The headline might seem a bit sensational, but once you see the photographic evidence there is no argument. You might be asking yourself how a humble little podcast uncovered such a major story. Well it happened as you would expect, when we were reading the Huffington Post during lunch. The title of the article was "Gary Brooks Faulkner: God Told Me To Kill Bin Laden" (a link to the full article can be found here). The article tells the story of Gary Brooks Faulkner, a fifty year old construction worker from Colorado who got busted in the sketchiest part of Pakistan carrying what you'd expect a middle aged American man with kidney disease to be carrying: a pistol, a sword, and night-vision equipment (since it's Ham we can only image that its a truly righteous sword like the one pictured to the left).

     Gary's motivation for this quest came when God appeared to him in a dream telling him to travel to Pakistan and rid the world of Osama bin Laden. Sounds like your average, run of the mill nut case right? It did to us as well until we saw the picture. There is only one explanation: Ham Bagby traveled back in time from twenty years in the future like some sort of Druid City T-1000 hell bent on taking out Osama. Who knows what kind of shit Bin Laden will have unleashed upon the world in twenty years (our best guess, and the reason for Future Ham's involvement, is that he will formulate some sort of anti-facemelting ray).

     Ham, we salute you. This attempt might have failed, but if all the Terminator movies have taught us anything it's that shit goes awry sometimes. Paradox issues be damned, Ham is going to save us all. Read more »

Little Willie's will have even more to offer than usual this Thursday. Our normal Thursday evening there involves drinking enough half priced wine to make Dionysus blush. This week will feature the Portland, OR-based band "The Insomniacs." These guys offer an old school, soulful sound that harkens back to a bygone era. A description of the band on their label's page gives nuggets such as this:

 "They play vintage instruments and channel a blues style from the 1950s, but there is a distinct new cyberspace bent to Delta Groove’s blues award winning quartet, The Insomniacs. These musicians who have quickly jumped into the top tier of clubs tour endless highways in a beat up van, babying a gut-string upright, the 1951 Fender “Nocaster” guitar, the 1964 Framus Star Bass and their Magnatone and Ampeg tube amps."

Upon listing to these guys it's easy to to hear that these songs would not mesh well with modern instruments. This will be one of the most exciting half priced wine nights you'll see for awhile. For more info on these guys check it out here.

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The Secret of Kells

Kells is a captivating study of the pursuit and preservation of knowledge.  All of this is personified in a mystical book that ancient monks have been working on for untold years.  The book is danger from two fronts: first, from the encroaching Vikings who seek to decimate the monk population; second, from the paranoia of this invasion that places more emphasis on protecting their treasures than continuing to add to them.

            The fable is grounded in a simple and highly effective foundation.  It begins with the central character, a young man named Brandon, with the set of monks who are responsible for writing the village’s books. Their places of origin are not specified but it seems the monks are meant to represent various cultures around the world, giving an interesting alternative to the more likely history of knowledge being scribed and collected by a narrow group of white men.  While these men are forced to divert their energy into fortifying the village, Brandon goes on a series of quests into the outside world, looking for visions to add to the legendary book.  In the course of these adventures he melds Christian and pagan philosophies without going in-depth into either, focusing instead on the wonders of the world outside the walls and a friendship with a faerie girl.

            Though the men are dressed as monks and there are some Christian symbols exhibited, along with an understanding of what monks used to get up to before the printing press, there is no mention in the book of religious specifics.  The story instead relies on the lines from Genesis stating, “The word is God,” or some more biblically accurate permutation.  Without explicitly saying “God,” it is clear that these men worship “the word,” truth, and knowledge.  Because of this reverence, it is easier to reconcile Brandon’s participation with “pagan” mythologies.  While in the forest, he must follow the truth of the forest, though there are some things he had previously believed to only be children’s stories. 

            Brandon’s guide in the forest is a girl he identifies as a faerie.  Her true identity or origin is never revealed and it need not be, since she exists mainly as juxtaposition to the exercise of truth Brandon had previously been exposed to.  Where the Abbott and the other monks see knowledge as a matter of record, Ashley is knowledge in action.  The comparison immediately brought to mind the difference between learning about life from a self-help book, and learning it from a work of literature.  Knowledge, truth, or whatever you want to call it, isn’t clear and stagnant; it is swirling and undefined, only to be caught through catching.  It is our task to understand Ashley as a concept, not as a list of characteristics.  The she was drawn, very different from all of the other characters, adds a great deal to her illustration of difference.  Her only flaw is that she was given the traits of a sassyyoung girl, much too modern for the rest of the film. She was even wearing what looked like bell-bottom pants.  This modernization didn’t serve any purpose that I could see, and disrupted the established flow of the film in a negative way. Thankfully, her part was small enough that it didn’t mar the film too much, and there were plenty of other, non-sassy scenes, that balanced out the sore points. Read more »

This latest work by Noah Baumbach gave me what all other films from the Indie champ have given: a decent time, but nothing much more or less than that.  The performances were charming, the shooting was perfection, and the story was offbeat with modest quirk.  It had plenty of great components but, as is often the case with these slice-of-life features, the result left me a little cold.

