If he's that knowledgeable about physics, he can't watch any outer space adventure without being repulsed.  OK, maybe 2001, A Space Odyssey, but even that gets a bit strange a...

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If he's that knowledgeable about physics, he can't watch any outer space adventure without being repulsed.  OK, maybe 2001, A Space Odyssey, but even that gets a bit strange at the end.   

By Eriq Gardner Imagine if NASA sued Stanley Kubrick for "2001: A Space Odyssey" claiming dominion over space travel. Or, better yet, fancy the patent-holding inventor of virtual environments going to court to claim James Cameron's "Avatar" is a rip-off....

In their live shows, Trainwreck takes their fans for a memorable trip down the wrong side of the tracks. From their stage costumes complete with mullets and mustaches to their stage antics complete with onstage bickering and wacky guest stars, everyone in the room is always along for a great ride. Original songs like "J.B. Shredman and "Bothered & Hot" to covers of "Footloose" turn Trainwreck gigs into hilarious white-trash hootenannies.

You may recognize Klip Calhoun as none other than Kyle Gass of Tenacious D (LAist's 2007 interview with Kyle Gass). Trainwreck's also features lead singer Darryl Donald (AKA JR Reed, who recently made Thanksgiving raunchy with The Sexy Pilgrim), Boy Johnny (John Spiker), John B. Shredman (John Konesky), and Dallas St. Bernard (Nate Rothacker). Then there are the guest stars, who also have created their ownTrainwreck characters. Some nights Tim Robbins, Jack Black, John C. Reilly and other funny and talented friends join the mayhem.

With the years of recording, fun gigs, and after parties in their Wreckabago, it is finally time for Trainwreck to release their first studio album. People of LA, Trainwreck wants you to know that "The Wreckoning" is coming at you. LAist visited Trainwreck at their rehearsal studio to hear about their upcoming album, album release show at the Roxy on December 2, and what Klip, Darryl, Boy Johnny and Shredman love about living in LA.

LAist: Here we are with Trainwreck. Their first studio album "The Wreckoning" is dropping on?
Darryl Donald: December 1st.

LAist: Excellent. And we have Boy Johnny, Klip Calhoun, Darryl Donald, and Shredman here. So tell us about recording your new album.

Kilp Calhoun: Well, it took seven years.

Darryl Donald: That's right. Almost as long as Chinese democracy.

Klip Calhoun: But it's call a Trainwreck democracy. We didn't want to be associated with Axel. So uh... but it took so long... why did it take so long Darryl?

Darryl Diamond: Because we fired about eight producers.

Klip Calhoun: We did. We went through a lot of producers. A lot of producers have trouble working with us because of our attention to detail I guess. We demand perfection in the studio. A lot of times we finish a track, we say "no" we have to do it over like eight to ten times. Now it's ready and I think it is perfection.

LAist: We hear you are having a big launch party for the record. Where is that going to be?

Darryl Donald: The Roxy! On the fabulous Sunset Strip on December 2nd that's Wednesday. 8pm.

Klip Calhoun: We are bringing rock back to the Roxy. Mmm hmm.

Darryl Donald: Yep.

LAist: What songs will you be playing that night?

Darryl Donald: We will be playing almost the whole album in its entirety, right?

Klip Calhoun: I think so. The album should have been called greatest hits. Quite frankly because it contains every one of our hits.

LAist: How long have you been in LA?

Klip Calhoun: Well...

Darryl Donald: About eight years now.

Klip Calhoun: I think yeah about eight years. I was heavily inebriated when I dropped into Los Angeles, so I am not quite sure the time. Darryl picked me up I was homeless. I was playing guitar in the street. He brought me in and actually saved my life. Thank you Darryl.

Darryl Donald: You're welcome. My pleasure.

Klip Calhoun: (looking at Boy Johnny and Shredman) These two guys we found at The Guitar Institute of technology. We convinced them to drop out because we said, "Hey. It's not about learning. It's about yearning. Yearning for the top."

LAist: What is you favorite thing about Los Angeles?

Darryl Donald: Besides Pink's hot dogs?

Klip Calhoun: I think the traffic. It give me a lot of time to catch up with my books on tape.

Darryl Donald: What are you listening to these days?

Klip Calhoun: Well, right now I am on "2001 A Space Odyssey" the Arthur C. Clark classic.

