![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
la_belle_laideLast night after I wrote up that concert review, I sent out an email to my friends and family with the link, to let them all know at once that we got back okay and give them the option of reading about what the adventure was like if they felt like it. I have a tendency to just think that everyone in the world knows exactly what the hell I'm talking about at all times, but the emails I got today reminded me otherwise. "What's Echelon?" "What does 'All Your Base Are Belong To' those strange glyphics mean?" "What did you mean by 'Jared went all Nazgul on Frodo?'" What's the deal with the intense eyes?" and my favorite, "Who are these guys?"
Well, to answer everyone in one clean shot, here's a FAQ about last night's review. ^_^
The band is 30 Seconds to Mars:
It was started by the Leto brothers, Jared and Shannon, from Louisiana when they were teenagers, I think, and they eventually up and moved to California in hopes of their band (then called something else) becoming hugely famous. Before that could happen, though, younger brother Jared landed the role of Jordan Catalano in the TV show My So Called Life when he was about 24 or something. It was a decent show and girls everywhere thought that Jordan Catalano was the most cutest thing ever and wanted to squeeze him and pet him and name him George. He went on to movies after that, so if you've ever seen movies like Fight Club, Alexander, Panic Room, Requiem For A Dream, Lord of War etc., then you've seen Jared Leto. But meanwhile, he and Shannon were still making music the whole time. These days the band consists of the two Leto brothers (Jared on guitar and vocals and Shannon on drums,) Matt Wachter on bass, and Tomo Milecivic on guitar. Tomo started out as a dedicated fan, and then when their first guitarist quit, Shannon called him in for an audition.
The small cult following they had from the beginning was like their street team, handing out flyers and putting up posters and stickers and stuff like that, and they called them the Echelon. These days everyone calls themselves "Echelon" even if they're just fans who don't actually do any promoting for the band. Which is pretty much everyone anymore, because the band suddenly broke into mainstream last year and now they pretty much have MTV promoting them, although they still do include their fans in their performances and stuff like that, which is pretty nice of them.
Ahhh, All Your Base Are Belong To...
Back in 1989, a video game named "Zero Wing" was released into America. It was translated from Japanese into English, but very, very badly. The opening sequence of the game showed a starship being attacked by a character named Katsu, or in English, CATS. That's the character whose image you see on the T shirt I made. One of the characters aboard the ship tells the captain, "WE GET SIGNAL ... SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB!" The villain CATS comes on and tells the captain of said ship, "HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN!!! ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US." The captian asks, "WHAT YOU SAY?" CATS says, "YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE, MAKE YOUR TIME, HAHAHA!" That was in 1989, okay? Fast foward to 2001, when a thread on a forum called TribalWar.com is started, quoting the entire opening scene. Shortly thereafter, people on that forum started to take random images and replace words in them with the phrase "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US." A lot of people did this very cleverly. Next, a band called The Laziest Men On Mars (okay, note from me: Holy Crap, I had no idea up until just now when I looked this up that there was another "Mars band" reference here... And apparently, unless I'm reading this wrong, they also have a member named Jared!) did a song called "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" which used the words from this sequence. "Bad_CRC", the original poster of that thread with all the "ALL YOUR BASE" pictures, made a music video using the Gabber Robots song and all the various cleverly done photomanipulations. Here is the video. And here is the official AYBABTU site. If you do or read nothing else here, do watch that video. It's still one of the cleverest things on the internet. That thread, begun on 12/16/00, now up to page 226,is still around today.
Thereafter, "All Your Base" exploded through the internet and became a "Snowclone", which is a phrase that is so popular that people start replacing key words in it with their own.
And the red sequined glyphics you see on the T Shirt I made are the band's glyphics. It actually means "30 Seconds To Mars." The first glyphic is two intertwined 3's with the 0 in the center. But a few months ago I noticed something extra in that one glyph: If you take it apart, it also spells out "Leto" twice, once right side up and once upside down. See:
I wasn't the only one who thought so, and the rumor (and it is just a rumor--no one's ever confirmed this,) is that Jared designed it to signify the brothers' devotion to each other and to their dreams of having a successful band. Here is someone else's view, much better than my own:
Shannon has the entire four glyphics tattooed on his arm, and Jared just as the "30 / Leto" one.
