Well my heart’s runnin’ round like a chicken with its head cut off
All around the barn yard falling in and out of love
Poor thing’s blind as a bat
Gettin’ up, fallin’ down, gettin’ up
Who’d fall in love with a chicken with its head cut off?

So when 69 Love Songs came out, myself and pretty much everyone I knew was devouring the 3 CD set and talking about this or that song pretty much 24/7. I had just started dating a neat guy who lived in Seattle (remember I lived in SF) and he, too, was going to make his way through all 69 songs. However, after listening to the fourth one he called me and said “You totally need to listen to this song. Because that’s me.” Reader, it was true, and I’m glad he warned me; it was still a very nice little romance.

Listen to “Chicken With Its Head Cut Off” – it’s song #4 on this page.

March 1st: “Two Characters in Search of a Country Song”

You were just like me
you were one big bruise
In the game of life
you were playing to lose

I love this song because it mentions Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, and (the Devil and) Daniel Webster. It’s about the Wild West and about being sad.

You can watch/listen to it here.

March 2nd: “The Desperate Things You Made Me Do”

Time provides the rope
but love with tie the slipknot
and I will be the chair you kick away

This is a synth heavy song, like the rest of “Get Lost”, and it’s super sweeping and moody. It’s great to listen to after a break up, or if you just feel like staring out at the rain and brooding.

Listen to the song here.*

March 3rd: “The Flowers She Sent and the Flowers She Said She Sent”

I saw you standing at the airport
With your chihuahua in your hand
Crying on the moving sidewalk
On your way to Disneylandstrong

This song puts a big lump in my throat, and I’m not even sure why. I think it has something to do with the melody and the the lighthearted singing of some silly lyrics that when you listen to them are quite sad. Are you noticing a sad trend here? There’s a reason that melancholy looking girls in black turtlenecks love this bad.

Listen to it here.

March 4th: “I Was Born on a Train”

And I’ve been making promises I know I’ll never keep.
One of these days I’m gonna leave you in your sleep.
I’ll have to go when the whistle blows-
The whistle knows my name.
Baby, I was born on a train.

“The Charm of the Highway Strip” is probably my favorite Magnetic Fields album. All of the songs are about leaving, traveling, moving, and momentum. This song is really jangly and it’s got a great rhythm. It gets stuck in my head for days at a time, and since I’m playing it as I type, I’m going to leave my break in a minute or two to sit at the refence desk bobbing my head to a silent soundtrack.

Listen to a kosher full version here (scroll down to “Born on a Train”)

* These are, by and large, links to YouTube videos made by fans. The Magnetic Fields obviously aren’t getting money every time you watch, so if you like the song(s) please consider hopping over to iTunes and buying your own copy so you can delight in them again and again. Or better yet, get them on CD or vinyl!

Under Great White Northern Lights played for 2 nights @ Northwest Film Forum. It’s a documentary film following the White Stripes as they tour the breadth and width of Canada, including all sorts of little, out of the way towns. They didn’t just play large evening events, either. They visited schools and bowling alleys and retirement homes and played short afternoon sets. My favorite was a last minute (5 minute warning via cell phone notice) performance on a city bus.

Watching Jack and Meg play their little hearts out was amazing. I liked the White Stripes in a “if they are playing on the stereo I’m happy, and once in awhile I may want to hear a specific song of theirs and put it on” kind of way, but never in a OHMIGODTHISBANDISAMAZING way. But now I kind of think they are amazing. Their live performances offer something I really enjoy seeing in a band or singer: I want them to look like they are having some sort of excorcism. This doesn’t mean they have to be twisting their faces all crazy — excorcisms can be more low key. I just want to see them letting the music out like it’s trapped inside of them and they need to let it free. I listened to a lot of Nina Simone and Grace Slick in my formative years.

At first it was odd to see this movie a few nights after seeing the Magnetic Fields. I mean, Stephen Merritt isn’t exactly the most emotive dude, right? His singing persona is based largely on his monotone and slightly flat notes. However, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made that I loved both bands. Stephen Merritt may not be all wild about it, but he’s also excorcising his musical demons: the man appears to obsessively create music, to the tune of more then 3 bands going at once and a ton of albums. His excorcism is methodical and ongoing.

