Es geht nichts über einen Music Mystery-Battle  im Kreise ebenso liebenswerter wie musikschrulliger Freunde. Auch diesmal bescherten wir uns freiwillig unfreiwilig gegenseitig ein Füllhorn voller großer Momente: Orthodoxobilly Wife gestand, eigentlich keinen Titel der Smiths so richtig beim Namen nennen zu können, nachdem moi MOZ – sich der Punkte schon sowas von damn sure – völlig aussichtslos an Bigmouth Strikes Again abgearbeitet hatte.  Vergebliche Liebesmüh, dem. Die gastgebende Ava Gardner aka Betty B. (aka Davids biggest Fan), petzte wiederum, sich mit hier nicht näher benannten Mitgliedern von DAF mal den selben Dealer geteilt zu haben. Psychobilly scheiterte kläglich daran, ausgrechnet dem größten noch lebenden Bowie-Fan Let’s Dance ordnungsgemäß vorzuträllern, gab dafür aber eine lupenreine Pantomime von Frankies Rage Hard zum Besten. Moi MOZ schließlich hatte etliche Aussetzer im Bereich Disco der 70iger – Stayin’ Alive und nicht Night Fever ist bei mir gerne mal der TITELsong von Saturday Night Fever. Klar doch, gemäß meines Alter Ego kenne ich mich auch eher bei Sandie Shaw und Co. aus … ähm.

Das Sahnehäubchen auf einen unbedingt wiederholenswerten Abend bescherte uns der akustische Abstecher in Avas schrill-profunde Musiksammlung nebst ihrer ganz eigenen Interpretation des Begriffs “Wave”: Diese ermöglicht es ihr nämlich, auch popmusikalische Italotrash-Größen wie Dalbello unter Wave zu subsumieren (Italopostretrowave, wa!!!). Hut ab, Ava!!! Demnächst hoffentlich mehr aus diesem Kabinett der Frau Dr. Gardner.

Kurzum: Wer U-Musik ebenso mag wie ab und an Gesellschaftsspiele im Kreise schrullig-liebenswerter Freunde, der sollte sich Music Mystery noch mal via eBay oder so ziehen. Und mit ganz viel Glück basteln Euch eben jene schrullig-liebenswerten Mitmenschen auch noch customized Erweiterungskarten, die Death Cab For Cutie, Die Sterne oder EMF enthalten.

1. You can tell by the way that someone “uses (his) walk” that he really ought to stop using walking as a means of communication.

2. We can try to understand “a New York high Jamaican man” or even “that New York times are made for men” but not the correct Bee Gees lyric “the New York Times’ effect on man” which is just plain incomprehensible.

3. Since the Bee Gees wrote the line “I’m a dancing man and I just can’t lose” in 1977, the victory rates of dancing men over real life have surprisingly been in steady decline. (edf)

Unbeknownst to some of you who only know me through this blog, in recent months I’ve been inspired by my love of movies to share my strange cinematic taste with friends, family and passersby.    The tradition has been established, and I thought I’d share it with you, loyal readers, and invite you all to be there in spirit, if not in person on Friday, November 20th at Club Awesome (aka my house, email me for info if you think you can make it!)

And yes, by request from an out of town friend who couldn’t make it last time, there will be a “here in spirit” message wall at the party where all snarky comments, congratulations and contributions will be displayed for our guests!

So what exactly will be on the movie menu?  Here’s the description I wrote for the invitation:

A place, where nobody dared to go - the love that we've come to know - they call it XANADU!

We’re going back to a simpler time before cellphones and the Internet, when Regan was in office and legs were very warm…in our first feature, the legwarmers are sported by Olivia Newton-John as she inspires an artist and a musician to build a roller disco palace called *’Xanadu’*! Will she give up her career as a Muse to be with the man she loves even though he wears vests and pulls his jeans up too high? Watch and find out!

The legwarmers in our second feature are sported by a still to become a jowly Scientologist John Travolta in *’Stayin’ Alive’*, the little known (and hardly watched) sequel to ‘Saturday Night Fever’. Our hero Tony Manero has given up the disco lifestyle and traded in his white suit for a tight spandex leotard and a headband. Will Tony get the lead in the Broadway show? Will he tame the diva and bend her to his will? Will you die laughing when you see his outfit in the big ‘finale’? Come to movie night and find out!
OK, now tell me that although y’all live in faraway places, you’ll do your best to roller disco yourselves to New Jersey and join in the fun!

This classic 1977 movie is an ever green coming of age movie that has its roots imbibed in the American culture. And it not just catapulted John Travolta to fame but also the Bee Gees who were the key behind most of the popular tracks such as “Stayin Alive”, “How Deep is your Love”, “More than a Woman”, “Night Fever” and “Jive Talking” not to mention “Boogie Shoes” by KC and the Sunshine Band.

