Over and Over Again

 I think I've listened to "Conventioneers" more than sixty times today. It was the only song I listed to as I drove from work to the house.

A lot of my favorite songs are the ones that sound contradictory to their lyrics and/or ultimate meaning. And "Conventioneers" is one of those songs.

The tune and the way Mr. Page sings are pretty darn sexy. And the first part of the lyrics are all about coworkers being attracted to each other and sneaking off to screw. The speaker (singer?) even says "I'm already thinking marriage / I know that in the past it was something I'd disparage" and "As we danced, I could see in your eyes / You and me as senior citizens in love." Clearly imagining something beyond the one night.

After sex, though, he sings, "Then you slept, and I dressed, and I left."

To make it worse, when they get back to work after the convention the speaker asks "How can I just avoid a conversation?" and ultimately decides that "It'd be great / If you transferred out of state" to solve what he sees as a problem.

He wants her to move. To. A. Different. State! Because he feels awkward now.

So unsexy and cruel and awful and against the tone of the music and voice.

So delicious to my ears.

Also, I really like this image: "You stationed in the warm glow of the TV / Too patient as I'm playing L1 O1 V4 E1." (The point value is important, even if the number aren't sung.) In my mind, the light flickers and changes colors occasionally as whatever they're watching (the hotel's info channel probably) cuts from scene to scene while the extra small tiles are placed.

And this bit as the emotional transition of the song: "Before all the fireworks exploded / Our conversations were so loaded, innuendo flying / Now what can we say?"

I want to hear it again.

A Moral Quandary

I learned yesterday that The Dresden Doll are touring again and will be with a couple of hours of where I live this fall.

On the one hand, this band was very important to me in the mid-2000s. I remember the good radio station playing Coin Operated Boy just enough that I kept the station on all the time so I could hear it again. The music is a fun tune with lyrics about loneliness and, I'll say it though many disagree, self pleasure. I'm a big fan of when the music is counter to message of the lyrics.

Then one night, while I drove home from work, after 11:30, the station announced a new song by The Dresden Dolls and played Girl Anachronism. Something in my brain shifted that night. The rawness of the emotion. The brutality of the lyrics. The wonderful piano bashing to emphasize frustration. The song was exactly what I needed in the moment and I had to buy the album. If vinyl had been the order of the day, I would have worn the grooves flat listening to the album.

On the other hand, even if the direct allegations against her aren't true, she was complacent in the sexual abuse her ex-husband performed while they were married. An open marriage is one thing, good thing, but not warning the women in your life, the women you bring into your home to care for your son, that your husband is a sexual predator and then not working to remove them from the situation is something else entirely.

Do I want to give my money and my time to a person like that?

The Word, Not the Sentiment?

While driving home today, "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails started playing on the radio.

I know the song pretty well, from back in the day, but I didn't have cable TV at that time and don't think I ever heard it on the radio before.

I wasn't surprised that "fuck" was was edited out of "I want to fuck you like an animal." I live in the USA and we have issues with this word, for some reason.

However, I was a little surprised that the line "I want to feel you from the inside" was left unedited. I mean, that's just fucking, right? And as a lyric, I always thought it was more graphic imagery.

Does this seem weird to anyone else? Is it just me?

Gumball does Joanna Newsom!

Stronger Than You?

So, I'm sitting here listening to Steven Universe songs because, for a while now, they're the only things that really make me feel. And I mean FEEL... something... anything. Mostly lost because it's so hard to feel. I don't know how much of it is the depression or the medication or what we're taught to just be from a young age. So I sit and I listen and I start to feel a lump in my throat and then my eyes swell up with water. And I wait. I wait for the water to leak. For that physical expression of feeling. It doesn't come. It never comes. It just sits there until the tears dry in my eye and there's only something little to wipe out of the corners.

The Bed Song

A favorite waltz of mine:



Although I think the song should be a duet.

Make It Simple

I like to sing.

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that here or anywhere, really. I do, though. I really enjoy singing. I sing in the shower. I sing while I’m cooking. I sing while I put away dishes and groceries. I sing in the car. I sing at work. When there’s music I like singing along so I can get the key and tempo and (hopefully) words right. When there’s no music I do the best I can and tend to stick to songs that I know all, or most, of the words.

Singing always makes me feel a little better. When I have really bad days I don’t sing. I can’t sing. I want to, but my tongue, jaw, and lips won’t move.

Maybe this goes back to when I was a kid and suddenly one of my brothers would start singing and I and the other, if we were all there, would join in. Mostly we sang songs from Animaniacs or The Beatles. Stuff we knew. Our voices went together well. It was always fun for me. Also, it was something that people of the female persuasion would compliment me on because they were surprised that I could do it (like the guys and my ability to catch a football, every year for all of my required schooling). I wasn’t complimented on much as from my peers, especially the female ones, and it felt a weird kind of good.

Singing still feels good even when it’s just me.

Life's Distractions

When the mail goes out tomorrow I will have sent out eight applications this week. Most have been to Cowcity, another was sent to Hell-A.

Every day I want to quit my job. My mother keeps telling me I should and go back to school. Get my MA and teach at a JC. I feel like I can't though.

And I don't understand... It's that word "can't." Of course I can. It'd be easy. I just write a letter to my boss saying my last day will be payday then fill out the paperwork and leave.

...And then go back to school?

I want to go to school. I'd like to get my Master's, but I don't want to not be working while I'm in school. The degree needs to be for me first, not the possibility of a job. Besides, if I quit I lose over four hundred hours of sick leave. (If they fire me, pardon, lay me off it'll keep for five or seven years, depending on the person I speak with, and will be waiting for me when I start back up with the state.) Mostly, though, I want to make sure I have a job before I go and spend thousands of dollars as an excuse to write about fanfiction.

As usual, thinking about all of this deepens the valley my brain sits in. And so I go for distractions.

A while ago I wrote (at least I'm pretty sure I wrote, but I couldn't find the post) that I think most people find something important to them to keep them too distracted to become too... thoughtful, as if full of thought. People distract themselves with other people, be it a lover, friends, children. People distract themselves with work. People distract themselves with hobbies. People distract themselves with TV or video games. People distract themselves with drugs, sometimes hardcore and sometime perfectly legal. People distract themselves with sex. Distraction helps keep us and the economy going.

I've been trying to find something to distract myself with to get rid of the thoughts. When I was still living in North Bay I was coming close to being distracted by writing. I got to the point where I was writing a little every day. Just notes, mostly. All of it silly fanfictions. Nothing great, but I was writing. I was on my way to being an amateur writer. (Sure, someday I was hoping to go pro, but that would be sometime after I competed in the Olympics.) Then I got a new job and moved.

I thought I'd be cool with new job. Just move in, move on, and keep going. And then it turned out my job was built around misery and dreams about finding babies to care for. And I couldn't write fiction of any sort. Sure, I could still blog, although not much, as seen by the paltry number of posts in 2011 and thus far in 2012. The hole got deeper and the deeper it goes the harder it was for me to write. But I got out of that craptastic job last fall, everything didn't get better. Oh, the stress and the baby dreams disappeared, which was great, but they were replaced with an all encompassing feeling that my position will never change. My work life will never get better. I'll always be on, or near, the bottom, ignored because I am the way I am and physically feel ill when I try to be different. These past seven months and dozens of applications and at least five interviews only reinforce the horrible things I believe about my professional life. And I'm tired of thinking about it. Hence, distractions.

The thing is, though, that I don't care for people, don't plan on having a lover, don't often feel like I have any friends, and don't want kids. I hate my work and that won't change unless I can move up a little. Video games work for a day, maybe, but not longer than that and only two or three times a month. I argue with the TV and dissect what I watch to myself all the time. Drugs cost money that I don't want to spend. And I'm not having sex with anyone anytime soon.

That leave a hobby. But I have no hobby. Writing was a hobby, but from deep in the hole I can't write what I'd like to write; I can only write narcissistic, nihilistic nothings like this. What can be my hobby?

Well, last week, I bought a ukelele (you may pronounce it either way, I'm cool with that). So far it is only mildly distracting because I can't play songs on it. I can read the music and I've sort of learned how to read tabs, but I can't move from one chord to another within the space of a beat, yet. Practice is what it'll take. Patients is what I hope I have. I really need... I really hope that it'll be distracting enough.

