W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" had a truly insane, incoherent video. They literalled it up, like with "Take On Me" by Aha. That one's still my favorite because the literal song is even catchy ("Piiiiiiipe Wrench Fiiiight!"), but the images on this just beg for this treatment.

These funny white boy rappers come up with some funny lines. They get a bunch of their friends to make a land/water video for YouTube, ha! And the topic is a good one on this deadly hot day: "Put on your clothes and jump in the water."


Yes, I had nosebleed seats, so cramped even my short legs were pinched. Yes, I paid $175 to an evil scalper for those horrible seats, way up on the left in the 2nd balcony. Luckily I brought my mini-binoculars because Jemaine and Brett were cute and wonderful! What a fun Flight of the Conchorts Concert on Wednesday!

Full house, lots of enthusiastic people. We all roared at their songs and their patter. They are indeed just like their personas on TV, and they do fun things in messing with the audience. Also, Brett looks less scrawny in person, which is surprising. Jemaine is obviously the louder and quicker thinking, but he is subservient to Brett. Brett is the alpha conchord, you can tell.

Eugene Mirman, who plays their sloppy, odd landlord in the series, did a little of his stand-up routine. He had a funny story about how much he hates Delta Airlines, and then he passed out postcards for people to fill in and send to Delta to reinforce that they made a bad move when they screwed around someone who's clever and plays in venues with thousands of people. Ha, and he used his claims refund for the baggage of his they lost to print up the postcards!

Jemaine and Brett have been to Austin to play SxSW in their lesser-known days. This time they did a lot of songs from Season II, which I don't know. But they played many of the top hits I loved: It's Business Time, Hip-Hop-aPotamus, I'm Not Crying, and ... The Humans Are Dead!

The humans are dead
The humans are de-ad
We used posionous gases
And we poisoned their asses!

Binary solo!
0000001000011100000010000001

They sold colorful men's briefs at their swag table. Not sure what that was about... I never got through the huge crowd to see details. But anyway, it was one of the NIghts of Wendy's Birthday. In this case, it was the gift I got myself two months ago. So glad I did!

They talked about this on KGSR this morning, and someone posted about her on Herdomain too, so I found the YouTube clip of frumpy, spunky, 47-year-old Susan Boyle killing with a Les Miz song in a recent Britain's Got Talent (their version of American Idol). She's an overnight sensation, millions of YouTube hits, etc. Now the comments all seem to be how watching the clip makes everybody cry. I did. It's kinda amazing and a good human lesson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used
And wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung
No wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame.

And still
I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather...

I had a dream my life would be
So different form this hell I'm living
so different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.

Update: Conversations about this woman and her unlikely success... That she challenged the youthful contestants on this show, for one. That she took the snickers and eye-rolls and made people reverse their opinions. A good comment was that the event was manipulated; the goofy music, the quick clips of her admitting cheerily to classic spinster details, the patronizing "How old are you Susan" from Simon in a tone more appropriate to a five-year-old. But even knowing and seeing that (it's one of the most manipulative of the reality shows, both in the US and England), you still get a lump in your throat and tears in your eyes from her voice and her phrasing. She's also not untutored; there's a clip on YouTube of Susan Boyle's song in a charity performance from 10 years ago, and she's great on that too: Cry Me a River.

But the discussions brought up for me why I don't like American Idol or America's Got Talent or those other shows. That part of the show where deluded contestants stand there, full of arrogance, and perform crappy auditions*, that's just mean. It's people laughing at the weakest parts of human nature as demonstrated by real humans, versus laughing at highly paid actors mouthing scripts by highly paid writers.

Those actors get to put off the deluded characters at the end of the day, but the foolish souls mocked on the reality shows go home with L-O-S-E-R tattooed across their foreheads. It makes me mad that there are such high TV audiences for that. It makes me furious that Simon Caldwell is making tens of millions of $$ from it.


*I find I can have some interest in watching the finalists perform in challenges; they're all acknowledged as good singers by that point, and loserdom is not part of the theme.

I didn't realize Jay Smooth, videoblogger with www.illdoctrine.com, was coming to SxSW. But here's an interview on YouTube with him. He's fascinating to listen to. He's passionate about his music (hip-hop) and brings into his communications politics, generational issues, domestic violence, racial politics, media, .... Plus, he's the person I've based a key character on in my planned supernatural mystery novel: No-Dog Jenkins, hip-hop entrepreneur of Austin.


For a good, recent example of the awesome wisdom of the man, go hear him discuss his feelings about patriotism, racism and optimism on the day of Obama's inauguration.

Free music in Austin! I quit work at 5pm today and dined downstairs (like, in our own office building which has totally been built out now with restaraunts and retail) at Mama Fu's with NC's friends. Then we walked across the bridge to auditorium shores for the free SxSW concert. Up first: Bob Schneider! I love me some BobS, but I didn't actually get to see him. Heard the last few songs of his set as I stood in/near the long long loooooong line to get through security. So long that it wrapped around the side of the concert area and came halfway up Drake Street bridge!

Yeah, so I bailed once Bob was done, missing Raul Malo, the Arc Angels, etc. It was a long, exhausting week for me made extra awful by oak pollens that make me feel so slow, headachy and weepy. However, a shout-out to the weather gods who gave us dreamy warm weather in time for the festival. 80s and sunny, y'all!

