You all know I love tv. And not just schlocky Lifetime stuff, I really do like critically acclaimed programs as well, I swear. One that I have always read great reviews of but never got around to watching until a few weeks ago is Friday Night Lights. I hate sports but love sports movies and really enjoyed the movie that inspired the television show, but I don’t know, it was on at a weird time or I had a dvr conflict, blah blah, there was always some reason I never got around to watching it.
Then a few weeks ago I found out seasons 1-3 are available on Netflix instant. I started it- and I couldn’t stop! I seriously watched 23 episodes in four days (you might think that sounds impossible, but I was working on data projects at work that only required ¾ of my brain, which allowed me to dial up the FNL and enjoy it with the other….um…well whatever percentage of my brain was still available.) and then I devoured another 25 episodes the next week, flying through the first three seasons in no time. My friend Megan, who had also started watching the show around then, got season 4 from a friend, and I watched that in two sittings. Season 5, (the final season!), airs on DirecTV in October, then hits NBC some time after that, and I. Cannot. WAIT!!!
Why the obsession?
Because the show is so so so good. The writing is fantastic, the acting is wonderful, the boys, well, super cute. The characters are so perfectly developed that you can’t help but care about them as if they were real, and when they succeed, you cheer, and when they make a bad choice- which they so often do- you are crushed and worry for them. There are characters on there who I aspire to be like, and others who I wish I could take under my wing and mentor. The show is funny, and sad, and real, and it manages to hurt, move and thrill you all in the same episode. I’m not great with reviews because it’s hard to for me to put my feelings in anything other than abstract terms, so let’s just say that I cannot express strongly enough that you need to watch this show.
And! If you don’t have Netflix, you are in luck because ABC Family is going to air the whole series from the beginning starting Tuesday, September 7th. Check their site for times, you will not be sorry! You are welcome.
A few months ago, I told you about Mass Solo Revolt. I hope at least of few of you took my recommendation and peeped out the band a little bit. (Seriously, my musical taste is 75% dead on, leaving room for extra crap that I find irresistible, but would never push on you. You can trust me. I kind of know what I’m doing). If you did, you now know that they are very, very, very good. Next week, with an aptly named new record “Bend in Time” under their belts, Mass Solo is striking out onto the road.
15 years ago I started dating a boy in a band. I made friends with his friends. Although I am very thankful for those friendships, they often unexpectedly cause twinges. So much can surface, thinking about the past. Ruminating on who you were and the ways you’ve changed always stings a little. Seeing how certain you were once… realizing the uncertainty of everything….sigh. The fact that looking back gives you a feeling not unlike sunburn mixed with food poisoning is not a coincidence.
Because I tend to over think the smallest situations, there is so much more going on here than just going to see some old friends whose music I enjoy. I’m looking at a unique chance to sit inside a time machine of my own making, a chance to look back, to see my 24-year-old self reconcile or collide with a nearly 40-year-old, looking into the eyes of, but not really seeing, men with grown up lives and years and years of water under our collective bridges.
So going to this show is going to be… something. MY FRIENDS ARE COMING HOME! And in a very corny way, so am I…the fact that time is going to be bending in a matter of days has me so ridiculously wound up that there are only two options for me on the night of the show.
I will either:
A) Run around in tight circles, giggling hysterically until I trip and accidentally smash my head on a table
Or
B) Be so untied that I will run stoically in tight circles until I purposely smash my head on a table.
So basically, whether you are there for either the show the band will put on, or the show I will put on, you will be entertained. Come and join. They will be rocking it out, absolutely killing it, and I will be the one with the 24-year-old heart and the 39-year-old life, struggling to staunch my bleeding head wound with cocktail napkins.
Grinning, like a sunburned idiot.
MASS SOLO REVOLT ON TOUR: Check them out here next week!!
Chicago, Ill Nov 17 @7:30pm The Subterranean
Ann Arbor, MI Nov 18 @ 9:00pm The Blind Pig
Kalamazoo, MI Nov 20 @ 9:00 pm The Strutt
Athens, GA Nov 21 @ 10pm The Caledonia Lounge
Okay, I know, another music blog…what can I say, I am a muse to many.
