...just saw that a book called Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter is coming out this July. If the cover is any indication (and the fact that her friend Dionne Warwick is involved), hopefully this will be a biography written with respect and consideration, not like the articles that ran in tabloids after Karen Carpenter passed away. Her lovely voice and music have often been overshadowed by her tragic death.

There's a Facebook page for the book:

http://www.facebook.com/search/?ref=search&q=little%20girl%20blue&init=quick#!/littlegirlbluekc?ref=search&sid=533065246.21501579..1

I remember a few weeks after she passed away, People magazine ran a cover article with a ghastly photo that was actually taken at a public appearance long before the last weeks of her death. Ironically, Karen Carpenter had physically "recovered," but the toll of intravenous 
feeding and sudden weight "gain" (what would still be under normal weight for most of us, but closer to a 'healthy' weight than it had been for her) on her tiny frame was too much for her heart.

In the more than 25 years since she died, the singer's life has been the brunt of eating disorder jokes and endless speculation about whether she also had bulimia. Sometimes lost in all of that is the fact that she was perhaps one of the greatest female vocalists of the 20th century....(of course I have loved the Carpenters since I was a child so I may be a bit biased)

On the Cars song Drive Benjamin Orr sounds mysterious, sad and all-too-knowing. Though Rick Ocasek is the name and face we usually put behind the wheel, I can't imagine anyone but Orr singing this track. It's probably one of the eeriest love songs (besides The Police's Every Breath You Take) to come out of the 80s and it's also one of the best (I think.)

Drive was the Cars' highest charting song in the United States. It was released in the summer of 1984 off their Heartbeat City album, but was still playing on the radio a lot when I started high school that fall.  For the longest time I associated it with everything that was weird, wonderful and upsetting about freshman year, but now I think of it as something else entirely.

It's not a sweet love song, it's not sugary or silly or cheesy...it's just brutally honest and yet...Rick Ocasek (who wrote it) talks of a love that never forgets and even as it has a bitter undertone, it's also about someone who still cares about the person who cast his love aside...

Of course, that's just my take...I may be reading too much into it. Besides, like any good song it's best to just let the sounds wash over you. 'Cause sometimes the whole reason we listen to music is so we can just be.

Some memories remain open wounds, even if they are really (in the long run) ridiculously unimportant ones from an equally ridiculous time in your past. You don't know they're still open until you hear an unexpected song in the supermarket or catch a glimpse of someone you had hoped you'd never see again as long as you lived...

Of course there are also those memories that come from out of nowhere without provocation or warning...somehow those are the worst ones...and like I do with other unwanted things rattling around inside my head, I just turn up the volume on my mp3 player and say, "I can't hear you!"

I know Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past!" But I disagree...we have to kill those pesky memories and show them who's boss once and for all. It's how we survive best.

I found Switched-On Bach at the library today and brought it home with me and I'm surprised at how much I hate it...I love Bach, but I guess I don't like the Moog Synthesizer...I've often hated things upon first listen, only to discover later I just didn't give them enough time...maybe that'll be the case with this?

"Air on The G String" is my favorite Bach, but this just doesn't sound like the G String I love....apparently, though, this album (first released in 1968) is quite popular in the classical music community and held in high regard...what am I missing?


for more info on the album:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched-On_Bach

I listen to this album (and the follow-up Two Suns) all the time. Singer Natasha Khan has said in interviews that she wants to "convey the fine line between passion and violence" in her music...I don't think she's talking about guns or knives or fighting, but about the passion behind emotions that cause us to do horrible things we later regret...

My favorite song of hers, though, has very little to do with passion OR violence. Instead, it's about the opposite...indifference or more appropriately...what happens when we lose passion. In the somber and very surreal sounding "What's A Girl To Do" Khan is singing of how much she still wants to love. But the feelings have gone and to where she has no idea. I don't think any song has ever so beautifully captured the pain of falling OUT of love with someone else.

