152 insights into my soul

So I had downloaded a bunch of musical soundtracks recently, which had me curious how many of those I actually had in my library:

Across the Universe (movie)
American Idiot
American Psycho
Annie (the 1999 and 2014 movie versions)
Avenue Q
Beautiful: the Carole King Musical
Bonnie and Clyde
Book of Mormon
Bring It On: The Musical*
Cruel Intentions: The Musical
Dear Evan Hansen
Dreamgirls (movie)
Fun Home
Godspell (movie and 2011 revival versions)
Grease (movie and 2007 new broadway versions)
Grease Live!
Hairspray (2007 movie version)
Hairspray Live!
Hamilton
Heathers: The Musical
Into the Woods (movie version)
Jersey Boys
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973 movie and 2001 versions)
Kinky Boots*
Legally Blonde: The Musical
Les Miserables (Broadway and Movie versions)
Little Shop of Horrors (Broadway)
Mamma Mia (movie version)
Matilda
Motown the Musical
Movin' Out
The Passion: New Orleans
Pippin (2013)
Priscilla: Queen of the Desert
Rent (Broadway and Movie versions)
Rock of Ages (Broadway and Movie versions)
Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again
School of Rock
Spring Awakening
The Last Five Years (movie)
Tuck Everlasting
Waitress
Wicked
13

50, and that's not counting Glee and other musical shows, stuff by Disney or Graff (i.e. Camp/Bandslam/Joyful Noise) and musical specials of various TV shows. Alas, I've only seen a small fraction of those Broadway (or in some cases, Off-Broadway) shows, having not learned of them until they were long done with their runs. Though of the ones I haven't seen live, there's only a handful I'm actually disappointed in missing- Cruel Intentions, Hamilton, Pippin, Spring Awakening, and 13.

Music videos I've liked recently (one of them is a year old, but if I haven't seen it, its new to me!):

"Standing In This Dream", by My Dear:



Basically, its a dreamy POV video all, "What if Seychelle Gabriel was your girlfriend, looking mad cute af, and you spent all day hanging out by the beach!"

Hayley Kiyoko's "Girls Like Girls":



Its a sweet video starring Stefanie Scott and Kelsey Chow and some douchey jerk, all about young love. I really love the end of the video, where Stefanie (or I guess "Coley" if you're going by the credits) is like reminiscing on what just happened and smiling contentedly all, this is the most awesome feeling in the world. Its just like really sweet and uplifting because you know you hope/want to feel that same feeling at least once in your life.

How about this for something non TV/movie/video game/music-related? So sometimes, people are talking to me about boring-ass crap I could give a rat's ass about. I smile and nod along, but in my mind, I'm actually thinking, "I'll take boring-ass crap I could give a rat's ass about for 500, Alex!" or if I'm in a particularly bad mood, I imagine Malcolm Tucker saying, "You know what, you're a real boring eff!" (well, I imagine him using the actual f-word, but I'm trying to keep this post devoid of the 7 words you can't say on TV, which is why I'm also using "crap") Which is kinda mean, since I often talk about boring-ass crap people could give a crap about. But then I think about people actually ignoring me, or outright stopping me in the middle of whatever I'm babbling about and saying, "WTF, I don't give a crap about this crap!" Which of course makes me angry, because its like, "What the frick, I listen to people's dumb-ass effin crap that I could care effin less about all the time, its my turn to inflict my crap upon the world!" Well, in my mind, because I'm kinda non-confrontational. Which is prolly why I have so much pent up aggression, that usually only gets out in video games or the road.

And amusingly enough, its not like the people who don't listen are the ones telling me uninteresting (to me) crap that I patiently sit through, so its not like they owe me anything, but its still frustrating all the same.

Now back to the usual subjects. So today is the last of Scars on 45's acoustic Monday previews of songs off their upcoming album that they post on their youtube channel. Its like, they sound so amazing, and I'm all, okay, when is this upcoming album, dangit!? But they don't have anything other than "early 2014".

ME blather- Heh, you know, I can't believe I've been playing the mp this whole time, and hadn't realized the awesomeness of chaining lighting an enemy up with incendiary ammo, hitting them with warp to detonate a fire explosion, then hitting them with another detonator power for a biotic explosion. Though to be fair, I've only recently playing more of the biotics in my quest to finish up the waves challenges. Plus, I'm pretty stingy with my incendiary ammo.

