my top 16 movies...

are as follows (in chronological order):

Carrie
The Breakfast Club
Real Genius
The Crow
Clueless
Empire Records
Mallrats
Velvet Goldmine
The Matrix
High Fidelity
Best in Show
Moulin Rouge
Napoleon Dynamite
The Big Lebowski
Juno
Bridesmaids

That's wayy too many movies. I need to narrow it down to a top 10. To do this, I'm going to watch all 16 and rate them on a scale of one to ten on the following five parameters:

1. atmosphere/setting/cinematography
2. characters: this will be achieved by rating each of the main characters on the one to ten scale and then averaging their scores.
3. dialogue
4. music
5. replayability

Each movie has the potential of achieving 50 points. If there's a tie for 10th place, the two movies in question will have to be rewatched/rescored to break the tie. I will blog about each one as I watch it (or take notes and post the blog later, either way). Hopefully, hilarity will ensue and I will be reminded of why these are my favorite movies. If anyone would like to join me, I'll be watching them in the order above. I'm watching "Carrie" tonight, but text/msg/email me if you want to come over for popcorn and join in the movie analysis for any of the films below "Carrie" on the list.

How To Behave When Art Is Being Made Before Your Eyes.

In July, for the first time since my fixation began in 1996, I saw Fiona Apple in concert.  My husband and I had relatively good seats that we paid approximately 25% of our paychecks to obtain.  Fiona was phenomenal, but the crowd was NOT.  As a whole, the audience broke all of the rules below, and I felt separated from the woman I’d desperately wanted to share a room with for sixteen years, the woman I had driven two and a half hours to see perform her art...grr, digress digress.

  

July 17, 2012 -- Midland Theatre, Kansas City, MO.
Her setlist was as follows: Fast As You Can, On the Bound, Shadowboxer, Paper Bag, Anything We Want, Get Gone, Sleep to Dream, Extraordinary Machine, Werewolf, Tymps, Daredevil, I Know, Every Single Night, Not About Love, Carrion, Criminal, and It's Only Make Believe.

Here are five rules of etiquette (I know, I’m no Lady Von Halbach) for all-encompassing enjoyment of a concert (“concert” here defined as any single musical act you have paid more than 10 or 15 bucks to see: i.e., NOT a festival and NOT a typical Friday night at the dive bar downtown):

1. As an overall mindset, try to remember that there are people in the crowd that really really really want to see the performer, you know, perform.  You will be doing those particular fans a service by being as reserved as possible during the evening’s events.  This is not a time for attention-seeking behaviors.  Your fellow concert-goers didn’t pay to hear or see YOU do anything.
2. A note on phone usage: Y’all know I am serious about my technology, but when you’re experiencing an in-person event, such as music being created before your very ears, I am very anti-phone.  Don’t take video.  Don’t take pictures.  Put the screens in your purse or pocket for two freaking hours and be in the moment, people!
3. No one wants to begrudge a concert-goer a beer or two, but please keep your drunkenness to a minimum.  If the booze-habit gets you in and out of the aisles for cup-fills and bladder-empties more than a couple of times, just stay by the bar and let someone else have your seat/standing space.
4. If there are seats, sit down (especially if you’re in the front).  I’m 5’5” (that’s not short) and the behemoths standing in front of me made it very difficult to see the tiny glorious woman onstage.  For a large portion of the concert, a man’s substantial left ear was covering Ms. Apple’s entire head.  Common sense makes obvious the fact that EVERYONE can see if EVERYONE is sitting down. Conversely, if the venue is set up such that you couldn’t possibly disturb anyone by standing, by all means, dance your cute little butt off!
5. Keep your clapping/screaming/yelling to an absolute minimum.  You paid for the ticket, the performer already KNOWS how much you love them. Admittedly, this is somewhat of a personal issue (I feel like a baby seal slapping her flippers together when clapping). There’s no reason to clap/yell during a performance unless, ill-advised as it most certainly is, the artist has encouraged some sort of rhythm-bastardizing-group-epileptic-fit (for the record, Fiona would never engage in such tomfoolery--she didn’t even leave the stage before her required encore, bless her no-nonsense heart).  Call me crazy, but I believe all displays of appreciation should be held until the very end of the performance, like at symphonies and operas.