Man do I love music.

Sidenote: I remember when the White Stripes first got to be household names and a ton of band dudes I knew complained constantly about how Meg White was just there to be hot with her boobs bouncing as she played the drums. At the time I thought this was just dumb sexist dumbness and usually said as much. But now that I have seen Meg White play I can testify that she is a sick, sick drummer and those band dudes were probably way threatened by her skills and had to make it about her boobs to save face.

Here are some bits and pieces that I remember…

They played “I Have the Moon” which contains lyrics that held the highest seat of lyrical honor in the late nineties: it was my e-mail signature line for many months:

O\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\O
\\You have to fly around the world all day //
\\to keep the sunlight on your face ////////
O\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\O

I had no idea that this song was about a Vampire in love, but apparently it is; Merritt’s intro to the song was “This is a song about vampires and apartness.”

It was great to see that my imaginary boyfriend, Sam Davol, had aged well. Click his name to read a sweet little NY Times article on how he revamped a Boston loft in which to raise his little twee family.

They ended the show (if you don’t count the encore) with one of my absolute favorites – 100,000 Fireflies. I’ve spent weeks at time with this song stuck in my head, and it was amazing to hear it played live. It’s a really unique song in that I can’t think of many others that have the same quality: it’s intense but breezy and light, and if I had to describe it with one word I’d call it “twinkly.”

Why do we still live here
in this repulsive town?
All our friends are in New York.

Why do we keep shrieking
when me mean soft things?
We should be whispering all the time.
- 100,000 Fireflies, Magnetic Fields

You can listen to the song by playing this YouTube video (nevermind the weird, blurry fankid graphics that go along).

For those playing along at home, there’s a set list posted on the Line Out review of the show.

Included is a set of just Sky and Gus: Gus is in love with Sky and cannot be more than a few feet from him at any given moment. These are just some photos taken in the last week or so, documenting a consistent behavior.

Gus and Sky are two peas in a pod

Next is a set of photos snapped in the last few months as we settle into our new place. There’s a lot of quilt photos in there because I like quilts and I got some new ones. If you are not a lover of quilts, avert your eyes.

Jen and a pile of laundry

And going back to December, just a few days after we got back from Chicago, we drove up to Scottish Lakes High Camp for a few days of relaxing and being alone. It was 6° most of the time we were there. Most of our food froze into solid chunks, but luckily there was caretaker guy there as well – we spent evenings down in the lodge hanging out and drinking spiked hot cocoa. Great times!

Skiing at Scottish Lakes High Camp in December

That said, I’ve had two mornings in a row of ridiculous lateness. I think job stress and all of the new stuff learning has taken its toll.

Yesterday I dallied all morning: made a big breakfast, took a long shower, sat with the kitties and did some petting, etc. When I had about 45 minutes until my shift started, I began to gather my things – I was going to walk to work for the first time and I wanted to give myself PLENTY OF TIME! As I looked at the clock I was struck with an awful, awful feeling – it was 10:55, and I was supposed to be at work at 11am. I’ve started my “late” days – days I work until 8pm, at 11:30 for so many years that although I knew my new hours were 11-8, I just plum forgot that as I went through my lazy morning routine. Woops. So I drove to work and arrived 15 minutes late and had to pay astronomical sums to get my car out of the garage at the end of the day.

Whew. Never going to do that again, right?

So this morning I’m having the weirdest dream wherein I keep meaning to leave for my job, but get sucked in watching a documentary with my mom, then eating a piece of cake with my sister, and then stopping in a store. In the dream I know I’m supposed to be at my mystery job by 5pm, and it’s about 6:30pm, but I just keep doing other things. Somehow my conscious thrusts me out of my dream and I’m panicked. I grab my phone and see that it’s 8:30am – the alarm wasn’t even on, ever. My bus to work left at 8:22. Since my lateness yesterday threw my day into a spiral of spacey/stressed/forgetful reactions, I tried to take it calmly. I drove again. This means two days in a row of ridiculously large garage payments. Maybe I needed to learn the lesson extra hard?

