my year, in song

This mash-up of all the hits from the past year has been floating around the internet today and I'm kind of obsessed with it. I listened to it this morning and it got me to thinking about how integral music is to my life in that I tie so much memory to certain songs -- where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, when, in that singular moment, it imprinted on my brain and will forever remind me of a time and place (good or bad).

So I decided to sort of dissect the mash-up and illuminate the memories that come with some of the sampled songs. In doing so it was kind of a great way to time stamp the last year, which obviously had a lot of ups and downs. I'm going to go the way of the optimist and say that it was all for the best.

The Black Eyed Peas - BOOM BOOM POW
-- Logan Slaughter's twinky sidekick busting out Fergie's "people in the place..." bridge at Barracuda, sending the whole place into a riot of laughter and dance.

Lady Gaga - POKER FACE
-- Andy Dodds. Period.

Lady Gaga Featuring Colby O'Donis - JUST DANCE
-- more from 2008, but dancing at Splash on Thursdays with Ryan and Michael and anyone else who decided to be as delightfully tragic as we were each week.

The Black Eyed Peas - I GOTTA FEELING
-- cruising to the beach in San Diego with Aja, Charlotte, and Caitlin."Mozel tov??!!"

Taylor Swift - LOVE STORY
-- runs along The East River.

Flo Rida - RIGHT ROUND
-- general skankiness throughout the year

Jason Mraz - I'M YOURS
-- singing to myself alone in my room...sometimes way too loudly.

Beyonce - SINGLE LADIES (PUT A RING ON IT)
-- Lauren Murphy busting out the dance, full stop, at any opportunity available, sometimes with her sister as backup

Kanye West - HEARTLESS
-- lamenting our love lives with Christine

Taylor Swift - YOU BELONG WITH ME
-- T. Swift jam sessions at ELLE

The Fray - YOU FOUND ME
-- watching So You Think You Can Dance with my ladies of Hotel 194

Kings Of Leon - USE SOMEBODY
-- moments like this

Jamie Foxx Featuring T-Pain - BLAME IT
-- giving my number, yelling at someone, or eating something when I shouldn't have

Pitbull - I KNOW YOU WANT ME (CALLE OCHO)
-- the top 16 group dance of SYTYCD season 5. BEYOND.

T.I. Featuring Rihanna - LIVE YOUR LIFE
-- Ringing in the New Year at our kick-ass party NYE party

Jay Sean Featuring Lil Wayne - DOWN
-- getting low at Elena's wedding

Miley Cyrus - THE CLIMB
-- camping out on Lauren and Blythe's floor, watching Hannah Montana: The Movie, and noming on Mexican food before saying goodbye to my chica as she leaves New York.

Kelly Clarkson - MY LIFE WOULD SUCK WITHOUT YOU
-- all my friends who kept my chin up through 2009 and who, truly, without my life would so suck.

Beyonce - HALO
-- weekend ski trip to Vermont with my harem of women: Aja, Charlotte, Caitlin and Lauren.

Katy Perry - HOT N COLD
-- jumping around like fools at Hiro with Patrick (aka Tragitwin) and Mary at the Paper+H&M party/Katy Perry concert

are you there, Santa? it's me, Seth

I went to a Christmas party/variety show of sorts last night and we played a game that involved reading quotes from notable Christmas movies and then trying to guess what film they were gleaned from. I got this gem:

The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.

Poor Kate. I guess a story like that puts the whole gremlins-are-trying-to-claw-my-face-off situation into perspective....

Think dad dead in the chimney trumps your older brother telling you Santa isn't real when you're only four years old? It's debatable, me thinks.

Seth

currently with Seth Plattner

Song of the moment: "Alejandro" Lady GaGa

Phrase I'm Using Too Much: "deal breaker!"

Over it: Serena's philandering

Girl Crush: Cate Blanchett

obsession: athletes

shout out

to Mikey at a gay hockey kids life

Because I remember what you're going through.

Hang in there.

It gets better.

It gets easier.

Do what you have to do right now.

You'll know when it's time.

