Where did the groove go?
I woke up naked on the beach of Ibiza in 1988. I said don't do it that way, you'll never make a dime. I was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids in CBGB's - they all thought it was crazy.
Ibiza is an island in the Mediterranean Sea off the east coast of Spain. Further to the east is the larger island of Mallaorca and as the saying goes, "People from Mallorca play tennis; people from Ibiza dance." Don't worry about who actually says this. It's not important.
If you're American and you want to seem like a rich douche you drop that you vacation in Cabo. If you're European and you want seem like a rich douche you drop that you vacation in Ibiza. If you're American and you want to seem cool, you drop that you vacation in Ibiza. If you're European and you want to seem cool, you drop that you vacation in Cabo. I'm not sure who makes these rules. I'm pretty sure George Clooney and Javier Bardem came to an agreement in 2008, as a means of not infringing on each other's territory.
Who exactly vacations in Ibiza? From what I hear people who teach children of celebrities and people working for defense contractors who get bored of paying off student loans and want to indulge their aspirations of becoming of a DJ. Where else would you go to take in olive skinned Mediterraneans wearing nothing and freely distributing their feel good candy while walking around with glow sticks and other glow-type accessories?
Somewhere in Ibiza there is an underground record store that vinyl of some obscure band that existed in 1985 for twelve minutes, but managed to create the most beautiful 12 minutes of music in the history of mankind. If only the warring peoples of this world could hear this music, world peace would be declared, but they haven't, because it's only for the people of Ibiza and the 10 most famous DJ's in the world at any given time. And nobody owns a record player except for pretentious douches.
Oh really, you'll let me listen to it? That's what it sounds like? It's ok, I mean I was expecting some kind of spiritual experience. I mean it kind of makes me want to dance, but I'm not really a dancer, so I don't really know how to resolve the inner conflict created by this song. I mean, when a song really gets through to me, it gives me goosebumps, I can feel them on my arms and down the back of my neck. Not sure the last time that happened, when I listened to something. Maybe Los Campesinos? The first track of Funeral by Arcade Fire always does that, from the first time I hear that first guitar note linger there.
To me, the amazing word that can be used to describe a song is cathartic. You just listen to it and your troubles float away on the notes. The amazing thing is that songs can be cathartic in so many ways. A sad song can let you be sad and just let it out. An Andrew W.K. can make you want to yell and jump and shed any excess energy you have built up. Try being stressed out when you don't have any energy left. Bob Dylan sings poems that sound beautiful, but when you try digest it as a whole, presents itself as impenetrable as a zen koan. Ten minutes later you forgot what you were thinking about in the first place.
What do you mean, I'm not listening to you Ibiza music correctly? Well, yes, I'm still wearing clothes. No, I'm know wearing or holding anything that glows. Spiritually centered? What kind of new age hokum is that? Feel good candy? Sure, why not? Are they skittles? I always eat too many skittles and then I have a tummy ache and my jaw hurts. I probably should be worried about becoming diabetic, but carpe diem, you know? Even though Dead Poets Society is way overrated by teenagers and teachers. Down the hatch then... oh, that tastes funny. You know this music is starting sound pretty good. Hey look my foot is moving. Didn't really mean for that to happen. What's going on in my hips? I either feel the need to practice my putting or dance. How many golf courses are there on Ibiza? Just one, huh? It closed? That's a shame. I guess I want to dance then.
My god...
I!
need!
to!
dance!
Ibiza is a place where the sun never sets.
Ibiza is a place where the sun never rises.
Ibiza is a place where global warming doesn't exist.
It is all things to all people.
The man tore his shirt off and ran off towards the glowing, pulsating crowd in the impromptu discotheque that had formed on the beach. He was yelling and screaming like a madman. Three days later he woke up in his hotel room to a ringing telephone.
"Hello?"
"It's time to go."
"What?"
"It's time to go home."
"I don't want to go back."
"We have to go back to the real world."
"Why?"
"It's just the way it is."
In the end someone always turns the lights out in Ibiza. No one gets to stay there. But it's a hell of a party while you're there. Just lay off the blue ones, you dig?
Monday, February 24, 2014
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Track 3
I've made a huge mistake.
Unfortunately, neither microsurgical vasectomy reversal nor a trip to an urgent care center to get a band-aid applied to my forehead are going to get me out of this one. No, I've dug my hole and once you dig deep enough, there's nothing to do to get out. You can try to dig up, but you usually end up just going deeper until you magically appear in your home for the start of the next episode.
Use Your Allusion
At this point, is it meant to be a one to one mapping? Is it supposed to be allegorical? Can you have an allegory where fictional characters from a 25 year old work are representing real people, or am I searching for another literary term? All I know is that the pigs represent Trotsky and Lenin in an allegory.
Here's a list of things that rhyme with Corey
Who represents whom? Am I the aging politician or the screaming woman? Who is plummeting to their death? At one point I was a sociopath, but now I fear I've socioed your path. Just in case, there is a safety deposit box at the 5/3 Bank across the street from the church I attended as a kid. It contains a list of GPS coordinates located on a certain farm in western Kentucky. If you are are an unintended reader this blog, should the name John Lorenz ever show up in a missing persons report, you will most likely find me buried at one of those coordinates.
Start digging...
Unfortunately, neither microsurgical vasectomy reversal nor a trip to an urgent care center to get a band-aid applied to my forehead are going to get me out of this one. No, I've dug my hole and once you dig deep enough, there's nothing to do to get out. You can try to dig up, but you usually end up just going deeper until you magically appear in your home for the start of the next episode.
Use Your Allusion
At this point, is it meant to be a one to one mapping? Is it supposed to be allegorical? Can you have an allegory where fictional characters from a 25 year old work are representing real people, or am I searching for another literary term? All I know is that the pigs represent Trotsky and Lenin in an allegory.
Here's a list of things that rhyme with Corey
Who represents whom? Am I the aging politician or the screaming woman? Who is plummeting to their death? At one point I was a sociopath, but now I fear I've socioed your path. Just in case, there is a safety deposit box at the 5/3 Bank across the street from the church I attended as a kid. It contains a list of GPS coordinates located on a certain farm in western Kentucky. If you are are an unintended reader this blog, should the name John Lorenz ever show up in a missing persons report, you will most likely find me buried at one of those coordinates.
Start digging...
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Track 2
"B-B-But Tom Waits never plays clubs."
It was a sheepish response to a joke gone horribly wrong. Any kind of witty Aaron Sorkin-esque banter was conspicuously absent, and nothing was going to summon TV ready dialogue now. It was supposed to be a joke but now she was shooting daggers at the man driving the car with her eyes. It was a look with the unspoken words, "Fear me Theseus for I am the Mighty Minotaur! You abandoned my hatred! Look into my eyes!" What to do next? He might not survive the trip to the restraunt.
His only shot was to babel incoherently.
"You know there are these two classic episodes of Austin City Limits that get played PBS at least a few times a year. They are from the seventies or eighties so you get all kinds of weird lighting artifacts from the camera overexposing the video, since it's filmed in a darkened theater. One is a concert by Stevie Ray Vaughn, you know for people that are way to into to Stevie Ray Vaughn, except he's been dead for a while now and I think we're starting to move beyond the generation of people who are way too into Stevie Ray Vaughn, so maybe they don't show that one as much anymore."
An awkward silence followed. What an awkward place to pause.
"The other episode is a Tom Waits concert. Well, it's no so much a concert as is it performance. There are some songs but there are also equal parts of him telling stories that don't going anywhere in the persona of a 50's beatnik over sparse jazz sounds. I've never been able to decide if it's brilliant or just bizarre. I'm prone to like time Tom Waits so it might be brilliant, but it's definitely bizarre. The man seems obsessed with hobos, like John Swartzwelder level obsessed."
Stony silence.
"John Swartzwelder was one of the most prolific writers of Simpsons episodes. He liked to work hobos into his scripts whenever possible. There are all kinds of weird stories about his reclusive personality, like how he would primarily write on a typewriter in the same booth at diner that would let him smoke in LA."
Nothing.
"Tom Waits smokes a lot during the Austin City Limits episode. There's probably about 4 or 5 breaks during songs/beat poems to light up new cigarettes. It plays to that gravely voice that he has. Back in the early to mid 70's, he had performed using a more conventional singing voice. But, as one reviewer put it, he didn't want to be Billy Joel, so he started 'singing' using a six pack a day hobo's voice to differentiate himself."
She didn't even flinch when he took his hands of the wheel to make air quotes. Her rage had risen to the level of disregard for personal safety.
"Of course he's an eccentric guy. Remember when Keira Knightly comes across him in the desert in Domino?"
The level of rage in her look went from white hot to icy cold. The car was turning into the bottom circle of Hell. He decided to change tactics. This was a mistake.
"I don't see what you have against him. Dan Rydell likes him. It's not as if he is actually stalking you and watching you undress from outside the window."
Ice crystals were starting to form on the car's interior windows.