SMASH

Over the last two day's I've watched the six episodes of SMASH out there, as of two-thirty PM PDT.

For those who don't know, SMASH is, theoretically, about the development of a new Broadway show based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. Like most TV shows that are procedurals, though, it's really about the characters and their lives. And that's where it falls flat, for me. Right now I only really like two characters. The first is Eileen Rand, played by the deliciously scene chewing Anjelica Huston, the producer of the play trying to pull together the backers and money to put on a workshop of the play. The other is Derek Wills, played by Jack Davenport (which is fun because I've been slowly working my way through the original version of Coupling where he plays Steve), the plays director.

The problem with these two characters is that they are so buried in the world of Broadway that they don't provide a way into that world. They know the tricks and rules so they don't explain anything to the audience. Maybe that's part of why I like them so much. They know. They're inside. That's the world I want to know.

There are two characters that are new to the Broadway world: Karen Cartwright, played by Katharine McPhee, and Ellis Tancharoen, played by Jaime Cepero. Ellis is the assistant to Tom Levitt, played by Christian Borle, a co-writer of the play and Karen the the wide-eyed mid-west girl come to the big city to be a star. These are characters designed to lead an audience into the weird world of plays. I don't like them, though.

Karen is too naive. She's constantly shocked at, well, everything. (Except for one time where the director wanted her to sleep with him and she didn't. That was a great moment.) She's exhausting.

Ellis was who I hoped would be the audience surrogate. He's the assistant to one of the writers. He has a front row seat to the creation of the songs and book. He can ask all the questions about how the songs are written and help the audience see how plays are created. Unfortunately, it looks like he's going to is a villain, and he never asks questions about the creative process.

The fact that I don't really like any of the characters isn't my real problem with the show, though. I want to delve into the behind the scenes creation of a play. I like to see how the sausage is made. I want the boring dirty details that go creation.

It seem to me that SMASH moves too fast. The songs are too finished. Where's the revision? Where's the evolution the the music? The alteration of the lyrics? The dances are perfected. Where's the choreographer practicing by himself in front of the mirror finding the perfect step, turn, turn, step, kick, step? Where's the frustration at teaching the chorus the step? Yes, I like seeing the dance numbers and hearing the songs, but when they come out complete it makes everything seem too easy. I don't just want to hear about Julia Houston, played by Debra Messing, having trouble writing the book and lyrics. I want to see her agonizing over finding the perfect lyric, the perfect line. (There was a moment in the third episode when Julia was trying to figure out how to write "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," but it was only a taste of the agonizingly beautiful frustration of creation I want to see.)

And then there are the musical numbers. They are so polished. So finished. I don't just mean the choreography. I mean that the songs are very finely produced. Example: In the first episode Karen sings the song "Beautiful" while she auditions for the part of Marilyn. It starts out with her singing with only a piano accompanying her. Then in come stings and whatnot. Yeah, the lighting changes, suggesting that this is a bit of a fantasy sequence, but why can't it just be a simple audition? Oh, yeah, the people in charge of the show want to be like Glee and make a shit ton of money selling covers, and originals. Still, when they're rehearsing and the only instrument is a piano and then I hear drums and strings and horns I get pulled out of the show and wonder where the orchestra is sitting? At least in Glee they always magically have an orchestra with them.

I plan to keep watching this show, even though it bothers me. I don't hate it like I do Glee. This show was built for a person like me. I love theater, including musical theater. I love TV shows that go behind the scenes. So I'll keep watching.

Screw It

Here's a few more:



(Couldn't find a live version pre-1983 so I thought we should go with the original recording.)



I guess I'm just in a mood tonight.

Not even close...

...to the song I wanted to post, but these are two that I never skip.


I grew up in an era without variety shows. I think I missed out on something.

Julia Nunes Videos

This was the first thing of hers that I saw:

It's an excellent video, I think, especially since it all seems to be done with a web cam. I like the song a lot, too.

This is her newest video from her soon to be released album:

Much more slick, but still wonderful.

