So this week we (meaning I) watched Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which, as you may have guessed from the name, is the sequel to Beetlejuice. Presumably in another 30 years or so there will be a threequel called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and then we’ll really be in for it.
The Twelve Steps of Discovering a Song is a Cover
1. While waiting for your wife to sit down so you can watch an episode of Shrinking, noodle around on YouTube and have it suggest “Breathless” by The Corrs. This is an entirely reasonable suggestion since you already like The Corrs (you have their greatest hits album, which incudes “Breathless”), so you play the video:
2. Have your wife wander in while the video is playing and tell her that you’re not sure why an Irish band is hanging around an old air strip in the California desert, but you’re just going with it. She will say something to the effect of she doesn’t hear their Irish accents while they’re singing (sometimes you can hear an accent when somebody sings, sometimes not) and will speculate on what they sound like when they talk.
3. Find an interview with the Corrs so your wife can hear them talking, and discover that even though they do have a little bit of an Irish lilt to their voices, it’s not nearly as pronounced as, say, a former Irish coworker’s:
4. In order to convince your wife that The Corrs are a legit Irish band, pull up a video of their playing the traditional Irish reel “Toss the Feathers“:
5. Now that you’ve clicked on several Corrs videos in quick succession, have YouTube show you one of them singing “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime”, which as far as you know is a Dream Academy song*. You find it plausible that a member of The Corrs would cover a Dream Academy song, even though The Corrs have sold millions more records than The Dream Academy, because, hey, it’s The Dream Academy. You decide to give their version a listen:
6. Decide that much as you like the Corrs, this version of the song isn’t for you, and search for “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime” on YouTube, expecting to find The Dream Academy. Instead, find a few dozen versions by other people, including Beck, whose version was used in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:
7. Say to yourself, “Self, what are the odds that Beck covered a Dream Academy song?”, and decide that the odds are approximately zero.
8. Go to Wikipedia to find out whose song it actually is, and discover that it’s by some band you never heard of called The Korgis.
9. Find the Korgis version and listen to it:
10. Say to your wife (who has long since lost interest in this entire investigation**), “Well, that version isn’t bad, but I like The Dream Academy’s version better. It has an oboe in it.”
11. So now you know that a song that for the past 40 years you thought was a Dream Academy original is, in fact, a cover, but that just goes to show you that what they say is true.
12. Everybody’s gotta learn sometime.
* Spoiler alert: It’s not.
** Not that she was very interested in the first place.
Teaser Tuesday: “Valley of the Lesser Evil”
So this week I was reading Valley of the Lesser Evil, by Carl Dane, which is not (gasp!) SF, fantasy, or (despite the title) horror, but is, in fact, an honest-to-God Western. It’s even set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, as Westerns should be.
Not A Not A Review Of “Paris, Texas”
So if you’ve been around here for a while, you might have seen that “Myth” by Beach House is one of my favorite songs.
What you may not be aware of is that, for some reason, people seem to like to take Beach House songs and make their own music videos out of them, including one that sets the song to scenes from the 1984 film Paris, Texas. (Normally I would embed the music video, but since playback is disabled on other sites, you can click here to view it on YouTube instead.)
Continue reading “Not A Not A Review Of “Paris, Texas””That Was The Year That Was (In Music): 2024 Edition
Last week I posted my 2024 reading report from Goodreads; this week, it’s time for my 2024 listening report from Last.fm. What was playing this year? If you guessed it’s largely the same as what was playing last year, you won’t be too far off. Let’s start with the big report, shall we?
Continue reading “That Was The Year That Was (In Music): 2024 Edition”That Was The Year That Was (In Books): 2024 Edition
So this year, as it does every year, Goodreads compiled a list of the books I read, making a nice little ― or not so little ― tapestry of covers, along with a few details. You can check out the list at Goodreads here, or look at the screen shots below. The advantage of visiting the list at Goodreads is that you can interactively click on individual books to see their entries; the advantage of viewing the screen shots is you get to go make a nice hot cup of tea while waiting for them all to finish loading. Let’s review a few notes about this year’s list!
Continue reading “That Was The Year That Was (In Books): 2024 Edition”Private Eyes, They’re Watching You, Maybe Your Kitties Too
The other day I read an article at Ars Technica about a new web site that will take your photo and show you everything that Google’s AI would say about it, were it to train its attention upon said photo.
Merry Christmas (Eve)!
Let’s Ask ChatGPT Medical Questions!
So a while back, having finished up the final season of The Umbrella Academy* and the first season of 3 Body Problem**, I had canceled our Netflix subscription while we watched some other stuff on Britbox, Starz, and elsewhere. But then the Jamie Foxx special What Had Happened Was … came along, and I wanted to see it, so I signed back up. The special is being billed (sort of) as standup comedy, but that’s not really what it is. It’s more or less Jamie Foxx speaking about a very serious incident and cracking the occasional joke, kind of not unlike somebody else we know.
The Early Years: Pressed In Stone?
So it seems like I’ve got my entire Villains & Vigilantes Rogues’ Gallery to go through, in my giant stack of old papers and whatnot that my folks found in the closet in my old bedroom and shipped out to me, so you should be prepared for just about any kind of cheesy supervillain to show up here over the next several installations of “The Early Years”. In this case, we have somebody based on, apparently, Ajax from the Trojan War, right down to his spear-flinging abilities; except this Ajax is a villain, not a hero.*
Continue reading “The Early Years: Pressed In Stone?”
Viscosity 