NOW, you can applaud...You’re welcome.  I love you too.

Finally, I shall contradict myself completely and reap the rewards of the assholes that held their phones up during the performance.  Below is a playlist of videos from that night.  They're not well-done, but they're in order and they're for posterity, for me, so I'm placing them here...

// music rut //

Lately, I’ve been uninspired, listening to nothing new, and wandering around with a cloud over my head instead of headphones in or around my ears.  I’ve been phoning it in and not taking the care and thought into choosing what I listen to at every moment of every day or, gasp (!!), listening to nothing at all.  I haven’t even made a mix in weeks!  My dismal music rut has just been punctuated by the death of my favorite headphones (A beautiful pair of Audio Technica ATH-M50’s, if anyone wants to buy me another pair--I would like them in white with the coiled cord, please.) not ten minutes ago.  Oh, woe is me.  From within this deep dark pit of aural despair, I turn to you for guidance.  Yes kittens, it’s time for a survey, so get a writing utensil and fill in the margins, darlings.  I beg of you, help me with my music drought and

Take my survey!

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

places your entire music library could live.

In a post-apocalyptic Joplin, I am of the personal opinion that one cannot have too many places to store their music collection within.  Perhaps I’m a little OVERprepared for disaster in this aspect, but if there’s one thing that I cannot possibly live without, it’s my music, so here are places where mine lives (5 in total, yes, I’m deranged), and perhaps one or two of these options will be useful for a normal human being as well:

1. COMPUTER-- At the very least, get all of your music ripped onto the hard drive of your computer.  Rip at higher bitrates for better audio quality (check the “preferences” or “settings” or “options” in your computer’s ripping software to tweak this.  I use 320kbps for all my ripping.).  You’ll need a disc drive to upload CDs, a tape deck, some cords, and some compatible software like Audacity to convert cassettes, and likewise a record player, Audacity, and more cords to convert records, though this process is a pain (here’s a good article on how to do this: http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20076685-285/the-cheap-way-to-convert-lps-audio-cassettes-to-digital/) so only do for things you absolutely can’t get digitally or through CD.  If you need to recover music you lost in the Wretched 2011 Wind, search our illustrious library’s catalog at joplinpubliclibrary.org for CDs you can check out--you can take home 4 at a time and we have a pretty decent selection (Seriously, this one time I got to help pick out a bunch of stuff...that was AWESOME!).
2. EXTERNAL BACKUP DRIVE-- Once you have all your music stored digitally, this and the following 3 music storage options are available to you.  Having an external hard drive is a good idea to backup your computer in general anyway (I back-up my entire computer every 10 days), and these puppies can be had for less than a hundred bucks at RadioShack and BestBuy (Seagate is well-reviewed and has served me well--survived the year 2011, even!).  If you can, lock your backup-drive away in a weather-proof enclosure for extra paranoid protection.
3. iPOD CLASSIC or OTHER LARGE CAPACITY MP3 PLAYER-- This option is probably only for the really big music geeks, because this little dream-machine (the iPod classic) costs 250$ for 160GB of storage.  I have all my music, movies, and pictures on my Classic.  I always get a little geek-thrill stomping out of the house with only my iPod the size of a cassette tape shuffling my entire music collection.  Every music-dweeb should have this distinct post-millennium pleasure.
4. iTUNES MATCH or OTHER CLOUD MUSIC SERVICE: In the event that all of your earthly possessions are obliterated (the iPod, the backup drive, AND the computer) which is, unfortunately, no longer something far-fetched for a lot of us, you’ll need to also have your music backed up in the cloud, which is another way of saying uploaded to the internet.  There are several services that do this: I personally use both Google Music (play.google.com) and iTunes Match, but there’s also Grooveshark, Amazon, and many other services as well.  They all involve time to upload and can suck the life out of your internet connection (in the case of me uploading my 9,000 songs to Google, it took about three weeks, but it won’t be that time-consuming if you have less music or a better internet connection), but wayyy worth it if your music is the second thing you grabbed last May (I know your animals come first--or children, if you’re into that sort of thing.) before climbing out of the rubble.  Check out the following article for a detailed analysis on all the cloud music storage options out there (http://lifehacker.com/5812138/cloud-music-comparison-whats-the-best-service-for-streaming-your-library-everywhere).

