Wham, bam, thank you meme

Today, I'm digging myself out of a week of silence by tackling the meme at Jaywalker's fine blog It's not that there's been a shortage of things to blog about, but I've been somehow unable to force myself to write, so this might break the block. I really hate passing these things on to people (even though that's the point), so please, if you feel moved to do this, will you let me know?

1. Are you a male or female? Woman. Earthy variety.

2. Describe yourself. Younger than I'll ever be.

3. How do you feel about yourself?
Protective and bewildered,like a mum wondering how to get her teen-aged daughter to pull out of a potentially self-destructive trajectory.

4. Describe your parents.
My father was a man of many fine qualities. Telling the truth wasn't one of them. I've just received a copy of the order of service from his memorial service. Neither my sister nor I are mentioned and when I read the included two-paged (single-spaced) biography, I finally realized why. If either my sister or I had attempted to see him in San Francisco, it would have blown the convoluted and fantastic epic that he had created out of the detritus of his former life sky high. It will take some time and a lot of carefully-chosen words before I can blog about this. Sagittarian.

My mother is nearly the polar opposite of my father in philosophy, politics, and her attitude toward the truth. Not a saint by any means, and no easier to live with than any of us mortals, but in terms of personal integrity, ahead of the general pack. Ahead of her time, too, in many ways -- she was using Vitamin D and velcro well before they came into popular use. An Aquarian without a doubt.

5. Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriends.
There's only one, really, unless you count two sexual experiments from my mid-teens and the guy I used to neck with at parties. And I don't. My one former boyfriend was a knight-in-shining-armour type, who stayed until I was out of danger and hopelessly in love, then moved on to a girl who was in even more trouble than I was.

6. Describe your current boy/girl situation. I have a husband of several years. He's a Virgo through and through and hence rather obsessive and very attentive to personal hygiene. (A double-edge sword, but it has its benefits.) It's difficult to describe someone you've lived with every day for so long. This song, Helpless Heart by Paul Brady, comes close:

I'm sitting here inside this stranger's place
And time is racing by
I've been way out here for a month or more
Tonight I'm wonderin' why
You try to understand the things that I feel
Maybe this time I'll find a way to explain it

Cause there is a dream deep inside me head
And it may seem like it's breaking the thread
That holds me to you
Still you have never wanted to change me
But darling I know though we're far apart
The signal is strong
This helpless heart will always belong to you...to you

This power takes me from the place I belong
To where only the strong get through
You've got to keep on believing or you'll lose your way
Cause it slips right out of view
Thought there are days the light can flicker and fade
Here in this place tonight a fire is burning

7. Describe your current location. Our cluttered study, which keeps lightening and darkening as the morning sun moves in and out of the clouds. Younger daughter, sick with a vague virus since Monday, is crooning contentedly in front of the television set.

8. Describe where you want to be. In Victoria, BC in a house or apartment, heck, even a hovel within walking distance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and my mother's. Or a house or apartment, heck, even a hovel somewhere near a Tube Station in London. Or somewhere where both my daughters are getting the educations they need.

9. Your best friend(s) is/are remarkable for even liking me.

10. Your favourite colour is probably blue. Although I feel drawn to magenta.

11. You know that panic feeds panic, so staying calm (or pretending to stay calm) is the best way to cope, no matter how bad things are.

12. If your life were a television show what would it be called? I dunno, Styx and Stones ?

13. What is life to you? Loss.

14. What is the best advice you have to give? When I filled out Norm Geras' Blogger's Profile, I said, "Pick your battles." I'm sticking with that.

And it's gone too!

Decided to spend my birthday afternoon listening to my new Last.fm station. Lots of my favourite songs. Lovely. I was rather puzzled by a new sign about a free subscription. Isn't Last.fm a free service? I thought to myself, but dismissed it, thinking they were referring to the benefits of the paid subscription, which hold no allure for me. About twenty minutes ago, the music died. Puzzled, I clicked around and found this:

. . .listeners to Last.fm Radio outside of the USA, UK and Germany will be asked to subscribe for €3.00 per month, after a 30 track free trial period. In the USA, UK and Germany, where it’s feasible to run an ad-supported radio service, there won’t be any changes. Everything else on Last.fm (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc.) will remain free in all countries, like it is now.