Darryl Donald: Oh jeez.

Klip Calhoun: But if I am on the 405. I go right to "Moby Dick".

Darryl Donald: Yeah, that's a good one.

Klip Calhoun: I forget who it was written by. Kevin Spacey I think wrote that one.

LAist: Can each of you tell what is you favorite Trainwreck song to play live on stage. Shredman?

Shredman: I think I like my song. John Bartholomew Shredman.

LAist: Darryl?

Darryl Donald: I am going to go with El Mustachio for obvious reasons.

LAist: Can you share a little bar of it?

Darryl Donald: I would if we had a guitar.

Klip Calhoun: I'll sing it. "Let me tell you about a friend I know goes by the name of El Mustachio." (Turns to Darryl.) Does it go something like that?

Darryl: Not even close.

Shredman: I don't know what band that is man.

Klip Calhoun: What band is that?

Darryl: (Singing.) "Let me tell a all you peeps about a friend I know. Ba be be um...be ooh ee oh ee um. He may not be too fast, you know his moves are slow."

LAist: Awesome. Klip which one is your favorite to do live?

Klip Calhoun: I think that is the first time Darryl has ever sang acapela.

Darryl Donald: I think so. I didn't know what it was.

Klip Calhoun: He can't spell it, but he can do it.

Darryl Donald: I thought it was a pasta.

LAist: Awesome. Klip, which is your favorite song to play live?

Klip Calhoun: My favorite song to play live would have to be...I'd say, "Tim Blankenship".

Darryl Diamond: Uh hun. Because it is his song. He sings lead.

Klip Calhoun: We are a very self absorbed, selfish band.

Boy Johnny: I was going to say "Love".

Darryl Donald: The song you sing lead on.

Klip Calhoun: That's Boy Johnny's song.

LAIst: Trainwreck do you have any messages for the people of Los Angeles?

Darryl Donald: Yeah, it's about time to get 'wreckified'. Okay 'cause wreck and roll is coming out and it's going to not only take over Los Angeles like a 2012 movie, but it's going to roll that tidal wave all over the nation as we spread it in our wreckabago. We are going to travel. We are going to go on tour. We are going to take it everywhere. Rancho Cucamonga, we're coming to you. Compton, we're coming to you. Okay. Palmdale, set up here we come.

LAist: Awesome. Thank you so much.

"The Wreckoning" comes out December 1. The CD, shirts and more are available on the band's Etsy page.The Trainwreck record release party is at The Roxy on December 2. Doors open at 8pm. Tickets.

György Ligeti’s choral and orchestral music hit the mainstream when it was featured in the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but his equally remarkable chamber works remain less well known. While indebted to his compatriot Bartók for its folk-inflected passages, Ligeti’s First Quartet, subtitled Métamorphoses nocturnes, is nonetheless a work of striking originality. The Second Quartet, composed around fifteen years later, abounds in contrasts between glacial stillness and manic activity, mechanistic pizzicatos and gentle oscillations. His early Andante and Allegro is richly expressive and easily accessible.

At first I thought this would be too difficult. Target, Best Buy, Walmart ... all those stores offer a very manageable number of Black Friday movie deals. Surely Amazon.com would prove way too massive of an undertaking ... but nope! Of course Amazon.com is offering a lot more movie deals than the non-virtual stores are, but they've made things quite easy by categorizing everything, and with handy links and everything!

First off, here's the Amazon Black Friday sales page, movies-only division. But that page offers way too many options, so let's pick out some of the best standard (non-blu-ray) dvd deals: Blazing Saddles ($5.99)! The Marx Brothers Collection ($17.99)!! The Goonies ($6.99)! The Nightmare on Elm Street box set ($24.99)! Spaceballs ($8.49)! And on and on it goes. New, old, classic, crappy, there's a good deal in here whatever you're after.

And what I'm after is blu-rays! 2001: A Space Odyssey ($9.49)! The Silence of the Lambs ($8.99)!! Watchmen director's cut ($16.99)! Goodfellas ($10.99)!! And those crafty Amazoners are planning to change the titles every day. It's like they want you to visit their website six times a day!

