Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Sound of Music

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks in my sector of the blogiverse, with music and fiction taking up about equal amounts of my time. Because there’s sufficient material to warrant two blog posts, I’ll deal with the music aspect in this one, and begin work on the fiction part of it tomorrow.

When Just an Earth-bound Misfit posted a link to Susan Boyle’s video last Monday (see the heading And Now For Something Completely Different), I never dreamed I’d be devoting this blog post to music. But Susan’s singing is superb (her video was viewed more than 30 million times in less than a week). And inspirational. And I couldn’t let it go without expressing my admiration for her talent.

On 4/07, Tarleisio, blogging as MoltenmetalMama, posted The Rock’n’roll Redemption Infinite Playlist, Part One. On the 10th, she posted Part Two. In her inimitable writing style, she reflects on enough heavy metal to start an industrial machine shop. If you’re a “metal” fan, you’ll find treasure trove enough to keep your blades rotating for a week. You’ll have to google each group to find the YouTube videos, but it’s a small price to pay for total eardrum destruction.

Badtux the Snarky Penguin has proof that music is a ghost that haunts the instrument and that only the adept can properly communicate with it. Sungha Jung, a young Korean boy and guitar virtuoso extraordinaire, does a lot of pickin’ and virtually no grinnin’ to prove he’s a serious musician who’s on familiar terms with the ghost. Scroll down the page (if you wait too long, you may have to backpedal a page or more) to find the two videos.

And I would be remiss not to mention Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, who posts a music video daily. His most recent offerings include “The Boss,” Sound Tribe Sector 9, and The Beatles. Gee, with this much music on tap, I sort of feel like singing.

If only I could.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

No Life on Mars

Who would have thought that the delightful Gretchen Mol is sexier as a brunette than she is as a blond? But there it is.

Last night’s finale of the prematurely terminated series Life on Mars was a real zinger. Suddenly, the series’ title began to make a little more sense in that the show was provided a rather loose connection to the red planet. But, hey, an honorable mention is better than no mention at all.

Still, the show was neither about life on Mars or living on Mars, so a more accurate title would have been Life on the Way to Mars While in a Defective State of Stasis. But that would have given away the ending. Besides, it’s too long to fit inside one of those little rectangular boxes used for the TV program listings.

Time will tell if Life on Mars’ replacement is worthy. If it isn’t, I’ll go back to watching Medium, which appears in the same time slot. Oh, yeah, and I’ll be watching for LoM to show up in syndication; I missed the first few episodes due to a previous engagement with Ms. Arquette.