My favorite band was (and still is) Unwound. I managed to see them live at the Palace (now the Avalon) when they opened for the Melvins and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion right after 9/11. They broke up on April 1, 2002.

On their website, they link to an interview they did with Maura Magazine that details the finals months of the band.

Vern Rumsey: I did break both of my hands. We tried to play with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the Melvins in L.A. and my hands hurt so bad that I could hardly play. That was the first time I reached out for help by talking to Buzz [Osborne] about my addictions. It took me several years to get into rehab, and I have been in and out ever since. It’s sad. I hate to see other bands that I love self-destruct, but it happens.

Justin Trosper: We finished the last show of the tour without Vern. I don’t really know what to say, except that it was awkward. I guess the audience at The Smell [in Los Angeles] was gracious. We limped home and cancelled the rest of our tours in Europe and Japan.

Reading that last night hit me a bit for obvious reasons. I knew Vern was in bad shape at the time, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. Perhaps the saddest thing written was what David Scott Stone (touring musician for the last tour) said:

I have no doubt that Unwound would have had the same success that Modest Mouse has if alcoholism hadn’t dimmed all that is bright.

Let’s get this clear and into the open… the only concern about the whole tour was Vern’s drinking. This is why Unwound stopped playing. This peaked just outside San Diego, where Vern downed two Long Island Iced Teas just before hitting the stage. Who knows how much he had been drinking throughout the day, but it had been bad for a long time before that. We tried to play three or four songs before Justin walked off, followed by Sara, then Brandt. I was the last to leave, and looking back I saw [Vern] with his head back, swaying to the drone of feedbacking guitars lying on the stage—then snapping out of it and looking around for the rest of us, only to see the stage empty. He stumbled backstage, plopped himself on the couch, and drunkingly slurred “I just want you to know that none of you could be as mad at me as I’m mad at myself,” then got up and punched the walls, breaking both his wrists. Every show we worried about how he was going to be that night, but that was pretty much it. They then went back as a three-piece to do one last tour of the West Coast.

It’s pretty sad to write about this. I love Vern, but I don’t feel it’s helpful to not openly address the reasons why the band stopped working. I dealt with my issues eight years ago, and I’ll always be there for him when he’s ready.

Here’s Unwound playing the song “Envelope” live in Pensacola, FL back in 1998:

Some guy named DICK POUND said this anti-gay stuff is overblown. As told by Canadian media outlet Metro News:

Pound said other countries have “far harsher laws” regarding homosexuals than Russia and little is written on that.

“In Malaysia, you can be put to death. In Nigeria, you can be put in jail for God knows how long,” Pound said. “So it’s a target of convenience with respect to Russia, not that I approve of the law, but putting it on a scale of 1-10 of odious laws, it’s not way up there near 10.”

Pound said much of the anti-Russia gay stand emanates from the United States, where, Pound says, only a handful of states allow same-sex marriage.

Get Fucked.

Selfies on a trail staring into the sun is always a good idea. Especially when I’m chewing on a piece of gum.

Here is where I went:

Here is the website for the Forrestal Nature Preserve.

Xiu Xiu’s new album Angel Guts: Red Classroom is streaming on Pitchfork Advance. It’s everything you expect and want from a Xiu Xiu album: weird shit that makes your head throb and when you take a deeper look it causes your psyche to huddle in a fetal position.

I wonder if anyone on the Seahawks or Broncos will use any of these songs on their iPod to get them amped up for the game on Sunday. If so, I suggest they use “Black Dick”.

They really are! From the Phoenix New Times:

“We heard through a reliable grapevine that our music was being used in Guantanamo Bay prison camps to musically stun or torture people,” founder cEvin Key says by phone from his Los Angeles home. “We heard that our music was used on at least four occasions. So we thought it would be a good idea to make an invoice to the U.S. government for musical services, thus the concept of the record title, Weapons.”

I’m not the biggest fan of Weapons, but any Skinny Puppy is better than no Skinny Puppy. I lived and somehow survived their hiatus after the death of Dwayne Goettel.

But here is a live version of “Testure”, a lovely ditty about the horrors of vivisection.

So it’s here, the Kings-Ducks game at Dodger Stadium. One story I’m really fucking tired of hearing: will the ice withstand the warm weather?

That’s a really fucking lazy story, and after practice yesterday both teams raved about the quality of the ice. So let the story drop already.

This is my last story for LAist. After today I will be a free agent, to use sports parlance. I will go back and do what I usually do: throw a bunch of shit on the wall and see what sticks. Should be something.

Asra Nomani wrote a gripping story on her coming to terms with the murder of her friend and colleague Daniel Pearl. It’s a long read and definitely worth the effort.

It not only details vividly how Pearl was brutally beheaded at the hands of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but it details her investigation into identifying everyone involved and seeing them to justice. What you think will be a straight up detective story becomes something more personal, how different people handle grief.

I had become a ghost myself. One of my favorite uncles died and I didn’t cry. Then my grandmother died—it was the same. Shibli fell on the playground, smashing his forehead on a bolt protruding from the jungle gym. Most moms would have flipped out. I just looked at him. We went to the hospital, where I videotaped him getting stitches. Shibli was nonplussed. It never occurred to me then that the effects of posttraumatic stress could be passed on.

How I came across this story yesterday, I don’t know. Social media was still abuzz about Justin Bieber, so even though I didn’t really care about it I was still bombarded with the news. I guess that’s something.

Last night I stepped out to take the trash out, and to my surprise there was fog!

People think because I live so close to the shore that I always see fog and cool temperatures. What people don’t realize is that San Pedro is hilly and where you live on a certain hill radically changes the sort of weather you get.

I live on a hill that faces away from the water, so fog is a rare occurrence. Triple-degree heat a la the Valley isn’t rare, however.

So there that is.

I have a lot of friends with no interest in sports and even less interest in football. Here is a video that details what football is in a nutshell.

I forget where I heard this, but I heard someone say that football is a bunch of fat guys running about for 10 seconds then falling down, waiting for a minute or so then repeating. That also is apt.

h/t to Deadspin

Mark Harris over at Grantland wrote how the larger “Best Picture” pool in the Oscars have actually shrunk Oscar contenders. But more interestingly, he discusses the campaign system used to nabbed nominations for films.

And for most films that are made and distributed independently, the cost of buying into the campaign system is now prohibitively steep. It is not a coincidence that, of the 12 movies on this year’s much-too-short short list of top-category contenders, 10 are from the studios or from studio-owned indie labels and the other two hail from the mightily well-financed Weinstein Company. Yes, ideally, voters would be able to look past this. But time is short, screeners are numerous, and it is obliviously high-minded to assume that with a little effort, voters can all render themselves invulnerable to the very loud noise that studio money can make. The same titles are being shouted in their faces week in, week out. How can anything else hope to be noticed?

Figures.

Recently I’ve been on a barrage of movie watching. I’ve missed a few: I still haven’t seen Nebraska or Captain Phillips. But here are my favorite films of 2013:

1. The Act of Killing
2. Spring Breakers
3. 12 Years a Slave
4. Upstream Color
5. Gravity
6. Blue Jasmine
7. The Wolf of Wall Street
8. Stories We Tell
9. Frances Ha
10. Her

I really fucking hated American Hustle and Dallas Buyers Club.

I realize I proclaimed my love of Spring Breakers calling it perhaps the best film of the decade. The Act of Killing just blew my fucking mind.