Last but not least, for those who love not just the deals but also the crazy pressure that comes with Black Friday, Amazon is now offering some nifty "Lightning Deals" that are scheduled throughout the week and last only a few hours. For example, tonight you can purchase the X-Men Origins: Wolverine blu-ray for $9.99. That's a pretty good deal on a very recent blu-ray release. Too bad the movie stinks.

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Received the email from amazon to remind me these great BlackFriday Blu-Ray titles.. they are great. Blu-rays starting at $7. http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location;=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Ffeature.html%3Fie%3DUTF8%26plgroup%3D2%26docId%3D1000449481&tag;=shopguid0b-20&linkCode;=ur2&camp;=1789&creative;=390957 * The Departed $8 * The Goodfellas $8 * Silence of the Lambs $8 * The Terminator $7.50 * 2001: A Space Odyssey $9 * Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire $10 * Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone $10 * Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets $10 * Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban $10 * Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix $10 * Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs $10 * Gladiator $10 * Braveheart $10 * Stargate $8 * Batman Begins (Limited Edition Gift Set) $13 * Complete list I'm especially interested in Braveheart and Gladiator..:cool:

Walmart discounts hundreds of Blu-ray movies. Even better, all qualify for free shipping. That puts many titles at or near lowest-we've-seen prices. Sales tax is added where applicable. Notable titles for $9 or less:

• Punisher on Blu-ray for $7.50
• Waiting on Blu-ray for $7.50
• Total Recall on Blu-ray for $7.50
• Wedding Crashers (Unrated) on Blu-ray (pictured) for $9
• 2001: A Space Odyssey on Blu-ray for $9
• V for Vendetta on Blu-ray for $9
• shop all discounted Blu-ray titles at Walmart

This week on Clip Joint, AJBee tries to rouse the rabble as he turns the spotlight on cinema's best gangs

In a world that's falling apart - or even just coming apart at the seams a little - we all need others to cling to for support. Strength comes in numbers, but also in togetherness. In cinema we can see that tribal feeling from 2001: A Space Odyssey's prehistoric man to the gangs of 60s Glasgow, or 80s Brighton. The protruding foreheads remain, only the accents alter.

Gangs provide a sense of belonging and identity, as well as protection from foes. They can also exclude, as so many high school-set teen flicks testify. We wrap our modern tribal behaviour in colours and call it sport, which begat other kinds of gangs, too often lionised in modern British cinema. But gang culture is common to every echelon of society from the streets to the top of the political tree. Has film imitated life in this regard, or do we imitate art? Stanley Kubrick's own withdrawing of the print of A Clockwork Orange may offer an answer. Let's take a look at the crews, bound by common cause, at the movies.

1) Gangs offer safety in numbers, as Mako's band of delinquent teens demonstrate in Stray Cat Rock. The bizarre full title of the film (as shown in the clip) in no way relates to the plot, but was a regular studio ploy in those days to sensationalise their product and put bums on seats.

2) Gangs can be an indicator of who we are, but also who we are not. The exclusivity of the Heathers is as much about defining others as losers as themselves as the elite.

3) Gangs are often defined by geography as much as intention. Turf is sacred and must be protected. Challenges can be made, however. Here, The Warriors are invited to "Come out to play ..."

4) Sometimes gangs are just people bound by friendship. Stand By Me can falter into treacle, but it does provide a wonderful nostalgic flashback to that time when your group of friends meant everything.

5) "They surrendered their bronze skin to tattooing and in this way gradually satisfied their artistic, their erotic, and even their moral needs." Solzhenitsyn was right, even from a continent away. New Zealand gangs can be connecting links to a shared past, incorporating the markings, rituals and initiations which provide a memory of what once was. The title Once Were Warriors shows this clearly, as does this fearsome clip.

Three weeks ago on Clip Joint, guest editor Jon Ronson got us focused with his five choices of staring on film. Here are his top picks on staring on film:

1) You say peeping, I say staring. Here's Carl Boehm in Michael Powell's boggle-eyed horror classic.

2) Implacable Javier Bardem bewilders and then seriously bothers a garage attendant in No Country For Old Men.

3) Sergio Leone took the art of staring and made it beautiful, baroque and wonderfully ludicrous – and never more so than Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

4) One of the scariest scenes from the Lynch back catalogue. Here is unblinking Robert Blake, getting the party started right in Lost Highway.