I didn't get enough time to decide if I liked Last.fm enough to pay nearly $40 a year to listen to it, and frankly, I'm a bit ticked off at being penalized for failing to live in the UK, the US, or Germany.

Happy birthday to me...

...and it's gone...

I spent a bittersweet last evening with Launchcast April 15th. Some Launchcast sessions are mediocre; some send wonderful song after wonderful song. This last listening was a good example of what I'll be missing from Launchcast: a mixture of favourites, bearables, and at least two songs that were new to me and may go on to being favourites. The first of the latter is Umfazi Omdata which I think means "old married woman", so it's obviously my song: and the second is Maura O'Connell's rendition of The Blue Train. I can't embed this one, but the version of YouTube is a particularly fine one with Maura O'Connell singing with James Grant and Nanci Griffith, so do use the link if you have time.

Among these final seventeen songs on my Launchcast station, I was sent a number of songs I'd rated over 90 such as: Skating Away (on the Thin Ice of a New Day) (a nice live version from 1977 here), and:Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered by the unsurpassed Ella Fitzgerald (here, sadly with the saucy Cole Porter lyrics cleaned up), and: my absolute favourite Simon and Garfunkel song The Only Living Boy in New York. This song also appeared, as you may guess from the embedded video, in the movie Garden State which is a film I sat through, thinking all the while: "I bet I would have loved this when I was twenty..."

I even got to hear Never Let You Go by Three Eye Blind. I understand that as a discerning music lover, I'm not supposed to like Three Eye Blind, but I do. And I love this song (but can't find a decent video of it). The last song I heard on my Launchcast station was What I Like About You by the Romantics. Perfect.

The next day, my worst fears were realized. Not only has Yahoo dismantled the player, but they've taken down the lists for each personalized station. I had anticipated this and had transferred all songs I'd rated above 78 to Last.fm. Still, my ratings of over 15,000 songs, over 900 artists and over 600 albums are gone. Yahoo claims that the video station at my account has my Launchcast ratings in mind, but a video station is simply not the same thing, and I don't see them sending me much that is new, except a hell of lot of commercials and promotions.

Nope. You're blowing it, Yahoo. I'm off to Last.fm which, from earliest indications, will have more of a British bent to it, along with some other differences which I might discuss later. After the ballet, of course.

Lying low for Easter

Last Thursday, I had finished my weekly shift at the school library and was walking down to the supermarket. That is, I was forcing my feet, one in front of the other. I suddenly realized that I was exhausted. It had been a stressful week, what with the field trip, younger daughter's day-long visit to the other prospective school for next year, and my insistence on baking hot-cross buns for her class which I've done every year for the past nine Easters. So my own bloody fault, I guess. As I willed myself downhill, I was approached by two young Chinese women, who showed me some directions they'd taken down over the phone: "Manner Street, two blocks from Springfield, Maybell". I knew they were probably looking for Manor Street, but couldn't think of where that might be. Maybell? Desperately, I tried to think of the two cross streets nearest youngest daughter's school, but all I could remember was that they both began with "M". These are streets I cross four times each day. One of the girls patted me sympathetically on the arm, and we went our ways. I fished in my pocket for a raisin cookie that the librarian had given me, and by the time I reached the busy intersection at Beechwood, I hit the traffic signal button and exclaimed: "Maple! They're looking for Maple!" (The other street is Mariposa.) The two women were entering the store when I left, and I asked if they had found the address. They hadn't.

Anyway, that's why I've been lying low for the Easter weekend. The madness isn't likely to let up for months, and I'm desperately trying to dredge up some reserves. I've been gorging myself on David Tennant and Doctor Who, listening to radio interviews on the computer, and thanks to the resourcefulness of elder daughter, watching downloaded and highly illegal copies of Planet of the Dead and the accompanying Confidential. (Yes, Auntie Beeb, we'll be buying the DVD in due course, but we'll be keeping the full, unexpurgated Confidential thank you very much.)