So there you have it, the meaning behind my T shirt and why I was so gleeful when Matt, the bass guitarist, got the reference.
"Jared went all Nazgul on Frodo Baggins?"
Ahh, that. A few nights ago at some MTV awards show, 30STm was presenting (and winning, I guess,) an award. In attendance was Lord Of The Rings star Elijah Wood. Apparently he had always had rude things to say about the band in magazines to begin with. The story I heard was that Frodo would turn and whisper to his date everytime Jared and Shannon walked by. At one point, Jared sat down across from him and whispered something in his ear. I guess for a while he kept whispering something and then sitting back to see if Frodo was going to respond or not. (There's a picture of this whispering going around the internet, too. It looks fairly innocent, but...) A little while later, Jared and Shannon walked past the table again, and Frodo said something to them, although no one's sure what he said. But I guess Jared didn't like it, because he turned around, grabbed Frodo by the neck and said, "That's my effing brother, you a-hole!" Only obviously he didn't censor himself. So when I said that I could understand Jared going Nazgul on Frodo because of the way I felt about that woman who was harassing my cousin, that's what I meant. I don't think violence is any way to solve things, but when someone gets on the case of your family, sometimes things like that just happen.
The other rumor going around--and this one I do believe--is that for as pretty as anyone says Jared's eyes are, they are not so nice-looking when he's choking someone. HAHA! ^_^ The eyes that did not launch a film career.
I say "did not launch a film career" because they really didn't. After that first TV show, Jared could have totally taken the easy way out and made lots of romantic comedies and been a millionaire. But instead, he chose to do things that were difficult and that meant something to him. Seems he went out o fhis way to pick movie roles that downplayed his handsome looks. I respect that.
And Shannon's weird gold-green eyes:
Sorry if that sounds fangirlish, but he really is pretty.
I hope that clears it all up. Sorry for talking in fangirl code. ;)
I'm going to see them again on Tuesday, which is Halloween, where we'll all be dressed up. It's part concert, part costume party, or "blood ball" as the band likes to call it, because if you come splattered in fake blood, you could maybe end up on their personal photo site. (Shannon is also a professional photographer.) So, that promises to be fun, huh?
ETA: I just read back a few posts and found I said that I'd had "an effed up dream about Frodo Baggins." For the record, that effed up dream came before I'd heard rumors of any of this Hobbit-choking behavior. O_o
Well, to answer everyone in one clean shot, here's a FAQ about last night's review. ^_^
The band is 30 Seconds to Mars:
It was started by the Leto brothers, Jared and Shannon, from Louisiana when they were teenagers, I think, and they eventually up and moved to California in hopes of their band (then called something else) becoming hugely famous. Before that could happen, though, younger brother Jared landed the role of Jordan Catalano in the TV show My So Called Life when he was about 24 or something. It was a decent show and girls everywhere thought that Jordan Catalano was the most cutest thing ever and wanted to squeeze him and pet him and name him George. He went on to movies after that, so if you've ever seen movies like Fight Club, Alexander, Panic Room, Requiem For A Dream, Lord of War etc., then you've seen Jared Leto. But meanwhile, he and Shannon were still making music the whole time. These days the band consists of the two Leto brothers (Jared on guitar and vocals and Shannon on drums,) Matt Wachter on bass, and Tomo Milecivic on guitar. Tomo started out as a dedicated fan, and then when their first guitarist quit, Shannon called him in for an audition.
The small cult following they had from the beginning was like their street team, handing out flyers and putting up posters and stickers and stuff like that, and they called them the Echelon. These days everyone calls themselves "Echelon" even if they're just fans who don't actually do any promoting for the band. Which is pretty much everyone anymore, because the band suddenly broke into mainstream last year and now they pretty much have MTV promoting them, although they still do include their fans in their performances and stuff like that, which is pretty nice of them.
Ahhh, All Your Base Are Belong To...
Back in 1989, a video game named "Zero Wing" was released into America. It was translated from Japanese into English, but very, very badly. The opening sequence of the game showed a starship being attacked by a character named Katsu, or in English, CATS. That's the character whose image you see on the T shirt I made. One of the characters aboard the ship tells the captain, "WE GET SIGNAL ... SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB!" The villain CATS comes on and tells the captain of said ship, "HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN!!! ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US." The captian asks, "WHAT YOU SAY?" CATS says, "YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE, MAKE YOUR TIME, HAHAHA!" That was in 1989, okay? Fast foward to 2001, when a thread on a forum called TribalWar.com is started, quoting the entire opening scene. Shortly thereafter, people on that forum started to take random images and replace words in them with the phrase "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US." A lot of people did this very cleverly. Next, a band called The Laziest Men On Mars (okay, note from me: Holy Crap, I had no idea up until just now when I looked this up that there was another "Mars band" reference here... And apparently, unless I'm reading this wrong, they also have a member named Jared!) did a song called "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" which used the words from this sequence. "Bad_CRC", the original poster of that thread with all the "ALL YOUR BASE" pictures, made a music video using the Gabber Robots song and all the various cleverly done photomanipulations. Here is the video. And here is the official AYBABTU site. If you do or read nothing else here, do watch that video. It's still one of the cleverest things on the internet. That thread, begun on 12/16/00, now up to page 226,is still around today.
Thereafter, "All Your Base" exploded through the internet and became a "Snowclone", which is a phrase that is so popular that people start replacing key words in it with their own.
And the red sequined glyphics you see on the T Shirt I made are the band's glyphics. It actually means "30 Seconds To Mars." The first glyphic is two intertwined 3's with the 0 in the center. But a few months ago I noticed something extra in that one glyph: If you take it apart, it also spells out "Leto" twice, once right side up and once upside down. See:
I wasn't the only one who thought so, and the rumor (and it is just a rumor--no one's ever confirmed this,) is that Jared designed it to signify the brothers' devotion to each other and to their dreams of having a successful band. Here is someone else's view, much better than my own: Shannon has the entire four glyphics tattooed on his arm, and Jared just as the "30 / Leto" one.
So there you have it, the meaning behind my T shirt and why I was so gleeful when Matt, the bass guitarist, got the reference.
"Jared went all Nazgul on Frodo Baggins?"
Ahh, that. A few nights ago at some MTV awards show, 30STm was presenting (and winning, I guess,) an award. In attendance was Lord Of The Rings star Elijah Wood. Apparently he had always had rude things to say about the band in magazines to begin with. The story I heard was that Frodo would turn and whisper to his date everytime Jared and Shannon walked by. At one point, Jared sat down across from him and whispered something in his ear. I guess for a while he kept whispering something and then sitting back to see if Frodo was going to respond or not. (There's a picture of this whispering going around the internet, too. It looks fairly innocent, but...) A little while later, Jared and Shannon walked past the table again, and Frodo said something to them, although no one's sure what he said. But I guess Jared didn't like it, because he turned around, grabbed Frodo by the neck and said, "That's my effing brother, you a-hole!" Only obviously he didn't censor himself. So when I said that I could understand Jared going Nazgul on Frodo because of the way I felt about that woman who was harassing my cousin, that's what I meant. I don't think violence is any way to solve things, but when someone gets on the case of your family, sometimes things like that just happen.
The other rumor going around--and this one I do believe--is that for as pretty as anyone says Jared's eyes are, they are not so nice-looking when he's choking someone. HAHA! ^_^ The eyes that did not launch a film career.
I say "did not launch a film career" because they really didn't. After that first TV show, Jared could have totally taken the easy way out and made lots of romantic comedies and been a millionaire. But instead, he chose to do things that were difficult and that meant something to him. Seems he went out o fhis way to pick movie roles that downplayed his handsome looks. I respect that.
And Shannon's weird gold-green eyes:
Sorry if that sounds fangirlish, but he really is pretty.
I hope that clears it all up. Sorry for talking in fangirl code. ;)
I'm going to see them again on Tuesday, which is Halloween, where we'll all be dressed up. It's part concert, part costume party, or "blood ball" as the band likes to call it, because if you come splattered in fake blood, you could maybe end up on their personal photo site. (Shannon is also a professional photographer.) So, that promises to be fun, huh?
ETA: I just read back a few posts and found I said that I'd had "an effed up dream about Frodo Baggins." For the record, that effed up dream came before I'd heard rumors of any of this Hobbit-choking behavior. O_o