5) This week's winner, however, is bluedaddy for their suggestion of Kaa; the wily bamboozler from The Jungle Book. No eyes do staring better than cartoon eyes.

Thanks to frogprincess, Steenbeck, Chris 7572, shoegazer and greatpoochini for the rest of this week's clips.

Fancy writing Clip Joint? Email Catherine Shoard for more details.

In an attempt to make a run at WalMart's $400 billion in annual sales, Amazon is offering a ton of Crazy Eddie-like deals for the holiday shopping season. There's the 6-quart Kitchen Aid stand mixer for $250 (50% off) and the 4GB SD memory card for just $10 but the real deals are on Blu-ray and DVD. There's the 60% off Planet Earth DVDs and Blu-ray that I mentioned earlier, 2001: A Space Odyssey on Blu-ray for $9.50 (!!), $10 for Quantum of Solace (Blu-ray), $8 for Slumdog Millionaire (DVD), 66% off seasons 1-6 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and entire seasons of The Office are up to 75% off.

Oh, and they're also offering $3 in free mp3 downloads if you use the MP34FREE code.

Tags: Amazon

The ghost of poet Dylan Thomas is spotted at a famous hotel.

New York, New York - A terrified tourist has reported seeing the ghost of Dylan Thomas – in the haunted New York hotel where he fell into his fatal coma.

The horrified guest at the world-famous Chelsea Hotel, scene of the poet’s alcohol-fueled final days, claimed she saw the poet’s bug-eyed head floating in front of her bedroom mirror.

As well as being the final “home” of the Welsh author of Death Shall Have No Dominion and Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, the atmospheric hotel went on to gain infamy as the spot where Sid Vicious’s girlfriend Nancy Spungen was found stabbed to death in 1978.

The guest’s chilling complaint, which followed a sleepless night punctuated by phantom footsteps and a creeping sense of fear, was posted on Chelsea Bloggers, a website dedicated to the 125-year-old inn.

“I suddenly looked up and right in front of the bedroom mirror, I saw a head in mid-air,” said the woman, identified only as Anna.

“The head seemed to grimace at me, and I will never forget the eyes staring me down, almost bug-eyed.

“The face seemed to be wearing some kind of theatre make-up, bright red lips drawn on very carefully, white face paint, and ear-length tightly coiled black hair.

“I have an idea of who this man was after looking at images of the famous that lived there and departed to the afterlife.

“The picture I observed made my stomach sink - it was the same face, that same grimace, and those same sad and large eyes. It looked like Dylan Thomas’s face.”

It is not the first time his spectre has been reported at the hotel, which has long been associated with his phantom for the past five decades.

Thomas stayed at the hotel during his fateful 1953 literary tour.

According to legend, he drank 18 straight whiskies at a nearby bar before slipping into a coma on his return to the Chelsea Hotel.

He died in the city’s St Vincent’s Hospital on November 9.

The iconic writer’s death is not the hotel’s only celebrity connection.

Mark Twain was among the first of many well-known authors to rent rooms at the hotel, which quickly began to gain a reputation as a hangout for artists.

In the Chelsea’s fabled rooms, Dylan Thomas fan Leonard Cohen met Janis Joplin on an unmade bed. Bob Dylan, who named himself after Thomas, holed up there for days in the 1960s, writing love songs. Andy Warhol “the father of pop art” lived there and writer and raconteur Quentin Crisp was a resident for more than 30 years.

Joni Mitchell wrote her hit Chelsea Morning there, reportedly inspiring the Clintons to name their daughter after the hotel.

In one room, Arthur C Clarke penned 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In possibly the hotel’s darkest incident, ex-Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious allegedly stabbed Nancy Spungen to death in his room’s bathroom.

The true identity of the apparition at the heart of the hotel’s latest spine-tingling incident may remain a mystery, according to the hotel’s owners.

A spokesman said: “I don’t think it’s likely to be Dylan as he was living in room 206 at the time of his death while this guest stayed in room 114.” - Robin Turner

Image: Dylan Thomas at work

More haunting experiences at the Chelsea Hotel:

Mysterious Disemboddied Head In Mirror at Chelsea Hotel

Evidence of the Paranormal at the Chelsea Hotel

Mysterious Skeleton Haunts the Chelsea Hotel

Source - http://www.walesonline.co.uk/