It took several hours for elder daughter to download Planet of the Dead Saturday evening, so while we waited, we watched our copy of one of my very favourite Easter movies Jesus de Montréal (1989, written and directed by the marvelous Denys Arcand who appears briefly as a wry court judge), a parable of the story of Jesus told through a few days in the lives of some struggling actors in Montreal. The story is very clever and a sly commentary on the Québecois arts scene, although anyone involved in the arts in any city would probably recognize the stereotypes.

YouTube has one of my favourite scenes. I should warn you that the English swear words are there to give an approximation of the joual (Québecois street slang) used in one of the parodies the actors perform. In joual, like many languages of predominantly Catholic countries, to be really offensive, you don't go after bodily functions as we do in English, you go after religious allusions and family members. Here we see Robert LePage (now a high profile theatrical director whose works have appeared in London) doing his best Marlon Brando, and Rémy Girard (Québec's equivalent of Jim Broadbent, he's ubiquitous) spewing religious profanities. Most of the actors in this film are very familiar to audiences in Québec, but alas, next to unknown in the rest of Canada.



This Montreal Jesus succumbs to a concussion resulting from his cross being knocked over during a fracas between security guards and the audience, so the final scenes were extra harrowing for us this year.

If I rouse myself sufficiently, I'll watch my other favourite Easter film The Life of Brian, another movie that has outraged audiences, not because it goes after Jesus (because neither LOB nor JOM does), but because it takes a poke at organized religion.

Oh yes, and Easter Parade was on last night, while I listened to a pirated recording of the Planet of the Dead commentary (what gives, Auntie Beeb?). Younger daughter loved it.

♪There's a hole....there's a hole♫

For the past couple of weeks, the ice has retreated slowly, revealing khaki-coloured grass. Hesitantly, the grass has greened, and timid shoots, first of crocuses, then the leading edges of prospective daffodils and tulips, have poked through the muddy edges of the yard. So guess what happened yesterday? And continues today? Yes, my friends, I live in Ottawa where April really is the cruelest month, only to be followed by the unmitigated malice of May.

Outside, a cardinal is pipping hungrily, perching on the snow on the railing which is dripping with baby icicles. But the weather is not really the problem. The weather is not the true reason that I've been waking up each morning hearing a voice screaming as if down a deep well, a voice that I recognise as my own internal shrieking echoing from a hole in my soul that gapes indefinitely.

This morning is a field trip morning. (Oh gawd, not another one...) I lie in my bed, forcing my muscles to relax and mentally repeating affirmations: I am brave and courageous. I am wise and patient. Younger daughter is brave, intelligent and articulate.... I remind myself that I have laid both my and my daughter's clothes out for the day, that I have made her lunch and stashed it in the fridge, that I have written the time and place of the field trip in her calendar, and carefully explained to her that it is for the morning only and that she will be spending the afternoon at school.

And all goes well. Younger daughter is up early and delightedly clothing herself in a new skirt, complete with tights and pretty Mary-Janes, as this is a concert field trip at the National Arts Centre. We arrive at school and things go a little awry. First I realize I have failed to explain that there will be an hour of school before the field trip. Younger daughter wails: "There's no field trip???" While I'm attempting once again to explain the intricacies of time and space, and how an hour is not forever, I notice that on the kilometre walk up the hill, the lower "modesty" layer of younger daughter's skirt has bunched up under her snow jacket. I quickly draw her into the teacher's washroom to smooth the skirt down, but she protests: "But I like my skirt!" "Yes, darling, but you'll need to check it every now and then..." "But it's a beautiful skirt..." A brief wave of frustration and panic overtake me, and I hear myself say: "Please don't be like this!" and unconsciously turn away from her. "Fine!" she spits. "Go away and leave me!"

I manage to accompany her to her classroom, then retreat to the darkened office of the school library while the national anthem blares over the loudspeakers. There in the dark, for once, I don't have to stand at attention and sing. Feelings of failure and recrimination wash over me like tepid goo. I help the librarian sort books for three quarters of an hour, then surrender myself for field trip duty.

