AJAX BELL

Author of the Queen City Boys books

Category Archives: muzica


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Only Lovers Left Alive

tumblr_n61mx7lrnm1r7wwqao1_500Last night I went and saw Only Lovers Left Alive with Darrah.  It was playing, as far as we could tell, only one week, Mon-Thur, two shows a night, at different times each night. At a theater inconvenient to most anyone who would probably be interested in it.  If they could even discover it was playing.  7pm on Thursday and the audience was the two of us, a solitary fangirl (I saw you, ma’am and recognized what you are), and two 50s-ish guys.  I mean I guess the theater can argue the limited run was for lack of interest but, c’mon, Nashville.  Why wasn’t this at the Belcourt,and publicized, like at all?

Still I’m grateful we saw it the theater, and in a quiet theater no less, because it was amazing.  I couldn’t watch the first couple minutes, where everything was spinning.  Too vertigo-y for my delicate brain constitution, but the rest of it was fucking perfect.

I want to crawl inside this movie and live forever. I over identified with Adam’s character, so crawling inside it obviously means Tilda Swinton would be my wife, which is all I’ve ever wanted out of the world. But there’s more reasons than that.  My coworker asked what it was about this morning, and I said, “it was vampire movie, but if I had to use single words to describe it they would be: soft, comfortable, calm and romantic.”  There really wasn’t angst and suffering in OLLA, just a little irritation and exasperation. And of course, the vampire thing.  I started reading Anne Rice and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro when I was 14 or 15.  Yep the vampire thing is kind of over played in pop culture now, but it will always be a huge part of  my emotional and intellectual upbringing.  OLLA was the vampire movie of my goth teenager dreams.  It filled me with the same calm wonder as discovering the Romantic poets did, or finding The Chameleons UK and feeling like someone else really understood my inner world.

The pacing of the movie was oddly relaxing.  There was no real sense of urgency in it, even when people were hurrying to do things. There was tension, but it never felt scary or anxiety inducing.  There was just this pervading sense that whatever came could be handled, somehow.  Which is perfect, if you’ve lived forever and been through everything, sure this too shall pass, you  know it will.  The film was also very much a snap shot. No long flashbacks, only casual discussion of their long past together.  Just here, right now, a small window into a long long life. And everything was left to be inferred.  There was no explanation for vampirism or powers or anything, it was just a given you’d know some parts and figure out others.

And of course now all I want to do is go shop for just the right white leather jacket.  I mean if I can’t marry Tilda Swinton can I at least please be super cool like her?

tumblr_n4zjh1y5fE1sw6awyo1_500I left the theater feeling both calmed and utterly delighted.  I want to write stories like this.  Stories that are merely a slice of life, a small window of a larger tale, but still utterly engaging and interesting. Stories that lack complicated plots but are rich and detailed with character, scene, setting and tone.

I totally recommend OLLA, but watch it undistracted, so you can live in it while it unfolds.


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Filler

I wouldn’t say I’ve been too busy to blog, but you know, just too lazy.  And I have so many things to share.  Alas I won’t be sharing most of them here, because I still need to take or edit pictures and think about what to say and blah blah blah blah.

In the meantime, I’ve got a million tabs open with other things I’m thinking about, so it’s best I think to share some of them here so I can clear my head of them.

1.  I can’t stop coming back to this picture.  Firstly, Clint Eastwood is sexy.  Period. At any age. But, um, WOW, this is above and beyond.  Secondly, this picture so harkens to a long gone by era that it makes me incredibly wistful for time when I wasn’t even alive.  Fortunately I figured out how to hack my Kindle, so I can make this one of the screensavers.  It’s the little things in life, people.

2. Go listen to this Kevin Gordon song.  I’ve seen him play it live at least half a dozen times and every time the room goes quiet like people realize that something is happening, like really happening.  It’s a moving song that also touches on time gone by, and puts you right back into it, even if you didn’t live it the first time.  Take some time to listen, this isn’t a background song, this is a slow build up, get involved in listening song.

3.  The UN says women’s right to make choices about their own bodies is a basic human right.  On the one hand I’m pleased with this though I doubt it will make any immediate impact in any women’s lives.  On the other hand I’m appalled that we still live in a world where this is even in question at all.  And not just in poor, “backwards” nations or countries under religious rule, but in our own land of the free.  It is my basic human right to make choices about my body, how are we still having this discussion.

4.  Coffee duck from The Oatmeal:

5. It’s my dearest, oldest, closest friend’s birthday today.  Even if you don’t know her, imagine the sister that made me who I am today and do something nice for someone you love in honor of friendships that cross the years and the miles.  I love you, Boots!


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Link round-up

Every year about this time I start searching again for something similar to a perfume I loved that was discontinued years ago.  I often start with an internet search for the scent notes in it, this year my search produced this. Really? We want to smother little boys in lavender and bergamot and tell them that’s how the Hulk smells? I’m, uh, actually I’m not at all sure how I feel about this.

Architectural Legos. Whee!  On the one hand, I wish we still lived in a world where you just got Legos and had to make your own things you imagined out of them.  On the other hand this is sooooo cool.

I think this link has made the rounds a bunch already, but these carved books are so spectacularly sculpturally beautiful that they must bee seen again and again.

Look at this fat little junco!  So sweet!

I almost never go to Threadless because I end up falling into some kind of time void where I lose hours looking at the awesome shirts.

This Mexican papel picado skirt is so incredible.  She says it didn’t take her that long, but I can’t imagine I could produce something handmade this spectacular in a year.  Still I want one very badly.  Hmm, maybe almost badly enough to try it myself.

Click boxes for notes.  Make tiny songs.  Refresh and start over.

Gravity marimba in a forest.  I don’t think I need to say more than that. Oh, it plays Bach.

 


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when summer arrives it sparkles

Another Sunday afternoon at work.  This is, I believe, my 24th day in a row at work.  And cloudy with a chance of storms.  I swear there’s been like 2 dry days this month.  I’m sure I heard some weather guy say weeks ago that the second half of May would be dry.  I guess it’s drier than May 1 & 2, but then almost anything would be.

I’ve been too busy/tired/overworked/uninteresting to post lately.  I almost posted the other night to tell you about my night off.  It consisted of watching recorded eps of 30 Rock, soaking my feet in epsom salts, and eating a dinner of cheese toast dipped in marinara, olives and white wine spritzers.  It was actually a lovely evening.

Last night I used my night off to go see Kevin Gordon, Eric Brace and Peter Cooper at Puckett’s Grocery.  It was a wonderful, intimate show, that way that only seems to happen in Nashville.  There were kids dancing around. One toddler called out, “Good bye, Peter, I’ll be right back!” as her parents carried her out the door.  As if, someone from the stage commented, she was going to drop her parents off and be right back to party.  Good music, good company.  The waitress told my date he looked like Russell Crowe.  Fun was had by everyone, I htink.

The drive to Leiper’s Fork was beautiful as always.  I saw several deer eating in rich people’s yards.  A Bull resting after a long day of standing about in a field.  A heron flying overhead.  Turkeys hunting down dinner.  A bat swooping low to get the good, early evening bugs. On the drive home, I missed a fox because I was looking out the wrong window.  But it didn’t matter because out my window were fields and fields of fireflies.  So dense and bright that it looked like fairies were dancing between the trees.


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where were you when the walls came down?

This used to be a road. Photo by Jeff Deason.

I was just reading about Vince Gill’s flood relief telethon and I thought, you know, I’ve always liked that guy.  Really he seems like a good guy.  And then I remembered seeing Keith Urban on TV the other day whining about ruined musical instruments and time out of his recording schedule and I thought, hey, f*** that guy. And it now occurs to me, um, where is everybody?  I mean this is a town FULL of celebrities.  You can’t throw a rock without hitting one. Right now I’m feeling like throwing rocks.  I mean, why isn’t every major teams’ star sports player on the news asking for help down here?  What about Miley Cyrus and Carrie Underwood? Kenny Chesney, I heard your house was damaged, are you now compelled to help others too?  Hey, John Rich, you have about seven life times of bad karma to make up already, maybe start paying back by helping out?

I mean, am I missing something?  I’ve barely heard a peep out of anyone that the world is usually listening too.  I feel like I’ve been glued to local media and combing national media as much as I have time for and I’m not seeing Hank Jr. or Brad Paisley stepping up to ask the world to notice our problems here. What gives? Jon Stewart seems to be more concerned about us than our own residents. I hope all the big country stars are giving generously and anonymously to the relief efforts, otherwise we really will have to re-build this city on rock and roll.  Branson can have country music, doesn’t seem to be doing us much good right now.

ETA: Thanks, Vince Gill, for making everyone come out.  Thanks, Taylor Swift, for giving 50x as much as TVA did. I have love for you and everyone else who donated to help people in my city.


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mish mash

Keds has this design your own shoe thing, where you can mix and match from their designs or you can upload your own pictures and get Keds made in any pattern at all.  I don’t even really wear shoes like this, but I think this is so incredibly cool.

Oh!  Oh my!!  Dinner cupcakes, bread version.  Dinner cupcakes, meat version.   And then, after the dinner cupcakes we have delicious gay cupcakes.

Paper stars!!  someday I am going to lock myself in the house and make hundreds of these.  I will fill jars with them and give them away to everyone.

Trey Deuce Club, Vol. 1.  Get it!


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don’t wait too long, to come home

I was typing in Notepad and hit some weird combination of keys that produced this:    ♫  I wonder if I’ll ever be able to figure out again how I did it.

On repeat on the old iPod this week is Gaslight Anthem (again) most especially:

and

I feel like a heartsick teenager.  Sometimes the only cure for that is pop songs on repeat.


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slow green glow

I had to scrape ice off my car this morning.  Brrrrrr!  My fingers still aren’t warm.  But it doesn’t matter.  You know why?  Because the little shrubs at the base of the wall of trees in my side yard have tiny green leaves on them.  Tiny.  Green.  Leaves.  That means spring.  Yes, oh, yes it does.

Song for today: Monday Morning Makeup – The New Tragedies (click to download or go buy it)

Now I need more coffee.  Lots to be done and none of it will be if I’m just lazing about all under caffeinated.


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let me be the first to welcome you

I am once again sitting around waiting for the cable guy to come fix some broken shit.  I woke up this morning, early, before my alarm.  All full of half-jumbled, woozy morning plans to rush off and do errands, get it all out of the way early, and then work work work, until it is time to go to work again.  And then I remembered the cable guy.  Did I switch around and buckle down to work until I could leave the house?  Ha!.

Which isn’t to say I’ve been doing nothing.  I have answered a bunch of work and personal correspondence.  Including important stuff like sending TMI emails to Rhi to entertain her because she has a hurt neck and needs distracting.

I should, I suppose, revist and reorder the giant to-do list of doom and sort out what goes on it today.  Number one was buy freezer paper and fabric dye, but alas that will have to come later.

My iPod loves me today.  It started out with a little Todd Snider, then a nice round of Bree Sharp, Kathleen Edwards and Amy Rigby, and now it’s been all Drag the River and Jon Snodgrass for like 40 minutes.  I’m pretty sure it can sense when I haven’t listened to the music I love most in a while and puts it out there to remind me.  I want to wallow in DTR all day.  That however, really isn’t productive.  I will have to switch back to the chick rock when I am going to get some work done.

First I will make breakfast.  Then finish my coffee.  Check my RSS feed reader.  And then I’m buckling down.  For reals, yo.

Also you go hit the DTR boys’ MySpace and listen to “Fleeting Porch” since that is what I am listening too right now and I am too lazy to upload it for you.  (Seriously, coming up on like an hour of DTR and JS songs on the old iPod, while on shuffle! I don’t even think they are the band with the most songs on there right now  -*checks* — nope totally beat out by Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.  I love you, iPod.)


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just another manic monday

So far today I have managed to finish approximately half my list of things to do.  Which isn’t so bad, since the day is about half over.  Can I keep up my momentum?  Who knows!  Here’s hoping as Christmas is looming and I have a ton of stuff to do.

Ha!  The Stephen Colbert episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent is on right now.  So funny to see him be all dramatic.

I was reminded by Rhi’s song of the day post that I’ve been meaning to post this forever:  House of Regret – Wild Sweet Orange (click to download).  I love this album (thanks, Rhi!!), and the more I listen to it, the more I hear something else I love.  “Ten Dead Dogs” is an amazing song, but this week, “House of Regret” is winning me over, it is most especially the lines:

And you crawl up those steps and read yourself to sleep
Yeah, you crawl up those steps and sing yourself to peace

It’s raining.  I am certainly not going to complain about too much rain.  Especially after 18+ months of drought here.  But man, GLOOMY.  Also there is some sort of ice storm forecast, which means I may or may not get all my outside errands done.  Or that I should rush out and do them now, in case tomorrow really is full of weather disasters.


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random stubborn scatteredness

I am so far behind in the stuff I wish I was getting done.  Like days behind, maybe even weeks.  I need to be doing stuff right now.  Well maybe not right now, as I haven’t had much coffee and I still feel a little sleep woozy and weird.  But soon.  I’m hoping that just by writing about it first thing in the am, I will suddenly be more motivated to work on stuff.

Neck still hurts.  Though it’s a bearable level of pain, which seems like an oxymoron, but there it is.

I had to reformat my iPod yesterday and then had some insane hitches trying to get music back on it.  It is all fine now, except I got frustrated and bored and so it’s only like less than a quarter full, which actually seems better.  20 gigs is too much music for me to carry around, since I usually only have it on shuffle anyway.  Less space makes for more conscious choices about what to include.  But I am loving what’s on there right now.  I really do need to remember to rotate out the music on the old ‘Pod, as I love what is on it, but I forget I have so much more wonderful music.  In that vein, todays’ songs are: Beautiful Girls – Girls, Guns and Glory (click to download) and Gia – Dealership (click to download) and Two Doors Down – Dolly Parton (click to download)

Brezny-scope for me this week:
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be, Taurus. Please read that last sentence again, drinking it in as if it were an elixir you’ve been longing for since you were 13 years old. Here are some corollaries: You don’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations. There’s no need to strive for a kind of perfection that’s not very interesting to you. You don’t have to believe in ideas that make you sad or tormented, and you don’t have to feel emotions that others try to manipulate you into feeling. In short, you are free to be exactly who you want to be. Celebrate that this Halloween season. Costume yourself as the person you’ve been hiding.

I find that it somehow makes the incredibly stubborn part of me very happy.  Like, Yeah!  I don’t have to be anything you think I am.  Hmm, no, I am not explaining that well, but really, it makes me oddly joyful.

Right now I am going to box up the stuff I should have mailed to my mom a week and half ago, then shower and get to work.  Well, maybe I’ll make a to do list first.  So I can stay on task.  As clearly I am very scattered from the outset today.

(Also anyone who saw the post I made in the middle of the night last night–Sorry, I had to delete as announcing a crush like that makes me feel like such a complete and utter spaz that I couldn’t leave it hanging out there publicly.)


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LL Neck Pain (no actually we don’t)

I am voluntarily watching Martha Stewart. My neck still hurts and I am unhappy. But! Martha? Has LL Cool J on!!! And they are making sugar skulls for Dia De Los Muertos!! Seriously, like best thing ever.  Because you know I love Day of the Dead stuff and I am a lady and Ladies Love Cool James.  Ha!  Right after I typed that Martha was just all, “Ladies love…”  And he looked slightly abashed, and said it could also be “Love Life Cool James” which amuses me because it’s kind of like a commandment from God. Heh.

My neck is 50% better today, which is to say 75% better than Sunday and thus should be fine tomorrow, but the still  hurting is SUCKY.  I do not like pain. It is sneaky and mean and should be taken away forever and ever.

Despite the pain and tons of whining, I went last night, when a friend called me, to be ‘background texture’ in a music video shoot.  I think I’ll only be in it for split second, but it was all simultaneously fun, boring and interesting to take part in.


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court date and good songs

Yesterday I got a subpoena, requesting that I testify in a hearing so that the kids who robbed me get tried as adults rather than in juvenile court. The kids are 17 and there was a gun involved, so, sure, fine.  But man, not to be all whiny baby, but the letter that came with the subpoena was so fucking rude.  Like, sure AG’s office, I’ll help you out, but maybe ask me nicely instead of implying that I’ve already made the criminal choice not to appear, and bitching me out about it in advance. Ugh.  Oh HA!  I was just about to post a sentence from the letter, complaining about it, but now that I re-read it, it is actually saying exactly the opposite of what I originally understood it to say.  Um, yes, suffice to say the letter is not very well written.  So anyway in two weeks I have to appear in court at 8 am.  I wonder if I can get anyone to go with me, just for moral support.

New Lu album.  I’m not sure I can make coherent statements about my level of excitement over this.  So instead I give you: If Wishes Were Horses – Lucinda Williams (click to download)  Most folks seem supremely excited of the Elvis Costello duet, “Jailhouse Tears,” but I have to say I’m kind of over Costello dueting with everyone in the universe, and while I like the song I find Costello fairly unbelievable as the criminal boyfriend.  I mean you hear Costello’s voice and you don’t think, “Yeah, he stole her truck.”  It’s more link, “Maybe he hacked her email and hung around outside her work acting creepy.”  But that’s a tiny tiny tiny complaint, over all I love love love love love love love love the album.  I have to admit the little girl inside me still kind of wants to be Lu when she grows up.  Lu’s my very warped version of a fairy princess.

I am all for fewer bizarre divides between genders, especially surrounding clothes and beauty, but for some reason I find this site vaguely creepy.  Perhaps it’s the way it’s presented, as the concept is a-okay.

Okay, need to go do errands/chores/work/stuff. Ugh ugh ugh.