This is the original circus poster from which John Lennon derived inspiration. It takes a particlurly special frame of mind to want to set a circus poster to music. It takes a particular brand of genius to then come up with a song brilliant rather than daft. That particular particularity is called The Beatles, masters of toeing the legendary fine line between stupid and clever.
Also included, clip from Across the Universe. Most of the songs in the movie are presented in context different from what you’d obviously imagine (which is the charm of it). This one, however, is visualized very aptly in a circus environment. The appeal of staging a circus scene was clearly too tempting for director Julie Taymor to resist. Mr. Kite is Eddie Izzard, the flamboyant British comedian.
Thought we haven’t heard from Cesaria Evora in a bit. Evora makes the world’s greatest chill-out music. If I was the kind of person who got high, I would totally toke up to this, although I’m not and I don’t, I imagine it would be nice. It’s perfect music to sip tea and enjoy life to.
Maybe you’ve noticed that in the last month famous people have been dropping like flies. This week we lost Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon. Last week David Carradine passed. And not long before that Natasha Richardson died as well. That’s a lot of dead celebs in a very short time. And I think it’s no coincidence. God has taken to smiting the rich and famous. Ok Ed McMahon was old and Farrah Fawcett had cancer. But Micheal Jackson? Obvious smite. Think about it; he was only 50, nothing was wrong with him besides all the usual things that are wrong with being Michael Jackson, he’s minding his own business one day and he just falls over dead. Verily, God did Smite him for the Sin of being to weird for this Earth. David Carradine? Easy. God did smite him for the sin of masturbation. Masterbation may not seem like a very big sin, and if you do it like normal people it’s not, but when you go all BDSM on yourself that’s a smite-able offense. What Natasha Richardson’s sin is I don’t know – she led a blameless life as far as I can tell. But look at the evidence. She fell down, bumped her head and died the next day. Clearly, a smiting. I hope and pray He smites Madonna next.
UPDATE: I just found out that God has smited Billy Mays, who was some kind of television personality. He was 50, cause of death unknown. I guess God hates infomercials.
This is one of The Who’s most prominent songs. It’s noteworthy (and unfortunate) that this song seems to attract douchebags who want to look ‘sensitive’. It’s been butchered many times by many crappy artists. Most famously, Behind Blue Eyes was savaged and plundered by the unholy Fred Durst and his Limp Bizkit minions. Sheryl Crow and Bryan Adams have also stuck their fingers in it. The most distasteful cover version is by neo-Nazi Oi! punks Skrewdriver, who adapted it to suit their own particular worldview. As in most cases, the original is above and beyond the rest of the crowd.
I’d been thinking long and deep about the cultural role played by First Ladies, and supermodels, and women’s roles in general. It all started when I read Time’s cover story on Michelle Obama. Michelle is a role model in a way than no other First Lady has ever been before (at least in my lifetime). I know that a First Lady’s job is to be a living embodyment of her husband’s agenda. We’ve just had eight years of Laura Bush, the good little Christian housewife who keeps her head down and her mouth shut. Before that we had Hillary, who was the opposite, hellbent on proving her liberal feminist credentials by sitting at the big boys’ table. Yes, Hillary is a strong feminist role model, but does any woman really aspire to be like Hillary? No. Real women admire Michelle Obama because she’s a smart and accomplished woman who’s not ashamed to be stylish and fit, and actually seems to be having fun being First Lady. Michelle is very cool, as First Ladies go, but she’s no Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Americans couldn’t even imagine having Carla Bruni as First Lady. Bruni is completely independent of her husband. If anyone benefits from their union it’s him. She’s wealthy and famous in her own right, she needs nothing from him. She doesn’t even share his political beliefs (she is much more liberal than he). Can you imagine an American President whose wife is so independent? In fact American politicians rely so heavily on their families to appeal to their potential constituents. In America it would be impossible for the wife of the President to not be defined first and foremost as First Lady, no matter what her other accomplishments may be. Being First Lady is not even close to being Carla Bruni’s defining accomplishment. Carla is heiress to Italy’s CEAT tire manufacturing fortune. In the 90s she became one of world’s highest paid supermodels. She dated Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger (but not both at the same time). She is an acclaimed singer/songwriter. Carla Bruni is a talented, brainy, rich and iconically beautiful woman who just happened to fall in love with the President of France. There’s a First Lady we can all look up to!
Carla Bruni has always been known as ‘the smart supermodel’. She’s also the musically gifted one. Her musical career has been highly acclaimed and commercially successful everywhere except the U.S. (where we like both our singers and our supermodels brainless). I recommend No Promises, her 2007 album. No Promises is a collection of famous poetry set to music by Bruni. It includes works by Emily Dickinson, Auden, Yeats, Dorothy Parker and Walter de la Mare. This one is a Yeats.
Been There Done That, Brian Eno & John Cale, Wrong Way Up, 1990
What is WMG? It’s a company of some kind and they own copyright on a lot of music. They don’t allow their music to be posted on YouTube. A lot of music owning companies probably don’t want their stuff of YouTube, but WMG actually blocks their music from uploading. How they are able to track this stuff is a mystery. The point is, WMG owns Wrong Way Up. So I can’t uplaod my video that I made. So you should now go play Brian Eno and John Cale ‘s Wrong Way Up. If you don’t own it, you should go buy it. Or you could really stick it to those WMG fucks and download it for free on Piratebay or some similar venue of pirated goodies. Go bootleggers!
So…I think Johnny Depp and Tim Burton should just move to Vermont together already, because they seem to have one hell of an inspiring muse/genius relationship going on. After the triumphant Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the mildy less triumphant Sweeney Todd, would these two stop and rest upon their laurels? No, they will top themselves once again. Burton’s got his paws on Alice In Wonderland, which if you ask me, is a marriage made in, well, Wonderland. Depp is the Mad Hatter. And Helena Bonham Carter is the Queen of Hearts, because she’s Burton’s baby mama and he is seriously the only person left in all of Hollywood still willing to give the woman a job. It’s going to be visually stunning, funny, morbid and creepy, with lots of really really pale people who have dark bags under their eyes. To make it even more interesting, it’s not a straight adaptation of the book, more like a sequel, but not Through the Looking Glass. Why they can’t just adapt the damn book is beyond me. But I’m very optimistic and I’m sure the new update will be appropriately awesome. Due date, March 2010. Can’t wait!
The Doors’ swansong. It was supposed to be a comeback, after some people apparently thought Soft Parade wasn’t good enough and Morrison Hotel was still not good enough and finally here was L.A. Woman being just great and dandy, and going back to their roots and all that good stuff… And everyone hoped that Jim would pull himself together and not be so drunk and unmanageable all the time, and maybe he’d lose the gut and the beard, and they could go on tour and everything would be fine. But Jim had other ideas, and took off to Paris thinking he could pull himself together better amid the picturesque and inspiring historic locales. And then he took one long hot bath too many. And that was the end.
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