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I hold hands with the business plan for the guillotine man
I have slept about six hours total in the last two nights. My recently prescribed inhaler may not be doing the job it's supposed to. It is my opinion that nothing about this month needed to be as difficult as it has been.
I don't think I have once in my life in the Boston area rented an apartment that resembled the configuration in which it was originally built, meaning my prosaic first reaction to this post is a solid bet on stairs to a former mother-in-law apartment or Philadelphia-style shared second floor that was walled off during a previous renovation; the ominous scratches around the deadbolt look entirely consistent with socketing it into the door well after the fact with about the level of competence I have personally experienced in property-managed repairs. The only part that strikes me as unusual is the accessibility of the stairs. The ones in our bedroom closet are blocked off.
Earlier this week I was stuck listening to a rather terrible cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" (1989), but it made me realize how much the original song impresses me for creating a narrative with nothing more than a list of cultural references and almost no verbs; it's the way it accelerates. The first verse spans events from 1949 to 1952, the second from 1953 to 1956, the third from 1957 to 1960, the fourth from 1961 to 1963, and then suddenly as if the Kennedy assassination broke time—what else do I have to say—the final verse hurtles from 1965 into 1989, leapfrogging pop culture and atrocity into an overwhelming pileup of history that will keep on coming as it always has whether the narrator can take it or not. Among other faults, the cover threw its post-Cold War references together without regard for chronology, which seemed to kill the entire point.
In my intermittent way of colliding with music videos, Spoon Benders' "Dichotomatic" (2023) strikes me as one of the better variations on the vampires of capitalism since Peter Strickland's In Fabric (2018), less fetishistically sexual and more working perhaps literally stiff. I also just like their lo-fi sludge-wall of sound.
I miss my little cat.
I don't think I have once in my life in the Boston area rented an apartment that resembled the configuration in which it was originally built, meaning my prosaic first reaction to this post is a solid bet on stairs to a former mother-in-law apartment or Philadelphia-style shared second floor that was walled off during a previous renovation; the ominous scratches around the deadbolt look entirely consistent with socketing it into the door well after the fact with about the level of competence I have personally experienced in property-managed repairs. The only part that strikes me as unusual is the accessibility of the stairs. The ones in our bedroom closet are blocked off.
Earlier this week I was stuck listening to a rather terrible cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" (1989), but it made me realize how much the original song impresses me for creating a narrative with nothing more than a list of cultural references and almost no verbs; it's the way it accelerates. The first verse spans events from 1949 to 1952, the second from 1953 to 1956, the third from 1957 to 1960, the fourth from 1961 to 1963, and then suddenly as if the Kennedy assassination broke time—what else do I have to say—the final verse hurtles from 1965 into 1989, leapfrogging pop culture and atrocity into an overwhelming pileup of history that will keep on coming as it always has whether the narrator can take it or not. Among other faults, the cover threw its post-Cold War references together without regard for chronology, which seemed to kill the entire point.
In my intermittent way of colliding with music videos, Spoon Benders' "Dichotomatic" (2023) strikes me as one of the better variations on the vampires of capitalism since Peter Strickland's In Fabric (2018), less fetishistically sexual and more working perhaps literally stiff. I also just like their lo-fi sludge-wall of sound.
I miss my little cat.
no subject
I really like your idea about the song structure -- to me it also reads as very personal (he was born in 1949) so of course there's that big focus on 63, which was like a prelude of 68 when everything really came crashing down. The video kind of does that too, altho it weirdly falls down with the last verse. And like Mrissa says, it came out in late 1989, less than two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution. de Klerk meeting with Mandela. And the supposed birth of the WWW, altho I don't know if Joel knew about it -- but the song eerily forecasts that too, with its hectic pace and five-second clips and fleeting references. It is super US-centric, but when I think of it as the musical summing-up of a Boomer who actually lived through all that, it bugs me less.
But Seriously Yolks: Avengers Didn't Start The Fire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-onk-Qm7ATw
no subject
I have not gone out of my way to listen to more than I heard standing around a pharmacy. I looked at the lyrics. "Obama, Spielberg, explosion, Lebanon."
It is super US-centric, but when I think of it as the musical summing-up of a Boomer who actually lived through all that, it bugs me less.
It works much better for me as a generational slice than an assertion about history. Your points about his birth year also makes me wonder if part of the crashing compression of the last verse is the difference between the pace of childhood and middle age suddenly slewing up in the windscreen.
But Seriously Yolks: Avengers Didn't Start The Fire
Okay, that is the single best piece of media to come out of the entire Thanos clusterfire.
("Bucky Barnes is back again" is funny.)
no subject
Oh yes, totally. Like 9/11 was a terrible shock to me, but I don't think my memories are going to be the same as someone's who was a kid then. It wasn't formative.
IS THAT VIDEO NOT THE BEST. I really love the ending.
no subject
What shaped the world for your recollections of childhood?
IS THAT VIDEO NOT THE BEST.
I really appreciate you sharing it.
no subject
Tl;dr Wargames! basically
no subject
It isn't dumb, which you know. I was sentient for the end of the Cold War. The nuclear anxiety was saturating. Just about every piece of science fiction far enough in the future—or not that far at all—assumed there had been a World War III in between.
Tl;dr Wargames! basically
There's a reason the film holds up.
*hugs*
no subject
no subject
"Trump got impeached twice / polar bears got no ice" is a personal favorite, absurdity-wise.
(I will say, I obviously knew on an intellectual level but - until suffering the psychic damage of the FOB cover - had never really thought about how much the OG "We Didn't Start The Fire" was a mashup of pop culture + actual serious geopolitical events...? (e.g., "North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe"))
no subject
It is certainly an artistic decision.
(I will say, I obviously knew on an intellectual level but - until suffering the psychic damage of the FOB cover - had never really thought about how much the OG "We Didn't Start The Fire" was a mashup of pop culture + actual serious geopolitical events...? (e.g., "North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe"))
It's a really good blitz of the time: all part of the same era, impossible to disentangle, nostalgia and trivia and horror. The cover is just a bunch of stuff.