Onto the story, John Travolta stars as Tony Manero, an Italian American, who works at a hardware store in the day and is a disco star by night. His seemingly uncomplicated life revolves around his job, family and dancing at Odyssey 2001 with his friend and dance partner Annette, and hanging out with his gang – Joey, Bobby C and Double J. During one of the rehearsals at a dance studio for a upcoming dance competition, Tony chances upon Stephanie Magano who is equally committed to dance and is a pro at dancing.

This spurs Tony to break off the partnership with Annette and pursue Stephanie to partner him for the competition. A reluctant but aloof Stephanie agrees and together they diligently practice for the competition while getting to know each other at the same time. Meanwhile, changes come in the form of Tony’s older brother leaving the church and Bobby C desparately trying to win Tony’s friendship and guidance. The competition night arrives, Tony and Stephanie put on a great performance but are outnumbered by a Brazilian couple. However, they win the award but Tony brashly hands over their prize to the Brazilian couple, and goes off with his friends to hang out at the Brooklyn bridge.

Tragedy strikes in the form of Bobby C’s death when he tries to mime the others’ dangerous antics on the bridge. The rest of the gang realize the enormity of the situation and return home more sobered up. Tony then decides to move to Manhattan and apologizes to Stephanie and tries to salvage his relationship with her. This is where the film ends.

Its a film very beautifully taken and portrayed. While certain scenes might be considered crude, it just forms part of the whole concept of growing up into adulthood. But if you’d compare it with the current chickflicks or coming of age movies, it is definitely bold for the 70s flick. I enjoyed watching it as much as my parents had done then. The music is absolutely magical and melodic. There is that perpetual rhythm that you’d dance to anyday.

Andrés Montes deja laSexta. Al igual que El Informal nos dejó a todos con un gran vacío al desaparecer.

El informal – El pelo p’atrás (Parodia de Bee Gees – Stayin’ alive).

Yo ya lo sé, cada vez que me ves andar,
Crees que estoy muy mal, que no soy normal
Voy “petao”, que más te da, tú ya sabes que
funciono igual
Que si “techno”, “Bakalao”
Yo prefiero ir “desfasao”
Quiero oir a Tavarés
Y que vuelva el “1, 2, 3″
Llueva, nieve o truene mi pelo no se mueve,
llevo el pelo pa’ trás, el pelo pa’ trás
Para darle brillo lo peino con cepillo
Todo el pelo pa’ trás, el pelo pa’ trás
Ah, ah, ah, ah, el pelo pa’ trás, el pelo pa’ trás
Ah, ah, ah, ah, el pelo pa’ trás
Yo ya sé, tu también te preguntarás,
Qué hace un macho así, con la voz tan mal
Me pasó jugando al balompié
En un penalty que paré
¿Qué ha pasado? ¡No lo sé!
¡Venga ya, levántate!
Dejadme ya, qué voy a hacer
Ya no sé cómo cantaré

Llueva, nieve o truene mi pelo no se mueve,
llevo el pelo pa’ trás, el pelo pa’ trás
vaya pesadilla me he jodido las criadillas
pero el pelo pa’ trás, el pelo pa’ trás
Ah, ah, ah, ah, no puedo más, pero el pelo pa’ trás
Ah, ah, ah, ah, el pelo pa’ trás
Que Dios me ampare, sin genitales
No sé como cantaré
No seas zoquete, canta en falsete
En falsete cantaré

Yo ya lo sé, cada vez que me ves andar,
Crees que estoy muy mal, que no soy normal
Voy “petao”, que más te da, tú ya sabes que
funciono igual
Ni rapado, ni “new wave”
Ni melenas, ni tupé
Dejadme ya, yo sólo sé
Que bien peinado moriré
Llueva, nieve o truene mi pelo no se mueve,
llevo el pelo pa’ trás, el pelo pa’ trás
Para darle brillo lo peino con cepillo
Todo el pelo pa’ trás, el pelo pa’ trás
Ah, ah, ah, ah, el pelo pa’ trás, el pelo pa’ trás
Ah, ah, ah, ah, el pelo pa’ trás
Ay, que pesado, este castrado
Que se calle de una vez (El pelo pa’trás)
Ay, cómo grita, se desgañita
Creo que le mataré (El pelo pa’trás)

Many who are obsessed with sex and sexual conquest will validate their own desires by rhetorically claiming that the engagement of numerous successful sexual exploits indicates they possess deeper survival instinct mechanisms, and therefore dominant, superior genes which will be likely extended to another generation.

Ha! Subtle theory. This is a very cynical view because it’s narrow-sighted, based exclusively in boring empirical analyses which assume that humans are moist automatons absent of free will or choice outside of physical drives. In fact, the cosmic view (not the same as ethical view) of sex-obsessed, narcissistic, quickie pick-up types is not far from the party-line agenda of “healthy skeptics” — or whatever other utterly annoying, arrogant label athiests and stage-magicians tend to throw around when describing why they don’t believe in things that are not physically visible and ripe for them to manipulate. (Here’s a hint as to why: stage magicians are so obsessed with manipulating other people because they themselves are deathly afraid of being manipulated. Hence they don’t believe in anything that cannot be “proven” empirically. Nice predictable, self-centered view of the universe you have there, assholes.)