And it's fine, considering the bus is delayed, and there's the usual gang of kids who think singing several choruses of "This is the Song that Everybody Hates" is hilariously witty, and a Grade Five mum sits herself between Guardian Angel's mum and me and doesn't address a word to either of us. It's a supply teacher today who doesn't know that the time to tell the Grade Sixes to let the Grade Fives off the bus first is just before the bus comes to a halt, not after a third of the class has escaped. She's also trying to assign parents to smaller groups while the National Arts ushers are frantically trying to herd us to our seats in the amphitheatre while the orchestra strikes up Beethoven's Fifth.

However, we're seated in a row of Grade Sixes who chatter a little bit during the concert, but about the concert. The girls in front of us think it's very funny to conduct during one of the pieces, but I figure that means they're listening to the music, and I only have to give one meaningful glance at the boys to my left, who immediately pipe down. Elsewhere, I'm told afterward, the ushers had to hush the Grade Fives four times. Their teachers and accompanying parent volunteers are all sitting companionably together in the centre, oblivious to this. Later, the entire Grade Five class fails to show up at the bus. One of our parents and the supply teacher go off in search of them while we wait on the bus, watching the agitated body language of the driver. When they finally appear, the parents saunter up last.

On the way back to school, younger daughter tells me that two girls in the NAC washrooms told her how pretty her skirt was.

Tomorrow, she spends the entire day at one of the schools we're looking at for her next year. Then there's a so-called "Marsville" project which involves spending a whole day at the Museum of Science and Technology. Then a history fair which means another full day at the Museum of Civilization. All through cruel April and into the maliciousness of May....

Transferral, transition, transfixion, transcendence...

Following the suggestion of Rullsenberg, I have set up a free account at Last.fm and have spent the last three days "life-boating" songs from my list at my soon-to-be-no-more station at Launchcast, the one I've been building up for over five years. This may take some time; I have over 15,000 songs rated at Launchcast, and although many are duplicated, quadruplicated and more (depending on how many albums they show up on), I don't know if I will make it through the songs I actually like by the 15th.

While I transfer, I've been slowly working out how Last.fm works. I'm not allowed to say how much I like a song, album or artist, for example. I can either "love it", simply save it to my station without comment, or ban it, whereas at Lauchcast, I had the option of rating something up to five stars (or banning it), or in my case, rating out of one hundred. Last.fm has the interesting feature of embedding YouTube videos at the individual song sites. At least, it does for some people. I tried linking several times when I saw no video available although I knew of one at YouTube. I entered the URL, a green icon came up, saying "Video added". Yet, when I checked later, still no video was there. I wonder if I have to have a paid subscription or something...

One of these was for the devastating second movement of Henryk Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. This piece has been much on my mind as I've been viewing a repeat of the documentary series Auschwitz: The Nazis & the 'Final Solution'. (I was watching the British version narrated by Samuel West; the one shown on PBS had Linda Hunt doing the narration.) Every time they launched into a heartrending description of slaughter, it was signaled either by Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel, or by the opening chords of the second movement of the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. My elder daughter, working at her homework while I sat in horror by the television set, turned and asked: "Why do they always play this music when someone is dying?" She didn't just mean the documentary. Both pieces figure in the screen version of Wit, starring Emma Thompson as a John Donne scholar succumbing to ovarian cancer. (As an aside, if you haven't seen Wit, you must. The play won a Pulitzer Prize. I've seen both the play and the movie. They're not easy viewing, but they're transcendent in every sense of the word.)

