The Tory Party

Make-Out Mix Gone Wrong

Hypothetically.

Say you have an iTunes mix of romantic music.

And commence an evening of auditory and make-out-itory enjoyment with Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.”

Sexy

You dim the lights. You get snugglesome.

A sampling of the music you might expect next:

• Ani DiFranco - “Hypnotized”
• Control Freq - “Sweetest Day”
• Imogen Heap - “Candlelight”
• Kate Bush - “Song of Solomon”
• KT Tunstall - “Silent Sea”
• Portishead - “It’s a Fire”
• Sufjan Stevens - “The Avalanche”
• Thom Yorke - “Harrowdown Hill”
• The Weepies - “Take It From Me”
• And a whole lot of Death Cab

Just look at that list. You would make out with the list itself.

But you must have you must have recently dragged-and-dropped your workout mix in error.

Because five minutes later the song gives way to Janet Jackson’s “Nasty Boys.”

Not sexy

What would you do?

Would you immediately cease making out to run across the room to kill the music?

Or would you continue, in the hope the next track was something more mood-appropriate?

BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I DID.

Do not do what I did.

Because the practical volume level of a pop song is much greater than that of a midtempo ballad. And what was utterly suitable for gentle Chris Isaak is now housemate-disturblingly loud.

And about three minutes in bad goes to worse as Janet Jackson starts shouting “WHO’S THAT DRIVIN’ THAT NAS-TAH CAR?”

I only bring this up because, as I clean up my iTunes mix of romantic music, I find myself filled with giggles of horror at the songs that COULD have suddenly started blasting through the room, instead of Miss Jackson if you’re nasty:

• Milli Vanilli - “Girl You Know It’s True”
• Motley Crue - “Same Old Situation”
• Naughty By Nature - “Hip Hop Hooray”
• Mylo (feat. Freeform Five) - “Muscle Car”
• Onyx - “Slam”
• Positive K - “I Got a Man”
• Rancid - “Ruby Soho”
• REM - “Shiny Happy People”
• Snap! - “Power”
• Techonotronic - “Get Up”
• TLC - “What About Your Friends?”

They say you’re only as sick as your secrets. Apparently my secret is 1991.

Lavigne vs. Rubinoos

AH HA HA HA HA.

Didja hear 70s pop band the Rubinoos are suing Avril Lavigne over similarities between their “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” and her “Girlfriend”?

You should take a listen to their original.

Go because it’s a pleasant, dense power-pop song. Stay because Lavigne’s is so similar as to be a parody.

Now, I know with the skillion songs in the world at this point, and the narrow parameters of popular music, complaining that one song is like another is sort of like complaining how many movies have the plot of She’s All That (they got together on a dare! But then he really likes her! But then she found out it was a dare!) or the premise of Fight Club/Secret Window/Identity/Hide and Seek/American Haunting/Number 23 (person tormented by a mysterious stranger who is revealed to be… HIMSELF!)

And the popular music necessitates, nay THRIVES ON, borrowing and reinventing itself. That’s why we have jazz, Christmas albums, and the Great American Songbook.

But these two are ALIKE. A LOT.

Because “Ghostbusters” may be like “I Want a New Drug,” and “Caribbean Queen” may be like “Billie Jean,” but they’re at least different enough in lyrical content as to give it the flesh of a different song.

Enough of my opinion. Here’s the evidence. What do you think?

LYRICS

Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix

Like Anne Coulter with all the evil sucked out!

In brief:

• Worthy.
• In look and tone, like a Harry Potter Lord of the Rings. Very growed up. And I am not the sort of person who thinks visual effects are stunning, but these were totally teh hott. The black smoke vs. white smoke alone was like surface of the sun. Put together, like the overhead shot of the kids in the courtyard with all of Hogwarts looming next to them, this movie created (in my estimation) the closest, most completely realized version of Harry Potter’s book world.
• Imelda Staunton as Professor Umbridge is like a circus peanut: Awful. But delicious.
• But Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood rocked me sockless. I want more footage of her explaining things in a high calm voice as soon as possible.

  
  Nevermind… just foller around Emma Thompson, do what she does.

• All the kids are growing up super attractive. Neville Longbottom’s massive pre-Goblet growth spurt is continuing nicely, evolving him into the slouching charisma of Nicolas Cage with the hair of Peter Gallagher.

  
  Knock knock.
  Who’s there?
  More attractive than you…

• Thestrels thestrels thestrels make you nawww-shuss.
• Good job of creating an arc and sticking to it. Minimal exposition. Forgotten (by me) faves like Kreacher breeze in and out leaving a light wake of their intended purpose without precipitating any monologues about who they are and what they’re doing.
• Character-driven humor! Look! There it goes! Make a note!

  
  
  Makes it OK that we’re dressed like the Scooby gang.

• Whedon moments! You know what I’m talking about. Like the little split-second reaction shots of Inara looking at Mal looking at Jayne looking at Keeley that remind you of the skillion years of backstory with which you’re intimately familiar. Like a fireside belly-rub of writerly affection. Who’s my good audience? Who’s my good little audience?
• The dude who plays Mr. Weasley looks like a parent version of Martin Freeman. Review. Discuss.
• Not enough Snape. No no no. Put additional Snape ‘tage with the Luna Lovegood immed pls kthx.

  
  Can it ever be wrong to love?

Recommend with a glass of effective flashback.

See: Gaydar, Lack thereof

Quick story.

I’m working out a post about racism (because no one has more intelligent things to say on the subject than I, a middle-class white girl with no education in the subject). And I was thinking about this story and wanted to share.

There’s some homosexism in the idea of “gaydar” — that there’s something about gay people that’s detectably different, and something EVEN DIFFERENTER than their sexual preference.

Their hair texture. Their shoelace color. Their use of coordinating conjunctions. I don’t know. Whatever a straight person can point to about thirty seconds after they find out someone’s gay.

(Of course, this is as it applies to heterosexual me navigating in the mostly-heterosexual world. I wager “gaydar” has a very different meaning, connotation, and application in, say, a metropolitan gay club invaded by straight college kids.)

Anyway. To the story.

(As an addict, but not to alcohol,) I went to an AA meeting with a friend who is gay. First time, little nervous. Very curious to see what a room full of alcoholics looks like. Surely they will all look and talk like WC Fields.

Nope! There are all kinds of people here — a more random assortment, I’d say, than I’ve seen in any other public gathering.

Women folk and men folk. Old folk and young folk, fat folk and skinny folk, homely folk and beautiful folk.

Professional dress and casual dress. Conservative types and hippie types. Rich types and working-class types.

I will say, generally, they all looked like they know what the back of hell looks like.

So we go through the opening 12-step rituals, and I think, dag, alcoholics look like everybody else.

Then.

About twenty minutes in.

They start talking personal.

Huh, I didn’t know he was gay.

Huh, I didn’t know she was gay.

Hey wait a minute! This is a gay AA meeting.

AH HA HA HA I AM DUMB!

Immediately I began to “detect” gayness. Oh yes, it’s so clear now… how could I have missed it…

No, no, no. What was really happening, and what was a rare privilege to see illustrated, was my subjective definition of what “gay” is descending on objective reality.

And once my vision fogged, I couldn’t un-fog it. But at least I could remember what the unfogged version was like.

And I hope I learned something about trying to tell one group of people from another by their outward appearance.

We’re all. Just. People.

But later at ALDI I tried speaking Spanish to an Indian couple, so maybe I learned nothing at all.

Testing out a wpSS Spreadsheet

I’ve had bad luck with WordPress plugins, mostly due to the fact that when it comes to handling other people’s code I am dumb as a bag of hammers and ADD as The Go! Team.

WordPress spreadsheet plugin courtesy TimRohrer.com