a fool's musings

Boreas by Waterhouse
Fool, said my muse to me,
look in thy heart and write...

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"pathological and unbalanced"

Items of Interest

    Music
  • Walk On - U2
  • Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
  • If I Can't Change Your Mind - Sugar
  • Sick of Myself - Matthew Sweet
  • Town Called Malice - The Jam
  • One - U2
  • The Space Between - DMB
    Books
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Catch-22
  • The Neely Trilogy
  • Absalom! Absalom!
  • Possession: A Romance
  • Foucault's Pendulum
  • Dreamhouse
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  • I Capture the Castle
  • Sandman
  • Waking the Moon

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  • Angel

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  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer (in reruns)

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  • The Simpsons

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2002-01-31 - 9:50 p.m.

Books, etc.

Just finished Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.

Fun book, though I thought the ending was a little abrupt. I'm happy with Sampath's ending, but I want to know what happens when Kulji discovers the spy!

I'd love to keep a log of books I've read here, and what I think about them, but the amount actual reading I'm doing has plummeted. Hell, I barely have time to read fic, either. I don't read the NYer from cover to cover anymore, I barely skim Movieline... the internet has taken over my life.

This is bad on so many levels...

I think it definitely correlates to how uninspired I've been lately, vis a vis writing. Of course there hasn't been much L/R fic around lately to inspire me either, and I've got a backlog of like 83 stories in CLex, and a slightly smaller number of WW fics to read yet.

Sigh.

Here's a list of ten random books from my to-be-read pile:

  • Sick Puppy - Carl Hiaasen

  • Eleanor of Aquitaine - Alison Weir

  • The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien

  • The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction - Henry James

  • Enduring Love - Ian McEwan

  • Blood Artists - Chuck Hogan [I think I might read this next. A nice thriller sounds good to me about now.]

  • The Tesseract - Alex Garland (The Beach was overrated, I thought)

  • Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder

  • The Middle Heart - Bette Bao Lord

  • Gone for Good - Mark Childress

Whaddaya think of them apples?

~victoria

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2002-01-31 - 2:49 p.m.

There's more than one way to skin a cat!

from DevilDoll's LJ:


Find out which Buffy villian you are most like!
By calophi



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2002-01-31 - 2:36 p.m.

"Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz"

Ah, feeling much better now that I've had my daily ration of fried grease.

I still have a lovely glazed donut waiting for me, as well. Got it this morning at the deli, since yesterday no one (two words) had any - not in the caf and not in the deli.

I blame the influx of cops.

Saw a couple of cute ones down in the caf today. Gotta love a man with handcuffs and a nightstick.

So I'm still undecided about this bar on the left side of the page here. And I've modified the point size, to make for easier reading. Not too big, and not too small. Just right. At least I think so.

Led Zep Jumps on Ad Band-Wagon by David Hinckley.

Aside from the fact that I don't believe "bandwagon" is hyphenated, I usually agree with Hinckley. He's got a good insight into a lot of things, mostly musical.

And here he's dead on the money.

I will never forget the first time I heard How Soon Is Now used in a car commercial.

It damn near broke my heart and made me want to throw up.

Now you can say it wasn't really How Soon Is Now, it was Hippie Chick, which unapologetically and blatantly lifted the guitar riff. And you can say How Soon Is Now lost its currency and any claim to non-commercialism as soon as it became a hit on The Craft soundtrack, and then the themesong of Charmed, but that was the remake, and well, Richard Butler has alterna-cred. I mean, Psych Furs!

But hearing it in a Nissan commercial? bleh.

Who would ever have thought that Morrissey would sell out like that? One of the great guitar riffs of all time, used to peddle Maximas?

::shudder::

I mean, I figured Page and Plant were done for as soon as Page collarborated on that travesty of a "remake" of Kashmir with the craptacular Puff Daddy or whatever the hell he's calling himself now.

But Morrissey and Marr? I never would have expected it.

I mean, as a kid, I didn't realize that Lou Reed was such an icon of cool, and I thought it was cool that Take a Walk on the Wild Side was used in a Honda commercial.

Of course, I'd also been traumatized by having my dad sing the chorus as we walked through the mall, and believe me, when you're 13 years old, the last thing you want is to be anywhere near your dad when he starts singing in public places (unless your dad is a singer by trade, of course. Mine is not.).

So, you know, as a kid, that was kind of cool.

But these days, it's like a song doesn't even get on the radio and it's *aleady* in a commercial, and that doesn't make me believe in any later protestations of artistic integrity [Lenny Kravitz, this means you. It's bad enough you're an unoriginal hack. Did you have to sell out, too?]

Selling out is a concept I generally have trouble with, as well.

I mean, you can't tell me that most people don't get into a band for at least one of the three following reasons (and usually *all* three):

= to get laid
=to get rich and famous
=to get free beer

So all those whiners who complain about becoming famous [and god knows, I love some of 'em to death] knew what they were getting into when they signed their contracts. (The grabbing hands / grab all they can / All for themselves after all / ... Everything counts in large amounts / It's a competitive world)*

But that's a tangential issue.

People make records and put out music to make money.