But anyway — why is sexual desire (lust) the thing that yanks us back into samsaric existence over and over again? What is so great about it that it overrides other desires as the focus of our attention? Why are romantic prospects more interesting than career prospects, when we have no control over the former?

A quick hierarchy of the fundamental survival needs could go, in order of necessary (albeit situationally unrealistic) acquisition:

1. rest or sleep (shelter)
2. food (sustenance)
3. physical dominance, or an acquired role in the social order
4. sexual desire (procreation, in the case of heterosexuals)
5. everything else (social acceptance, education, spirituality, etc.)

The first two definitely have to be satisfied before the third. The third is sort of a toss-up and could fit somewhere after sexual desire, within social acceptance, as a sort of novelty or luxury of life. In modern post-industrial, capitalist/socialist society our social role is a little more subtly defined than in, say, a tribe of hunter-gatherers, a caste-based system, or a feudal kingdom. For instance, in modern society, most people maintain shelter and food throughout their entire lives, even if they don’t work very hard. There is an infinite spread of wealth between the financially poorest and wealthiest, and there are certainly a number of homeless people, yet most have somewhere to crash and something to chow down on. The quality of luxury varies, but it’s rare that people just suddenly lose access to these basic needs (not to mention the strange preference some women have these days for skinny, weak, whiny, white guys). As I said, one can consider social identity to be a luxury outside that of “citizen”.

Of course, imprisonment is an interesting case. Prison fucks up the entire chain of priorities, because it enforces the shelter and food from above, limiting the freedoms of inmates’ survival instincts to the role of social and physical dominance. Even sexual roles are relegated almost exclusively to status games in prisons (although you could argue that sexual roles are always status games anyway). There seem to be similarities between active military service and certain brands of imprisonment actually.

Back to sex and why it’s important to us: sex is fun because it’s the ego’s ultimate feeling of power, importance, purpose, meaning. Ha! I think Freud wrote something about this. Sex is the ultimate trick of the universe — the illusory notion of self-importance. And of course, when you analyze it, and ask what makes sex, like anything, important or purposeful, you realize there is no purpose. It’s just like when you ask a girl why she loves to dance: “It’s just fun!”

So everything in existence is just fun for it’s own pleasurable amusement. And if you think about it, in society, the ultimate goal is simply procreation. Fulfilling other desires, like wealth, fame, status — these are all secondary or complementary to procreation. A lot of us will disagree with this, but it’s possible that those who choose not to procreate have qualms with the nature of the world or existence (I have one friend who thinks they are doing a better service to the world by not having kids and by allowing the world some extra space). They are a product of modern life, a luxury of modern society, though I would wager some people who choose not to procreate now would have done so in the past.

It’s common knowledge that men and women who dress in intentionally revealing clothing often suffer from insecurities about their own self-image and self-esteem in general. It’s also mentioned that men and women who have excessive sexual relationships suffer from devalued notions of self-worth (although folks like Ikkyu or Baudelaire or Austin Spare could hardly be considered guilty of such things, so it makes me wonder if some people aren’t just unemotional and have inflated self-worth and excessive boredom).

So my fundamental question: those who have the viable option to procreate or have sex, and instead opt not to — do they have the greatest self-love of all? What do you think?

After work, I was talking to a friend who regaled me with enchanting tales of his investment portfolio. Basically the (young) dude made a handsome little chunk on the stock-market before the whole thing fell apart a year ago. He gradually reinvested tends of thousands of US dollars into a comfortable nest egg for him to coast on while he spends some money to get into the career of his dreams over the next decade. 

After talking to him for a while, I realized the reason I was drooling in a blind rage was not because I didn’t do that, or didn’t understand or was dumb. It was because his parents had actually raised him with survival skills whereas mine had given me… what exactly?

Let’s see, my parents did not teach me:

(A) how to fight
(B) how to talk to or appeal to girls (in a sleazy or non-sleazy way)
(C) how to cook, farm, etc. 
(D) how to organize one’s finances or investments

In other words, all of the important survival skills on the physical, mental and material planes were not prepped by my parents. All of the other impending necessary survival skills of my life were left out of that list because they still haven’t even popped up on my radar. Well, that’s nice and comforting. Don’t mind me, I’m just groping around blindly in the dark with my ethical radar to lead the way into the jaws of misery.

Hi Steve Jobs.  Yeah, I head about your iTunes LP gimmick.  It sounds like a good idea: pack extra goodies like album art, lyrics, and specially made videos into one digital download.  And you can see it all with iTunes.  But I saw some screenshots…yeah, I did.  It looks boring.  Just because I can watch Dave Matthews mumble through a song doesn’t mean that I want to buy the whole album.  I know you’re excited about getting Ray Manzarek to be in an interview for The Doors, but I already have the ordinary album.  I understand that it could bring in new listeners, convince them to take the plunge and just get the whole album.  But for everything?  Listen, people aren’t buying full albums anymore because most of them suck.  Would you pay for two LP’s worth of disco just to get “Stayin’ Alive”?

