Missy Higgins - Where I Stood (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

Yo! Missy! Fiona Apple called, she wants her sound back.

Two words: Jet Li

He's quiet and fierce. J'adore Jet Li. Actually I love Kung Fu movies and martial arts films in general. I haven't read any reviews on this one yet, but I'm going to see it regardless.

Guess what?...

A legally male transgendered person is having a baby. He looks like a bloated guy that drinks too much beer. It's not beer, it's a baby! Remember "Junior," starring the Governator? That movie sucked... except for the fact that it freaked my dad out really, really bad.

The Advocate has the full story.

There is a god.

I can forget about RFID chips and the other bullshit because Anthony Bourdain is coming to Pittsburgh for the the Drue Heinz Lecture Series at the Carnegie Music Hall.

It's sold out but if you hear about some crazy bitch from Beaver County breaking in, it was definitely not me, not me at all.

Bloggers are born not made

I'm starting to believe that bloggers are born, not made.

I hate to ruin the glamour and romance of this site that tons of people look at daily to see what I'm into and not into, but blogging is not in my nature. Some people believe that blogging is our future. Well I believe "The Children Are Our Future," just kidding, that was lame.

I sat in on a meeting about "continuous news" at the newspaper where I intern. The other editors on the copy desk asked me to go to the meeting because they didn't want to, and I'm glad they did because it was a total eye opener.

I don't think that ameteur bloggers are our future, and I refuse to believe that the future is right now in the news industry.

Writing for the Web is a good class, and the skills that we have learned taking this course are super important in the Journalism and PR industries. But the legacy portions of our industry are catching up, quickly. In the meeting, we learned about all of the research that went onto the creation of TMZ.com.

And guess what?

That site is run by real journalists, though trashy and somewhat unethical, and they have one of the most heavily hit websites on the net.

I don't think that I need to blog on my own to be successful or to know what's going on. But in the near future my boss may ask me to write on a blog. I look forward to it because at least then I won't have to search through random crap and find something to take up space to get a good grade.

Here's the idea that mass media is catching up on and now one talks about, continuous news. The story never ends, the story is always developing, like our blogs. Does that make any sense? Basically newspapers are going to be developing news sites like the gossip site TMZ because it works! And then up sell ads to their legacy print counter parts. And the most successful news sites are still the traditional heavy hitters like The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. The Las Vegas Sun was also mentioned as a great news website.

P.S. the art I chose for this is called "Birth" by Frida Kahlo. Guess who owns the original? Madonna! Ha, got you, bitches.

P.P.S. don't google the word "birth" and look for images without a bucket. One word: abortion. Yikes.

Hey Ladies

Two metro, most likely homo, sex-pots for the price of one!

"60 Minutes," hasn't been this hot since the last time Andy Rooney trimmed his nose hairs. I refuse to believe that Anderson Cooper is totally 100% gay, I'm sorry I can't.

The grey fox will come back to us! But if he doesn't, his interview with Prince Charming will suffice for quite awhile. Thank you CBS!

Blame it on ... awesomely bad taste

Demi Moore and Michael Caine reunited! Anybody remember "Blame It On Rio?"

Ah, the early 80s, delightfully tacky.

Okay, Demetria isn't actually in the trailer for "Blame It On Rio," but she plays the best friend of the girl all over the trailer, trust me.

Devil's advocate

"Dark Matter," is new film about campus violence. It looks really interesting but I don't think that it's going into wide release by any means. Yeah Netflix!

This movie follows a brililiant Chinese student who becomes overwhelmed and resorts to violence while attending an American university.

I think it's going to be worthwhile to see the other side of the story. We always see the chaos, the sadness and the candle light vigil's. And we always ask ourselves, "What was the shooter thinking? What were they trying to accomplish?" Here's a movie that will help us to gain some insight to the other side of the coin.

Tiger Balm: Here he comes to save the day

I woke up last Wednesday morning with a stiff back. I thought it would just go away. But like so many other things in my life ... it didn't turn out the way that I though it would.

Nowadays, I have to write things down in order to remember what to do, what to buy and where to go and what time to be there. My feet hurt, my skin gets dry and when I wake up with a back ache it just gets worse and worse day after day until I look like Mr. Burns from the "Simpsons."



The only thing that saved me was Tiger Balm. A wonderful Indonesian remedy that smells like Vick's Vapo Rub on acid mixed with cinnamon and anything else that will burn your nose.

When some philanthropic, perhaps misguided, soul gets manipulated into manipulating your back with the fire balm your both in for an experience.

Your masseuse with be disgusted by your orgasmic relief and you will be overcome with the sweet, burning, tingling sensation brought to you by the islands of southeast Asia.

Growing up I thought that my dad was one of the only people around that could get Tiger Balm, because his close friend was Indonesian and an athlete.

In actuality you can buy it at any health food store, even just GNC and Drugstore.com.

It was seriously like two years ago when I was in GNC and I saw Tiger Balm and thought to myself, "How do they know about this?" Then I figured it out, I'm retarded.

All Hail the Queen's new album

Guess what guys? Yes, yes, yes Madonna is releasing another album! It's going to be called "Hard Candy," and there will be no disco, sigh. The album will hit stores April 29th and the first single called "Four Minutes," should be out by the end of this month. It's her last album with Warner Brothers, but not her last I'm sure.

So some other less awesome bloggers say her first single sucks. But they just don't understand her, you know. A version of the single has been leaked, but I highly doubt that it's the official single. She's too good for that.

I think that Madonna and I should do a version of Rhianna and Ne-yo's "Hate That I Love You." That pretty much sums it up.

Art in Beaver County, can it be?

There is a small glimmer of hope, shining at the end of a long, long dark overcast tunnel. It's the The Annual Exhibition of the Beaver Valley Artists at the Merrick Art Gallery in New Brighton! The exhibition is from March 16-April 10, 2008 and the Opening Reception is on Sunday, March 16th from 1-4PM. I'm totally going if anybody needs a ride.

Two artists that I admire should be there, Paul Camp, all around renaissance man, and Regina Madonna an accomplished watercolorist and muralist. Hopefully they won't be scanning our National Real ID cards at the door (see below). Just kidding, they don't even charge at the door at the Merrick Gallery, that's one of the reasons why I love it.

In addition to featuring Beaver Valley artists, they also offer art classes and have a great collection of wonderful examples of the Hudson River School. Did I mention that it's free admission? See you there, squares.

Our father who art in heaven...

Think this is a joke. Go to the press conference at the University of Pittsburgh on March 13.

Batten down the hatches people. This crap is getting out of control.

I was hanging out with a friend this weekend and we were discussing our general discontent about politics, extremism, fear culture and all of the other tools used to strip us of our freedoms. He asked me if I knew about the RFID chips, I said no, and he directed me to You Tube, of course, to show me just what he was talking about. So I've posted a few videos, some more extreme than others, to give you an idea of what were dealing with here.

The basics are that this is a micro chip that can be implanted into your body, placed in money and in any product you buy at the store. This idea has been sold to us under the guise of safety, you need this or your kids won't be able to play in the front yard shit.

Advocates of the chip say that this is a way to weed out terrorists and destroyers of the American way of life. True, I agree that more specific identification for using mass transportation like airplanes could be a highly effective safety precaution.

But what happens when they turn off your chip? You can't buy food, you can't travel, you can't have a bank account. Wow, life is beautiful. Personally I think I should buy a dairy cow, start building a homestead and bury my gold in the front yard.

Anywho ... scroll down to hear Republican Presidential Nominee Ron Paul discuss his opinion on the National Real ID card. He's onto something. For the record I'm not a republican and I'm not a democrat, I'm a realist who's sees virtually no difference between corporate republicans and corporate democrats. I'm disgusted by the 2% of our population who control 80% of our wealth.

I think that the distribution of wealth on our country is one of the worst things about the US. When your looking for someone to blame, look up, not down. People who live off of the state, and use my hard earned money to buy clothes and candy for their kids, weaken the middle class because that's what suits corporate America.

I don't like white trash, lazy unmotivated thieves or people that don't respect themselves enough to work as hard as others, but I fucking hate rich people. And I don't mean doctors and lawyers who drive luxury vehicles and who pull in six figures, I'm talking about Exxon Mobile. I'm talking about the super elite.

For the record, I'm also not a peace loving hippie that eats wheat germ and no red meat. But I am an angry son of a bitch who hates getting ripped off, and I'd rather help out a single mother who wants an education with my tax dollars than give some fat cat, who put that bull shit scapegoat Bush in office, another damn dollar or liberty of mine. I hope that this wasn't too over the top.

The New World Order is Here!

Ron Paul rejecting the Real ID (nat'l ID card)

real id card/RFID CHIPS

BAD SPELLING. GOOD POINT.

I Like Dirt

I want to be this woman. Not Courtney Cox, Lucy Spiller. Actually now that I think about it, I want to be Courtney Cox too.

The FX series Dirt is back! I'm going to watch all of the inappropriate sex scenes and follow the ridiculous plot lines. God bless FX for keeping this crap on TV.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

A few weeks ago I was puttering around my apartment watching an episode of "The Charlie Rose Show." The guest, Julien Schnabel, had been invited back for an hour long discussion about his life and career as a modern artist and filmmaker. So I stopped puttering and started paying attention. Schnabel is the director of "Before Night Falls"and the recently released "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", which is now playing at Cinemagic in Squirrel Hill.

I'm not going to make the trip to Squirrel Hill unless one of my friends offers to drive me. So I may have to rent or buy as soon as it's released, because this movie looks and sounds awesome.

If you watched the Oscars last night, you may have noticed that it picked up a few nominations, but "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" cleaned house.

Anyway the movie is about the former editor of French Elle, Jean-Dominique Bauby. He travelled, he indulged, he lived a life that most of us can only dream of. Then he had a stroke and developed what's known as locked-in syndrome. It's a state of almost total paralysis and only had the use of one of his eyes. One of his nurses would recite the alphabet, and when she would say a letter, he would blink. That's how this dude wrote his memoirs, by blinking a letter at a time.

The moral of the story? This man, who had once had everything, learned how to use his imagination and appreciate life because he was locked in his own body.

But this isn't a cheesy movie about how you should appreciate life, blah, blah, blah. It has a great script, acting, cinematography...Shall I go on? If anyone sees it let me know what you think. Its an American movie but based on a French novel, so it's filmed in French. Lovely.

Pretty Ladies

Alphonse Mucha is amazing. He was a commercial artist who created these pretty ladies for Job cigarette papers and other advertisements. Now he's more well known as an fine artist. Mucha's highly stylized and decorative portraits gave birth to what we know as Art Nouveau.

So let's all plan a trip to Prague to visit the museum. Shall we? I've never been to there. But everyone I know who has been to this gem of Eastern Europe, has fallen in love with it, and dreamed of revisiting.
Just thought I'd share.

I have a fantasy about being able to travel around the world to see the world's greatest museums and to visit galleries. I wish I had enough money to be an art collector, maybe even an art dealer. For me musicians and artists are as good a reason as any to travel to a new city.

But mostly I love art and artists because art is universal. I believe that good art transcends age and time and race. Most of the accomplished local fine artists that I know are much older than myself. And when I talk to them about their lives or families I feel like a polite listener, but when we discuss the art world and they're work or mine we become equals.

And I can't wait for the day that I get to walk on the streets of Prague like Samantha Brown from the Travel Channel, go to the museum and stare at Mucha's work from two inches away.

Personalization...

I would like to call this photo "Lazy, sleep deprived: one in the same."

After a class critique I've decided that I will be posting a picture of myself every once in awhile. I know that you can post a photo with your profile, but I would rather use this as an opportunity to bring my many fans into my day to day, or week to week (however it happens to be going). My friend Tom did a project called "Tom Rudich Everyday." He took a photo of himself every single day for a year. 365 days without fail. Along with the fact that my blog needs to be more personal, I now feel more inspired by Tom than ever. Here goes "Amanda Brobeck Maybe Every Once and Awhile."

This is my Christmas

I'm going to imagine that I actually have thousands of fans reading my blog everyday. I want to believe that repeatedly through out the day my weblog addicted fans are checking my blog spot (that sounded dirty) so my witty commentary can brighten up a dull moment in their day.

Assumedly, no one looks at my blog unless Dr. Chapin tells them that it's required.

Never-the-less, I'm going to share with "all of you" the joy I'm experiencing this evening.

It's Oscar night. This is my Christmas. I watch every year, through every bad joke, fashion disaster and lengthy speech. I've taken film classes, I've worked with actual celluloid and splicer's. I buy soundtracks. I read the novels that inspire the films. I try to see as many of the nominated films as I can, in my culture depraved valley by the river, before I watch the awards broadcast. I'm a massive dork, and I need to get out more.

But I just want to say, why is Miley Cyrus at the Oscar's? She haunts me. You think I'm kidding, but I AM NOT. I take it back, she's haunting all of us. This girl is a cockroach, I swear. She will come rising out of the ashes of the apocalypse wearing a blonde wig clutching a microphone and carrying a huge wad of the billion dollars she will supposedly have by the time SHE TURNS 18! What has the world come to? Miley give me all your money. Maybe I can work my way up through the ranks, become her friend and sometimes manager, feed her pills leaving her disoriented, and take some of her money, become infamous and leave. It could happen, I just need to stay focused.

Congrats to Javier Bardem, for winning Best Supporting Actor. He deserves it, he set the tone in No Country For Old Men.

Anywho, most of the chicks on the red carpet played it safe, pretty and boring. And Jennifer Hudson redeemed herself from looking like a damn space ship last year. Go girl.

I'm done boring no one now. Can't wait til next year.

All Hail the Queen

I once spent $50 on a one year membership to Madonna's fan club. "Icons", as paying fans are referred, are given the chance to win advanced tickets to Madonna's concerts and to also win one of a kind prizes and give aways.

I didn't win anything, and I never went to her concert that year. But I don't get down about, I'm not bitter.

