Last year, last fall, I carried this song everywhere. See, well, it meant a lot. And it just seems so perfect that today, the first of the year, I found this lovely remake. It's lovelier. So, good starts all around?
"The ratés, the failed intellectuals (writers, artists, would-be Ph.D.’s). People like Sam Wolfenstein [mathematician], with his limp, his briefcase, his empty days, his addiction to the films, his penny-pinching and scavengering, his arid family nest from which he flees — terrifies me." - Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 1947-1964
My book order finally came in! Sontag even said journals were meant to be read by other people (albeit people intimate with the author, but still). Other people's journals aid in narcissistically looking at our own world and drawing out grand parallels. Any young girl reading Sylvia Plath's college journals would, I'd imagine, identify with all her private insecurity, all her immeasurable melancholy (all her beauty). Five Christmas's ago, the boy who gave me Plath's journals wrote behind the front cover: "I hope it's not too dark or depressing or anything." But given the time, I probably would have wanted it that way.
Youtube and I had some pretty good times there for awhile, but that fling is over. Doomtree is a hip-hop band I've been familiarizing myself with this past term, but never got around to writing about. They've been often characterized as "aggressive" sounding--which harks back to various member's punk-rock roots--but don't be afraid. They co-opt a lot of nostalgic big-band anthems/soulful trumpet wails while keeping song structures astonishingly premeditated. Also, I stand by what I say regarding (these bilingual!?) clever hip-hop lyrics. Just listen to it. It'll feel good. You can thank me later.
He told me not much had changed since the rose-coloured days our parents were kids. He used to always play the magician while I plucked shy daisies for the famous flower act. I had this dress the exact shade of back-porch lemonade and kisses fleeting as the sound of popped bubblegum. There was a season when we would spend evenings lying on the front lawn humming to sounds of Percy Faith breezing through the windows--but we soon realized it wasn't enough ass we grew up, got jobs, got married, got drunk, got kisses from strangers in the haze of smoke-filled rooms. It still wasn't enough.
--Oh, and the music is pretty good too.
This past season, Mad Men featured Sukiyaki (the only Japanese language song to ever hit the top of US sale charts; 1963):