I can see that iTunes LP is some form of apology.  Your strategy of a-la carte song downloading became one of the catalysts for the downfall of the music industry.  But really, it’s the music industry’s fault anyway.  If they actually made good music, people would be more willing to pay for it.  Remember “Jerk It Out“?  No?  You used it in an iPod ad.  Yeah, that one.  For a song about masturbation it’s actually kind of catchy.  But the rest of that album sucks.  iTunes LP is a nice gesture, but it won’t solve anything.  Do you think of the Black Eyed Peas when you think of timeless music? ‘Cause that’s really the key.  Good music is timeless.  And nothing you or the records companies do can change that.

Well, I’m keeping the mashups coming for the moment, though I’m starting to get tired of the theme.

Today, I thought I’d play one that was billed as a “Super Rare” video of a concert that clearly didn’t exist. It appears to be a mashup of the Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive, the Beatles Come Together, and Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In the Wall.

I thought it was amusing, anyways. And I like all the listed songs, so…

As a martial artist, I’m nothing special (err… probably not as a wizard either, come to think of it). This is something I think about in a sober frame of mind. I consciously think of my limitations — not obsessively, as some self-esteem issue, but so that I am aware of what I am capable of and where I can develop and grow as a person. This thought process is why I like effective self-deprecating humor because, when done effectively, it actually reveals the person’s self-awareness and comfort within that awareness. A person aware of — and comfortable with, their own limitations is socially attractive.

Now, in society, a lot of people think martial arts means something other than it does. To describe them objectively, martial arts are mostly an aerobic method of maximizing body efficiency in movement, balance and physical contact (not violence). This kind of training leaves out a lot of emotional, environmental and sociological variables that are involved in real conflict and violence. Controlled sparring, even at fairly high levels of physical contact and danger of injury, is still radically different than sudden violence in any other situation. Most of us should be wise to this by now; it’s Animal MacYoung 101!

To use an analogy: sparring is like jamming on guitar with your friend, whereas real conflict/combat is playing a live concert. You can certainly get really good at jamming with your friend and gain high levels of ability, but when playing a concert there are so many variables that could mess up your show and mess with your confidence and performance: the electronic equipment, the crowd, the venue, the way your bandmates perform, your physical or mental health, your actual preparedness with the material being performed, and so on. And because of all those variables, each concert is different in it’s own way. The stuff you practiced with your friend is only a sized portion of the concert, but it is the part over which you have the most immediate or consistent control.

When around people who are more learned on a conversational subject, it is courteous to defer a temporary conversational authority to that person. But in certain situations, such as people who are irresponsibly physically violent or sexually manipulative, it’s better to abandon the situation or confront it. These are people who are seeking to establish complete control over the situation at hand — it’s a bullying control mechanism.

I know people who are violent criminals who, out of their own insecurities, need to blatantly establish their imposing physical dominance over every social environment they are in. They will not become involved in a social environment unless they feel they are the supreme physical dominant (not to mention such people feel it necessary to receive a vocal affirmation from others). These people are dangerous, because inevitably their irresponsibility and narcissism will lead to a situation in which their fragile psychological needs will engage in violent activity and override the group’s safety. For instance, such a person would be an ineffective bodyguard or soldier because their personal issues mean they would engage in violence at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons.

One important thing to learn in life is humility. Religions and martial arts groups parrot on about how important humility is, but don’t give a full explanation of the subject, while also ironically expecting an inappropriate amount of subservience from the individual. Humility is simply being subservient to those who deserve your respect and walking away from those who do not (this in lieu of confrontation). Subservience is feigning much personal responsibility, whereas arrogance often creates the exact kind of violent criminal I mention above. This approach includes dealing with your own teacher(s) sometimes. If someone insists on being “right” or dominant in a situation, you have three choices: you walk away, you confront them, or you submit to their authority. Teachers are certainly to be socially deferred to within the realm of their expertise, but as soon as someone seeks to dominate your position outside of the area you have agreed to allow them authority — it’s time to confront it or walk away.

Today I took the time to muse about power! In my mind, power indicates a kind of social separation — perhaps social isolation. To attain power, one has to focus the mind one-pointedly on that goal to the exclusion of other things. I’m being deliberately vague by using the term “power” because it can refer to lots of different kinds of power: financial/political/social power, physical/sexual power, intellectual/mental power, etc.

Power indicates the ability to force other things against their will, to temporarily go against the laws of nature. Certain religious philosophies try to affect the individual by reprogramming the mind to go against the impulsive avenues the human ego uses to try and sustain itself in life — grasping for a tangible immediate control over one’s surroundings. But power does not last anyway — power fades and abandons the user in time, because power is a temporary flux of momentum.

