Category Archives: Notes on notes

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Glee!

Did you watch Glee last night? Did you, did you? If you didn’t, go click on that link and watch it now!

I didn’t find out about this show until almost the last minute– a couple days ago, with the “preview” of the first episode being last night. Fox is doing a weird, risky thing, showing the first episode after American Idol, and making that episode available on their website all summer, and then not showing the rest of the season until the Fall. But hopefully a bunch of people watched and are now as in love with it as I am. It’s totally tailor made for me- created by the creator of one of my favorite shows of all time, with singing and dancing, and a similar sweet, lovely feel to Pushing Daisies,another of my all time favorite shows.

And the singing and the dancing. Oh my goodness. They completely and utterly traffick in what Liz and I refer to as musical blackmail- they use arrangements and songs that make you all emotional- but oh how I love it. I can’t even begin to start to talk about Rachel’s “On My Own” audition scene, it was so heartbreaking and so perfect, and perfectly expressed to us the duality of her character- and goodness, she’s a little baby Idina Menzel! I was in tears at the end of the show when they finished “Don’t Stop Believing”- and not just because the arrangement was gorgeous, but also because again they used it to mirror the character development, as the best musicals do. It came perfectly after Will’s speech about his own experience with Glee Club, how during their award winning performance he suddenly “knew who I was in this world”. Ah, it gives me shivers just thinking about it, because it so completely spoke to my experience.

In Zen terms, my most present, most mindful experiences have been while on the stage performing. I can remember them in vivid detail – I was hyper aware of everything that was happening, of every other person on the stage, in the audience, in the wings, of the lights, of the air around me. And I was completely aware of my connection to each and every one of those things- of exactly who I was and my place in the world. And that feeling is so brilliant, so ideal, that I know why people spend so much time in pursuit of it, whatever way they go about it.

But seeing that played out, as Will walks in and sees those kids feeling that same way- man, it kills me. Seriously, I want to put this episode on my iPod so I can just carry it around with me.

I also totally identify with that little rag tag glee club fighting against the powerhouse money suck that is the Cheerios (the cheerleading squad) – in our High School it was the teeny tiny drama department against the Show Choir. So I look forward to living vicariously through New Directions and their ultimate triumph. :) And yes, I could have just been in Show Choir, but the teacher drove me insane and someone needed to stand up against his madness and keep the drama department afloat. (Yeah, I was a total little activist. Just call me Lily. If you don’t get that, go watch Popular. You’ll love it.) Maybe someday I’ll post the story of how I stormed into his office and completely told him off for being disrespectful and actively running drama into the ground for the benefit of Show Choir….. ah, good times.

But old resentments aside, I also love how the creator, Ryan Murphy, so captures what it is to be in high school. Obviously, this is a made up world for TV, but the underlying emotions and motivations are all there and so dead on. He did it in Popular, and I can already see he’ll do it again here. Rachel’s certain, yet completely uncertain statement that “If you’re part of something special, that makes you special… right?” is heartbreaking on so many levels. Ah, I love it.

Go check out the show. I hope you like it. :)

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Musical goodness

Very often while in the car we listen to the kids station on Sirrius. The other day we encountered a new song that is adorable and surprisingly pensive and lovely. It’s my new favorite kids song, and perhaps even my new favorite song all together.It’s called It Only Takes One Night to Make a Balloon Your Friend by Lunch Money. Check it out. I guarantee it will make you smile.

Zoe’s current favorite song is the polar opposite of pensive and lovely, but will also make you smile- it’s called Banana by Doctor Noize, and I’m not listening to it at the moment, but I’m fairly confident that the complete lyrics are: Banana. (If you click on that link the option to listen to the song is on the left side of the screen. #8.)

I’m super excited to see that the Pet Shop Boys have a new album coming out, and it sounds awesome. I can say that because if you follow that link you can listen to the album, so go do it!

That’s really all I have to say.
What are you listening to?

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With my freeze ray, I will find the time to find the words

If you haven’t seen Joss Whedon’s incredibly awesome Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (which is a 3 part internet musical mini-series starring Neil Patrick Harris, who is full of win), you must go check it out. It’s available on iTunes for mere dollars, and it will give you such enjoyment – it’s a total steal. If you watched the musical episode of Buffy, this is approximately 2000 times better. (Although I will warn that the ending is pure Whedon- if you know his stuff, you know what that means.)

The reason for this post though, is to bring to your attention that the soundtrack, which is really, really good, is now available on iTunes. If nothing else, check out the songs Slipping and Everything You Ever, they’re just so incredibly good. There are definite traces of Sondheim, both in some of the melodic phrases and the complexity of some of the lyrics, which is never a bad thing. So go! I’m going to listen to My Freeze Ray again.

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Murder isn’t funny

Two stories:

1) We recently got Macy Gray’s “new” album (I think it came out last year). Bruce listened to it first, and my first question was, “does it have a murder song on it? Because if it doesn’t, I’m so not interested”. When I listen for myself and discover that to my great delight, there is in fact, yet another song about her killing someone, I can’t stop giggling.

2) Driving in the car, listening to the radio, I catch Maroon 5′s song “Wake Up Call” – about a guy catching his girlfriend in bed with another guy, who he shoots. I’m laughing so hard I almost have to pull over.

I’ve been thinking about it, and as far as I can figure, there are 4 kinds of murder songs. The first type is the poignant, make you think kind of song- Janie’s Got a Gun by Aerosmith, or The Thunder Rolls by Garth Brooks.

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We watched part of the Superbowl for the only thing that could get me to watch it- Prince at half-time. That man just makes me happy. We’re talking can’t wipe the grin off my face happy. As we watched, we came up with a couple of conclusions that I’m fairly certain are completely true.

1. Rain doesn’t even touch Prince. It just sees Prince and says, hey, I’ll just go over there instead. (That was B’s observation.) Honestly, he just moved through it like it was nothing.

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Favorite Christmas Songs

I have a bunch of things I should be doing, but instead I think I’ll post a list of my favorite Christmas songs instead. Because, well, why not? I LOVE Christmas songs, a trait I inherited from my Daddy. He would listen to them all year long if my mom hadn’t made a rule that he has to wait until the 4th of July to start. :) So here we go, my top Christmas songs.

1. Oh Holy Night by Josh Groban. Oh Holy Night is my favorite Christmas song, hands down, and this version is breathtaking because the song covers quite a range, and little Joshie doesn’t even have to strain for a second.

2. Happy Xmas (War is Over) by John Lennon. I’ve been really loving this song this year. It’s kind of funny, because I think Lennon would disagree with the reason I love it so much. I know he wasn’t big on religion (I don’t actually know if he believed in God or Christ) and he was focusing on individuals taking responsibility for ending war, but the connection between the coming of Christ and the end of war is just so beautiful that it makes me cry.

3. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by U2. Oh my goodness how I love this song. It could have been written for Bono, it lets him do that thing with his voice that gives me shivers, I could listen to this song over and over.

4. White Christmas by Bing Crosby. Nothing says Christmas quite like this song.

5. Christmas by Blues Traveler. This song just makes me happy.

Apparently that’s all for now. What are your favorite Christmas songs?

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Why I love Prince today

I love Prince everyday, for a number of reasons. They include, but are in no way limited to:

1) He’s a musical genius
2) He has amazing cheekbones
3) Even though he’s short (5’2″- same as me), he somehow looks 7 feet tall when he performs
4) He’s taken the swear words out of his songs since he doesn’t use them in real life
5) He’s sexy as all get out

My reason today, however, comes from one moment in his performance on Saturday Night Live this weekend. He was towards the end of the song, doing a guitar solo, and he hit one of those riffs where guitar players usually get that screwed up look on their face that says, “look at how hard I’m concentrating, playing the guitar is really hard, look how well I play”. The look on his face was entirely different. It simply said, with no hint of pride, “This is what I do. It’s what I was put on this Earth to do, and it’s the easiest and most joyful thing in the world”. What he was playing was complicated and beautiful, and looked completely effortless. I watched part of Purple Rain today (it happened to be on TV), and the look is the same in his performances there. I don’t know that he ever felt the need to make it look hard, or maybe it just never was.

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Books 4/20/05

I have read a book since the last time I posted, I’m not completly flaking out on the reading front. It was Nana by Delacorta, which I’ve read a billion times (or at least 30), but it still counts.

Right now, instead of reading, I’m watching music videos from the 80′s, and finding myself really amused by the narratives they told. (You had to know I was going to tie it back into reading somehow!) I haven’t watched a lot of current music videos, but the few that I’ve seen in the last couple of days (I have the TV on while I type for work), have been noticeably heavy on the booty shaking, and less so on the story elements.

Let’s look, for instance, at Cradle of Love by Billy Idol, a staple of 80s MTV, (or CMC, before we convinced our parents that we needed our MTV.) Instead of watching pretty Billy Idol (who was pretty!), we have the story of a sexy teenager who shows up at her slightly shy, slightly bookish neighbor’s door. It seems that her stereo is broken, and it’s essential that she listen to a particular tape immediately. That tape is, of course, Billy Idol singing Cradle of Love, and as she listens, she’s moved by the music to dance seductively. Over the course of the video she is startled and spills wine on her pristine white shirt and has to take it off, and then writhes on her neighbor’s bed in her bra and super short skirt while he watches guiltily. Finally, they kiss, and at the end of the video a guy that we assume is her boyfriend shows up at the door looking for her.
So basically, there’s just as much booty shaking, it just seems like they put more effort into it, don’t you think?

Or what about Erasure’s Lay All Your Love on Me? A sexy (and definitly NOT little) Red Riding Hood runs into the forest to find an equally sexy Snow White lying motionless on the ground. After pulling out a phone and a strange box with men on motorcycles in it, she calls on the boys of Erasure, who are dressed in gold lame motorcycle suits, and appear to be in a large sqaure room. (Like a box?) The “princes” ride through the forest on their motorcycles, stopped only when their motorcycles are wrecked. As one of them fixes the bikes, the other roasts a teddy bear on a spit over a fire. An ethereal woman dressed in white appears over the trees, and they continue on, until they find the girls. Snow White is awakened with a kiss, and the princes take the girls back to their mansion, where all is well. It doesn’t make a whole ton of sense, but where’s the fun in that?

Then you have the videos like Robert Palmer’s, one of which is on right now. I don’t know which one it is because they all blur together for me. He was all about the booty shaking with no story. The girls are pretty, but the video is missing the soul that the “story” videos have.

And that’s why I don’t really watch very many videos lately, they’re just not as much fun as they used to be. Give me a story any day.

Of course the exception to that is The Killers’ video for Mr. Brightside, which is a playful, pretty homage to Moulin Rouge. They win.

Current total: 27
Just finished: Nana by Delacorta
Currently reading: To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust

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Some new years thoughts

A new year, a new blog. I’ll still be keeping up my reading blog (100 Books at lilmaryanne.blogspot.com), but I thought I’d try my hand at a regular one as well, mainly to have a place to put random thoughts like the following, inspired by random songs playing on my iPod.

I’m always surprised by how enveloping Ozzy Osbourne’s voice is. It has a quality that I really like, and I forget about it, then am pleasantly startled when I hear it again. I have a soft spot for Ozzy, and was extremely pleased when I saw him coherent, clear eyed and clear voiced on that new reality show he’s doing. I’d kind of assumed the grogginess that everyone mocked from The Osbournes was a permanent result of his hard living earlier in life, so it was nice to see him fully functional.

Everyone I know is doing their Top 10 lists for the year- I have trouble doing them because I never remember what came out when or when I saw/ heard/ read it. However, here a couple of my current favorites- again, inspired by the iPod.

Favorite line from a song: “She’s gonna miss you at first, but then she’s gonna buy me things. Thats when I’m gonna lay her across my piano stool and… sing to her” The Marrying Kind by Prince

Favorite Song: Louder than Words from the Tick Tick..Boom Soundtrack Favorite line: “Why does it take catastrophe to start a revolution? If we’re so free tell me why, someone tell me why, so many people bleed.”

Favorite New Band: (Tie) Jem, The Killers

Favorite use of music in a movie: the dramatic crescendo of Life on Mars? as Steve Zissou walks down the deck after meeting his probably son in The Life Aquatic.

Speaking of The Life Aquatic, I really really liked this movie. We just saw it last night, and I already want to see it again. While it hasn’t displaced The Royal Tenenbaums as my favorite of Wes Anderson’s films, it definitly has it’s own place in my heart.
The one thing I thought was missing from The Royal Tenenbaums is that one blissful moment when everything clicks, when the epiphany hits. The Life Aquatic has that moment, and it’s stunning. When Zissou finally sees his leopard shark, the look on Bill Murray’s face, the depth of his expression, is incredible. The whole movie is tied up in that look, everything after it is just epilogue. With it he realizes that the inevitablity of mortality is inescapably tied to it’s beauty, and that no matter how hard we try, sometimes we have to settle for witnessing life, not controlling it. Truly stunning.
I could have done without the gay jokes, they didn’t seem needed (are they ever REALLY needed?), and some short pieces felt disjointed, but on the whole I really liked it. The CG underwater world Anderson dreamt up was gorgeous, I think it served to capture the probably delightful, unpredictable feel of deep sea exploration, seeing creatures that no one has ever seen before. The Portuguese David Bowie songs were inspired, I really hope they’re on the soundtrack.