was this cute gay pride bear. You can just tell activism is a distant second to hunting strange for this bear. Working on your car for you is foreplay. That kind of bear. Rough around the edges. But he cleans up well.
I was feeding my Media Player albums again earlier and these were my favorite singles...the ones I had to play more than once while downloading...
1. E=Mc squared (how do you do the superscript?), Big Audio Dynamite
2. Velvet Pants, Propellerheads (is that adorable dead Edie Sedgwick yakking away?)
3. Being Boring, Pet Shop Boys
4. Io so che alle sue pene..., Puccini (Renata Tebaldi, Carlo Bergonzi...)
I liked this so much as a kid and I love trios when they're done well, but now this sounds so skittish. Puccini's so much like television here, bad television, it's scary. The pacing of the trio is just horrible...slow pathos is sped up to helium speed...and yet of course he writes some of the most beautiful arias when he wants to...I suppose opera was pretty much a form of television back then...isn't it weird to think this is taking place in a town that's going to be vaporized by an atomic bomb in about fifty years? Somebody should do a strange dramatic mindfuck with that...anchronistic mixture or conflation...
5. Sat in Your Lap, Kate Bush...calisthenic poetry
6. Staralfur, Sigur Ros
7. Devorzhum, Dead Can Dance
Went to lunch with my mother and Lee. When I walked out the front door of my house, I found a dollar bill blown into my garden. There was nobody around in the neighborhood to leave me with a moral quandary. It's mine! It was very windy last night and this morning. Everybody said too bad it was a one, but I'm happy anyway. It pays to follow the feng shui principles in setting up your garden. If only I had an arrowana (the "money fish" in feng shui) in a pool there it would have been a Benjamin at least! I think arrowanas are cool looking. Joli-laid fish. Hang mirrors on your house to deflect bad energy back at bad neighbors. But if they put one up too it could be a Butter Battle Book come alive. I've never seen a mirror hung up on a house like that really.
I don't really believe in feng shui but I like the appurtenances and principles and think it's fun. For instance, I found a gold "money tree" at a thrift store a few months back for a dollar or so and I love it.
Chinese restaurants will often have these sitting by the cash register. Often little Chinese coins (real or pretend) will be hung from threads. This is a "money attractor." Isn't this all silly? Sympathetic magic. Very old stuff. My money tree just has garish golden leaves and a tortured shape. No coins. It looks like the spirit of a Vegas hooker who died and incarnated as a tree. It's a Vegas hooker dryad.
So we were in the car so we were jumping around on Sirius (will this merger with XM eventually make everything worse?) and it was mostly crap.
I was playing with Lee's Zune and watching videos, which is the only way I stay in touch with pop music when I'm not working in an office setting where I'm hearing the stuff. Via Lee's Zune or stuff he's playing on his computer. Or his kids. "The House Bunny" had a 100% bubble gum girly soundtrack too. We watched that the other night. Ana Faris is so cute. I'm glad to see she's finally getting larger roles even if it's craptastic stuff like this. I loved the girl who played the Idahoan sorority sister.
So Lee directed my attention to Lady Gaga's new video, "Poker Face." You can tell right away it's a monster pop song. She looks to be a very young 'un and does a great job of selling it in the video, which mostly pantomimes orgiastic decadence in a very innocent way. There are some hot gay men impersonating straight men interested in her, but that's every video with a hot chick, isn't it? The song is catchy and boring which is why it is number one on like four continents. And because Lady Gaga is probably the face (and bod) that launched a thousand thousand thousand young male stiffs. She owes more than a little to Christina Aguilera and Pink, but that's true of so many female pop vocalists getting major airplay these days.