Remember, you don’t have to be as paranoid as me, but if you choose only two of these options, your music will feel snug and safe pending any season’s weather apocalypses.  If you need tech support carrying out any of these options, email me at mixtressrae@yahoo.com and I’ll try my best to answer your questions.

perception/deception

In high school my English teacher (you remember: the cute one that is now a principal?) taught a class about pluralism.  Pluralism (as I remember him teaching it then) is this idea that perception is reality and everyone perceives things differently, so can reality be defined/constant?  This is something we've all thought about at one time or another, so I am presenting nothing new, but recently I had to take a hard look at myself.

Remember in Anne Rice's "Queen of the Damned" where spirits were these giant balls of misty energy that spanned hundreds of miles with a concentrated meaty center? After the tornado, I was forced to gather up all of my misty-wide energy and stuff it into the shell of my body.  I then turned that body into a fortress and tried to ignore it.  In the time since that stupid Spring day I've over-indulged in alcohol, food, and darkness.  Any escape I could find, I clutched onto until my fingers bled.  As a result, what was already growing stagnant within me even before last Spring became so still, so unforgivingly rigid, that I couldn't even see that I was frozen.  My father died and I felt as if I was looking through an opaque glass at myself from another realm.  Apathy has been my muse, and I thank her for her service, but I have to break the fucking glass.

Recently, a confrontation/intervention was placed in front of me that I could not ignore.  I have always known who I am, so it was really hard to admit that I didn't know who I had become.  I had become this insular being without ardor.  I had forgotten that what we all are is fluid.  We change and evolve and taking a look at who you are is required of you every day.

The only people that remain sane in this world let go of the perception they believe others have of them.  They don't let themselves be defined by that perception.  Not even the perception that is their own.  I've always known this, but recently I've lost sight of where I sit within it.  I feel SUCH a kinship to those that are being their genuine selves without definition.  What I am now is not who I will be.  What I have been is not what I am.  I always really liked the lyrics to Incubus' "Make Yourself".  The idea of creating your self has always been important to me, but the thing I am grasping now is that you have to do this continuously throughout your existence.  It isn't forever that you are, it's forever that you choose to be.

With one swift primal scream I must let that giant all-encompassing spirit take her space again.  It cannot be contained within my body.  It must pervade everything around me so that I can feel and be felt by others.

We cannot see things as they truly are, or they are what we see and we can't see what anyone else sees. So why construct an image without purpose?  If what you're trying to fit within doesn't feel comfortable, get out!



The celebrities that I find interesting usually have zero control over their personae (Courtney Love, Grimes, and Fiona Apple) and don't care.  They are raw and real and it inspires me tremendously.  I also enjoy when they have TOO much control over their personae (Lady GaGa, Marilyn Manson) because they're taking their art to such an extreme that it becomes an agenda.  Grimes IS art and GaGa forces you to confront your own art and both of these images make you look at yourself.  The video above makes no sense and that was probably Grimes' unintentional point.  She just gathered together people she liked and visual images that intrigued her and she danced.  I cried watching this because her weirdness feels so genuine to me.

My next tattoo is:

stop.
making.
sense.

and this to me is my zen.  Reminding myself that what I think others think does not matter.  Who I am and that I am confrontationally genuine is what is important to me.  I want to be a Fiona, a Grimes, a Courtney Love.  A brash, bold, ballsy, blunt BITCH.  The witch within is emerging from the gristle she's been hiding amidst.

Top Five Music Apps.

So, you’ve just gotten a smartphone (Not that anyone’s calling your old phone dumb; It was probably quite astute for being 5 years old...) and you need some apps.  I’ve compiled a list of most of my favorite music apps that are available for both A’s: Android and Apple.

