Took A Break From My Epic ITunes Adventure To Listen To Eighty Hours OfThe Ricky Gervais Show. I Don't

Took a break from my epic iTunes adventure to listen to eighty hours of The Ricky Gervais Show. I don't understand how or why anything on that show happens. How does Karl not punch Ricky in the mouth? How does Karl's...unique point of view still flower and blossom underneath the constant scorn? Whatever, I won't question it, it's amazing.

This morning in the car I had an idea about something in Hallways that I'm excited about. The plot's been stuck in a logjam forever and this is the first sign that the...logs, I guess...are splintering. Although I'm still very pleased with my earlier idea that the time traveling character loves Tom Waits, because it indicates that the only music that survived from our time to the future was, like, the contents of one maladjusted hipster's iPod.

All right to be honest that probably won't become canon, but I still take great satisfaction in thinking of what kind of music he'd be excited about. "Oh my God you guys it's the twenty-first century!! Let's go see what Kathleen Hanna's up to!!"

How gauche would it be to say I'm not really feeling Kate Bush's voice on this album? I listen to Tori Amos, for God's sake.

So far I'm finding this album kind of boring, although there were some upbeat songs that were less boring. And "Mrs. Bartolozzi" was kind of wistfully nutty.

It's funny, I now associate the feeling of boredom with Avatar, as in, "Why does this album remind me of Avatar for some reason? Oh yeah, because I'm bored and I wish I were doing something else."

The Angel's Cut, by Elizabeth Knox

I don't know about this book. I finished it very quickly and I didn't want to stop reading for the first 3/4ths of it. There are some lovely moments of prose, just like in The Vintner's Luck, and virtually every time Lucifer met up with Xas and they had a theological conversation, it was super-exciting and revelatory. It turned out that certain things I was confused about in The Vintner's Luck hadn't been completely answered yet, so it was satisfying to get answers to certain mysteries.

But I also felt like the character relationships never really gelled -- not the way Xas and Sobran did, and not even on a more superficial level. Flora was a very interesting character in her own inner monologue, but her relationship with Xas was so passive and undiscussed that I never felt the bond between them as strongly as I think I was supposed to. The same with Xas's relationship with Cole -- I understood the attraction there, but not necessarily the devotion. The Cole that Xas was so intrigued by initially was not the same character that appeared in the rest of the book: he was sketched but then never reinforced.

I also thought the book was more plot-driven than The Vintner's Luck, which was structured chronologically, so when the book ended I kind of felt let down. Wasn't more supposed to happen? But then I realized that, just like with Sobran in Vintner, the book essentially follows Flora from the time Xas meets her to her death, it's just not as rigidly structured. So I feel better about that...but also kind of underwhelmed by Flora's journey in the last 3/4ths of the book.

There's a third book planned that might address some of the new questions raised here (there's a potential OMG moment at the end that I'm very interested to see developed), and anyway I've only read it once, so by the sixth time I've read it I'll probably have a different perspective on things.

Ha, going from Mirah to Nick Cave's Abattoir Blues was a bit whoa. Get Ready for Love is really good. I've only ever listened to two (2) Nick Cave songs, both on the first X-Files soundtrack, when I was sixteen. Those were really good too, so. Logic.

Abattoir Blues was awesome, a question though: is Nick Cave Tom Waits-y, or is Tom Waits Nick Cave-sy? Now listening to Abbey Road by some band called The Beatles. These dudes think they're so great just because they got a Rock Band game named after them, like Green Day. Another question, can you play "Octopus's Garden" on Beatles Rock Band? Like, for completionists who don't mind the scorn and taunts of their friends? In the book I'm writing (it's called Hallways) there's time travel, and one of the people from the ~future~ is totally into the Beatles. I think that's probably been done before and is verging on cliche, but what's he going to be into instead? The Rolling Stones? Green Day? Maybe he should be into Tom Waits. No artist is more appealing to the youth of America than Tom Waits. Actually I like that idea a lot. "Hey guys! I may be from the future, but I'm still totally relatable to you guys and your time!" (plays 'Earth Died Screaming')

Oh God, up next is Tori Amos' Abnormally Attracted to Sin. I've tried to get into this one before and I just can't. Like, according to iTunes I've listened to the whole thing three times, but I don't remember anything except "Strong Black Vine." Which I like a lot, but it's only one track out of 17.

Okay I guess I remember "Give." Sonically this is a little more Choirgirl-y than anything on her last couple of albums, which is good because I think Choirgirl is my favorite Tori album. Maybe it isn't though, maybe it's Under the Pink. But then again Choirgirl was the first Tori album I heard, with all the attendant nostalgia that involves. It was recommended to me by fellow students in my high school drama class, which I guess is the traditional time and place for Tori Amos indoctrination.

Welcome to England continues that Tori tradition of ending the song by dropping out all the instrumentation and drawling the last word ponderously. I think she did that six times on Scarlet's Walk. I pointed it out to a friend in college who was way more into Tori than I was, and he got mad at me, because once you start listening for it, it's everywhere.