B-Movie Central Cheese Blog

Over seven months ago, I bought a Schecter Gryphon on Ebay. It said in the listing that it was in near mint condition, but when I got it, it had a ding near the jack down to the wood and a dent in the clear coat on the other side. Also, the push pull pot for the coil splitting was broken and the shaft had come completely out of the pot with the knob on it.

Being anal about my guitars, I took it to a local luthier who told me it would take about four or five days to do the work to fix it once he got to it in his work flow, and that it would cost roughly $60 – $90 bucks. I was ok with that since I could fix the push pull pot myself and I had gotten a great deal on the guitar, even with fixing it I’d still come in well under the price of the guitar new.

I had the guitar for about a week before I took it in to him for the repair. As of tomorrow, he’ll have had it for seven months. The only thing I’ve heard from him as far as a status update in all that time is that he did the repair but the color didn’t dry to a perfect match, and since he was really anal about his restoration work, wanted to know if he could keep it to give it another try. I agreed, because I want the guitar to be as perfect as possible.

I haven’t heard anything since. I wrote to him the other day. Still waiting for a response. Now I know he’s busy, as he’s one of the very few local luthiers we have around here, but seriously…seven months…and counting? I always told him to take whatever time he needs and that I wasn’t in any hurry at all, but come on. Take your time and I’m not in any hurry doesn’t mean keep it indefinitely and constantly put other work ahead of it. It means take your time to do it right and make it look as nice as possible.

Anyway, here I wait, wondering about the status of my poor Schecter Gryphon. The funny thing is, I’ve had a replacement push-pull pot and jack sitting here on my desk for almost the whole time he’s had it, waiting to be installed once I get it back. I do my own set up work now, and my own pickup and electronics work, but I still don’t have the tools to do fret work and I’ll likely never get into finish work, which means having to pay someone else to do it. Unfortunately, that also means waiting for them to get around to it.

So I sent back the Dillion DBM-012T Red Special for a refund. Kudos to John and Tony for dealing with that and getting me refunded. However, I was left short on the whole affair since I had paid $35 dollars to ship the first guitar in on a warranty claim, plus I had bought a Graph Tech nut for it which cost me another $20 that I no longer have any use for and $7 or so for some extra trem springs. Basically, the first guitar was really poorly crafted, and over time developed issues related to wood swelling because the wood was too dry when it was made. The one I received as a warranty replacement also had some shoddy work done on it, so at that point I just gave up and returned it for a refund, which I received yesterday. I’ve given up on getting a Red Special. I’ve had nothing but bad luck with them.

So, instead I called up Musician’s Friend and they gave me a 15% discount on an Ibanez SR800 bass and the matching hard shell case for it. It ended up costing more than the Red Special, but since I’m a bass player and this will be the finest bass I’ve ever owned, it was worth it.

I feel settled now, and happy. When things aren’t settled, it really eats at me and consumes far too much of my thought. When I make a mistake, as I did in buying the Red Special, I prefer to get it out of my life and move on. I was hoping so bad the replacement would arrive and be perfect, but sadly, that wasn’t the case. I’m a bass player anyway, and while I do play guitar, I’m not a real guitarist. I play guitar for my own enjoyment, but bass is my main instrument, so this probably worked out for the best.

Still, someday down the road, maybe I’ll try another BMG Red Special. Who knows? Only time will tell. For right now though, I have about another two days of anticipation and waiting until my new bass arrives. I just hope it’s clean and perfect. I’ve had good luck with Musician’s Friend in the past. I know if it’s not perfect I can return it for a replacement without any hassles, and without having to pay my own shipping, so at least I’m feeling safe and confident about that. Fortunately, the instruments I’ve bought from them over the years have all arrived in perfect condition, so I’m pretty sure this will be no exception.

So I’m watching this clip this morning of this old lady who survived the Oklahoma tornadoes, and she had lost her dog when her home was destroyed. During the interview, one of the news people happened to look down and see the dog under some rubble alive. They lifted the rubble and it managed to struggle out, likely quite sore and visible very shaken, but alive, and as far as I could tell, unhurt for the most part.