There was a free SxSW concert on auditorium shores last night too, but I'd committed to doing the ASG Work Group meeting, held in a member's home north of Austin instead of Dominican Joe's, which was overrun with tourists. It was nice to see Kathy's lovely home in Pflugerville, but OMG. That was such a wasted evening. I think I gave some useful feedback on logic problems one must address in a "Born Free" story premise with clones. I got little to no feedback on my own script that related to anything I myself wrote. And then I missed 30ROCK for that!

Heard from my friends at Aether Paranormal that the production company I introduced them to is enthusiastic about creating a pitch package around them as a reality show. So cool! Shad came into our office wearing a TIE! OMG, our eyes popped out. "When have you EVER worn a tie before?" we asked. Turns out he did one time in July 2005. But each of the Aether Team members was making a 2-minute movie about their dayjobs and life outside paranormal investigations. Shad's was meant to point out how much more relaxed he was working from home than being in the office. And so I intruded myself on his clip with a goofy ad lib performance. I'm the obnoxious coworker who comes looking over his shoulder, startling him, and having a fit. "Oh man! Did you use purple on that?!" (he's doing desktop publishing of a marketing piece) "The execs hate purple! Gawwwhh!" (Cute touch, but, boy, I dislike seeing myself on camera.)

Next week or soon, as thanks for the help with Hollywood, Shad and the team plan to take me to Estancia Churrascaria -- the Brazilian all-you-can-eat steakhouse... W00t!

Tuesday my new sofa and loveseat arrived. Special order, green leather. For the first time in my life, I own reclining furniture... But classy! And it really is a comfortable set of furniture too. I had to sit on dozens of pieces to find it. For some reason, manufacturers make leather furniture with a very deep seat. Short people like me either perch at the edge of the cushions, or they scoot back with their legs sticking out straight in front of them. Not this furniture! But the smell of the chemicals in the dyeing of the leather is pretty awful, so I've been opening all my living room windows to air out while I'm home. And since I gave my perfectly fine if somewhat cat-mangled previous furniture to my brother, my living room had been pretty bare. Now it's furnished and comfy again.

I did get home last night in time to see most of President Obama's talk on Jay Leno. So smart! So charming! Explaining things so calmly. He and his Secy of Treasury inherited craziness and are doing such a responsible and focused job of putting out the fires and making changes. The idiots that have flamed him for creating a mess in his first 70-80 days in office? The media that reports every gaffe or stumble? Mostly the American public is ignoring them. Obama has a 65% or more approval rating in several polls. And the people in Europe are ecstatic about him. It feels so good to have someone in office I voted for. It feels even better that he's such a good guy!

http://www.archive.org/details/Sita_Sings_the_Blues

That URL gives you a listing of the several formats in which this FREE - Creative Commons Licensed - FREE animation is available for download. Nina Paley, the creator, makes a big thing about how/why her work is free, while she used creative works (songs, mostly) that are not. And how she throws herself upon the generosity of the IntarWebs for income from this work that took years of her life ... So that idea of a creator's works being worth $0 and .00 kinda makes me uneasy...

But the movie itself is charming! Wonderful animation! And what seems to be a respectful yet entertaining extrapolation of "the other" for richness and resonance. I know that's a LJ hot button discussion right now. Paley gives her expert commentators (POC, or people of color) on Indian/Hindu culture a direct voice, in fact. They're the shadow puppet characters squabbling over details and names -- with entertaining but informative results. I love how the animation styles evolve and make a visual mash-up, while I believe still respecting the POC origins of the story. Like a Bettie Boop influenced Sita...

It's the story of an American woman whose husband moves away to India and slowly, coldly dumps her, juxtaposed with the Indian epic, "Ramayana," the story of Sita and Rama. And the music is also awesome!

The buzz is that this is a shoe-in for best animated feature in 2009...

Love "Flight of the Conchords," loooooove 'em. And I loaned my season one DVD to J4 and now she loves them too. They'll be playing the Bass Concert Hall in Austin 4 days before my birthday in May...

And yet the Universe did NOT let me buy a ticket when they went on sale. The tickets sold out in 20 minutes, UTPAC told me. Purchased undeniably by evil re-sellers and scalpers to sell for 3x, 5x, up to 20x the face price.

I'd been monitoring the resale ticket prices, and the cheaper ones (ha! even they start at $165 with all the crappy fees) were already disappearing. So today I bit the bullet and bought a nosebleed seat on the 2nd balcony. And paid too much.

But I'll really be blue not to have seen them in person. Plus, I had a dream that I lived in a condo/townhouse near downtown and my garage apartment (?) was a regular bunkhouse for musicians and artists. I was surprised to see Bret and Jemaine and their entourage moving in back there, and then "remembered" how you do in a dream they'd been staying with me when in town since before they were famous.

It was hugs all around, then I loudly told them that I never got a ticket for the concert because they were all sold out! And the guys and their manager (it was totally Murray!) assured me I'd have a good seat.

UPDATE: The tickets went on sale today and SOLD OUT IN 10 MINUTES. They cost about $40 each. I can find them on ticket consolidator sites -- for like $140 to $750 !!

Jeezus. You know the biggest buyers were these profit-making bastards. Hate 'em!



Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie will be playing the Bass Concert Hall here in Austin on May 7th. They were folk musicians / novelty acts before they were deadpan funny actors in their own HBO TV series.

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