            Staring Ben Stiller in a “dramatic turn,” Greenbergis about a former musician returning to L.A. to watch his brother’s house.  He connects with some old figures in his life, writes snotty letters, and has a romance of sorts with his brother’s assistant.  Greenberg isn’t a particularly likable guy, and though it’s meant to seem as though he’s changed in the course of the film, he really hasn’t.  That’s fine, characters don’t really have to change, but I would argue they do need to draft a more significant note of interest than is exhibited here.  The fault there isn’t in the writing, it’s in the casting.  Stiller is fine enough in his genre, but merely an extended discomfort in this black-comedy field. In this part, Stiller kept the audience at arms length, too guarded for what the character needed to reach a note of naturalness and authenticity.  He was anxious and curt, not in a way that jived with the part but stemming from personal discomfort.  When working with supporting players like the delightful Rhys Ifans and the always lovely Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stiller looks miserably out of his depth, which distracts from the depths that Greenberg’s shallowness could be exhibited. Read more »

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

It didn’t feel like a video game movie, for what that’s worth.  Though it was somewhat comical to watch a controversial Oscar nominee do brown-face.  Wonder if anyone told him that playing a different race does get you quite the same acclaim as playing “differently-abled.”  Perhaps he just watched Tropic Thunderand didn’t catch the parody.

            Personally, I liked Aladdinmuch more as a cartoon than live-action, though Robin Williams never gave him the power to climb walls using arrows that can pierce stone.  At least, not that I remember.  Not even a member of the A-Team could hop that far unassisted!  As Jake Gyllenhaal darted in and out of huts, crashing through crowds and interrupting a harem, all that was missing was a catchy tune and a mischievous monkey.  Well, that and a believable front man.  But hey, animation has come a long way, even back in 1992.

            In this telling, the rascally street-rat doesn’t find a genie, but instead gets adopted as a boy by the Persian king and later finds a magical, time traveling sword that he must guard so it doesn’t destroy mankind and ruin his time with the sexy princess.  I know, I know: why didn’t they just stick with the simple realism of the Cave of Wonders?  That’s modern Disney for you.

            I don’t see any problem with the magical sword of time sand, and really hope this isn’t a fancy legend that I am shamefully clueless of.  There’s no reason a plot can’t be fantastical.  The fantastical does become a problem, however, when it defies logic out of laziness and not some strand of creativity.  Drama is based on a series of actions, a line of cause and effect.  The line of action presented here is a lot of effect, with weak cause.  The King sees Dastan (Gyllenhaal) protecting another beggar child as a boy, admires his bravery and decides to adopt him – what?!  The man already has two SONS, why the blip is he picking up strangers?  This leads to a whole heap of other “why?!”s that I don’t have the energy to pluck down, mainly because it dangerously raises my blood pressure.  The real mind bender is that there was no reason to construct such flimsy premise action, the direct route would have been simpler and required less wiggling and wrangling. Read more »

On Saturday June 5th wellthatscool.com took the long and grueling 55 mile trip to Birmingham for The Magic City Brewfest. The event was great and gave us a chance to chat with the good people from Good People Brewing. As expected the line to get to their booth was one of the most daunting of the whole festival. They had a special release of their double Imperial Stout called "El Gordo". Each 5oz glass cost $3 with all the money going to Free The hops. This release raised over $1500 to help FTH fight to continue to modernize Alabama's beer laws. We were lucky enough to get a sample before it got to crazy and can only describe it like this- "It's like drinking a black velvet Elvis painting".  As Good People continue to grow we look forward to more and more of their brews here in the Druid City. One of the other brews we enjoyed was Tommyknockers "Hop Strike Black Rye I.P.A". This is the beer that was brewed to commemorate the 1 year anniversary of the Hops being freed. This fest however was just the kicking off of beer events in Alabama and in Tuscaloosa. The events where still getting finalized last week and now we have the undated list of events and beers.