So what does this lady do? She starts thanking God and saying that she thought he only answered one of her prayers when she prayed for herself to be all right, but now she sees he answered both of her prayers because her dog was all right too. People commented on the video things like, “Praise God!” and “God does wondrous things!” and “God is amazing!”

Now I’m sorry, and I try not to swear here in this blog even though swearing tends to be a frequent part of my speech patterns in my every day life, but are you FUCKING kidding me here???

Seriously, everything around her is leveled for miles around. I don’t mean damaged, I mean LEVELED, and she can honestly look around her and thank “God” that her dog is alive? Thank Lady Luck grandma, because she’s the ONLY reason you and your dog are alive. If there was a “God”, at least one that takes the form of what the brainwashed masses suppose it to be, then he would have to be the most colossally indifferent, evil ass hole in the entire universe. A being of supposedly limitless power who is also supposedly perfect sits idly by as children are killed and people’s lives are utterly destroyed, and has the power to stop it, but doesn’t. Then that dip shit Pat Robertson has the NERVE to say that the Oklahoma devastation was caused because people didn’t pray hard enough. Again…are you kidding me???

I look at this and I can’t help but shake my head in disbelief at the level of brainwashing that takes place in the churches. Nothing is ever God’s fault. In the midst of massive devastation and utter destruction, even the tiniest good thing that happens in the middle of it is because God answered a prayer or God works in mysterious ways and he has a plan and is in control. Yeah, there’s another one. I’ve heard that a lot from religious people. God is in control. So…he was controlling the tornadoes that killed all of those people and caused that massive destruction? Really? Well then…oh, I dunno, maybe he could have steered them clear of populated areas, or gee, here’s a thought, maybe he could have stopped them all together? No really God, just if you’re not too busy. Oh, you’re on the crapper? Oh ok then, we’ll just dig ourselves out. Let us know when you’re done.

The sad part is, it’ll never phase these people in the least how ridiculous, limiting and utterly destructive their beliefs are. It’s sad that religion still has that much of a control over people’s thinking, but when people drag their kids to church with them from birth and it’s hammered into their heads from the time they pop out of the mother, I can’t really blame them, because they’ve never known anything else. Still, how can any adult human being look around them after something like that and still believe there’s a god? Many who survived the German death camps in WWII understood that there could be no god that laid any claim of being good, loving and merciful that would allow something like that to happen, and that if there was truly some sort of a god out there, then he was actually vile, arrogant, supremely indifferent and not worth even a second of our lives to worship him.

I have really given up trying to deprogram people from their religious indoctrination. It just doesn’t work. It makes them miserable and me miserable and everyone around miserable, so I’ve given up on that. What I haven’t given up on however is bitching about religious idiocy as I come across it randomly in day to day life. I’ll leave it to the internet to create whole new generations of atheists. It’s proven itself to be quite adept at that.

I see a lot of reviews online from people who viewed a film at a film festival or in some other large, communal environment, and then they go to Amazon, IMDB, Netflix or wherever and give films that may be really little more than just average, these glowing reviews, talking about them like they’re the best thing since peanut butter. Any time you see a review from someone that was written after viewing a film in this type of an environment, like for example, at a film festival, convention, etc…, you have to take it with a grain of salt.

The film that Phil got all the hate mail over in the April issue of Rogue Cinema is a good example of this. All of the people who disagreed with his assessment of the film, to the person, had seen it in a communal environment. The problem with seeing films in this type of an environment is that people feed off of each others’ energy. Suddenly, things that are smile worthy become funnier because one person laughs at it and others pick up on that and laugh as well. Someone overreacts to a scary scene, and suddenly, it all becomes scarier, or funnier, depending on your view of it. To truly assess a film, it should be viewed alone, so that the influential element of other people’s reactions can be eliminated from the assessment.

