A very happy Mother’s Day to you and yours.
Tag: Holidays
Fool of a Took.
Happy April Fool’s Day, y’all. Because I’m feeling relatively lazy, I’ll just point the way to Toast in the Machine, an old warhorse I still trod out once a year. For a better-conceived April Fool’s joke, PJ and co. announce pre-production on the 2-part Son of Kong. (in which Kong Jr. will fight Nazis…oh, word.)
Denzel’s up to something…
“Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music cry ‘Caesar!’ Speak. Caesar is turn’d to hear. Beware the ides of March.” Be careful out there today, y’all.
Love Songs.
I’m off early this morning to catch up with college friends for one of our semi-annual reunions, so I expect it’ll be quiet around here until next week. But, since it’s a holiday weekend of sorts, and since I’ve been perusing a number of MP3 blogs lately, I figured I wouldn’t leave on a jet plane before regaling you, my dear readers, with the Valentine’s gift of music. (The usual mp3blog rules apply: the files will be up this weekend and this weekend only, and please do not link to them.) So, without further ado:
You have to trust it,
Maybe not from the sources
you have poured yours
maybe not from the directions
you are staring at,
Twist your head around
it’s all around you
As y’all know, iconography from the stunning video to Bjork’s “All is Full of Love” has graced this site for years now, so it seemed a logical choice for GitM‘s Valentine. It’d be hard for me to introduce the song any better than Bjork did herself: “That song’s from a moment when I’d had a pretty rough winter and then it was a spring morning and I walked outside and the birds were singing: Spring is here! I wrote the song and recorded in half a day. It just clicked – you know: you’re being too stubborn, don’t be so silly, there is love everywhere. The feeling, the emotion of the song was like completely melting and loving everything and feeling like everything loved you, after a long time of not having that. The song, in essence, is actually about believing in love.“
Strangely enough, I experienced a very similar revelatory moment, traipsing around outside after a blizzard several years ago, while listening to this “Plaid” version of the song. It’s missing the languorous beat that’s so memorable in the single version, but I adore the fugue-like intro and textured, contrapuntal rhythms of this mix — They lend it a timeless, ethereal beauty that perfectly matches the celestial coo and growl of its Icelandic muse. I don’t want to hate on Love, Actually for too many posts in a row, but to my mind this song brilliantly encapsulates what that movie tried and failed to get at — Even in our loneliest moments, love surrounds us and binds us.
All is Full of Love (Plaid Mix) — Bjork (5.88MB, 4:17)
(song removed)
Original version on Homogenic.
[Update:]
***
I want you
I’m not ashamed to say I cried for you
I want you
I want to know the things you did that we do too
I want you
I want to hear he pleases you more than I do
I want you
I might as well be useless for all it means to you…
Bjork too sappy? Well, if, on the other hand, you prefer to spend Valentine’s Day prodding scars and excavating the thin line between love and hate, then here’s a streetlight serenade for you — a blistering-hot live version of Elvis Costello’s most savage, searing slow burn. Much of the resonance of the original “I Want You” lies in how what starts off as a run-of-the-mill torch song slowly degenerates into something much more complicated and sinister. This spooky, haunted-house version from the 2002 tour skips the set-up, but it’s nevertheless a poisonous mirrorball of rage and regret, bitterness and betrayal, loss and (self-)loathing…all those quintessential consequences of a love implosion that they just don’t seem to make Hallmark cards for (and it’s all topped off with a brief twinge of Yankee Power.) Our man Costello may be enthralled with Diana Krall these days, but as this song makes emphatically clear, there are still some things you just don’t wanna know about his dark life.
I Want You (Live in Nashville 2002) — Elvis Costello (15.1MB, 8:15)
(song removed)
Original version on Blood and Chocolate.
[Update]:
Either path you choose, have a safe and happy weekend, and I’ll catch y’all next week.
MLK 2K5.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil…must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.“
— Martin Luther King, Jr (1929-1968)
XXX.
Well, there may be 48-72 hours left in 2004 (good riddance — I’ll be remembering this year as pretty much a lamentable waste, orals and prospectus notwithstanding), but my twenties ended about an hour ago…and, y’know, I really wouldn’t have minded if they’d lasted a mite longer. 😉
But, life marches on, so here’s to 30. I’m back in NYC as of late this evening, and will probably celebrate by checking out one last wave of movies before the end-of-year round-up. So, see y’all on the flipside.
Snow and Light.
Hope y’all had a safe and merry christmas. Berk and I are still in Norfolk, where we (like many) enjoyed a surprisingly white Boxing Day. Santa brought a sleek new digital camera to replace the clunky, floppy-disk model I’ve been lugging around since the 20th century, so expect more Flickr-integration around here in the near future. I also received some nice new threads as befitting a soon-to-be-thirty-year-old, some quality time-consuming games (most notably Halflife II and KotOR II, or, as I’ll be referring to them, January and February), and an assortment of DVDs, books, and assorted other media I’ve had my eye on. (And, if you’re keeping score, Berk procured his share of bones and bacon-smelling items too…although he’s spent much of the week trying to pick a fight with the inflatable moose head I gave my mother.)
This year, my brother also introduced a new element to the usual family fare of poker, Scrabble, and Halo/2: electrocution, by way of Lightning Reaction and Shocking Tanks, two electrifying games soon to be banned in a state near you…Ouch.
Trailer Park Xmas.
Hello all…I finished up the end-of-term grading yesterday evening, at which point Berkeley and I started settling in to the christmas spirit down here at Murphy Home Base in Norfolk. Here’s hoping everyone out there is having a safe and merry holiday season, and that you get something better from Santa than Dubya’s warmed-over right-wing judges.
Also, if you’re looking for some trailers to tide you over, here’s Leggy & Liam battling freedom-hating infidels in Ridley Scott’s crusader pic Kingdom of Heaven, Russell Crowe trying to out-Seabiscuit Seabiscuit in Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, a slew of A-listers vamping and vicing in the Robert Rodriguez version of Frank Miller’s Sin City, MTV Films butchering another needless remake in The Longest Yard, and creepy undead kids claiming yet another victim in Boogeyman. Enjoy, and happy holidays, y’all.(Aragorn pic via Fark.)
Boo.
No Eggs in Ithilien.
A very happy Easter to you and yours, from the (possibly temporary) new look GitM. Here’s hoping you didn’t find any guns during your Easter Egg hunt and that you didn’t have to witness the Passion of the Easter Bunny. Freaky-deaky stuff.