But who loves weakness? Nobody finds that attractive, except bullies. Our artistic and cultural feedback often isolates (romantic) love instead as the experience closest to giving existence a tangible meaning, and perhaps in some way, love is complete abdication of power — beyond weakness, even. Love is the switch that bypasses the ego’s need to assert itself. Sexual desire is often conflated with love, for love is the term to indicate this experience that is so foreign to some that it only appears in their sexual proclivities.

Power has no healthy place in society — and love is the abdication of power. The more shallow the drive for power, the more blatant and anti-social it becomes.

N.A.S.A. w/ Fatlip, Pase Rock and Special Guests
Wednesday, August 12th @ The El Rey

1. First, the El Rey is an amazing place to see a show. This is far from the beer-soaked dives I’m used to seeing shows in. Both the floor and the walls are covered in red carpeting, three huge chandeliers hang from the ceiling, and additional wall-mounted chandeliers line the sides. On top of that, it’s an intimate venue with not a bad spot in the house. No pillars or balconies to block the view of the stage. As I get older, I have an appreciation for venues like this. Especially when they have such a nice spot and still are willing to book acts that might normally seem out of place in such a venue.

2. Fatlip (yes, Fatflip of the Pharcyde) opened the show with a half-hour DJ set. Pharcyde is one of my favorite hip-hop acts of the nineties, but I had never caught them (or Fatlip) live before. I think Fatlip is a solid MC, with some of his rhymes from the Pharcyde being among the most memorable. But, as much as I love him, he’s just not that great of a DJ. His set was steeped heavily in early nineties R&B, which isn’t a bad thing, I guess. But I have to admit that when he busted out Boyz II Men’s “Motown Philly” part of me was like, “Really?”

3. The evening can be summed up in two words: technical difficulties. Fatlip was, albeit admittedly and jokingly, fucking up his mixes. The other DJ opener, Pase Rock, couldn’t get his laptop to work and instead had to rely on whatever music Fatlip had in his iTunes library. And even N.A.S.A. themselves were suffering from some of their video feeds not working properly. The crowd was patient with it, but you could feel the frustration of the performers on stage. No one said, “This is a clusterfuck,” but I definitely got a sense that at any minute those very words would be shouted from the stage.

4. I was excited to see N.A.S.A. I dug their debut album (“The Spirit of Apollo”) and was excited to see how the tracks from that album would be translated into a live show. Unfortunately, even after seeing the show last night, I still have no idea how most those songs would translate into a live show. For a huge bulk of their 75-minute set, at least a good 80% of it, Squeak E. Clean and DJ Zegon chose to basically spin records. From the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” to Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It,” N.A.S.A. spent most of the evening playing other people’s songs. And that’s fine, I guess, but it’s definitely not what I expected. There are so many tracks on “The Spirit of Apollo” that I consider to be works of art, and it would have been nice to hear those songs. They did play a handful of them, I guess, including “Whachadoin?” and “Money,” but hearing those songs was a little expected.

5. The highlight was their performance of “Way Down.” Special guests Money Mark and Barbie Hatch joined the duo on stage for what proved to be the best song of the night. Another memorable moment came when Fatlip joined them for some impromptu verses of both the Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By” and the Chemical Brothers’ “The Salmon Dance.” (To be fair, they did also briefly dip into their track “Hip-Hop.”) Those moments were fun but, again, I came to hear N.A.S.A. Maybe next time.

Here’s a video for “Way Down,”

-Shady

PS: I wasn’t able to shoot photos at the show, but click here if you’re interested in seeing images of the performance.

I was thinking the other day about my pal who thought on the song “Desperado” the Eagles sang, “You’ve been outright offensive, for so long now” instead of “You’ve been out riding fences, for so long now.” She made a good case and almost convinced me, arguing that a desperado who was out for so long wouldn’t smell very good.

I know I’m guilty of singing the wrong words — and often the wrong notes — of popular songs, so I thought I’d do some research, defined today as “time I’d like not spent cleaning the house.”

After you read some of these misheard lyrics you might never be able to sing the right words ever again.

This is from the FAQs of The Archive of Misheard Lyrics ….

Q: How did this whole thing come about?
A: The archive started as a spontaneous idea originating out of the Birdhouse Arts Collective in September,1995. The concept was inspired by the mother of a close friend of the founder, who confessed to us that, as a young girl, she had thought that the old church song “A little walk with Jesus” was called “A little chocolate Jesus.” In fact, she never realized her error until she was almost 45 years old.

Q: Is there a technical name for these mishearances?
A: Well, not a technical name as in psychology terminology, but there is an anecdotal name — they’re called mondegreens, and it’s all explained at Mondegreens Ripped My Flesh. [Becky’s note: Read this. It’s funny.]

Jim Coleman offers the following on the subject of mondegreens:

This term was coined when an author was referring to hearing “upon the green” as “mondegreen.” Malachi McCourt, brother of Frank who wrote Angela’s Ashes, titled his autobiography “A Monk’s Swimmin’,” which is how the little Irish boys heard the line from the Ave Maria/Hail Mary “blessed are thou amongst women.”

