20 Questions on Music

Another idea stolen from someone else's LiveJournal. 20 interesting questions, and my answers of the moment:

1. Your favorite song with the name of a city in the title or text.

This is easy. It's gotta be "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" by They Might Be Giants

2. A song you've listened to repeatedly when you were depressed at some point in your life.

"Birds and Ships" from Mermaid Avenue by Billy Bragg & Wilco (sung, I believe, by Natalie Merchant)

3. Ever bought an entire album just for one song and winded up disliking everything but that song? Gimme that song.

"Fight The Power" from "Fear of a Black Planet" by Public Enemy. Not that it's a bad album, but I wasn't even close to being ready for it when I got it.

4. A song whose lyrics you thought you knew in the past, but about which you later learned you were incorrect.

"Talk About The Passion" from Murmur by REM. It was about 3 months ago when I finally figured out it was "comme bien du temps" (at least that's what I think it is now). I always just sang gibberish when I sang along. Of course, that's what one did when singing to early mumbly-Stiped REM.

5. Your least favorite song on one of your favorite albums of all time.

Another easy one. "Yellow Submarine" from The Beatles' Revolver

6. A song you like by someone you find physically unattractive or otherwise repellent.

"You Never Can Tell" by Chuck Berry. Not the most pleasant mug to gawk at. Plus, there's all that video-taping-woman-using-the-toilet-in-his-restaurant stuff

7. Your favorite song that has expletives in it that's not by Liz Phair.

"Fuck Her Gently" by Tenacious D

8. A song that sounds as if it's by someone British but isn't.

"Harry's Wall" by Loudon Wainwright lll, not because he sounds British, but only because he states his address in the song. It's a London address.

9. A song you like (possibly from your past) that took you forever to finally locate a copy of.

I can't think of any songs that are now difficult to locate.

10. A song that reminds you of spring but doesn't mention spring at all.

"Oblivious" by Aztec Camera. Light and crisp.

11. A song that sounds to you like being happy feels.

"Ranking Full Stop" by The Beat. Is there anything more fun than dancing with a group of people to a ska band?

12. Your favorite song from a non-soundtrack compilation album.

"I Love Paris" by Les Negresse Vertes from Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter

13. A song from your past that would be considered politically incorrect now (and possibly was then).

Can't recall any recorded song that would fit this description. However, there's a version of "I'm a Little Teapot" that I ocassionally sing that's not very correct.

14. A song sung by an overweight person.

Other than my version of "I'm a Little Teapot"? Hmm, I'd say "Move Your Feet" by Junior Senior. I believe Senior is overweight.

15. A song you actually like by an artist you otherwise hate.

"Nothing Compares 2 U" by Sinead O'Connor. It's the only song I like by her. I don't hate her, but this is as close as I can come, I guess.

16. A song by a band that features three or more female members.

"Those Memories Of You" by The Trio (Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Linda Rondstat) Not really a band, but close enough.

17. One of the earliest songs that you can remember listening to.

"My Brother Paul" by Stompin' Tom Connors

18. A song you've been mocked by friends for liking.

I've been mocked for having "Oh Sherrie" by Steve Perry in my music collection, even though I don't like him/it. It's there for my wife. I swear.

19. A really good cover version you think no one else has heard.

Cracker performing a countryfied version of "White Riot" by The Clash

20. A song that has helped cheer you up (or empowered you somehow) after a breakup or otherwise difficult situation.

"My City of Ruin" by Bruce Springsteen from America: A Tribute to Heroes

Athlete, Hear Thyself

A baseball pitcher told a reporter that it was obvious, just by looking at Barry Bonds, that he has been taking steroids.

This is part of Bonds' reply:

"I heard about his comments. If you've got something to say, say it to my face," Bonds said. "Don't talk through the media."

"I'm not worried about him. I'm not worried about anyone. I have a lot of respect for Turk Wendell. I have a lot of respect for every baseball player in this game," he added. "You got something to say, you come to my face and say it and we'll deal with each other. Don't talk through the media like you're some tough guy."

...said Bonds, talking through the media like he was some tough guy.

That's even more ironic than rain on your wedding day.

Warriors...Come Out And Play-Ee-Ayyy!!

Moments ago, I was spoken to by some sort of higher force. It said "It's time for the remake of The Warriors."