I gave elder daughter a quick and inadequate history of both pieces of music, and later discovered she had saved a YouTube video of the Gorecki piece to her account.
Here it is:
When I hear it, I find myself transfixed where I am. The opening chords are based on a Polish folk melody, but brim with the spirit of youth. Then an oppressive chord on the strings takes over, and over it the soprano starts, very low: "Mama.....don't cry...." As I understand it, Henryk Górecki heard of a prison in southern Poland where, amongst the hundreds of messages scratched on the wall by prisoners facing torture and death by the Nazis, there was a poignant message from Helena Wanda Błażusiakówna who was imprisoned there in late 1944: "O Mamo nie płacz nie—Niebios Przeczysta Królowo Ty zawsze wspieraj mnie" (Oh Mamma do not cry—Immaculate Queen of Heaven support me always)
He said that among all the messages of fear, anger, despair, this simple message from an eighteen-year-old girl really stood out, in its lack of self-concern. There seems to be evidence that Helena Wanda survived her ordeal and married a Roman Pawlik, but the vast majority of Nazi prisoners didn't. So I sit when this music begins, unable to move, thinking of the children led into the Nazi abattoirs, with and without their mothers, and of the children being exploited, tortured, murdered today. I'm really glad Helena Wanda's mum got her back.

And my poor fool is hanged

Wednesday used to be an impossible night for TV viewing, but last night there was an embarrassment of riches in a sparse week. I had planned to watch Being Erica and the second-to-last episode of the doomed American version of Life on Mars, but the Resident Fan Boy reminded me that Ian McKellen's King Lear was on PBS.

Oh my goodness. This King Lear has to be one of the clearest and accessible productions I've ever seen. From the opening moments, the characters emerge in all their complexity. McKellen's Lear is a very old man, one used to getting his way and one still capable of forcing everyone into a deep terrified curtsey if he so much as raises his voice. The eldest daughter Goneril (Frances Barber) comes across as the voice of sweet reason; the middle sister Regan (Monica Dolan) clutches a wine goblet at every opportunity and follows Goneril's lead, while kid sister Cordelia (Romola Garai) makes the fateful decision not to flatter her father. As the events spin out inexorably into death and disaster, one wishes she had. Perhaps then, her aged arrogant father would not be systematically stripped of all his power and left to the whim of her sisters, who in this production, start out from put-upon and annoyed before suddenly toppling over into out-and-out cruelty.

There seems to be a Doctor Who theme over at the Royal Shakespeare Company these days. One of Lear's few remaining supporters is his fool, played by Sylvester McCoy, who manages to slip his trademark spoon-playing into his routine. This is a frightened and powerless servant full of affection for the foolish king, but all too aware of the way the wind blows. (And it does, with a heigh-ho.)

In a startling re-staging and arranging, the sort of stuff for which the RSC is famous, Lear's ambiguous line near the end, "And my poor fool is hanged" is made unmistakable at the end of Act III. Usually, the fool just vanishes, but Gloucester, deliberately disobeying the two elder daughters' orders to leave Lear to the elements, returns once again to help the king flee, and fool is still in the stable when Gloucester is surrounded by grinning Cossack types. A couple of them haul Gloucester off to face his blinding (which I can never face, I always change the channel or leave the auditorium -- I do, really). The remainder improvise a gallows and brutally hang the poor fool who speaks "a prophecy ere I go", a speech that normally takes place at the end of the earlier heath scene: ". . .Then comes the time, who lives to see't/ That going shall be us'd with feet." It is upsetting enough to see the gentle jester strangled, but see Sylvester McCoy used thus is doubly so.

Our PBS transmission concluded with a wonderful interview with Sir Ian, looking remarkably youthful after his ravaged Lear. I hope the rumoured filming of David Tennant's Hamlet is of similar quality.

Last summer, talent writer and Lear virgin Marie Phillips wrote in her blog about seeing King Lear for the very first time and being bamboozled. Marie, if the King Lear currently languishing on your PVR is McKellen's and Trevor Nunn's RSC version, for pity's sake, watch it. This is a crystal-clear Lear.

A Clockwork Grapefruit

These are the signs of the approach of spring in Hades:

1. Dust and the taste of salt in your mouth. With neither snow nor glaciers to hold them down, the gravel, sand, and salt rise unimpeded into the air. This heralds...

2. The unbelievably loud roar of street cleaners mowing up and down the streets between midnight and 3 am. Even our double-glazed, airtight casement windows fail to hold out the din.


3. Chunky rivers dotted with motorboats of ice wranglers. We have special machines that roll out on the ice to begin breaking it up, but I missed them this year.

