OUR NEW YEAR (AND MY NEW YEAR)
Okay, we are now at minus fifty minutes.Sayunara sugar to 2010, Konichiwa 2011!
So what actually happened this year? Well - Best Film at the flicks goes hands down to 'Scott Pilgrim VS the World', which, admittedly, was full of annoying hipsters, but also had the fairly awesome Michael Cera and the utterly adorable Ellen Wong playing underage cutiepie Knives Chau. Rowena Flowers left me cold, but oh that pink hair.The power-ups, the KO's and the whole ordinary everyboy having to step up to the plate to get what he really wants? Perhaps Edgar Wright has my personality type in his pocket completely (witness the eponymous hero of 'Shaun Of The Dead' who wore a frickin' NAMETAG. Can you imagine BruceWillisStevenSeagalJCVDet al working...in retail? ) But I'll happily cop to being an ageing lolita, in the sense of being the target of every pink + glitter/ rock-star-endorsed/ hipster-geek product/ record/ lipstick/ work of art. Chanel have a new perfume? Meh. Christina Aguilera has a new perfume? I WANT IT . NOW.
I'm not ashamed to say there wasn't really any music I was entranced by this year. I guess, nominally, it would go to C-Love, still using the 'Hole' moniker, and the album...see, the fact that the name of the album didn't immediately leap to mind shows how shallow the wound was. Some great moments - 'Samantha' ('watch her wrap her legs around this world') and 'Skinny Little Bitch' ('you staggered here on broken glass/ so I could kick yr scrawny ass') were great but not, you know, 'Courtney' great. I think I preferred the footage of her singing an acoustic cover of 'Bad Romance' in the audience of some fashion show.
Which brings me to two other things that have affected me over the course of twenty-ten. One minor, one major. First of all, I rediscovered a love of girlpop music that I would have found terminally lame two years ago. (The Spice Girls don't count, because it's the Spice Girl's world and we just live in it.. They are icons in the religous sense for me, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But that's a whole 'nother post.) Initially in the eurotrash-fash music of Lady Gaga (who provided with the awesomely lame or lamely awesome alterna-name Lady BaaBaa. This is 'funny' because my surname is Lamb, you see. Cue Lucille Ball style WAHHHH.) But then I went beyond, entertaining Ke$ha, the gratingly-voiced Katy Perry, and launching into the back catalogues of Britney, Christina Aguilera and even reassessing the appeal of the original poptart, Madonna. So I'm baldly going to say the best song of the year was 'Teenage Dream'. Not necessarily the version by Ms Perry, but a couple of indie bands and choirs - yeah, I saw that Glee episode - who deconstructed it down to the basics. It's an honest to god 3-chord song that sounds good with just an acoustic guitar. (C9, D, E for the purists.) And the lyrics were, well, actually kind of sweet. "Let's go all the way tonight" as performed by the Rescues, sounds like a yearning, a nostalgia for things we can never get back emotionally or physically. "You and I/ we'll be young forever." Amen to that.
My major thing? Well, we'd been led to believe that Hole's album was going to be called 'How Dirty Girls Get Clean.' I even have a pic courtesy of dicknailed that shows C-love in a while t-shirt that just says "Clean". I can't speak for Courtney, but I have been clean/straight/sober/pick a lame description for five months now. Five months may not sound very impressive, but considering I had never gotten beyond two or three days at most - since 2005 - it's a pretty big deal. And, caustically enough, it wasn't being sent to rehab that got me there. It was a literal 'I-cannot-physically-keep-doing-this' moment. And, yes, it was frakking horrible. And I have had moments where I've thought - 'what's so gorram good about being clean? Where's my reward?' I'm guessing, in my limited wisdom, that it's when you realise there IS no frakking reward, is when you've broken through some kind of portal.( Note to self; stop swearing like a nerd.)
Ooh check it out - four minutes to go. Happy freakin' new year, beautiful people (that's you, by the way.) xx
So what actually happened this year? Well - Best Film at the flicks goes hands down to 'Scott Pilgrim VS the World', which, admittedly, was full of annoying hipsters, but also had the fairly awesome Michael Cera and the utterly adorable Ellen Wong playing underage cutiepie Knives Chau. Rowena Flowers left me cold, but oh that pink hair.The power-ups, the KO's and the whole ordinary everyboy having to step up to the plate to get what he really wants? Perhaps Edgar Wright has my personality type in his pocket completely (witness the eponymous hero of 'Shaun Of The Dead' who wore a frickin' NAMETAG. Can you imagine BruceWillisStevenSeagalJCVDet al working...in retail? ) But I'll happily cop to being an ageing lolita, in the sense of being the target of every pink + glitter/ rock-star-endorsed/ hipster-geek product/ record/ lipstick/ work of art. Chanel have a new perfume? Meh. Christina Aguilera has a new perfume? I WANT IT . NOW.
I'm not ashamed to say there wasn't really any music I was entranced by this year. I guess, nominally, it would go to C-Love, still using the 'Hole' moniker, and the album...see, the fact that the name of the album didn't immediately leap to mind shows how shallow the wound was. Some great moments - 'Samantha' ('watch her wrap her legs around this world') and 'Skinny Little Bitch' ('you staggered here on broken glass/ so I could kick yr scrawny ass') were great but not, you know, 'Courtney' great. I think I preferred the footage of her singing an acoustic cover of 'Bad Romance' in the audience of some fashion show.
Which brings me to two other things that have affected me over the course of twenty-ten. One minor, one major. First of all, I rediscovered a love of girlpop music that I would have found terminally lame two years ago. (The Spice Girls don't count, because it's the Spice Girl's world and we just live in it.. They are icons in the religous sense for me, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But that's a whole 'nother post.) Initially in the eurotrash-fash music of Lady Gaga (who provided with the awesomely lame or lamely awesome alterna-name Lady BaaBaa. This is 'funny' because my surname is Lamb, you see. Cue Lucille Ball style WAHHHH.) But then I went beyond, entertaining Ke$ha, the gratingly-voiced Katy Perry, and launching into the back catalogues of Britney, Christina Aguilera and even reassessing the appeal of the original poptart, Madonna. So I'm baldly going to say the best song of the year was 'Teenage Dream'. Not necessarily the version by Ms Perry, but a couple of indie bands and choirs - yeah, I saw that Glee episode - who deconstructed it down to the basics. It's an honest to god 3-chord song that sounds good with just an acoustic guitar. (C9, D, E for the purists.) And the lyrics were, well, actually kind of sweet. "Let's go all the way tonight" as performed by the Rescues, sounds like a yearning, a nostalgia for things we can never get back emotionally or physically. "You and I/ we'll be young forever." Amen to that.
My major thing? Well, we'd been led to believe that Hole's album was going to be called 'How Dirty Girls Get Clean.' I even have a pic courtesy of dicknailed that shows C-love in a while t-shirt that just says "Clean". I can't speak for Courtney, but I have been clean/straight/sober/pick a lame description for five months now. Five months may not sound very impressive, but considering I had never gotten beyond two or three days at most - since 2005 - it's a pretty big deal. And, caustically enough, it wasn't being sent to rehab that got me there. It was a literal 'I-cannot-physically-keep-doing-this' moment. And, yes, it was frakking horrible. And I have had moments where I've thought - 'what's so gorram good about being clean? Where's my reward?' I'm guessing, in my limited wisdom, that it's when you realise there IS no frakking reward, is when you've broken through some kind of portal.( Note to self; stop swearing like a nerd.)
Ooh check it out - four minutes to go. Happy freakin' new year, beautiful people (that's you, by the way.) xx