DISCLAIMER: Make sure you have the data available for all except #2 (and #2 will use a bunch of data if your music is stored in iTunes Match)--most of these apps will suck up a 200MB plan in a measly few hours of streaming music set on higher quality bitrates.

#1- PANDORA (free): First and foremost, you must to have Pandora.  It is the most easily accessible music app ever.  All you do after downloading is type in the name of an artist, composer, or song that you like and you will then have a radio station tailored to that artist/composer/song.  Then, you “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” tracks as you go along to further tailor your station.

#2- GROOVE 2 ($1.99 for Apple only): Ok, I lied about all the apps being available for both A’s.  I realllly like Groove, though, so you need to know about it if you have an iOS device, and hopefully someday it will be available for Android as well.  This app syncs with the music on your phone (so it’s no good if you don’t have any music uploaded to either your phone or iTunes Match) and creates playlists based on your music.  Some of the great featured playlists: Artist Duos play two artists back to back, Three of a Kind plays three songs each from an artist (remember Block Parties on the radio back in the day?) and Groovy Mixes are smart mixes of songs that go well together (works much more consistently than iTunes’ not-so-Genius: there, I SAID it!).  The app also tags your music so you can play by genre.  There’s even a Surprise Me button if you don’t want to think at ALL, which is especially helpful for short work commutes...because, we all know you can’t drive in freakin’ silence! This app is TOTALLY worth the $2. 

#3- SPOTIFY ($9.99/mo subscription): I have touted the virtues of Spotify’s on-demand music subscription service before. Being 10 bucks a month, it’s obviously not for everyone.  However, if you like listening to anything you want whenever and wherever you want without having to own any music, this is pure bliss.  Just make sure you have the data plan to stream or the space on your phone to download playlists before you leave the comfort of your own WiFi.  They’ve recently added a radio feature that operates similar to Pandora that’s actually surprisingly compelling.

#4- SONGZA (free): This is a really cool new playlist app.  Download this app now before they get too big and start charging.  The way the playlists work is time-sensitive.  For example, I’m writing this on a Monday evening.  When I tap into the app it says “It’s Monday night.  Play music for: Bedtime, Love and Romance, Unwinding After a Long Day, or Work or Study.”  When I choose “Work or Study” it gives genre options and I choose “Electronic”.  Finally, there are three playlists to choose from that are electronic ambient stations to melt into the background while I’m working/studying (I chose “Electronic Study: IDM” in case you’re wondering).  How cool is that?  In the morning, the playlist options will be different (such as “Morning Commute” or “Waking Up”), but you can also bypass the time of day and pick from a list of activities or favorite playlists.  The selection of genres and playlists are really varied and I’ve actually discovered some cool new music (Hello, Moderat, I think I fancy you!) from this app.  Seriously, get it now before they start charging $5 for it or something.

#5- SOMAFM ($4 for app, or free from somafm.com): I’ve also peddled the infinite goodness of somafm before within these pages.  somafm.com is a San Franciso-based internet radio conglomerate with a lot of really cool (mostly electronic and chill music, though they do have some other genres; check them out online before shelling out the 4 bucks) radio stations.  They are commercial-free and donation-based, so if you like them, support them!  I like to send them $10 every once in awhile, just to show I care.  My favorite station on SomaFM is the very ambient “Drone Zone”.  I usually play it  when getting ready for bed at night.

  

The above list is a great music app starter-kit, whether you’re just starting out in the smartphone world or recently learning to love the beautiful plethora of music apps out there in this gorgeous electronic universe of ours.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Something Blue.

Episode 65.
airdate: 30 Nov 1999.

Willow is "hanging on by a thread", still mourning the loss of Oz.  He sent for his stuff and it is now pretty clear he isn't coming back.  Spike is still staying with Giles.  Buffy goes on her first date with Riley.

Of course Willow wants all the pain to go "poof" so she does a spell to have her "will be done".  Willow has a fight with Giles because he disapproves of her doing a spell in her "unfocused condition".  She tells him he can't "see anything" so he starts going blind.  Willow says something about Amy being a normal girl and she turns from rat to person for a moment.  So Will's will is being done, though only her sarcastic unintentional will.  When Will says "why don't they just get married?" referring to Buffy and Spike, they get engaged.  Willow calls Xander a "demon magnet" and then demons come from all over and invade Xander's basement.