When I was 16, I saw this effect first hand at a fantasy convention where they showed Vincent Price’s, The Tingler. It’s a great movie on its own, but when you show it to a whole room full of people, suddenly one person shouts out a goofy comment, and then everyone else picks up on that and starts shouting out comments of their own and everyone has a great time watching the film. When you walk out of an experience like this, your opinion of the film isn’t just about the film, but about the experience as a whole, which is great, but it doesn’t make for an accurate assessment of the film on its own merits.

I posted this on Facebook the other day, and I thought it merited posting here as well.

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When people find out I’m a film reviewer, the first question I’m often asked is, “What’s your favorite film?”

This is a question I cannot answer with any accuracy, because I don’t have just “one” favorite film. I could make a list of my favorite films, but generally I just wouldn’t bother, because knowing what my favorite films are, will neither change the fate of the person making the inquiry, nor the fate of the universe as a whole.

However, if asked who my favorite actor is, I will reply without regret or hesitation, the name of the one man whose performances I always look forward to, and never tire of. That man is none other than Basil Rathbone. There are many names that are high on my list of favorites, including Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and others of their ilk, but for me, Basil Rathbone is, and will always be, my all time favorite actor.

Needless to say, when asked to name some of my favorite films, one that is always comes first to my mind is A Comedy of Terrors, which stars all three of these men, and Boris Karloff besides. I’ve seen that film many times, and I never tire of it.

I posted this on Facebook this morning, and figured it was worthy of posting this here as well…

 
People are giving Taylor Swift a load of crap for not jumping for joy over Adele’s winning of the award instead of her. Let me clue those folks in on something. There’s this human emotion called disappointment. Maybe some people’s lives are all lollipops and gumdrops and they don’t understand what that is, but the rest of these idiots should be more understanding. I saw the photos of her reaction. She looked disappointed. So what? She’s not allowed to be human? I’d have clapped for her, but would likely have had the same look on my face were I in her shoes.

For all the wonderful things the internet gives us, it has also cursed the world with haters, ready to jump on every little thing to rip on someone for things that are quite frankly, none of their damn business, just to make themselves feel superior. I’m not saying it’s always wrong to rip on someone. Some people quite deserve it.

*cough* Nicki Minaj *cough*

But these kinds of things where they take a single look in a few photographs or a small video clip and suddenly turn it into saying that Taylor Swift was mean mugging Adele is just wrong.

I hope all those idiots jump up and down and smile from ear to ear the next time they lose out on something they wanted. Oh wait, that would mean they’d actually have to not be hypocrites, which is a feat that is surely beyond them.

I’ve been using the Axe-Fx for a long time now, both for bass and guitar.  First the Axe-Fx Ultra, and then the Axe-Fx II when it came out, which is what I have now.  I’ve never been entirely happy with the bass tone I got from it though.  The best tone I ever got out of it for bass was a simple compressor / graphic EQ / enhancer combination.

After hearing about it for a long time and reading countless reviews about how awesome it was, I finally purchased a Sansamp RPM and put it in my rack, which I’m now using for my bass tone, and running it through the Axe for the compressor and enhancer and whatever other effects I want.  I gotta tell you, I’ve been using straight digital for so long that I had forgotten how awesome an analog signal can sound for bass.  I’m extremely happy with the tones I’m able to achieve with the Sansamp RPM, and I can’t recommend it enough.  It’s what I’ve been missing and has given me a bass tone that I love.  I’m not trying to cap on the Axe-Fx for having bad tone or anything.  Far from it.  You can get incredible tones with it, and you can dial it in to fit into any mix.  I was missing something though, and the missing piece was the organic presence and feel you get from an analog preamp, and the ease of adjustment that comes from having the knobs right in front of you instead of having to go into menu pages to make tonal adjustments.  I won’t use it for guitar obviously because it’s a bass pre-amp and not voiced for guitar, but for bass, I seriously can’t recommend it enough, with or without the Axe.

