Hipsters

So, my first real brush with hipsterdom was when I read an article online about the music used in the party scene of the monster movie Cloverfield. I did not see this movie, but apparently the music used in that scene was very young and cool and hip and alternative, etc. I downloaded some of the songs (and a few similiar songs not in that movie) and found that they made a very pleasant playlist to put on my ipod and then set to random in my car when passengers are present. I called the playlist "Hipster Mix."

Hipster's seem cool but are apparently actually lame and deserve our scorn (though it does seem kind of hipster-esque to heap scorn on things). I'm pretty sure I'm not a hipster, but it would be cool if I was. I tried to make a list of my hipster leanings: I like SOME alternative music, I listen to records, I sometimes shop at Urban Outfitters (and mention it WAY too often in my blog). I still don't have waterballoon fights or think Kanye West stole my sunglasses.

Here is an article from Time about Hipsters:

"A Brief History of Hipsters"

And here is a website that has a bad word in its name:

LATFH

This is a list of the songs from Cloverfield. "West Coast" is my favorite - did you know that Coconut Records is Jason Schwartzman?

19-2000 - Gorillaz
Beautiful Girls - Sean Kingston*
Cleanup in Aisle 19 - Stephan M. Sechi*
Disco Lies - Moby*
Do I Have Your Attention - Blood Arm
Do the Whirlwind - Architecture in Helsinki
Four Winds - Bright Eyes
Fuzz - Mucc*
Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker) - Parliament
Going Up? - Stephan M. Sechi*
Got Your Moments - Scissors for Lefty
Grown So Ugly - Black Keys
My Kind of Lover - Locksley*
Not So Easy - Kevin Browne*
Officer of the Day - R.B. Hall*
Pankhida - Lekha Rathnakumar*
Pistol of Fire - Kings of Leon
Roar! (Cloverfield Overture) - Michael Giacchino*
Seventeen Years - Ratatat
Sunday Ticket - David Robidoux*
Taper Jean Girl - Kings of Leon
The Ride - Joan As Police Woman
The Underdog - Spoon
West Coast - Coconut Records
Wraith Pinned to the Mist - Of Montreal

*Ones I don't have in my hipster mix

Attention Hollywood:

Dear Filmmakers,

Please stop trying to force Eric Bana on us. It's not going to happen. We want exactly none of him.

America

Torchwood

This post is going to be about Torchwood. If you haven't seen it and you don't want to read any spoilers, then don't read this. But may I suggest you just never bother starting to watch it in the first place?

*************** Here Be Spoilers ***************

So I just finished watching the last episode of the 5 episode mini-series Torchwood: Children of Earth. Actually, I just finished fast-forwarding through the whole episode to see if Ianto was in it, but he was not. What the hell? Why do they kill everyone off on this show? What is the point of that? Why did I watch two whole seasons and a mini series - for this? That's it? That's how it ends??

Oh, maybe they will come back later and have another series - who will be in it? Jack and Gwen and Rhys? And a baby or something? Lois? That would suck.

Plus, I always though Tosh and Owen were killed off because the actors needed to leave to go do other things or something (um... Bleak House?), but no. Apparently they were killed off for "dramatic" reasons. I don't care so much about them, but it did seem like kind of a waste for both of them to die in the same episode. But Ianto? There is no Torchwood without Ianto.

What a waste of time.

My suggestion to you, if you want to start watching this BBC series (a spin-off of sorts from Doctor Who, which I don't watch) is to go ahead and stop watching at the end of Episode 3 of COE. Then imagine in your head any ending you can think of - I'm sure it will be better than the real one.

Ack. I still can't believe it.

Thumbs-up for Slurpees

The other day when I was writing about literal videos, it got me thinking about THE literally literal video - Jonathan Coulton's "Flickr." Coulton is cool (in a geeky sort of way). He did a project called "Thing a Week" where he wrote a song a week for a year. Most of his songs are kind of geeky pop culture inspired tunes such as "Tom Cruise Crazy" or the Zombie tune "Re: Your Brains." Check out the video for "Flickr" here:

Flickr: Jonathan Coulton (YouTube)

In it, a fan (?) puts Coulton's song which was inspired by images seen on the photo-sharing website to pictures of the things he is describing in the song (it makes more sense if you just watch it).

Plus, check out this entry in the Urban Dictionary (here).

Coulton's site is (here).

And Flickr is (here).

An Open Letter...