It's your fault!

You didn't watch when it was on TV!

A Bit More About Glee

There's one more thing I wanted to mention about Glee that I forgot, and that's the role of music on the show.

One of the earliest complaints I remember reading about the music is that they didn't use original songs. DUH! Show choirs and glee clubs rarely, if ever, do original music. They take existing music and spin it into their own bit of incredible (or mediocrity). And now that Glee has done original songs I need to know how much people enjoyed them? Personally, with the exception of "Trouty Mouth," which was hilarious, and "My Headband," which was also just a joke, the songs didn't impress me.

The show tends to stick to arrangements of songs we've already heard. Sometimes that's disappointing, the Rocky Horror episode sticks out in my mind, but sometimes it's amazing, like when they did "She's Not There." And, of course, a lot of the mash-ups are great, I posted a link to my favorite, so far, in that other post which is the mash-up of "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and "Young Girl."

Now if Glee were really about a glee club training for shows, we would probably only hear a couple dozen songs rehearsed to death. Fortunately, this is TV and the songs are there to represent how music can underscore our emotions. It's probably safe to assume that nearly everyone has heard a song at just the right time that it seemed to be written about them. Here's a post with several songs that hit me that way and I know I've written about more songs, just don't want to look them up. They're the songs that you used to rewind on the cassette or lifting the arm of the record player for. Today we can just press the reverse button and listen over and over.

My favorite example of using a song to reflect the emotions of a character is "Landslide" from a few episodes ago. Watch Santana's face as she sings all the hurt and confusion and love and a little bit of anger. These are the moments that really make Glee worth watching and this is exactly how music should be used in a show about singing high school students.

A Bit About Glee

I don't really like the show Glee, but I watch it.

During the first half of the first season, I was a champion of the show. (Not of the blog, so much, but when asked about it in real life. For a while it was my favorite show on TV.) It was about this group of kids trying to find a place to fit and even the place where they best fit wasn't comfortable for them. It was about the formation of a team coming together to work toward a difficult goal. And surrounding this theme were interesting characters, backstabbing, a cute and earnest OCD teacher, a psycho with a fake pregnancy, The Pink Dagger, and the always utterly fantastic Jane Lynch. Oh and lots of great songs. (These span the whole of the first season. Dammit.)

When the second half of the first season came around, something seemed to change. The music was still great, but the characters weren't right. They all seemed so much more over the top. And while that worked for Sue Sylvester, it didn't work so when for Artie or Tina or Brittany or Will. Stories also became about the topic of the week, not the characters. I kept watching, though, because of the songs. It's like horrible train wreck, death and destruction, gorgeous sunset, train wreck, death, amazing painting, train wreck.

After moving, I didn't watch much TV until my brother pointed me to the D&D episode of Community. That's when I went back to my unhealthy hate/love relationship with Glee. It still has all the same problems (although I've been pretty impressed with the Santana arc in the past few episodes), but I can ignore them more. Now I just watch it episode to episode and don't expect anything to really carry over from one episode to the next. I just enjoy what's there. It's become a lot easier to watch.

And that's why I keep watching, even though I'm pretty sure I hate most of the show.

"Dear Deer"

No, I think she deserves to have a little more crush.

Obsessive Song: "Walking In Los Angeles"

A Song I Enjoy

This Week's Obsessive Song

The Perfect Fit -- The Dresden Dolls
It's a fan video, but they've done a pretty nice job.

I've probably listened to this song sixty times in the last five years, but it just hit me in the gut this week and I could easily add another twenty times listening to to.

More Obsessive Songs: The Video Edition

Colin Hay's "Overkill" -- Actually not the real video, just him singin' it live.


Jimmy Eats World's "The Middle" -- Never saw this video until today, it's kind of stupid, but I've been humming the song a lot recently.


Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks" -- A fan video. As Heels put it when she posted it back in August: "This guy made this for the love of the music, and it's incredible."

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

Nightshade Family's "Frankie" -- One I just watched this morning, much to my chagrin since Johnny Logic posted it last week, also a fan video. It's about where I grew up. Pretty sure I've been on that merry-go-round.