Sunday bits and pieces
You know, yesterday I caved and went from smiling benignly to exclaiming "YES!" re: world cup results. It was hard not to, walking through celebrations in Munich.
This was a week of cheer for me on a personal level as well, because seeing old stories of mine from different fandoms reccommended leaves this nice glow of "aww, this one is still read... and this one as well".
I shall now rec some new works myself:
Battlestar Galactica/ Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
Satellite. This crossover was written for this year's Multiverse and provides an encounter between BSG's Laura Roslin and DS9's Kai Winn. I always thought that Winn and Roslin were very similar characters, if not the same one, only one written as the villain and one as the heroine of the story, and this story plays on that magnificently. Spoilers for the entire canon of both shows.
Sarah Connor Chronicles:
Raise it up: a great vid about the are-they-still?-children in SCC, all but Savannah soldiers in a war whether they want to be or not: Riley, Lauren, the Martin Bedells, Allison, Savannah and John himself. Stunning. Also reminds me that now that the film festival is over I need to finish my SCC rewatch.
****
On a note of "things don't take place in a vaccuum": I'm not in SPN fandom, and I don't read the fanfiction, but it was impossible to miss what's been going on during the last months. I do, however, read Time Magazine on occasion, and Joel Stein recently published an article called My own private India which is, shall we say, a proof you don't have to be a fanfiction writer to behave in a spectacularly clueless and entitled way. He got got called on it by Kal Penn (who played Kutner in House) in a magnificent fashion.
****
Back to more fun things. When Lennon Naked was broadcast, some of the reviews went through previous screen incarnations of any aspects of Beatles tales, and that's how I found out that Elizabeth Mitchell, who played Juliet on Lost, has played Linda McCartney in a tv version of her life. (Gary Bakewall, aka Richard Mayhew from Neverwhere, was Paul. He has played him as well in Backbeat, which makes me wonder whether there is such a thing as (ex)Beatles type casting, seeing that Ian Hart played John Lennon twice as well.) This made for a fleeting moment of imagining a really bizarre Lost crossover.
Something Lennon Naked by necessity of its focus could not cover was the origin story of one of my favourite songs, Hey Jude, but as the film covers the exact period I was reminded of it again. It's also a good example of how any work of art, or, if you prefer a less fancy term, any creative effort can be interpreted completely independent from authorial intention the moment it's done, which in the case of the interpretation I'm thinking of has a bittersweet irony. To recapitulate via quotes from the various horses' mouths:
Paul McCartney: "Hey Jude was a song which I originally thought of whilst driving my car out to visit Cynthia and Julian Lennon after John's divorce from them. We'd been very good friends for millions of yers and I thought it was a bit much for them suddenly to be personae non gratae and out of my life, so I decided to play them a visit and say, 'How are you doing? What's happening?' I was very used to writing songs oon my way out to Kenwood because I was usually going there to collaborate with John. This time I started with the idea 'Hey Jules', which was Julian, don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better. Hey, try and deal with this terrible thing. I knew it was not going to be easy for him. I always feel sorry for kids in divorces. The adults may be fine but the kids... I always relate to their little brain spinning round in confusion, going, 'Did I do this? Was it me?' Guilt is such a terrible thing and I know it affects a lot of people and I think that aws the reason I went out. And I got this idea for a long, 'Hey Jude', and made up a few little things so I had the basic by the time I got there. I changed it to 'Jude' because I thought that sounded a bit better."
(This sympathy for Julian thing wasn't a one time only gesture. Quoth Julian Lennon: " "Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit-more than Dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seems to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and my dad." Case in point. They still seem to get along well. )
Of course, by the time Hey Jude entered the recording stage, the text had changed quite a bit; as with the majority of McCartney songs, romantic love had entered the picture with the line "you were made to/go out and get her". This led to none other than John Lennon - who was savagely critical about most of Paul's later stuff, but not of this song, which he always praised - to come up with the following interpretation (from the Playboy interviews shortly before his death):
"I always heard it as a song to me. If you think about it... Yoko's just come into the picture. He's saying, 'Hey Jude" - "Hey John". I know I'm sounding like one of those fans who reads things into it, but you can hear it as a song to me. The words 'go out and get her' - subconsciously he was saying, 'Go ahead, leave me.' On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you'. The devil in him didn't like it at all because he didn't want to lose his partner."
Checking out YouTube for Hey Jude versions, I found the original promo, of course (those very early music vids strike one as weirdly static today):
And then there's a version from a charity concert for Montserrat at the Royal Albert Hall, featuring Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler, Sting, Eric Clapton and Elton John singing it:
And then there's Hugh Laurie parodying the whole thing, singing it in chipmunk fashion. (BTW, whenever you find a YouTube clip featuring Hugh Laurie, there are bound to be some comments posted expressing amazement that he did exist before House and is not, in fact, American. I wonder what the planned reunion sketch with Stephen Fry will do to those viewers' perception?)
