Guns, dames, & the Friday Random Ten

Just saw the movie Road House. Not the Patrick Swayze movie, although may he rest in peace. This one was from 1948, with Ida Lupino as a night club singer/pianist who falls for the manager (Cornel Wilde) when the owner (Richard Widmark) assumed she was his girl. Lupino's very good,and rhw movie takes an interesting, low key approach to the noir genre. It's like a series of more-or-less uncomfortable situations, slowly building up, only exploding at the end. Though Widmark is nuts, of course.

1. R.E.M. - Pilgrimage
2. Love - Alone Again Or
3. Roxy Music - Cry, Cry, Cry
4. TV on the Radio - Shout Me Out
5. Chic - Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)
6. Radiohead - Dollars & Cents
7. The Magnetic Fields - In My Secret Place
8. The Beautiful South - Have You Ever Been Away
9. Rasputina - Gingerbread Coffin
10. Art Blakey - Moanin'

Fairly good news

Right call. Walmart is pretty close to its dream of owning entire megalopolises and having all the citizens take the surname "Walmart", a la Jennifer Government. So I'm glad Washington is opting to remain a real city for now.

Just the rabbits, ma'am

I feel sort of bad only putting a half-minute of this animation up, because it just establishes the look and feel. That's all there is, though. I'll have to remind myself to look out for this animator as she completes the project. Anyway, the stop-motion turntable is something else.

focus teaser from matusevich maria on Vimeo.

Tidbit

I will be responding to comments soon.  This has the disadvantage of being one of those blog posts I do when I should already be in bed.

Wanted to share this, though.  At lunch today I was doing the crossword and incidentally, through solving other clues, I filled in three squares with "LUX."  That was the whole answer, so I looked at the clue.  It was "Interior of the Cramps."  I was happy to be vindicated in my answers, and also that the auhtor remembered old Erick Purkhiser.

Friday Random Ten: A Heated List

Nothing like the day after a major holiday when the temperature is in the 90s with a "feels like" factor of 100 or more.  Huge number of people staying home or returning home ASAP.  Somehow I managed to keep busy at work.

1. Chic - Good Times
2. XTC - In Loving Memory of a Name
3. David Bowie - Valentine's Day
4. Rasputina - Our Lies
5. They Might Be Giants - Circular Karate Chop
6. Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Look Out There's a Monster Coming
7. Radiohead - You and Whose Army
8. Arcade Fire - Windowsill
9. Love - Andmoreagain
10. Martin Denny - The Enchanted Isle

"America" is MIA

I was intending to put Prince's song "America" up in celebration of Independence Day.  It's kind of a polarizing song, even among his fans.  Some don't like him getting preachy and political, while others are rubbed the wrong way by the song's sort of conservative tone.  I've always found it fascinating, in part because of the tension between the lyrics and the music.

To post it, though, I'd pretty much need a video.  Not an official music video, or even necessarily something with moving images.  Just something I could embed in the place where a video would go.  And as far as I can tell there's none online for that song.

It always surprises me these days when something isn't on the Internet.  We've just been conditioned to expect everything will be.  Inconvenience aside, maybe I should be relieved.

Non-combatant

Today at the place where I volunteer the lady who's been supervising me the last couple of weeks (I kind of float from place to place) set up a computer and left me to it.  When she was gone, a guy said she was trying to get credit for my work and called her something that rhymes with "stunt."

I don't really care about profanity in the workplace, in general.  Nor am I going to assume the fellow is a sexist just from that.  There's not enough to go on.  From the context it's plausible he was trying to help me.

Thing is, though, even when I'm a paid employee I avoid office politics like the plague.  Going into work every day with the predisposition that some people are allies and others are enemies?  Don't really need that.  Yes if someone fucks me over personally or does something over the line - and this is important, if I know about it for sure - then yes, that will affect my attitude toward them.  But this is not a situation to be embraced.

Really I try to approach all of life like that.  The universe isn't helped by me having an opinion about every little thing.