Historically, mondegreens help to explain the many different lyrics in similar folk songs. In the old Appalachian ballad, Wildwood Flower, one version has the lines “The myrtle so white and its emerald hue, the pale and the leader and islip so blue” while another has “The myrtle so white and its emerald hue, the pale amanita and eyes look so blue.” Amanita is a deadly poisonous mushroom, hardly something for a love lyric.

Sometimes, the mondegreens are intentional. On the John Laroquette show many years ago, there were two cops, one a short woman and the other a rotund middle aged man. The woman once stated that her partner was so food obsessed that he thought the line to the Crystal Gayle song was “Donuts make your brown eyes blue.”

So that’s a little background. Here are some BeckyLand favorites.

Artist     Billy Joel
Song     You May Be Right
THE MISHEARD: You made the rice, I made the gravy, But it just may be some tuna fish you’re lookin for…
Real Lyric: You may be right, I may be crazy, But it just may be a lunatic you’re lookin for…

Artist     Deep Purple
Song     Smoke On The Water
THE MISHEARD: Slow motion Walter, the fire engine guy.
Real Lyric: Smoke on the water, fire in the sky

Artist     The Beatles
Song     Michelle
THE MISHEARD: Michelle ma belle, some say monkeys play piano well, play piano well.
Real Lyric: Michelle ma belle, sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble, très bien ensemble.

Artist     Abba
Song     Take A Chance On Me
THE MISHEARD: If you change your mind (Jackie Chan) I’m the first in line (Jackie Chan)
Real Lyric: If you change your mind (take a chance) I’m the first in line (take a chance)

Artist     Pink Floyd
Song     Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
THE MISHEARD: The ducks are hazards in the classroom.
Real Lyric: No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Artist     Eddie Money
Song     Two Tickets To Paradise
THE MISHEARD: I’ve got flu, rickets, and parasites.
Real Lyric: I’ve got two tickets to paradise.

Artist     Bee Gees
Song     Stayin’ Alive
THE MISHEARD: Hell, you can tell right away I abuse my rock, I’m a woman, man, go climb the clock…
Real Lyric: Well you can tell by the way I use my walk, I’m a woman’s man, no time for talk…

Artist     The Beatles
Song     Get Back
THE MISHEARD: Jo Jo was a man before he was a woman.
Real Lyric: Jo Jo was a man who thought he was a loner.

Artist     Queen
Song     Bohemian Rhapsody
THE MISHEARD: Caught in Alaska No escape from reality
Real Lyric: Caught in a landslide No escape from reality

And speaking of Bohemian Rhapsody … a treasure trove …

THE MISHEARD: Mitch Miller, no, he will not let you go.
Real Lyric: Bizmilah! NO! We will not let you go!

THE MISHEARD: Is this the real life or is this just Battersea?
Real Lyric: Is this the real life or is this just fantasy?

THE MISHEARD: Gotta moosh, Gotta moosh Will you do the bannano
Real Lyric: Scaramouche, scaramouche Will you do the fandango

THE MISHEARD: Hit me with the windows, doesn’t really matter to me.
Real Lyric: Any way the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me.

THE MISHEARD: But he has acne all the time…
Real Lyric: Body’s aching all the time…

THE MISHEARD: Spare him his life from his mom’s recipe!
THE MISHEARD: Spare him his life from this one saucy deed.
THE MISHEARD: Spare him his life from his wife’s canopy
THE MISHEARD: Spare him his life and his lone piece of cheese…
THE MISHEARD: Saving his life from his warm sausage tea
Real Lyric: Spare him his life from this monstrosity!

Is this just Battersea? Got any of your own?

This  one is for the Legend …. 

There comes a time when we hear a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
and it’s time to lend a hand to life
There greatest gift of all

We can’t go on pretending day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change
We are all a part of God’s great big family
And the truth, you know,
Love is all we need

[Chorus:]
We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
it’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me

Send them your heart so they’ll know that someone cares
And their lives will be stronger and free
As God has shown us by turning stones to bread
So we all must lend a helping hand

[Chorus]

When you’re down and out, there seems no hope at all
But if you just believe there’s no way we can fall
Let us realize that a change can only come
When we stand together as one

To queue or not to queue, that is the question.

It was around the hour of 9pm and a few dozen bodies had already begun to form a line from the ticket man at the top of the steps on San Telmo to the long bar backed by rows of red hot barbecues laden with smoking sardines.
“Let’s go for it,” said Jack
And by the time we’d made our way to the back of what was a small queue, people were attaching themselves to its rear like iron filings to a magnet.

4 juicy sardines, bread and a beer, not bad for €3.50

It’s the night before Embarkation Tuesday and the traditional ‘Sardinada’ on the San Telmo in Puerto de la Cruz. It’s a sultry night and the fragrant smoke from the barbecues is adding to the ambient heat. The whole town is teeming with people and San Telmo itself is a swarming mass of people, most of them under the age of 25 years and the girls are looking stunning in their sun dresses and strappy sandals.

