friday random ten – “pop culture omnivore” edition
Being Friday, I shall continue my tradition of posting a random list of tunes pulled off of an interest streaming service, and offering up a short summary of my week.
The tunes’ll come eventually, I promise. As for the week, it’s been less than optimal. First of all, the kitten (who’s really past two years old now, so I shouldn’t call her a kitten, but she’s still tiny, so I keep doing it) managed to worm her way into my bedroom a couple of nights this week and kept waking me up, so I’ve been sleeping badly.
Work’s been kinda the usual; lots of meetings cancelled, and I had my supervisor changed in the timekeeping application without anyone letting me or my new supervisor know; it came up in a non-related conversation, where we both decided that the agency seems to think we’re mushrooms (you know the allusion, don’t make me say it).
Since it’s been raining on and off and keeping me mostly inside (along with the fact that I am really tired thanks to the kitten), I finished off Stranger Things on Netflix, which I highly recommend if you like Spielberg, Stephen King, or have an affectionate regard for the 80s. The production design is excellent, as is the music (I’ll forgive that one anachronistic Bangles tune, because it’s the best Bangles tune). Seriously, watch it.
I also finished off Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which I was maybe a little less impressed with (and yes, I’m aware it’s a play and seeing it performed is always better than reading it and blah blah blah). I had tempered expectations going in (I felt no pressing need for JKR to go back to the well, especially as a play about middle-aged Harry and his kid who’s whinier than he was by way of Back to the Future Part II where she’s got nothing beyond a “story by” credit); and my expectations were met. There were some nice character bits from old favorites there, and new character Scorpius Malfoy is a joy, but plot-wise, it was everything one would expect from a lesser piece of fan fiction, lacking only the obligatory slash (and that lack is itself debatable…). It’s not that I didn’t enjoy bits of it (the Trolley Witch is exactly the right kind of batshit crazy*), but overall, it was kind of a letdown, mostly because there was very little “new” there, merely a remix of all the old elements, which mostly reaffirms my belief that the story found it’s end with book 7 (the universe, thin as it is upon cursory examination, still might have potential). I’m sure the hardcore Potter-heads will love it, and will probably revive a bit of the fandom (which might mean some more gigs for me, which I’m down with), though I’ll just be waiting patiently for the next Cormoran Strike novel.
Finally, I caught Terminator: Genisys on Amazon Prime one night this week; it wasn’t nearly as awful as everybody said it was (it was kind of awful, but it was the kind of awful I needed). It’s only reasonable after five movies of timeline-bending shenanigans that Los Angeles of October 1984 is now crawling with time-displaced killer cyborgs. I kind of loved it, which, according to this study, speaks well of me.
I’m hoping for an enjoyable weekend; we’ve got (free) tickets to a screening of Suicide Squad tonight, which should be amusing if nothing else if the reviews are to be believed, and we’re talking about catching the local Dogwood Dell production of Spamalot on Saturday before it closes its run.
That’s really about it here…hoping the rest of my non-entertainment obligations stay pretty quiet. Here are some tunes – a neat little mix, I’ll grant. I still kind of love that I added a “Viking Metal” channel to my Pandora feed for kicks one day. It’s the gift that keeps on giving:
- “This Ain’t Over Yet” – Tom Smith
- “Skyway” – The Replacements
- “The Presidents” – Jonathan Coulton
- “One More Dollar” – the Wailin’ Jennys
- “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” – Eurythmics
- “The Empty Page” – Sonic Youth
- “Four Chords” – Axis of Awesome
- “Cannonball” – The Breeders
- “Guardians of Fate” – Ensiferium
- “Don’t Stop Me Now” – Queen
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* – I’ve already cracked the nut on the first proper wrock tune of my own composition, a character study of the events of Act 1, Scene 11.