And while the passion is gone...all the things that takes its place (guilt, sadness that the person who once was your world now sparks so little in you) are crippling.


...
As for the rest of the album, one word can sum it up: wow!! Every song is a stunner and her cover of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire" is a revelation!!

I'm determined to sell someone else besides me on Henry James before I die. It's not that he doesn't already have his fans (though probably not in the same number as Dickens or Austen) or that I'm the first person to ever hear of him. And I'll admit it's quite easy to make fun of his long-winded ways and his serious side profiles (he always is so stern in any picture I've ever seen of him.) But if you can wade through some of his runaway train sentences (which actually are quite lovely at times) you'll can find surprisingly 'modern' stuff like this:

“Oh no, that is not necessary,” Miss Daintry rejoined, with more exactness. “There are one or two, however, who always appreciate a pretty speech.” She added in an instant: “Do you remember Mrs Mesh?”

“Mrs Mesh?”   Florimond apparently did not remember.

“The wife of Donald Mesh; your grandfathers were first cousins. I don’t mean her grandfather, but her husband’s. If you don’t remember her, I suppose he married her after you went away.”

“I remember Donald; but I never knew he was a relation. He was single then, I think.”

“Well, he’s double now,” said Miss Daintry; “he’s triple, I may say, for there are two ladies in the house.”

“If you mean he’s a polygamist – are there Mormons even here?” Florimond, leaning back in his chair, with his elbow on the arm, and twisting with his gloved fingers the point of a small fair moustache, did not appear to have been arrested by this account of Mr Mesh’s household; for he almost immediately asked, in a large, detached way – “Are there any nice women here?”

“It depends on what you mean by nice women; there are some very sharp ones.”

“Oh, I don’t like sharp ones,” Florimond remarked, in a tone which made his aunt long to throw her sofa-cushion at his head. “Are there any pretty ones?”

She looked at him a moment, hesitating. “Rachel Torrance is pretty, in a strange, unusual way – black hair and blue eyes, a serpentine figure, old coins in her tresses; that sort of thing.”

“I have seen a good deal of that sort of thing,” said Florimond, abstractedly.

I especially like the part about throwing the sofa-cushion...who knew people in polite society had such thoughts back then? And apparently it was just as hard for single men and women as it is now:)

I remember when I first read James back in college...Washington Square was the first work of his I ever read and it touched me profoundly...and through all his (sometimes) dry way of putting things, I saw that he could see right through the veneer of proper society and heavy clothing to the heart that beats in anyone who has ever been manipulated or spurned in the name of love...or lack of it.

"Buildings & Mountains" by The Republic Tigers is one of the most amazing songs I've ever heard...check out the video:


http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=33300019

I couldn't find their video through You Tube, but this IS a safe link! I love the very end of the video...mystical and in keeping with the spirit of the song...not a flashy video at all, but that's the point!:)

I had a very disturbing dream the other night...about a reality tv show where every woman on it had an eating disorder and the show was romanticizing eating disorders and people who were genuinely suffering from them...most bizarre, sad dream I've had in a while...the truly weird thing is no one told these girls they were being filmed...and the girls weren't being "pro ana"...but the producers were definitely being exploitative...one of the worst dreams I've had in ages.

The scary thing is I wouldn't be surprised if someday reality tv reaches lows that we haven't even begun to imagine...

While "Sex Therapy" is more than halfway decent and Robin Thicke can give Justin Timberlake a good run for his money, there's a lot to be said for a little less telling and a lot more showing. Thicke's voice is as smooth and buttery as icing on a delicious cake, but his over-emphasis on phallic imagery and frequent use of "daddy" is enough to give me an Oedius Rex complex...honey, Robin, please...remember less is more when it comes to describing sex. The sensuality in the music and his voice is pitch perfect, but the lyrics...well, they are, at times (on songs such as "Shakin' It 4 Daddy") just a tad cringe-worthy!