"Or was it that I brought up Keira Knightly knightly. I don't know why you hate her either. You love British period pieces, and you can't swing a dead cat without hitting Keira Knightly in a British period piece. I mean Mary on Downton Abbey is practically her clone. If Downton Abbey was a movie instead of a TV show, Mary would have been played by Keira Knightly."
"WHAT!?"
Unsure as to whether the mention of Keira Knightly or the dead cat had finally elicited an aural response. He pressed on.
"The only album by Tom Waits I own is Alice, which is music he made for a German stage adaptation of the Lewis Carroll stories. That's why the song is is in german, it's from the perspective of the rabbit. But actually most what he says is gibberish, something he calls subvocalizing. One thing I'll say, is that recently people like to take Lewis Carroll and turn it into this twisted, weird world. Which, you know maybe it was, but they try really hard, it's not like the source material needs to be made weirder. But one thing I'll say for Alice in Wonderland - the animated movie - is that what is scarier than taking something that's weird, and making it for kids, there's sort of a demented brilliance to that. You can Tim Burton or Tom Waits it all you want and try to make it seem scary or unusual - or you can make little kids laugh and squirm at truly weird stuff. They may grow out of being scared by interested by it, but hopefully they'll circle back around and realize they never understood it, and that it's still weird and maybe a little scary. Most people assume, 'Oh, kids movies aren't for adults.' But when you pay attention they really are. Besides, it was supposed to be nonsense for kids, just with a bunch of allusions sprinkled in for adults. The brilliance of most of the good Disney movies when they aren't afraid to go dark with something."
Something was about to go dark in the car...
One last tactical change.
"You know Lewis Carroll started out at Oxford. He gets referenced in Inspector Lewis sometimes. Do you want to watch an episode when we get back home?"
"I don't know, is he solving murders in Indiana now?"
Gulp...
It was a sheepish response to a joke gone horribly wrong. Any kind of witty Aaron Sorkin-esque banter was conspicuously absent, and nothing was going to summon TV ready dialogue now. It was supposed to be a joke but now she was shooting daggers at the man driving the car with her eyes. It was a look with the unspoken words, "Fear me Theseus for I am the Mighty Minotaur! You abandoned my hatred! Look into my eyes!" What to do next? He might not survive the trip to the restraunt.
His only shot was to babel incoherently.
"You know there are these two classic episodes of Austin City Limits that get played PBS at least a few times a year. They are from the seventies or eighties so you get all kinds of weird lighting artifacts from the camera overexposing the video, since it's filmed in a darkened theater. One is a concert by Stevie Ray Vaughn, you know for people that are way to into to Stevie Ray Vaughn, except he's been dead for a while now and I think we're starting to move beyond the generation of people who are way too into Stevie Ray Vaughn, so maybe they don't show that one as much anymore."
An awkward silence followed. What an awkward place to pause.
"The other episode is a Tom Waits concert. Well, it's no so much a concert as is it performance. There are some songs but there are also equal parts of him telling stories that don't going anywhere in the persona of a 50's beatnik over sparse jazz sounds. I've never been able to decide if it's brilliant or just bizarre. I'm prone to like time Tom Waits so it might be brilliant, but it's definitely bizarre. The man seems obsessed with hobos, like John Swartzwelder level obsessed."
Stony silence.
"John Swartzwelder was one of the most prolific writers of Simpsons episodes. He liked to work hobos into his scripts whenever possible. There are all kinds of weird stories about his reclusive personality, like how he would primarily write on a typewriter in the same booth at diner that would let him smoke in LA."
Nothing.
"Tom Waits smokes a lot during the Austin City Limits episode. There's probably about 4 or 5 breaks during songs/beat poems to light up new cigarettes. It plays to that gravely voice that he has. Back in the early to mid 70's, he had performed using a more conventional singing voice. But, as one reviewer put it, he didn't want to be Billy Joel, so he started 'singing' using a six pack a day hobo's voice to differentiate himself."
She didn't even flinch when he took his hands of the wheel to make air quotes. Her rage had risen to the level of disregard for personal safety.
"Of course he's an eccentric guy. Remember when Keira Knightly comes across him in the desert in Domino?"
The level of rage in her look went from white hot to icy cold. The car was turning into the bottom circle of Hell. He decided to change tactics. This was a mistake.
"I don't see what you have against him. Dan Rydell likes him. It's not as if he is actually stalking you and watching you undress from outside the window."
Ice crystals were starting to form on the car's interior windows.
"Or was it that I brought up Keira Knightly knightly. I don't know why you hate her either. You love British period pieces, and you can't swing a dead cat without hitting Keira Knightly in a British period piece. I mean Mary on Downton Abbey is practically her clone. If Downton Abbey was a movie instead of a TV show, Mary would have been played by Keira Knightly."