Currently I’m working on moving all of the content from the current Rogue Cinema over to a new Wordpress site I’ve made for it.  This is taking a crazy amount of time and work, but in the end, it’ll be worth it.  Once I get that completed and the new site goes live, I’m going to attempt to do the same with B-Movie Central, as I’ve become entirely sick of how commercial Joomla has become.  You can’t find any decent extensions hardly anymore that aren’t commercial, and it’s gotten really irritating.  It used to be that most of them were free and it was a community that liked building great extensions and putting them out there for people to use.  Now it’s little more than a business for the extension developers.  It’s not a community anymore.  Wordpress is, and even though there are limitations to it that might prove to be a colossal pain when it comes to moving the content over, in the long run, it’ll be far better for the longevity of the site.

Speaking of B-Movie Central, fans of the site may have noticed that I haven’t posted a new review there in literally years now.  The reason for that is that Rogue Cinema takes up all my time and mental energy.  I’ve never abandoned B-Movie Central, and I never will.  It’s my baby.  I always keep it updated on the software side, and I fully plan on attempting to move it over to the new platform.  I also may be doing a new review for it soon oddly enough.  I’ve recently received a film from 1955 that would be perfect for it, and I’ve already written the review for Rogue Cinema, which I can use as the review for B-Movie Central as well.  I’d just have to do all the other stuff that goes into a BMC review that I don’t do for Rogue Cinema, like the screenshots and captions, character shots, film info, etc….  There’s one hitch, and that is that the film is in Spanish, and I’m not sure I can capture a clip with the subtitles on.  I’ll have to figure out how to do that.  Either that, or I can use a clip that has action, without any dialog.  I’ll have to figure it out.  In any case, I think it’s long past time for a new review on BMC.  I just need to fit it into the workflow.

Anyway, that’s about it for now.  I know I’ve been posting here very infrequently.  That’s mostly because I’m so pissed off about the political crap going on in this country right now, that I’m trying to avoid ranting about politics, and other than politics, I just haven’t had a whole lot to talk about.

So that’s it for now.  I’ll post something new when I have something to talk about that won’t give me a stroke.

Yeah I know, I haven’t posted anything in ages.  Why?  Because to be perfectly honest, my life isn’t all that interesting.  That, plus my disgust with the election has had me in a funk.

Anyway, I’ve had my Schecter C-1 FR guitar for years now, and I’ve always really liked the guitar itself, but I wasn’t crazy about the pickups.  It had Duncan Designed pickups in it that were the equivalent of Seymour Duncan Blackouts.  I never really cared for their tone, which I found too “bronze” if I were to put a color to it.  They were also not all that tight in the low end and kinda fuzzier than I’d have liked.  Another thing I didn’t care for is that they weren’t coil tapped like the EMG’s in my Schecter Hellraiser, and the clean tones on it left something to be desired.

So…, after seeing numerous videos of Mark Day playing his Suhr Modern with Suhr Dough Aldrich pickups, and loving the tone he was getting from them, I did some research on them, read reviews and watched more videos.  Utterly convinced of their awesomeness and thrilled with the fact that they were passive, so I could eliminate the 9v battery from the guitar, I ordered a set from The Mad Ape.  Check them out.  Not everything they stock is online, including the pickups, but if you call Matt there, he’ll hook you up if they have what you’re looking for.  You can check out the site at http://www.themadape.com.  I recently made my first order from them when I bought a Schecter guitar case for the Schecter Gryphon I bought on Ebay, but more about that in a bit.  Anyway, the case didn’t ship, and when I called to find out where it was he said the system said it shipped, but it didn’t, and he took care of it immediately.  He even offered faster shipping on it, but I told him not to worry about it.  He also told me he’d give me a discount on the pair of Aldrich pickups, which was awesome.  I wasn’t ready to get them right then, but when I was, sure enough, he got them out right away and I had them in no time.  Great customer service there.  Not trying to be an advertisement here, but when you get great service and great prices, you should let people know.  Oh, and the case was cheaper than anywhere else just from the get go, so that was cool too.  That’s how I found their site in the first place.

