Oh shit

I forgot my anniversary. Me and RJ Battles have been together for 3 years, 3 years this past Tuesday, but I didn't stop by and write anything that day.

I didn't realize this until late last night, and while it's not a big deal, I really did mean to do something. 3 years is kind of a big deal. That's a long time.

But really, I've been neglectful of the blog for the past 6 months anyway. I haven't been too busy; I've just been less ambitious than I usually (which isn't very).

I follow 3 blogs. Even though the writing comes off like a high school newspaper student trying to sound like a People Magazine music reviewer, I do usually learn something new about a song that I'm half-way interested in. The writer, Joel, is knowledgable, but "Guru" (a word I don't care for anyway) is a stretch. Also, you can see where a lot of the info comes from- read his post about Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot" and then take a look at the song's Wiki page- seperated at birth.

For the past year or so I've been following the blog By Ken Levine. He's former writer for M*A*S*H and Cheers and he's a baseball announcer (so, as you'd probably guess, I skip any posts that show a picture of a baseball diamond). I came across his blog one day when I was on Wiki reading about Cheers. There was a story about Carla's husband Eddie and the whole backstory about why he left the show so abruptly and a link to Levine's blog where he tells everything in full detail. It's very interesting and his blog is full of posts like that. Levine also co-wrote the movie Volunteers starring Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, and John Candy. Remember when people made a big deal out of the characters drinking Coke in the movie while the movie company, Tri-Star, was owned by Coke? He gives the details behind that story too. Also, he was in a mini-feud with Aaron Sorkin a couple years ago and a mini-feud with Roseanne this year.

Both The Daily Guru and By Ken Levine feature new posts every single day. It's part of The Guru's "mission", and Levine's blog was voted one of the 25 Best Blogs of 2011 by Time Magazine so that makes for an eager audience. My favorite blogger isn't as productive, or, at least, hasn't been lately.

Last year, Final Girl put up 387 posts; so far, this year there have only been 92- for July, August, and September there were a total of 6 posts. She's written every day of October, but that's because it's October. I mean, I'm not complaining (but I am)- I'm just surprised that someone who ammassed such a large following would just let it all wither. Because I'm sure that a lot of people don't even bother checking in anymore. Final Girl might be on their Favorites list but they gave up on it and have found new blogs to read.

But I'm sure she's got a lot of other projects to work on, and maybe she just wants a break from constantly writing about horror movies. Maybe she's said just about everything she wanted to say about the subject.

What I know for sure (if I can say that, if it's OK with Oprah) is that if she decides to get back into Final Girl full-time, she's such a good writer that she'll attract just as many people to the site. It'll never be a ghost-town (NPI).

April

I have a feeling that April is going to fly by. March did. It seems like it was just the beginning of February.

What's the plan for RJ Battles this month?

I'd like to make some terrariums and post pictures of their progress and I also wanna go to my parents' so I can scan some pictures and post those too.

I've been watching a lot of good movies and I want to write revieews but i don't know how to write them. I posted about movies here before but I don't think they've been fun or interesting to read. Maybe I'm wrong.

I like to go to Final Girl and go through her reviews archive, whether it's something I've seen, or want to see, or know I'll never see. It's always fun and interesting. I'd like my reviews to be like that.

Later tonight...

Later tonight I'll be blogging about the 1990 film, The Godfather Part III. My original plan was to copy Final Girl and do what she did with the Halloween series and all the Friday the 13th movies- watch all the movies and blog about them at the same time.

Final Girl is my blogging role model and she comes up with a lot of creative ideas. Doing all the Godfather movies would've been fun, but, really, it wouldn't work. Is there anything new that anybody can say about the first two films?

Anyway, the movie starts in a few minutes. Check back here at RJ Battles later on tonight.

(If you'd like to watch with me, it's gonna be on at 8pm on AMC.

Something to buy for me

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I wanna blog something

Over at Final Girl she did two movie marathons and blogged during them. She did the Halloween series, the original and all the sequels, and the same thing with Friday the 13th. If you have some free time and you want to have fun you can go to the Final Girl archives and look them up.

I don't want to copy her (yes, I do), but I want to do something likwe that. I want to do something for a few hours and blog about it- I want you to feel like you're with me the whole time.

I could do the Godfather movies, but, really, what can I say? Maybe it would be fun if I listened to all the Pixies albums, in order, and put up a post for each of them. And it would feel like you were up here in my bedroom listening with me.

Even better, what if I blogged during something we could all experience at the same time. Let's say we watched football and we watched the Superbowl together (I know, it was yesterday)- I could blog and you could keep checking in to see what I say and you could leave some comments.

I'll have to keep thinking about this. In the meantime, I'm going to bed, I'm tired.

If you have any ideas, send them along. I love comments.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

When it comes to horror movies I don't have any standards and just about all horror movies scare me. Still, I'm watching Halloween 5 again and realizing that I lost all interest in the Halloween movies after III. I and II are like the first two Godfathers to me and Season of the Witch is good in it's own way, but all the other sequels sucked.

I think Final Girl has mentioned this already, but: that is NOT the Myers house, not even remodeled to disquise its past- it's just a different house altogether.

I still haven't seen Halloween 6, the one that came out in the mid-90s and stars Paul Rudd. I guess it answers the questions raised at the end of 5. I wanna stay up and watch it but I've gotta be in early tomorrow morning. I'm thinking AMC will play it again this week.

Don't you love it...

...when you take a sip of water from a glass and realize how thirsty you are and drink the whole thing at once. Water is so delicious.