D'Hoffryn comes to try to lure Willow into the vengeance fold.  Her rage is righteous, apparently, and he wants to recruit Willow.  Sometimes it's difficult to blog about Buffy episodes.  The metaphors are great because of their simplicity, but there's not a lot to say.  There's some character foreshadowing with Willow because you see her become indignant with Giles about doing spells when she really shouldn't and her trying to make her pain, which is enormous and extremely dire, go away with a poof.  This is the way she's always coped, and Buffy writers are very good at being consistent with the character arcs of everyone, for the most part.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Pangs

Episode 64.
airdate: 23 Nov 1999.

Wow, I haven't done one of these since May.  That means I need to do two per week until the end of the year in order to finish, as per my goal.  I haven't been keeping up with all of my New Year's goals lately, but I've been half-assing them enough to say I'm doing something.  That's a metaphor for my life!  I half-ass everything enough to say I did SOMEthing.  Oh, well.  It seems to be enough at the moment to delude myself into thinking I'm content.  I just realized recently that I don't think about things in terms of "success and failure".  Everything in my life is self-defined and I'm really easy on my self, as it turns out.

Ok, this is the episode about a Native American poltergeist that's revenging against the Americans that wronged him because of Thanksgiving and new colonists and shit.  Angel is lurking.  Buffy decides to make Thanksgiving dinner for everyone.  The Initiative is searching for Spike, who's sad and neutered and alone.  Xander is working construction and ends up with the "funny syphilis" because he fell into an old mission no one knew was there at his construction site, which is the whole reason the vengeance spirit has been unearthed, of course.  Giles is harboring Angel.  Apparently he's in town because someone had a vision (Was this Cordelia?  Was she having visions already? I don't think so.) of badness associated with Buffy.

Spike is looking in on a vampire family eating a human all forlorn-like.  Angel talks to Willow and is all jealous about Riley.  Spike attempts to reconcile with Harmony, but she actually rejects him this time.  Willow doesn't want to kill the Shumash Indian because his anger is legitimate.  He's "recreating the wrongs done to his people".  Giles disagrees and Buffy is trying to be peacemaker and have a great Thanksgiving.

"Buffy is for to be slaying sometime soon, yeah?"  Spike seeks help from Buffy and friends.  He's so sad and pathetic.  So they let him in and tie him up.  The beginning of Spike's redemption.  Yeay!  More Spike!  I love when he gives them the speech about how they should shut up about feeling guilty about the Indians.  "You won...that's what conquering nations DO."  The vengeance spirit is after Buffy because he wants the leader of the community, which to him, a warrior, is the strongest fighter.  He "sieges" them, they kill him, Xander recovers from the syphilis, and they eat Thanksgiving dinner while Spike whines.  All very endearing.

Fiona Apple, please allow me to express how ardently I admire and love you.

In my life I have taken many opportunities to express my obsession with Fiona Apple, but here in the Current, Etc I have not yet sung her praises loud enough.  I feel like I grew up with Apple, though she is 4 years older than me.  Her lush debut “Tidal” saw me through my first makeout sessions and first hate-breakups, then more than a decade later saw me walking down the aisle.  She is a rare artist in that she actually waits until she has exceptional material before she releases music, feels no urgency and makes an album simply when it’s time to make an album.  I have always admired her raw sensibility, the way she says what she’s thinking the moment she’s thinking it without any guard stronger than the shield of her inability to communicate with most normal people.  I assure you, I count this as an extreme virtue.  Blunt honesty is undervalued, especially in the world of celebrity.  I knew she was one of my people the moment she made that infamous speech at the MTV Music Awards back in the late ‘90s.  People tend to call Apple angsty, but really she is simply real, having turmoil and depression just like the rest of us.  She is the embodiment of awkward and admits her inadequacies with reckless abandon and it is brilliant and beautiful and grotesque all within the space of one ragged breath.