As usual the Tinerfeños have opted for the chaos system of organisation and as usual, it seems to result in everyone eventually getting 4 grilled sardines, a chunk of anis bread and a plastic beaker of beer for the princely sum of €3.50, with not a cross word, a shove or a push in sight.

We eat the fish with our fingers, the tender flesh falling easily from the bones, leaving cartoon-style fish heads on skeletons. Suitably salty and greasy, we dump our plates and head with parched throats and sardine smelling fingers to the bar and the dance floor.

This year there’s been a slight deviation from the usual agenda (no doubt questions will be asked in the Ayuntamiento) and there’s a DJ to warm the sweating crowd up. The music is dreadful; 70s and 80s pop and for a moment, I wonder if we’re lying in a coma somewhere in 2009 but then I remember,we’re in Tenerife. But we lap it up because just for once it’s not Latino and we join the hordes of people getting down to ‘I Will Survive’, ‘Stayin’ Alive’, ‘YMCA’, ‘Waterloo’ and ‘Karma Chameleon’.
Around us everyone’s joining in with the chorus and singing nonsense that sounds like the real thing, which is exactly what we do to the Spanish stuff and when they play ‘La Bamba’ and ‘Volare’, roles are reversed.

Getting down to bad retro sounds in a brilliant setting

The DJ pumps it up with more retro rubbish intermingled with Spanish pop rubbish and finally climaxes with Blur’s ‘Song for Two’, presumably a tribute to this year’s Glasto performance, which goes down a storm and like all good DJs he bows out leaving his crowd hungry for more.

At this stage the Maquinaria Band take to the stage and the dance floor shifts a gear from busy to crushed. Sweltering in the heat of the night and the bodies around us, our throats like sand paper from the garlic-laden food we’d eaten earlier, now augmented by the sardines, we slowly thread our way through the masses and escape to the slightly less overwhelming heat of the promenade.

At around midnight, like salmon returning to spawn we fight our way upstream through the crowds of teenagers making their way towards San Telmo where the band are still on their warming up numbers.

Tomorrow’s the BIG DAY – hour after hour of standing, eating and drinking in the searing sun while all around us people are throwing, squirting, diving into, sailing on, swimming in and predominantly being thrown into… water.
It’s tough, but being privilaged enough to live in Party Town, we feel obliged to join in at every opportunity.

Classic Song 

-Geoffrey M. Gottlieb

Hope your CPR/AED Awareness Week is going just swell!

This is just too great not to share:

While this particular dinosaur advocates using Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” others enjoy using “Stayin’ Alive” by the BeeGees. (Research shows that neither title is indicative of the victim’s eventual state post-CPR…okay, no research has been done, but we’re pretty sure it has no effect.)

Don’t forget to register to get trained at your local Red Cross!  (Why look , it’s our course catalog!) While we don’t normally teach the “Queen Theory” or the “BeeGees Theory,” feel free to pick your favorite and go with it and sing it out. We won’t mind.

(Comic courtesy of www.qwantz.com)

When this song hit the airwaves, I was immediately hooked. I mean, truly obsessed, had-to-listen-to-the-radio-all-the-time into this song. I actually remember keeping the radio on all day for days at a time to be able to record the song to tape. Once that happened? It was over! I listened to Stayin’ Alive ad nauseum. Anyway, I was equally obsessed with the music video in all of its retro 1970s Saturday Night Fever glory. The dance off at the end of the video? Amazing.

Wir waren dabei: In den 60ern auf den Klassenfeten in schummrigen Partykellern  mit den Schmusesongs „Massachusetts“, „Words“ und I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You“,  10 Jahre später in den Discos mit „Stayin’ Alive“ and „Night Fever“ und Ende der 80er haben wir „One“ zu Hause auf dem Sofa gehört. Die Bee Gees haben unser Leben begleitet wie die Stones oder die Beatles.

Jetzt waren wir dabei als Robin Gibb die ganz alten, mittelalte  und die neueren Hits der Bee Gees mit Unterstützung einer kleinen Vocal-Gruppe und teilweise der des Publikums zum Besten gab.

Bei den alten Songs schwelgten wir in Erinnerungen – sie wurden sehr professionell vorgetragen mit ein wenig ungenk wirkenden  Gesten und spärlicher Moderation. „Thank you Mannheim“ kam Robin dabei außerhalb der Songs noch am Besten über die Lippen.

 Bei den Disco-Songs gingen das Publikum mit, sprang von den Stühlen, einige der Zuhörer gerieten in ekstaseartige Zustände.

 Ein tolles Konzert, auch wenn die hohen Stimmen aus dem Chor kamen und der Barbara Streisand Song „Woman in Love“ – auch von den Bee Gees geschrieben -recht dürftig zum Publikum rüberkam.

 Wir waren alles in allem von den 1 ½  Stunden begeistert.

