There are certain songs that really grab me from the get go. Ones that I hear once, then absolutely have to hear again. And again, and again. Songs like Sonia Dada’s You ain’t thinkin’ ’bout Me, Shivaree’s Goodnight Moon, Mozart’s Voi che sepete, REM’s What’s the Frequency Kenneth? and Anita Kelsey’s Sway*. I have no idea what makes me like these songs so much, I just really really like them. Perhaps if someone who actually knew something about music was to analyse these selections they’d be able to find some kind of pattern, maybe to do with minor keys. Hmmmmm.
In any case I’m rambling on about this because as I type I’m holding in my hot little hands* two brand new CDs containing the two most recent songs to grab me in this fashion. Ben Folds’ Rockin’ the Suburbs (for Annie Waits) and Cake’s Comfort Eagle* (for Commissioning a Symphony in C). I ordered these a few days ago from a well know Australia online music store, who I just don’t feel like mentioning the name of now. Dunno why, I’m just in a recalcitrant mood 🙂
Also in my now rather overcrowded hot little hands are brand new DVDs of Clerks and The Fifth Element. I decided to buy the latter after watching it on TV last week, and deciding that it’s one of my favourite films of all time*. It’s extremely well written, is very funny*, has great special effects, fantastic music, an agglutinating conlang* and features Milla Jovovich who is probably second only to Alisen Down in my actress-I’ll-never-get-anywhere-near-but-wouldn’t-it-be-nice affections. Clerks, another one of my favourite films of all times just happened to be sitting on the shelf next to it, and going out cheap, so how could I resist? So, all up I’m about $120 down, but quite happy 🙂
And now for something completely different. Each Thursday the ABC has taken to filling in the two minute or so gap before Daria with a video clip. As for some reason they continue to classify Daria as a children’s show (it’s animated! It must be for little kiddies!) these clips are aimed firmly at the pre-teen market, and generally include colourful Sesame Street type characters singing about how wonderful trees are or something of that ilk. However the other week they played one of the oddest and most intriguing video clips I’ve ever seen.
It was stop motion animation, and about an aardvark* who plays the drums. He plays the drums in a swing band with a whole load of other aardvarks (all in very cool 40’s attire) in a 40’s style nightclub, and everything’s going well. Then a bunch of Gangster Parrots* take over the club and kick them out, although not before dragging him before the big boss and roughing him up (apparently they don’t like his drum solos). He wanders the streets, poor and destitute, until he ends up living in the dump, where he has lots of fun playing drums for the rats, who are highly appreciative. What happened after that I really can’t say as I was cooking dinner and a pot threatened to boil over, but it was pretty damn surreal. I think he got a new band together at the end, and named them after a mattress billboard, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I was most impressed, and would very much like to know what the heck it was all about.
Anyone care to enlighten me?
In other news, it turns out that the proprietors of Lovebox.com, who I so heavily vilified a while back for their evil spamming practices, are in fact a bunch of innocent cardboard box manufacturers from Kansas who’s domain name has been hijacked by the evil spammers. I was informed of this in a very apologetic email from a Lovebox employee – the company seems to be scouring the net for people inconvenienced by these parasitic bottom-dwellers in order to apologise to them, which is a refreshingly polite attitude in these, the waning days of our civilisation. So, anyone else who’s received the Lovebox email should visit this page for the full lowdown, and follow the advice provided to crush the squamous vipers besmirching the name of a respectable packaging company.
OK, I’m gonna go sleep now. Or watch The Glass House. Whatever.
* The real version. Off the Dark City soundtrack. Not that dance travesty from a few years back. Die dance travesty makers! Die!
* Not literally. I’m not that dexterous.
* Comfort Eagle. Not Lone Eagle. Yes, I’m talking to you 😉
* For the record Clerks, Ghostbusters, The Blues Brothers, Men in Black, Run Lola Run and The Fifth Element. MiB is now the only one I don’t have on DVD. Cool!
* Multipass!
* Listen to that and tell me it’s not agglutinating buddy!
* I presume it was an aardvark. I thought at first it was a pig, but it had a long tail, and the ears were probably a bit big. It could have been a Set beast I suppose, but the prospects of stop-motion animators knowing what a Set beast is, let alone using one in a children’s video clip seem rather remote.
* I am not making this up!
what was the name of the film???
It turned out to be something called Hamilton Mattress.
The movie was hamilton mattress