An open letter to the guy in the red baseball cap and the white T-shirt with his arms folded outside the Ed Sullivan Theatre when Paul McCartney was performing atop the Marquee for the Letterman show:

Dude. What is your problem? You are watching Paul McCartney. He is playing "Get Back" on a rooftop in New York City and you are there - in what is basically the front row. Why do you have your arms crossed and why do you look so stern? Chill out! How often is life going to be this good? Just enjoy it. I would say you were bumming me out, but I was having a good time and I wasn't there! I was watching it on my iPhone via YouTube. Dude, seriously, chill.

Lori

For more from someone who actually enjoyed herself seeing Sir Paul from the front row, see my post about Coachella 2009 (here).

Every Little Thing

This is the third in a series of blog entries about songs picked at random from my itunes library. For the post on last week's song, "No Surprises" go (here) for "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Love Version)" try (here).

This week's song is an Early/Mid Beatles Tune, "Every Little Thing."

I remember the first time I heard this song... OK, not really, but there is one thing I'm sure of, this entry will not be very long even though I plan to tell you every little thing I know about this song. I can't stop thinking about it now ;)

Now, in no particular order, a list of things I know about "Every Little Thing" without having to look anything up:

1. I once made a fake Beatles fan-newsletter for some reason to send to a friend of mine who was away at school and I titled it after this song, which I thought was a vastly clever title. The one real Beatles fan newsletter I knew about was called "Good Day Sunshine" which is an OK title.

2. There is a Japanese band called Every Little Thing (or ELT) but I don't know if the name has anything to do with this song. Also, it's been about four years since I have heard anything about Japanese music, so I don't know if they are still together.

3. This is kind of an unusual Beatles song in that Paul wrote it, but John sings it. (Usually they sang their own songs).

4. Ringo plays some kind of weird drum on this. I recall reading about it somewhere and also you can hear it.

5. This was on the album Beatles for Sale which was their fourth album.

This is a good song; I like it. It's not my favorite song or anything. Well, were you expecting this put-my-itunes-on-shuffle experiment to shell out nothing but the hits?

French Veggies

I have been a vegetarian for more than six months now (for a year before that I was eating only birds and fish) and I love it. It did take me thirty years to finally make the switch however. What held me back for so long was my love of traveling, and especially my desire to live in a foreign country. I didn't want to go to another country and miss out on trying all of its local foods. I did my share of traveling and living abroad, however, and am now happily veggie.

I have not, however, visited France yet, though I have eaten enough French cuisine to satisfy my sense of curiosity on the matter. When I do go to France, I have no doubt I will be able to eat very well, especially considering my love for bread, coffee, dessert, wine, etc. I can also buy food at a store pretty easily with my one semester of college French. What will I eat, however, when I go to a fancy French restaurant?

In answer to that question, I recently discovered this article on Yahoo news titled: "Meatless in Paris: Dining for Vegetarian Visitors." Please read it if you are interested.

For more info. on going Veggie (why not try it?) go (here).

Bon Appetit!

Labels Used More Than Once in this Blog so Far

I just finished updating the labels for all my old posts. Here is a list of all the labels I have used more than once, followed by the number of posts I used them in. FYI.

books (3)

Depeche Mode (2)

Disneyland (2)

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (2) - though, to be fair, the second use was in reference to the older post

music (4)

Paul McCartney (2)

Radiohead (2) - both times I made the same comment about only knowing three of their songs

updates (4) including this entry

Urban Outfitters (2)

zipper pull (2)

If you have been reading my blog recently, you might want to go and take a look at a few of the older posts, I have updated some of them, too. I don't think bloggers are supposed to do that, but oh well.

No Surprises

This is the second in a series of blog entries about songs picked at random from my itunes library. For the post on last week's song, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Love Version)" go (here).

This week's song is Radiohead's "No Surprises." I only have three radiohead songs (a random quote this just made me think of by David Spade: "I only know three songs by REM and guess what? I don't like two of them! That's right, I'm not cool- I don't like REM. Don't hang out with me, I'm a nerd.") and this is one of them. I got this song because at the time I was trying to learn to play it on my ukulele - I've kind of taken a break on learning it, though, because even though I'm playing the right chords, it doesn't sound anything like this song except for the "silent" part.

Anyway, this is a cool song, but does it have to mention suicide? I think this song would be more interesting without the obvious suicide reference. Oh well.

The video for this song features a close-up of Thom Yorke wearing a space man helmet that slowly gets filled with water. The effect is achieved by filming it in regular speed and them playing it back in slow motion - he must have sang it really fast. It's a pretty standard Radiohead video - they always do weird things in their videos. Remember that one that was filmed all with light or something?

