Sunday Scenester Picks: Kickball, Prometheus, Destroyer, and Robocopter

It's a hot and sticky summer Sunday in Larryville, and that means...kickball.   We paid our first visit to the always entertaining Sundays in the Park blog to catch up on recent happenings.  Here's our favorite line:


"...the Free State Growlers made sure the Bald Beavers left the field with a well manicured Brazilian in another drubbing that ended 31-5."

And it seems that today's Cork and Barrel kickball special for canned beer is Summer Shandy.  But shouldn't all true townies be purchasing their kickball booze at Jensen's?

Tonight's Game of the Week is West Coast Saloon vs. Balls Deep.   We have no insight on which is the better team, but surely we can all agree on which has the better name.

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 A good bet for a hot afternoon might be a multiplex excursion to see Prometheus.  We saw it on IMAX 3D Friday and had an absolute blast.  But judging from the fanboy vitriol over at AICN, we were wrong to enjoy it.  Here's a sampling.

killer_instinct says:  "Ridley Scott you are done...finished...terrible movie".

zillabeast says:  "I'm not kidding when I say I thought the characters in AvP were more interesting than they were in Prometheus."

hardboiled wonderland says:  "Science fiction died this week."

And autodidact says:  "To the annoying fat smelly fuck sitting next to me: die in a fire."

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Literary types will want to check out Destroyer at the Granada this evening.  Pitchfork gave an impressive 8.8 to 2011's Kaputt (full review here ):

"People can miss that Dan Bejar is funny as hell-- he seeds his music with lyrical and musical in-jokes, and everyone has their own favorite lines to pluck out of his songs and admire for their concise wit. He likes surprises-- few lyric sheets have as many exclamation points."

Destroyer's newest release is a digital/vinyl remaster of old cassette recordings called Ideas for Songs.

Here's the cover, a painting by the artist Synthia Sleigh, which makes Chip giggle:

 


 The Itunes cover looks a little different, however, as they choose to censor the dingus:

























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Speaking of lyrical geniuses, our buddy Robocopter sent us the lyrics of his new song "Strangers," which you can check out on Soundcloud here.  Enjoy Chip's analysis:

Chip:  "From the outset, Robocopter introduces the song's central tenets through a couple of clever references:

The apple doesn’t fall far from a tree.

A crash landing caused by gravity.

 First is Newton's discovery of gravity via the legendary apple tree incident, reflecting Robcopter's consistent privileging of science over faith.  Second is the old axiom, "The apple doesn/t fall far from the tree," which insists we are all predetermined to become like our ancestors, a notion that the song seems to reject via its title alone.   Late in the song, Robcopter turns to science again, this time the notion of evolution, though it's twisted here toward devolution, leaving us with a a gritty Robocopterian vision of humanity reverting to a primitive state

Wish it were true, wish there was fate,

but we’re all wild and going ape.

Heady stuff indeed, but Robocopter is wise enough to toss a Saved by the Bell reference (and possibly a Kurt Vonegut reference: "player pianos") into the song's midsection, leavening the despair with what may be the central tenet of Robocopter's philosophy:   above all else, there is pop culture."