Films, ale and grey hair
March 2011
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The Runaway Found: Tom Waits's acceptance speech at the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame Induction →
I just want to know if there’s a key-chain version that I can keep with me just in case I hear someone say, “Pete, take the cuffs off. I think he’s a Hall of Famer.” Thank you for the kind words, Neil. I’m honored to be honored. And, gee, I don’t know where to begin. Songs, uh, are really just interesting things to be doing with the air. I love working with tunes. I love music, but we really want music to love us. Neil was saying the other night, he said, “When there’s a song approaching it’s kind of like there’s an animal in the room, and you don’t want it to run off.” You know, how did it get in?
I was, uh, fifteen and I snuck in to see Lightnin’ Hopkins. I put white-out in my hair and I drew on a mustache and I put on an overcoat and I stood there and I said, “Ticket for one.” Amazing show. Every time he opened his mouth, that orchestra of gold teeth was just devastating. And then I saw him leave the show and he walked through a door and slammed the door behind him. And on the door, it said, I swear to God, “KEEP OUT. THIS ROOM IS FOR ENTERTAINERS ONLY.” And I knew at that moment that I had to get into show business as soon as possible. So, uh, that was a real big one for me. And I’ve had the pleasure and the privilege of playing with a lot of great musicians over the years. Some of you are here and some of you are not here. Some of us are on the wrong side of the dirt, as they say. But any day on this side of the dirt is a good day, for me and for all of us.
Let’s see, what else? They told me I should talk for quite a while, but I don’t intend to. I fully do not intend to. I’d like to thank my family. They know me and they love me anyway. My wife and her incandescent light that has guided me and kept me alive and breathing and sparkling. And my kids who, well, they taught me everything I know. Or maybe they taught me everything they know. I don’t know. They taught me a lot.
Okay, I did the bit about the door and the club. Um, the first time I went onstage, my face felt like it was made of plaster and if I smiled, it would crack off, and I thought, “This is such an interesting [Christian?] experience” and somehow wanted more of it. They say I have no hits and I’m difficult to work with, and they say that like it’s a bad thing. [crowd cheers] The only thing I really can compare this to is I was given the key to the city of El Paso several months ago. It was a really kind offer. They told me there’s only one key to the city, but I found out later there were a whole lot of them, and they fit nothing. So, I’m just hoping there are some fringe benefits that go along with this baby. Thank you very much. This has been very encouraging.
And also
Here’s all the 30 day film challenge ones:
Day 1 - Your Favorite Film - American Beauty
Day 2 - Your Least Favorite Film - Psycho (Gus Van Sant remake)
Day 3 - A Film You Watch to Feel Good - Remember the Titans
Day 4 - A Film You Watch to Feel Down - Grave of the Fireflies
Day 5 - A Film That Reminds You of Someone - Predator (Sam)
Day 6 - A Film That Reminds You of Somewhere - Total Recall (reminds me of Beijing, watched it dubbed in Mandarin in a hotel there, so trippy…)
Day 7 - A Film That Reminds You of Your Past - Alien (made me want to make films in the first place)
Day 8 - The Film You Can Quote Best - Draw between Anchorman and Withnail & I (honorable mentions go to The Room and Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2)
Day 9 - A Film With Your Favorite Actor (Male) - Leon (Gary Oldman)
Day 10 - A Film With Your Favorite Actor (Female) - An Education (Carey Mulligan)
Day 11 - A Film By Your Favorite Director - Audition (Takashi Miike)
Day 12 - A Film By Your Least Favorite Director - Bloodrayne (Uwe Boll)
Day 13 - A Guilty Pleasure - Piranha 3D
Day 14 - The Film That No One Expected You To Like - Mean Girls
Day 15 - The Film That Depicts Your Life - The Matrix
Day 16 - A Film You Used to Love, But Now Hate - Transformers
Day 17 - Your Favorite Drama Film - American Beauty again
Day 18 - Your Favorite Comedy Film - The Big Lebowski
Day 19 - Your Favorite Action Film - Oldboy (hard to categorise really)
Day 20 - Your Favorite Romantic Film- Chungking Express
Day 21 - Your Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film - Metropolis
Day 22 - Your Favorite Horror Film - Alien
Day 23 - Your Favorite Thriller/Mystery Film - Rear Window
Day 24 - Your Favorite Animated or Children’s Film - Princess Mononoke
Day 25 - Your Favorite Documentary Film - Grizzly Man
Day 26 - Your Favorite Foreign Language Film - Oldboy again
Day 27 - Your Favorite Independent Film - Survive Style 5+
Day 28 - The Most Obscure Film You’ve Ever Seen - Wow… Urm… The Bird People In China if we’re not counting shorts… I guess… I’ve seen a lot of rare stuff
Day 29 - Your Favorite Film As a Kid - Star Wars (duh)
Day 30 - Your Favorite Film This Time Last Year - American Beauty
RIGHT
This stoopid song a day thing is still bugging me so I’m just gonna list all the rest of them from 16 onwards that I would have done had I stuck with it to the end, then I can be rid of this foolishness.
