What else is afoot? There are upcoming concerts in Charlotte and Miami and Melbourne; see the gig calendar. Front complained about another movie over at SBFMC. That nice young fellow wil.i.am tried really hard to make a nerdcore song, which actual nerd rappers will have to find kind of adorable. Front drew a couple of submissions for jerkcity HD.

Oh! And Front loves his mom, which you already knew.

Also on the horizon: Florida Supercon on 4th of July weekend! It will be the first visit ever to Miami for Front and bandmates. Won't you join them there?

And before that? Front flies solo in Charlotte NC on June 7th and 8th for Heroes Con and the SouthEast LinuxFest. Comics, okay, sure. But that other thing? Front sure plays a lot of events associated with an OS that he's basically too dumb to use! Be certain to drop by and heckle him about that, about his trousers, about any other deficiencies he brings to the table.

Front's impossibly talented flatmate Meredith Gran is currently up for a Reuben and an Eisner! If you are someone who gets to vote for those things, vote wisely. She has to win everything so that she can spend less time fretting over her career and more time getting drunk and watching terrible car movies with Front in the living room.

And were you aware that your likely inability to score a PAX badge does not entirely hinder your weekend's excitements? Front and the Protomen are onstage in Cambridge at the Middle East on Sunday evening, to destroy any hope you had of peace and rest.

Then? Frontalot (and indomitable nerdcore rapmaster Random) hop a flight to San Francisco to perform at a party for GDC. You'll need a con badge to get in, we think. You can RSVP for free or buy a VIP ticket for about what a Midwesterner spends on rent. We assume the VIP area will include solid platinum ecigs and a free backrub from Gavin Newsom.

Hey, our MC wants to thank some folks who made SXSW such a slam-bang wham-doodle this year: Tim for hosting the whole band, Kat Jones and Minor Birds for letting Front hog the best room in the mansion all week, Rico and Mikey and Ian and crew for being fine concertgoing companions, Schaffer and Int0x80 and kHill and Jesse and the WB and Les and Lars and Ran and Adam and Tribeone for keeping the stage live and the crowd explosive throughout the official nerdcore showcase, Adam A and Plaidlad for showing us yet another great time around town, and Lynda for making the whole thing happen. And are you ready for the full report on Front's music venue traipsery? He managed to see (big breath): Reggie Watts, Chaos Chaos, Seryn, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Kyle Kinane, Hasan Minhaj, Amanda Palmer, DJ Spooky, Protomen, Louis Logic, Open Mike Eagle, Prince Paul, Ultramagnetic MCs, Geto Boys, Earl Sweatshirt, Linkoban, Lucy Love, Tribe Called Red, Heliotropes, Death Grips, Big Freedia, the Pharcyde (well, Imani and Booty Brown), and Mos Def. Sorry about how there's no hyperlinks in that list. Internet probably has enough hyperlinks already. We don't want to mess things up.

Here's Front talking to Rapstation about hip-hop stuff very recently.

To celebrate this excursion, we offer you a new video presentation for Nerd Vs. Jock, from Solved.

If you missed your Frontalot on NPR's Science Friday, the audio is here, and a whole 'nother video segment is over here. It is not actually possible to miss things any more, because internet. So don't.

PAX East is so soon, people. So soon.

New York! Our MC performs one song at the Video Game Critics Circle Awards on Tues the 5th. It's free! It will be fun. Come sit in the back and yell "Mario Cart! Give it to Mario Cart!" Or something.

King Of The Nerds starts Thursday on TBS! Get familiar with the contestants now so that Front can break your heart by kicking your favorite one(s) off the show in the sixth or seventh episode.

PAX East and PAX Australia and SXSW all impend. We'll remind you about those again soon. ]]> 1358185860 Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800 1358150400 Sat, 12 Jan 2013 13:43:14 -0800 Jul 20, Sat
Melbourne Showgrounds
Epsom Road
Ascot Vale, VIC (AU)
With: Protomen
Cover: Free w/ badge
Concert schedule not announced yet! Show might be on Friday night instead.
]]> 1358026994 Sun, 16 Dec 2012 06:09:00 -0800 Front's 'greatest' 'hits' compilation Favoritism is now available in MP3, AAC, and FLAC, in the album downloading area, for a scant ten dollars. Perhaps you should avail yourself of a copy, to make your i-thing's song collection more robust? Also makes a great gift, except for being a download-only album that cannot possibly rattle inside of a crisply wrapped box. Our more substantial merch is better suited to that purpose.

This Saturday sees Front w/ DJ CPU in Oakland, alongside Crashfaster, Doc Pop, and MC Lars, for the 2nd annual Ugly Sweater Party. Tickets still available.

Holy down-underness! Front is slated to rock the mic in Melbourne at the first-ever PAX Australia. If you think you might be anywhere near Australia in July of 2013, get a pass. Or if Boston's more your speed, see Front at PAX East in March, like you usually do.