If they didn't want to, they'd be busking in the subway or grinding it out in obscurity.

Therefore, becoming a huge rock star is not *selling out.*

I direct this argument at those fans - and you know who you are - who turn their noses up at certain artists' ::coughU2cough:: later work ::coughanythingafterUnforgettableFirecough:: , even if it happens to be their *best* work ::coughAchtungBabycough:: just because, through hard work and good music, a band blows up big.

Now, I do believe there is a thing called selling out, and I believe it usually happens *way* before this point.

To *me*, selling out is when a band puts out a couple albums, gets some critical acclaim but no sales, and then dramatically changes their sound, becoming more like whatever *is* selling at the moment, so they, too can go platinum.

That's selling out, babies.

Example: The Goo Goo Dolls.

First couple of albums, good, workmanlike rock and roll. They were hailed as "The New Replacements" which could only be a good thing [I heart the Mats]. Hell, Paul Westerberg wrote their freaking biggest hit at the time [We Are the Normal in case you were wondering].

But they never really broke out. Then grunge got big and faded, and *then* Goo Goo Dolls, with their revamp, playing up Johnny Rzeznik's looks and black nail polish, and their Adult Alternative stylings (I think there's another A word, but I can't remember it) and the song Name.

If you listen to latter-day Goo Goo Dolls, they do not, in my opinion, much resemble the same band who wrote such great songs on "Superstar Carwash" etc.

There *is* such a thing as expanding artistically and growing and trying new things. Yes. Absolutely.

See Metallica.

A band many have said sold out, but I think you can see the clear progression from early Metallica to the later model.

And I *lurve* the Black Album.

Then there's changing your style so you can become famous and make money.

And of course, there's selling your music to be used in commercials, which bugs the living hell out of me, though on some levels I'm glad, because it's introduced me to some lovely music I wouldn't have known about otherwise [Badly Drawn Boy, for example, or Sheila Chandra].

But overall, hearing the songs of my teenage years hawking cars really disturbs me.

Look, I'm all for making money and getting what you can while you can. Sure. Whatever.

But dammit, if that's what you're in it for, at least be fucking honest about it. Don't pretend to have any artistic integrity and then turn around and get rich off advertising.

I'll save the rant about advertising for another day.

I wanted to be in advertising, you know, when I got out of college, but with the recession and no experience, I couldn't do it.

So maybe I'm bitter. I dunno. *g*

~victoria

*If you know the song these lyrics come from, e me. *g*

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2002-01-31 - 10:15 a.m.

the art of corporate artifice

I'm supposed to be redoing letters I've already redone about 12 times (and I'm not exaggerating on that).

So of course, I'm writing in my diary instead. *g*

Random rambling thoughts on many things...

The art of corporate artifice:

The plant man was just in to water the plants that line the cabinets here on the floor.

Except, instead of watering them, he removed them and put in all new ones. Ones that don't look like they'd been left out in the desert for 40 days without water.

I love it.

Don't try to revive the plants. Just pitch 'em and bring in new ones.

Speaking of Big Evol MegaCorp, I really, really need to get a little more financial industry savvy. I just spoke with a guy at Deutsche Bank and asked him about the "indenture thingy".

Oy.

Speaking of "oy"... Last night's West Wing...

Turn back now if you haven't seen it, 'cause here be spoilers and I'm not leaving spoiler space except for this warning...

The Two Bartlets was an... odd episode, to say the least. Nothing seemed to tie together, with the A-plot and the B-plot and the Josh/Amy thing.

I mean, where the *HELL* did that ending come from? And maybe I've become overly-sensitized [snerk], but didn't Bartlet's last comment to Toby seem a little...anti-Semitic?

And so not loving Josh/Amy. And are we supposed to believe that Donna is now dating Cliff? I mean, he turned out to be an okay guy, and I'll forgive him the lapse in judgement for sleeping with Donna (I kinda have to, since I'm forgiving *her* the lapse in judgement, since Sorkin has given us no canonical reason for it), but still... just bringing up the diary at all during the investigation makes him a little suspect in my mind.

And I really, really wish they'd gotten Reed Diamond to play him. Because he's tall enough for Donna, and they'd look so pretty together. I mean, Feuerstein's adorable, don't get me wrong, but Diamond...*thud*

I really liked Sam last night, and his handling of the crackpot guy. That was sweet and sad. And of course, "This is just like D&D camp."

<*rolls*>

First off, there's such a thing as Dungeons & Dragons camp? And do I even want to know?

Second [and how come you never say, "second off"? Shouldn't there be a parallelism in the formatting of such a list? Gah.], Sam went to D&D camp?

It seems a little... plebeian for him, no?

And does he have a Latino background?

I wish Sorkin would come out and say so if he does.

CJ was, of course, wonderful, but Toby still seems unsettled and... distracted somehow, much as he did in 100K airplanes.

I have such a crush on CJ. I want to be her when I grow up.

~victoria
[current mood: bemused]
[current music: Life During Wartime - Talking Heads]

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The painting is "Boreas" by John William Waterhouse. Again, not a muse, but I like her. She suits the color scheme.

The quote is from Sir Philip Sidney.

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