Fiona Apple is one of the only artists whom I will trust enough to purchase her album the day it comes out without hearing any of it first, as I did with “The Idler Wheel is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do” when it arrived Tuesday.  She only writes one album per seven-ish years, but it’s always worth the wait, and this endeavor is no exception to the Apple barometer of excellence.

Speaking about who Fiona is is directly speaking about how her music sounds.  She is as genuine in her sound as she is in her actions.  Her words are raw and her music is unsettling when she feels unsettled, and she does here, most definitely.  Her musical timing is discordant and doesn’t hit on the beats you think they will.  For this reason, I had a headache the first time I listened to “Idler Wheel...”, but the thing with this album is that it is imperative that you listen to it without any other distractions.  Let Fiona Fiona all over you, with headphones on.  You probably won’t like it at first, but give it a second and third try and you’ll begin to feel more than you have in years.  You’ll begin to say things like “The bare eccentric percussion that serves as an accompaniment to her witty and perfectly-placed piano melodies do nothing but accentuate her developed, rich, and emotionally articulate vocals”, such as another raw and beautiful singer named Jonathan said to me today.  If you’ve ever felt a kinship with Fiona Apple, buy this record now.

Best Song (so far, as I’m sure this will change daily over the next year, then weekly the year after that, then yearly the decades after that, as this is how “Tidal” still effects me 16 years after its’ release): "Valentine"

Best Lyrics: “Just tolerate my little fist tugging on your forest chest.”

How to make a mix: 3 indispensable rules.

As I insist upon calling myself MixtressRae, I dare say I know my way around a mix.  I’ve been pressing record/play on tape decks since the tender age of waiting for songs to come on the radio; they have to be numbering in the several hundreds at this point.  Not all of my mixes were great, of course.  Some of them were really dreadful...nay, many of them are dreadful, if you take into account the times my mix’s recipients have played/enjoyed my mixes.  All this to say, I am only an authority on mixes if you decide me to be, and I hope the sheer volume of mixes I’ve created these past two decades will recommend me to advise you on this very worthy pursuit:

Rule #1 -- Find a reason/theme for your mix.  Do you want a workout mix, a love dedication mix, or just a drivin’ around summer night mix?  The reason is what drives the emotions in a mix...even if that reason is just “songs I like right now”.  I used to have a mix called “songs I’m ashamed to like” before I learned to be ashamed of nothing...mostly.

Rule #2 -- Decide a length for your mix.  If you’re not, as you probably aren’t, using a cassette or a CD, mp3 playlists can be daunting without an expiration within a reasonable listening duration, and you need one especially if you are intending to give your mix to others.  One can’t expect a person to listen to something longer than an hour and a half, in my experience.  If you’re making a mix for an exercise routine, make it as long as your routine.  If you’re making a makeout mix, consider the phase of your relationship and time it accordingly.  Of course, if you ARE making a mix for cassette or CD, your time is already set and working within the confines of sides on a cassette is a finesse that will be appreciated by your mix’s lucky beneficiary, if they have ANY sense whatsoever.

Rule #3 -- Pick a song order (if an order doesn’t show itself to you organically).  There are many ways to do this.  If you want to make it really easy, order the songs by length (shortest to longest or vise versa) or chronology, or even by alphabet.  If you want something a bit more evocative, I’ve found that it helps to start with excitement: high beats per minute and something joyous/rawk-us.  Then, make track 2 even MORE exciting, take it down a notch on track 3, and continue to play with emotions throughout with at least a 4 or 5 track wind-down at the end...personally, I think a really good mix ends in a nap, but only if they sleep when you tell them to sleep, gosh darn it!

Disregard all of the above, and any other rules on mixes if they don’t suit you.  MAKE MIXES FOR YOU, and no one else.  Make them to your liking, not only because people are exceedingly under-appreciative of mixes in general, but also, if you aren’t putting your heart (and freakin’ rhythm ‘n’ soul!) into your mixes, they REALLY won’t be appreciated, so do what you want always and worry not how they will be received/perceived.  I always make mixes for me and if they involve thoughts of another, I give that person a copy and hope they listen/love it as much as I do.

You have it within you: go forth and follow your rockin’ psyche, mixters and mixtresses!