Friday Random Ten without

Didn't get any trick or treaters tonight. Well, didn't see any. For a good chunk of the evening I was hanging out elsewhere. For some reason a sing on the door reading "Hey kids door open and candy. S inside" didn't seem like a great idea.

1. Lou Rawls - Down Here On the Ground
2. New Order - Your Silent Face
3. Lambert, Hendricks & Ross - Bijou
4. Laurie Anderson - Walking and Falling
5. Metric - Youth Without Youth
6. Saint Vincent - I Prefer Your Love
7. Fleetwood Mac- Tusk
8. Fats Domino - Poor Me
9. The Band - The Weight
10. Diana Krall - Let's Fall In Love

Pre-Halloween musical fun

Here is one wacky cover. It's Screamin' Jay Hawkins singing Tom Waits' "Heart Attack & Vine" even hammier than the original, which should be impossible. Also he changes the line "There ain't no Devil there's just God when He's drunk" by substituting his own name for God's. Hope the Almighty has a sense of humor.

To the moon, Alice!

The now not so recent changes in Blogger don't bother me as much now that I know that for text + media posts such as this one you can go back and forth from "compose" to "media." Which helps.

Anyway if you're out there, I hope that you're doing well, and that the blessings of the Halloween season are upon you.

Half The Moon Away from Sophie McPike on Vimeo.

Sleeping beauty

Weird thing with the laptop tonight. I got home and it wouldn't stop hibernating. Not until I shut the power off cold, turned it on again and put up with all the restarting rigamarole. Which is probably not the best thing to do, but then neither is muling opium from Turkey, which I bring up for no particular reason.

No, I've looked this problem up and they suggest updating some drivers. This is worth a try, I just couldn't do it in the moment.

Timeless Saturday Random Ten

So I keep my watch X number of minutes on purpose. Partly so it won't be slow. Today a lady caught sight of my watch for a couple of seconds. She complains that the bus is late. I say no, my watch is fast. This doesn't seem to have any effect on her, so I repeat it. The bus comes and she bitches at the driver for being late, which of course the driver isn't.

Is it just plain easier to give the wrong impression than the right one?

1. Diana Krall - East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)
2. Paul Simon - Sure Don't Feel Like Love
3. Broadcast - America's Boy
4. Benny Spellman - Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette)
5. Camper Van Beethoven - You Got to Roll
6. Ladytron - Sugar
7. Fleetwood Mac - Ledge
8. New Pornographers - Brill Bruisers
9. Brian Eno - Little Fishes
10. Elvis Costello & the Attractions - You Belong to Me

Behind the scenes

It being the second half of October, I'm hoping to put up a really weird post soon. If not creepy weird, at least surreal weird. As to what that entails, still figuring that out.

Ear. Shot.

Heard earlier tonight from a well-dressed fellow:

"Starbucks, this Starbucks has the most fucked up people. I mean, they're all assholes."

Was this gentleman drunk? I kind of hope he had at least that excuse. He was right in front of the counter, and I was further away from him than that and could hear him loud and clear. If you don't have the balls to cuss people out to their face, make an effort to insure that they don't wind up hearing you.

Saturday Random Ten under some duress

Greetings. Blogging has been light of late. Mainly because of a couple of things distracting in a not-too-fun way. One is a clog in the bathtub that's happened to be so insoluble that I might just turn it over to the professionals. God, the plumbing in this place sucks. Also my mailbox is jammed and I can't open it which gets worse with every item the carrier crammed in. I talked to the carrier unit and told them about it and they said they'd have someone unlock it and take the mail out. Then, no one did. So I have to beat on them a little more.

And just when I was maybe starting to feel sorry for myself, along comes the magic of Guy Debord's Muppets to show me... Well, "hope" seems like the wrong word.

1. Beastie Boys - All Lifestyles
2. Sarah Vaughan - You Hit the Spot
3. New Pornographers - Dancehall Domine
4. Dave Van Ronk - House Carpenter
5. Broadcast - I Found the F
6. R.E.M. - Good Advices
7. St. Vincent - Birth in Reverse
8. Heidi Bruhl - Mister Love
9. Camper Van Beethoven - Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out
10. Lou Rawls - Love is a Hurtin' Thing

Guten abend

Gonna hit the hay now. I'll be needing to be kind of sharp tomorrow, to the extent that it's possible for me to be so. I'll have to figure something else out too. More later.

