Well happpppy holidays to you and yours!
How ya been keeping? Well, I assume. I've been pretty decent myself.
Last week's 10th edition of Bitch Salad was a thunderous success (save for a bit of a glitch with Laura Landauer's haunted smoke machine, but we made lemonade out of those lemons in the end...), so thank you SOOOO fucking much to each and all who came out to that. Video's will be coming soon...
I also took in a screening of current Oscar-bait film Doubt, starring the amazing Meryl Streep and accordingly exceptional Amy Adams... SPOILER: The prevailing theme of the movie - doubt. Yep. Doubt doubt doubt. If you don't like that word, DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE - because holy fuck, they say it every 10 seconds. Another prevailing theme: Interracial pedophilia and underage drinking. So that's fun, at least.
No... but yeah - Meryl's amazing as per usual, but all the people who will be lured to this movie based on her star-turn performances in The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia! (not to mention Amy Adams' classic performance in Enchanted) will be sorely disappointed... the shit's a play on film... there's a lot of heavy handed dialogue and about 5 scenes. There is no fabulous makeover montage that I'm so fond of to speak of.... nope... just 5 half-hour-long scenes, generally in church offices. Anyballs... go and see it, if just to keep Meryl Streep's movie-star ball rolling. Please.
Anyballs...
So t'is the season... it truly is beginning to look a lot like Christmas (well, in Toronto, it's kinda beginning to look a lot like The Day After Tomorrow, but I'll continue to try and view the glass as being half-full...) - and as such, I only find it fitting to impose some magical Christmas sounds I've discovered on your ears...
The first one is FUCKING AMAZING... I am OBSESSED with this...
I don't know who did it or how I even came across it, but it's a mash-up of Karen Carpenter singing "The Christmas Song" and something that the Roots did... if this song could take a human form, it would look like your mild-mannered, Christmas-sweater-wearing, Nanaimo-bar-baking Aunt Judith stoned out of her mind on some demented Barbadosian weed. It's just fucking genius.
Download/Listen to it HERE!!!
The next offering comes from one of the breakout starts of 2008 - Lady GaGa.
Ohhh Lady GaGa. Substantial props for assuming a stage name that starts with "Lady" - it's very regal... further props for bringing back the zany super-hero aesthetic to pop music... and, final props for merging your signature Betty-Boop-on-meth-voice coupled with your thinly veiled crass sexual metaphors with the Christmas Spirit. Thank God for Lady GaGa and her Christmas single, "Christmas Tree" - although I'm sure, I heartily assume it's just another metaphor for a big, sturdy cock. With lyrics like "Light me up, put me on top, let's fa-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la", anyone who listens to this is sure to be filled with Christmas Spirit. Or hot, piping spunk. One of the two.
Download/Listen to it HERE!!!
The penultimate offering comes from a sultry-voiced dance music queen named Kirstine W., who you probably wouldn't know unless you're a gay remix enthusiast, which I just so happen to totally be, so...
She recently released an album entitled "Mr. Christmas", featuring dance-i-fied versions of several Christmas songs, including (but not limited to) "Oh Holy Night", "Mary, Did You Know" and "Favourite Things"... but there's one song she did that jumped right out of me, a cover of "Hard Candy Christmas" from the musical The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. The song - about carrying on in the face of hard times... specifically, loss, be it financial or personal - has specific resonance this year, what with the horrific financial climate.
It also has significance for me, because The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas was the first musical my parents took me to see (odd choice, I know, but it just happened to be what the Brockville Operatic Society was doing at the time...) It was bizarre... I remember it vividly... Oddly enough, my French Teacher - Madame Darroch - was in it, playing a whore, who said the line "shit" after being left out of an orgy of football players. This blew my mind... ANYBALLS - I remember crying my fucking eyes out at the end when the whores were evacuated from the whorehouse singing "Hard Candy Christmas".
Anyballs... GOOD SONG... Download/Listen to it HERE!!!
But... the ultimate offering - I'm talkin' the aural equivalent of gold, mer and mothafuckin' frankincense up in herre - that I can give you this season has to be a track off of outsider-musician (and close personal friend of mine) Heidi Brander's sophomore Christmas album, "Pair Noel"...
Background: Last Christmastime, Heidi surprised all of us in my friendship circle with a full-length Christmas album she recorded. It was amazing. I made her a myspace page. She's really taken off.
This year's follow-up was a collection of yule tide duets - "Pair Noel". We had a listening party last night, and it was absolutely bonkers. Well worth listening to each and every song. But I'm not made of time, so I'll post the duet that I did with her... in the style of Whitney Houston featuring Bobbi Kristina from her Christmas album "One Wish", here's Heidi featuring me raping and murdering "The Li'l Drummer Boy"...
Download/Listen to it HERE!!!
And I strongly urge you to visit Heidi's myspace page to hear more...
Anyballs - that's it for me. This snow better stop at some point.
Back on Monday with a countdown!!!
