I heard the dandelions roar in Piccadilly Circus

As I expected, hardly anyone has posted anything since I made my post about having caught up on my friends list. That's how it always seems to work.

Anyway, a discussion of XTC's two Apple Venus albums on revme's journal made me listen to the two of them back to back. They're both excellent albums, and I wish there had been more from the band after that. Apple Venus Volume 1 came out at a quite fortuitous time for me, since it was right around when I finished purchasing XTC's back catalog. I was in college at the time, and I bought it on the day it came out, probably for too much money. The music store close to campus didn't have it, so I walked across town to the Regency Mall to get it. I think I saw it at the closer store a few days later for less money, but by then I already had it. It's possible that they had it on the release date, too, but just hadn't put it out yet. I probably should have asked, but I tend to avoid doing that kind of thing.

I believe I liked Volume 1 more than Wasp Star (AKA Volume 2) upon first listen, but now I find them more evenly matched. Volume 1 has more of an unusual sound to it, with all of its lush instrumentation, while Volume 2 is more generic-sounding. I remember reading that Wasp Star was supposed to be the hard rock volume, and I don't know that the band really succeeded in that. Black Sea it ain't. Nonetheless, it's still an album of amazingly catchy songs, and I can't complain about that.

A few other comments I have on the two volumes:

• Both of them start out really strongly (with "River Of Orchids" and "Playground," respectively). WS also has an amazing ending song with "The Wheel And The Maypole," but I'm not very fond of Volume 1's closer, "The Last Balloon."
  
• I like "Knights In Shining Karma" better now than I used to.
  
• "Green Man" is one of the best songs on either volume, but takes a long time to wrap up. That's fairly common with XTC songs, really. They rarely just end.
  
• "Stupidly Happy" is still vastly overrated.
  
• I remember someone commenting on how "Wounded Horse" doesn't make a lot of sense, because it goes from describing the singer as "like a wounded horse" to being told to "climb back in the saddle." This is actually pretty similar to "Shake You Donkey Up," where it's sometimes the man who's the donkey ("look at he long ears, and he big brown eyes"), and sometimes the woman ("how she carry you over thick and thin ice, you still dug your spurs in"). I guess Andy Partridge has trouble keeping a simile or metaphor consistent throughout a song. {g}
  

In other news (not that what I just wrote WAS news), someone on the Frank Black Forum linked to a list of the 50 most loathsome New Yorkers. Aside from the fact that the whole thing is painfully unfunny (about the only thing I found kind of amusing was the comparison of the Hilton Sisters to peasant-impersonating French nobles), what might be even worse is how bizarre the qualifications are. The authors admit that "we cast a wide net and caught all manner of frauds, blowhards and bloodsuckers." Apparently corrupt politicians and the captain who caused the Staten Island Ferry crash aren't as bad as some annoying celebrities. They're all mixed in there together. It's like how VH1's "Most Shocking Moments in Rock" (or whatever it was called) included both Ozzy biting the head off a bat and John Lennon being shot. Come on, have a sense of perspective, people! At least VH1 put Lennon's death near (if not at) the top of the list.

By the way, I believe Piccadilly Circus is the equivalent of Marvin Gardens (which should actually be "Marven Gardens") on the British Monopoly board.

It's like we're in the school's lymphatic system, and WE'RE the lymph!

Today, I semi-randomly thought of the game 7-Up. Did anyone else play this in school? A group of seven kids was selected, and then everyone else had to put their heads down and thumbs up. If one of the selected kids pressed your thumb down, you had to guess who it was. I used to HATE this game. I even thought of cheating by putting my thumb down before anyone could actually get to it, although I never did. I think I took it way too seriously, or something. It was probably connected to the weird social anxiety that made me unable to choose my own groups for group work.

And if you're not interested in my childhood anxieties, this post also contains cartoon reviews! Tonight's Simpsons didn't really go much anywhere, but there was some good character-driven humor. Milhouse had some great lines while in the steam tunnel. I also liked the video conversation between Superintendent Chalmers and Comptroller Atkins, and Homer and Bart mocking the other father and son at the restaurant. Also, after hearing all the mentions in the DVD commentaries about how the show used to do flashbacks all the time but doesn't so much anymore, I found it amusing that there was one in this episode, explaining how Bart got on the No Fly list. I found the scene where Bart was deciding whether or not to save Homer to be pretty tedious, though. And while I'm not so fond of endings that leave a lot of loose ends, the bit with Lisa hearing both Marge and Homer's messages on the answering machine was amusing.

Family Guy wasn't a future classic by any means, but it wasn't bad either. There were some funny moments involving Peter's stint as a professional athlete, and the family's brief move to England. bethje and I both wondered about the running gag with Jay Leno harrassing Tom Brady, though. Is there some basis for that, or was it just a random thing?

I would have to say that tonight's American Dad was one of the stronger ones I've seen. Klaus finally had a significant role, rather than just the occasional line. There were clever subplots for all of the other characters, and more funny moments than in most the other episodes I've seen: everything with the offensive Indian statue, the ridiculous products Stan bought, the parking lot sequence, etc.

Apparently the trend of really bad parody movies is continuing with Date Movie. I haven't seen any of the Scary Movie films, and I don't intend to see this. What I've heard and what the commercials suggest, though, is that they're basically a bunch of crude gross-out gags and blatant, simplistic spoofs of other movies (many of which no one saw in the first place). I like parodies as much as the next guy (and quite possibly MORE than the next guy, depending on who the next guy is), but the philosophy with that kind of movie seems to be, "If it's a reference to something, it's automatically funny! Even if there's absolutely no context or subtlety, or even a real joke!" Hey, this is like The Ring, except Anna Morgan gets caught on a tree branch when she tries to jump into the ocean! Isn't that SO funny? And apparently, if you can work in a joke about semen or ear-rape, it's even better.

( Okay, enough of that. Here's a quiz result. )

By the way, you know how people do those mash-ups of songs? You know what one of them should do? The Blur song "Top Man," over the Top Man music from Mega Man 3. I can't actually remember how that music goes, but I'm sure it was intense. All the music from those games was.