Archive for August, 2011

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17
Aug
11

Treefiddy Review: The Features – The Wilderness

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Album Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

features-wildernessThe Down Lizzo:

You probably haven’t heard of them, but The Features latest album Wilderness is pretty fucking cool.

They’re a four-piece indie rock / neo psychedelic band that hails from Tennessee and borrows a bit from a multitude of bands ranging from Kings Of Leon to Kasabian to Franz Ferdinand.

They keep it all glued together with a sound steeped in carnivalesque organs, skuzzy basslines, shimmering tambourines and frontman Matt Pelham’s vocals, which sound, weirdly enough, like a mixture of Phil Collins and Caleb Followill.

Sick Tracks:

“Another One” is the most easily accessible track on Wilderness. It’s a perfect yin-yang of floaty 80s synth and guitar melodies punctuated with some sick cow bells and darker, heavier organ parts that play in the chorous while Pelham gives his vocal chords a solid workout.

 

 

“Kids” is a wild, dirty, unrepentant two-and-a-half-minute ruckus about fathering children that are “born screaming with fire in their eyes / Like wild demons that came as no surprise”. It somehow makes fatherhood sound simultaneously fun and terrifying, which is exactly what I imagine it is.

“Rambo” also stands out as a great example of this band’s grasp of truly epic songwriting. It sounds like an old Spaghetti Western track, only better. It’s like “Ghost Riders In The Sky” on steroids, and Pelham’s gritty vocal cries at the end of the track are a great touch.

And lets not overlook “Golden Comb”, which descends into a swirling vortex of flaring, nightmarish organs, frantic drums and robot rock basslines, brought to life by Pelham’s anguished screams. And then, one track later, he crosses into full on Neil Diamond territory in the lovelorn track “Fats Domino”.

It takes a special kind of talent to write with that kind of range.

 

 

Should You Give A Shit?

I think so. I think this band has everything it takes to eat into Kings Of Leon’s fan base once the world has grown tired of them.

But I’m not here to dictate what you should or shouldn’t like, I’m just here to give you my opinion, which happens to always be right.

So give “Another One” a listen so we can both agree on this and then let’s go huff some glue, I’m buying Smile with tongue out.

 

 

Final Verdict: 7/10

-ST

16
Aug
11

The Beargarden – Prelude

By SlickTiger 1 Comment
Categories: Being Slick and Good Times
Tags: , , , ,

TUDsportsIn the late 16th and 17th centuries in London a place was rumoured to exist which the locals referred to as the Beargarden.

A round or polygonal open structure, comparable to the public theatres that appeared in London at the time, the Beargarden was a place where animals were frequently “baited” or made to fight one another while the people watching betted on which ones would win.

It was barbaric. Apes, horses, bulls, bears and on the rare occasion, lions were thrown into the ring together, whipped into a blind, murderous rage and made to tear one another limb from limb.

An early account, from the Duke of Najera reads as follows:

"…a pony with an ape fastened on its back, and to see the animal kicking among the dogs, with the screams of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, is very laughable."

This October, the Beargarden reopens.

Only this time, we won’t be baiting animals.

Unless you count the Tiger Winking smile 

 

 

There will be more, but until then I can promise you one thing, what you’re going to see won’t be pretty.

-ST

15
Aug
11

Ex-Box

By SlickTiger 2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

sad-panda2Last night, after two glorious months of coming home every night to a shiny black Xbox Kinect, I finally had to pack my new best friend up so he can be shipped off to his new home.

Opening up his box to pack him away brought all the memories we’ve shared over the last two months flooding back.

The moment when we first unpacked him and plugged him in and his little Kinect sensor nodded slowly up and down, trying to find me like a baby bird so that I could regurgitate some food into his little mouth.

The day when I invited all my buddies around to play Kinect Sports and the neighbours downstairs threatened to call the police because we have wooden floors and all the 100m sprinting, javelining, hurdling and long jumping was making bits of plaster rain down on them like a summer thundershower.

 

 

And who could forget the time when I figured out how to connect to Xbox Live using a 3G modem? Right before my eyes, the young eaglet I had nursed took flight for the first time only to nose-dive into a rock moments later when I tried to get the Kinect pics off the &^*@#!% thing and failed miserably (my fault for being a dumbass).

Then there was the night we downloaded Limbo. That deserves a post in itself, seriously. That game ROCKS – if you’re connected to Xbox Live, I’d highly recommend buying Limbo, especially if you’re a fan of old school platform games with incredible gameplay and a dark, melancholy ambience that is hauntingly memorable.

 

 

But of course the cherry on the cake was Fable III which turned out to be awesome despite the fact that I thought it was utter crap the first time I played (J-Rab and I opted to try out 2 player mode which is awesome! For player 1. All player 2 really does is run around being useless for at least the first hour of gameplay, which was all it took to put J-Rab off it for life).

I never got to finish Fable III, but last night I played it in my dreams a bit. You guys were all there! You were all my subjects and I was raising the taxes and making your children work in my factories and then fathering a whole lot of basterd offspring of my own with whores (seriously, you can do everything mentioned in that last sentence. Such a fucking cool game).

 

 

It’s still here, right next to me as I write this. I was even sent an extra controller, which I carefully packed away last night, but just as I was picking it up to put it on the table in the entrance hall so I wouldn’t forget it, I pressed the Xbox button and the green light started flashing in the darkness, calling out to an Xbox that was already shut down and boxed away.

Calling out, “Kaaa! Kaaaaa!” to no one.

No one.

 

 

BUT, there is hope! I saved my gamer profile so I can just ram it into someone else’s Xbox and finally finish Fable III! Now all I got to find is someone kind enough to lend me theirs…

Or I could just man up and finally buy one for myself. Not quite sure how I’ll ever be able to afford one, but if I put a little away every month, I should have enough saved by about April next year.

Anyone know any great deals on Xboxes?

-ST

12
Aug
11

New Spider-man Movie Tells The Origins Story… Again

By SlickTiger 3 Comments
Categories: Satire, Irony And Vitriol
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Andrew Garfield stars as Spider-Man in Columbia Pictures' "The Amazing Spider-Man."So I’m on the Ster Kinekor website the other day and I happen to see they’re playing this “exclusive trailer” (whatever the fuck that means) for a new Spider-man movie that’s due for release next year called The Amazing Spider-Man.

Being a fan of the first two Spider-Man movies, I was pretty interested to see what new direction The Amazing Spider-Man would take and who would be in it.

They fucked Venom up completely in Spider-Man 3 so I was really hoping they’d try and redeem themselves and introduce someone badass like Carnage, but they didn’t do that, no. Instead they decided to start the whole thing over from scratch, again!

When this gets released, it will have been exactly ten years since the first Spider-Man starring Toby Maguire came out, are our memory spans really that short?!

Also, say what you will about the third one, but the first two Spider-Man movies were great. They had brilliant action sequences and though he was a bit whiney and cried too much, Toby Maguire did a great job of bringing Peter Parker to life.

He was funny, loveable in a goofy kinda way and he kicked a lot of ass. Remember the train scene in Spider-Man 2? That is still one of my all-time favourite scenes in a Marvel movie. That and the scenes where his powers fuck out and he ends up falling 20 stories and eating pavement.

 

 

So why, for the love of sweet, sweet baby Jesus, would you sink a good couple of million dollars into telling the same story we’ve already seen?! Are they going to retell the Green Goblin story as well?!

The trailer hints at some dark secret that seems to involve Parker’s parents, but I seriously doubt it’s going to save what looks to be the biggest snorefest since the jazzy dancing scene that the ‘evil’ Peter Parker tap-dances his way through in Spiderman 3.

Also, and maybe this is just me, but the new Spider-Man doesn’t look funny. That was one of the best moves they made with the first two films, they made them funny because in the comic books Spiderman is a funny, nerdy guy. Not some pouting teen heart-throb who takes himself too seriously.

I dunno. This movie has FAIL written all over it, but watch the trailer below and tell me what you think.

 

 

Have a killer weekend party people. See ya on the other side Winking smile

-ST

11
Aug
11

What the Emoticons You Use Say About Your Mental Health

By SlickTiger 9 Comments
Categories: Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

406268It must have been a truly epic, universe-changing moment the first time man sat down to write something and after accidentally placing a colon next to a closed bracket, realised he’d just made a smiley.

“Hey guys! Guys! You gotta see what just happened!”