Speaking of videos (I'm going somewhere with this) Have you heard of literal videos? They are pretty popular on YouTube. People take a video and then sing what is literally happening it in. Here's a good example of one:

Total Eclipse of the Heart Literal Video (YouTube)

Favorite line: "Ringo Starr: Lined Eyes." By the way, what is up with this video? Is she a teacher at this school? And why DOES that guy have gold glitter in his fencing mask?

Here's one for this song:

No Surprises Literal Video (YouTube)

Favorite line: "Big chin."

Sources:

Wikiquote: David Spade

More U.O.

As I have posted before (here), I love Urban Outfitters, specifically the website (here). For the most part, I have have kept my obession to just looking and adding things to my wishlist, but recently I decided to treat myself to a few accessories. I've been wanting a headband (maybe something with feathers - they are probably not cruelty-free, though) a scarf, new sunglasses, and maybe a new necklace or two - so I ordered them!

My new sunglasses came today and are totally sheik - they are big and like half blue/half zebra print. Super cute! Above is a picture of me wearing them (though you can only see half of them, I assure you the other half looks the same)! You also check them out (here). They are on sale for only $10.

Here are a few of the other items I ordered so I can be fashionable on my vacation (the best time to try out, say, a headwrap - where no one you know will see you):

Double Braided Headwrap
Asymmetrical Free Bird Necklace
Urban Renewal Scarf Necklace

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I did finally order one of those blind box zipper pulls - you know, where you never know if you're going to get a corn cob, logs on fire, a lemon in a sidecar, etc.? Well, I got mine and it turned out to be drugs. Drugs. Here's a picture:

It's cute, I guess.

UPDATE (7/18/09): Since I ordered my sunglasses/zipper pull in the mail, U.O. just sent me a cool catalogue with a naked chick on the front of it. It's very classy.

Lucy in the Sky

I like listening to vinyl (see this earlier post) but I have a computer, an ipod, and an iphone like many people. I also listen to the radio every day. This makes the songs on my itunes a little unusual. You see, most of the music I like to listen to I get to hear on the radio - so I don't buy the songs on itunes. For the most part, my itunes library is made up of weird songs I bought for various personal reasons and is often not a very good indicator of my musical tastes. Still, when I set it to random (as I usually do when I am working on this blog) the occasional gem will show up and make me smile. I decided, therefore, to introduce a new feature to this blog. Every once in a while I am going to press "random" on my itunes library and write a blog entry about whatever song happens to pop up. As you can probably tell from the title of this post, this week's entry features a certain girl in a certain celestial location with certain precious gems.

Friday July 10th, 2009 - "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Love Version)"

So most of my music is Beatles-related. The odds were that a fab tune would show up. Here we have "Lucy" from the soundtrack of the Cirque du Soleil Beatles spectacular, Love.

For Thanksgiving 2008, my dad decided to come to sunny So. Cal to visit me from out of state. I was all for a visit from my dad, but I wasn't really sure what we were going to do. I mean, I wasn't going to cook... So, he suggested we go to Vegas, since he has never been. To me, Vegas mostly means going to clubs and drinking alcohol, then seeing a weird expensive French Canadian circus show. I did not want to do the first two things with my dad, so I settled on taking him to see LOVE. Being a fan of the Beatles I had an interest in seeing the show, which features the music of the Beatles re-arranged by their original producer Sir George Martin and his son. I didn't really know much about the show. (My dad, by the way, waits until we are in our seats to mention that he "never really cared for the Beatles" but OK). The show was really not at all like the other Cirque production I have seen, "O", it was more dancing and less circusing. Still, it was OK at first. I mean, it had it's moments. I know that Paul and Ringo and Yoko and Olivia all signed off on it. The last half, however, left me with my mouth hanging open in shock and disgust. A fun circus-dance about pre-teen John Lennon's mother getting hit by a car is not exactly my idea of fun.

Anyway, the song. A lot of those LOVE songs are fun re-arrangements of the classic. This one, though, out of all of them seems the most like the original and that's not really a good thing. Not that the original isn't amazing, but compared to other songs on the soundtrack like the brilliant mix of "Here Comes the Sun/The Inner Light" (I remember thinking while watching the show, "This is the George Harrison show starring George Harrison!" Yay!) "Lucy" falls a bit flat. One reviewer calls it "largely unsullied."

The Wikipedia page about the album goes into some of the details of how the Martins used "elements from 130 individual recordings of the Beatles" to create the 26 tracks on the album. Here is an excerpt from the article:

• "Drive My Car"/"The Word"/"What You're Doing" – As reported, the medley features the guitar solo from "Taxman" and the horns section from "Savoy Truffle".
• "Gnik Nus" – As suggested in its title, the track contains the vocal arrangement of "Sun King" played in reverse.
• "Something" (with "Blue Jay Way" transition) – The track contains vocal elements from "Nowhere Man".
• "Strawberry Fields Forever" – A review of the album noted that this version builds from an acoustic demo. It includes the orchestral section from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the solo piano from "In My Life", the brass included in "Penny Lane", the cello and harpsicord arrangement from "Piggies" and the coda of "Hello, Goodbye".

