a little bit of everything

Happy May Day everyone. Its an important time to remember the days when we had 24 Hour Filmmaking Contests.

Music! I've had the new single from a group called The Submarines stuck in my head for many days now. Its catchy. Also the Flight of the Conchords finally released their full length album, and although it was too crazy at Amoeba last week for me to catch their show, I still highly recommend their album (and their HBO show).

Movies! Forgetting Sarah Marshall is, to me, the most endearing of the onslaught of Apatow-produced comedies. Of course he only produced it, leaving the writing to star Jason Segal and the director to rookie Nicholas Stoller. The movie feels a lot more similar to Apatow's TV shows than Knocked Up or 40 Year Old Virgin. Also, Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis are, um, easy on the eyes.

Sports! I love Rick Ankiel. He went on a tear these last few days which has my fantasy team off and running. Cardinals are off to a great start, although they haven't really played any really good teams, except for 3 against the Brewers. This weekends series against the Cubs should tell us a lot.

Books! I don't really read comic books, but I have a lot of friends who do. Every now and then I get into a good graphic novel, and the other day I borrowed a copy of the Batman: The Killing Joke. Its a very quick read, and a great story that offers some insight into the background of the Joker.

There's a whirlwind tour of the various entertainments in my life. The rest of it is just keeping the house clean and getting ready for some travelling. Life is good.

welcome back, tv

Last night marked the post-writers' strike returns of two of the more entertaining shows on television, 30 Rock and The Office. Battlestar Galactica returned last Friday, and was good! Battlestar isn't always very good at all, but it was nice that it started the season strong. Now I just have to look forward to watching Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime.

I finished watching Mad Men Season 1 this week, and I was glad the show picked up in the second half of the season. It wasn't really holding my interest for a few episodes in the middle, but it finished strong and I'm looking forward to Season 2.

In other news, is it 1993? There are new albums out by R.E.M., The B-52's, and The Counting Crows!!?? Add to that the fact that there's flooding in Missouri and its a little bit weird. It was an OK year, I suppose, but there's really no need to repeat it.

Have a good weekend everybody!

cover up

This is required reading: Part 1, Part 2, and today we get Part 3. Will the saga continue? Please?

Its time for this week's music post, but I'll admit that there are lots of things I've got going on at the moment, so I'll try to keep this short.

I appreciate a good cover of a good song. A while back I made a playlist which consisted of several sets of 3 songs each. The first song was an original song by an artist. The next two songs were covers of that artist, but they had to be two different songs covered by two different artists. For example:

1. The Beatles "Let It Be"
2. Fiona Apple "Across the Universe"
3. Brad Mehldau "She's Leaving Home"

The exercise was pretty interesting, and made for an enjoyable playlist even apart from the "novelty" factor. For an artist to have had two different songs covered by two different artists usually means they were a pretty significant songwriting force in pop music. The covered artists on the list include Bob Dylan, Prince, Sting, Leonard Cohen, etc. Here's a PDF of the whole list. Some of my favorites? Aimee Mann's cover of "One", Johnny Cash's "Bridge Over Troubled Water", Etta James "You Can Leave Your Hat On." I think Sinead O'Conner covering Nirvana and Sophie B. Hawkins covering Bob Dylan are two of the more amusing combinations on the list.

If you think I've left any out, or have made an egregious oversight in my selection of the cover versions, let me know. I'm always looking to add to/improve on this playlist.

musical monday

Yeah, I took a few (ten) days off from blogging. As Dick Cheney would say, "So?"

I like music. I have a lot of it. I wish I had more time to listen to it. In my long absence from posting I've acquired several albums. Some are new, some are just new to me. So here, in no particular or coherent order, are some thoughts about the music I'm listening to:

Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward got together and formed themselves a little band, called She and Him. I've always had a soft spot for her (she was brilliantly cast in the sadly disappointing film adaptation of A Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and while her singing voice isn't going to blow anybody away, its produced well enough to create an engaging alt-country-50's sound that I'm really enjoying. It helps that they cover one of my favorite early Beatles tunes, "I Should Have Known Better."

If you're into the whole Lily Allen/Amy Winehouse superfad of British female rock/soul vocalists, then you'll no doubt soon be hearing (if you haven't already) music by Duffy (whose single "Mercy" could, sadly, reach "Rehab" levels of overexposure) and Adele, who's a little more mellow than some of her contemporaries. She doesn't impress me all that much, except that during a live set for KCRW last week she ended with an awesome cover of Sam Cooke's "I'm Movin On". You can check out her set here (skip to the end). For me, its up there with KT Tunstall's hoarse but rockin' cover of the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back".

I checked out a couple of artists whose songs have been used in commercials and then get stuck in my head lots. First is Earlimart, whose "Happy Alone" has been featured in the ad campaign for the new season of The Riches on FX. The song has a really strong Aimee Mann vibe, and I'm down with that. The album (Mentor Tormentor) is kind of all over the map sound wise, with "Happy Alone" being a bit of an outlier. I've only been through the album once. The jury is still out.

Next is the ubiquitous "New Soul" from those MacBook Air commercials. It comes from the French/Israeli singer Yael Naim's self titled debut album, which has so far held my interest. A fair number of the songs are in Hebrew, which is not something you hear very much. There's a cover of Britney Spears' "Toxic", which seems to be a popular thing these days. Its made a good first impression as a solid entry to the acoustic female pop genre, but nothing out of this world.

I'm also working my way through albums by James Combs and Cassettes Won't Listen, which were both KCRW recommendations. Haven't heard either in their entirety, but both seem like they might stick around in my library for a while at least.

in recovery

I begin by giving some respect to Andy Pettitte for giving a forthright account of his use of HGH, and at least something of an explanation and apology. I'm done with the whole "steroids in baseball" carnival, and I can't wait for there to be actual games to watch. In the meantime, however, it was refreshing to see a player speak openly and honestly about his errors in judgment. Public figures in general seem extremely reluctant to do this, and anytime one of them does I believe they should be applauded.

I also have to give much love to the City By the Bay. I spent the weekend in San Francisco to help a friend celebrate her 30th year and it was just a really good time. Every time I'm in that city I love it more. I don't need to list the reasons. You either know, or it will be self-evident when you visit. Its a gray, dreary day in Los Angeles, and I wish I were still up north.

Side note: Catchiest song about San Francisco? Written and Performed by Libbie Schrader, who is pretty great.

Well, results from WI will be coming in soon, and we'll see if Krysta's home state can keep the Obamarama going.

down and out

If there's been a lack of posting recently, its because a wave of illness has hit our household. The weather changed pretty dramatically here in SoCal over the weekend, suddenly jumping up into the 80's, and that may have contributed to the awful headcold I was fighting Sunday and yesterday. Krysta's down today with a slight fever and general ickiness, which sounds like its been going around.

Read this little blurb today about Netflix dropping HD-DVD by the end of the year. That's pretty much the nail in the coffin for that format, with most of the studios dropping it as well. I didn't really have a horse in the race, but I'm glad it looks to be settling. The question now is whether its at all worth it to bother with a High-Def DVD format, when we can't be that far away from an all-digital delivery format that doesn't require physical media.

Also found out recently that Yahoo Music is going away. I've been a subscriber for a couple years now at least, and while it certainly wasn't the prettiest subscription music service out there, it was the cheapest. I'm currently weighing my options between Rhapsody and Napster, and my first impression is that the former is a more friendly interface.

The WGA is expected to vote to end the strike today while the ratification process proceeds regarding the tenative deal reached this past weekend. Hopefully this means I'll be going back to work soon, although the big question on everybody's minds now is: What TV shows are even going to bother starting up again this season? It is also uncertain what sort of Pilots for new shows will be ordered this year, as those would have been up and filming in the next 4-6 weeks had it not been for the strike. In any case, it sounds like the writer's got an OK deal, and at least some people can get back to work soon.

Pitchers and catchers report on Thursday, at which point I'm sure I'll have something to say on the Cardinals. Sometime this week I'll talk about some good music I'm listening to these days.