4. Cars, trucks, and buses brushing by pedestrians in frighteningly close proximity. After six months of being shielded from the road by glacial trenches and palisades of snow, one feels positively naked and exposed to traffic. Rear-view mirrors appear to whistle past one's ears.

5. Cardinals.


6. In a related development, a bird feeder that now needs refilling again after hanging unnibbled for more than a month. I don't know if the birds that were here in January found somewhere warm to hang out for February or simply got frozen to the trees. Either they or some new birds are now busily ripping through my seed supply.

7. The schoolyard is a vast expanse of glossy steel-coloured ice. On warmer days, this is very slick, and on even warmer days, it's a hazardous swamp with a lubricious and perilous bottom. Watch the ankle-biters sink shrieking from view.

8. The glaciers and piles of filthy discarded snow, resembling frozen tsunamis and other bad choices for surfing, are retreating centimetre by centimetre revealing perfectly preserved dog droppings and other delights.

9. Native Ottawans are now insisting on wearing open-toed shoes and sandals, despite - 11 Celsius temperatures. Because it's spring, dammit.

10. Blood-curdling screams from the bathroom to summon The Resident Fan Boy who has been doing his morning puttering in the kitchen.
 No, wait. That's not a sign of impending spring; that was me yesterday morning.

 This is because I glanced in the mirror while wrestling with my contact lenses and saw something like this:Since brain injury has been a bit of a theme at this house for the past six months, my immediate thoughts were: Omigod-omigod-omigod, I've having a stroke; there's cranial bleeding; my brain is leaking away; I don't want to spend the whole bloody day in emergency.... However, it seemed too much of a coincidence that I had just been to the ophthalmologist the day before and had those pupil-dilating eye drops. A quick google revealed a host of horrible things that could be happening to me, but also mentioned that anisocoria (a pretty name for the condition that makes you look somewhat like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange) is also a fairly common reaction to eyedrops. Mind you, I've never had this reaction before after many many years of taking my nearsighted eyeballs for a checkup, but I decided to hold off the panicked phone call until I'd taken younger daughter to school. If I'd really had my wits about me, I'd have only made up one eye to creep out the Rockcliffe mums, but my sense of humour was somewhat diminished that morning. When I got home, my pupils were nearly the same size and after an hour they were back to normal and I decided not to bother the doctor.

So the evening found me relatively panic-free, surveying a television schedule with little to offer. Thank God for the Turner Classic Movie channel. In between movies, they showed a delightful documentary of Chuck Jones remembering his childhood, illustrated with animated version of his rough drawings.

This got me to thinking of some of my favourite animated shorts. In my pre-mum days, I used to attend animation festivals regularly. I only had a faint recollection of one of my very favourites, in which two married animators took a soundtrack of their daughters talking and playing and transformed it into a luminous cartoon. And I found it! Here's "Windy Day" by John and Faith Hubley:
Another one I loved is one that seems to have vanished, a cartoon fantasy set to a 1930's recording of Fred Astaire singing "Puttin' on the Ritz" which is turned into a flight of fantasy with quite a bit of eroticism. I think it's from the early '80s. Let me know if you recognize it.

Finally, a delightful cartoon from then largely unknown Tim Burton:And yes, that is the glorious and classy Vincent Price himself narrating.

Now that my pupils are the same size, I don't feel quite like I would fit in perfectly with that last item. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to go out and get grazed by passing cars again...

The sun always shines on the ophthalmologist

The skies are never overcast when I have an appointment with the ophthalmologist. Almost sounds like a song lyric, doesn't it? Nope, every time I go to see the eye doctor, the sun is blazing in a cloudless blue sky. Since my appointment is always in March, this generally means that there are freezing winds screaming up Sparks Street directly from the Ottawa River which is bobbing with chunks and pans of ice this time of year. With my pupils dilated to bad-art-puppy-dog size, I have to remove my glasses (my contact lenses being out of the question), and slap on sunglasses, then grope my way up the street, squinting at street signs and traffic signals. I spend the afternoon in front of the computer wearing reading glasses over my regular glasses. Luckily, no one is home. When 2:30 arrives, I once again slap sunglasses over my leaden eyeballs and grimace in what I hope is a friendly fashion at the vague shapes that may be people greeting me.