"WHAT!?"
Unsure as to whether the mention of Keira Knightly or the dead cat had finally elicited an aural response. He pressed on.
"The only album by Tom Waits I own is Alice, which is music he made for a German stage adaptation of the Lewis Carroll stories. That's why the song is is in german, it's from the perspective of the rabbit. But actually most what he says is gibberish, something he calls subvocalizing. One thing I'll say, is that recently people like to take Lewis Carroll and turn it into this twisted, weird world. Which, you know maybe it was, but they try really hard, it's not like the source material needs to be made weirder. But one thing I'll say for Alice in Wonderland - the animated movie - is that what is scarier than taking something that's weird, and making it for kids, there's sort of a demented brilliance to that. You can Tim Burton or Tom Waits it all you want and try to make it seem scary or unusual - or you can make little kids laugh and squirm at truly weird stuff. They may grow out of being scared by interested by it, but hopefully they'll circle back around and realize they never understood it, and that it's still weird and maybe a little scary. Most people assume, 'Oh, kids movies aren't for adults.' But when you pay attention they really are. Besides, it was supposed to be nonsense for kids, just with a bunch of allusions sprinkled in for adults. The brilliance of most of the good Disney movies when they aren't afraid to go dark with something."
Something was about to go dark in the car...
One last tactical change.
"You know Lewis Carroll started out at Oxford. He gets referenced in Inspector Lewis sometimes. Do you want to watch an episode when we get back home?"
"I don't know, is he solving murders in Indiana now?"
Gulp...
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Track 1
There was some disagreement about the meaning of Liam Neeson's speech from Taken.
One viewpoint was expressed by a socialist Indian by way of Signapore.
Maybe your husband just means it to say that he loves you because he cares about you the way Liam Neeson cares about the daughter in Taken.
Are you saying we're like a father and daugher.
No, no, no, no, no. I obviously don't mean it that way. I'm just saying that when you look at it from the angle of Liam Neeson being an action star...
...with a particular set of skills...
...yes, yes, of course, with a particular set of skills. You know, in the movie he flies to Europe and saves his daughter while single-handedly taking out an Albanian human trafficking ring. Well, the speech is, of course, scary if you're one of the Albanians, but if you aren't, then it can be very reassuring, that someone would go to such lengths to save his daughter. You know, he would want to protect you in the same way, so I can see it being very sweet, you know.
So you're saying I'm not an Albanian?
Yes, yes, exactly. It's a scary speech for the bad guys. So, I could see it being something romantic for someone that he's not trying to kill.
Romantic?
Well, I don't know if romantic is quite the right word for it. It could be a sign of his love and that he wants to protect you. You know, on Valentine's Day and all that.
Riiiigghht...
The opposing viewpoint was offered by a Caucasian male, likely of leftist leanings, but only because he disliked their side less than he disliked the right. He, like most who seek out intelligence in other people and find it lacking, was perhaps best categorized simply as a misanthrope. He was never one to let politics get in the way of his disdain.
Good god! Is your husband a serial killer!?
One year later further evidence was presented that often pithy arguments carry the most weight.
One viewpoint was expressed by a socialist Indian by way of Signapore.
Maybe your husband just means it to say that he loves you because he cares about you the way Liam Neeson cares about the daughter in Taken.
Are you saying we're like a father and daugher.
No, no, no, no, no. I obviously don't mean it that way. I'm just saying that when you look at it from the angle of Liam Neeson being an action star...
...with a particular set of skills...
...yes, yes, of course, with a particular set of skills. You know, in the movie he flies to Europe and saves his daughter while single-handedly taking out an Albanian human trafficking ring. Well, the speech is, of course, scary if you're one of the Albanians, but if you aren't, then it can be very reassuring, that someone would go to such lengths to save his daughter. You know, he would want to protect you in the same way, so I can see it being very sweet, you know.
So you're saying I'm not an Albanian?
Yes, yes, exactly. It's a scary speech for the bad guys. So, I could see it being something romantic for someone that he's not trying to kill.
Romantic?
Well, I don't know if romantic is quite the right word for it. It could be a sign of his love and that he wants to protect you. You know, on Valentine's Day and all that.
Riiiigghht...
The opposing viewpoint was offered by a Caucasian male, likely of leftist leanings, but only because he disliked their side less than he disliked the right. He, like most who seek out intelligence in other people and find it lacking, was perhaps best categorized simply as a misanthrope. He was never one to let politics get in the way of his disdain.
Good god! Is your husband a serial killer!?
One year later further evidence was presented that often pithy arguments carry the most weight.
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