Still, this is a rather appealing album with some nice soul grooves, some strong dance beats and a slew of great guest appearances by artists such as Snoop Dog, Estelle and Kid Cudi. Given the album's title, I don't really think it's necessary for me to say "consider yourself warned!" But I will anyway...because the former Catholic school girl in me is feeling SO guilty for listening to this!:)

 

Sometimes I feel like one of those really out-of-touch people with an  insane need for nostalgia and its warped way of making you think everything was wonderful back in the day...but sometimes I also feel like I would bring those "real" days back in a flash...

I'm listening to Snow Patrol's "Cartwheels" (it's absolutely gorgeous and deceptively easy-going  like most of their songs are!)

 

and being lulled into this sense of "other" worldliness, something that often comes over me when I'm lost in a really really good song. And I can't believe there was a time when I was free enough with my body to not only want to do cartwheels, but to be able to actually do them...

Childhood is truly a remarkable time in our lives and no matter what kind we have it seems to me that most of us have this incredible talent for making ourselves totally believe anything...Maybe what we need as adults is a (occasionally, of course) strong dose of make believe...because keeping your eyes open all the time kind of hurts...

My sister gave me an Amazon MP3 music store gift card and "Meet Danny Wilson" is one of the albums I bought. I absolutely adored this album in college and had since lost my copy (in cassette) so it was the first thing I thought of when I went online to use my card.

Danny Wilson's most well-known song "Mary's Prayer" is so beautiful and magical that the very first time I heard it (in a record store that still sold records and way before digital music was even a gleam in someone's eye) I thought I might have to sit down for fear of fainting....Hyperbolic? maybe, but "Meet Danny Wilson" is full of wondrous moments, whether it's "Mary's Prayer," the smooth and jazzy "Nothing Ever Goes to Plan" or the very odd and cheeky "Five Friendly Aliens."

When I first saw "Moulin Rouge" in the theater it bizarrely bothered me how they could mix modern music with a previous turn of the century setting. I thought, "I'm going to HATE this movie. HATE it!"

But nine years later the soundtrack remains me one of my favorites, if for no other reason than Rufus Wainwright's painfully beautiful "Complainte de La Butte." Boy, can that man sing the Hell out of sad! And he sounds so old world weary, making this the only song that could easily fit in during Moulin's actual time.

And now, it makes perfect sense to me, that mashing of a kind of early 1900s decadence with the best of modern pop songs, with what the cast lacks in the original artist's talent more than making up for in earnestness:)...I mean, the sheer freakish of the "Like A Virgin" scene is more in spirit with Madonna's vision that you might first think...

...it's getting late and my thought process is slowing...sleep well!!:)

Oh Henry, you're not really the stick in the mud most people think you are...in fact, few writers (in my reading experience, at least) have captured the pain of broken hearts and being socially awkward the way you have.

I'll be circling the barn*with some of your most long-winded words ever and suddenly I feel caught off guard by how you manage to find little ticks and mean quirks smack dab in the middle of polite society. It's quite obvious that you and your equally famous brother William both had great insights into the human psyche...

And nothing has ever quite gotten to me the way Washington Square and Beast in the Jungle have...




*just a quick side note:

example of what seems like circling the barn, but in fact makes beautiful sense after more than one reading....see, the thing about Henry James is that you really need lots of patience to get through what he's saying, but the pay-off is very high:):


from the short story "Georgiana's Reasons":

1. 
   
   

   I.
   
