"Follow You Wherever You Go" is clearly the best song ever written:

ETA: Whoa, co-written by Macy Gray, according to iTunes.

Makes this pretty curious. (Full lyrics to that one, presumably, here.)

I was telling the Pixie about Kara, and Kara's Republican dad, and poli sci, and Mad Doll, and Billboard, and the failed record deals, and then I made her listen to "Crying at the Disco" and "Avalanche" and "Somebody to Love" all in a row.

Lalanav1: Ugh, ugh, it's so much more depressing knowing this stuff.
Lalanav1: GOD.
Lalanav1: LOL.
girlboymusic: YOU SEE.
Lalanav1: I want to slap her, so she stops being depressing. JUST WRITE YOUR OWN SHIT, KARA.
Lalanav1: YOU ARE FINE.
Lalanav1: STOP CRYING AT THE DISCO :-( :-(
girlboymusic: I KNOW! I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW!
Lalanav1: Ok, on to "Avalanche."
Lalanav1: AHHHHH THIS SONG
Lalanav1: :-(
Lalanav1: I wonder if she's really conflicted.
girlboymusic: LOL.
girlboymusic: I'm pretty sure she is.
girlboymusic: In many ways.
Lalanav1: Yeah....so sad.
Lalanav1: :-( :-( "I've given up everything I had"
girlboymusic: I KNOW! I KNOWWWWWWW!
Lalanav1: "Somebody to Love" now
Lalanav1: God, she's killing me.
Lalanav1: I hope you know this.
Lalanav1: KILLING ME.
girlboymusic: LOL I AM SO GLAD YOU UNDERSTAND.
girlboymusic: I have inducted you into the club.
Lalanav1: LOL!
Lalanav1: :-( around 2:30 or so when she says "We all want somebody/crave somebody/need somebody to love" all soft :-( :-(
Lalanav1: Stop! Stop! JUST STOP IT, KARA!
girlboymusic: LOL.
girlboymusic: Stop stabbing you in the heart, you mean?
Lalanav1: YES.
girlboymusic: She won't.
Lalanav1: Grr.

Skim: (during an Idol Gives Back segment set to "Fix You") "You could play this song behind images of Satan and I'd cry."
Me: "I'm sure David Archuleta will sing it at some point, and then we'll get to test that hypothesis."

girlboymusic: Fucking David Archuleta.
Lalanav1: Word.
Lalanav1: I hate him.
Lalanav1: I want to punch him with a puppy's fist.

This is by far the best thing I have ever watched:


"TELEVISION!"

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your LJ along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they're listening to.

I don't know about shaping my spring, but these are the songs I've got on repeat right now. In no particular order:

1. Those Dancing Days - "Hitten"
2. John Mayer - "Say"
3. Vanessa Paradis - "L'incendie"
4. Miley Cyrus - "Start All Over"
5. Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals - "Fight Outta You"
6. Ben's Brother - "Stuttering"
7. Danity Kane - "Damaged"

(What the hell, Steph, you're listening to Platinum Weird and I'm not!)

I choo-choo-choose: lalanav, luckytobe_alive, skyecaptain, koganbot, theblondie, silveran, and...alexmacpherson?

By the way, the South Park episode where Britney blows her head off (okay, apparently not streaming anymore till April 19th, sorry) is brilliant. Like, Battlestar Galactica levels of brilliant. The structure, the metaphor, the willingness to take risks.

What really takes it above and beyond for me is that there are three moments in the episode where it is just silent. No dialogue, no movement. Just silence. Just sit there and think.

You have to be pretty confident in your abilities as a writer to choose not to say something. You have to be pretty sure of point argument to not make it. I hope they submit this episode for Emmy consideration, and I hope they win, because it is really impressive.

girlboymusic: Yo, is it just me, or is Barack Obama dancing behind her?



Lalanav1: OMG OMG YES IT IS
Lalanav1: THAT IS OBAMA

I got an out-of-office reply from some guy in Copenhagen: "I'm away from the office until 25 of Marts..."

25 OF MARTS.

That is the name of my new band. We are Swedish/American indiepop living in L.A.