Never go to bed angry

I actually saw Gone Girl in its opening weekend, a week ago yesterday. Meaning that I'm a little behind-the-beat in blogging about it. Not that I'm required to, but it is kind of a notable movie.

One of the reasons I was interested to see the movie was to compare it to the book. I read the book after seeing it on the Shirley Jackson Award shortlist, and found it pretty twisty.

As an adaptation, it's not obsessively close like Roman Polanski did with Rosemary's Baby. It is pretty close, though. I had sort of imagined that Nick Dunne would be played by someone like Ben Affleck, and wouldn't you know, he gets the starring role. Now in the original story Amy is seven years older than Nick. In Hollywood as it is, that's just not going to happen onscreen, sad to say. My educated guess is that Affleck is supposed to be playing younger than his 41-42 years, but not substantially younger than Rosamund Pike's character.

The story could be called feminist or misogynist, I guess. It's not my job to worry about labels like that. Men are largely ineffectual, though. The big villain in the film - not saying who - is a woman. But anything good that comes about also seems to happen because of female effort too. It's possible David Fincher just had an idea such a movie would be fun to watch.

Early 90s nuttiness

Fishbone - Sunless Saturday (Live 1991) by greiggy321

Been kind of a sneezy day. What are you gonna do? Keep blogging, I guess.

This is Fishbone from Saturday Night Live in 1991. That's Jeremy Irons introducing them. It's the kind of performance that can make you sit up and pay attention, as it did with me. Both times I've seen them live they've kept up an energy level like this.

Mayor's own Friday Random Ten

Want an ad blitz? A truly epic one is underway in Providence, with Buddy Cianci vying for a third lengthy term as mayor. In current lawn signs and other campaign paraphernalia the toupee is dead and buried, the candidate openly chrome-domed. It does make him look more trustworthy one one level.

1. Heidi Bruhl - Sag Mir Leis "Je t'aime"
2. The New Pornographers - Backstairs
3. Laurie Anderson - O Superman (For Massenet)
4. Diana Krall - The Best Thing for You
5. Fleetwood Mac - Never Make Me Cry
6. Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderly - The Masquerade Is Over
7. Imperial Teen - Hanging About
8. Nellie McKay - I am Nothing
9. Lou Rawls - Trouble Down Here Below
10. Dave Van Ronk - Silver Dagger

It all comes out in the wash

Usually I do my laundry during the day. I'm able to take a little time off every couple of weeks to do a few needed errands during the day, laundry included.

This week a guy I work with is out. I have to cover for him, so he can't for me. So I had to wait until evening to do my wash.

Main difference is that the TV shows in the background are (even) more obnoxious. This definitely includes the nightly network news broadcast. Brian Williams may be a cool guy in regular life, I have no way of knowing that.  IN the context of the news, he's a useless empty shirt.

Still, I like this laundromat. Hope they don't think I'm blaming them.

No defense

In resoonse to Bill Maher here, I guess I can only say - and this is in direct response to the header - so what? Being a liberal isn't a catch-all explanation. Calling yourself or someone else by the word accomplishes nothing. And if liberals and conserviatives agree amongst themselves that a certain group deserves persecution, that's not justice. It's a huge chunk of Southern history is what it is.

Deeply plumbed Friday Random Ten

There are few forms of bliss which can compare with the euphoria one feels when one's bathroom sink has experienced low-to-know drainage for several days unto weeks, and then one places an auger or "snake" into the drain and twists it for a few seconds, resulting in an empty sink a few seconds later. The feeling even survives the need to wash out a malodorous clump of hair and got knows what from the auger after the job is done.

1. Fleetwood Mac - Sara
2. Brian Eno - Becalmed
3. Tito Puente - Mambo Diablo
4. The Band - This Wheel's on Fire
5. Metric - Nothing But Time
6. Fats Domino - Jambalaya
7. The Velvet Underground - Lady Godiva's Operation
8. The New Pornographers - Hi-Rise
9. St. Vincent - Psychopath
10. Broadcast - I Found the End

The part of the year where we start talking about "good sleeping weather"

In the wake of the three day rainstorm that's just passed, I think I can say we've buried summer, dug up its grave, shot it, and buried it again.