My horoscope was a very gloomy one this morning, which is doubly disturbing since it comes from the normally witty and cheery Georgia Nichols. Today, she told me: I'm not going to kid you. This could be a challenging Monday. ("It was Monday. It was Monday all day.") Powerful forces from within you might make you feel uncomfortable about something. You might not even know what's going on. (I don't even know what's going on.) It's time to let go of something. (But what?)

All perfectly true, of course. It being the first day back at school for both daughters after March Break, I was in a fit of gloom over taking younger daughter back to the mine-infested obstacle course of class projects, presentations, field trips and rituals from here until June. I was however, strangely comforted by a rare dream involving David Tennant. Nothing erotic, you understand. We were walking companionably down a crowded hallway in what I presume was a hotel, and he was clad in an adult-sized replica of younger daughter's pajamas. He kept reaching back to take my hand to guide me through the throngs of people and the combination of this gesture and the pajamas was rather endearing. He had just come back from some public event in Berlin where he'd been doused with water and become rather cross. I've mentioned before that my dreams rarely make a lick of sense. I think I prefer it that way.

The Launchcast Death Watch continues. Here's a bit of what I listened to over the weekend, with my ratings out of a hundred:
Why? 50 - Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman (1988)
What I Like About You 100 - The Romantics, The Romantics (1980) The link I've provided here is to a well-edited Doctor Who fan-vid done by some sweet young thing who thinks this is a song by The Ramones. This is the risk you take when ripping off music from Limewire...
Gyasi Went Home 68 - Bedouin Soundclash, Sounding a Mosaic (2004) (Can/Con) These guys are from Kingston which is on Lake Ontario, and is about an hour by train from Ottawa. The video I've linked to has them gabbing about the song for about a minute and a half, but the song itself is worth a listen.
My Maria 100 - Brooks and Dunn, Borderline (1996) I loved the 1973 original by B.W. Stevenson, but this is a wonderful cover, and I must confess, despite not being a huge fan of country music, I think Ronnie Dunn is one long cool drink of water...
All I Want Is You (Live) 70 - U2
Once in Love With Amy (from Where's Charley?) 100 - Ray Bolger Alas, there is no YouTube link to Ray Bolger's rendition of his signature tune. Lisa Rullsenberg suggested this weekend that I check out Last.fm, so I transferred 252 of my favourite artists to my profile there, and, on a whim, typed in Ray Bolger. And up came this song, which bodes well, although I think it will take me some time to figure the site out.
A Dream, A Dream, A Dream 47 - Bert Jansch
Symphony #6, Movement III 81 - Beethoven
Lonesome Blues 50 - Louis Armstrong, The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (1926)
Goin' Out West 56 - Tom Waits, Bone Machine (1992)
I Drove All Night 70 - Cyndi Lauper, Twelve Deadly Cyns. . . . (1995)Always liked this video, also this cover of the Roy Orbison song.
Quien (Who) 50 - Tish Hinoiosa, Cada Niño/Every Child (1996)
For a Job 47 - Peggy Seeger, An Odd Collection (1996)
This Traveling Around 50 - Lyle Lovett, It's Not Big, It's Large (2007)
Laughter 50 - Jack Rouse, Home (2000)
The End of the Tour 65 - They Might Be Giants, John Henry (1994)This is just a taste of the song by the quirky band which takes its name from one of my favourite movies.

When I was a Boy 96 - Dar Williams, Out There (2001)
One of my very favourite Dar Williams songs:
I won't forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand
I said I was a boy; I'm glad he didn't check.
I learned to fly, I learned to fight.
I lived a whole life in one night.
We saved each other's lives out on the pirates' deck.

And I remember that night
When I'm leaving a late night with some friends
And I hear somebody tell me it's not safe,
someone should help me.
I need to find a nice man to walk me home.

When I was a boy, I scared the pants off of my mom,
Climbed what I could climb upon
And I don't know how I survived,
I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew.