TV commentary:

Lost Girl- Heh, interesting twist there. ( spoiler cut )

HIMYM- Hey, finally, an ep with the actual mother. Hopefully as they get nearer to the actually wedding ceremony, we'll start seeing more of her, because its kinda ridiculous that they added her to the cast, and yet she only shows up every few episodes. One cute touch I enjoyed in the episode was that she was wearing driving gloves when she was driving the van. Its a nice little call back.

Nikita- I was actually surprised by last week's ep. ( spoiler cut )

Sons of Anarchy- Some thoughts on the last few eps since I hadn't posted about this show in a while. ( spoiler cut )

So since isabel79 mentioned the original "Much Ado About Nothing" in response to my post about the Whedon version, I was looking it up. I figured it was a bunch of English actors, what with Beatrice and Benedick being played by Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh, respectively, and a young Kate Beckinsale as Hero. But Claudio was played by Wilson from House, Don Pedro was played by Denzel Washington and Don John by Keanu Reeves. Oh and Michael Keaton was Dogberry?

I've gotten a bunch of music lately. I mentioned Haim last week, I had actually gotten Icona Pop the week before that. But I also picked up the latest The Naked and Famous album, the deluxe version of Florence + The Machine's "Lungs" (I had the original, but the deluxe version has like 10 extra songs), and did the "complete my album" for Bruno Mars' Unorthodox Jukebox. I had Bruno Mars' previous singles off that album, but then I heard Gorilla on the radio (which, how dirty is that song? But its got a cool sound), and decided to finally preview the rest of the album, and I liked what I heard, so why not finish up the album?

Haim dropped their new album today. I had seen some people I follow mention them on tumblr, so I thought, "I wonder what they sound like?" And I liked the songs from the album that had been previously released, and I liked what I heard of the previews on itunes, so I picked it up. I'm pleased with my purchase, the last time I enjoyed a lesser known artist this much was Marina and the Diamonds.

Oh, speaking of more well known artists, Katy Perry released a couple of tracks from her upcoming new album, "Prism". And I must be out of touch with "pop" music, since people were saying they enjoyed "Roar" more. I think "Dark Horse" and "Walking on Air" sound way better. It was the same a few weeks ago, since Gaga's "Applause" came out at the same time, and like I said, I couldn't see (hear?) how people thought "Roar" was better than "Applause". Speaking of those two, it sounds like an upcoming Glee ep is gonna be Gaga vs Perry, I wonder what songs they'll be doing? My sources tell me its those two songs, plus "Marry the Night" and "Wide Awake". I'm curious if there are any others.

So before the Breaking Bad finale last night, the ex-roomie was playing some GTA V. Hmm, it looks like it does the AC thing where you get more points for completing a mission the "right" way. Like the mission, some guy hires some assassin's to take out Michael's family. So you rush back home, and there's this guy holding Tracey hostage in her room, and K had to reload twice because he couldn't make the head shot to kill the guy, instead popping the guy in the knee to let the daughter go and then finishing the guy off- but according to the mission synopsis at the end, it looks like he would've gotten a bonus if he had been able to head shot the guy. It did look like a hard shot, I'd like to play the game at some point to see if I could make it.

But I digress, the bonuses for doing things in a fancy way make sense, since apparently if you fail the same portion of a mission thrice, it'll just fast forward you to the next checkpoint. Which is kinda lame, but I guess its a way to keep those players who like the other aspects of the game, but manage to totally suck at the main story missions, invested. It makes sense, since a lot of the appeal to many people is the sandbox aspect, and if having to play main missions to expand what you can do to expand that sandbox is difficult for them, why not help them skip through to get to the stuff they want, while giving bonuses to those who are good enough to play the game right?

The roomie detailed other parts of the game, which I found fascinating. Like I heard there's a stock market in the game, and was thinking, that's overly detailed, who wants to play stocks? But apparently, it ties in with things like the assassination side missions. The previous games, there were special assassination missions that got you money, but with the addition of this stock market, you can actually make a huge profit in the game by playing the stocks knowing you're about to take out some corporate big wig.