Britney's video for "Womanizer" is great fun. Lee has the uncensored version. I love to watch Britney move. She is stellar in this video, which is choreographed to perfection. She acts out the song's aggressive lyrics in a comical manner, and the seduction turned warfare theme of the video serves up some sexy slapstick. A married wifey decides to test her hubby in the workplace and elsewhere by posing as various seductresses. The actor playing her hubby is handsome and plays his role as a sexist "suit" to perfection. In the uncensored version, the director throws in some peripheral eye candy, half-clothed dancers and costars. The superfast editing is fantastic; it's like looking through a hummingbird's eyes. Britney looks awesome in the partial nudity shots (in this version the steam which masks her in the edited version is removed). I'm so happy she didn't die and has her sense of humor intact. "You say I'm crazy? I got your crazy!" I love the completely confected nature of her voice in this song. Britney sounds best when she is completely confected, a studio creation, her voice relentlessly modified until it is almost a porn loop to go along with her mesmerizing moves. I liked the tribute in this video to Melanie Griffith's sexy look in the movie Something Wild. That's Tippi Hedren's daughter. Alfred Hitchcock got a bit obsessive with Tippi in an unpleasant and unwelcome manner and allegedly "stalked, harassed and abused her" according to a book she wrote. Some of his "scare tactics" were extremely creepy and almost sound like a plot line from one of his movies. Another genius who was a creep. There are so many. Mom drew the eyes and so did her girl. Nobel laureate poet Octavio Paz once announced publicly he had a terrible crush on Melanie. I think Tippi Hedren is a great animal lover and pretty much a hermit now, loving to tend her menagerie and be left alone. That's where she was at in the last interview I saw with her anyway. She seems to be a lovely spirit.
Then I watched some Mika videos. It doesn't get any more gorgeous in the world of pop for me than Mika. I wonder what his ethnicity is. I can't place it. He almost looks Greek, but possibly Eastern European with that name? I never looked up any info on him so know nothing about him but his name. "Grace Kelley" is a hilarious video. That little girl that lip synchs the Grace Kelley lines is perfect. So are all the other cast in the video. Any singer that reverences Freddy Mercury and sings a tribute to him in a pop song is okay in my book. I love Mika's falsetto but if he stays there too long it can bring a song down. When he uses his full range he is all that. I had never seen the video for "Happy Ending." That one's a very fun video. Kudos to whoever directed that!
Lee has tons of Sarah Brightman on here. I love her in concert and so does he and even his kids. But I think he loves her even more. I did one concert. Lee and his kids did three when she was touring the East Coast. That was a nonpareil show....the staging was just out of this world. And she is ever flawless and charming during her interactions. I so want her to say in that whispering ultrafeminine "butter wouldn't melt" voice of hers, "You know, I never even cash the checks I get from Andrew (Lloyd Weber), but I do so love to think of the pain it causes him to write them." He is very funny and a great sport when he's on Graham Norton, and while he is almost frightening to behold, he really is a great wit and gives a killer interview.
Oh, and I watched the Bjork "Wanderlust" video for about the tenth time. I hope that thing won like twenty-five awards. If there's any justice.
And then some even older videos. Lee has good shit on his Zune.
I also derive a perverse satisfaction from watching Madonna beat the shit out of Madonna in "Die Another Day." That video is very funny.
I still love Michael and Janet's "Scream" video but Lee got some remix version with a weird altered video. I like the original. What a great sonically punchy assault of a song.
I tried to ff to my favorite songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas...I have no idea how many dozens of movies he has on here, but apparently you can't forward by scenes. Hmmm...might have something to do with where he downloaded it from...lol..."you no pay!"
I wanted to see Lock, Shock and Barrel Kidnap Mr. Sandy Claws.
The Chinese restaurant has the cutest gift shop and the one hostess in a bright pink cheongsam and white faux fur stole who was adorable (spoke very little English but was so cute in which words she knew and used cheerily) was helping us go through the Hello Kitty items to find the ones that played the best songs. They give this stuff away in their gift shop. Less than three bucks for a gorgeous Hello Kitty ceramic bank about eight inches tall glued into a cute multicolor basket. Kitty plays pop songs when you push down on her head....(wait, that sounded durty). We found one that sings "Barbie Girl" by Aqua for Lee's daughter, and for my niece's daughter another one that sings Aqua's "My oh My." Our hostess was willing to keep going to find another "Barbie Girl," but after about a dozen we felt guilty having her open all those boxes. Thank goodness she understood "Thank you!"
I looked to see if there was more money in our "wind garden" when we got home but no such luck.
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