Addictive album: Jim Noir - Tower of Love/Flyers Thoughts

The first time I spun this disc I thought "instant classic." Every song is so catchy and listenable but not in a hooky terrible saccharin way. I think that some of it is derivative--very derivative---of both the Beatles and the Beach Boys for odd, conflicting reasons. The first song "My Patch" reminds me of "For You Blue" by the Beatles, but somewhere near the middle morphs into Beach Boys-style harmony. Also, "I Wanna Be in the Key of C" sounds like "Octupus' Garden" for some reason. Maybe because of the "I wanna be..." phrasing that it shares with "I wanna be under the sea in an Octupus' Garden, in the shade." Or perhaps after the first song, I was just locked in to hearing Beatles' similarities. If it is intentional, awesome! But if it's unintentional, it's still awesome because it's not like the Beatles at all. Difficult to categorize, "Tower of Love" is going to be one of my favorites for a really, really, really, really long time. Download "I wanna be in the key of C" and try to NOT GET ADDICTED. It is pure cocaine for the ears.

On a Philadelphia Flyers note, I don't want to make any outlandish predictions--> but if we play even better on Friday than we did last night, we should have no problem winning. I have heard a lot of talk, saying Buffalo is clearly the better team, which I think is a completley unfounded statement. They have had more success with special teams in the regular season, and they had a lot of success in Game 2, but honestly the Flyers killed a lot of penalties in Game 1 and some extremely pivotal penalties in Game 3. Aside from Game 2, the Flyers and Sabres look to compliment each other in terms of who is the better team. They are both bringing different styles of play to the table and on any given night the game could go either way, but I feel like the Flyers have a bead on what's happening now, I think a lot of the veteran experience on the Flyers is going to win out over the rather young Buffalo squad. Of course, there are young kids on the Flyers as well, but it's not as widespread as Buffalo, not to mention, all our guys were on the Phantoms when they won the Calder Cup, they've got sort of an idea of what playoff hockey is like.

Anyway, I have a lot of confidence in the Flyers, I think they just were shocked into responding in Game 2, and before you knew it, they were down a ridiculous amount of goals and throwing the game away.

With that said, here are the top five most repeated phrases heard while Lauren is watching a Flyers playoff game:

1. "ATTACK THE PUCK! ATTACK THE PUCK!! ATTACK THE PUCK!" (screamed mostly while the Flyers are trying to kill a penalty and just standing around in their own zone waiting for Buffalo to make a move)
2. "Nice facial hair, Lindy, really, I like it."
3. "SAL FA SA NO!" (It works for every occasion)
4. "WHERE'S THE PENALTY!!!!???"
5. "AWW COME ON RATHJE YOU SUCK!"

Also, the ridiculous nicknames that I shout at regular intervals: Fors, Gahn, Hatch, Um, Rich, Jay-Z or Jeff, Rath, Kanub, Freddy, Pit, Desj, Eschey, Neds, Aaron's brother(Brian Savage, since Aaron Rowand and him are brothers), Kap, Niko, Han, Brank...

LET'S GO FLYERS!

I turn my camera on........

I was watching a show, recently, about 40 minutes ago, in fact. The show was called 'Grey's Anatomy' and this show is one I watch quite frequently, due to the faint hint of a good show lurking somewhere beneath and showing its face from time to time. The vague traces include but are not limited to: a decent soundtrack (i.e. The Boy Least Likely To, Wilco, Al Green), Patrick Dempsey's sometimes inspired and realistic acting, the intriguing medical scenarios (of which the various legitimacy issues are ignored for the sake of entertainment) and some really intriguing life scenarios and relationship scenarios (for example, George loves Meredith but she's just not that into him, which is one of the most terrible ordeals humans can get themselves into).

However, a few minutes ago, I mulled the show over while I was in the shower. I was wondering why shows on TV can only be about 11% realistic when it comes to portraying relationships. There is zero chemistry between any of these people on the show. Why is it so difficult to get actors to act like they really love this character that they are supposed to love? Is it because only people who are really in love can showcase that to the world enough to make it believable? Do I just want perfection from film and television? The complete false tv love is not limited to low-rate network television. Even on shows that are critically agreed to be 'good' ... the relationships are hardly 100% believable or even 65% believable. The Sopranos??? I apoligize to the masses who consume this fluff like it is cocaine but seriously, you expect me to believe that stuff? Is that the point? Do they not want me to believe it?

I just do not think it is that difficult to write a plot and write dialogue that is believable and I don't understand why these people who get paid 100,000 dollars a day to write this stuff can't make it at least 40% believeable (instead of the aforementioned 11%). Or! Do they purposefully write it in this diluted fashion because the standard average person watching ABC on a Sunday night doesn't know what a real emotion is anyway? Do they water it down for a reason so that the people who don't know how to properly feel (which is probably 85% of the country) will be entertained and enjoy their 42 minutes of television without thinking too hard about what love SHOULD BE?

Damn it. This is why the few realistic portrayals of relationships and emotions that I have seen in film, I truly treasure. For example, how about in American Beauty when Annette Bening collapses into Lester's clothes at the end? I don't think any scene in any movie ever got to me as much as that one did. There are other examples, but this is one that most people have seen.

Well, hopefully someone can answer my questions or set me straight and tell me I am a pretentious piece of junk!

Stay velvet, kiddies.