All due respect to Substance ... after all, it was my introduction to New Order, purchased at the Wherehouse after convincing my parents to drive me there one 8th grade evening, listening to it with my family on the ride home and lying that i was familiar with "Everything's Gone Green" ... but the remix of "Confusion" is a stripped down, piss poor version of the raw groove of the original 12" mix.

My latest mp3 obsession again involves cleaning up my cover art. In addition to ensuring i have clear, good quality scans of all my covers, free of annoying jpg compression artifacts (Gibbs ringing and whatnot), i've lately been on a campaign to find (or create) images free of the silly PRMC "Parental advisory explicit lyrics" warning. I'm tempted to write an idiot's guide to using a flatbed scanner as i'm getting mighty tired of finding images on the web that look like they were acquired using a 4 color pallette.

While Veronica attended a friend's going away party in the city late last night, i stayed at home with doggie and watched my tivoed copy of 1986's Platoon. Intense. The scene where they raid a Vietnamese village is difficult to watch, as only haflway through it i was shaking my head and thinking this couldn't get any more disturbing, and then it did. In typical Oliver Stone style, no point is left unclear, and all messages are delivered with a sledgehammer. Charlie Sheen rails between the drug-induced escapism of Willem Dafoe and the retaliatory rage of Tom Berenger, almost so much that you can see him flipping the switch back and forth. However, the messages of the film are told in a brutally unflinching style so it works. I think i prefer Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick vs. Stone, no comparison), but i'm glad i finally checked out Ollie's take on Vietnam as well.

One other thing about Goal! ... the cameos by football superstars including David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane, Raul, and Santiago's Newcastle teammates Alan Shearer and Jermaine Jenas were fairly hilarious because of the footballers' lack of acting prowess. My favorite was a group shot of the Newcastle first team eyeing Santiago during practice, with Lee Bowyer staring at the camera with a stupid grin on his face.