Which is kinda insane. Like its not enough the game is all, "Oh here, kill some people and we'll pay you!" its "Oh, here's how you can make huge profits in other ways by assassinating someone!" Its like a whole other level of disturbing.

TV commentary:

OUAT- Heh, that was quick! ( spoiler cut )

So I was thinking the other day, do they still have infomercials for those music compilations? I mean, I would think mp3s pretty much killed those. Like they would be all, "If you wanted to get all these songs, you have to be the entire album they were on even if you didn't want the other songs on those albums, and it would cost you thousands of dollars! We'll give you all of just the ones you want for $39.99! (or is it .95?) Of course, once we have your mailing address, we'll spam you with all sorts of shit (wait, is it still spam if its real mail?). And if you were dumb enough to give us your credit card number, we'll enroll you in a program that will charge your card a monthly fee so we can send you a bunch of other shit you don't want until you manage to get through a gauntlet of operators and finally get us to stop sending you shit and charging you".

But yeah, now with like itunes and amazon and wot-not, you can cherry pick all the songs you want, so why would you ever buy one of those compilations. And then just now I remembered, this all sounds familiar, and I wonder if I had this conversation before with someone.

Saw this Hollywood Movie Dance Tribute the other day but forgot to post about it:



Basically, its a supercut of "dance" scenes throughout all of movies, set to both versions of Safety Dance, with the Turk-Carla Safety Dance convo about their future kid from Scrubs thrown in at the end.

Its pretty amusing, though they seem to have a very loose interpretation of "dance scene" if they include Michael Madsen from Reservoir Dogs as he gets ready to torture that one guy to "Stuck In the Middle With You" and Malcolm Mcdowell and the Droogs getting ready to trash that house they broke into (and cause other unspeakable Mayhem).

Someone did a tribute like this before, but so many more movies with dances came out since then, like Black Swan, Silver Linings Playbook, and the Footloose remake (not to mention more step up movies!). But it still has my all time favorite "people randomly bursting into dance" scene, the one from 500 Days of Summer set to "You Make My Dreams" by Hall and Oates.

First listen Mondays! So this week's ep is all songs feature prominently in movies:

In Your Eyes- From "Say Anything", of course, as done by Will with backup from ND. Easily and by far my favorite song of this batch, beautifully done.

Shout- From "Animal House", by Blaine and Brittany.

Come What May- From "Moulin Rouge", by Kurt and Blaine.

Footloose- From "Footloose" (duh), by Artie, Sam, and Joe.

Unchained Melody- From "Ghost", by Jake and Ryder. Heh, so will this be sung by Jake to Marley, with Ryder singing it also from afar?

You're All the World To Me- The dancing on the walls and roof song from "Royal Wedding" as done by Will and Emma (who apparently also dance on the walls and stuff too).

Danger Zone/Old Time Rock and Roll- From "Top Gun" and "Risky Business", respectively, sung by Sam and Blaine.

Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend/Material Girl- By Marley and Unique. I was going to say the first is from "Gentleman Prefer Blondes". But I guess its a Moulin Rouge reference again? I mean, I don't think "Material Girl" was featured in any movies, and I guess the arrangement is totally the mashup from Moulin Rouge.

The aforementioned commercials I mentioned in my last post:

Naya Rivera M&M commercial:



Fast & Furious 6:



Glee first listen mondays:

"Girl On Fire", The Alica Keys song as done by Santana.

"Hung Up"- The Madonna sung as done by Tina.

"Nutbrush City", again by Santana.

"Make No Mistake She's Mine, done by Santana and Sam. (Santana sure has a lot of songs this ep)

"Diva", by Unique, Brittany, and Tina. Heh, I've kinda had this stuck in my head all morning.

"Don't Stop Me Now", by Queen, as done by Blaine. I've been having to suppress the urge to sing along and aloud.

"Bring Him Home" from Les Mis, the Rachel version.

"Bring Him Home". the Kurt Version.

I guess this is like "Defying Gravity" in season one and "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" in season 2, where Rachel and Kurt sing off on some number from a musical.

I know I'm late to the party, but I'm really loving Marina and the Diamonds. I've had Electra Heart on constant replay on my ipod for the past week.

I like her more with dark hair though:



She went blond for most of the vids off of Electra Heart though, but thankfully went back to the black hair for How to be a Heartbreaker: