Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
Day 13 - A song that is a guilty pleasure
Honestly, I can't feel too guilty about this one, because IT IS AWESOME. But it doesn't exactly bolster my reputation for genteel suavity. Tomorrow: A song that no one would expect you to love.
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11:45:33 PM,Monday 25 April 2011
Day 12 - A song from a band you hate
I wouldn't call it hate, but TMBG annoy me on a pretty regular basis. Mostly the voices. Also the non sequitur lyrics that never seem to add up to anything. And the melodies tend to be sort of monotonous. I dunno. They're just not my thing. This cover version of a very silly song from the '50s is the thing of theirs I hate least. So here you go. Tomorrow: A song that is a guilty pleasure
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11:11:10 PM,Sunday 24 April 2011
Day 11 - A song from your favorite band
I decided to interpret this a little facetiously. 'Cause, I mean, band? Does Leonard Cohen count? He doesn't really have a band, even though his touring and session musicians are all pretty great. But I'm gonna be putting plenty of his stuff in later entries. And Pink Floyd was definitely my favorite band once upon a time, but I've already done one of their songs, and honestly I don't listen to them all that often these days, though I'm still very fond of their stuff and enjoy it whenever it comes on at random. Or is it supposed to be just my favorite musician in general, with the word "band" interpreted as loosely as possible? Well, according to last.fm, that's J.S. Bach, with 2,367 tracks played, totally vanquishing the band in the number two spot, which are The Magnetic Fields (who aren't really contenders for my favorite band either; I love some of their stuff like whoah, but a lot of it leaves me cold), with 985 tracks played. And I just did Bach yesterday. So to determine this whole favorite band question I just typed the word "band" into Winamp and looked through what I found. And, of those, it basically came down to Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band or the Klezmer Conservatory Band. Now, I love me some Maddy Prior, but the KCB is just awesome. So they win. My favorite song of theirs isn't available on YouTube, but this one is pretty great too. Many thanks to Ms. Nehring for introducing me to them. Tomorrow: A song from a band you hate.
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02:46:46 PM,Saturday 23 April 2011
Day 10 - A song that makes you fall asleep
I've always had insomnia, my whole life. I've mentioned it before. The only thing that sometimes helps me get to sleep faster (or at least makes me less grindingly bored and frustrated when I can't sleep) is listening to something with my eyes closed. For part of my senior year of high school and most of my freshman year of college, I depended on this album to get me through the week. I figured, hey, if it was good enough for Count Kaiserling... So anyway, every single night I put it on, and almost every night I was still awake by the time this aria played again at the end of the album, but usually I was able to drop off fairly soon after that, and only being awake for a bit more than 55 minutes was actually a lot better than I'd been used to. Fortunately my roommate had the patience of a saint and didn't mind hearing the same freaking album every night for almost two semesters. Eventually I realized that I'd heard it so many times I was kind of getting sick of it, which I thought was a real shame to happen to such beautiful music, so I put it by for a while and switched to audiobooks. (By that time I had a single dorm room; I wouldn't have tested my roommate's good humor that severely.) I haven't heard it straight through since then, but every time one of the variations comes up when I'm playing my whole mp3 collection on shuffle, I smile. I don't get particularly sleepy, but it makes me happy all the same. Maybe someday, if nothing else is working, I'll put the whole thing on again and give it a try.
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12:14:20 AM,Saturday 23 April 2011
Day 09 - A song that you can dance to
Tomorrow: A song that makes you fall asleep.
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05:59:06 PM,Thursday 21 April 2011
Day 08 - A song that you know all the words to
Tomorrow: A song that you can dance to.
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01:38:52 AM,Thursday 21 April 2011
I'm prepping Julius Caesar for the theater captioning company, and I'm discovering how truly weird a play it is. First of all, even more than usual, Shakespeare can't keep himself from getting ridiculously meta. At the moment of the assassination, Cassius says:
How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown!
And Brutus answers:
How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport.
Really, Will? You think after a dude kills his best friend, the main thing on his mind is who's gonna write a play about it 1500 years later? And then it comes up again, when they tell Mark Antony that for him their swords will have leaden points. Of course your swords have leaden points! It's a freaking play! Way to yank us out of the moment. Then we get Mark Antony's justly famous "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war" line, which is a great damn line by any reckoning, but then comes a strong contender for the clunkiest line in Shakespeare:
"Passion, I see, is catching. For mine eyes, seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine, begin to water."
Seriously? "Passion, I see, is catching?" Lordy.
The whole play has this weird creepy ambivalent feeling, like it's trying to crawl out of its own skin. It opens with a carpenter totally pwning the snooty aristocrats who are the ostensible heroes of the play. Caesar himself is an entirely unsympathetic character, but he's beloved of the common people, who are portrayed as canny bastards full of hilarious zingers. Shakespeare spends a lot of time letting the conspirators go on and on about how noble they are, and they say an awful lot about tyranny, but not a damn thing about the virtues of a Republic. I just really want to read the version he wrote for himself before he prettied it up for the public. As it is, it sounds crossed out and scribbled over so many times that what's left is just some random hodgepodge of platitude and subtext, with all those lines about how awesome playwrights are plus lots of spooky portent business shoved in as spackle. I dunno. I'm 60% of the way through it. If it comes together by the end, I'll post an apology. Meanwhile, I gotta say... This play is plenty interesting, but it's kind of a hot mess.
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08:43:58 AM,Wednesday 20 April 2011
Day 07 - A song that reminds you of a certain event
April 2004, Bethesda Fountain.
Tomorrow: A song that you know all the words to.
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10:07:37 PM,Tuesday 19 April 2011
Day 06 - A song that reminds of you of somewhere
My old apartment on 191st Street, the one I moved into (along with two roommates) after my one-month sublet ran out when I moved here the summer of 2004. It's only one block up and one block over from this place, and the new place we're moving into is only one block over and four blocks up from this place, but the buildings are about as alike as a scuffed old shoe, a dried-up orange peel, and a lump of frozen butter. That old building was hilarious. The drug dealers who hung out on the front stoop were so courteous; they always held the door open and greeted me politely, unlike the kids who lived in the building and got their kicks from hanging out on the second floor stairwell and spitting on the heads of anyone unwary enough to stand near the mailboxes. My room was on the corner of the building, which looked directly onto St. Nicholas Avenue. The place was hopping until late every night. I don't even own this song, but I heard it hundreds of times that summer; cars would drive past blasting it, or they'd park right under my window and just idle there for hours. The old guys playing dominoes on the corner would sing along, and up on the 5th floor K. and I would wake up from our fitful summer doze and shake our booties along with the beat. We saw so much wacky stuff from that window. The apartment itself was dirty and smelly and broken down, but there were saris covering the walls of the living room, and the view from the fire escape was like nothing I'd ever seen before, except in the city-lusting dreams of my childhood. Then we moved here, which is off the main drag. All our windows just look onto the brick wall of the next building, and we don't have a fire escape. It's usually much quieter (sometimes the cars cruising by still wake us up, but it takes a more expensive set of speakers than in the old place) and there's nothing much to look at, but it's been ours and only ours for five years now, and it'll be strange leaving it. We don't have a de facto theme song for this place, the way "Contacto" was for the old place. I guess since we're in the process of packing up our stuff for the move, I've been flashing back a lot to when I moved from the old place, remembering that glorious, exasperating, sleepless summer, living in the thick of the updraft from the streets of Washington Heights. Tomorrow: A song that reminds you of a certain event.
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12:41:44 AM,Tuesday 19 April 2011
Day 05 - A song that reminds you of someone
My best friend from middle school. We haven't spoken in years; we're very different people now. But that part of a person's life doesn't go away. It's buried pretty near the core. This song gives me a very strange and specific feeling. It's a song about nostalgia, but I was so young when I first heard it, so instead it wound up inspiring a sort of projected nostalgia, imagining what it would feel like when I was old and looking back at myself. And of course, now I am old, and when I look back, all I can remember is that questing, groping attempt at looking forward. That summer. The floppy-limbed, whirring-brained aimlessness. Stealing a cedar chip from some house's scrap pile and putting it in the center of the nursing home's rock garden every afternoon on the same route from my house to nowhere in particular. Playing video games, talking nonsense, drowning in books and hormones and sunlight and misplaced apprehensions. Sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night and trudging halfway across the city to camp out on a stranger's yard because we once walked past when the college kids who lived there were playing this song. Two deeply weird kids who, for one year and a couple summers, almost understood each other. Tomorrow: A song that reminds of you of somewhere.
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01:46:52 AM,Monday 18 April 2011
Derp, double post.
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01:46:04 AM,Monday 18 April 2011
The 30 Day Song Challenge
Day 04 - A song that makes you sad
Time stands still.
All I can feel is the time standing still,
as you put down the keys
and say, "Don't call me, please."
While the radio plays...
I think I need a new heart.
You've lied too,
but it's a sin that I can't tell the truth,
'cause it all comes out wrong,
unless I put it in a song.
So the radio plays...
I think I need a new heart.
Just for you.
I think I need a new heart.
'Cause I always say "I love you,"
when I mean "Turn out the light."
And I say "Let's run away,"
when I just mean "Stay the night."
But the words you want to hear
you will never hear from me.
I'll never say "Happy anniversary."
Never stay to say "Happy anniversary."
So I think I need a new heart.
Give me time.
I love this song. The brainless perky beat plus the utter desolation of the lyrics just wrenches me. It would make me even sadder if my actual life had anything in common with it. Lately I've been trying to figure out how to turn this song into ASL. I wrote out a gloss today and signed it all out to myself, but then realized that I'd tried to put too much material into a pretty quick-moving song and there wasn't actually time to sign everything I'd written down. So I'll have to shorten it and try again. One of these days I'm gonna get it right (possibly after I can afford to start taking lessons with my ASL tutor again, so I can get his advice on fixing the idioms) and then I'll post a video, hopefully sometime this summer. Tomorrow: A song that reminds you of someone.
