The Pipettes' "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me" : Thank heaven for the skanky ass of Amy Winehouse: her successful use of the early 60's girl group sound has made it safe for others to follow. The Pipettes play it much straighter; occasionally, you can forget you're listening to something recorded recently, save for the lyrical content. This song in particular is a winner, alternating between sassy and beautiful (during the chorus and towards the end especially), with a winning tempo that just makes me want to dance. In fact, I used this song to warm me up a couple weeks ago at my cousins wedding; I was listening to my iPod and shaking my ass in between directing people where to park. It got me into a dancing mood.
I've always been a fan of girl groups: I have a boxed set of Lesley Gore, The Shangri-Las greatest hits, and I consider One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found collection every bit as vital as Nuggets.
(The Pipettes' manifesto is pretty enlightening, as well.)
Scary Foreign Movies : I celebrated this Halloween by watching a passel of foreign films, via Netflix. Partly this is because a friend of mine let me borrow his TV for a while, a TV that is significantly larger than my
previous one, so that now I can actually read the subtitles from across the room. I started with Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood -- not exactly a horror movie, but it definitely is creepy, and has some supernatural bits. Then I watched Suspiria (Christ, the soundtrack music was overwhelming! Also, this movie might define the limits of my Sirk-inspired love for artificiality and stylization in movies); Godzilla in the original Japanese (I cried at the end; I love you, Dr. Serizawa!); and Mario Bava's Tre volti della paura (which I enjoyed very much, particularly the epilogue). Tonight I watch The Innocents, and then The Host, which I've put off watching for quite a while now, and then James Whale's Frankenstein movies, a Halloween (or in this case, post-Halloween) perennial! In the Netflix queue are several Mario Bava movies. Yay!You'll notice that most of these movies are decades-old; this is because of my abiding pussy-itude. Seriously, I have a low tolerance for horror, and an even lower tolerance for gore.
More Information Than You Require by John Hodgman : Holy crap, is this book a riot. I swear to Jeebus, yesterday I was reading it at lunch, and I actually had to stop because I was embarrassed that I was laughing so hard. You begin
reading, assuming that he's just goofing on everything, right? But slowly you notice that he seems to be creating an alternate world, a world where Jimmy Carter's nickname was Nutsy McMalaise; where feral troubadours prowl the wilderness, looking for cats to kill; where Richmond, VA, is rained upon with human teeth; where the 51st state, Hohoq (also known as Ar), travels the country by unknown means; where furry old lobsters (which actually look like otters) were hunted to extinction and supplanted by the non-furry variety; and where there is an entire shadow history of the United States populated by hobos. It's like magic realism or fantasy, presented as a sort of almanac. It rules.It helps that I have a crush on John Hodgman. Seriously, when I see those Apple commercials, he makes me want to buy a PC. I have a thing for doughy guys with glasses.
