This is so much like real life. We all fall in love for the good looking one, but we end up marry the one who gets it right down with us. Same story for the well known Youtube celebrity ObamaGirl. She supposedly has a crash for Obama, but she ends up doing a video with the purer Gravel.

I have this negative opinion for music artists who can’t write their own music, or at least actively contribute in the production of their own album. But once in a while, an album happens to be so good, that even if it’s put together by a label and it’s just “a product”, I can forgive all that.

That’s the story with Rihanna’s “Good girl gone bad” album. I don’t like hip-hop (we are mostly into alt.rock in our home), but damn, that’s a good dance and R&B album, plus she can sing. It’s much better than Fergie’s album, and also better than Nelly Furtado’s. Definitely a better album than Madonna’s “Hard Candy” which used the same producers too. It seems that Madonna got just the left overs from the producer’s creativity.

Best songs on the album: Umbrella, Push up on me, Don’t stop the music, Shut up and drive, Rehab, and Good Girl Gone Bad. Except 1-2 songs that are not super but still acceptable, the rest are very good too.

1. Umbrella 9/10
2. Push up on Me 9/10
3. Don’t Stop the Music 9.5/10
4. Breakin’ Dishes 7.5/10
5. Shut up and Drive 10/10
6. Hate That I Love You 7.5/10
7. Say It 6/10
8. Sell Me Candy 7/10
9. Lemme Get That 6/10
10. Rehab 9/10
11. Question Existing 6/10
12. Good Girl Gone Bad 8.5/10

Overall rating: 7.9/10

Best hip-hop/RnB album I ever listened to.

JBQ came from work and we were supposed to go shopping for the week, but he was so tired that he slept for 1.5 hours. So I took the time to sketch two more portraits, ‘The Vision’ of the Avengers, and Wolverine of the X-Men.

The android Vision was always a tragic and sad figure. I hope I captured that.

In this sketch, I hope I captured Wolverine’s angry, animal-like nature.

That’s it. I won’t be sketching again for another 10 years or so…

This is why I love “Lost”. It camouflages itself as an action drama, but all the geek elements are there, in the form of easter eggs and scientific-like mysteries that eventually will be big parts of the overall story. “Lost” is simply any geek’s dream of a TV series, and anyone who have stopped watching it is only because his/her not watching closely enough — or they are not geeky enough.

I’ve said many times that I love the Marvel heroes. The kick DC’s heroes asses real hard!

Zap2It now has many release dates from the upcoming Marvel movies: “Iron Man 2″, “Thor”, “Captain America”, “Avengers”, “Punisher”… I can’t wait for the “Mighty Avengers“, my all time favorite comics. I always had a crash on Hawkeye, and when he wasn’t looking, there was always the Vision.

The only thing that bothers me is they keep rebooting the movie series a bit too much. The new “Punisher” movie uses a different actor than in the 2004 movie, and “Hulk” too. I much prefer a more solid universe where the cast is what it is, so it’s more believable this way.

Hopefully, the “Fantastic Four” will get a third movie too to finish up their trilogy, but this doesn’t look very possible now… At least the “Wolverine” movie is coming out soon!

The first full album of “Rantings of Eva” is out! It includes older songs from their EP and some new ones too. “Sirens” and “Fracture” are their best of their new songs, but “Bright Side” remains my all time favorite of their repertoire and one of my favorite songs of all time. Overall, an amazing alt-rock album that more people should know about. Help the band by buying it DRM-free from iTunes for $10 or from Amazon for $9. This album is my first iTunes purchase, even if I had an account for a while now. Overall rating: 7.5/10

A few months ago I published an interview with Dusty Watts, guitarist of ‘Rantings of Eva’.

Madonna is going hip-hop and 80’s funk with her latest album. She obviously got a bit jealous of the success of younger names like Rihanna, Fergie and Nelly Furtado and so she employed in this album producers that have worked with these singers, like Timberlake, Timbaland, Kanye West, and Pharrell. One by one, the songs of “Hard Candy“:

1. Candy Shop
A very primitive beat in my opinion. Repetitive and primitive. It doesn’t seem to excel at any point. I would have not included that song if that was my album.
Rating: 6/10

2. 4 Minutes to Save the World
The first single of the album is a good deal. It sticks easily under your tongue, and it’s quite dancy too. It gets a bit old after a few listenings though. Still, the 5th best song in the album.
Rating: 7.5/10

3. Give It 2 Me
The fourth best song in the album. Very trance, and with a dose of funk too. If this song doesn’t get you out of your chair to dance, none of the other songs in the album will. I somewhat dislike the rap part of the song though near the middle.
Rating: 8/10