   She was certainly a singular girl, and if he felt at the end that he
   did n't know her nor understand her, it is not surprising that he should
   have felt it at the beginning. But he felt at the beginning what he
   did not feel at the end, that her singularity took the form of a charm
   which--once circumstances had made them so intimate--it was impossible
   to resist or conjure away. He had a strange impression (it amounted
   at times to a positive distress, and shot through the sense of
   pleasure--morally speaking--with the acuteness of a sudden twinge of
   neuralgia) that it would be better for each of them that they should
   break off short and never see each other again. In later years he called
   this feeling a foreboding, and remembered two or th

I thought I was getting a cold yesterday so I did what I usually do when I'm home and too tired to read...I watched movies. The first one ("Tank Girl") I knew would be good because I'd already seen it and it's one of my favorites. It has a "bring it on" attitude I love and wild colors and kangeroo men and Naomi Watts so I'm happy...but the second movie "The Real Life of Angel Deverell" (or just "Angel" as it's more commonly called) was so bad it circled around and almost became good...but more on this film later...I'm still trying to figure out how I could spend two hours watching something so bad that wasn't the kind of campy bad that makes you laugh your ass off...

Normally I prefer pie over cake, but oh my gosh is Nina Persson's "Black Winged Bird" (off of The Cake Sale) one of the most beautiful and dreamy songs I've heard in recent years. Persson is from the Cardigans and more recently A Camp and she has so such a lovely voice I could listen to it for a long time...




You've got to hear this track (just click on the Cake Sale picture for a link to the sample!) and tell me if you don't start crying...

And her wicked duet with Tom Jones on their cover of "Burning Down the House" is also awesome...it's off of his Reloaded Hits album:

 

I dream about staircases a lot in my dreams which seems fitting somehow since my dreams often have different layers or levels of weirdness and reality. There are many theories on staircase dreams

(http://thedreamwell.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/dream-symbols-stairs-staircases-and-lifts/ )

and I respect people who use dream interpretation a lot even if I don't personally believe in it.

Because I really think it's hard to tell one person why they dream of stairs when it could mean different things to different people. With me I find that my staircase dreams are like intermissions between each of the dreams that I'm lucky enough to recall when I wake.

It's a great song to dance to, but if you listen more closely to Robbie Williams' "Bodies" you actually start to think about the words and whether our culture does worship at the temple of the human body so much it forgets about what's really important...not to mention that for many of us we want physical perfection so much it hurts (because, after all, who will really love us without those luscious abs and perky breasts?)...



God gave me the sunshine,
Then showed me my lifeline
I was told it was all mine,
Then I got laid on a ley line
What a day, what a day,
And your Jesus really died for me
Then Jesus really tried for me
UK and entropy,
I feel like its ****in’ me
Wanna feed off the energy,
Love living like a deity
What a day, one day,
And your Jesus really died for me
I guess Jesus really tried for me
Bodies in the Bodhi tree,
Bodies making chemistry
Bodies on my family,
Bodies in the way of me
Bodies in the cemetery,
And that’s the way it’s gonna be
All we’ve ever wanted
Is to look good naked
Hope that someone can take it
God save me rejection
From my reflection,
I want perfection
Praying for the rapture,
‘Cause it’s stranger getting stranger
And everything’s contagious
It’s the modern middle ages
All day every day
And if Jesus really died for me
Then Jesus really tried for me
Bodies in the Bodhi tree,
Bodies making chemistry
Bodies on my family,
Bodies in the way of me
Bodies in the cemetery,
And that’s the way it’s gonna be
All we’ve ever wanted
Is to look good naked
Hope that someone can take it
God save me rejection
From my reflection,
I want perfection
Bodies in the Bodhi tree,
Bodies making chemistry
Bodies on my family,
Bodies in the way of me
Bodies in the cemetery,
Bodies in the bodhi tree,
Bodies making chemistry
Bodies on my family,
Bodies in the way of me
Bodies in the cemetery,
And that’s the way it’s gonna be
All we’ve ever wanted
Is to look good naked
Hope that someone can take it
So God save me rejection
From my reflection,
I want perfection
Jesus didn’t die for you, what do you want?
(I want perfection)
Jesus didn’t die for you, what are you on?
Oh Lord
(Jesus really died for you) Ohh
(Jesus really died for you)
(Jesus really died for you) Ohh


You really full feel the full effect more if you listen to the song or watch the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US8cgUq_XBY

I am so tired of wintery white stuff and yet the one thing I liked about it last week was the solitude and quiet that comes with being snowed in...it's not that I don't love people (I do, most of the time!) but that I'm such a foot-in-mouth kind of girl when it comes to talking that I only feel safe by myself...

