The Middle Years (2006-2009)

The story of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, and how it moved from an African hit to an international one. In the original version, the “wimoweh” of the Americanised versions was actually “mbube” - Zulu for “lion”. I’ve chanced upon a lot of weirdness on the Internet in my life, but the “teens who still breastfeed” Yahoo group (started by an 18-year-old, ostensibly) was still bizarre. The Holland Village dog passes away. Aww. I remember the li’l guy. On the bus from the hospital yesterday, I watched the men’s doubles table tennis finals of the Commonwealth Games - boy that Nigerian team (Segun Toriloa/Monday Merotohun) was really exciting to watch.

My previous post on Thunder Road made me realise I have 5 other versions of the song besides Springsteen’s: Badly Drawn Boy, Cowboy Junkies, Kevin Rowland, Mary Lou Lord, Tortoise & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. I also have the piano-and-harmonica version referenced by the Wily Filipino here.

On my walk from the office to the subway station today, Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” just kept playing in my head. (Okay, by the time it made an encore in my head, I whipped out my MP3 player and let it repeat in my ears.) It’s a song I like to dip into from time to time - for one, it’s got one of my favourite couplets in pop songs: “Roy Orbison singing for the lonely / Hey that’s me and I want you only”. For another, it’s a song that somehow manages to juxtapose a lot of contrasting emotions: the promise of getting out along with making the most of things right now in spite of the limitations of current options (“Hey what else can we do now? / Except roll down the window / And let the wind blow back your hair”), of faith despite the passing of time (“So you’re scared and you’re thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore / Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night”). (I like mixed emotions in songs - here’s my little take on happy songs of despair.)

Well, not slacking off, despite the advice of the last link - back from a long day at work, still catching up with things. Entertain yourselves: Jake Shimabukuru does “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on the ukulele. Pretty cool. What blog post has had the most comments ever? Speaking of posts with a lot of comments, here’s the genius of Snakes on a Plane. I wouldn’t get too excited yet - I had a friend who worked on the set of Bats, and I thought that had the potential to be a so-bad-it’s-good film, but it just turned out to be so bad, full stop. On the importance of slacking to productivity. I knew I had it right all along. Nice quote from Peter Drucker: “All one can think and do in a short time is to think what one already knows and to do as one has always done”.

Back at work today. Here’s a snippet of conversation, post-lunch, in the stairwell of a carpark: Colleague: “Where did we park? Is this the floor?” Me: “This is Deck 2B - is that where we parked?”

Watched Chungking Express for the umpteenth time today - the first time in a year, though. Had forgotten that that very brief scene between Tony Leung and Valerie Chow was so sexy.

The question of “authenticity” as it applies to nationality and ethnicity, particular as it applies to members of any diaspora, has always struck me as interesting, and a recent Slate article on the creation of “Irishness” was very fascinating in this regard. I knew Diageo, owner of Guinness, had thrown its weight behind the export of Irish pubs, but I hadn’t known just how big its reach was. (Here’s an NPR interview on IPCo, the Irish Pub Company.)

My version of the iTunes oracle meme (from Playing School, Irreverently, pointed out very nicely by someone who means a lot to me)… Instructions: Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING.

Rerun continued to look forlorn today - hardly touched his food. Think he misses Mum quite badly.

And so it goes: my aunt swapped phones with my mum so that my mum has a phone with Bluetooth. Which means that despite the fact that I can’t actually enter the ward, I can send her photos that I took with my phone. (Her card doesn’t receive MMSs, so this was a kludge of a solution.) Stood outside the door of her ward this evening sending a photo of dad and Rerun. Saw her beaming when she saw the photo. Ah, technology.

Because sometimes you need all the diversions you can find: How Roma adopted the “Seven Nation Army” bassline as its chant (Francesco Totti’s rendition of the tune in the middle of the piece is pretty terribly off-key) More gushing over Sarah Silverman, this time from the Observer. I’m glad I caught Jesus is Magic a few years back. Silverman’s hosting of the Independent Spirit Awards was pretty cool too, particularly seeing Matt Dillon’s cold response. (Random question: wasn’t Matt Dillon in town quite a long time back, and no one recognised him?) A friend alerts me to Pandora, which creates a radio station with songs you would like based on artists you already like. I typed in “The White Stripes”, and it returned two songs I didn’t know but ended up liking, Damien Jurado’s “Inevitable” and Pink Noise Test’s “All the Same to Me”, as well as the Strokes’ “Electricityscape”, which I do really like. Kanye West’s girlfriend gets pissed off at online haters. The Londonist highlights “Wake Me Up” stickers. (You can pick them up here.) Oddly enough, the past few days I keep bumping into “Wake Me Up When September Ends” while scanning the radio.

Rerun’s been moping around the house waiting for mum to come home. Poor thing seems so out of sorts. Apparently when my dad took him for a walk this morning he plopped down halfway at a bus stop and refused to move, and had to be carried for a while. (Yes, he really is the baby of the family.)

I am not, as it turns out, in New York. I am preparing to head back down to the hospital. Nine years ago, the week before my flight to America, my mother was diagnosed with kidney failure. Those of you who know me from way back might remember seeing her in a wheelchair when she was seeing me off. She and my dad had been supposed to accompany me in my first week before college; there was no way to do that, obviously, when she was so weak.

I think it’s a sign of my brown fizzy sugar water fixation that when I saw this “anti-griddle”, I immediately wondered whether it could be used to chill a Coke quickly. (via BoingBoing)

It comes down to reality And it’s fine with me Cos I’ve let it slide… Don’t care if it’s Chinatown or Riverside I don’t have any reasons, I’ve left them all behind I’m in a New York state of mind

Random snippets of comments from mum watching the Oscars: “George Clooney has really aged well” “Jake Gyllenhaal has dreamy eyes” “George Clooney strikes me as a very intelligent man… I couldn’t stand Brad Pitt’s comments on Jennifer Aniston - I mean, if you want to date Angelina, that’s fine”

Look what I got offered in the mail! Yup, it said “sexist gadgets”: Ah… I can see the thought process that they want to inspire now - “hmm, should I take up this offer? Well, I have always wanted a handphone that denigrated women”.

More fun videos: the Simpsons intro, recreated in real life. (Source - also, any CSS/HTML wizzes know how to get a border around an embedded video, the same way I have borders around my pics? Putting in a style=“border: 1px solid #586;” in the object tag only leads to a weird effect where I get half a border)

A performance of John Cage’s 4'33" at the Barbican - (If you’re viewing somewhere where Flash is disabled, just stare at the space for 4 minutes 33 seconds. Oh, add time for appropriate pauses between movements.)

The Guardian summarises the Canadian responses to Paul and Heather McCartney’s campaign against seal clubbing, replete with a funny pic of H-Mac getting nipped by a harp seal. A worthy cause, in my book - I can see why people get annoyed by the celeb intrusion but I tend to think that the “there are better causes to support” argument that some of the people quoted used is sometimes fatuous: no one can support everything in one lifetime, after all, and why shouldn’t celebrities promote their own pet causes? (The point about overfishing of cod not getting enough attention, though, is a good one…)