October is one of my favorite months and I love Halloween so I'd like to watch some horror movies and write about them here. And I don't even need to rent anything. Turner Classic Movies is showing a lot of horror films this month and I've got the Chiller Channel.

Today The Changeling was on IFC or Sundance and I caught parts of it. I was sick and went to take a nap halfway through and was surprised to see it was still on when I woke up. I caught the ending and remembered why I'd thought of it recently: Final Girl has been running a game called The Final Shot where she posts the last image from a horror movie and you try and guess the movie. She did The Changeling last week.

Saw that The Sunday New York Times reviewed Kristin Hersh's book Rat Girl this past weekend. I'm happy about that; it was a very favorable review and it'll be great exposure for the book. I'm hoping that Rat Girl finds a large audience and it brings a lot of attention to Throwing Muses, who are working on their first album since 2003.

That record, called Throwing Muses, featured some of their best songs and Tanya Donelly came back to sing backing vocals. From what I've heard she won't be involved with the new album but who knows? It would be awesome to see a full reunion with her singing and playing guitar, maybe even throwing in a couple of her own songs. Donelly hasn't put out an album since 2006 so she must have a few songs kicking around.

There are about half a dozen demos up at Throwing Muses's CASH Music page. The best, I think, is "Cherry Candy/Dripping Trees". If you get a chance, check it out.

Today is the two year anniversary of the start of RJ Battles. I'd been thinking of starting a blog for a while, inspired by my favorite blog, Final Girl. When I began this blog I'd just moved to a new city and had been there (here) for just over a week. I hadn't found a job yet and to be honest, I wasn't really looking too hard. Less than a week later I got a call back and started work the next day. My two year anniversary of starting work there (here) is coming up on the 17th.

I'm very proud of some of the writing I've done here at RJ Battles and I'm pleased with a lot of the images I've found and put up. Thank you to everyone who's come here to RJ Battles to read and look at the pictures. I appreciate it and I hope you'll continue to check in from time to time. See you later, RJ Battles

My favorite blog

"My Favorite Blog"
by RJ Battles
Monday, September 27, 2010

My favorite blog, and the one that inspired me to start my own blog, is Final Girl. This week I had some time to kill so I re-read some of my favorite posts: A few years ago she did two movie series marathons, one for Halloween, and tyhe other for Friday the 13th. It was a great idea and everything was written so well.

Last night I made a list of movies that I'd like to rent now that it's almost October. One of the movies is The Strangers (2008). Final Girl reviewed the movie and talked about the dumb things that horror movie characters do and the way that they don't stay to together for safety.

From Final Girl, June 12, 2008-

"(I)f I am one of two people trapped in a house by masked kookadooks and my pal, the one with the shotgun, says, "I'll be right back", I will say,"Fuck that noise, I am coming with you. Or leave the boomstick with me, your choice"."

A tribute to Final Girl

I've been reading the Final Girl blog since around 2007. I found it through the old Look Back In Anger blog.

I've read about 85% of the posts, which are mostly movie reviews, and most of the movies are horror movies, and most of those horror movies are slasher movies from the 1970s and 80s.

I've seen a lot of the movies she writes about, but even when I haven't seen or even heard of the particular film she's reviewing, it's always a pleasure to read. She's a great writer and very funny.

It was her blog that inspired me to start this one- RJ Battles. In fact, a long time ago, I asked her on Myspace if she had any advice about starting a blog. I like what she said and I've tried to do it. She said, basically, "Write about something you're interested in, and don't worry if you don't have readers right away; just write for yourself".

If you get a chance you should definitely check out Final Girl. There you can find her Review Archive and look up all the reviews she's done. Here is a list of just a few of my favorite posts:

Night Of The Lepus
Salem's Lot
Eaten Alive
Straight Jacket
Frogs
Day Of The Animals
The Fog (1980) (2005)
The Exorcist III
The Blair Witch Project
Grindhouse
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Polergeist II & III
Devil Dog: Hound From Hell

She has also done marathon blogs where she watched an entire series in one night; there was a Halloween marathon and a Friday The 13th one.



Note: One time a reader plagerised her and put up a post that copied her almost word for word. She went through the roof and posted an awesome response. The guy ended up deleting his entire blog. It was great.

Sometimes, though, I'll be writing something for RJ Battles and if it's funny I'll immediately think, "Did I copy this from something I read on Final Girl?"


(Note: I don't mean to give the impression that I'm friends with Final Girl. We're friends on Myspace but we only spoke that one time there, and we sent a couple messages when I participated in her Final Girl Film Club.)

New direction

RJ Battles

Over the past month I've come across a lot of record sleeves that I've always wanted to see, for example, the inside of the Feed The Tree CD and the back cover of the Super-connected CD. I've made RJ Battles into the kind of website that I used to look around for and the kind of place where I'd like to look around for a while.

RJ Battles has become a kind of continuation of the 4AD eyesore database. Eyesore is a website where you can look up all the 4AD artists and see the front covers of all their abums, singles, and EPs, along with some promo posters. Here I've tried to add some extras: Japanese imports, alternate covers, and inside and back cover artwork.

Along the way I've done some music, movie, and TV reviews, and I think, now that I've shown most of the album artwork that I like I'm going to focus more on movie and music reviews. I'm not able to do funny reviews like Final Girl does so I'm not going to even try, but I do have a point of view so I'm going to share it.

Anyway, there's a lot to look forward to here at RJ Battles. There will still be a lot of record sleeve art (I'm always looking); there's going to be a lot more of everything. Thank you for coming here and I hope to see you in the future.

Thank you, RJ Battles