And the game is total crack. alenxa has been playing it all week, and it’s that perfect combination of WTF and fascinating.
Tag: music
Writer’s Block: Ten for the Tenth
Some people spend their whole lives preparing the answer to this question: What albums are on your personal all-time Top 10 list?
Tori Amos: Toss-up between Little Earthquakes* and Scarlet’s Walk
Vertical Horizon: Everything You Want*
Aimee Mann: Lost In Space*
Conan the Barbarian Soundtrack
Liz Phair: Somebody’s Miracle
Garbage: Garbage
Gin Blossoms: New Miserable Experience
The Nightmare Before Christmas Soundtrack. (The special edition has some decent covers, too, though only the Fiona Apple version of Sally’s song really made an impression.)
Nina Gordon: Toss-up between Tonight and the Rest of My Life and Bleeding Heart Graffiti
Evanescence: Evanescence (I almost listed the Rent cast album instead, but when I thought about it, there’s still a lot of recitative on the recording.)
This is mostly in no particular order, but the ones that came to mind immediately are marked with asterisks. I made a point not to list more than one album by the same artist, but it was tough to pick a favorite Tori album — and I can’t quite choose between the two Nina Gordon albums.
Overall, these just don’t have a single bad track on them. Though I’ll admit I don’t have “Me and a Gun” in rotation on my playlist — it’s just not a song you want to hear unexpectedly…kind of like Vienna Teng’s “Passage.”
Obama Campaign Headquarters: One Day More
Finally logged onto Facebook after something like 2 months, and one of my friends had posted this.
Genius. Absolute Genius.
(Still trying to figure out whether they used the London or Broadway cast recording of Les Miserables. The most distinctive voices — Valjean and Eponine — were the same. There was a time I would have been able to tell instantly. I think it’s the London cast, but I’m not sure.)
Writer’s Block: Your First Record
What was the first music album you ever bought or owned? Do you still listen to it or have you moved on?
If I remember correctly, the first album I bought was the soundtrack to Glory. I haven’t listened to the album itself in a long time, but the music’s on the instrumental mix.
Like This!
Stuck at work trying to finish a project, or at least get it to a state where I can finish it early enough tomorrow morning that we can do testing. Brain turning to mush. Had to pause to stave off a potential flamewar in blog comments. Almost sprayed tea all over keyboard during “The Song That Goes Like This” (Spamalot).
Sign of the Apocalypse
I just received my weekly newsletter from Ticketmaster. The featured event? New Kids On the Block. I’m not kidding.
Weekend: Concert & Home
alenxa and I went to see Aimee Mann at the House of Blues on Friday. Rather than trying to eat somewhere in Downtown Disney, where no one takes reservations and everything is crowded on a Friday night, we just ate at Taco Rosa and drove up after dinner. It worked out pretty well — we ended up there after the doors had opened (so we didn’t have to stand in line), but early enough to secure a spot on the main floor, putting us closer to the stage than we’ve ever been before. The concert was good, but a bit strange in that her new album had only been out for 4 days, so most people didn’t know the songs. Older songs got cheers as soon as people recognized the intro, but the old songs were met with silence until she finished and the audience applauded.
And she told a funny story about how one of the songs started out as a sort-of commission for Shrek III. Unfortunately they wanted a happy, encouraging, “Come on, you can do it!” song, and she said she’s not very good at that kind of message.
House-hunting on Saturday turned up a few prospects. Meanwhile, did some cleanup at the apartment. Finally arranged the front of the living room so that the display case doesn’t block access to the window.
As for the goals I set for myself:
- Sort through old magazines. – Done. Tossed 2 bags of magazines & one bag of old papers (seriously, brochures for wedding services for a company we didn’t use?) into the recycling.
- Find desk lamp. – Tried, no luck.
- Put some actual content on Facebook profile. – A little, but not much.
- Finish website update on the Silver-Age Flash. – Wrote a lot, but didn’t finish.
Sound and Image
A month or two ago I dug out a bunch of CDs I hadn’t listened to in years, including some musical-related stuff, and started importing songs into iTunes. My plan was to play the albums first, then pick out which songs I wanted, but it didn’t quite work out, so I put a lot of stuff on just from memory, or in some cases just imported the whole album with the idea that I’d remove anything I found myself skipping. Some worked out well. Others… well the Man of La Mancha suite from Quantum Leap just wasn’t as good as I remembered.
So today, as alenxa and I were driving around to look at condos, Bernadette Peters came on, singing “Cupid.” It was a bit more easy listening-sounding than I remembered, but not cringe-inducingly-so… and then my brain stepped in to “enhance” it.
You see, we’re also working our way through the third volume of Animaniacs on DVD. I found myself picturing Rita (as in Rita and Runt) singing the song.
“Brain, stop it!” I said.
Katie: “Is yours doing the same thing mine is?”
“I think so…”
“On a fence post?”
“Yep.”
In house hunting news, we found a couple of good possibilities. Well, one good possibility, and one that was really nice, but the rooms were way too small. Fantastic view, though.
And then there was the place that had been trashed so badly that when I dropped my sunglasses, I refused to pick them up. Ugh.
Music, Christmas, and Deadlines
Ended up missing my company’s Christmas party this year because we had tickets to see Tori Amos at the Grove on Saturday. Good concert, but our feet were pretty much dead by the end of the standing show. Sometime I’ll have to post the experience of trying to eat at El Torito Grill beforehand.
Meanwhile, everyone at my office hopped on a bus last Friday at noon to go out to Las Vegas. Apparently they did a murder mystery dinner for the actual party. It was a bit eerie afterward.
Still scrambling to finish a website at work. Also trying to finish some articles that I’m contributing to a book about the Flash. And Christmas shopping? Hah!
5 days before Christmas is a bad time to find out that you’re almost out of scotch tape, but I suppose it’s better than finding out at 8pm on December 24.