December 10th, 2006
I have just returned from the much-vaunted The Queen, which I decided to see after spending a remarkably rainy day in doors working. N just left for the East Coast last night, leaving me and the cat with each other for entertainment. So off to the movies. The choice was a bit tricky, given that it seemed a bit unfair to see something both of us wanted to see (such as The Queen), but in the end the current crop of movies left only Apocalypto, which I only wished to see for the language and really think will be best watched on video, in installments.
So I saw The Queen, and have returned rather puzzled by the all hubbub. It’s a tame film, scrupulously acted, if not especially brilliantly. And therein lies the puzzlement. More
December 1st, 2006
Ok, so a bit of guilty pleasure just now. CNN.com has a movie clip of Danny Devito’s drunken appearance on The View. I don’t really care about this, and frankly, I sympathize with his need to take pain medicine before encountering that crowd, but that’s not what I’m blogging about.
Interestingly, the clip at the very end contains a couple seconds of Bush playing a Javanese saron (presumably after he listened to a gamelan performance in Singapore). He apparently requested to play afterwards, and doesn’t seem to do so bad. I had thought, in fact, that he had been trained. But it’s raw musical talent. Good for him.
Want to be like Bush? Check out this cool vitual gamelan you can play yourself.
October 23rd, 2006
Speaking of music still, I discovered today courtesy of Slate that Weird Al has an incredible presence on YouTube. The most entertaining, I think is his parody of "American Pie" as a Phantom Menace summary. More interesting, perhaps, is his parody of "Like a Virgin", which closes with a rather amazing series of contortions atop a gurney (around 3:10, if you want to skip through the boring stuff), prompting us to wonder if this was something Madonna did in the video.
Indeed. That’s sort of all that there is to the video. That and her wandering through Venice (somehow looking like she’s not on a gondola but floating above one). Oh, yes, and a dark prince wearing a Carnivale lion mask (2:42). It’s incredibly kitchy, perhaps far more so than Weird Al’s parody. Makes me wonder why he even tried.
October 22nd, 2006
A little SC-pride — while listening to Gillian Welch’s Wrecking Ball this afternoon during bread-baking, finally caught the last lines:
With too much trouble for me to shake
Oh, the weather and the blindin’ ache
Was ridin’ high until the ‘89 quake
Hit the Santa Cruz Garden Mall
Like a wrecking ball
More
October 22nd, 2006
So on N’s favorite new station, we recently heard a song by the Monterey-based sister-singer-songwriter duo Vermillion Lies, which advertises itself as a found-object musical extravaganza (including, of course, musical typewriter, though in fewer numbers than the quintessentially Cantabrigian BTO). Their songs (from a quick perusal in Itunes) have that knowing fourth-wall bending style I’m a sucker for. By way of advertisement, a selection from the song we heard, “Global Warming” (this is, admittedly, from my hearing so it’s probably inaccurate in many respects):
…But what about the polar bears? They can’t go naked, they’re already naked.
We’ll build a freezer for the polar bears,
We’ll build a freezer and put all the penguins in there,
We’ll build a freezer for the elephants–
But that’s too cold for elephants.
Ok, ok…
We’ll build a fridge for the elephants,
We’ll build a fridge for…people who want to wear pants!
We’ll build a fridge for assorted miscreants.
Global Warming.
Global Warming.
Gloo-baal warming:
It’s too hot for school.
It’s of course a bit hard to convey the music here. Suffice to say, two guitarists, a lot of harmony, and a fair bit of dropping into voice.
