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"Bros Before Hoes!"

I've decided that MTV shows are the perfect weekend fare: they're trashy; they're always playing in marathons, so they can easily take up an entire afternoon; they require about 5% of one's brainpower to actually understand what's going on; & once in a while, there's something really, really funny, like the line I just heard on "Next", said about some lame guy wearing a polo shirt with a popped collar: "Too bad those balloons weren't collars, cause then I bet you could've popped them."

But so let's also take, as an example, "Parental Control," which I watched a marathon of last weekend, and which may well be the most offensive & tragic show on television.

Charming.

The plot: the parents hate the girlfriend/boyfriend of their offspring, and want to find the son/daughter a new significant other. They interview about 20 potential suitors, and each (father & mother) selects one; the son/daughter then takes these new potentials out on a date for a couple of hours [1], while the current s.o. has to watch a video of the date along with the parents, with the parents insulting him/her the entire time. Fun!

And then, after the dates, the son/daughter has to choose between the current significant other & the two new people he/she dated. So cruel!

But not only that: I watched a marathon of "Parental Control" last weekend, and at least 50% of the time--probably closer to 75%--the son/daughter chooses one of the new suitors, rather than the current s.o. That's so fucking tragic, throwing away months/years of a relationship for someone you've dated for a couple of hours on a television show.

But then again, it's pretty entertaining! & the strangest thing is how stiff & scripted these shows are [2]: most of the time, it sounds as though the participants are reading off of cue cards, and not doing it particularly well. They're also very formulaic, albeit in a somewhat comforting way--e.g. in "Parental Control", for example, the son/daughter will always:

• describe how hard it's going to be to eliminate any of the three suitors;
• easily eliminate one of those suitors;
• say something good about each of the remaining two suitors (always the current s.o. plus one of the dates), then say something bad about each of them;

&c. It's almost as if MTV is engineering a race of stupid-but-pretty people just to participate in these shows. If only they could engineer them not to breed.

[1] In the standard MTV formula, as exemplified on e.g. "Date My Mom" : go to the beach, take some surfing lessons, grind a bit at a nightclub, then come back home.

[2] All of these shows, including "Next", "Parental Control", "Date My Mom", &c.  have the most scripted dialogue I've seen in a long time on television. Heard today, as an example: "She's not going to Next me, cause I'm 6-foot-2, laying down ".

What song makes you happy?

No matter what mood I'm in, playing "Biology" by Girls Aloud will make me so, so happy!

Girls Aloud - Biology

"... had a drink at my buddy’s old bar"

Wow, a really intricate meme, requiring a huge amount of concentration & focus. & but so I really enjoyed it! Anything re: music is fun, & it gives me a chance to experiment with formatting buttons.

Name your top 10 most played bands on iTunes:

1. The Go-Betweens
2. Scritti Politti
3. The Fiery Furnaces
4. Prince
5. Spoon
6. MC Solaar
7. The Clientele
8. Phoenix
9. Destroyer
10. Television

What was the first song you ever heard by 6?
"Nouvelle Western".

What is your favorite album of 2?

Anomie & Bonhomie

Anomie & Bonhomie.

What is your favorite lyric that 5 has sung?
Oh, I don't know. I really like "Anything You Want", so I suppose one'd be, "And if you and me's so right / Why's it the same thing every night?"

How many times have you seen 4 live?
Never. I'm really very sad about this.

What is your favorite song by 7?
"Since K Got Over Me".

What is a good memory you have involving the music of 10?
In Hawaii last summer, on the afternoon of the day in which I'd fallen off my bike and had to get 15 stitches on my chin, listening to my iPod Shuffle in the lobby of the hotel--open to the ocean, breeze flowing around, &c--and Television's "Carried Away" coming on randomly. That was nice.

Blueberry Boat

Is there a song of 3 that makes you sad?
"Birdie Brain", particularly the bit that goes, "I hate the aeroplane that nearly misses my birdie brain / That terrifies my terrier insane."

