let the caffeine do the talking

today's title is from we the dreamers by kate voegele. it's a fun song, even in its demo form, since i don't think there's been an official release yet. luckily, it, and everything else in the world, are on youtube, so have a listen:

i know i promised a few of you a music post today, since i discovered a new artist and a handful of songs which i'm dying to obsess over with you, but we have more important matters to discuss first --

i found a prom dress. by accident, actually, while flipping through the momster's copies of the saks catalog.

can you guess which one it is? no? here, i'll help you out. sadly, i didn't have much luck wheedling a pair of the matching jimmy choos out of the momster. oh well, a girl can dream, right?

anyway, since april is national poetry month i thought i'd share a poem with you today:

Bad women
know how to cook
create a miracle in a pot
make something out of chicken feet, pigs feet, cornmeal,
hogmaw, fisheads, fatback, ribs, roots, soy or red beans
Bad women overcome homelessness, violence, addiction and self hate.
Bad women march for equality
education, jobs, childcare, universal health care,
affirmative action and choice.
Bad women flaunt themselves
plump as mangos, skinny as tallow
tall, short
dark as plums and coffee
light as cream and butter
gold as sun on lemons, red as cinnamon
brown as kola.
Bad women don't get old, they get full
full flavored like aged wine
full as harvest's vine
seasoned.
Bad women celebrate themselves,
fingerpopping, hipshaking, big laughed, wisemouthed
hefty thighed, smart thinking women
hatwearing, soft syllabled, eyelash fluttering
tangerine lipstick queens,
small and big breasted
fat kneed, skinny ankled women
who dance without warning
wrap their men or their women around their waist
and dance to the edge of dawn.
Bad women know how to stir
their tears in pots of compassion
add some hot sauce, wasabe, five spices, jalapenos
the salt of memory
stoke the fire of history
simmer in resilience
make it taste like home.

Bad women can burn.

- Janice Mirikitani 

isn't that gorgeous? i love poetry. but not as much as music, so without further ado, i give you sky ferreira.

i feel like i should be jealous that she's my age. seventeen. mostly, though, i'm a little bit horrified, since. well, you saw the video. and i first heard about her because she's getting drunk everynight with friends with katy perry and gabe saporta from cobra starship. her voice is amazing, though. i can't find embeddable links yet, but her cover of miike snow's animal is gorgeous. and i actually really like her single. so, you know, make of her what you will.

anyway, i have to go do my calc flashcards so that's all for now.

and now for the important things...

and we all know what important things i'm referring to, right? right. because we all know that i would only ever use my precious subject line to refer to midtown, their songs, my ongoing devotion to them, and/or current project to keep reviewing their albums in order to get you to like them.

today we're covering album two, aka 'living well is the best revenge'. it's kind of ironic that i'd be covering my least favorite of their albums on my least favorite day this month, but...oh well. although you should understand that my least favorite midtown album is approximately equivalent in terms of musical love/squee factor with my second favorite kings of leon album (only by the night, in case you were wondering), just to keep things in perspective. i just thought i should share that since i realized today that since most of you have met me in the midst of one of my overexcited, new-band-discovery periods (and it doesn't really matter if that band was cutie and co., panic!, cobra starship, or better than ezra because that initial period of excitement is pretty much the same no matter what), you probably haven't really been exposed to my love of all things midtown yet. mostly because that was always in the back of my head, just below the beatles and just above britney spears, but never really something i felt the need to fangirl over (well, until now, obviously). and now that we have some context for this, onto the review.

well, okay, it's not much of a review because i'm not much of a reviewer. my main problem with this album is how overproduced it sounds. also, gabe's vocals on a lot of these songs seem different to the other albums (or even his pre-vocal cyst stuff with cobra). his voice isn't necessarily bad, not at all. more like generic. he sounds like every other singer in a pop-punk band (besides tom, who will never be equalled). like i said, overproduced. the good? just about everything else.

favorite song: like a movie. the lyrics in this are great and it's such a great car song. in case you couldn't tell, that's pretty high praise from me (especially since there are days when it feels like i was born with a car seat welded to my butt).