Lalanav1: BETTER IN TIME
Lalanav1: I DISCOVERED THAT LAST NIGHT
Lalanav1: I LOVE IT
Lalanav1: LOL.
girlboymusic: No you did not!
Lalanav1: Yes?
Lalanav1: LOL
Lalanav1: I did!
girlboymusic: I made you listen to it at least a week ago!
Lalanav1: No, that was "Forgiveness."
girlboymusic: As well as "Forgiveness," which was written by Kara DioGuardi.
Lalanav1: LOL.
girlboymusic: Why did I use her full name there?
girlboymusic: Like you don't know who she is.
Lalanav1: ROFL I have no idea.
girlboymusic: Hey, have I told you about this songwriter I kind of like?
Lalanav1: Hm, no! Tell me more!
girlboymusic: She's pretty great. I bet she'll write a few hits!
Lalanav1: BRB
girlboymusic: ("YOU ADORABLE BASTARD.")
girlboymusic: Haha if I ever have a child out of wedlock...
girlboymusic: Which of course will never happen, because: abortions.
girlboymusic: But if I did...I would totally call it an adorable bastard all the time.
Lalanav1: ROFLMAOOO
Lalanav1: That was the most amazing series of sentences I've ever come back to, ever.
Lalanav1: I want to remember that forever.
girlboymusic: LMAO.
girlboymusic: Me too.
girlboymusic: You should LJ it.
Lalanav1: I think I will.
Lalanav1: LOL.
Lalanav1: I'm going to omit your screenname, though, in case of crazy anti-abortion stalkers.
girlboymusic: Whatevs.
Lalanav1: FINE. I WILL GO TO PRO-LIFE MESSAGE BOARDS AND POST IT.
girlboymusic: How many crazy anti-abortionists read your LJ?
girlboymusic: You know, besides you.
Lalanav1: I don't know, but I get really weird comments sometimes from completely random strangers.
girlboymusic: LOL yeah me too.
girlboymusic: Although lately they're all about Kara.
girlboymusic: DioGuardi.
girlboymusic: That songwriter I was telling you about?
Lalanav1: Ohhhh.
Lalanav1: Right.

I can't figure out of this is a joke. Is it obvious and I'm just missing it? Caitlin Moran says women don't think about music -- they have a "pure" emotional response, which relieves them of the responsibility of knowing who Ahmet Ertegun is:

Women, on the other hand, prove that they love a song by either screaming: “I love this song!” and getting up and dancing to it, or wailing: “I love this song!” and bursting into tears. Women make jokes about the band’s hair, drink a shot of tequila for each time Rihanna sings the word “umbrella”, and work out in which order they would have sex with the band lineup – a popular, diverting game known as “Shag Order”.

Hm. Forget first lines, here's a new meme: Guess My Shag Order. I'll give you an easy one: In which order would I have sex with the members of Platinum Weird?

(I want to meet the woman who can survive "a shot of tequila for every time Rihanna sings the word 'umbrella,'" by the way.)

Meanwhile, it's okay for women to want to bang band members, but it's not okay for a man to own more than one copy of an album -- to his wife, it's akin to bringing home another woman, says Pete Paphides:

For men, it might be that record collecting is a displaced throwback to hunter-gatherer times. Dragging the carcass of a wild ox back to your North London home is a logistical nightmare. Record collecting is a pleasant alternative. Certainly, in the dusty secondhand record shop where I regularly browse I have only seen one woman there. Well, she wasn’t really a woman. She was my daughter. And when she woke up and realised where she was, she screamed until we finally left the shop.

Pixie, remember that time we had a sex change and went to Princeton Record Exchange? Let's do that again. (Oh shit, remember Abbey Road? I miss Abbey Road. Wasn't that where I got my copy of Buckingham Nicks? The fucking FBI, man.)

Enjoy the Joshtin at 2:50.

I'm sitting in my bedroom and I can hear muffled music from somewhere outside, and just this bass throb and something else low mixed in, with a little sparkle to it, and I think, "That's Stevie Nicks. That's the Dance album." So I open the window, and yeah, it's "Dreams." So now I'm sitting here with the window open, because it's kind of nicer than just pulling out the CD and listening to it myself.

girlboymusic: No, I'm saying that you usually say the music I like and you don't is shitty and boring.
Lalanav1: No I don't, I say it's not my thing and I don't like it.
Lalanav1: That doesn't equal shitty and boring.
Lalanav1: Unless it's Ashley Simpson, in which case: shitty! But not boring. But shitty!
girlboymusic: You definitely called "La La" boring.
Lalanav1: Ok, so one Ashley Simpson song that I think is both shitty and boring. That doesn't mean every song you've ever listened to that I don't like is shitty and boring. LOL.
girlboymusic: ASHLEE.
Lalanav1: LMAO
Lalanav1: Sorry.