And you can walk me home, but I was a boy, too.

I was a kid that you would like, just a small boy on her bike
Riding topless, yeah, I never cared who saw.
My neighbor come outside to say, "Get your shirt,"
I said "No way, it's the last time I'm not breaking any law."

And now I'm in this clothing store, and the signs say less is more.
More that's tight means more to see, more for them, not more for me.
That can't help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat.

When I was a boy, See that picture? That was me
Grass-stained shirt and dusty knees.
And I know things have gotta change,
They got pills to sell, they've got implants to put in,
they've got implants to remove

But I am not forgetting...that I was a boy too.

And like the woods where I would creep, it's a secret I can keep
Except when I'm tired, 'cept when I'm being caught off guard.
And I've had a lonesome awful day, the conversation finds its way
To catching fire-flies out in the backyard.

And so I tell the man I'm with about the other life I lived
And I say, "Now you're top gun, I have lost and you have won."
And he says, "Oh no, no, can't you see

When I was a girl, my mom and I we always talked
And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked.
And I could always cry, now even when I'm alone I seldom do.
And I have lost some kindness
But I was a girl too.
And you were just like me, and I was just like you."

Continuing my Launchcast Lament

In keeping with my whinge over losing Launchcast as of April 15th, I made a note of each song that played on my Launchcast station last night and how I rated each one. Roughly half were new to me and a third were from Canadian artists. (Yes, I know that Rufus Wainwright was born in the US; he was raised in Montreal by his Canadian mother, okay?) I used the rate out of 100 option because the five stars aren't exacting enough for me. Anything below 50 means I don't care for it (the degree of dislike increases with the smallness of the number, obviously). 50-59 means I don't mind hearing it again; 60-69 means I'd like to hear it again; 70-79 means I care about hearing it again; 80-89 means I must hear it again, and 90 and above means I stop what I'm doing to listen and sometimes even shove back my chair and sing and dance in front of the computer. (Luckily, you will be spared this.) Yesterday evening was a good evening, only one song below fifty percent. I've provided some YouTube links to some of them in case you'd like to listen along to what was playing on Lily Father's Joy's Station:
Water's Edge - 79 - Cyndi Lauper, The Body Acoustic 2005
Sleepwalker - 74 - Wallflowers, Breach 2000
You Stole the Sun from My Heart - 65 - Manic Street Preachers, Forever Delayed: Greatest Hits
My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors - 83 - Moxy Fruvous, Bargainville 1993 (Can/Con) I'd just like to point out at this juncture that one of the members of Moxy Fruvous is my younger daughter's speech therapist's nephew. No, I don't know which one.
Awkward Game - 59 - The Cash Brothers, How Was Tomorrow? 2001 (Can/Con)
Willie's Fatal Visit - 50 - Jeannie Robertson, Classic Ballads of the British Isles
God and Country - 68 - Blue Rodeo, Diamond Mine 1989 (Can/Con)
Everybody Loves Me, Baby - 98 - Don Mclean, American Pie 1971
You Are Everyone - 60 - Dar Williams, Promised Land 2008
Drinkin' Days - 63 - Slaid Cleaves, Wishbones 2004
Land of Canaan - 54 - Indigo Girls, Strange Fire 1987
Going to a Town - 50 - Rufus Wainwright, Release the Stars 2007 (Can/Con)
The Night Pat Murphy Died - 70 - Great Big Sea, Great Big DVD and CD
2004 (Can/Con)
Needle in the Hay - 50 - Elliott Smith, Elliott Smith 1995
Andy, You're A Star - 61 - The Killers, Hot Fuss 2004
If I Should Fall From Grace with God - 80 - The Pogues, If I Should Fall From Grace With God 1988
Walk Around Downtown - 83 - Cheryl Wheeler, Different Stripe 2002

Sigh. I suppose I can go back to listening to The Q online, but I will miss having somewhere to list what I like and dislike. You may want to steer clear of this blog for the next three weeks; I'll probably be doing a number of moanfests like this one. (Beats facing what really going on...)