For the last couple weeks, I haven’t been able to get this tune out of my head . ”Song For Zula” is a new(ish) song from Matthew Houck’s Phosphorescent, and it’s got some gorgeous instrumentals.
But I hadn’t really taken the time to listen to the lyrics and that was a mistake. Here’s a taste: Read More
Confession Time: my favorite movie, from about age 12 to age 16, was Baz Luhrmann’s adaption of Romeo and Juliet. If you were too busy being cool in the late 1990s, that was the one with the Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah, that’s right – my teenage self was into DiCaprio way before Titanic.
My second favorite thing about the movie – after the aforementioned DiCaprio, of course – was the soundtrack. For a 12 year old, it felt pretty edgy: Garbage, Radiohead, Butthole Surfers.
Now, Baz Luhrmann is dipping back into the 10th grade English curriculum with a new adaptation of The Great Gatsby, due out in theaters on May 10th, and the soundtrack is shaking up to be just as good as that Romeo and Juliet tape was to my 6th grade self. Read More
You know who the most punk people on the planet are?
Toddlers.
Seriously. Angsty teenagers think they’ve got the market cornered on punk, but they’re too self-conscious to completely pull it off. Toddlers don’t have that problem, mainly because they don’t really care about anyone but themselves.
Think of the most epic outburst from a punk band you can come up with. Got it? Okay, well there’s a two-year-old at an Olive Garden that is throwing a tantrum that is putting that band to shame. Toddlers don’t give a fuck.
One time Matt Pond PA called me an alcoholic. This is true. It really did happen. I was sort of insulted by it but perhaps that is mainly because it seemed to hit too close to home!
Well sort of. I mean I guess I am worried about drinking too much but I do not feel like I am an alcoholic or anything really.
Anyway this is about Matt Pond PA. And really only tangentially about my drinking…
The other day, I’d had a bad day at work and come home in a bad mood. This prompted Dan, as it always goes, to sing the only words he knows from Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day”.
Yes, that means he just sings “You had a bad day” over and over because those are the only words anyone knows to that song. I pulled up the song on YouTube hoping Dan might learn another part of the song to sing on repeat, and ended up going down a Daniel Powter themed Internet black hole.
This yielded some important findings, such as the fact that there is a Chipmunks version of “Bad Day”, and it’s just as awful as you’d expect. But mostly it just made me sad, because major portions of Powter’s wikipedia page are dedicated to the fact that he is a one hit wonder.
Don’t know how many of you are in school, but if you’re a student or teacher right now, you know it’s crunch time. K-12 schools are facing the evil that is standardized testing, while college students are realizing that all those final projects they’ve been avoiding are due in the next few weeks.
(Also, given the date, I’d bet it’s crunch time for accountant too, but I have a feeling my accountant readership is pretty low).
But if you’re around any kind of educational institution right now, you’re probably feeling the stress. Even if you are on top of all your work, that creeping sense of “I’m/my students are gonna fail!” is pretty much unavoidable. Read More
On Saturday, I got the chance to go to a showing of the indie film Somebody Up There Likes Me, which had a Q&A with the director Bob Byington and actor/producer Nick Offerman. And it was awkward. Oh, so awkward.
Why was it so awkward?
Well, in part it was because it was a late showing and the place where I saw it serves alcohol. So I think it’s safe to assume a good chunk of the audience was pretty buzzed by the time the Q&A started. And, despite what you might think, drunk people don’t come up with the most insightful questions.
But I also think some of it came from the fact that many of the audience members were giddy to be seeing Nick Offerman, aka the real life Ron Swanson. So they basically asked any dumb question they could think of in order to have a moment with him.
Which I get, because who doesn’t love Ron Swanson (and getting to brag to your friends about interacting with a famous person)?
So there’s a couple ways you can think about the new video from Charli XCX, which features her hanging around a hotel room with a few friends:
Option A: Charli knew she had to film a video for this track, so she invited two of her best friends over to her hotel room, where they hung out and and sang along with the camera rolling.
Option B: Charli’s manager/PR people decided she needed to film a video for this track, so they spent weeks finding two women that fit the image of ‘friend of Charli XCX’, then spent another few weeks scouting the perfect location. Every aspect of the video, down to pizza and the runs in Charli’s tights, is fully scripted.
When Vampire Weekend’s first album came out, I adored it. I played it everywhere, even in my 2nd grade class until I realized they were singing ‘fuck’ repeatedly in “Oxford Comma.” And you know what? I still love that album.
And you know, for a while, the indie scene loved Vampire Weekend too. And then that love started to wane. There’s probably lots of reasons: they got hyped beyond what any band can live up to, their second album wasn’t as good as their first, they went to an Ivy League school.
But I think a major reason people’s love started to wane was that they got ‘mainstream’. It’s a claim as old as ‘hip’ has existed – that you liked a band before they became cool – and it’s a tired debate to get involved with. Read More