Have a good one,
--- Aj
How ya been keeping? Well, I assume. I've been pretty decent myself.
Last week's 10th edition of Bitch Salad was a thunderous success (save for a bit of a glitch with Laura Landauer's haunted smoke machine, but we made lemonade out of those lemons in the end...), so thank you SOOOO fucking much to each and all who came out to that. Video's will be coming soon...
I also took in a screening of current Oscar-bait film Doubt, starring the amazing Meryl Streep and accordingly exceptional Amy Adams... SPOILER: The prevailing theme of the movie - doubt. Yep. Doubt doubt doubt. If you don't like that word, DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE - because holy fuck, they say it every 10 seconds. Another prevailing theme: Interracial pedophilia and underage drinking. So that's fun, at least.No... but yeah - Meryl's amazing as per usual, but all the people who will be lured to this movie based on her star-turn performances in The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia! (not to mention Amy Adams' classic performance in Enchanted) will be sorely disappointed... the shit's a play on film... there's a lot of heavy handed dialogue and about 5 scenes. There is no fabulous makeover montage that I'm so fond of to speak of.... nope... just 5 half-hour-long scenes, generally in church offices. Anyballs... go and see it, if just to keep Meryl Streep's movie-star ball rolling. Please.
Anyballs...
So t'is the season... it truly is beginning to look a lot like Christmas (well, in Toronto, it's kinda beginning to look a lot like The Day After Tomorrow, but I'll continue to try and view the glass as being half-full...) - and as such, I only find it fitting to impose some magical Christmas sounds I've discovered on your ears...
The first one is FUCKING AMAZING... I am OBSESSED with this...
I don't know who did it or how I even came across it, but it's a mash-up of Karen Carpenter singing "The Christmas Song" and something that the Roots did... if this song could take a human form, it would look like your mild-mannered, Christmas-sweater-wearing, Nanaimo-bar-baking Aunt Judith stoned out of her mind on some demented Barbadosian weed. It's just fucking genius.Download/Listen to it HERE!!!
The next offering comes from one of the breakout starts of 2008 - Lady GaGa.
Ohhh Lady GaGa. Substantial props for assuming a stage name that starts with "Lady" - it's very regal... further props for bringing back the zany super-hero aesthetic to pop music... and, final props for merging your signature Betty-Boop-on-meth-voice coupled with your thinly veiled crass sexual metaphors with the Christmas Spirit. Thank God for Lady GaGa and her Christmas single, "Christmas Tree" - although I'm sure, I heartily assume it's just another metaphor for a big, sturdy cock. With lyrics like "Light me up, put me on top, let's fa-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la", anyone who listens to this is sure to be filled with Christmas Spirit. Or hot, piping spunk. One of the two.Download/Listen to it HERE!!!
The penultimate offering comes from a sultry-voiced dance music queen named Kirstine W., who you probably wouldn't know unless you're a gay remix enthusiast, which I just so happen to totally be, so...
She recently released an album entitled "Mr. Christmas", featuring dance-i-fied versions of several Christmas songs, including (but not limited to) "Oh Holy Night", "Mary, Did You Know" and "Favourite Things"... but there's one song she did that jumped right out of me, a cover of "Hard Candy Christmas" from the musical The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. The song - about carrying on in the face of hard times... specifically, loss, be it financial or personal - has specific resonance this year, what with the horrific financial climate.It also has significance for me, because The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas was the first musical my parents took me to see (odd choice, I know, but it just happened to be what the Brockville Operatic Society was doing at the time...) It was bizarre... I remember it vividly... Oddly enough, my French Teacher - Madame Darroch - was in it, playing a whore, who said the line "shit" after being left out of an orgy of football players. This blew my mind... ANYBALLS - I remember crying my fucking eyes out at the end when the whores were evacuated from the whorehouse singing "Hard Candy Christmas".
Anyballs... GOOD SONG... Download/Listen to it HERE!!!
But... the ultimate offering - I'm talkin' the aural equivalent of gold, mer and mothafuckin' frankincense up in herre - that I can give you this season has to be a track off of outsider-musician (and close personal friend of mine) Heidi Brander's sophomore Christmas album, "Pair Noel"...
Background: Last Christmastime, Heidi surprised all of us in my friendship circle with a full-length Christmas album she recorded. It was amazing. I made her a myspace page. She's really taken off.This year's follow-up was a collection of yule tide duets - "Pair Noel". We had a listening party last night, and it was absolutely bonkers. Well worth listening to each and every song. But I'm not made of time, so I'll post the duet that I did with her... in the style of Whitney Houston featuring Bobbi Kristina from her Christmas album "One Wish", here's Heidi featuring me raping and murdering "The Li'l Drummer Boy"...
Download/Listen to it HERE!!!
And I strongly urge you to visit Heidi's myspace page to hear more...
Anyballs - that's it for me. This snow better stop at some point.
Back on Monday with a countdown!!!
Have a good one,
--- Aj