day 16 - a song that you used to love but now hate - American Idiot by Green Day
day 17 - a song that you hear often on the radio - Do It Like a Dude by Jessie J
day 18 - a song that you wish you heard on the radio - Dead Flag Blues by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
day 19 - a song from your favorite album - Yearning by Mono
day 20 - a song that you listen to when you’re angry Hell on Earth by Big D and the Kids Table
day 21 - a song that you listen to when you’re happy - Hey Man (Now you’re really living) by Eels
day 22 - a song that you listen to when you’re sad - Three Little Birds by Bob Marley
day 23 - a song that you want to play at your wedding - Eight Days a Week by The Beatles
day 24 - a song that you want to play at your funeral - It’s a Motherfucker by Eels
day 25 - a song that makes you laugh - Bobby Brown by Frank Zappa
day 26 - a song that you can play on an instrument - The Chain by Fleetwood Mac
day 27 - a song that you wish you could play - Give up the Funk by Parliament
day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty - Eh? Why would a song make me feel guilty, even if it did would I really flag it up on facebook!? I guess Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf does but that’s largely because I love it and I’ve never bothered to listen to them properly. So yeah… Sod this category
day 29 - a song from your childhood - Blue by Eiffel 65
day 30 - your favorite song at this time last year - Purple Rain by Prince (maybe, I can’t remember, really)
Now I never have to think about that again
All these jokes about the earthquake...
I get that people can say what they want, I respect that, they’re more than welcome to make jokes about this, or any disaster so long as they’re not hurting anyone. I know that for the most part it doesn’t express their true opinion on the issue. I just don’t see the point. If it’s just for the sake of appearing cool or funny then it’s sick, if you have to rely on something as un-funny as that to derive humour from then you’re not a very funny person. On the flip side I can see where in this banter orientated youth culture, discussing it seriously is an unlikely occurrence, so I’m almost glad that it’s getting mentioned. I don’t know why I want people to take it more seriously, I mean it doesn’t effect them in any literal way, I just hate the fact that empathy seems to be a statement of the obvious. Like ‘well duh, of course its sad, get over it’. You can’t be post-modern, ironic or slick about something that killed an estimated ten thousand people. It is a tragedy. Internet culture seems to be ruining our sense of place, like a huge natural disaster, instead of inciting feelings of pity, sadness, awe or dread, makes people instantly start pondering over how best to exploit it via Facebook or Twitter to garner attention. Making it about them. I realise that it’s a little hypocritical to say that, then post this, but I’m just thinking aloud. What I think I’m driving at is that people don’t seem to ever really look at the big picture anymore, the only time they ever come close is when they’re pretending to, deliberately. We’re a planet of over six billion people and the most complete, universal mode of mass communication is littered with millions of those people all jumping up and down yelling ‘LOOK AT ME’ waving pictures of cats, Charlie Sheen and destroyed Japanese houses over their heads. Screw the internet and screw everyone. I’m going to live in the wilderness or something.
P.S. This is a rage post that I will likely regret in the morning and am in fact slightly regretting now, I have no intention of moving to the wilderness, I like video games, movies and chips way too much for that.
P.P.S. Try and imagine that this post is covered in swear words, I have given up bad language for lent :P
Bleurgh
So if you hadn’t guessed already I’ve given up on this song a day dealio, the categories were just getting less interesting by turns and to be honest the novelty of making a playlist out of all of them wore off when I started having to include songs that I couldn’t stand. Other than that life is pretty average, money’s once again become a looming shadow of despair but compared to the predicaments some of my peers have been in of late I have no right to gripe about that. I’ve kind of worked myself into a routine here and I’m feeling like something big is just around the corner. I could be wrong and I could just keep doing what I’m doing right up until summer, but I’m hoping that as much as I love the norm, something will come along and upset it slightly, or drastically.
Something fun, I hope.
Trains
Porcupine Tree
Porcupine Tree - Trains
Day 15: A song that describes you.
Fuck this one. Seriously. It puts me in mind of everything I hate about emo pop culture, people who think that songs describe them or that artists are speaking to them or understand their problems. News flash you little shits, when Gerrard Way wrote Teenagers, he was not thinking “Wow, I’m really onto something here, this song can help teens all over the world, it will prove that we, as a band, are here to help and plan to do all we can to make life better for depressed, downtrodden teenagers.”. He was probably thinking something more like “Hey this is catchy. This will make me lots of money. So much money…”. Frankly I don’t blame him, see you people don’t need help, so you’re miserable, so you feel like nobody understands. Do you live on the street? Is your country at war? Can you walk, talk, hear, see, read, write and eat without throwing it back up? Do you have to be hooked up to a dialysis machine on a daily basis? Are you currently undergoing chemotherapy? Are you taking lithium? No? Then you don’t get to act like the world is cheating you. Nor do you need to transplant your emotions on to song lyrics. You need to take a step back, realize how good you have it, and cut the fucking complaints out.
OK… I took that a little overboard, the existence of a ‘song that describes you’ category is most definitely not to blame for all that stuff. It is fairly shallow though.
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