Fostering a rescued dog; ideally looking to find her a permanent home.

Took a dog home from the LA North Central shelter yesterday afternoon. Had been contemplating a dog for a bit, but heard about her on Friday afternoon and needed to go check it out.

She was adopted out of that shelter in 2003. She was picked up on Xmas of 09 as a stray. They ran her chip and tried contacting her owners by phone, letter, etc and no one ever made an attempt to get her. She appears to be a chow, shepherd mix, with maybe a little akita? They estimate she's about 10. She's 54 lbs and all black. She apparently had some very bad hair loss on her lower back when she was brought in. They had her on some meds and is growing back (just looks a bit thinner in those areas). Needless to say, 10 year old black weird mix is not on a lot of people's lists to adopt and her time was up. She was over 60 days which meant she was going to be put down any time now.

She's incredibly sweet. She's a little over-stimulated right now, which makes a lot of sense considering she's been in a small pen for the past 2 months. (There's too many dogs there to walk them all every day, so if she was lucky, she got out into their yard twice a week.) They told us at the pound that no one had asked about her in weeks, so she's had very little interaction with anything. She's fine with other dogs (barked once at some dogs who jumped at her while we were out walking) and seems OK with the cats. She generally ignores them. She's run after the kitten a couple of times, but it seems more playful than aggressive, and it's been after they've had extended eye contact and the kitten goes first. So, the dog probably thinks they're playing. I think kitten disagrees.

We got her groomed yesterday and she's looking good. Still has an area where you can tell she's growing hair back, and she has dry skin which we're treating with some spray lotion stuff. She's really an awesome dog.

However, she's probably a bit big for this place, esp considering the cats. Ideally, I'd love to see her get a permanent home where she can live out the rest of her days happily, maybe with a yard (she seems to want to bury her bone in my office) or other friends. I intend to put a listing up on petfinder and contact some other sources to help with this. If anyone reading this is interested, or knows someone who's interested, etc please feel free to contact me or to forward to other people.
MarkJVieira@hotmail.com is the best way to reach me.

Giving up on 2009 List

Not surprisingly, I've opted to abandon by 2009 best of list. Oh well.

Kylesa- Static Tensions

I, unfortunately, wasn't working at Prosthetic when this record came out and the band was pretty much out of album cycle when I started, so I didn't get the opportunity to work this album or with this band very much. It's a fantastic record and a great band. Great mix of doom, "stoner," psych, and even some sludge and bordering on crust at times. "Static Tensions" walks the line between artistic trippy and dissonant anger so well. The band reminds me quite a bit of Eyes Like Knives, if they'd gone even heavier at the end, rather than quieter, mainly due to the back and forth male/female vocals. Definitely curious as to what they're going to do next.

Skeletonwitch- Breathing the Fire

I debated whether or not I was going to include bands I worked with but I figured if I like the record, I shouldn't punish the band by not including them on my illustrious list. (note sarcasm) This was one of the first things I got to work on when I started at Prosthetic and I was pumped. I liked "Beyond the Permafrost," but hadn't seen the band and didn't know all that much about them. It's definitely a good start to a job when your first project is to promote an album that totally fucking smokes. A lot of the albums/bands on my list you could debate whether or not they're metal. Some of them could be tagged "hipster metal," or prog, or hardrock, or hardcore or whateverthefuckcore. There's absolutely no debating this band is METAL. In fact, I'd say they're in the top 5 "true metal" bands in the US at this point. The band combines elements of black metal, death metal, thrash and NWOBM. The album flies by in no time (the longest track is 3:40) but manages to hold onto a real sense of melody, mainly due to Maiden/Thin Lizzy-esque leads. They're also monsters live and I've been lucky enough to see them several times in the past 6 months, with a few more coming in the next month.

Mastodon- Crack The Skye

So I've been really slacking on this album list. I had every intention of having this done between Christmas and New Year's Day. I'm a failed blogger; how embarrassing. Anywho, so here's my next album on my "Best of 09" list and shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. First off, I don't think I saw any top lists that didn't have this record on it and secondly, I've been on this band wagon for quite a while and I jocked their previous releases, hard, as well. The album kicks ass, pretty simply. I will say, in total honesty, the first time I threw this bad boy in, I was a little disappointed. I'd heard some rough mixes and was blown away, but the album took me a couple of listens to really get into. Not entirely sure why though. It's definitely their "least heavy" release and I think it took me off guard. But it grew on me, quickly. What it lacked in "heaviness" it made up for in general intensity and awesome (in the truest sense of the word) memorable melodies. I'd like to pick a favorite track from the album, but I can't; the whole thing just works so well together. (I guess that's sort of the point of a concept record.) This, to me, was the logical next step from Blood Mountain and I can't wait to hear what they recorded for the Jonah Hex film.

Iron Age- The Sleeping Eye

I first became familiar with this Texas band back in late '05 or '06 some time. I was managing the now defunct Righteous Jams and they loved these dudes, and played with them a bit. I'm pretty sure there was at least part of a US tour, and they were a semi-last minute fill in for another band on the ill-fated (and final) RJ Euro tour. I could be wrong, but I think a couple of these guys may have actually played IN RJ at the end of that tour. Stranger things have happened. Anyway, so I've known about these guys, and always thought they were an OK NYHC influenced hardcore band. Nothing really to write home about, but decent enough, although the quality on some of their earlier recordings left much to be desired. I heard they were working on a new album which shocked me, since the shelf life on hardcore bands seems to be somewhere between 6 months and 2 years. The fact that it was 3-4 years later stunned me. But what I would come to find out is, this was no ordinary hardcore band.

Not sure if I heard THE SLEEPING EYE first or the new they'd signed to one of my favorite labels, TEEPEE, out of NYC. Now, the odd thing in this equation is, with the exception of ANNIHILATION TIME, there's really nothing that comes close to "hardcore" on this label. I was still kind of surprised ANNIHILATION TIME were on the label. TEEPEE releases some killer stoner/doom/psych type stuff; shit, even some borderline drugged out country shit. Not at all the label I would expect to be doing the new IRON AGE. Again, I would discover, this was no ordinary hardcore band, nor hardcore record.

First off, the song lengths were way too long to be standard "hardcore" and they certainly aren't. Nor are the structures. The album's received a good amount of press in metal circles as part of the "thrash revival" (along with bands like TOXIC HOLOCAUST, MUNICIPAL WASTE). I don't think that does the record justice, either. I can hear what seems to be a strong METALLICA influence, as well as COC. And in structure, there's definitely old METALLICA showing through. There's "lots of parts," which I'd normally use as a criticism, but not in this case. It all works. The record, in some ways reminds me of a more metal version of their contemporaries FUCKED UP. Again, not a bad thing.

The record seems to really be crossing over to different scenes, and these guys deserve it. I'd be very surprised if we don't see some big things from these guys in the future. They also seem to be touring quite a bit on this (although I keep missing them), so that's certainly going to help them.

My Top List for 2009

Every year around this time, I start to ponder doing a "Best of" list for the year. Some years, people actually ask to see them, or, even more odd, ask me to do them for their sites/blogs/yadda yadda. I'm always puzzled by whether or not I should do one. Truth is, I usually start and fart out half way through.

Now, there's a few fundamental issues with these: First, there's no way I, or anyone else has heard EVERYTHING out there, (even within a certain genre) so it's more of a "Favorites of the year" as opposed to "best of." Plus, every year, without fail, there's SOMETHING out there I meant to check out, usually by an artist I really dig, but just for some reason, don't get to hear.

There's also the issue of when things are released. Every year, I try to put a list together and forget something was released that year, and vice versa, think something released the previous year was from this one. I've been looking at a lot of "year end" lists in recent weeks, and the top 5s, GENERALLY are cluttered with releases from the past 4-6 months, whereas, releases from the first part of the year are lower, if on the list at all in many cases.

So, since I now have this handy-dandy blog, I'm going to be posting a "My Favorite Releases" list over the next week or so. Since I tend to get very wordy at times, I'm going to do them individually, as opposed to as a list. Plus, I'm not doing 10, nor are they in any specific order. Hell, some may not even be albums; I could add some films, TV shows, events, etc.

Stay tuned for my next exciting entry.