Archive for the ‘Music’ Category
So the wonderful Thanksgiving holidays are over and the count down to Christmas holidays begins. I want Christmas to be here quite badly because the thought of working all day right now makes me want to gouge out my eyes; however, I also don’t want Christmas to be here yet because I’m in no mood to go Christmas shopping. Just ugh.
Anyway, Thanksgiving was fun; I went to Dallas/Fort Worth to visit my parents, and spent most of the time there reading Harry Potter. Obsessed much? Oh yes. I’m now almost halfway through the last book, and I’m still pissed about what happened to Sirius in the fifth book. The only other thing I really did over the break was go to a Tori Amos concert! The weather was cold and rainy and we had to pay $15 to park and then walk in the miserable weather, but Tori was nothing short of completely awesome. And she performed Cornflake Girl. Which completely made my night right there.
This was my second time seeing her in concert, and I think I liked this time a bit better because one, our seats were a bit closer, and two, she played with her band, which I think makes it more interesting for some songs. She still did a solo section with just her and the piano, but it was nice hearing her with the band as well this time.
Moving on, I just want to say THANK YOU again to those of you who read the new chapters of I Woke Up LA. I’m happy that it was well-received and your comments make me excited to start the next part. Though, however excited I may be, I do think it will be quite some time before the next chapters are released. I do not know if I will have much time to even start working on it before Christmas. Of course, you never know, maybe me saying that will make the opposite happen.
I will say this about what to expect in the future chapters: Read the rest of this entry »
October 29th, 2007
In the Making, Music
Believe it or not, I actually made some progress on I Woke Up LA this weekend. And by this weekend, I mean last night mostly. I now have 26 pictures completed. It’s amazing how long those 26 took, and while granted–they were probably some of the more difficult of the bunch, I’m not looking forward to the remaining 100+. Picture taking used to be the best part of making the story for me, but now…it’s just too much of a pain in the ass. I think the standards are too high for my lazy butt now, and my lots are just disgusting now after 6 chapters and nearly 2 years.
Just plain barf, really. I have at least 800 Jills running around in that neighborhood, and as hot as that may sound to some of you, I just want to get a shotgun and start killing some of them off. Of course, I do that, and something will screw up the neighborhood, so I’m just dealing with the mess to avoid complications at the moment.
Anyway, on a plus side, I think I’m done with ridiculous blanket editing. I gave up and took an easy way out on one picture, but I don’t care anymore, and hopefully most of the pictures from the scene turned out alright.
Okay, new topic: it’s Monday afternoon and I’m taking a break at work right now because I just found the solution to something that was looming over my head for a while then causing me massive amounts of grief this morning with its lack of an ability to work at all. But now it’s working and I’m super excited and rewarding myself with the treat of coming on here and blabbing away about nothing.
Today’s nothing topic will be a follow-up to my gushing on about Tool in the last post. Today I will mention the coolest cover-mix I have ever heard. A cover so awesome, I’m willing to listen to it at major McPoo quality because no higher quality is available that I know of. It’s entirely possible I’ve blabbed about this song before. It’s A Perfect Circle’s live cover combination of The Cure’s Love Song and Ozzy’s Diary of a Madman.
It amazes me how APC put these two songs together. Completely seamless as if they were meant to be that way. Mentions of diarrhea and all. Listen to it; it’s all kinds of coolness. And if you’ve been living under a rock covered in a hundred other rocks, here are the originals: Love Song and Diary of a Madman.
Friday night at last, and I’m currently sitting at my desk with the patio door open listening to Tool loudly, because I’m sure the neighbors here in hickified Bryan, Texas love it. To pieces.
In my list of 250 songs (which I managed to leave some key players out, so it might be more like top 300 when I’m done), I have several songs by Tool listed. Tool is a great band because they’re heavy, have incredibly fucked up lyrics, and yet Maynard has this insanely beautiful voice. Which is the key to me with heavier music really, the voice. I’m very picky about the screaming and growling that comes along with heavy rock, but Maynard does it perfectly.