(Pics from Beer fest Provided by David Smith for more on his photography please check him out here. Pictured to the left are WTC's Josh Hamilton, Bo Hicks and Bo's wife Becky Hicks)

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If liking off the beaten path quirky movies makes us film nerds, so be it. Based on the success of last years "Bama Art House film Series" this years event has grown even bigger. The Bama Art Film Series is a series of one night showings of independent and foreign films that rarely make it to the opulent shiny halls of the Cobb Hollywood 16. It's hard for a lot of these films to fight for screen space when you have such cinematic masterpieces as "MacGruber" and "Sex in The City 2" (*ed. note. "Sex in The City 2" runs only a scant 30 minutes shorter then "Schindler's List". We here at wellthatscool.com all agree that we would rather be shot three times in the junk with a pellet gun then have to sit through that stinker. That's two and a half hours of your life you can never get back.). The Bama will fill this cultural void over the next 8 weeks starting with Greenberg on Tuesday June 8th staring Ben Stiller and directed by Noah Baumbach. Noah Baumbach is known for his 1995 cult classic "Kicking and Screaming" and the critically acclaimed "The Squid and The Whale".(*ed note "The Squid and the Whale" sounds more like a "Mastodon" album than the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents divorce in Brooklyn. Also the picture to the left has nothing to do with the movie - it's just awesome).

Each Tuesday Morning we will post a synopsis of that week's movie followed by our own movie reviewing maven Dosty Glory's review later in the week. For a complete list of films as well as ticket info please visit www.bamaarthouse.com. Read more »

If there is one thing that we here at wellthatscool.com love, it's beer. Sweet, delicious beer. So naturally when we heard about "Alabama Beer Week" our ears perked up. Alabama Beer Week is a week long, state wide event that highlights all of the great craft brews on the market from right here in Alabama. Tuscaloosa will be getting its own events but the week starts in Birmingham this weekend with "The Magic City Brew Fest". The MCBF is brought to you by Free the Hops, a grassroots lobbying effort that helped change Alabama's beer laws, allowing many of the finer craft beers available in the U.S. to finally enter Alabama.
The MCBF takes place on Friday, June 4th from 7-11P.M. and Saturday, June 5th from 3-7 P.M. The event sells out every year, so make sure to grab your tickets early here. You can check out a list of the beers that they'll be pouring here. If you can't make it to Birmingham, worry not. The Druid City is hosting its own week worth of events for lovers of quality beer.

Monday June 7th

Tommyknocker Night at Egans with Tommyknocker sales manger Jim Schwab. This event will feature a special keg of a extremley limited production keg of Hop Strike! Black Rye I.P.A. This commemorative brew is made in honor of the first anniversary of the passing of the Gourmet Beer Bill. This will be the only keg in Tuscaloosa. This event will also have wellthatscool.com's own Bo Hicks tending bar. Event starts at 4pm.

The Alcove International Tavern will also play host to Great Divide’s Bryan Baltzell. All of the Alcove's taps will be Great Divide brews, including Titan IPA, Belgica (Belgian IPA),Dunkel Weiss, Denver Pale Ale, Old Ruffian Barley Wine, and Hercules Double IPA. The Belgica, Dunkel Weiss, and Old Ruffian Barley Wine will be making their debut in town. Get a free Great Divide pint glass with any Great Divide purchase(while supplys last) Event starts at 9pm

by Ally Nevarez

(* ed note. We here at wellthatscool.com are really happy to announce a new addition to the site, Ally Nevarez. We thought who better to dish out new music then the person we get it from. Ally can be found helping make Tuscaloosa cooler at Oz music. Next time you're there ask for her and she'll set you right up. We look forward to getting the scoop and passing it on to you very often)

What do you get when you bring together indie-rock heavy hitters Justin Vernon and Mike Noyce of Bon Iver, Zack Coulter and Adam Hurlburt of Solid Gold, various members of folk rock band Megafaun and about 20 others? Armed with keyboards and slide-guitars, you get an 11 track album fully inspired by 10cc’s art rock 1975 hit song “I’m Not in Love”—and one Godley & Crème cover. I was surprised, too.

Relayted, the Jagjaguwar Records 2010 release from this eclectic super-group could have been stuck wading in the mucky waters of irony, but it’s the group’s diverse talents that prevent that from becoming a possibility. Justin Vernon’s falsetto we know so well from For Emma, Forever Ago makes an appearance on “Faded High,” but is totally eclipsed by his sweet, sweet rhyming abilities on “Last Prom on Earth.” “The Walker” is another high point, with haunting background vocals and a brief, yet piercing guitar solo. You can call the tracks slow jams or bedroom rock even, but there’s no denying that this album is smooth. Read more »

You'll just have to watch this weeks podcast

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