I can see it. Absolutely. Dope ST, dawg. Starring a murder of current rappers, hip-hoppers. A who's who of da nizzle, my frizzles.

Who's in as producer?

What movie from the past is ripe for the remake, according to you?

Random Notes

Okay, so I saw some other *ugh* blogger do this, and I thought I'd give it a go, too.

I'm going to randomize my complete music library into a playlist. I present here the first 20 songs, good and bad, embarrassing and not.

Here they are:

1) We're Going To Be Friends - The White Stripes

2) All This Useless Beauty - Elvis Costello

3) We'll Meet Again - Johnny Cash

4) Headache - Frank Black

5) One Week - Barenaked Ladies

6) Pontiac - Lyle Lovett

7) Politik - Coldplay

8) Carnival of the Animals, The Swan - Saint-Saens (not sure of composer. This is some classical piece)

9) Sing It Again - Beck

10) I Saw Her Standing There - The Beatles

11) Eyes Without A Face - Billy Idol

12) Courage - The Tragically Hip

13) Tomb Of The Boom - Outkast

14) Simple Pages - Weezer

15) Don't Stand So Close To Me - The Police

16) Old King Kong - George Jones

17) Twist The Knife - Neko Case

18) The Needle and the Damage Done - Neil Young

19) Lonestar - Norah Jones

20) Daisies of the Galaxy - Eels

Okay, so as I was typing this, I took the liberty to remove repeat artists. For instance, Elvis Costello showed up again at #18 with "What's Her Name Today", and Johnny Cash repeated at #9 with "See Ruby Fall". So, this is actually the first 22 songs in the "All My Songs" playlist.

Not a bad mix, if I do so say. If I was to burn it to a CD, I'd probably remove the classical piece and Billy Idol, plus take out "One Week" simply because it's been an over-played radio staple.

WotD: recrudescent

After a multi-day break from this site, I hope to experience a recrudescent period of active posting here once again.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Check this out. It's pretty funny. Esto no es una canción rebelde. Éste es domingo domingo sangriento (sorry, it's .ram)

Wonder Twin Power, Activate!

I was walking back to work at lunch today, and I saw a guy trotting up a street carrying a cumbersome load of papers in his arms. He was, perhaps, 30 yards from where I was. He didn't drop his pile of paper, but as I saw him, I wondered: if he did start to drop it, and I had super power strength or ability or speed, would it be worth my trouble to go and prevent the accident. Further imagining my super-powers to be secret to the public, I decided it wouldn't be worth the trouble of possible discovery of my wonderful abilities. (Yes, I'm 38 years old.)

But that got me wondering something else. In my lifetime, what incidents (that didn't directly involve me) have I personally witnessed where the use of some super-human ability would have been 'worth the trouble'? Had I witnessed a car accident, where my super-speed could have shoved the little girl out of the way of the speeding car? No, nothing like that rings a history bell with me.

After a thorough 20 second google of my brain, I came up empty. I couldn't think of anything that sticks out in my life that would have benefitted from my secret super powers.

What about any of you? Have you been in the vicinity of some event or accident or incident where you'd have used a secret super-power to keep it from happening?

WotD: quietus

Having spent more years than I should have in my poverterial (my word) pursuit of the performing arts, and acquiring the financial debt that this implies, I now take serious aim at freeing myself of this obligation, and look forward to the day (year?) when I am finally quietus in my relationship with Mastercard and Visa.

For Al: They can take away our amplifier and our guitars, but they'll never quietus.

Ell Oh Ell

I have a sense of humour. Everyone does, of course, to varying degrees. And each of us has a differing opinion on what is funny.

One aspect of my sense of humour relies on sarcasm and, to some extent, on the appearance that I mean what I say. For me, a sarcastic remark is best if the receiver of it isn't sure if it is, in fact, sarcasm. And I may go to great lengths to not give anything away.

In the textual world of the internet, sarcasm is a tough sell. Especially for someone who doesn't like to make the sarcasm obvious. So, when you come across any of my online personas: Unka Whiskerz in the lolita chat rooms; BlueBallzz in the fetish forums; AzzCrackz in the big bum boards, or Lieutenant Dan in any of the alt. newsgroups, don't be looking for an "lol", or a winking smiley face emoticon from me, because I won't give it away that easily.

