I've been loving the Ataris a ridiculous amount recently (thanks to the beach boys for letting me know about them), especially Saddest Song and In This Diary, which have some amazing lyrics, and took half an hour to chill in a playground, swinging and singing recently. It was so much fun! Swinging is AT LEAST as much fun at 23 as it was at 3, and when you're belting out (badly) lyrics as great as these:
"Here in this diary,
I write you visions of my summer.
It was the best I ever had.
There were choruses and sing-alongs,
and that unspoken feeling
of knowing that right now is all that matters."
(In This Diary)
"Only two more days, until your birthday
Yesterday was mine
You'll be turning five
I know what it's like, growing up without your father in your life
So I pretend, I'm doing all I can
And I hope someday you'll find it in your heart
To understand
Why I'm not around
And forgive me for not being in your life"
(Saddest Song)
and
""We Are the Champions" playing out on the radio station
Everyone sing along with these anthems of our generation.
Cruisin' down Pacific Coast Highway,
Put the top down, crawl into the back seat.
Let's create anthems of our own tonight."
(Summer '79)
It's probably even better. Though a guy turned up with his dogs halfway through my private concert and, though I don't think he could hear me from where he was (for his sake, I REALLY hope not), he kept staring at me. I reckon he was jealous. I would have been.
xx
D
PS. Ataris in Vancouver August 1. I'll be there. can't wait for the epic!
Sunday, May 30, 2010
I have more time on my hands these days since I can remember. The summer between grade 12 and York, probably. It's...weird. On the one hand, I love that I can go to the studio with the beach boys, or the beach, or out for coffee, or to a movie (SATC2 was every bit the amazing ridiculousness it was meant to be), or whatever, whenever...on the other hand, I hate being bored, and not being 110% booked up is a good way to become bored. Especially when the weather is shiiiite as it has been recently.
I've had more time to read and watch documentaries and stuff though recently, which has been nice! I recently saw No Impact Man, which is about a family of three in NYC who decide (well he decides and she goes along with it; the 2-yr-old doesn't really care) to live for a year without making a net negative impact on the environment. This includes 6 months of living without power, not using paper (including toilet paper), shopping for unwrapped food so as to not create any garbage, only using foot and pedal power...pretty intense and interesting. She works for Business Week and he's not a *total* hippy, so it was interesting to see them asking the questions around what we 'actually' need to use/consume/etc. Of course, they blogged about it all once he borrowed a solar panel to power his laptop (but not his fridge), this man has his priorties straight!
I also saw 'RiP: A remix Manifesto', which was almost as interesting for the fact that the director grew up on Gabriola of all places! It looks at the development of copyright and its current state, and how we need to move on to copyleft. Interestingly, it looks in pretty great detail at one of my favourite DJs, Girltalk, who samples and remixes dozens of songs into each track. To do it legally, he would have to pay some $284,000 per song to buy the licensing rights, even though he only uses a second or two of each track. Crazy. In contrast, the whole documentary is copyleft/CC and open to remixing. [film homepage]
Reading-wise, I finally decided to get to Siddartha, given to me by a dear friend before I left Japan, who told me that I was 'on a journey and needed to read it.' I know I'll be re-reading it soon, but I'm glad I did. There were some great things about loving and listening in there.
Continuing a strangely Indian theme, I'm also working my way through Shantaram right now, which is a 900+ page memoir-style novel about a semi-fictionalised decade in India. Written by ex criminal/drug dealer/arms dealer/prison escape artist/etc. etc., Gregory David Roberts, it's well worth the time. Apparently he's working on two other books to make it a trilogy and the movie rights have been bought, though there's no way a film could do the rich description of this novel justice, so I don't think I'd go see it. (Plus I think it would be at turns depressing, gruesome, scary, and stunningly gorgeous and I'm not sure I can handle all of that plus Johnny Depp all in one sitting). I have 650 pages, or roughly a week, to go, and I'm already mourning the end of this book. Here's hoping the sequels don't take the 13 years this one was rumored to take to write.
Happy reading!
D
I've had more time to read and watch documentaries and stuff though recently, which has been nice! I recently saw No Impact Man, which is about a family of three in NYC who decide (well he decides and she goes along with it; the 2-yr-old doesn't really care) to live for a year without making a net negative impact on the environment. This includes 6 months of living without power, not using paper (including toilet paper), shopping for unwrapped food so as to not create any garbage, only using foot and pedal power...pretty intense and interesting. She works for Business Week and he's not a *total* hippy, so it was interesting to see them asking the questions around what we 'actually' need to use/consume/etc. Of course, they blogged about it all once he borrowed a solar panel to power his laptop (but not his fridge), this man has his priorties straight!
I also saw 'RiP: A remix Manifesto', which was almost as interesting for the fact that the director grew up on Gabriola of all places! It looks at the development of copyright and its current state, and how we need to move on to copyleft. Interestingly, it looks in pretty great detail at one of my favourite DJs, Girltalk, who samples and remixes dozens of songs into each track. To do it legally, he would have to pay some $284,000 per song to buy the licensing rights, even though he only uses a second or two of each track. Crazy. In contrast, the whole documentary is copyleft/CC and open to remixing. [film homepage]
Reading-wise, I finally decided to get to Siddartha, given to me by a dear friend before I left Japan, who told me that I was 'on a journey and needed to read it.' I know I'll be re-reading it soon, but I'm glad I did. There were some great things about loving and listening in there.
Continuing a strangely Indian theme, I'm also working my way through Shantaram right now, which is a 900+ page memoir-style novel about a semi-fictionalised decade in India. Written by ex criminal/drug dealer/arms dealer/prison escape artist/etc. etc., Gregory David Roberts, it's well worth the time. Apparently he's working on two other books to make it a trilogy and the movie rights have been bought, though there's no way a film could do the rich description of this novel justice, so I don't think I'd go see it. (Plus I think it would be at turns depressing, gruesome, scary, and stunningly gorgeous and I'm not sure I can handle all of that plus Johnny Depp all in one sitting). I have 650 pages, or roughly a week, to go, and I'm already mourning the end of this book. Here's hoping the sequels don't take the 13 years this one was rumored to take to write.
Happy reading!
D
Monday, May 03, 2010
[post 400!]
Today's topic: How I spent my summer vacation. Or: How Grampa and I turned a pigeon coop into a house.
One of those 'has potential' places TLC so loves to cover on Saturday afternoon specials.
It's defining feature was 14 years (and wheelbarrow loads) of crap. Which we hauled away to find a very structurally-sound place, luckily!
Even some torn ligaments weren't enough to stop construction.
This was BY FAR the crappiest part of the whole reno. If you can avoid it, I highly suggest you NEVER insulate a ceiling.
In the end, though, it was totally worth it!! I'll find some other pictures later, including some of the other end, which features a teeny tiny kitchenette and a little bitty desk.
Today's topic: How I spent my summer vacation. Or: How Grampa and I turned a pigeon coop into a house.
One of those 'has potential' places TLC so loves to cover on Saturday afternoon specials.
It's defining feature was 14 years (and wheelbarrow loads) of crap. Which we hauled away to find a very structurally-sound place, luckily!
Even some torn ligaments weren't enough to stop construction.
This was BY FAR the crappiest part of the whole reno. If you can avoid it, I highly suggest you NEVER insulate a ceiling.
In the end, though, it was totally worth it!! I'll find some other pictures later, including some of the other end, which features a teeny tiny kitchenette and a little bitty desk.
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