What is your favorite lyric that 2 has sung?
Probably something from "A Little Knowledge", because I'm a real sucker for the Scritti Politti ballads: "Got a little radio / Held to my body / I can feel your back beat, boy".

How did you get into 3?
I read about them on Fluxblog and first heard the single version of "We Got Back the Plague". I very quickly decided that I loved them, & bought Gallowsbird's Bark.

What was the first song you heard by 1?
"Spring Rain", from Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express.

What is your favorite song by 4?
"I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man", from Sign o' the Times.

How many times have you seen 9 live?
Once.

What is a good memory you have involving 2?
I bought my first Scritti Politti album a couple of years ago, in 2003. It was Cupid & Psyche '85, and I'd not really listened to it seriously until I took a drive down from San Francisco to San Jose to visit our datacenter at the time. It was about a 50-minute drive, and after listening to Electric Six on the way down, I put on Scritti Politti on the way back, & had an absolutely brilliant ride home. It was on that drive that I fell in love with "A Little Knowledge".

It's Never Been Like That

Is there a song of 8 that makes you sad?
Yes, "Consolation Prizes", from their new album, It's Never Been Like That. Though, frankly, it also makes me really fucking happy, at the same time, because it's just a perfect song.

What is your favorite album of 5?
A Series of Sneaks.

What is your favorite lyric that 3 has sung?
Well, this is a long one. From "Chief Inspector Blanchflower":

So I got both remotes and turned off the DVD
And said "Michael, is there something that you need to say to me?"
- "Well I don’t know how to tell you."
- "You can tell me anything that you want 'cept I started seeing Jenny."

- "I started seeing Jenny."
- "My Jenny?"
And he looked down at the floor.
- "You know damn well she ain't your Jenny no more."

What is your favorite song of 1?
So difficult! It's pretty much always from 16 Lovers Lane, but sometimes it's "You Can't Say No Forever"; sometimes it's "Dive For Your Memory"; &c.

What is your favorite song of 10?
"Marquee Moon".

How many times have you seen 8 live?
Never.

What is your favorite album of 1?
16 Lovers Lane.

Destroyer's Rubies

What is a great memory you have considering 9?
Hmm, nothing really comes to mind, in part because this is showing the bias that my last.fm/iTunes profile has towards music I've liked recently. Perhaps my best Destroyer memory is seeing them live, but that's really hardly a "memory," as it was only a couple of weeks ago.

What was the first song you heard by 8?
"Too Young", from United, but first heard in Lost in Translation.

What is your favorite cover by 2?
The only cover I can think of is the Scritti Politti/Shabba Ranks cover of the Beatles' "She's a Woman", so I suppose that is, by default, my favorite.

"Big beat drum..."

What's your favorite song of 2006?

So impossible--I'm afraid I can't choose just one song!

Here are five, as a compromise. For the first four, I've linked off to The Hype Machine for your listening enjoyment; for the last, I've uploaded the track myself, and it's playable below.

• Destroyer, "Looter's Follies" (listen)
• The Fiery Furnaces, "Bitter Tea" (listen)
• Ghostface Killah, "Underwater" (listen)
• Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy" (listen)
• Scritti Politti, "Boom Boom Bap"

Boom Boom Bap

Scritti Politti

That was fucking tough, let me tell you. I feel as if I've missed so much else in that list, and the year is not even yet half over, & there are some fantastic albums out just in the last week that I've not yet heard, &c.

"We'd bump bump bump..."

Clay Aiken (American Idol 5 finale)

So here's the thing: I've watched the American Idol finales for each of the last couple of of seasons, and every time, they're always the same boring old bullshit, with performances from each of the final contestants, clips of their families, endless commercials, &c.

And so but this year, I've been so into Lost, and Lost's finale overlapped with American Idol, so being without dual-tuner-DVR, I had to forego the American Idol finale, figuring I'd just miss the usual drawn-out mess.

But: no, not this year!

I missed Prince--playing "Lolita", even!--& Clay Aiken [1], and I was oh so sad. Thankfully, there's YouTube to make it all better!