Anyway, so I installed the pickups yesterday after waiting for the two push-pull pots to arrive.  I knew they were coming yesterday, so I took out the old stuff, popped in the new ones and got everything ready to go.  While I waited for the pots to arrive, I cleaned the fretboard, polished the frets and oiled it, which is something you can only do when the strings are all off, which is rare, so I figured I might as well take advantage of the opportunity.

So the pots arrive and I go online to find the wiring schematic I had bookmarked.  I printed it out and proceeded to wire everything up, which was a total pain in the ass.  Seriously.  Anyway, after I got done wiring it all up, I went and plugged in the guitar to see if they were working by tapping a screwdriver on the magnets.  The neck pickup wasn’t working, but the bridge one was.  Oh great.  So I redid the solder connections and such, and tried again.  Still no dice.  Plus, I had wired the switch backward.  Ok, frustrated and pissed off, I finally came to realize, I was using the wrong damn wiring diagram for what I was trying to do.  Wonderful.  So I found the right one, had dinner, and then proceeded to de-solder everything, which was a pain because I had to clean off all the solder, and my solder sucker is less than stellar.  I need to get a real one at some point.

Once I got everything cleaned up, I went to work soldering up everything the way it was supposed to be, and did a nice clean job of it, except for the ground wires.  I had a bitch of a time getting the solder to stick to the pots for the ground wires, but I did finally manage it, even though it looks a bit messy.  Still, what a pain.  I took it and plugged it in and the pickups were working as expected.  After that I had to restring it, and naturally I popped my high E string.  Then the new one I put on, like an idiot, I trimmed too short, so I had to open yet another new pack to get one out of there.  I’ll have to pick up a single to replace it.

Anyway, I’m all done and the pickups sound phenomenal.  They’re the best sounding pickups I’ve ever heard when coil tapped, and sound amazing in humbucker mode as well.  I can see why Mark Day was such a huge fan of them.  I saw a few reviews that said the neck pickup was too hot to do nice cleans.  Don’t you believe it.  It does gorgeous cleans.  Those guys who said that probably just had the gain on their amps too high.

So that’s it for that.  I love my new pickups, and I especially love not having to worry about a battery in the guitar, so it’s a win/win.  Plus, I can actually play and enjoy the guitar now that it has some great pickups in it instead of the ones I wasn’t happy with.

I also recently got a new guitar, as mentioned above.  It’s a Schecter Gryphon, and I managed to snake it for $177 on Ebay.  It had one ding in it and a couple of small dents, but was in otherwise awesome condition.  I have it at a luthier right now getting the ding and dents fixed.  It’s a string through with a TonePros bridge, which is nice.  I am so sick of dealing with Floyd Rose trems I could scream.  The guitar also had another issue with the push-pull knob on the tone pot not working properly.  I have a new one here to replace it, but I need to get the guitar back first.  It has Duncan Designed pickups as well.  The ones in that are the equivalent of the SH-6 Distortion set, and I actually like them quite a bit.  They’re really right and have great definition, and the cleans sound really nice as well.  Maybe someday when I have money I’d be tempted to replace them with the Aldrich set, but in general I really dig them.

So that’s about it.  The only other thing I have to report since my last post is that our piece of crap GMC Jimmy finally crapped out on us and we had to replace it.  We got a 2007 Hyundai Elantra and we absolutely love it.  It’s a wonderful car.

I’ll try to post more often here, but to be honest, I’m so sick of politics and the world in general that I don’t want to talk about them anymore, and I generally don’t have a lot going on in my life that’s worth posting about.  I guess that’s a good thing in some ways, but then again, it makes one day seem like the next, so it kinda sucks.  Oh well.

Been a while, so I wanted to post this here.  I’m dead tired right now but I just saw something on YouTube that inspired me to write this.

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I just realized something. I’ve really grown to despise listening to people talk about philosophy, both about their own and the philosophies of others, whether it be personal or religious. You know what? Humans have a really bad habit of either over-thinking everything, or wanting it wrapped up in a nice little neat philosophical package that they can deal with.