Tomorrow I have the day off, and Friday I’ll set 3 alarms. And possibly sleep in my work clothes.

Dear raver girl wearing really large pants that belong in 1998 who is listening to hip hop really loud on her enormous headphones and looking confused as she drinks an extra large Subway soda,

I don’t know why you are so surprised that Scarf Man (aka Scarf Guy) has begun dancing along to your music and has in fact moved across the aisle to sit closer to you. That’s what loud music can do, it can bring people together. Go ahead, take his business card; he’s right: you’ve got flair.

Love,
Jen

Desk Set : watched last Friday w/ Katie & Sky
This movie wasn’t half as fun as I thought it would be. I love me some Katherine Hepburn, or at least I thought I did, but I spent much of this movie confused because she was laughing her crazy head-thrown-back New England laugh and I didn’t understand what what so godamned funny about the plot. Maybe you had to be there. The clothes were great and I took some small pride in the fact that the librarians were better than a machine (even if they were rattling off complex, memorized answers just like robots most of the time). Anyway, this is one of those LIBRARIAN movies that you’re supposed to watch and so I watched it and I think Party Girl should be our group movie if we get to vote on it.

Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all’italiana if you’re being fancy): watched last night w/ Sky
This movie was hilarious and I really enjoyed that they made a totally hot lady (Fefe’s wife) look “ugly” by giving her a unibrow and a mustache. Those hips were out of this world. Also the weird dubbing was pretty great and I loved all of the clothes and I’d like to live in a castle now.

Visual Acoustics: watched tonight w/ Sky
This film has been selling out @ Northwest Film Forum – so much so that they were showing it in both theaters tonight. It’s a documentary about Julius Shulman, a world famous photographer who is best known for capturing modern architecture in Southern California: Case Study Houses, Palm Springs, etc. He was a swell guy and the documentary had a lot of great footage of him visiting with all sorts of people: previous owners of houses, new owners, and architects. Shulman was a pleasure to watch, and his photographs were amazing. That’s about all that was good about this documentary, though. There were all sorts of woozy special effects, random Jib Jab style animations, a not very cohesive story line and weird edits throughout. It seemed more like a really long Power Point presentation (with some video thrown in) than a film. A few times they didn’t give names of people who were talking until they’d been on screen for a minute or so – super frustrating.

It wasn’t an awful documentary, but it wasn’t a good one, either. I’m a connoisseur of the documentary film, and it makes me cranky when I see half of Seattle lining up to see a mediocre one when there are so many AMAZING ones slipping under the radar every day. I also take issue with people who assume documentary making is easy, or easier than making a fiction film.

* Brain is stuffed due to entirely new job in entirely new place which I don’t really want to talk about because I’m still trying to reconcile myself with the fact that I have an entirely new job in an entirely new place

Imagine my suprise, however, when a neighborhood type person rushed up to me and said “ooooHH! I saw an ‘I Saw U’ ad about you! It was definitely you because of the tattoos!” I verified the information, being a thorough librarian, and learned that alas, my moment had finally come. I missed the edition of The Stranger this was printed in, so I can’t clip it for posterity as as Pop Culture Librarian suggested. Instead I will post it to my blog so I can visit it on days when I’m feeling frumpy and demonic.

Angelic librarian @Cap Hill branch
You: gorgeous brunette woman with tattoo on inside of left wrist. You helped me find A Twist of the Wrist (motorcycling not cooking) on 1/23. I finally got my wits and came back, but your shift was over. Let’s meet for a drink and conversation.

P.S. Even if I were single I wouldn’t contact the guy: he was cute, but when I asked him if he wanted the book about cooking or the one about motorcycles he made a face and said “motorcycling” in a super macho way. Doesn’t he know women like men who can make them waffles?

There’s a short summary of the show posted on Line Out. The writeup gives an accurate blow-by-blow but doesn’t do much to explain what it felt like.

At the end of the evening Patti performed an staggeringly awesome and heartfelt a capella version of “Because the Night” wherein she asked us to help her sing the refrain. There’s a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHiHq6VoHrQ (she begins singing a few minutes in)

I love that she narrated the guitar solo, Literal Video style!