Anyway, I really like this version; it's so emotionally fraught.
Losing My Mind from Hey, Mr. Producer!
Performed by Michael Ball
Written by Stephen Sondheim
Monday 29 April 2019
Musical Monday #204
Weirdly enough, having now seen Follies, from which this song originates, I don't remember it at all. I'm vaguely aware that in the show, it is a female character who sings it, and so I can work out who it is who sings it from context, but nope, no memory of seeing it live in the slightest. Guess I was too busy etching all of Philip Quast's scenes into my brain to save anything else in there.
Anyway, I really like this version; it's so emotionally fraught.
Anyway, I really like this version; it's so emotionally fraught.
Friday 26 April 2019
(Don't) Spoil Endgame
Most people don't want spoilers for Avengers Endgame. Everyone I know is rushing to the cinema as quickly as possible to see it while it is still a surprise. Not me, I demanded spoilers before I even considered going to see it. Ever since I saw the trailer for Infinity War and heard all the hype of 'who are they going to kill off' I knew this was not a franchise I wanted to be a part of any more.
The Housemate saw Endgame last night and gave me the lowdown this morning.
So I moped all day at work and didn't have a good reason when anyone asked.
I thought maybe if I blogged about it, I would get it out of my system.
The Housemate saw Endgame last night and gave me the lowdown this morning.
So I moped all day at work and didn't have a good reason when anyone asked.
I thought maybe if I blogged about it, I would get it out of my system.
Monday 22 April 2019
Musical Monday #203
So I was going to do my top 3 favourite songs and general season overview of Season 4 of Crazy Ex Girlfriend today, as I have done for the previous three seasons but it turns out that I am a) struggling to find any favourite songs in season 4 and b) still too mad at it to write anything coherent. So gonna leave that till next week.
Instead here is a 'learning to dance montage', which I always think must be interesting to film, because someone who can dance has to pretend that they can't. I think actors have a lot of fun with things like that, pretending to be bad at things that you are actually good at. Anyway this montage is super cute.
Instead here is a 'learning to dance montage', which I always think must be interesting to film, because someone who can dance has to pretend that they can't. I think actors have a lot of fun with things like that, pretending to be bad at things that you are actually good at. Anyway this montage is super cute.
Let's Hear It For The Boy from Footloose
Scene performed by Kevin Bacon and Chris Penn, Song performed by Deniece Williams
and written by Tom Snow and Dean Pitchford
Sunday 21 April 2019
Welcome To Me
At the start of the year, I meant to write a series of ‘About Me’ posts, but I had issues with my computer and wasn’t able to. Then I bought a new computer, but since then I just haven’t been able to make myself do it.
The whole reason I wanted to do these posts was as a form of self-affirmation and starting the year proud to be the me I am.
But every time I sit down to start, I feel completely cast in the shadow of my social anxiety – it’s not quite self-loathing, because I happen to like myself, but my utter unshakeable conviction that everybody else despises me.
I dunno how other people view themselves, but I often feel that I am kind of shattered into different aspects of my personality that just don’t mesh together.
At my heart and centre, this is me:
This confident being who is totally sly and irreverent and finds everything amusing.
But like most cartoon characters, I have a little angel and devil pulling me off course. Except not so much good and evil as love and hate.
One is my loving side who is totally sweet and empathetic and is compassionate to everything.
And the other is my hateful side who is totally cynical and antagonistic and is critical of everything.
Most of my friends are familiar with these two aspects of my personality – someone who is completely distracted by how cute and fluffy squirrels are and also complains about every movie and book that crosses my path.
But just to complicate matters, I have this other layer.
I think it has actually formed from both my compassion and my criticism colliding into a shield who is totally strict and ethical and needs to correct everything. This tends to be the part of me my colleagues know best. On the one hand, it makes me a really efficient employee and useful, reliable person to keep around, but on the other hand, it makes me seem mean and unbending and kind of scary.