other highlights:

1. get it together, for the intro, mostly, but also because after dances i like to put this song on while i'm in the bathroom and listen to gabe saporta tell me to 'take off your makeup, honey' while i'm...taking my makeup off. i don't know, i'm easily amused, okay?
2. you should know. this is definitely a lyrics song to me. i don't know enough about music to comment on the arrangements on this song beyond saying that it sounds like a simplified and slowed down version of blink, but the lyrics and gabe's voice on this (which is less polished than on the rest of the songs) filled all of my 'reasons i like midtown' ticky boxes. besides, what's not to love in a song that's telling us that 'it's safe to fall if you just trust the ground you stand on'?
3. become what you hate/in the songs. okay, so these are two songs, but i like them both for the same reason, which is that they're all about midtown's record label (which they left after this album). it's fun for context/being spitefully happy that they ditched drive thru records in time to make 'forget what you know' independently (and awesomely, without any of the crazy 'sound like bands X, Y, & Z' directives that had to be responsible for this album).

so that was 'living well is the best revenge'. stay tuned for 'save the girl, lose the world'.

does truth lie in the sincerity of another sullen song?

so i'm thinking blogging about my favorite drink discovery was a bad idea. mostly because whenever i have one now i keep wanting to blog. so, here, have a picture of my latest favorite drink in the universe (it's quite photogenic) and my favorite cheeseball too (isn't he cute?). also, in case you couldn't tell, i'm rereading the potters in time to watch the newest one on dvd. is it lame that i'm excited about that? i don't think so. but, eh, it's me - i spent half an hour in the car looking up youtube interviews with the cast about the deathly hallows movie. (according to daniel radcliffe they're hitting the "home stretch" of filming after christmas. which means new movie soon!) besides, it's not like my fixation with british children's fantasy literature in general is news to anyone. it's not even my fault, either. if they would just write silly fantasy

like twilight i wouldn't be so addicted, but, nope, those silly brits had to go and invent narnia and hogwarts and - and - roald dahl. how could any kid have been expected to step away from the bookcase after reading the witches? it's just not possible. and speaking of old roald, we went to see the fantastic mr. fox and it was pretty funny (if a little disconcerting to hear clooney in theaters so soon after goats). i still prefer the book, though. oh, and remember my last post? (you should, it was from, like, two hours ago) well, i'm serious about midtown, okay? they were my cutie and the followills before i knew who cutie and the followills were. you will like them. like, it's not even up for discussion. and to help you out with that, i'm going to feature an album review/primer every day for the next...three days. maybe longer, since they had a few EPs that weren't officially released.

let's start with my favorite: forget what you know. it was their last album. and their best (according to me and gabe saporta; clearly this is a consensus you should trust, okay?). here's the ap.net review, which is a lot more detailed and coherent than i could ever hope to be since my default state when listening to music i like tends to be roughly equivalent to a gibbering baboon. i'm just saying. also, here's gabe from cobra starship talking about midtown. let's all take a moment to soak in the hopes of a reunion tour (well, if blink-182 could do it, why can't they?). excited now? good. now when you listen to the album (and you're going to listen to the album or we're not friends anymore), here's the songs you should pay special attention to, aka rachel's list of favorites:

1. to our savior - no, s-la, they aren't taking the lord's name in vain and i will never forgive you for making that your only comment on brand new/jesus christ.
2. waiting for the news - the intro. also, for any cobra fans, gabe's voice on this kind of reminds me of his voice on the scene is dead; long live the scene.
3. god is dead - no, seriously, steffi, i know what you're thinking and you should stop it right now. it's a nice interlude, okay, and there's a reason it's been on my sleep sleep playlist since eighth grade.
4. help me sleep - doesn't actually help me sleep, but it's fun to sing along to in the car. the only way the momster got me to drive on the way back from gettysburg this summer was by letting me play this song on loop for half an hour (although was she really expecting me to drive to the accompaniment of the beegees? she should've known better)
5. whole new world - i don't why, but in my mind this is automatically filed under 'soundtrack'. even if it never made it to tv (that wikipedia knows of), it's still awesome. besides, everyone knows the only things being played on tv shows nowadays is lady gaga and the disney kids. (although that bonus jonas kid's blog is the most amazing thing i've ever read, even if i don't know if it's real or not. either way, go look at it)

forget what you know

so you might've noticed that the playlist changed again. and it might seem a little different than my former blogging music of choice. i mean, it's no secret that i love my wee little indie darlings. but now that cobra starship has finally made it big i feel like the time is right to try to force one of my greatest musical loves down your collective throats.

this is midtown. you might recognize that dorky one in the middle (you know, the one pulling the...actually, i'm not sure you could call that a face). he's gabe saporta, currently of cobra starship. but before he started singing about making them good girls go bad he was in this little band that started in rutgers, just a few minutes away from where i lived as a tiny tot just starting kindergarten. basically, they were what the 'cool kids' - and in a tiny private school where all the grades were houses in the same not-so-tiny building, the 'cool kids' were anyone above sixth grade. no, really - listened to, and, as a result, what us younger kids copied. except in copying the older kids by listening to them i actually started to like them. i'm guessing it's a little bit like s-la liking blink as a wee little 2nd grader. looking back on it now i can realize that i didn't understand any of what they were singing about, but i could sing along anyway. mostly, they were my introduction into music that wasn't britney spears and the backstreet boys or owned by my parents (because no childhood is complete without the beatles). without this band i never would've started listening to blink or the pixies or taking back sunday and saves the day or anything besides aaron carter and justin timberlake (my poor, poor misguided third and fourth grade classmates). who knows, without their music to counteract the bubblegum pop of my formative years i might not even have the wee little indie darlings on my itunes. so do yourself a favor and start listening to some midtown. and here's a heads-up: if you say you don't like them, i'll say i'm not judging you. (but i am, i so totally am).

i had a dream (and it was weird)

so, basically, what happened was i went driving last night. because my mother is under the impression that i will never ever drive myself anywhere if she doesn't make me practice all the time. 

and then we went to dinner at this chinese place in cashtown that we'd passed when we were coming home from gettysburg on saturday. which was, you know, like an hour and a half away. and lead to us getting home at like two, with about twelve thousand boxes of leftovers and completely (stir)-fried brains. (and yes, the food was so worth it).

and i'm guessing that these are not circumstances that lead to good dreams, because, in my dream, there was a talking spring roll. and it was telling me that i'd been rejected by every college i ever applied to. and i was sitting there pleading with the spring roll to let me into college, any college, and the spring roll was all 'no way, jose' and i was devastated. 

and then death appeared. and death's friend. and for some reason death was this guy from cobra starship named alex suarez and his friend was nate (the drummer). and then death ripped a piece off the spring roll and was all 'it's time to go.'

and then my mother woke me up. at four am. because the dog was barking and she wanted to make sure i wasn't being murdered or sneaking out of the house or joining a mormon polygamous cult or anything. 

unfortunately, her idea of waking me up involved sneaking into my room, standing by the side of the bed right where my face was, and poking me in the shoulder. while i was dreaming about dying via electropoppunk band and college-hating spring roll. 

needless to say, my reaction was a little too filled with **** to type. 

and then i wound up the night by falling out of the bed (the shock! the horror! the spring roll!) and cutting myself on my shoe rack (it's by my bed).

life sucks. 

off to babysit. 

when eddie c. met buffy

so, despite evidence to the contrary, i am alive. busy, but alive. and, best of all, since we have a yearbook theme and all the people i babysit or dogwalk for are finally home, i actually have downtime. 

which involved seeing harry potter and the half-blood prince. only once (so far). and loveloveloving it. it's actually probably my favorite of the movies, but i'll fangirl about that next post. right now, i just want to post one little thing:

in other words, why joss whedon/buffy summers totally pwn stephenie meyer/eddie c. 

also, cobra starship's new single hot mess? totally frigging amazing. i've only had it for the two days since i got back from gettysburg and it's already cracked my top 25 on itunes (hello, 66 plays, soon to be 67)