4. Heartbeat
Except the chorus, which is nice, the rest of the song is un-singable. It feels like a test, that was thrown together just because they had a good chorus and needed to do something with it.
Rating: 6/10

5. Miles Away
The second best song on the album. It has atmosphere, it makes you “feel it” what she sings about. The only song with a heart and soul in the whole album. Possibly because she sings about a personal matter of hers so she feels it too when she sings.
Rating: 8.5/10

6. She’s Not Me
Terrible. Starts kinda ok, gets you acquainted with a disco/funk sound, and towards the middle it becomes weird — to say the least. Like it’s a different song. It just changes out of the blue, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Second worst song in the album.
Rating: 4.5/10

7. Incredible
Another primitive sound and beat. It’s listenable, but again, towards the middle changes its beat and it’s like it’s a different song too. It’s just weird. Yuck.
Rating: 5/10

8. Beat Goes On
A good disco/funk sound. No ugly surprises here. It really reminds me of the early ’80s disco songs. It’s a good track, but nothing special I can say special about it. It’s a good filler.
Rating: 7/10

9. Dance 2Night
Like the previous song, it’s a good listenable funk song. Pretty well done too, which makes you feel that you are back in another decade. Older people will feel nostalgic with this beat.
Rating: 7/10

10. Spanish Lesson
Worst song in the whole album. It’s a mass instrument mess. I don’t feel it at all. In reality, songs #6 and #7 are worse, but this beat actually had a potential and it seems that got destroyed during the production. And I can’t really forgive that.
Rating: 4/10

11. Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You
Best song in the whole album. It has a melody, it’s not random beats put together than some of her other songs. It has a melody and a rhythm, and doesn’t surprise you negatively.
Rating: 9/10

12. Voices
A very good song, third best in the whole album. It also has a grand melody, and some interesting lyrics too. “Who is the master and who is the slave” to “are you walking the dog or the dog is walking you?”. Good stuff.
Rating: 8/10

Overall, the album has 5 good songs, 2 “ok” songs, and 5 songs that range from mediocre to terrible. Compared to her previous album, “Confessions on a dance floor” (rating: 7.50/10), this is not as a strong of a release. Heck, some of her unreleased songs that never saw the light of day are better than some of these songs. Still, not a bad album compared to most other albums out there.

Overall Rating: 6.7/10

An amazing song. Why these guys are still without a contract, no one knows about them, and according to their blog they only have money to buy tour vans that break down in the middle of nowhere?

Ratings just don’t make sense. You have stupid shows like the slut drama “Grey’s Anatomy” supposedly watched by at least 16 million viewers per week, and “Lost” only got this week 11.14 million viewers, the lowest performance ever for the show. And that, followed by a very good episode last week. That doesn’t make sense, right?

The interesting thing about “Lost” is the fact that it’s the most recorded live action series in the world, as nearly 35% of its additional viewers are DVR users (making it 15+ million viewers overall, plus it’s the most popular illegally downloaded show). Secondly, it’s the show with the most 18-49 year old viewers, which is a key demographic for advertisers. In other words, the kind of people who watch CSI and Grey’s Anatomy are mostly old (or plainly put, boring) people who like old-style TV shows.

The conclusion I draw from the above, is that “Lost” is created for the kind of people who don’t sit in front of a TV to watch it. Not the traditional kind of viewer, but the geek one. The “Lost” viewer is more likely to TiVO the show, download it off iTunes, or download it off Bittorrent, or simply go to ABC’s site and watch it in HD — almost without any ads at all.

Personally, I see “Lost” falling below 10 million viewers by the 6th and final season, but its star among its fans will continue to be as bright as it is now. Thankfully, ABC knows all that so there is not the slightest chance for the show to get canceled.

As you might have heard, Coldplay is giving away this week a song from their upcoming album, called “Violet Hill”. All you have to do, is supposedly go to their web site, give away your email address and postal code, and get in return an email with the download information.

Astonishingly, I never received their emails. When my first effort (much later after their “site crash”) yielded no results, I entered once more with my hotmail account and once with my gmail one, but I never received any emails from them. No, the emails didn’t got stuck in any spam folder, I made sure of that. And no, their form page didn’t fail. It clearly said that they received my info and that they sent the emails out. But I never received anything, and that was 8 hours ago already.

So, if they aren’t able to employ webmasters who can pull their shit together, then they deserve the piracy. I had no alternative but search on blogs to download the mp3 file directly.

And I did pay for that. With two of my email addresses and thrice the spam when they decide to send marketing email out.