First, I detach myself from facebook yesterday. And then today, my phone is weird and gives me the white screen of death (as opposed to Windows’ blue screen of death), rendering me unable to do anything (turn on/off, etc.). At first, I thought, uh oh. Now I can’t get a hold of anyone, especially when I need to contact people to prep for my film shoot next week.
But then I thought, what if this is a sign? That maybe I should cut myself off from all technological communication and just stick to snail mail and perhaps, grudgingly, email too.
But then, I got home took out the battery to my phone, and got it working again. Maybe this is a sign I should keep using my brain-damaging phone. At least for now.
A friend on facebook always posts these sickly romantic status updates and I decided to try and balance out his disgusting words of romance with my cynicism.
“I’d rather have you as my moon than my star, at least I know you’ll always be close by and I don’t have to reach that far to hold ur hand”
My response: “Actually, research has shown that the moon is very, very slowly drifting away from the Earth. Might want to re-think that metaphor.”
Those who read my blog know that I have my own category dedicated to documentaries, so picking one out of everything I’ve seen was difficult. My first thought was something from Michael Moore, either Fahrenheit 9/11 or Bowling For Columbine as they are up there on my list of favourite docs. But I had to go with the truly affecting Hearts and Minds.
I think part of the reason Hearts and Minds was more affecting for me was because I was learning about the Vietnam War in my History class so I was better able to grasp everyone involved and the background of how it all developed. There’s a scene in the film that really disturbs me: a solider is in the street in Vietnam and he shoots a man in the head. As the man collapses on the ground, blood releases from his head like a fountain, and at the time, I was in so much shock because I had seen this happen in Hollywood movies before but this was real — a man just got shot in the head. There was no special effects, no pouch of blood exploding. It was all real. This was reality.
It still haunts me today. Reality is horrific. Take a lesson from that, modern horror movie makers.
Not knowing what to do after the 30 Day Music Challenge, I decided to take a friend’s advice to do another challenge on facebook. The first thing I thought of and searched for was a movie challenge of some sort and lo and behold, the 30 Day Movie Challenge popped up.
First up: the favourite film. Well, as difficult as it is to choose one, I also find that my favourite film changes every now and then, what with my mood and with new movies I watch. Maybe it’s because I wrote about it in a short story I wrote a week or so ago, but I went with the 1960 Billy Wilder classic The Apartment. Jack Lemmon plays a guy who lends his apartment to his bosses — they get to sleep around and he gets on their approval and promotions. He likes Shirley MacLaine’s character, an elevator operator working in the same building. It’s clever, cute, and actually romantic, unlike today’s rom-coms.
This is more of a rant than anything, but I’ve been playing the Tournament mode for Family Feud for the past while. It’s different than the original version in that it’s basically a round of Fast Money but your answers are compared to other Family Feud players on facebook. There are different levels of difficulty; you start on Normal and depending on if you finish with the highest score or lowest score, you move up and down difficulty levels. Down a notch from Normal is Beginner, which I was on for a while and I kept losing and losing, slightly ashamed that I was on the same level as some these other strangers. I thought this was the lowest level until I noticed I was on Novice, and that was pretty sad. I’ve never gotten higher than Normal because I apparently am too stupid to win anymore, and I’m stuck on Novice, which appears to consist of me and about 2 or 3 other players because every time I play the game, I always get paired up with those people, and they always end up beating me, which is really frustrating. It’s not frustrating because it’s them (I have no idea who they are) but it’s frustrating to keep losing and losing all the time. Argh!
Yes, I could just not play but fuck, I want to get myself back up to Beginner at least.
In other news, the world is supposed to end tomorrow. Around six-ish. Not sure what time zone that’s supposed to be, but I’ll be alert if I hear that Europe or the East Coast has been destroyed hours earlier.
I’ve posted this “song” before and have commented on it already so I don’t have much else to say. A difficult Chopin piece of which I’ve taught myself about half of so far but the last half awaits me and my cursing when I screw up. I’m working on it though…
Day 28: A song that makes you feel guilty
This is probably the most difficult one I’ve had to pick so far, just because I had NO idea of any song that makes me feel guilty. I think part of the reason I couldn’t think of one was because the songs I mainly listen to make me sad or are sad and songs that I’d listen to when I’m sad, but none that make me feel guilty. And why guilty? Out of all the emotions out there, why choose a song that makes you feel guilty? I didn’t realize there were supposed to be a lot of songs for this category, but apparently so, or else they might’ve asked me for a song that makes me feel like constipated or scared of heights.
Anyway, the best I could do was Vivian Green’s take on the jazz standard “Love For Sale” by Cole Porter. I’ve listened to a few version of this song and I had seen De-lovely (but have forgotten most of it since it was kind of a meh movie) but didn’t remember her singing “Love For Sale” in the film at all. It’s a darker, more melancholic take on the song, I think, and as much as I am open about discussing most of everything in my life, the song reminds me of a period in my life that I’m certainly not proud of. Judging by the lyrics, I’m sure you can come to some conclusion about what that might be.
It’s about time I posted some Muse. Sure, I’m not a hardcore fan by any means, but I do like a few of their songs, especially since the following:
1. it gives a good name to the awesome instrument known as the piano. Matthew Bellamy can rock it. Take that, closed-minded people who think piano is only played by uptight Classical musicians!
2. Fantastic piano solo. And a hard one too.
I didn’t want to post a song by Vanessa Carlton since that would be too easy, and though it’s been a while since I’ve played this (I played it again today and it wasn’t the greatest but I got through it), I think it’s something that I’m not really used to playing. At least I’d say so.
“If I’m having a good time and I’m happy and things are going really well, why would I want to stop what I’m doing to go and write at the piano?”
Fiona Apple said these words during an interview with Craig Ferguson about songwriting and I feel the same way about listening to music while I’m in a good mood. Why would I listen to a song when I’m happy instead of doing whatever makes me happy? I may listen to a song which might make me feel happy but I don’t generally listen to a song when I’m happy. Anyway!
Gotta abide by the rules. So I went through my CD collection and didn’t really find anything so I turned to my favourites on youtube and found Mika’s “Relax, Take It Easy” which is a good song. I never really liked “Grace Kelly” but his other songs are actually pretty catchy, which reminds me — I should probably pick up his CDs sometime. Hmm.
I’ve posted this one before I think, but there’s no such thing as overposting Scissor Sisters! I don’t have much to say about this one since it’s fairly self-explanatory. There was one night where I actually wanted to go out and — wait for it! — dance! I don’t remember what happened earlier that day and if that had anything to do with my sudden crave for moving my body. Eventually, I didn’t find anyone to go out with and ended up dancing to most of the songs on the Scissor Sisters’ Ta-Dah album with myself in my room with my stereo blaring, not caring in the world that I probably looked like a drunken fool having an epileptic seizure.
At my high school, the music groups go on trips every year. Every other year, they’ll go to somewhere closer like Victoria or Edmonton, and the other years, they go out of the country. When I was in Grade 10, the music trip that year was to Britain for 10 days. We had to prepare to play a selection of songs with a bunch of other ensembles from other parts of the world including a band from Armenia, which everyone thought was really awesome. We practiced Rossini’s William Tell Overture, which was one of the most fun pieces I had ever learned to play on the clarinet, and this one: Abba’s “Thank You for the Music”, in memory of a local conductor who would be retiring that season. I might be wrong about this but I think we only saw him on the last day of the music festival when he actually conducted us.
So imagine this song being played by an orchestra over of over 100 students. Pretty damn awesome, and I’m not even an ABBA fan.
aaron's random musings 