Skipping over a Czech version by Marta Kubišová and a Robbie Williams version, here's a beautiful one by David Garret:
And I shall leave you with a spontanous singalong on Carnaby St London on 13 June 2009:
This was a week of cheer for me on a personal level as well, because seeing old stories of mine from different fandoms reccommended leaves this nice glow of "aww, this one is still read... and this one as well".
I shall now rec some new works myself:
Battlestar Galactica/ Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
Satellite. This crossover was written for this year's Multiverse and provides an encounter between BSG's Laura Roslin and DS9's Kai Winn. I always thought that Winn and Roslin were very similar characters, if not the same one, only one written as the villain and one as the heroine of the story, and this story plays on that magnificently. Spoilers for the entire canon of both shows.
Sarah Connor Chronicles:
Raise it up: a great vid about the are-they-still?-children in SCC, all but Savannah soldiers in a war whether they want to be or not: Riley, Lauren, the Martin Bedells, Allison, Savannah and John himself. Stunning. Also reminds me that now that the film festival is over I need to finish my SCC rewatch.
****
On a note of "things don't take place in a vaccuum": I'm not in SPN fandom, and I don't read the fanfiction, but it was impossible to miss what's been going on during the last months. I do, however, read Time Magazine on occasion, and Joel Stein recently published an article called My own private India which is, shall we say, a proof you don't have to be a fanfiction writer to behave in a spectacularly clueless and entitled way. He got got called on it by Kal Penn (who played Kutner in House) in a magnificent fashion.
****
Back to more fun things. When Lennon Naked was broadcast, some of the reviews went through previous screen incarnations of any aspects of Beatles tales, and that's how I found out that Elizabeth Mitchell, who played Juliet on Lost, has played Linda McCartney in a tv version of her life. (Gary Bakewall, aka Richard Mayhew from Neverwhere, was Paul. He has played him as well in Backbeat, which makes me wonder whether there is such a thing as (ex)Beatles type casting, seeing that Ian Hart played John Lennon twice as well.) This made for a fleeting moment of imagining a really bizarre Lost crossover.
Something Lennon Naked by necessity of its focus could not cover was the origin story of one of my favourite songs, Hey Jude, but as the film covers the exact period I was reminded of it again. It's also a good example of how any work of art, or, if you prefer a less fancy term, any creative effort can be interpreted completely independent from authorial intention the moment it's done, which in the case of the interpretation I'm thinking of has a bittersweet irony. To recapitulate via quotes from the various horses' mouths:
Paul McCartney: "Hey Jude was a song which I originally thought of whilst driving my car out to visit Cynthia and Julian Lennon after John's divorce from them. We'd been very good friends for millions of yers and I thought it was a bit much for them suddenly to be personae non gratae and out of my life, so I decided to play them a visit and say, 'How are you doing? What's happening?' I was very used to writing songs oon my way out to Kenwood because I was usually going there to collaborate with John. This time I started with the idea 'Hey Jules', which was Julian, don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better. Hey, try and deal with this terrible thing. I knew it was not going to be easy for him. I always feel sorry for kids in divorces. The adults may be fine but the kids... I always relate to their little brain spinning round in confusion, going, 'Did I do this? Was it me?' Guilt is such a terrible thing and I know it affects a lot of people and I think that aws the reason I went out. And I got this idea for a long, 'Hey Jude', and made up a few little things so I had the basic by the time I got there. I changed it to 'Jude' because I thought that sounded a bit better."
(This sympathy for Julian thing wasn't a one time only gesture. Quoth Julian Lennon: " "Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit-more than Dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seems to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and my dad." Case in point. They still seem to get along well. )
Of course, by the time Hey Jude entered the recording stage, the text had changed quite a bit; as with the majority of McCartney songs, romantic love had entered the picture with the line "you were made to/go out and get her". This led to none other than John Lennon - who was savagely critical about most of Paul's later stuff, but not of this song, which he always praised - to come up with the following interpretation (from the Playboy interviews shortly before his death):
"I always heard it as a song to me. If you think about it... Yoko's just come into the picture. He's saying, 'Hey Jude" - "Hey John". I know I'm sounding like one of those fans who reads things into it, but you can hear it as a song to me. The words 'go out and get her' - subconsciously he was saying, 'Go ahead, leave me.' On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you'. The devil in him didn't like it at all because he didn't want to lose his partner."
Checking out YouTube for Hey Jude versions, I found the original promo, of course (those very early music vids strike one as weirdly static today):
Click to view
And then there's a version from a charity concert for Montserrat at the Royal Albert Hall, featuring Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler, Sting, Eric Clapton and Elton John singing it:
And then there's Hugh Laurie parodying the whole thing, singing it in chipmunk fashion. (BTW, whenever you find a YouTube clip featuring Hugh Laurie, there are bound to be some comments posted expressing amazement that he did exist before House and is not, in fact, American. I wonder what the planned reunion sketch with Stephen Fry will do to those viewers' perception?)
Skipping over a Czech version by Marta Kubišová and a Robbie Williams version, here's a beautiful one by David Garret:
And I shall leave you with a spontanous singalong on Carnaby St London on 13 June 2009: