Friday, December 28, 2007

Things That Keep Me Sane In A Crazy World AKA My Favorite Sites (Updated From January)

We are in the information age and anything you need to know/find, all you have to do is hit up that Google bar and do a search. However, that still doesn’t mean you can necessarily find that site/forum that could be be of the most use to you. Given the sheer volume of wack shit out there, there are some places I use as sanctuaries/sources of information (I am an information junkie...ain’t it obvious from my blog?). Back in my record store days, I was pretty much called on to know a wide array of stuff. This is how I can bridge the gap between what I already know with what I don’t. These are my favorite spots on the net to visit and why when I’m not .

I've spent quite a bit of time this holiday season watching movies for free, Handbraking everything in site, going to back to back Celtics games (December 21st vs. Chicago Bulls and December 23rd vs. Orlando Magic), getting little sleep watching the C's on a West Coast road trip (2-0 so far..24-3 on the season!), trying to win the DP Dot Com Pro Football Pool in a miraculous Week 17 comeback and watching my nephew while he's on Christmas break so I haven't been able to blog this past week and an end of year Dartflix looks like it may not materialize unless a minor miracle occurs soon. Well, here's my new list:


The Red Bull Music Academy lectures help keep me convinced that there are hip hop producers that still have love and reverence for music and the art of Hip Hop. It’s like “Inside The Actors Studio” for producers, almost:

http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/TUTORS.9.0.html?act_genre=7

This is where I find out who the hell all of those British/European groups with tight ass clothes and weird names are that everyone talks about on Dissensus (UK music/culture board):

http://allmusic.com/

This is what we use to watch “The Kingdom” on my brother's new video iPod:

http://handbrake.m0k.org/?article=download

This is where I get old school NES, SNES, NEO Geo and TurboGrafx16 games to play on my laptop with the arrows, Shift, Z and Space bar for Start. I’ll play Tecmo Super Bowl with Philly (Randall Cunningham was QB Eagles) and get my Mike Vick on (no dogfights/jail sentence) until I win the Super Bowl....and break all types of Pro Bowl records. Now that the Wii is adding these joints to the Virtual Console I can play them on aproper console and the games that haven’t been added yet still get played on the desktop:

http://www.emulator-zone.com/
http://www.rom-world.com/

Google and Blogger searches are cool, but you still miss mad stuff. This blog search engine is on beast mode. Sickamore from XXLmag.com put me on to it in 2006:

http://technorati.com/search/

Because even my memory has it’s limits in regards to albums:

http://www.discogs.com/

What’s that actors/actresses name? What was the name of that flick we saw as kids? When is Boondock Saints 2 ever coming out? What's going on with the new Watchmen movie? This is where I go:

http://www.imdb.com/

I grew up in the “Kung Fu Theater” generation and I grew up watching mad Kung Fu/Martial Arts/Wu Xia films. This is where I check out a wide assortment of trailers of classic (and some hot garbage) joints that I caught on channels 25 and 56 in Boston on a Sunday afternoon as a kid:

http://www.shaolinchamber.com/trailerschamber.html

Whenever I feel like my writing is slacking, I check some of these spec scripts out. I soon realize that I’m doing the right thing with my life and back out another article/blog. Warning: Some of these scripts are unintentionally funny as shit...they’re SERIOUS. Keep that in mind while reading the 1st draft of the movie adaptations of Metroid and Contra (No...for real):

http://www.scriptbuddy.com/community/

Rare CD’s and records? These are two of the spots I check first:

http://eil.com/
http://www.gemm.com/

How well/badly did a film do? What was it’s budget? How’d it do domestically and internationally? Will there be a sequel? This is where I go to find out:

http://www.the-numbers.com/index.php

Looking for some TV shows and movies you can’t find anywhere else? You better do like Jin said and learn Chinese to find everything you’re looking for, but I manage pretty well with just limited knowledge of it:

http://www.tudou.com/
http://www.youku.com/

This is where I get facts to separate from the fiction I see in all the goddamn historical crime dramas/gangster movies I watch:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/outlaws/index.html#1

Don’t feel like shelling out $10 to see a movie that might suck because it’s snowing outside? Just pick a flick and watch from home. I got about 10 more backup sites in case those disappear on me overnight (no SSUpload):

http://www.movie6.net/
http://www.bedroommedia.com/


These are the hip hop sites I got to find out about the hip hop I grew up on and fell in love with along with the DJ, producers and emcees me and my frienemies and enemends used to argue and debate about on a regular basis. I got love for any site with writers who know who Eddie Sancho, Herb Powers, and Dave “Funken” Klein are:

http://www.unkut.com/
http://www.ohword.com/

Why do I love Okayplayer? Where else would they run off Lupe Fiasco for never having heard Midnight Marauders? Where else would they gang up on people that diss The Beatnuts rhymes and production skills? Where else could someone post poll threads like “El-P vs. Dr. Dre” “Necro vs. Timbaland” and “Cannibal Ox vs. Mobb Deep”and El-P, Necro and Cannibal Ox ALL WIN? Nowhere else but in OKPLand, fam! They keep me on my toes for real. If you don’t stay sharp you will get eaten alive in there:

http://www.okayplayer.com/

Whenever I get stumped about anything comic book related whether it be information, images or comic book covers, these are the first places I go to:

http://www.celticsblog.com/index.php

All Of My Favorite Sites (All 96 Of ‘Em In One Shot!):

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

good lookin on this post. especially that shaolinchamber site. very nice.

Ivan said...

Glad to know I'm on your Technorati favs... ;-D

Anonymous said...

coverbrowser dot com is the shiite (no falluja)

AaronM said...

That Red Bull site is the shit. Thanks for sharing.