I made the committment not to give it away so easily on that night, right after I lost my cherry.

Sketch 22

Well, it looks like we've saddled ourselves with a name for both our group and for our show this summer.

We are, and it is, called 'Sketch 22'. Now, of course, we wait for the inevitable 'there's a group in blah-blah who have that name', or 'What? Just like 22 minutes?', or 'that name sucks'. To all of that, I say:

That'll do, pig. That'll do.

You can catch a sneak peek during the TheatrePEI theatre festival in late March.

Lunch Plans?

Someone just asked me if I had plans for lunch.

It strikes me as odd that 'plan' needs to be pluralized here. Whose lunch is so complicated, so detailed, that they need to create more than one plan? Even so, if your lunch is so complicated, detailed and full of things to do that it requires you to create a list, wouldn't that still just be a plan? Does the 'plans' refer to contingencies in case the original plan gets altered? If so, how many of us make up plans in advance? Don't most of us make one plan for lunch, and if that falls through, then we make another plan?

Don't even get me started on that single item of clothing called 'pants'.

I Had A Sandbox Too, But...

...I never made anything like this. Granted, my sandbox wasn't backlit.

It's a fair-size download (18M) for you dial-uppers, but I found this to be extremely cool, soothing, comforting (I'm not sure why), and beautiful.

Triomphe, le chien comique d'insulte

To those offended by the Quebec musings of Conan's puppet dog, I say:

Yawn.

M-O-O-N...that spells Big Tom

I swear to god, this is what I heard last night during Survivor when “Pretty Boy” Probst (so-called by Boston Rob) asked Big Tom what he thought about Jenna abandoning the game in favour of going home to be with her dying mother:

Ahm gamma dohney abrroot atorpin’ betingluh shamoo applain. Tuh dumbah samgamblin’ abrroot muh whole family in a car crash, bin laden samores tadingluh Big Tom for Big Tom.

I swear, that’s what I heard.

Time Flies When You're Getting Old

On my homepage, myway.com (an excellent commercial/popup free alternative to the more popular yahoo or msn, commercial-filled versions ), I get a daily update on whose birthday it is.

Today is Christina Ricci's birthday. She was born in 1980. 1980!!!! But she's a grown-up. That depressed the hell outta me. Then I got more depressed when I realised that probably some people who read this are even younger than that.

I have a hard time grasping the concept that it's possible that people born during my initial pubic hair-bearing years could possibly have pubic hair of their own now. Was 1980 really that long ago? Shouldn't someone born in 1980 still be in, I don't know...junior high, at most? Where did the '90s go? Aren't I still 'just out of my 20s', even though it's been 3/4 of a decade since a '2' appeared anywhere in my age?

sigh

At least it's good to have the hell outta me for a while, even if it was depressed outta me.

WotD: bombinate

Our new fridge is working wonderfully. We had to replace the old one because it couldn't be trusted to keep things cold, and it would bombinate in the most annoying way.

The Firefox Arena

I am proposing we change the name of the Silverfox curling club in Summerside to the Firefox. Sure, the fox industry, specifically the silver fox industry, has been an important part of our Island history, but that's history. Let's be more progressive and name it (or at least something here on the island, maybe the Firefox Tearoom?) in recognition of the wonderful work done by Steven Garrity, Stephen DesRoches and Daniel Burka on the branding design and visual identity of the beautiful new Firefox browser (formerly Firebird).

Well done guys. Even though I've never met any of you, I'm now proud (and more happy than ever) to use Firefox as my default browser knowing that some Island boys were so instrumental in its branding design.

WotD: rapport

Being shy and guarded with my emotions, it can be difficult for me to build a rapport with those people whom I meet casually.

WotD: miasma

I've recently removed a few blogs from my daily reading list. One of them in particular because I thought it to be a miasma of pomposity.

She Loves You, And Loves You, Amen

I may have reported here before of my love of The Beatles. It's boring to say, but they are my favourite band.

One of the problems with being such a huge fan of a musical group or artist, I think, is what I'll call the 'Trees for the Forest' syndrome. By that, I mean that because I know so well every aspect of the songs, sometimes I can be listening to a song but not really hear it. Because it's so familiar to me, sometimes I take the song for granted, I think, and don't hear the drums, bass, guitars and vocals for what they are. I hear it from rote, without really paying attention to it.