And here's one more exciting thing to anticipate: this January, Front will be a 'celebrity' guest on the new TBS show King Of The Nerds, which, as far as we can tell, is kind of like a cross between IT Crowd, Project Runway, and The Running Man. Hack your DVRs to set themselves as soon as the broadcast schedule hits the database. And if you have a Nielsen box, hack that to report that nobody in the country watched anything else that whole week.

Did you catch Front talking zombies with Schaffer and Lugo on the Epic Piecast? Relive the audio glory here. Or, if you do not like to hear voices, you may instead read Front's zombie flick top-10 at Stand By For Mind Control.

Hot damn: new videos from Brandon Patton, Random, The Coup, Jean Grae, Busdriver. New albums from Random, Jonathan Coulton / John Roderick, Sole, Whoremoans, Kid Koala, Brad Sucks.

Front's favored kickstarters of the moment: Doc of the Dead, Cincy Comic-Con.

Oh! And: a joyous turkey day to you all, Americans! Expect a holiday-themed comic from our pal Jeffrey pretty soon.

Because I (with Gm7) wrote and oversaw several productions of a rock musical called Young Zombies In Love between 1999 and 2004, I have long been considered an expert on zombie stuff. And since I slightly prefigured the big zombie boom of the last ten years, I'm obviously the person you should look to when it's time to compile a list of the best zombie movies of all time.

I admit that I have not seen every zombie movie ever. There are some early 80s Italian classics and plenty of 2007-2012 American schlock that I've never found time for. But I am still the most awesome possible authority, so you should pay a lot of attention to me and immediately watch or re-watch everything in my Top Ten (Plus Five).

First, a technical concern: what is a zombie movie? Evil Dead II does not count, despite being full of reanimated corpses, since those corpses are animated by a supernatural/mystical force; zombieism must be a physical phenomenon. Jason is technically a zombie, but his Friday The 13th series falls square in the middle of the slasher genre; zombies must occur in outbreak form, and they must create new zombies when they kill.

Five that are absolutely worth watching:

• Planet Terror
  2007, Robert Rodriguez
  Part of the "Grind House" double feature, a tribute to cheap horror of the past, including faux missing scenes, print scratch, etc. Delightful.
• Zombieland
  2009, Ruben Fleisher
  Another tribute, but one that asks what would happen if, just once, the protagonist in a zombie apocalypse were smart, logical, organized, and equipped.
• Resident Evil
  2002, Paul W. S. Anderson
  A big surprise coming out of a video game license, but this ends up being a very engaging and claustrophobic adventure.
• Fido
  2006, Andrew Currie
  A social satire about suburban life, death, and pets.
• Night Of The Comet
  1984, Thom. E. Eberhardt
  Sort of a technical foul for this list since the zombified horde remains sentient, but a classic all the same.

And my Top Ten:

10.
Dawn Of The Dead
2004, Zack Snyder
Snyder is a hack, and his idea of stripping the politics out of this story and turning it into an action romp was not a good idea. But somehow it absolutely worked. Maybe because Sarah Polley is the princess of my heart.

9.
28 Weeks Later
2007, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
At once a hilarious critique of American military policy and a sober narrative about teen rebellion and triumph. A frightening and worthy follow-up to 28 Days.

8.
[Rec]
2007, Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza
Best-ever execution of the "found footage" horror movie framework, a shocking and riveting experience from top to bottom. Followed by cleverly (technically) non-zombie sequels and dumb American remakes ("Quarantine").

7.
28 Days Later
2002, Danny Boyle
Like many of these, a story much more about the inhumanity of survivors than about the terror of encroaching undead. But oh boy are these zombies scary.

6.
Dawn Of The Dead
1978, George A. Romero
A scathing look at American consumerism that goes way deeper than "zombies in a mall, get it??". The late seventies was a great time for public discourse on how nothing was ever going to be okay ever again, and this one really lets the dread percolate.

5.
Shaun Of The Dead
2004, Edgar Wright
Another tribute to zombie cinema, this one shines in its perfection, absorbing and refashioning every trope and managing to be both hilarious and heart-pounding at once.

4.
Cemetery Man (also known as Dellamorte Dellamorte)
1994, Michele Soavi
An abstract, arty movie about secrets, lies, whether the world has already ended, and Rupert Everett's cock. Probably a technical foul since its zombie epidemic might be mystical in origin, but still one of the very best. Do not miss.

3.
Return Of The Living Dead
1985, Dan O'Bannon
Marketed as a spiritual sequel to Romero's trilogy, it carved out its own place as a genuine classic of horror comedy. I watched it so much in sixth grade that the VHS tape broke. Definitely a top inspiration for the number two entry...

2.
Dead Alive (also known as Braindead)
1992, Peter Jackson
A flawless concoction of the gore-and-humor horror formula, and Jackson's best film by a long shot. Sorry. Give me zombie family dinner hour over hiking to Mordor any day.