Prince on American Idol-Hidef by ExDeus

[1] Clay's performance was kind of... creepy.

But the weirdest thing was, when I first watched it on YouTube, it was all grainy & the sound wasn't that good, and I hadn't read about it being a Clay impersonator, &c. And so I was kind of like, what the fuck, has Clay always been this bad & I've just been so wrong for all this time? But then, no, Clay came out, and then all was at least partially right with the world.

Boo!

Do you believe in ghosts? Follow-up question: What's the most supernatural experience you've ever had?

To the first question: yes.

To the follow-up: I can't think of any specifics, but certainly there've been cases where things just haven't seemed right, or just so, or so-called "natural." I can't say that I'd really like to have a supernatural experience, because I'd probably be freaked the fuck out, but on the other hand, if I were to see some spirit, I'd probably feel quite vindicated.

& so but the thing that I always think of when I think of ghosts is this show we saw on some Discovery-channel special about a ghost in the Leap Castle in Ireland, called the Elemental, which is apparently the most evil ghost/spirit in the world, or something?

Honestly, the strangest thing about the Elemental is that, in the video footage--which is, admittedly, not actual video footage, but rather recreations of same--it looks like a little dog. It's all low to the ground, shuffling around, like a terrier, even, just following someone around. Kind of sad-looking, really.

Apparently I'm a closet Australian.

I took this quiz, & here are the results: [1]

Which country should you REALLY be living in?

Australia

G'day Mate! You're a yokker. A true Aussie. You love the beach and barbies, as well as sport and sex. Life couldn't get any simpler, and thats the way it should be. C'mon Aussie, C'mon!

In case you're interested in also ending up Aussie, when answering the quiz focus on beaches & alcohol. Part of me would've preferred Spain--because at least it's somewhat fucking close to something other than New Zealand--but I can happily live with & in Australia. [2]

[1] Yeah, so--I can't actually paste the results in to Comet, so instead I just copied the text & uploaded the Australia image. Not ideal, but it worked.

[2] Though I am a bit concerned about all of the deadly things in Australia.

Best badguy ever.

Groundhog Day

I should think Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

He's not perhaps what you'd think of as the typical movie villain, granted, but in so far as comedies go, he's a fairly real villain. I like it when he punches Ned in the face.

&, of course, he's got a happy ending (spoiler!).

"Memory wastes..."

This news makes me very sad: Grant McLennan of the Go-Betweens has died at just 48 years old. The Go-Betweens message boards remember & reminisce.

I spent much of 2004, 2005, & 2006 getting quite into the Go-Betweens. I fell late, as I do often, but I fell rather hard, & I honestly feel as though they've marked some of the more significant memories of my recent years. 16 Lovers Lane is one of my favorite albums, ever: perfect, gorgeous, lovelorn pop music.

That Striped Sunlight Sound

Just a couple of months ago, after watching the concert captured on That Striped Sunlight Sound I wrote a bit about the warmth of their live shows, which came through even on DVD.

Of course, the music blogs have responded in kind to the news by posting loads of Go-Betweens music. Some of my favorites Grant tunes:

• "Cattle and Cane"
• "Love Goes On!"
• "Bye Bye Pride"

And, one of my absolute favorites (though this is a Robert Forster tune):

• "Dive For Your Memory"

Grant will be very missed.

"Now it's your turn to cry..."

As part of some online magazine subscription service we recently received a two-month-old issue of Esquire, which contained their "Best Song in the World" [1] poll.

It's structured as an NCAA-style single-elimination, complete with brackets, &c. and contains 32 songs at the outer level, which filter down to 1 Best Song.

Chocolate Factory

What it doesn't contain, however, are the actual best songs of the 21st century.

& they are: Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" and R. Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)". So I'm sorry to all of the people who've responded to the Esquire poll, but you voted for the wrong songs. You lose!

[1] "Best Song in the World" is a bit broad--what they're actually looking at is best song in the 21st century. And even then, that's rather broad, because it's really best single, and then, probably best single pre-selected from a group of very highly-selling singles in mainstream pop/rock/hip-hop.