That's why it's great, lately, to be hearing some previously unrelesed or hard-to-come-by Beatles music. Because I know the familiar recordings too well, the differences in these alternate takes, outtakes, etc. can startle me and cause me to hear the songs anew.

A couple of great sources for alternate Beatles songs, and history are found at the NPR site, from a program called All Songs Considered. I watched (although mostly it's just a couple of guys sitting in chairs, and occasional still photos) one this afternoon called The Birth Of Beatlemania (high speed recommended). It focused on the year 1963 and the path of events that took the Beatles to America. Very interesting to me. The second, which I am going to watch now, has to do with The Lost Beatles and recordings from Let It Be that were stolen 30 years ago and only recently recovered.

If you're deep into The Beatles like I am, I'll bet you'll enjoy them quite a bit.

WotD: Hector

A new, periodic-to-daily, until-I-get-tired-of-it feature of The Annekenstein Monster will be the Dictionary.com word of the day, used in a paragraph of my creation that somehow relates to something that's going on in my life.

Today's word: Hector

This week, there has been quite a bit of talk, on a couple of blogs I frequent, about the word "vagina". Fortunately, the debates remained civil and nobody attempted to hector another.

Heaven and Helen

My wife's grandmother, Helen, in her 10th decade, suffered a large heart attack about a week ago. She'd been in the hospital ever since, at times seeming like she'd pull through, at other times seeming pretty frail and showing her age and condition. Upon her being admitted to the hospital, the nurses told the family to expect Helen to not leave the hospital, and so, over the past week, we were expecting death to come. Today at noon It did.

I wasn't really close to Helen. I liked her and she was friendly enough to me over our 20 years of knowing each other, but in the past few years, I'd only seen her a couple of times. Karyn and Cameron, the church-goers in our family of three, would see her much more often at church.

One of my last memories of her was when she, still living on her own in her own home, invited us to stay for lunch during one of our visits to see her. We didn't really want to stay but we did. She made us Kraft Dinner. From what I remember, she didn't have any milk for the cheese mix, so she used a bit of water instead. Unfortunately, she used too much water, and the resulting cheese sauce was pretty weak. Actually, the word 'weak' implies much more flavour than what was contained in that dinner. It was, by far, the worst macaroni and cheese I've ever eaten.

Still, it was a nice visit, and she was remarkably smart and clear and spright for a lady of her age. And in my 20 years of knowing her, I've never seen her angry or unpleasant, and she was always quick to laugh.

She was a pretty religious lady. And even though I am not religious at all... Helen, I hope everything works out for you.

If I Could Save Hair In A Bottle

Well, it was bound to happen. Obviously, a few months ago, all the pipes and plumbing in our bathroom got together and planned this. First it'll be the toilet that goes. The bathroom sink and its pipes, having been replaced a mere year or two ago, decided it'd be obvious if they went again. Now, the final bit of bathroom plumbing has decided to malfunction and depart. So, today, we have new taps and shower, plus new pipes leading to the taps and shower.

To get to the pipes, our interim plumber (the much appreciated Cecil has put his back out and was unable to attend to our needs) had to go in from the bathroom closet. That means the wall in the closet had to be, um, removed. That means that everything in the closet had to be removed.

The closet in question has probably seven shelves, and is as deep as a standard tub is wide. Pretty deep, for a closet, I think. Over the 10+ years of living here, we've begun using less and less of the back areas of those shelves. Lately, in fact, I'd guess we only use the front 6 inches of those shelves. That's not to say the rest of the area is empty. Quite the opposite, in fact. All the shelves are piled deep with all sorts and manner of bathroom and non-bathroom items. Many of which have not been seen for years.

One of those objects was a pill bottle that contained some of Cameron's baby hair. Much lighter than it is now. I found it interesting how my wife was quite struck by the memories that this bottle of hair elicited, yet my reaction was (perhaps typical of the male of the species) more along the lines of "Erp."

The difference must have something to do with the fact that she has a vagina

Strumtrulescent

For those, like me, who are a fan of both, Johnny Depp will be on The Actor's Studio tonight on Bravo.