No More Behaving

Professor Anonymous and leigh tagged me with this meme. Best cover and worst cover ever. leigh used Hendrix does Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower", which was very inconsiderate of her, seeing as it is my all-time favorite - dammit leigh!Never fear though. I have another fav. JLK is "of the firm opinion that you can ruin ANYthing.....ANYTHING by doing a country version of it". Just to prove her wrong, I give you this:Ben Folds Five live cover of "Champagne Supernova" originally by Oasis.I can't seem to embed it in the post (it will only go into the sidebar), so just click the link. There's no video.Now, I'm not a tremendous Oasis fan (understatement of the year), but this song is just breathtaking.-----------------------------------------------------------------------To demonstrate that the previous entry is not a fluke, I also recommend ANYTHING (but particularly "Highway to Hell") by Hayseed Dixie. They are an AC/DC cover band (get it? try saying "Hayseed Dixie" aloud) and they are just fucking awesome!Wonderful, isn't it? I have no fucking clue what the accompanying video is all about.---------------------------------------------------------------------And now for something completely different!Worst cover ever:Britney Spears does butchers "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by the Stones as an opener to her own "Oops! I Did it Again".No, no, no, no, no, no, nooooooooo!!!!!111!!1!!!!!11!!!Wrong-wrong-wrongity-wrong on sooooooo many levels. First of all, she's got no business even approaching this song, nor does she have any business doing classic rock. Period. (Don't even get me started on her cover of Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll", originally by the Arrows.) But just to add insult to sacrilege, she uses what is widely believed to be The Best R & R Song of All Time to open her own lollipop garbage! But the wrongity of the whole thing doesn't stop there! Oh no! Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, did you notice that the whole performance starts with her seated in a chair in a Michael Jackson get-up? Which she then proceeds to tear off and prance around in a costume that is all but, and certainly suggests, total nudity a la "Flashdance".Just in case you missed the heretical mash-up of artists/genres/pop-culture references, I bolded them for you."One of these things is not like the others,One of these things does not belong...."Oh right, none of them belong together!What the fuck is going on here!?!? The whole unholy union is like a musical representation of hell. It couldn't possibly be worse than this. I dare anybody to find something that is more of an affront to rock and roll than this criminally bad piece.OK, so what have you got Acadamnit, Toaster, Hermie, BeanMom, Nat, and Stephanie?