And speaking of safe, the thought of driving in the snow absolutely terrifies me. I would love to be able to afford one of those tough "survival" winter driving courses that cost over $200. 

Something like this, I suppose:

http://www.winterdrive.com/index.php

Meanwhile there are albums like this beautiful one to keep me going 'til spring:

 

 Sarah Palin is upset about this past Sunday's episode:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/palin-family-says-family-guy-writers-are-heartless-jerks/#preview

Anyone who is the least bit familiar with "Family Guy" would tell you that the writers were actually pretty tame in this episode...in fact, I thought they were fairly respectful and even made a good point about how just because someone has a disability doesn't necessarily mean they are nice and kind as some of us would automatically think. If you compare this episode to the infamous AIDS one or how the writers regularly mock and treat eating disorders with such insensitivity this one is amazingly low-key!

Since I'm really a 19th century girl living in the 21st I found this article in Sunday's New York Times very interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/opinion/14epstein.html

 

I can't stand the taste of peeps, but I do think they make for great art!:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/peeps

...Supernatural Hunger...

I've never been so hungry that I would plunge my hands into a vat of boiling french fries and after watching last night's "Supernatural" I now know I never will be. But that horrific little moment from the episode touches on how bad and dangerous hunger can be...and not necessarily a hunger confined to food. In "My Bloody Valentine" the Winchester brothers find out just what happens when Biblical Famine comes to town.

Ever since "Supernatural" introduced a distinctly Christian background to the show (particularly in a Revelations sense) in the fourth season I have been surprisingly caught up in how raw and un-Touched By An Angel-like a Christian-themed show can actually be. There's no worrying here that at least one character is going to light up like a Christmas tree fifty minutes into the program...here we get a more realistic sense of the Bible's darkness...or at least how realistic a show called "Supernatural" can be.

more on this later...about the White Castle burgers...one of the angels on "Supernatural" was chowing down on these for most of the episode...his name is "Castiel" and he's played with charming solemnity by actor Misha Collins:

 

Today I have been full of unexplained anxiety...maybe it was all the coffee I drank early this morning or the fact that I have quickly broken off my once beloved relationship with snow and feel I'm going to freak if I see one more flake of white. One thing I know for sure...the "Out of Africa" soundtrack always calms my soul as best it can:)...

Barry's score captures the beauty of Africa and the freedom of flying and I always feel so lifted after I listen to it...

Other terrific film scores include:
(also composed by John Barry)




(amazing!!!)








If you were going to musically score the biggest heartbreak of your life, this might be how it would sound. The sadness and pain would come not with an angry bang or a soft whimper, but rest instead in an understated dark beauty, evoking images of cold prairie nights or horse and rider moving through unblemished snow, no one else in sight.

One reviewer on allmusic.com referred to the album The Assassination of Jesse James as a "sophisticated undertaking, full of narrative." When I watched the movie for the first time, it wasn’t the acting that captivated me, but the sounds of such pieces as "Rather Lovely Thing." It sits low in your chest and refuses to leave, until you’re ready to release it. Part of the amazing atmosphere comes from Nick Cave’s willingness to experiment with different instruments such as the Hohner guitaret, which is closely associated with the harmonica and accordion.

A soundtrack as good as this one can only help the film it accompanies, taking something that already has simple majesty and making it even more lovely and breathtaking. I normally only like to listen to scores while I’m reading or resting quietly at home, but I’ve had this in my car lately because it helps me deal with the overwhelming madness of rush hour. It’s calming, but never lures you into a false sense of security…which is a must for anyone braving nasty traffic that even outlaws like Jesse James never could have handled.