My ex-husband (you can discuss the revelation of my looking way too young to have multiple marriages amongst yourselves) plays jazz. Now, I cannot share with you my deep wisdom about all things jazz, because I have none. To be honest, jazz makes me want to break things. Immediately. But anyhoo, Dave has been playing keyboard with David Pastorius and Local 518 for some time and they are very good. They recently released their album in Japan on Japan’s biggest Indie label and a couple of weeks later, it was the number one seller for the label.
I am super duper proud of Dave, and not only because I absolutely love the mental image of a harajuku girl wearing his face on a tiny baby doll t-shirt that she has adorned with fishnet sleeves. But that is part of it, sure. Let’s just say that it is about time that karma gave David an ice cream sandwich for his trouble. And if his ice cream is delivered by a harajuku girl who is wearing his face on her tiny chest, well, all the better.
If jazz does NOT make you want to break things, you might want to check out Dave’s band. All the Japanese hipsters love it, and if they love it, you’ll love it too. Of course, they also love green bean flavored soda, but maybe where music is concerned, their tastes are more trustworthy.
Click here if you want to hear some….www.davidpastorius.com
Some of you may remember a few months back when, after devouring the Twilight series in 10 days, Amy Kate went AWOL and was pretty much a complete brat when anyone made her leave her comfy little world of Forks.
I am feeling that big time, only it’s a new vampire mythology that has me crushed under its supernatural little fang- True Blood
I feel as though I have been bitten and drained of all my life force. I don’t want to sew, I don’t want to write, I don’t want to shop, or exercise, or paint my toenails…all I want to do is talk about True Blood, or look up things about it on the internet. THAT IS IT. In fact, just now I went to You Tube to select a video for this post, and I have been distracted by fan-made True Blood tributes for the last 35 minutes. I have actually searched the web to find out if the actor who plays Jason Stackhouse went to a prestigious university, because anyone who plays dumb that brilliantly has to be a genius. I’ve wasted time trying to find out the heights of Alexander Skarsgard, Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin, because the way Eric towers over Sookie and Bill just drives me crazy and I had to find out what the difference is. For the record: Alexander is 6’4”, Anna is 5’5” and Stephen is SUPPOSEDLY 5’10” but I feel like that might be a….stretch (hee).
I’ve been watching True Blood with my friends Megan and Jenn. We tore through season 1 in three days, then Megan actually ordered HBO so we could watch season 2 on demand, and suddenly we were caught up with the rest of America within two nights of viewings. Addicted.
I didn’t realize what a nerd I was until I started watching this show with two girls who, other than Twilight, have not had that much exposure to vampire and monster tales. Because when you hang with most people you can say something like “of course, there HAS to be a blood sacrifice” without them giving you a WTF look, right? Right?! I blame it on Buffy. Thanks to my years of devotion to Joss Whedon’s mythology, I now think I know everything about creatures that don’t even (probably, maybe?) exist. I’m all “hmm-maybe-she’s-a-chaos-demon-this” and “you-think-THAT’S-a-tough-day-after-losing-your-virginity-to-a-vampire, you-need-to-see-Buffy-season-2-that.” The vamps on True Blood haven’t yet taken over my heart (or cut it out and eaten it, for that matter) the same way my old friends Buffy and Angel have, but they have already surpassed my affection for Bella and Edward. And right now, I cannot get enough of them. Therefore, I must now go back to watching slow-mo videos of them set to adult contemporary music. I’ll leave you with this video, one that showcases Eric’s more comic moments. Enjoy.
I recently wrote this for some boys that I used to know way back in the day, mostly because it is the suckiest possible injustice that they are still slogging away, while Shinedown is eating sushi in LA. Check them out, you won’t be sorry.
Some artists are able to accomplish the mission of creativity: to express agony, joy and the incredible yearning that lies between in the art they create. Well expressed art is able to integrate enough honesty that the audience is not repulsed by need but inspired by possibility. When a message gets inside musicians who are able to channel human energy which continually needs to claw its way out, the patron benefits on a level that far surpasses common entertainment value. It makes entertainment value seem like the most superficial artifice there is.
The best music challenges you. It surprises, questions and invites. When you are helpless to do anything but try and get into the speaker, into the amp, you know something important is happening. When you get beyond something that is more than just a catchy melody, more art than just sonic stimulation, soon follows an important addiction.
Mass Solo Revolt’s music is like raw energy, sometimes channeled and restrained, sometimes glaringly, violently emotional; one moment, the tension of a life about to explode, the next, beauty glowering with the power to obliterate. It can be sardonic and charismatic, break your heart, and punch you in the chest, sometimes within one song. Beyond that, there is something about the yearning and honesty of this music that comes through like pure grain alcohol. If your reaction is to want to become immersed in its current, lose the shit that is suddenly unimportant; to believe, at least momentarily that nothing is important except for what you are suddenly experiencing, then you have it right.
To see the never very illusive “artist’s soul” is nothing special. Plenty of people are able to come up with very entertaining music. Holding guitars with skill, turning a phrase, looking uncomfortable and nodding in perfect time are skills that are fairly easy to master. These musicians may be cheating you for your applause, but they don’t know any better. You will eventually see the transparency once you have heard music like MSR’s. There is the something more in artists who are able to transmit emotion to you in such a way that it becomes palpable feeling. That is sharing the artist’s soul, and when it is a soul worth sharing, is an unforgettable and addictive experience. And it is art at its best.
You can learn more about MSR by checking out their myspace page: www.myspace.com/masssolorevolt
Previous albums “The Sap” and “Easy Mark” are available on iTunes, or by contacting the band directly via myspace. Clicking on the Amazon link below will take you directly to purchasing information on Amazon.com. for “Easy Mark”
Mass Solo Revolt’s third album “Bend in Time” is due out in October. It’s truly awesome.
So after spending much time on the Facebook of late, I have used my superior observational skills and have noticed certain behaviors that require some calling out….
Premature Evacuation
This is the tendency some people have to immediately go offline when your name appears in the chat window. I’m not saying that it has happened to me, per se, but after a couple of humiliating instances where my hilarious opening chat line is ignored, and its follow up prompts FB to tell me that the particular person is offline, and would I like to send a message? Well, I would sense a pattern…you know, if it ever happened to me. It’s akin to the phenomenon that happens when you see a person at the bar who owes you money, or was a one night hook-up …I imagine. Then when you turn to approach them you see an overturned chair with a still smoking ciggy in the table’s ash tray. Premature evacuation.
Random Fandom
Seriously? You are a fan of hot showers? Cake? Birthdays? Pina Coladas? Getting caught in the rain? SO WHAT! I am a fan of you giving me an effing break. Facebook isn’t a charm bracelet.
The Yellow Pages Friend Collector
Do not send someone a friend request just because you are trying to beef up your numbers. It’s lame as hell. It gives me anxiety, because for one, I have no freaking idea if I should remember you or not, and for two, once I confirm you, I live in fear that I may at some point need to prematurely evacuate in the middle of a REAL chat with someone that I actually like, because here you come, trying to dredge up some lame ass memory about how you and I wore the same scrunchy at a school dance (hilarity!), asking me if I remember how boring Mrs. Isakson’s class was. I DON’T remember, and even if I do, I don’t care. I have even had people request me because 2 or 3 of their friends are my friends …wtf are we supposed to talk about? Good rule of thumb: If we never signed each other’s yearbook, held each other’s hair back over a toilet, or would pointedly ignore each other in line at Target, move on. Just move on
News Ticker Updaters
You know who you are because you move through your day thinking in status updates. How you still can’t manage to come up with anything interesting is beyond me. “Joe Alan Dipshit is getting ready to clip his toenails…yowza!” “Joe Alan Dipshit may have just cut his pinky toenail too short…OUCH!” “Joe Alan Dipshit is putting the toenail clippers away and getting ready to go eat some chips!!!” Now, I will admit I update, A LOT…sometimes 3 or more times in one day. But at least I try and make that shit funny or insert a secret message to somebody. I’m not Doogie Howser up in here, using my status updates as the world’s most boring diary.
Now, to those of you who found this blog after my status update alerted you to its existence…you know I’m not talking about you- crazy! You I love, and have absolutely no qualms with your FB etiquette. I just knew you would relate and stuff…and we both know who I am really talking about, right? Let’s meet for a ghetto drink later and talk it out.
Okay, there’s this girl? Bella Swan? And she moves to this remote town in Washington state and enrolls in a school where a family of vampires attend also? One of the vamps is incredibly sexy, and she falls for him utterly, and they begin almost immediately to obsess. Like immediately and all consuming. Never-want-to-look-away-obsessed. I know how it is.
Okay, do NOT judge me because I am totally infatuated with a book series that was written to push the buttons of a love starved 14-year-old, okay? Twilight may not have been designed with a 38-year-old housewife in mind, but like vampire/human romance, if my love for Edward Cullen isn’t exactly convenient, it IS all consuming. There is nothing to be done.
Like everyone who opens the books, I ripped through the first three in 2 days. It’s a good thing that Hub didn’t have to come home a third day to see me on the couch with my nose in the binding and only the back of my unwashed head visible from anywhere in the room. I was incapacitated, very angry when he suggested that I make some dinner.
“WHY can’t you more like a VAMPIRE!!!” I snarled (a phrase that has been on a loop all week) “They don’t even EAT dinner!”
“Because they eat PEO-ple” he singsongs back to me.
Well. He does have a point there.
Right, but it’s not as if we have any shortage of people in this hovel. Eddie could feed off Ryan the Hub for a week, easily long enough to get him to turn me. (I can’t help it! These thoughts come unbidden!)
Even when I’m not reading, I am with the vampire family in Forks, Washington. One of the vampires, Alice Cullen, is able to foresee the future. As I scrawl a broken sliver of Secret across my armpit, I think, “Alice should have forewarned me that I was almost out of deodorant” Another vampire is ridiculously strong. I have had many jobs for him as well (not all of them involve the sex swing). I continuously fantasize about having enough designer clothing to just throw away the things I’ve worn when I’m doing my 14th load of laundry, the vamps ARE wealth, they are rolling in money), or be able to get all kinds of crap done while I’m not wasting time with sleep, cooking, or applying anti-aging creams.
I held off reading the final book of the saga, partially because I wasn’t ready to end my time in Forks, partly because every book store in the area was out of copies. I was sure that I would appear in “Breaking Dawn”. I was just hoping that I wouldn’t turn out to be one of the werewolves, sworn enemies of the Cullen clan. I think I did find myself in one of the characters, a vampire from another family who harbors a deep unrequited love for Edward. It’s nice that I was written as breathtakingly beautiful, with a romantic Russian accent, but I would have traded it all to have been able to just bone Edward once. Just one time, in a nice flash back would have been nice. I could live of the memories of THAT for the rest of my eternal life.
I set Breaking Dawn
Since Stef is in the throes of the Twilight
First off, let me establish that there will be no list of resolutions. It strikes me as one of two things…easy blog fodder, or alternatively, a way of putting all those resolutions out there and expecting the judgment of readers and friends to keep your lazy ass in line. Not really fair whichever way you look at it.
Anyhoo, yeah, no resolutions, because seriously, mine are boring. And I never ever keep them. The very act of coming up with them (or rather listing the things that constantly nag me, since they are always there, just dying for an ink pen to validate them into a purer form of guilt) starts me instantaneously on a cycle of rebellion and defiance. Saying I need to lose 15 pounds makes me crave Cheez-Its. Saying I want to design some new stuff makes me sink into the couch for a Gilmore Girls
Anyway, I think its way more effective to not look directly at the resolution I’m not making, but to keep it back in the periphery and maybe chip away at it in a passive aggressive manner, not so that it, or my super ego would notice. That’s what I’ll say I’m going with.
That being said, if you are craving a cyber list, here is a good one by a wonderful blogger I love.
Also don’t miss the comment that another blogger I love makes about #27. Freaking hilarious. Which, if I was making resolutions, I would definitely resolve to be more of. Hilarious, I mean. Oh, and not to be so in love with 22-year-old angst monger vampires.
Happy New Year, dear friends!!!
I am being held hostage by the Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)