Labels: Cover, Meme

Eugenie tagged me with the "Book Meme". Good thing, because my brain needs an oil change and there was no way I was going to come up with some fresh blog fodder for you without causing the engine to seize. The rules are thus: list 15 books that you can come up with in 15 minutes that have "stuck with you". I don't often play by the rules, so I see no reason to start now. I've listed my >15 books (in a couple of different categories) that have "stuck with me". It took me considerably longer than 15 minutes to do so.Children's Books:His Dark Materials (Trilogy) - Phillip Pullman - (The Amber Spyglass movie is crap in comparison.) I actually didn't read this series as a child - I think the first time was when I was about 15 or 16 (at which point I think I was more of a young adult)...and I've read it several times over since then. It did then and still does appeal to my inner scientist and general pain in the ass. Question everything and don't let other people determine your ethics for you based on "I said so".Lord of the Rings (Trilogy) - J.R.R. Tolkein - for the obvious reasons I think.Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak - I wanted to be Max as a child. Actually I just wanted his pajamas. And I love love love the illustrations, and the verbal imagery: "they rolled their terrible eyes, and gnashed their terrible teeth!". I remember going to see The Nutcracker by the Pacific Northwest Ballet as a little kid. I never liked the story, but was utterly enchanted by the set (designed by Sendak), especially the Christmas tree that grew out of the stage. He also did the costume design - the seven-headed Rat King gave me nightmares for years - excellent!Ronia The Robber's Daughter - Astrid Lindgren - Was kind of "meh" on Pippi Longstocking but I loved this book because the protagonist was a little girl who was exactly not like most other little girls in children's books. She was a little hellion raised by a band of robbers, and she basically spent her time traipsing about the woods on her pony getting up to no good. She befriends the son of a rival robbers' band, and in Romeo & Juliet fashion they defy the family rivalry and remain fast friends, even moving out and setting up their own camp in the woods. But they don't fall in love as I recall and they both remain little terrors right through the story. No moralizing (except to the parents). Wonderful.We Were Tired of Living in House - Liesel Moak Scorpen (author), Doris Burn (illustrator). The illustrations in newer editions are just crap in comparison to the original. Kids get sick of being told what to do, so they move out to their own place (are we detecting a theme here? All things considered, my parents were pretty awesome, I just had a wicked independent streak). Of course, various inclement weather forces them to move on to other abodes, and each time they take something with them from their previous home. "....and a frog who was a particular friend...." I think my mom saved this book for me in hopes that I'll give it *my* kids someday. Methinks it's some sort of bribe in exchange for grandkids. Mom, I can buy it on amazon.The Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling - It's all been said before.The Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino - This isn't really children's book, but I suspect I would have liked it just as much if I'd read it as a kid.Philosophy/Mythology/Literature:The Hero With a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell - This book sticks with me not as the book itself, but as a sort of tour guide through my high school Literary Backgrounds course. This class was the reason I became a Philosophy major. It was taught by a crotchety and occasionally creepy old dude who cursed a lot and treated his students like adults (a rarity). He insisted that we be suspicious of any viewpoint that was handed to us on a platter - that people (and good authors) lie about their agenda so you have to dig a little deeper to figure out what's really going on, that the hard things are the ones worth doing, and that being intellectually lazy means missing out on the Real Deal (also working themes from Hero).Fear and Trembling - Soren Kierkegaard - This work was pivotal for me. Read it for my Existentialism class in college, and suddenly I "got it" about belief/faith. I was raised in a religious household, but with a big heaping healthy dose of critical thinking. I tried really hard to "believe" but never felt like I pulled it off. Kierkegaard spelled out why. Belief is informed by your experiences and perceptions of reality, but requires at some point a "leap of faith" or a conscious decision to accept cognitive dissonance, to hold two opposing realities simultaneously as truths...sort of like Schroedinger's cat, which is something I "get" intellectually, but it is much more difficult to wrap my head around in practice. It was this book that showed me why I couldn't do it, and it was a tremendous relief. Dynamics of Faith and The Courage To Be - Paul Tillich - Yeah, that's two books, so sue me. Part counterpoint to Kierkegaard, part "Yeah, existentialism is tough - suck it up! Oh, and if you do, it's pretty awesome!" Republic - Plato - Perhaps it's a bit cliche but the Allegory of the Cave is still true. Our experience informs our perception of reality. Changing it is scary.The Trial - Franz Kafka - Alternate Title: AA's Initiation into Academic Science. The first time I read this book (pre-initiation into academic science) I thought it was miserable and terrifying. I still think it's miserable and terrifying. I mean WTF? Why? What the hell is wrong with you Franz? And then I joined the ranks of academic science and I felt just like Franz. I am clearly on trial here, but no one can/will tell me what for exactly or how I am supposed to go about defending myself. Soldiering on in the face of absurdity can feel like a pretty lonely position, but it's not a unique experience.Fiction (I'm going to be lazy on this section - I'm not telling you why these ones stuck with me - I suggest you go read them and see what you get out of it):A Trip to the Stars - Nicholas ChristopherFierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates - Tom RobbinsYou Shall Know Our Velocity! - Dave EggersThe Stone Raft - Jose SaramagoBalthasar and Blimunda - Jose SaramagoI like Cath's tagging method. She tagged anyone who's ever fallen off a sailboat. I tag anyone who's ever fallen off a horse.

Labels: Book, Meme