Seth

step and repeat

Ya know those times when you walk out of your apartment on a cold-ish type day, where the sun is just starting to shine through a gray morning, just enough that you put on your sunglasses not to look cool but maybe to just to protect yourself, and you have a converse feeling of solitude before you become enveloped by the city and all you want is something other than your own self-awareness, your own self-analysis to do all the work for you, to be like "hey, this is how you're feeling right now and if it's not how you're feeling I'm going to make you feel this way because you sometimes don't have a fucking clue what to feel" and what that something is is a song that comes on in a moment of kismet timing so you just go with it and it feels good, really good, to just get lost in something, even if it's just on the walk to the subway station and even if it kind of hurts at least you know if it hurts something is working and everything isn't covered in scars where only phantoms get the last laugh?

these are those songs:

allow me ruminate, dammit.

How hot is this poster?!

I originally had no plans to take to my blog to talk about New Moon, because -- while I'm finally OK with admitting I'm a Twihard -- I didn't want to contribute to the collective Twitteratti that is making everyone else want to put a gun in their mouths.

Nevertheless, this is my blog, and I need to realize that it's perfectly fine to indulge my obsessions so long as they don't become destructive and/or all consuming (thanks for go-ahead, Dr. Kelly!). That being said, I'm simply going to expound on Twilight v. New Moon. This isn't review so much as observation; so observe me observing.

Given I saw New Moon two times in 24 hours, I can't say I didn't like the movie. I obviously did. I know how to walk into a movie like this and reduce my critical eye to that of an untreated, nearly blind syphilitic (STD reference is intentional and appropriate), able to enjoy spoonful after spoonful of schmultz because, look, there's pleasure in the lowbrow if you just get over your ego for a couple of hours. And so I "eee!"-d a bit when the title came across the screen; I clapped when Edward did his first slow-motion walk across the school parking towards Bella; I gaped and then cried when Jacob took off his shirt; I snapped my fingers and said "Yeah, bitch!" when Dakota Fanning was all "Pain." You watch for moments like these that speak do your immature whims, not Oscars and accolades.

Still, if I have to be comparatively critical, I liked Twilight better, and here's where I'm going to get all first-year-film-major on you. There are moments when New Moon certainly exceeds Twilight. The overall scope of the story is more easily managed by Chris Weitz. That is to say he's able to take the remarkability of vampires and wolves and capture it with more technical savoir faire. It just felt like a bigger, meatier movie with him at the helm. However (and this is a big however), I really really missed Hardwicke's direction when it came to the emotion of the story. One of the reasons I was unable to stop watching Twilight over and over again was due to her ability to take the complexities of teenage emotion and attraction and desire and channel them through Bella's experience. Across the board, any emotion a teenager has is going to be affected by some type of angst, and no one does adolescent angst better than Hardwicke. Watch 20 minutes of Hardwicke's raw masterpiece, Thirteen, and you'll understand that. So when I saw New Moon, I just couldn't help but wonder what she would have done with Bella's gyre of despair post-Edward walk-out. And even Bella's recovery at the hands of Jacob would have been more treated, more palpably wearisome and painful. Hardwicke noted in the commentary of Twilight that she inserted a lot of Thirteen-type shots and scene set-ups that were, for me, really effective in conveying the story. And while she got a few knocks for having a directorial style that was too narrowed and sometimes careless, I actually felt it worked in the movie. The fact that she would approach certain scenes with a "let's-just-film-and-see-where-it-goes" mentality made for a movie who's instabilities only enhanced the themes of the books and the nature of teenage main characters. I'll cite the first time Bella comes to The Cullens in Twilight, when we get the whole dancing in Edward's room/climbing through pine trees/Edward playing the piano to example how she can seriously set a mood and capture sensibility.

It's a pity Hardwicke never got her shot at New Moon, but given her lack of experience with CGI, it could have been an embarrassing disaster. When it's all said and done she got to introduce the world to what will -- lamentably, perhaps -- become one of the greatest love stories ever told. Weitz did an OK job with his turn, but I'm glad there will be some new blood in Eclipse with David Slade, who directed 30 Days of Night, where vampires looked like this:



So if anyone is going to bring a darker, more mature element to this franchise, it's going to be Slade. Let's hope for an epic werewolves + The Cullens v. new vampire army battle.

Seth

The Big Pink is My New Therapy

Why I thought a Sunday night would be appropriate for a viewing of the mind-liquifyingly horrifying House of the Devil, I have no idea, especially considering I hate scary movies. Alas, I found myself hunkered down in the Angelika Theater mentally preparing for what was sure to be almost two hours of sheer terror. And it was, OK? I cowered. I covered my eyes. I jumped. I shrieked. I nearly wept. But I don’t want to talk about it, alright? Because if I talk about it I...look, I’M NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT IT!

