This album is amazing!! It's what you would get if you took the Squirrel Nut Zippers, some of the Fratellis (of whom founding member Jon Lawler appears here as half of the Codeine Velvet Club) and 60s Vegas lounge.

"They conjure up a Sixties-inspired sound that's equal parts Phil Spector's teenage symphonies and John Barry's sharp 007 soundtracks" - News of the World

I love all of the tracks, but my favorite ones are "The Black Roses", "Little Sister," "Reste Avec Moi" and "Like a Full Moon." The underlying dark atmosphere and sensual give and take between both singers has made me change my mind about duets for the better!

(DO NOT READ if you watch "Medium" and haven't seen the finale yet!)





I just finished watching the series finale of "Medium." I don't normally say this, but I'm going to anyway: WTF?  I started watching already sad to see the show go since it's one of my favorites, but by the time the credits rolled I was sad, very disappointed and rather angry. The writers and producers gave a terrific show bleak and mostly tragic closure when it should given it something more buoyant and "upward and onward."

Those of us who love "Medium" watched tonight as Allison mourned the loss of her husband for seven years. And then, just when all hope was gone, she discovered he somehow survived a horrible plane crash and washed up on a beach in Mexico...but wait, that turned out to be false hope because Allison was really just dreaming and Joe (her husband) woke up her (in a rather abrupt and coldly detached manner, I thought) to tell her he was, indeed, completely, without a doubt, "this is no dream" dead.

Those seven years never happened and it was actually just minutes after Joe died during his return flight from a business flight in Hawaii.

If you don't watch "Medium" this probably doesn't make much sense. Of course, I'm tired and in a bad mood, so I'm not sure I'm writing in a clear or direct manner anyway.

Maybe I should put it this way: tonight's finale should have been warm and fuzzy and left devoted viewers with the beloved and familiar image of what, for the past seven seasons, has been a mostly happy family doing family-like things in a way that is more like what a real family would do than a tv one. Modern film and tv is so bent on constantly having that dark edge on things that it seems like "warm and fuzzy" is somehow dirty and useless.

Yes, "Medium" has often had a dark side when it comes to its crimes and the people behind them, but the family itself? No.

I wanted warm and fuzzy. I wanted Allison and Joe and the girls to have another crazy morning of hurried breakfast and "who's driving the girls to school today?"...for there to be several more mornings like that in the Dubois family's future...for Joe and Allison to still have their healthy marital arguments...for Allison to wake Joe up because she had a bad dream.

Instead, though on a much, much less intense level, I felt the way I do when I wake from dreaming of a departed loved one's miraculous return: depleted and despondent that the bleaker version, not the pleasant one in my dreams, is the true version of what happened.

Phil Collins' newest album took me surprise when I listened to it earlier this evening. Not only is it one of his best albums in years, Going Back is one of the best albums of covers I've heard in quite some time. His  decision to remain completely faithful to the original arrangements (not changing anything) pays off well.

Sure, there are a couple of misses. "(Love is Like a) Heat Wave" should only ever be sung by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas (only!!!) and "Standing in the Shadows of Love" is just a tad weak vocally.

But the rest is Motown magic!! On "Jimmy Mack" Collins tweaks the cover by singing a plee to Jimmy to come back soon before he (Collins) takes Jimmy's girlfriend away; otherwise it's every bit as catchy and sweet as the original. Other stand-outs include the lovely "In My Lonely Room," "Do I Love You" and the powerful "Papa Was A Rolling Stone."

I've never been a big Phil Collins fan, but Going Back is inspiring me to give it repeat listens!! Great album for feeling good and feeding your nostalgic side!

I wonder sometimes why it's so so hard to find a good, solid sleep aid that works and works well...not one that does help you fall asleep only to have you wide awake a few hours later...or one that eventually kicks in, but not until you've first experienced some very weird symptoms, including (in some cases) auditory hallucinations.

I'm still searching for a good one and I wish I could say Excedrin PM is one of those. It's not. Different people have different reactions to the same medicine, of course, but as far as I can tell this just isn't one to recommend.

 I've used worse ones, for sure, but I prefer not to have nightmares while under a sleep aid's spell or fogginess when I wake up and both happened here the nights I used Excedrin PM.

So the search is still on...

Did you know on Amazon you can buy a pack of 24 Snickers Dark Chocolate for just $18.17*? I'm tempted to buy, if only 'cause it's so hard to find the bars in a lot of the grocery stores I frequent.  The difference between regular Snickers and Dark Chocolate (to me) is the difference between ground beef and sirloin steak...

Okay, maybe that analogy doesn't work (I'm really, really bad at analogies and don't eat red meat anymore.) But any lover of dark chocolate will tell you that the enjoyment you get from it puts milk chocolate to shame. (Maybe a better analogy would be the difference between boxed wine and bottled?)


(*Just probably isn't the right word since $18.17 sounds like a lot, but considering most candy bars are up to a dollar these days...)

Last night I listened to Madonna's Erotica for the first time in ages and I realized: this album is totally underrated compared to the Material Girl's other work. I remember that it wasn't all that well-received back in 1992, when she simultaneously released her Sex book and took on a whole new level of controversy in her career.

But as Erotica's gotten on in years, some critics have started re-evaluating it. When I went online to see what others think about the album these days, I found this awesome review (one of the best reviews for any album I've ever read):

click here  to read review

Say what you want about it...at its worst moments, Erotica's still something you can move your body to...even if, at times, it's about as sexy as a visit to the gynecologist. 

And speaking of underrated and Madonna...

