Doug The Space Turkey

Staff Machine Gun Shoot: It Gets Better as the Video Progresses

Wall-E, Sick for cigarettes

Last week, I came home very drunk after seeing Collin Herring perform at Aces. I got real drunk real fast like I typically do nowadays. I was bored and a little sad after the set, especially when I finally got home. I did something radical and visited iTunes. There, I found Wall-E for digital sale. I bought it immediately.

 

I'd heard about Wall-E way before its release and knew it was a movie tailor-made for me:

Seeing as that is the most accurate portrayal of how I feel on a regular basis. 

Initially, and after watching the movie five times in a row, I felt a little irritated when I discovered that others shared a similar love for Wall-E. Encountering their banal discussion and talking points, I felt robbed of my unique and beautiful experience behind the computer screen with Wall-E and his aloneness on that other world. I wanted it to be mine and no one else's. It was like hearing someone discuss my own music or writing, totally repulsive. 

I share a deep kinship with Wall-E. Our days are the same. It was like watching myself, only more sympathetic and well, cute. But it's not "cute." I would use that adjective with other characters, though I dislike hearing the word I won't deny certain things are undeniably "cute," and can only be described as "cute." Wall-E is not that. He's something else. Just look into his eyes, just look right above the text at the picture. I haven't been able to pin point what it is, and I've given it a lot of thought over the last few days. 

I love Wall-E, I think. Not just him, though. The mystery behind it is hard to pin down. Maybe that's because Wall-E is the first on-screen non-humanoid robot that has displayed facial features, real feelings as vivid as day and real life. Still, the peculiar feeling evades my self-analysis. 

I'm sure it sounds ridiculous, but the experience of Wall-E is very emotionally intense for me, particularly the first twenty minutes. 

Recent Press Roundup: It's Hip To B Square

Weekly LA magazine CityBeat calls us for what we are, "sweaty, spandex-suited, intergalactic-romance geeks."

Los Angeles music bloggers, Classical Geek Theater (ha!), gives The Frontier Brothers a glowing live review. Did I mention how nice you're looking tonight, Classical Geek Theater? Your manners are so nice, you must have had a terrific mother.

Eenie Meenie Records digs on "How Do You Make Movies When You're Under The Sea." Hey Eenie Meenie, gives us a call. (You can reach me at 8179943131- I'll pretend I'm my secretary too.)

LA scenester, Feed Your Head, commands our attention and lists Space Punk Starlet in his top ten.

Marshall Galactic asks Go!Chicago, "How does it feel to get you’re a-s kicked by a dude in a shiny spandex suit?"

The Pasadena Weekly think they have us figure out. They don't.

Musicologist Everything Is Pop, Pop Is Everything posts a terrific article about The Kinks and gives us a name drop.

The Run-Off Groove calls our brand of rock'n'roll a "rugged one." Uh... hell yes!

Thank you world.
- Brett

Show Diary: Orange, CA

The Lightyear Saloon - Orange, CA
pictures by David Hall

If we blog, they will read.

Looks like traffic is increasing. Keep blogging. Keep blogging. Keep blogging.

Also, found during a frequent star-crossed "frontier brothers" google search:
Some guy's favorite bands listed in alphabetical order. It's like a poem.

an excerpt:
"Elvis
Eric Clapton
Franz Ferdinand
The Fray
Frontier Brothers
Hellogoodbye
The High Llamas
The Hives
Iron & Wine
Jay-Z
Jimi Hendrix
Jimmy Eat World
Joe Louis Walker
John Mayer"

reminds me of that old coca-cola christmas song, "we are the world." blacks, whites, greens, tall people all holding hands.

Visualizations From Recent Times

Segment for KTCU

Party in the sky - on set for Jump Blues video

Travis prepares for a show

The Pacific

A big tour bus and a good parking spot


Los Angeles at vlaze tv or crotches

Finding gold in LA

A capable rifle shot

Still a rifle shot

House party played in front of Hindu Temple

Big mexican dish in LA


Wedding party

Coming back through the west, the gold and rotten vegas, and shows from the bottom of L.A. clubs with hidden handles of liquor behind the amp

The West was a wild ride, as usual. I had this picture in my room, from the first house to the second and final one, always there on the wall. A strange painting of a distorted southwest desert-scape filled all over the brims of the hills with little shrubs that looked like sprouts of broccoli and a sky behind with red and blue and a thin light edged to the horizon. That pushed me into a love of the west, the southwest more closely, and all the expanse. Perhaps my desert obsession was a bizarre meme implanted long ago or maybe I feel a likeness in the landscape, a proud mind that this brain of mine is not too cluttered and I like to rest and stay cold and have good things come and go and mysterious places beneath rocks that shimmy out at night under the stars.
Driving out there, through Arizona and New Mexico, and West Texas I thought a great deal about the geography and the past places, the eastern cities packed and noisy with street cars, with smog that make plants seem sad and homeless. I thought about my brief love affair with The Last of the Mohicans and a love affair with a girl in New York, New York and the desert.
The desert at night is not lonely. Not like that melancholic feeling you got when you were a kid, and the friends are sitting beside the lake or whatever nice, starry scattered place and one says he wishes he had a girl with him right now. Because the older you get, you look back and you think that the entire thing was a tragedy: a woman there would chip the fantasy down to nothing and take away that nice serenity and when the woman was gone the same odd melancholy would roll right back in; the situation was hopeless, neither would work, and you might as well retire to whatever guest bed and have a hot dog.



No it was not a loneliness or anything. Nothing really but the sight of the mountains dunked in moonlight, frosted up with the stuff and scattered about in random mounds.

Now I had plenty of time to think. Plenty, hours. And I entertained the vision of indians racing boldly across these places, breaking upon one another in the broad big daylight of the west and the desert: combat better than the forests of Virginia, where killers moved quiet and loose through the crowded branches, pushing out knives towards one another at random in the dark.



Las Vegas was a strange place. Stranger than this particular post. The place is a joke. And if the money flows from your pockets and you laugh at the men and women with skin pulled tight around their faces and you gamble and hire pussy and leave, there is no mystery. But if you don't have the money and the women ask you to move your beer from their private tables, the joke seems to be on you and you feel like a rube with scuffed shoes who doesn't belong. I could only afford one dance at the strip club, but I can't keep her out of mind. I told her I was a writer and real genius and she seemed to believe that. I did not feel dirty because no part of me was exchanged for anything else. I got to say something like that, something Arturo Bandini of Ask the Dust would say, and she was nice. But I hope never to go back. Still, we might go through again. I don't mind. Next time, I'd like to see a magician or an aquarium and then get drunk and get in a fight. That would be nice.

Tulsa awaits in three days. January calls us once more into the crowded east. But fuck it, it's all great. And more songs are coming, violent ones and pretty ones you can cuddle in front of the heater in your car and like. They're coming.

-M. Galactic

just checking in

we tasted american hedonism in los angeles and it wasn't enough, so we set off to las vegas for a weekends' worth of party. the frontier brothers like it out west. i'm thinking that the final frontier and the western one share the same adventurous heart. more rock and roll, a long drive, and then i'll fill you guys in on all the gory details.

- b (gambling away all the band's money)

Object is 5 light years in diameter. A planetary nebula, Abell 39

Tour Beginnings: Part 1, Night Before

You know you have been too long without a hot shower, without a run in clean air, without a good diet and good shows when things start jiggle as you brush your teeth. Now, I'm not talking about women. They move naturally. But personally, I feel that no part of myself should move in coordination with the strokes of my toothbrush. I notice these things. I notice them because not enough time has passed between tours. The tour is still all over me, like an extra layer I can't scrub off. 

I was jiggling when this idea came to me: To write here about jiggling. It wasn't my balls. My stomach moved. My chest moved. My face, too, seemed in motion. This tour, I think, will be a lean tour. Not a party or celebration where the face puffs up bright and pink and I get happy. 

A new sense of purpose has arisen from the ashes of the Tahoe. The winebago stands ready for the test. At the helm of the RV I'm a grizzled veteran, a trucker with a stash of porn and methamphetamines beating the road down into its grave like a dirty animal. I want to tip my hat to the truckers at gas stops; pick up a conversation like old friends. When some little toyota cuts you off and the wind is howling and almost tips your rig over, you understand why truckers are so goddamned angry all the time. Maybe it's the feeling of riding over everybody and controlling a machine of such bulk that instills such a deep disgust for lesser motor pedestrians. But Camrys and Tundras come across as persistent automatons. They are bent on disturbing the path of the real motor-vehicle, the RV. And that makes me angry and gets my temperature up.

The outing is short one; we've been prudent with scheduling. Nonetheless, the material voyage is a vast one, through miles of empty and full places. But we don't mind, because we're the best band in the world. If you like our music, thank you. If you don't, then fuck you. 

The Frontier Brothers on Fox Good Day Austin

The Frontier Brothers Perform Jump Blues For Fox Good Day Austin


- B

Got a new keyboard.

Old Letter

I found this the other day. I wrote this in 2006, clinically depressed and hating Austin. It's funny. I forgot about the apes.





Jon,


I'm going insane, writer style. Short summary: Outcast here. No friends. Hate everyone and everything. I need your help. I want to write a novel so badly that...(reference first sentence). Poetry is still coming, but I've developed a style that is getting a little stale and hard to work with ( can't stress enough, I'm still going with it) The problem with prose is its lack of concentration. I want to express things directly; it's hard to indulge every expressive whim in a novel.

It's funny that your diagnosis of UT played out to be the exact opposite of reality. Right now, there are no distractions. No parties. Nothing to disturb me. Besides, of course, my fat fuck roommate who plays videogames and watches football all day and generally plays the part of making me a dumber human-being. I had a dream the other night. I was walking behind a small country home and in the brown field behind it and over the hills behind the field, a giant rank and file of apes were plodding along in single file: a big block of them, row upon row of these apes parallel to each other. They all seemed to notice me at once. They turned to their right and began walking straight for me. Sinister-like.

The dream dips into absurdity when I jump into my mother's old minivan and run them down. Dead to the last dirty ape! I've conjectured that these apes are really my perception of the people around me. Therefore, you can understand what kind of dire social situation I'm in.

About the novel, I've grudgingly accepted the necessity of a story outline, and maybe even character situations. Please send me some tips about getting started. I figured you already spent so much time with me, it would be foolish to abandon your investment at this point. Anyway, hope things are going great at CD. Kelly says she really likes the imaginative writing class. I heard you used one of my poems in class. Always flattering.


-Marshall

Girl Buys AK-47, Other relevant stories

Last night we rented The Neverending Story. It was the first time I'd seen it. I avoided it in the past because for some reason I thought the main character was Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I refuse to watch him on screen. 

But the movie was beautiful and I almost cried during the part, 

Bastian: How many wishes do I get?

Empress Moonchild: As many as you want, and the more wishes you make, the more magnificent Fantasia will become. 

For some reason I choked up a bit there. You really have to see it on screen. I love books or movies that go straight to the imagination sentiment. Because it really is true. It's one of the few reasons to keep living. As for the crying, I experienced the same thing at the end of Last of the Mohicans, a pretty crappy movie. If I get into an idea I really work myself up about it. Plus, my med schedule is spotty, and I get hyper-emotional if I don't take them on time. 

A few days ago I visited a local gun show in Fort Worth. I taking a look at this gun behind the counter when I noticed two short, fat mexican girls inspecting an AK-47. They thought I was employee and they asked, "Sir, would this be considered a pistol grip." I felt cool for a second, but had to reveal that I was just a random guy. Anyway, the real owner told the two girls that the rifle (which definitely had a pistol grip) was meant to be shouldered, meaning they could purchase the firearm as long as they were eighteen. I watched as the sale was finalized. The girls didn't seem well acquainted with the weapon; they barely touched it, held it at a distance like some alien specimen. Five minutes later they were walking away with it, out the doors and into the parking lot.

Now I know a lot of people would find this disturbing. It's really not. A civilian Ak-47 is really just a semi-automatic rifle. However, a few years ago a republican legislature halted the ban on over-sized magazines and banana magazines. These hold a shit-load of ammunition and make even crappy gun show Ak's deadly weapons. I've thought about it. Maybe she just wanted a cool gun. Maybe she was buying it for her criminal boyfriend. Who knows. I don't care. If she attacked me, I'd shoot first.