I don’t know when or how I got into Tool exactly. I think it was sometime right after high school, and perhaps the song was one of their radio songs, like Sober or something. Whatever the case, I soon got all their albums, which were just Opiate, Undertow and Ænima at the time. One of my first obsessions was the song Opiate, from the same-titled album. Then there’s my favorites from Undertow: Prison Sex and Swamp Song; and Ænima songs, Stinkfist, Eulogy and H. As the (many) years passed, Lateralus comes out and I’m of course drawn to Parabol + Parabola. Separate tracks, but they must be listened to together because for some reason Parabol just makes Parabola that much sweeter. I don’t have anything from their newest album on my list because I haven’t gotten into it quite as much yet, though there are definitely songs I like–just not love to absolute pieces like these mentioned.
If I had to pick a single favorite, I think it would be Prison Sex. Probably one of the more fucked up of the bunch, but incredibly catchy.
It took so long to remember just what happened.
I was so young and vestal then,
you know it hurt me,
but I’m breathing so I guess I’m still alive
even if signs seem to tell me otherwise.
I’ve got my hands bound,
my head down, my eyes closed,
and my throat wide open.
Do unto others, what has been done to me,
Do unto others, what has been done to you.
This post has no other purpose than to superficially gush about Tool. Oh, and if you really want to know what a crazy person I am, the song which alphabetically precedes all of the Tool songs in my top favorite list is 867-5309 by Tommy Tutone. Only extremely cool people will admit to loving both. Ha!
Happy weekend, all.
It’s a good thing tomorrow is Friday, otherwise I might have to jump out my office window and then I Woke Up LA would never be finished. Nevermind that our “windows” don’t open and I’m only on the second floor.
Earlier this week I went through my giant music collection on my computer and picked out my favorite songs of all time of the moment. Make sense? No? Yeah. Anyway, it ended up around 250 songs, but then I think I started adding a lot more toward the end of the alphabet than I did at the beginning–like I was being more strict in my qualifications at first or something. I was thinking I would post about these songs in this blog, but now I may have decided I’m too lazy for that. But we’ll see, I might just get that bored here in the next few days.
For the time being, I’ll talk about my current complete and utter obsession with a couple Chris Isaak songs, which I’m often obsessed with, actually, and they are definitely on this top 250 list I spoke of. I dare you to listen to Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing and not have it stuck in your head for hours. Such a silly song. I think it makes a perfect “soundtrack” type song. I could see using it in a soundtrack to I Woke Up LA, or several movies and pretty much anything.
I looked up the video on YouTube and saw that it was basically a big strip-fest. Not that I should be surprised after the Wicked Game video, but still. It’s funny. I like Chris Isaak, but bloody hell man, stick to white t-shirts and jeans, please. This psychotic florescent clothing obsession of his must be stopped. Seriously, it’s not just the purple suit in the Bad Bad Thing video. Google image him and such things as this and this (what is that?) turn up. Though you are my mother’s age, you are incredibly good looking, Mr. Isaak. No need to doo-doo on that. Perhaps I’m missing something.
October 15th, 2007
In the Making, Music
I started taking pictures for Chapter 7 tonight. No, I’m not done writing. But I didn’t feel like writing tonight, I felt like starting pictures. So here we are.
Remember that post from July where I griped about how difficult pictures were going to be for this chapter? Well, mostly difficult because I am the suck at drawing things like blankets. I think the one here kind of looks like a swirly slug shake. Oh well.
On the upside, those magic display tray objects or whatever they’re called that let you pose sims on objects are fantastic! Definitely making things easier on that front.
I got ten slides done tonight; let’s see if this keeps up. The entire time I was taking pictures, I was listening to the new Radiohead album. Obsessed much? Oh yes. It’s good to be obsessed with something new because I was entirely bored of my music before this came out. And I love the “pay what you want for it” thing Radiohead is trying out with this album. Only they would do something like this. So if they’re only going to release it online (not counting crazy ass box set), then I’m glad it’s like this. I don’t particularly care for paying a great deal for digitally downloaded music. If I pay for it, I typically want something tangible (a CD). 99 cents for one song on iTunes is positively ridiculous to me, and would be a last resort for me to obtain a song.
So yeah. I highly recommend buying the album. My favorites at the moment are 15 Step, Reckoner and Jigsaw Falling into Place.