“What, what did you do? Cure cancer? Discover a cure for AIDS? Become immortal? TELL US!”

“Something way, way better than all those things. Check it out…”

🙂

“Woooaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh… That’s… that’s fucking AWESOME MAN! It’s like, now when I’m happy, I don’t need to write ‘I’m happy’ I can just use that convenient arrangement of punctuation, hooray!”

And so on, and so on.

Of course once emoticons started being used (which Wikipedia tells me was sometime around 1982), teenage girls the world over took things to a whole other level and before we knew what hit us, there were literally hundreds of the fucking things smiling, winking, crying and frowning their way across cyberspace at us like a yellow circus of over-emotional disembodied heads.

 

 

And yet, as with most things in life, when faced with so many choices as to how to express oneself through the use of these clever little icons, most people defaulted to only using one, two at the most, over and over and over again.

So here’s a summary of your current state of mental health according to the emoticons you use the most often based on extensive scientific research by SlickTiger Industries. Dig it.

 

Smile The Regular Smiley

Emotionally bankrupt. By far the most common of the whole bunch, people who use regular smileys are uninspired, emotionally distant, bored and boring. Don’t be fooled into thinking they are happy. These people need industrial strength anti-depressants to feel anything close to happiness.

 

 

Open-mouthed smile The SUPER SMILEY

Psychopath. People who use the SUPER SMILEY are hiding something. No one is that happy, it’s just not humanly possible. There’s a good chance this person has just murdered someone in cold blood and fed their remains to pigs. Never go to a cabin in the woods alone with the SUPER SMILEY person, and if you do, you better make sure it puts the lotion on its skin…

 

 

Winking smile The Winky Face

Paedophile. Either that or deranged sexual predator. Even the name “winky face” immediately conjures mental images of the old dude in the brown duster that used to hang around our pre-school with a bag of candy and a grin that would make Freddy Kruger run crying to his mom. The Winky Face says “I collect restraining orders”. Unless you ever had a burning desire to have your face printed on a milk carton, run far, far away.

 

 

Surprised smile The Shocked Smiley

Closet nymphomaniac. The whole acting shocked thing is all a big lie – this is the internet fer chrissake! NOBODY gets shocked anymore. If you’re blind dating a girl who sends this emoticon at any stage during your correspondence, you can bet money she’ll put out on the first date. If a guy uses this, I got bad news ladies, he’s a flaming homosexual.

 

 

Smile with tongue out Pulling Tongue Smiley

Junkie. Pulling Tongue Smiley users are strung out on drugs and have been for quite some time now. The pulling tongue smiley is commonly interpreted as being fun or cheeky, but don’t be fooled. This person does boatloads of drugs, and not the good variety. We’re talking about the kinda guy that huffs glue and paint fixative to wake up in the morning and then klaps a button of Mandrax mixed with BB tabacco in a hollowed out koki for breakfast. This person WILL steal your stereo at some stage or another, that’s a given.

 

 

Sad smile Sad Face

Emotional blackmailer. People whip these bad boys out when they want to lay the guilt on nice and thick. “Wen u comin home? :-(“ or “Missd u @ church y/day :-(“ are common examples of how this emoticon is used to dial the guilt right up to the “1000 hail Marys” mark. People don’t use these when they’re sad. They use them when they want to make YOU sad. Don’t play those petty games, tell them to man up and get off the fucking cross. The world has enough martyrs.

 

 

Crying face Crying Face

Suicidal. But not the “I’m going to eat a bullet” kind of suicidal, more like the “I’m going to go put my head in the oven now” kind of suicidal. These people cut themselves with pencil sharpener blades and then blame it on their non-existent cats. They listen to Anthony And The Johnsons and read to old people and secretly pray they’ll never live that long.

 

 

Disappointed smile Nothing Face

Sociopath. Probably the most obvious of the whole bunch. On the outside this person is a respected investment banker, but behind closed doors he chops people up with an axe whilst humming Huey Lewis And The News songs.