 Jade Gallagher  als Gast und 20minütigen Vorspiel hätte man sich allerdings sparen können. Jade hat sicher gute Songs, die sie aber besser zunächst weiterhin in britischen Clubs präsentieren sollte als in der SAP-Arena in Mannheim oder anderswo. Zumal durch die schlechte Aussteuerung oder Akustik die Texte wenig verständlich waren. Da hatte es Robin leichter: „World“, „Stayin’ Alive“ und andere Titel konnte das Publikum rauf- und runterjodeln.

Apparently Rand McNally road atlases (atlii?) are like gold. I irritated Calvin one weekend in early April by making him stop at the book store (I know, the HORRAH) so I could pop in “real quick” and pick up a copy. Except, they were all out. So, I ordered one from Amazon on 4/6. I waited, I checked the status, I waited some more. Finally, after three weeks of being backordered, I canceled the order on 4/26, and on that same day placed an order directly with Rand McNally. The order confirmation told me that it would ship in 24-48 hours. I waited until the end of the week (5/1 for those of you playing at home), and, still not seeing it arrive in my mailbox, I called Rand McNally for a status. They said they were all out of the 2009 printing, and so they’d be sending me a 2010 issue, which would be shipping out that day.

As of this morning still no book ‘o maps, so I called Rand McNally’s customer service AGAIN, and they said it was shipping today for delivery on Friday. We shall see, my pets. Those of you inclined to hold your breath, I would strongly advise against such activity.

On a related note, do you know how hard it is to plan a road trip of multi-state proportions WITHOUT a road atlas? Google Maps and Mapquest sure are cumbersome to use when the destination is more than, like, fifty miles away. They really only like there-and-back directions, and they don’t allow very conveniently for multi-state, circuitous-route travel. Me, I’m a big picture kind of girl, and, well, I’d like to see the big pictures of mappy goodness laid before me so I can plan my route. Right now, according to our plans, we’re still stuck in Cody, Wyoming. That’s where my planning stalled, in need of maps! Mama needs her maps! Gimme mah maps!

Mmmmmmmaaaaaapppppps.

Okay, I’m a freak. Moving on.

———-

A vignette:

Last Saturday night Calvin and I were hanging around the house, watching movies. At about 9:00, he got up for a trip to the fridge, and asked me if I wanted anything. I said, “Yeah, a strawberry sundae from Dairy Queen.” He said, teasing, “Feh, you don’t need ice cream.” I agreed, and went about watching the movie. Five minutes later, Calvin said, “You know? A banana split sounds really good right now.” So I said, “Feh, you don’t need ice cream.” He made a face at me, and five minutes later we were in the truck, in our jammies, on our way to the Dairy Queen drive-through.

It was a beautiful night, so we rolled down all the windows (aside: nobody has window cranks anymore, why do we still say we “roll” them down?) and blasted the tunes. Ice cream successfully secured and in our possession, we rolled out of the drive and came to a stop at the light at the intersection.

The Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive” came on just as a man started to cross through the crosswalk. As he walked, his step came more and more in sync with the music, until he was in perfect time.

“Well you can tell by the way I use my walk…” stride stride stride stride… all the way across the intersection and down the sidewalk, for as long as we sat there. I don’t think he even realized he was doing it, but it sure did crack us the hell up.

I understand it completely, though. YOU try to walk along to that song without stepping in time to it. I mean, hell, the Bee Gees themselves couldn’t stop it. Neither could John Travolta.

Ayer leí esta entrada de Javi Boix en la que colgaba el anuncio que tenéis arriba protagonizado por Roger Federer, Tiger Woods y Derek Jeter, y amenizado por el recurrente Stayin’ alive de los Bee Gees. ¿Qué tiene esta canción que se utiliza para vender casi cualquier cosa? Yo creo que son las connotaciones setenteras vinculadas al personaje de Tony Manero en Fiebre del sábado noche, un referente tanto cinematográfico como musical por su chulería y su afán de superación. El anuncio de arriba reproduce al milímetro la escena inicial de la película.

Como soy curiosa por naturaleza me lancé a la búsqueda y entre lo que me sonaba y las pistas que seguí, encontré algún que otro hallazgo relacionado con este tema y la publicidad. El más reciente es el siguiente anuncio que se está emitiendo ahora en la televisión y que me hace mucha gracia. Creo que lo que más me gusta es el aspecto de pringados dignos de los tres protagonistas.

El siguiente también fue bastante popular. También tiene elementos de la escena que abre la película.

En el siguiente, internacional, se promociona la importancia de los exámenes de próstata y no sólo sale la música, sino que también se utiliza como lema.

Y aunque el siguiente vídeo no es de publicidad, creo que merece estar en la lista por ser uno de los momentos más míticos de la televisión reciente. Con este videoclip los de El informal rozaron el cielo.

Y, por último, no me extrañaría que después de ver los vídeos de arriba os entrasen ganas de hacer lo que hacen en este último anuncio.