Anyways, I'm totally obsessed with her. She's kind of old, too serious, not that great of a singer, or actress. But her ambition is hard to match. Most of us are exposed to Madonna's pop sensibilities and perceive her as, well, total crap. But during my lifetime as a superfan, I've been pleasantly surprised over and over gain by Madonna's sophisticated taste in art, music and culture. If you scratch just below the surface of the glossy magazine covers and shallow sound bites you'll find a real artist who's made the most of her life and career. She works with the world's most cutting edge producers, directors and fashion designers. Check the liner notes see what it's all about. Click here for info on her directorial debut, the latest news, all of her music videos and my favorite feature, the photographic timeline.

I wish I didn't understand her, but I do. I want to just say no, but every time she comes our with a new album, I buy it. Then I find the collector's edition and I buy that too. And then I find the concert DVD, and I buy that too. I'm a whore.

Awards Season!

Awards season is upon us. I know we've had the Golden Globes and the SAG awards already, but the Grammy's make the season of winning just commercial enough for it to register with me. And I don't really care about the Grammy's, it just gets me excited about the Oscars! I'm a total sap for classic films and Oscar nostalgia.

No Country For Old Men

I went to see the new Coen Brothers film, "No Country For Old Men" on Sunday afternoon. I went to a matinee, it's only $5.75. It was the best $5.75 I've ever spent in my life. Javier Bardem's acting is unbelievable, frightening and awakening.

Basically the plot follows a hired killer, who happens to be a psychopath, and his journey in rural Texas to get the job done. From the moment the house lights were dimmed, to the moment they were raised, the mood was tense and brutal.

I don't want to say to much, because I want everyone to go see this movie.

Another interesting and unexpected factor...practically zero soundtrack. The Coen Brothers last few movies have had soundtracks that were almost equally narrative and successful as the films themselves, "No Country" has no music, only a few low volume soundscapes that are barely noticable.

For some odd reason, that I will not question, "No Country" and the new Daniel Day-Lewis vehicle, "There Will Be Blood" are being shown at Cinemark in Center Township. Take advantage of his break in normal Beaver County culture!

Also, even though the film was totally brutal, the matinee crowd was an odd mix of cotton ball haired bubbas and middle-aged couples...wierd.

I didn't want to have to do this

I've been following the Britney Spears debacle since day one. My fascination with Britney isn't a new part of my life. I like her music, the upbeat stuff can really keep me moving on a treadmill. And the images I have in my memory of how she looked back in the day, on MTV in that barely there, sequined jumpsuit, are enough to motivate me to get on a treadmill.

There are so many aspects to what's happening to her, that everyone has an opinion. People who are divorced, kids who are estranged from their parents, anyone who's had their heartbroken, if you've had a rough night immortalized on film or if you've ever dreamed of being famous.

Anyway, when someone is mentally ill, addicted or otherwise it's so easy to say, "Someone should have helped them. How could there family let that happen?" When you try to help someone who doesn't want help, because they don't think that they need help, good luck. That shit is WAY easier said than done. WAY easier. I've know a few people who let themselves get to a point almost beyond help because their family couldn't face the truth, and their mental illness didn't develop overnight. It developed over years. And idiosyncraies that you thought were hilarious or exciting become dangerous and detrimental.

I blame Justin Timberlake. HA! Deal with it. Let's all admit it, she went down hill after that, and then KFed put the nail in the coffin so to speak.

My dream is to see her come back around and do another Diane Sawyer interview. Or go down like Francis Farmer, crazy as a shit house rat.

More on this later, trust me.

Tomorrow is just another opportunity to eat breakfast.

I'm not an expert in anything, really. Except for maybe one thing...working in a fruit market. Do you want a good treat that's high in fiber and full of vitamins A and C? How about some ruby red grapefruit. Throw on some local honey to build up your immunity to local free radicals and allergins, that's money baby! If I lay on the couch for 12 straight hours and eat nothing but fast food and pizza while on that couch, I start fresh in the morning. I eat ruby red grapefruit with local honey, some scrambled egg whites and drink a cup of green tea. I swear I could run over a newborn baby and rob a bank and that breakfast would make me feel like nothing is wrong in my life. Give it try, tell me what you think.

Tonight, I was watching "American Gladiators" and "Law and Order SVU" at the same time. When I clicked back to NBC for some more Gladiators, it was instead America's Biggest Fattest Stupidest Liar With a Southern Drawl and a Pea Size Brain giving The State of the Union Address. When is the president going to get to the part that goes something like, "I'm working on a new resolution that will allow all college students to study for free, or at least for a reasonable price." Oh crap, the address is over, I guess my dreams are crushed again! I will be eating breakfast tomorrow, you know what I'm saying?