1.
Night Of The Living Dead
1968, George A. Romero
I assume this is in the top spot every single time someone makes a list like this, and there are some good reasons to put it there. It is scary. It invented all the elements (zombieism as a spreading plague with impossible-to-pinpoint origin, zombies craving flesh, the siege house, the ragtag survivor crew at odds with themselves and their fate) that have been standard in this genre for 44 years. It proves itself, in its final moment, to be a deeply political piece. And it is a plain old good movie. Do yourself a favor and watch it, but make sure you don't accidentally get one of the two remakes or three colorizations.

If you have any major issues with this list (like you think Snyder's remake is better than Romero's Dawn, or that I forgot something) then you are wrong. But not so wrong that you can't take it to the forums and try to convince me that you're right.

He wishes to EXTRA QUADRUPLE THANK Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, and probably Washington (they count votes slowly over there), for being the first group out the gate, and for reminding the whole country that our march toward marriage equality and more fully realized human rights is not merely possible but inevitable. Furthermore! Big ups to Tammy Baldwin for breaking the Senate ceiling, under which 100% of previous gay and lesbian senators have had to stay closeted. High fives to Tammy Duckworth for ejecting flunkwit blowhard Joe Walsh from the House, to Claire McCaskill and Joe Donnely for shutting down the Republican "Get Raped For God" squad, and to Elizabeth Warren, who gave pretty-boy fraud Scott Brown a very satisfying smackdown in Frontalot's former base of ops, Massachusetts.

Front hopes that the vote suppression experts infesting the state machinery in Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Iowa can be exposed, prosecuted, incarcerated, and forgotten. If you managed to vote in any of those states despite the best efforts of your officials, you are getting the biggest virtual hug right now from the rapper in question.

Shitty weather keeps messing with the northeast! If you are in NY or NJ, here's some ways to pitch in.

This is not technically a bootleg review since I paid for a 48-hour rental on Amazon, but I did watch it at like 480p blown up to fullscreen so it was pretty similar to watching it embedded on a russian pharmacy affiliate link traffic funnel page.

This plot summary is written in tribute to Gabe's 'The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time' while that feature is on hiatus.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Poor James Franco. His dad John Lithgow has a disease. It is called THE DISEASE throughout but also at some point accidentally called Alzheimer's, and obviously it's Alzheimer's because when it's acting up John Lithgow can't play piano excellently or hold his fork the right direction. So obviously James Franco is devoting his life to developing and testing a new ANTI THE DISEASE drug called one-twelve. One-twelve has no side effects. Except that it makes test chimps into noble revolutionaries. Oops!

Our man's reporting his success to a group of people in business suits that is both the governing body of the drug company and a set of potential investors(?) when his powerpoint presentation goes so poorly that testing is discontinued and all the apes are put to death. Doctor(?) Franco heads home in defeat, pausing only to adopt a newborn chimp who's already received ape-smartening chemicals prenatally. Oh, right! One-twelve! He takes some of that home too in case he wants to give it to his dying father. After three years he figures, sure. Why not.

His dad has an immediate total recovery! But our boy is cagey, and keeps this wildly exciting CURE FOR ALZHEIMER'S a secret. Perhaps he is hardened by years of subterfuge — his grim duty of protecting and hiding the stolen chimp Caesar. Caesar of course is the smartest ape on the planet, wears clothes, enjoys a gym at home but prefers trips to the redwoods, is protective of John Lithgow, pummels a neighbor, and winds up in an intensely implausible ape prison in San Bruno.

Sure, it's posh upstairs, but down on the cell block it is all cruel guards and corrupt wardens. You get mush and hay and if you complain you get the hose. Caesar leans his head against his drawing of a window and dreams of home.

Instead of rescuing his chimp son, James Franco reports to his mean boss that one-twelve made his dad smarter than HE EVEN WAS BEFORE HE HAD ALZHEIMER'S, which means obviously that research is back on and it's time to load up on chimps. Some of these are deliveries from the same ape jail where Caesar lives, so apparently it is an ape jail SLASH test monkey emporium, but when James Franco comes to bail him out, Caesar opts to remain. He would rather escape on his own, steal smart drugs from the fridge, break BACK into ape jail, dose up an army of supergenius ape guerrillas, liberate the drug lab, liberate the zoo (though only the primate exhibit? why not share your smart gas, ape dicks?), and then lead his cohort toward primatey paradise (Sausalito, I think).

It's a panic on the Golden Gate! The apes whoop ass on the police, mercilessly killing the mean boss from the drug company (who's helping shoot at them from a helicopter for some reason), then trundle off into freedom's bosom.

James Franco is only momentarily confused when, in the sun-dappled glade of their final farewell, Caesar speaks English. "This film is terrible and I have not looked like a real living creature for even one frame of it, but I'd like you to trust that all of us CGI apes belong here, in Sausalito, and not in your attic."

James Franco makes a few more hilarious acting faces and they part in peace. Except: his recent upgrade of the Alzheimer's cure ALSO escaped the lab and is super poisonous and now the whole human race will be wiped out in several weeks. Oops again! Cue credits.