 

 

So there you have it boys and girls, all the most common smileys and the associated mental disorders of their frequent users summed up based on decades of extensive research.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go pick up a random hitch hiker and take him / her through to this great little cabin I found in Elgin, super stoked Open-mouthed smile

-ST

10
Aug
11

A Song You Probably Havent Heard In 10 Years

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Sick Tracks
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Babylon Zoo - The Boy With The X-Ray EyesBack in the 90s (as with any decade I guess) there were some bands that released killer tracks and then just as quickly faded into complete obscurity, only to surface again at the most random times in our lives.

It’s 3am and you’re listening to Cradock FM and the next thing you know, “Spaceman” by Babylon Zoo starts blasting through the speakers. Remember that one? Christ, giving away my age here…

Anyway, I’ve made it my mission to track down some of the songs that really meant something to me that have since vanished into thin air and this is one of them.

The band is called Dishwalla, which sounds completely random right? Wrong, “Dishwalla” is a Hindi word. Meaning it must have some higher significance, some mystical relevance right? Wrong, it’s what they call people who “provide cable television” (?).

 

 

Anyway, back in 1996 they had some moderate success with a song that started randomly playing in my head a couple of days back, just snatches at first, then enough lyrics to do a quick Google search and track the band down and bada bing bada bang! Here it is Winking smile

The song’s called “Counting The Blue Cars” and goes like this…

 

 

For me, it reminds me of a winter I spent with my cousins in Natal when it snowed. I couldn’t have been much older than 12, but I’ll never forget how the world looked when we woke up that morning and everything around us was covered in a soft white blanket of snow.

Later that day we missioned outside to make snowmen and ended up wandering all over my cousin’s farm to find where the most snow had fallen so we could build snowmen like Calvin.

 

 

We eventually wandered so far from home, it was easier to call from the local pub than it was to walk all the way back, so we did and my cousin’s older sister picked us up in her car and this song was playing.

Crazy how vividly this song brings that all back.

That’s the power of music I guess, and the reason why I can’t live without it.

-ST

09
Aug
11

A Post From SlickTiger To The Women Of SA

By SlickTiger 3 Comments
Categories: Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Decker1We’re going to keep today’s post nice and quick because it’s a beautiful day in Cape Town today and I’d rather be out spoiling my woman somewhere where we can soak up the sun and sip a cocktail or ten.

Today is about celebrating women for the beautiful and crazy creatures they are because even though they might drive us completely insane from time to time and are basically nearly impossible to figure out, the love of a good woman can save even the most wretched of souls.

And besides that, if you had to take women out of the equation completely and just fill the world with men I think it would very closely resemble hell.

We’d probably fill our time with war, death, torture, fighting, killing, maiming, destroying, obliterating, eviscerating and sodomy. More sodomy than you could shake a rubber ball gag at – does that sound like fun to you?

 

 

Fuck no. So the next time your girlfriend busts your balls because you’re left the dishes for three days or you spend too much time getting rat faced with your buddies than you do hanging out with her buying shoes, just keep that thought in mind.

Girls bring balance to the force. Life without them would be fucking miserable.

So thank you girls, all of you out there (and especially the ones who read this site. You are a rare breed and a continual reminder that not all girls are about lip gloss, the Ellen Degenerate Show and celebrity gossip. I salute you).

 

 

Please never decide to leave this planet en mass because you’ve had enough of us. I know we can be retarded sometimes, but we can also be strong, brave, understanding and great at opening pickle jars.

We need each other. Let’s both never forget that Winking smile

Happy Women’s Day.

-ST

08
Aug
11

Awesome Work Time-Wasters (Part V)

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Awesome Work Time Wasters
Tags: , , , ,

Mr Runner4Christ, I think I just hit the motherload of time wasters!

I started trying to write this post at about 11 and it’s now pretty much 2.30 and I’m STILL playing the fucking time-waster I found.

Quick disclaimer before we continue, I took leave today, otherwise I probably would have been fired outright for killing so much time playing this game.

The game’s called “Mr Runner 2” and basically all you do is mission through one level after the next at insane speeds trying to avoid getting skewered alive or plummeting to your death.

The graphics aren’t too bad, but my god the gameplay is addictive as smoking heroin! It’s your typical “starts-out-all-sunny-happy-and-easy” kind of game and you’ll find it’s dead simple to clock up gold and platinum medals in the first world without really breaking a sweat, but by the time you get to world 2, shit starts getting pretty goddamn challenging.