But on top of that, my very outer layer is this awful repressed-by-society gunk layer.
So people who don’t know me at all only see this repressed surface layer who is intensely shy and insecure, working always to hide the real me away because I spent so many years unable to be myself, because school and society forgot to educate me on a) who I was and b) that it was okay to be that person, and now I’m so entrenched in this tar that it stops me from being able to be myself or do the things I want to do and people really think I am this pointless and the tar only gets thicker.
People who don’t know me at all label me as ‘quiet’, which is the outer tar layer.
People who know me a little label me as ‘serious’ and ‘sensible’, which is the middle shield layer.
People who know me better label me as ‘hates everything’ or ‘overly sensitive’, which are my hate-devil and love-angel sides.
I might be the only one who knows the inner Me me, who might have been the outer me if I hadn’t been so confused and isolated during my formative years. Or maybe I was always destined to have these different personality traits who completely contradict each other. The other day The Housemate called me ‘an introvert who wants to be an extrovert’.
When I look back at my childhood, I can remember different instances of being the Inner Me, and the Love-Angel, and the Hate-Devil, and the Shield Layer and sadly the Tar Layer. But by the time I was a teenager, I think the Tar Layer had got a lot thicker, and maybe the Inner Me had got smaller, or just was more sound-proofed off. I can remember sometimes just wanting to rip it all away and reveal the real me, but then when it came to it, not knowing who that was. I deliberately perpetuated a ‘Scary’ persona as a teen because it was the only thing that made me stand out and it has stayed with me through to my adulthood now, albeit smartened up a bit, as the no-nonsense don’t-mess-with persona I use at work. Am I really that strict? I don’t know. Because on the one hand, I really do care and I can’t stand it when things aren’t done properly, and on the other hand, I could not care in the least because I am just here to have a good time.
I am all five of these beings. They are all aspects of my personality. They all bring positives and negatives to my life. (They are also all usually represented by different characters in my stories.)
Inner Me is where my sense of humour comes from and my ability to relax so it’s what makes life fun, but the irreverence means I can be rude and really not care, which gets me into trouble.
Love-Angel is kind and loving to animals and fills my life with joy, but all that compassion means I feel pain nearly all of the time when I look at the cruelty of the world.
Hate-Angel is passionate and exhilarating, which helps me vent negative emotions and pushes me to improve, but also undermines my confidence in my own work as well as leaving me incapable of enjoying other people’s.
Shield Layer is reliable and useful, making me someone of value in the workplace and able to stand up for my friends against injustice, but is also cold and severe so unlikely to make new friends and makes it almost painful to compromise.
Tar Layer is absolutely crippling, making me incapable to doing simple tasks like getting my hair cut, it suffocates me and makes me constantly miserable. If it has an upside, I guess it protects me from strangers, but unfortunately it protects me from everything else too, including things I want.
But good or bad, this is me. Welcome.
The whole reason I wanted to do these posts was as a form of self-affirmation and starting the year proud to be the me I am.
But every time I sit down to start, I feel completely cast in the shadow of my social anxiety – it’s not quite self-loathing, because I happen to like myself, but my utter unshakeable conviction that everybody else despises me.
I dunno how other people view themselves, but I often feel that I am kind of shattered into different aspects of my personality that just don’t mesh together.
At my heart and centre, this is me:
This confident being who is totally sly and irreverent and finds everything amusing.
But like most cartoon characters, I have a little angel and devil pulling me off course. Except not so much good and evil as love and hate.
One is my loving side who is totally sweet and empathetic and is compassionate to everything.
And the other is my hateful side who is totally cynical and antagonistic and is critical of everything.
Most of my friends are familiar with these two aspects of my personality – someone who is completely distracted by how cute and fluffy squirrels are and also complains about every movie and book that crosses my path.
But just to complicate matters, I have this other layer.
I think it has actually formed from both my compassion and my criticism colliding into a shield who is totally strict and ethical and needs to correct everything. This tends to be the part of me my colleagues know best. On the one hand, it makes me a really efficient employee and useful, reliable person to keep around, but on the other hand, it makes me seem mean and unbending and kind of scary.
But on top of that, my very outer layer is this awful repressed-by-society gunk layer.
So people who don’t know me at all only see this repressed surface layer who is intensely shy and insecure, working always to hide the real me away because I spent so many years unable to be myself, because school and society forgot to educate me on a) who I was and b) that it was okay to be that person, and now I’m so entrenched in this tar that it stops me from being able to be myself or do the things I want to do and people really think I am this pointless and the tar only gets thicker.
People who don’t know me at all label me as ‘quiet’, which is the outer tar layer.
People who know me a little label me as ‘serious’ and ‘sensible’, which is the middle shield layer.
People who know me better label me as ‘hates everything’ or ‘overly sensitive’, which are my hate-devil and love-angel sides.
I might be the only one who knows the inner Me me, who might have been the outer me if I hadn’t been so confused and isolated during my formative years. Or maybe I was always destined to have these different personality traits who completely contradict each other. The other day The Housemate called me ‘an introvert who wants to be an extrovert’.
When I look back at my childhood, I can remember different instances of being the Inner Me, and the Love-Angel, and the Hate-Devil, and the Shield Layer and sadly the Tar Layer. But by the time I was a teenager, I think the Tar Layer had got a lot thicker, and maybe the Inner Me had got smaller, or just was more sound-proofed off. I can remember sometimes just wanting to rip it all away and reveal the real me, but then when it came to it, not knowing who that was. I deliberately perpetuated a ‘Scary’ persona as a teen because it was the only thing that made me stand out and it has stayed with me through to my adulthood now, albeit smartened up a bit, as the no-nonsense don’t-mess-with persona I use at work. Am I really that strict? I don’t know. Because on the one hand, I really do care and I can’t stand it when things aren’t done properly, and on the other hand, I could not care in the least because I am just here to have a good time.
I am all five of these beings. They are all aspects of my personality. They all bring positives and negatives to my life. (They are also all usually represented by different characters in my stories.)
Inner Me is where my sense of humour comes from and my ability to relax so it’s what makes life fun, but the irreverence means I can be rude and really not care, which gets me into trouble.
Love-Angel is kind and loving to animals and fills my life with joy, but all that compassion means I feel pain nearly all of the time when I look at the cruelty of the world.
Hate-Angel is passionate and exhilarating, which helps me vent negative emotions and pushes me to improve, but also undermines my confidence in my own work as well as leaving me incapable of enjoying other people’s.
Shield Layer is reliable and useful, making me someone of value in the workplace and able to stand up for my friends against injustice, but is also cold and severe so unlikely to make new friends and makes it almost painful to compromise.
Tar Layer is absolutely crippling, making me incapable to doing simple tasks like getting my hair cut, it suffocates me and makes me constantly miserable. If it has an upside, I guess it protects me from strangers, but unfortunately it protects me from everything else too, including things I want.
But good or bad, this is me. Welcome.
Monday 15 April 2019
Musical Monday #202
Today's number is from a film I haven't actually seen, but it's a pretty famous song.
Thoughts:
1) Did people really used to go and see shows that had no dialogue in them?
2) The music is actually more interesting than the dancing.
3) I first heard this song from that series of adverts in the 90s. I figure it was for some kind of insurance, but I had to look it up to find out which, so advertising fails again.
Thoughts:
1) Did people really used to go and see shows that had no dialogue in them?
2) The music is actually more interesting than the dancing.
3) I first heard this song from that series of adverts in the 90s. I figure it was for some kind of insurance, but I had to look it up to find out which, so advertising fails again.
Let’s Face The Music And Dance from Follow The Fleet
Performed by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
Written by Irving Berlin
Monday 8 April 2019
Musical Monday #201
Today's number comes from the 1994 movie Thumbelina, which I recently watched as part of #Cramuary having seen it advertised a lot as a child. It is, in case you were wondering, complete garbage.
I think its main problem is that the writers didn't do much work to rewrite the rambling fairy tale, and pretty much the plot of Hans Christian Andersen's original tale made it to the screen. A rambling little adventure works fine in a fairy story - they are supposed to be a journey where the hero overcomes different obstacles - but it doesn't work in a movie. Films need a proper structure, recurring characters and some kind of overarching moral so that it builds to something interesting. Instead what we get is Thumbelina, a completely fickle nitwit, being handed about between different monstrous creatures because they all think she's hot, while she does nothing to save herself, or even really to complain about the situation. The fairy prince is introduced at the start rather than the end, but since Thumbelina pretty much instantly assumes she has to live a life without him when she is kidnapped, it doesn't really make much difference to the story, other than make her come across as not very likeable. He meanwhile spends the film very ineptly looking for her, while her friend the swallow just as uselessly looks for him in return. Winter comes along and kills the prince, although he does get better later, and Thumbelina spends the last third of the movie chronically depressed because the only person she loves is dead. Great movie guys.
So this is the only okay song in the movie (and visually at least is clearly ripping off 'A Whole New World' from Aladdin). See that bit at the end where she blows a kiss to that creepy toad? If she hadn't done that, none of the awful things that follow would happen.
I think its main problem is that the writers didn't do much work to rewrite the rambling fairy tale, and pretty much the plot of Hans Christian Andersen's original tale made it to the screen. A rambling little adventure works fine in a fairy story - they are supposed to be a journey where the hero overcomes different obstacles - but it doesn't work in a movie. Films need a proper structure, recurring characters and some kind of overarching moral so that it builds to something interesting. Instead what we get is Thumbelina, a completely fickle nitwit, being handed about between different monstrous creatures because they all think she's hot, while she does nothing to save herself, or even really to complain about the situation. The fairy prince is introduced at the start rather than the end, but since Thumbelina pretty much instantly assumes she has to live a life without him when she is kidnapped, it doesn't really make much difference to the story, other than make her come across as not very likeable. He meanwhile spends the film very ineptly looking for her, while her friend the swallow just as uselessly looks for him in return. Winter comes along and kills the prince, although he does get better later, and Thumbelina spends the last third of the movie chronically depressed because the only person she loves is dead. Great movie guys.
So this is the only okay song in the movie (and visually at least is clearly ripping off 'A Whole New World' from Aladdin). See that bit at the end where she blows a kiss to that creepy toad? If she hadn't done that, none of the awful things that follow would happen.
Let Me Be Your Wings from Thumbelina
Performed by Gary Imhoff and Jodi Benson
Written by Bruce Sussman, Jack Feldman and Barry Manilow
Actually there's a perfect example of what a passive idiot Thumbelina is in that song. See the bit where Cornelius accidentally drops her and she DOESN'T EVEN NOTICE, or if she does, doesn't mind in the slightest? That is what she is like for the entire movie. UGH.
And here's a lovely reprise in which Thumbelina sings about how winter killed her boyfriend. Yay.
Let Me Be Your Wings (Sun Reprise) from Thumbelina
Performed by Jodi Benson
Written by Bruce Sussman, Jack Feldman and Barry Manilow
Monday 1 April 2019
Musical Monday #200
Ooh, look at that, a nice shiny round number. So here's a nice environmentally friendly, hopeful gospel-sounding kind of song. Didn't particularly like the film, but this is a really nice song, even if it is awkwardly only two letters removed from that dumb Disney song people are so obsessed with. This came first.
Let It Grow from The Lorax
Written by John Powell and Cinco Paul
Performed by Fletcher Sheridan, Dan Navarro, Edie Lehmann Boddicker, Jenny Slate, Claira Titman, Betty White, Rob Riggle and Ed Helms
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