But, what I am going to talk about is The Big Pink. What I love about the Angelika Theater is their dedication not only to little-engine-that-could movies, but also indie music that deserves to be heard. Before previews start they’re always running those fun trivia/factoid reels with featured music playing on top. On Sunday night, one of those featured bands was The Big Pink. The playlist had to loop through a couple of times before I started to take notice of their single, “Dominoes,” that was playing amid other tracks. I jotted down their name in my moleskin and, later that night, looking for something—anything—to ease my mind after what I’d just watched, I downloaded their debut album, A Brief History of Love, which dropped back in September. I owe my post-House of the Devil-sanity in part to British duo Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell for creating so cohesive an album and sound that I was able to fully get lost in it, momentarily forgetting that not half an hour prior I’d seen a deformed satanic old lady bleeding from her eyes.

Beyond the unstoppably catchy “Dominoes” is a collection of songs that reminds me of Animal Collective—distorted noise, synthetic riffs, doctored voices—only better, more focused with the right kind of intention of heavy beats, consistent tempos, and hooks I can actually get behind. “Crystal Visions” starts things off beautifully and “Velvet” kicks in mid-album just when you need it. Two days later and I’ve still got ABHOL on repeat, definitely for the sound…but also just to maybe get me back to that place before I’d seen House of the Devil.

—Seth Plattner, Assistant Editor

via ELLE.com

currently with Seth Plattner

Reading: Lolita

Song of the moment: "Dominoes" The Big Pink

Albums on repeat: A Brief History of Love, Lost Channels, Glee, The Music: Volume 1

Phrase I'm Using Too Much: "of the what?"

Over it: regret

Girl Crush: Carrey Mulligan

obsession: Frosted Flakes!

Wicked + the gays = yeah. and?

While famed NYC gay hot spot Splash Bar can get just a wee bit seedy on most evenings (especially when those college guys get rowdy on Thursdays!), Monday night found the dance floor occupied by a decidedly mixed crowd all there to enjoy the weekly Broadway sing-along night deemed Musical Mondays. Though any Monday night is a good excuse to gather your gaggle, down a few drinks, and belt your lungs out to video-taped recordings of some of the Great White Way’s most famous performances, this particular evening held the especially high occasion of celebrating the six-year anniversary of the opening of Wicked. In honor of the show’s almost 2,500 performance run (and certainly counting) a handful of Wicked cast members took their night off from the Gershwin Theater to lend their voices to some memorable performances for a gathering of their most adoring fans.

Dee Roscioli (pictured), who plays Elphaba on Broadway, ripped through “The Wizard and I” as if the cold she was reportedly nursing didn’t even exist. Chelsea Krombach, currently the Elfaba understudy, blew our ears off with “Defying Gravity,” and Heather Spore, a Galinda understudy, did the dutiful role of bewitching the crowd with Wicked fan favorite, “Popular.” After a performance by the Wicked dancers and a crowed giveaway, night took a, uh, charmingly desperate (?) turn when Craig Jessup, the make-up artist responsible for greenifying Elfaba every night, sang an original number, “Date With Myself.” Naturally, almost everyone in the room identified. At least we’ll always have our musicals.

—Seth Plattner, Assistant Editor

from ELLE.com

forgot to import this

but I'm (still) reading it, so (still) apropos.

When faced with the decision of what book to read next, I’m always torn between whether to go light or heavy. I generally try to keep it even, indulging in something mindless yet entertaining (think the Twilight saga) and then making my brain sweat a little with, oh, say Goethe? But at my last literary crossroad, I found myself wanting both. A tough request some might say, but not impossible thanks to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and, of course, Jane Austen. The book made the press rounds a couple of months ago at its release, and I finally decided to grab a copy knowing that hilariously desecrated high literature would be exactly what I’d been looking for. Elizabeth Bennet is everyone’s favorite classical tough girl, even more so when Grahame-Smith gives her action lines like this:

“Elizabeth lifted her skirt, disregarding modesty, and delivered a swift kick to the creature’s head.”

Chortle. I know there are P&P purists out there, but I for one think the zombie injection makes it a much more engaging read. Except I’ve never actually read the original text…which is making it kind of hard to know what’s from Austen and what’s from Grahame-Smith. Oh well. England and brains and death and innuendo and stuff!

—Seth Plattner, Assistant Editor

via ELLE.com