I’ve only made it to the third level on world 3, but that’s as far as I’m going because it’s fucking mid afternoon and I’m still lying in bed, fucking starving and feeling like I’ve just killed a lot of time I’ll never, never, never get back.

 

 

The challenge here is finish the game. Get through the levels to world 3 and actually finish it and I’ll be seriously impressed.

The gauntlet has been thrown down, gentlemen! Now kill the rest of the afternoon waiting for tomorrow’s public holiday to kick in and thank me later.

TOTAL TIME WASTED: 3 fucking hours!
TOTAL ENJOYMENT LEVEL: 75%
FINAL VERDICT: Much like crack, you’ll convince yourself that one more game won’t hurt, I mean, you can stop whenever you want, right?

-ST

05
Aug
11

10 Year Highschool Reunion

By SlickTiger 1 Comment
Categories: Being Slick
Tags: , , , , ,

yearbook2Why is it that only the biggest assholes from your year actually miss being in highschool?

I don’t miss being in highschool. People who say highschool were the best years of their lives clearly never went to university.

They were ok years, don’t get me wrong. I made some great friends and I wouldn’t change that for anything, but the best years of your life?! I’d say that’s a bit of a stretch.

And yet here I am, sitting in the airport as you read this, about to fly back up to Jozi for my 10 year highschool reunion, but why?

It’s something I thought long and hard about in the shower yesterday (I do my best thinking in there), because besides a small handful of about 10 guys, most of whom I see on a pretty regular basis anyway, there’s really no one else attending the reunion that I want to see.

Also, no matter how much you’ve changed since highschool, it’s a given that the minute all the people in your year who haven’t seen you since you matriculated meet you, they treat you exactly like the guy they knew 10 years ago.

And you know what the crazy thing is? I’m totally fine with that. I’m totally fine with that because I still am that guy I was 10 years ago.

 

 

I feel exactly like that guy, the only thing that’s changed is I’ve found more of the words I was desperately looking for back then to explain the fucked up thoughts and ideas floating around like dead goldfish in the bowl of soupy water that is my skull.

There is great comfort in the thought that you are you, you will always be you and there’s nothing you ever have to do to make other people try and understand who you are.

Just be you.

I may not have made millions since I left school like I hoped I would. I may not be famous and living the rockstar lifestyle I’ve always dreamed of, but at the same time, I can stand proud and say I’ve found my own way in life.

 

 

I’ve found something I’m good at and that gives me fulfilment and pays the bills, how many people can say that?

Not to mention the fact that I’m wildly in love with the best, most gorgeous, funniest, sexiest, most generous, most tolerant (god knows!), most intelligent and most caring woman I have ever known. I mean fuck! People search their whole lives for this kind of love, and it just fell right into my lap.

So I’m excited for this weekend. It’ll be fun to see all my friends again and it’s been ages since I last got boozed on school property, so there’s always that.

You crazy kids have a killer weekend and I’ll see you all on the other side, hungover, but still alive and ready to fight another day Winking smile

-ST

04
Aug
11

SlickTiger Plays The Bad Guy

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Creepy shadowTwo guesses what I just spent the last two hours doing and no, it wasn’t klapping gym or running around the forests of Cape Town wearing my underpants on the outside.

I was just sitting with my good buddy Supa Dan and a writer after my own black heart who goes by the name Frank Voorlaaier getting briefed on an idea Voorlaaier’s got for a short movie.

That’s right boys and girls, your buddy Slick’s jumping back in front of the camera, but this time he’s not playing a loveable gym klapping boychie or a happy-go-lucky necrophiliac, but the bad guy in a seriously badass horror movie.

Without going into too much detail, I basically get to terrorise the shit out of the main actor and then brutally murder three people, blood everywhere, yay!

 

 

To be perfectly honest I was actually really impressed with Voorlaaier’s idea. In a world where everything’s been done to death, he’s come up with a great premise for a seriously creepy short horror movie that he’s planning on entering into some competition or other.

Getting it right is going to be fucking tricky, but if we pull this off I’m pretty confident we’ll win the horror fest we’re entering hands down.

So watch this space, I’ll have a chat with Voorlaaier about getting the finished product up on this site for you guys to watch. We’re shooting the whole thing in two nights starting the weekend after next.

Good times I tell ya Winking smile

-ST

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