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01:06:31 AM,Saturday 16 April 2011
The 30 Day Song Challenge
Day 03 - A song that makes you happy
I dug through a bazillion YouTube videos of this song, and this one is the best I could find, though it's not anywhere near as fantastic as the version I heard first, which is by the Arakaendar Bolivia Choir. If you've hung out with me on MixApp, you've probably heard me put on this song more than once. It never fails to make me grin. Tomorrow: A Song That Makes You Sad.
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12:18:37 AM,Friday 15 April 2011
30 Day Song Challenge
Day 02 - Your least favorite song
I know that at least one person who reads this blog loves Bette Midler, and so I feel a little bad posting this one, but you have to understand the context. I don't actually know Bette Midler at all. This is the only song of hers I've heard, and I didn't realize she was the one who sang it until I looked it up yesterday. And anyway, she didn't write it; it's apparently by someone named Julie Gold. Okay, so when I was about 10 or so, I got a clock radio. I decided that since I was on the cusp of teenagerhood, it was about time to force myself to finally like pop music, just like all the cool kids. So I set my alarm to the local pop station. Apparently that station's morning programming consisted of playing the top ten songs from the national charts, and I guess this song stayed in the same position on the charts for a really long time, because every single morning for what seemed like months I was awoken by this song. Every. Single. Morning. I knew that the process of becoming a pop-savvy with-it kid would be arduous at first, so I held out as long as I could, but after the nth consecutive morning of being jolted out of sleep by "God is waaatching us! God is waaatching us!" I finally snapped. I flipped the clock's switch from "radio" to "alarm" and for the rest of my school career woke up to BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP instead of quasireligious tinkly synth warbles. It was music to my ears. Tomorrow: A Song that Makes You Happy.
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04:34:30 PM,Thursday 14 April 2011
Since I've been neglecting this blog for months now, and since whenever I do post to it I mostly just post videos, I'm going to resort to desperate measures: A meme. The 30-Day Song Challenge meme. A guy I went to college with has been doing it on Facebook, which is where I first learned about it, but I'm gonna do it here, because I seem to be mostly just a Facebook lurker except when I'm in my StenoKnight persona. (To be fair, I'm pretty much still a lurker even then.) So:
The 30 Day Song Challenge
Day 01 - Your favorite song
Day 02 - Your least favorite song
Day 03 - A song that makes you happy
Day 04 - A song that makes you sad
Day 05 - A song that reminds you of someone
Day 06 - A song that reminds of you of somewhere
Day 07 - A song that reminds you of a certain event
Day 08 - A song that you know all the words to
Day 09 - A song that you can dance to
Day 10 - A song that makes you fall asleep
Day 11 - A song from your favorite band
Day 12 - A song from a band you hate
Day 13 - A song that is a guilty pleasure
Day 14 - A song that no one would expect you to love
Day 15 - A song that describes you
Day 16 - A song that you used to love but now hate
Day 17 - A song that you hear often on the radio
Day 18 - A song that you wish you heard on the radio
Day 19 - A song from your favorite album
Day 20 - A song that you listen to when you're angry
Day 21 - A song that you listen to when you're happy
Day 22 - A song that you listen to when you're sad
Day 23 - A song that you want to play at your wedding
Day 24 - A song that you want to play at your funeral
Day 25 - A song that makes you laugh
Day 26 - A song that you can play on an instrument
Day 27 - A song that you wish you could play
Day 28 - A song that makes you feel guilty
Day 29 - A song from your childhood
Day 30 - Your favorite song at this time last year
My favorite song? Everyone knows that's impossible. But here's one of 'em.
I'll sail upon the dog-star
And then pursue the morning
I'll chase the moon till it be noon
But I'll make her leave her horning
I'll climb the frosty mountain
And there I'll coin the weather
I'll tear the rainbow from the sky
And tie both ends together
The stars pluck from their orbs, too
And crowd them in my budget
And whether I'm a roaring boy
Let all the nations judge it
Unfortunately the sound quality isn't very good on this video, but of all the ones I could find this guy was the best at actually getting across the intention of the song, I thought. The version I listen to the most is the one by David Daniels; I think it should be sung by a countertenor for the full effect. But anyway, this is the song I sing in the shower when I'm feeling ballsy and triumphant. For a favorite song, it'll do. One more version just so you can see the manuscript. Youtube wouldn't let me embed that one, but it's worth checking out. Stay tuned for tomorrow: My least favorite song! I'll have to think about that one.
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05:38:40 PM,Wednesday 13 April 2011
Little Girl in Subway Elevator: Have you read Charlotte's Web? I love it. I'm on level 5. I mean... Chapter 5.
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07:59:33 AM,Tuesday 29 March 2011
How many of you were really confused in 6th grade biology when they labeled the parts of the cell and talked all about the mitochondria but forgot to mention the farandolae?
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08:29:11 PM,Monday 28 March 2011
Also this.
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11:45:44 PM,Friday 11 February 2011
Posted without comment.
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11:58:47 PM,Thursday 10 February 2011