Don't those make the songs sound like the fun and new versions of beloved classics that they are? Well, "Lucy" is not mentioned in the list - probably because it's not as interesting. It's just not as different from the original. In defense of the show, I do recall the "Lucy" part (along with "Something") being one of the most interesting circusy parts of the show - it's just that the album version of the song is not that amazing.

Don't those make the songs sound like the fun and new versions of beloved classics that they are? Well, "Lucy" is not mentioned in the list - probably because it's not as interesting. It's just not as different from the original. In defense of the show, I do recall the "Lucy" part (along with "Something") being one of the most interesting circusy parts of the show - it's just that the album version of the song is not that amazing.

That having been said, are you still thinking it's about LSD? Stop thinking that. Any good Apple Scruff worth his or her salt will tell you that John got the title from a drawing made by his then young son Julian of a classmate named Lucy. The real-life Lucy, in fact, recently re-kindled her friendship with now 46 year-old Julian. Lucy Vodden, unfortunately, has been diagnosed with Lupus, a condition which attacks the internal organs of the body and leaves one exhausted and often depressed.

Don't let me review scare you away from LOVE (the album) but you might consider letting it scare you away from wasting $250 on LOVE (the show).

Best wishes to Lucy!

References:
Alternative Health Journal
Wikipedia - LOVE (the Beatles album)
PopMatters Review

RIP Geocities

So celebrities are not the only thing dying lately, this October Geocities - the free website service, will be gone (or at least, the "free" part). So, if you are like me and you went to college in the late nineties and learned how to make websites by writing the crude HTML yourself then put it up on Geocities and then re-vamped your site ostensibly so that your friends and family back home could hear news and see pictures of you while you lived abroad and then re-vamped it again so that your friends from abroad could hear news and see pictures of you back home after you came back (though, probably no one ever really went to your website, if we're being honest) then you are going to have to find something to do with that site that you haven't updated since April 7th, 2005.

So what are your options? That, my friends, is the question. You can pay $4.99 A MONTH to keep it at Geocities where it is (though, again, no one ever goes to your website so what, then, really, is the point?) or you can find some other free web-hosting site on which to put your page.

Let's face it. No one goes to my website, but I can't just let my pink-Pride-and-Prejudice-and-frames design with it's links, pictures, etc. just go to waste! IT links to my website on how to teach Japanese to junior high school students! It includes my children's books about a monkey who is afraid of heights and a carrot who doesn't want to be made into a salad! So, I've got to find a new parking spot for my poor step-child of a webpage.

If you have any ideas, let me know in the comments, won't you?

Wuthering Heights & Jane Eyre

This is my second book-related post in as many weeks. Next week I will have to write about some music, I think.

Yes, though I dislike their undeserved hatred of Jane Austen, I am reading or re-reading the Brontes - the above two novels at least. I re-read WH (which I know I read on my own while in college because I remember leaving it to entertain a friend of mine who was going to spend the afternoon in my room recovering from a visit to the dentist while I was in class and not because it made any impression on me. All I remembered was that there was a bed or a wall or something that had "Catherine Heathcliff" scratched all over it). JE, however, though I am familiar with numerous faithful film and television adaptations, I haven't read until now. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I do think that it would have been much more interesting if I hadn't already known what was going to happen. If you have any interest in the tale of an orphaned girl-turned-governess, I suggest you read the book before seeing any of the movie versions.

WH, though a good book, almost works better for me as a film. I can't say that for most movies adapted from novels, but WH lends itself to film. The tragic love story of Catherine, Heathcliff, and their offspring is told in the novel through the eyes of a servant and an annoying man trying to get some peace and solitude away from what must be a very trying existence as a landed gentleman in the 1800's who is rich off of not having to do anything. Movie versions are not likely to show an old lady sitting by a fire telling a story to a man with a cold, and so they often seem a bit more exciting.

Next up on my reading list, Anne Bronte gets her chance to out-do her sisters if she can with The Tennant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey.

UPDATE (7/18/09): I finished Agnes Grey and it was not good at all. It's probably the most boring version of a governess tale I can imagine and is filled with far too much churchy stuff to boot. The only reason you might want to read it is so that you can truly appreciate how great Jane Eyre is in comparison.