Life is one long chain of experiences. The best thing you could ever do for yourself is to learn to deal with them as they come, and deal with them individually rather than trying to apply some blanket philosophy to everything you do and everything that happens to you. You’ll learn a lot more and you’ll grow more as a person as those experiences shape you, rather than having your thinking shaped by some pre-conceived philosophy that keeps your personal growth contained within the constraints of that philosophy.

In other words…think, explore and learn to ask the question why. When you feel a certain way about something, ask yourself why you feel that way, and really look closely at whether you feel that way about something because it’s a conclusion you came to on your own through personal observation and, or research into the facts, or whether you feel that way because someone told you you should and it just stuck with you. Generally we gain this type of programmed thinking as children. It’s typically not until we reach high school age and start experiencing more freedom and gaining life experience that we hadn’t had the chance to experience before that we start to break away from what we were told and begin to gain that ability to think for ourselves. An open mind is one that can grow, but you have to break out of the bonds of pre-conceived philosophies to experience that. Otherwise, you might as well just be a robot, existing day to day with a set of pre-programmed ideas that not only may have been fed to you, but that also may not be in your best interests.

That’s my rambling for the day, just because I was thinking about it just now while I sit here, semi-coherent from lack of sleep. Hopefully it’ll mean something to someone.

I know it’s been a long time in between posts.  Mostly it’s just because I’ve been swamped with screeners to review lately and I haven’t had the mental energy to do much in the line of writing outside of my reviews and the article and interview I did last month.

So, what’s been going on.  Well…

Our lemon piece of crap car finally died completely.  Seriously, I will never own another American car, or at least not a GM vehicle.  That GMC Jimmy was the biggest piece of junk on planet Earth.  We just just a 2007 Huyndai Elantra GLS and we absolutely love it.  The best part is, everything freakin’ works in it.  That was our big thing after we got it.  “Hey this works!  Hey that works too!  Awesome!”

Seriously, it was ridiculous how crappy our last car was.  This one is amazing, and I would totally buy another Hyundai in the future.

Let’s see, what else is going on?

Oh, I messed my my shoulder pretty bad the other day.  I picked my wife up to crack her back and something gave in my left shoulder, which is one that I damaged in the past weight lifting.  It made a loud pop and felt like something gave, almost like it dislocated for a quick instant.  It’s been sore and weak ever since, especially from certain angles.  It’s getting better slowly, but it’s still got another couple of weeks probably before it’ll be mostly back to normal.  I’m not sure what happened, but man it sucks.  It always takes this shoulder ages to heal completely, and every time I re-injure it, I have to go through that long healing process all over again, which means I’m limited as to what I can do with it, because if I re-injure it before it’s healed, then the healing process has to start all over again.

Guess I’ll stay away from political stuff.  There’s just too much going on in the world that’s pissing me the hell off right now.  If I start ranting about it, I’ll never stop.

Screeners wise, I’m actually ahead of the game a bit this month.  I’m loaded down again, but I’ve already got three watched, and I’ll be writing the third review today.  My burnout has had the better of me for years now, and more often than not, I’m writing all of my reviews for the month within the last day or two before I have to do the magazine, and often, I’m even doing some on magazine day as well.  This month I’m trying to avoid having to scramble like that at the end, so I’m going to try to get through at least one movie and review a day just to keep caught up.  Today I’ll be writing a review for the Hammer film, Twins of Evil.  Pretty cool film, and the twin girls in it were just yummy.  They reminded me VERY much of a late teens, early twenties Hayley Mills, but with rockin’ boobs.  Yum!  They couldn’t act like Hayley Mills though.  Honestly, their performances were rather boring, but overall the movie was very good, so it was cool.  Man, Peter Cushing was a bastard in it though!  I haven’t seen hardly any films where he plays a real bastard, but he sure played it well in this one.

Anyway, I can’t think of much else to report at the moment.  I’ll try to be better about posting more often.  So until next time…