Making it Up As I Go

I haven’t done a rambly post in a while, and I enjoy rambling, so here we go.

It’s almost Christmas! In that spirit, I give you this:

I post it every year, but it’s one of my very favorite things ever. I don’t think any one else should ever sing this song, Bono just owns it. It must be sung with heartbreaking abandon. I adore Bono so much. I saw U2 in concert once, and he is so magnetic you could feel it across the amphitheater. Plus The Edge’s eyeroll at 1:28 is magnificent.

Watching this, I realized that I think early Bono is the look that little John Taylor whatshisname was going for on The Voice.

It’s not really his fault that he got the “super special little snowflake” treatment this season. He has a good voice, the whole “he has a VISION, people!” thing just got old. He’s too young not to take some advice.

And can I just say that Gwen and Pharrell were adorable together? The complete adoration he has for her just kills me.

Also for your Christmas cheese enjoyment:

Thoughts while watching:

I love this song so much. I know it’s cheesy, but I loved it so much anytime it came on the radio when I was little. This was really the first “activism” of any kind I knew about. This was how you spread information back then, there was no internet, no twitter to get people informed and motivated. But you could influence people through music, and the thought of all these artists getting together to do this still warms my heart. The more recent version, however, is an abomination and should be burned with fire.

Some shallow thoughts:Do you think Sting asked for them to show him during the “bitter sting of tears” lyric?  Boy George has lovely teeth. So does George Michael. I appreciate a good eye tooth. Paul Weller is incredibly lovely. Like, seriously incredibly lovely.

I watched the documentary The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden and it was fascinating. It started out slow with two families moving to the Galapagos Islands to find solitude. The islands were mostly uninhabited at that point, and the whole idea of people moving to the middle of an inhospitable nowhere is interesting in and of itself. But all of the sudden it took an Agatha Christie turn with the arrival of a young baroness and her two lovers. What happens is fascinating, but what impressed me most is that it made me appreciate Dame Agatha all the more (and she is my idol, so that’s impressive) because these people were so fully realized (um, because they were real people) but they felt just like her characters, which meant she had such an incredible facility for capturing people’s quirks and the things that make them alive.

Anyway, the documentary is really interesting, and I’m currently reading one of the books it’s based on, also called Satan Came to Eden, by Dore Strauch, one of the women who lived it.

I just fell down a random youtube rabbit hole and came across this. This is one of my favorite David Bowie songs. When I was writing the first novel I ever wrote (during NaNoWriMo 2001?) I picked a bunch of songs to lead what I was writing. There’s a death in that book, and this song, while it’s really about missing someone who moved away, became the touchstone for one of the character’s grief. So now every time I hear it, I think of this character singing it to his friend who is dead and not there anymore.  Plus at the end of this video is his version of Cactus, which is one of my favorite covers of all time.

And of course, Bowie always makes me think of Swinton, because they really are so visually similar. Have you seen Only Lovers Left Alive yet? You really should. It’s so beautiful. You have to be in the right mood for it, but dear goodness, I could watch it forever. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hilddleston are vampires who are spending their eternity making music and reading books, and it’s a Jim Jarmusch movie so nothing happens. Either that appeals to you or it doesn’t, but it’s pretty much my ideal movie.

Neil Gaiman recently mentioned Tom Hiddleston in relation to the Morpheus role in the movie version of the Sandman comics, and while I read it as tongue in cheek, I think Tom Hiddleston would be fantastic. I’d prefer Joseph Gordon Levitt, who’s the one that’s been attached to it, but Tom Hiddleston would kill that role.

I have to go bag up some marshmallows (marshmallows were made today). I went outside my comfort zone and made chocolate marshmallows, which turned out pretty well.  So I’ll leave you now.

What’s going on with you?