Entertainment Weekly put out this list of what they consider the top ten most underrated Madonna songs....

definitely agree with this choice, in particular:

''More'' (I'm Breathless: Songs From and Inspired by the Film Dick Tracy, 1990)
''Nothing's better than more,'' Madonna sings, channeling her Breathless Mahoney character from Dick Tracy. And indeed, when it comes to the movie's soundtrack, nothing really is better than ''More.'' Just when you think Stephen Sondheim's rapid-fire wordplay is about to get away from her, Madonna pushes through, proving she's got a stronger instrument than a lot of critics would like to admit.

I love the mini-trampoline I got for Christmas. For the first time in ages I'm excited about exercising. The rush I feel jumping up and down while my favorite songs dance through my body...it's almost like being a kid again. I don't stress or think about the future or worry about anything. I'm just in the moment!

It's a real high, better than any pill-induced mood!

Here's just one of the many articles on exercising with mini-trampolines (or rebounders):

read here

This book is so good I forgot to watch one of my favorite shows last night. On the surface Handling the Undead seems to be about Swedish zombies, or, as they're more commonly referred to within the novel, "the reliving."

But as I get further into the book (and further hooked) I can't help but think Lindqvist's novel is all about the unbearable pain and power of grief...because when the dead (only those who have passed away within the past two months return from the grave) start coming back to life, their loved ones will do anything to keep hold of them.

It doesn't seem to matter to the families and spouses that "reliving" means nothing more than rotting, gray flesh, rancid smells and a strictly electrical reanimation with restricted bodily movement and limited speech. The grieving will take whatever they can get!!

That's it for now...gotta get back to this marvelous, addictive read!!

 

"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels"-Kate Moss

A while back the famous model got into a hot mess of trouble for saying this. I remember thinking it was a somewhat reckless comment since young women and girls are so impressible when it comes to fashion and society's image of the "ideal" body...but recently I saw this essay and couldn't help agreeing with the author:

read here

I just finished reading We Need to Talk About Kevin about twenty minutes ago and I am completely drained by the whole thing. Shriver is an amazing writer who not only creates some very suspenseful moments and a jaw-dropping plot twist, but also manages to create a main character readers are sure to feel ambivalent about.

Never have I started and stopped a book so many times...not because it was boring or badly written, but because it was so disturbing and powerful at times I didn't think I could take it.

It will make you uneasy more times than not and the main character is often aloof and pretentious, even dislikable. But the thing about Lionel Shriver's novel is that it's100 percent mesmerizing from beginning to end. You may think you want to stop reading (I returned it unfinished to the library the first time I had it), but you won't be able to (the next day I pulled it back off the shelf and continued reading.)

It's creepy and well-written and full of  the kind of writing that puts things the way you wish you could say them.  Eva is never afraid to say what she really thinks, even if it makes her look bad. She wonders if her doubts about motherhood and having such a terrible time raising her son may be the cause of the disaster that has become her everyday life, which mostly consists of having people recognize her when she's out in public and visiting her son in prison on certain Saturdays of the month.

The Boston Globe called Shriver's novel "searing" and "brutally honest"  and it won the Orange Prize in 2005.  This suspenseful tale, written in a series of letters to her often clueless husband by a woman recounting a lifetime of events leading up to her son's murderous rampage at his high school, is hard to shake. Shriver takes "a calculated risk" (as the Wall Street Journal reviewed) "but the gamble pays off as she strikes a tone of compelling intimacy."

Once you finish this read, be ready to have it on your mind for several days after...it's that compelling and that good, but it comes with a price: that feeling in your stomach when a book sucker punches you.

...yet another heart-breaking song that sounds lovely and lush and can bring tears to your eyes if you're in a particularly vulnerable mood. A few months ago, "Around the Bend" was available for free on Amazon's MP3 download store, but even at its current price of 99 cents a pop, it's still very much worth adding to your player.


My favorite part goes:

Play the song without the rhyme scheme
Play the song without the hook in the third line
So I can forget it easily
Like I wish I could forget you


(another Eternal Sunshine of the Mind moment)



Greg Laswell sounds a lot like Chris Martin from Coldplay, but that's fine with me!:)

I often relate more to novels where the point of view is from a male's perspective.  One book in particular is Five Days Apart by Chris Binchy. So much of what the main character says I empathize with a lot. He doesn't know how to talk to people he actually likes and often ends up saying things he regrets or making things much, much worse.

He writes of spending a life "building significance into the smallest everyday interactions with women. Smiles in shops. A coincidentally turning head. Eyes meeting in a mirror or in a car stuck in traffic...These incidents were the starting points for my fantasies...Over and over I went through the same process, imagining what could have been. I would return to these happy scenarios as if they were memories."

I suppose it doesn't matter what your gender is, though, when it comes to passages like the one above. I mean isn't that kind of thinking what fuels the "missed connections" section of Craig's List??:)

missed connections

Loneliness and a deep yearning to meet someone special isn't limited to being a man or a woman. The problem is that sometimes loneliness can be so intense and yearning so painful that we see things where they don't exist. I'm not saying that the "missed connections" section of Craig's List is full of delusional and sad people. I'm not. I'm pretty sure some of those people read the right signals and are hoping, miraculously, that somehow that other lost soul will be perusing "missed connections" and catch sight of their ad.

Sometimes (I'll use myself as an example) you want to believe someone else is giving you that "I want to get to know more" look and then you happen to be in the rest room a few minutes later, look in the mirror and realize you've had spinach in your teeth ever since lunch and that's why you've been getting those looks.

Still, a girl (or guy) can always dream, right?:)

...heard this amazing and very catchy song today in American Eagle when I was shopping with my niece and her best friend. It's definitely worth the 99 cents to download it off Amazon or iTunes!!:)

"Souls for Sale" came out in 2007, but it's never been more relevant!

listen and see lyrics here