Category: Music

  • Earworm Wednesday: It’s from that Movie, Right?

    “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was suggested by my daughter, who associates this song with the end of Real Genius. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that this song does play at the end of that movie, you know, when all the kids are jumping in the popcorn that exploded out of that professor’s house. For some reason I thought this song played at the end of a John Huges movie, like The Breakfast Club. (I was thinking of “Don’t You (Forget About Me.” which I might use next week.)

    Anyway, the kid hates how easy this song gets stuck in her head. My memory of it is listening to it on the radio when my Mom was driving me around in her Chevette in the late 80’s. We might have been on our way to the J.C. Penny’s at Six Flags Mall to buy me a pair senseable slacks.

  • Earworm Thursday: I Hear this Song When I’m Running Late

    I watched the original Adventures in Babysitting the other night, and this song plays a prominent role in the ending of the movie. But on a much larger level, this is song has the sound of what I feel when I’m running late, but still in control of the situation.

  • Earworm Thursday: Not the Whole Song, Just One Part

    That’s not to say that I don’t like this song. “Nicotine & Gravy” is awesome as is the everything on Midnite Vultures. What get stuck in my head from “Nicotine & Gravy” is the part where Beck sings, “I don’t wanna die tonight.” See that; that’s the part that gets stuck in my head on a loop.

  • Earworm Thursday: It Makes Me Think of Weddings

    I’m not a fan of Daft Punk, but I don’t hate them either. They exist in the world, and they don’t make things worse, so more power to them. So, being that I know virtually nothing about them, this song is the only thing I now about them. If I hear it once, it does get stuck in my head, but that might be more the fault of Pharrell’s vocals, than Daft Punk.

    What I do know is that at one point I head this song all the time, and hearing it at weddings is the memory that most jumps out in my mind. Meaning, for me, this is a song I expect to hear at a wedding. Not that it always happens, but it’s what I expect.

  • The Act of Painting

    If you want to experience a hidden New York treasure, then you should go to the basement paint department at the Manhattan Home Depot on 23rd Street. At that location, you can watch New York couples implode as they try and pick out paint colors. It is a graveyard of relationships.

    The wife and I prefer the Home Depot in Yonkers. Less couple strife, and more space. We were there over the long weekend to pick the colors for our living room. We generally know the colors we want to use, now it’s just a matter of getting the correct complementary hues. And we did it all without an argument.

    Points for us.

    Which means that when school is out, I’m going to start painting the living room. But before the painting, there will be patching holes in the walls. And then cleaning. It’s a small apartment, so half the living room is going to have to temporarily hold all the stuff while I paint the open half, then a swap, and I paint the other half. Oh, and I have to paint the ceiling as well. I think I can get the kid to help… I think…

    I’m saying all of this because I have to psych myself up to it. It feels like a shit ton of work, because it is a shit ton of work. Will I feel better when the job is done? Most likely. Pretty much. Yes, yes, I will feel immensely better when the job is completed.

    Not that the whole job is a chore. The actual painting is enjoyable. The repetitive motion, the up and down, back and forth. Music helps, but the sound of the paint rolling on the wall has a satisfying quality to it. And in the end, painting is making a change, and change can be fun.