Lalanav1: How was Conan?
girlboymusic: Hi-larious!
Lalanav1: LOL yay! Who were the guests?
girlboymusic: Dr. Phil, one of the authors of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, and this TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE BAND.
girlboymusic: Called Les Savy Fav.
Lalanav1: LOL!
girlboymusic: I can't even like...describe.
Lalanav1: I feel like my completely "I don't even know" reaction to that name is like....enough to make me understand.
girlboymusic: No.
girlboymusic: No.
girlboymusic: They like...played music? But the guy just yelled? And he had on these sparkly red leggings? And a cape?
Lalanav1: LMAO
girlboymusic: And...t-shirts. Lots and lots of t-shirts. And he kept taking them off.
Lalanav1: Wow, I did not understand at all. LOL.
girlboymusic: Until finally there were no t-shirts.
girlboymusic: Just...stuff written on his chest.
Lalanav1: Isn't that a video on YouTube??
Lalanav1: Or something??
girlboymusic: THERE WERE NO MORE T-SHIRTS!
girlboymusic: I THOUGHT HIS PANTS WERE GOING TO FALL OFF!
girlboymusic: THE LIGHTS KEPT FLASHING!
girlboymusic: IT WAS TERRIBLE!
Lalanav1: LMAOOOO
Lalanav1: All I can say is: why??
girlboymusic: I DON'T KNOW!
girlboymusic: HOW'DITGETBURRRRRRRRRNNNNNED?
girlboymusic: Is like, the only appropriate response.
Lalanav1: HAHAAHHAHA YES.

I'm not sure yet what bothers me so much about this piece on Amy Winehouse from the New York Times. Perhaps it's the assertion that, were he alive today, bloggers would have branded Kurt Cobain "krazy Kurt." Oh. No. Give 'em some credit, come on. They could do better than that. But I see what you did there! Oh, those krazy kids on the Internet, with their snarky nicknames and wacky spellings! Lollerskates!11!!

Or maybe it's the utter retardedness of this: "Addiction might start with experiments by performers so young they feel invulnerable; it might seem to be, at first, a way to ease the stress of a peculiar job. It might be a way to act out the old Romantic image of the artist as daredevil." Thanks for the insight.

It's at least a little bit the stupid idea that if you are concerned about a celebrity having her problems splashed across the mass media, the best thing to do is write about her problems in the mass media -- which, admittedly, is not unique to the Times, but combined with the house style of addressing subjects by a title and last name, it seems doubly condescending and hypocritical, like she's getting scolded by a particularly obnoxious headmistress: "In the era of total exposure Ms. Winehouse would serve herself and her listeners best by working behind closed doors."

It's partially the name-checking of Facebook to suggest that ours is becoming a surveillance culture -- a suggestion which is promptly not followed up at all.

But it is definitely, definitiely the fact that we a get a full five paragraphs re-stating the same fact: back then, celebrities did their dying in private; now, because of the Internet, we see it in real time. Five paragraphs! Of the same thing! That's space you could have used to talk about surveillance culture! How we are rejecting, or at least re-defining, the notion of privacy! How maybe the reason we are so obsessed with posting our lives on the Internet is because we have seen celebrities' lives posted on the Internet, and the boundaries between celebrity and civilian are blurred, and like nine million things more interesting than five paragraphs of the same goddamn sentence! Did somebody drop an ad or something? Why were you so desperate to fill this white space? What is fucking wrong with you? What is fucking wrong with me, that you have to write this way?

Remember the '90s, when everybody cared about the environment in a non-political way, and children in Keds and brightly colored sweatshirts would go to the UN and make-guilt trip speeches asking why adults were ruining the planet for us? Stop polluting journalism! Fuck! Jesus!

In the TMZ video player: