One of my shitty bands got the chance to share the stage yesterday with a couple slightly less shitty bands, the surprisingly badass Phantom Planet and a band I’d never really heard of called Takota. I don’t think anyone else had really heard of them either, but I get the feeling that’s about to change: they’re second disc, Just Before Morning is set to come out on Island Records later this year and if it’s anything like their live set, its gonna be filled with epic vocal hooks ( ala Dredg ) set atop guitar-driven midtempo pop rock, with a little synth grandeur added in for good measure. Someone told me they sounded like the Scorpions gone modern emo, which might sound like a dig, but if you know shit about epic ’80s ballads you know the Scorpions are on point. Anyways, since they’re on some major label bullshit they only have brief clips of some songs on their Myspace but you can get a pretty good gauge of what the band is all about regardless. If you’re on the east coast you can also check them out on tour with Third Eye Blind next month. Oh and if yourre wondering who the sore thumb dude is in the above picture (for those too obtuse for old adages, sore thumb as in sticking out) he’s not just some random old dude who slapped on an H&M sweater to try to look more croosh, he’s Justin, one of the old drummers from Reel Big Fish. That’s cred.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Lord of The Rings at this point - probably an embarrassing amount, I’m sure. I’m pretty much a sucker for epic movies involving journeys of personal discovery, great battles, teams of erstwhile friends who must band together to triumph over a greater foe, and anything with swords and/or magic. I swear, if I wasn’t so busy with pop culture/bands/life of excess all the time I would still be rolling two 10-sided dice to determine my saving throw to see if my wizard was resistant to poison or whatever.

So I’m probably going to see Beowulf when it comes to theatres on November 16th. I’m probably going to be stoked, too. Even if it kinda sucks I’ll still secretly be excited.

Some dudes did a Podcast interview with some of the folks from the movie (John Malkovich and Robin Wright-Penn), and it’s on iTunes. For no charge. Did I click below? Yes. Yes I did.

DIRECT LINK TO THE FREE PODCAST

Did I subscribe? That’s another story… Okay, off to the Ren Faire! Huzzah!