Miss me?

So it has been a good while since I last posted, and undoubtedly I've lost any fans I may have ever had. None the less, I am back, with a vengeance!

To express my mood more clearly, here's the good boys from Weezer:

Weezer - Pork and Beans

Ah that line, "Imma do the things that i wanna do/ I ain't got a thing to prove to you."

What has kept me from posting lately, is a great wondering, about the future, about my career, about my brain, the usual crap. And with that comes anxiety, etc. But that has all amounted to me not knowing what to do about this blog and about all my activities.

Well, I can go with Weezer's answer, maybe.

(Just once more, a good hand of applause for those Weezer kids. Excellent, excellent band. Now musically, they pull off some pretty complex and well-performed material. But that alone doesn't give them the greatness they have. They're one of the few bands whose lyrics play an immensely positive role in the impact of their songs. I mean, come on "I'm going to eat my candy with pork and beans!" Now I couldn't understand all the lyrics of that song, but I understood enough for the psychic impact to be magnified many fold. That's not to say they're flawless. I haven't heard a bad Weezer song, but I've heard some so-so ones (Beverly Hills, for example). Yet they've really pulled off some classics, and if you want some examples of that, check out some of the previous posts I've done involving Weezer, here, also here, and finally here.)

But "whatever I wanna do" is an answer that does contain some flaws. What is it that I want to do? Hmmmm?

Well what the Lord wills, but then again there's a lot the Lord wills.

Well, perhaps what I want to do is just try out some of those good stuff that seem to intrigue me in a place I like, and do the best I can with that.

That's a poor answer really.

Ah, maybe I'll eat some pork and beans, and some CANDY!

Time to go down to the ground where the Buffulo Roam

So I am utterly, totally, tired.
So I was thinking about doing a music/AMV session.
But I'm even more tired than that would imply.
And I'm a bum.
So instead I'm going to a VJ thing and give some videos without really giving reviews, except maybe some random chatter.
So but for future reference, all these songs and videos rock.
They really do.
So...
KICK IT!!!

Beastie Boys - Fight for Your Right to Party

So I know I actually used this in one of my AMV sessions (Beastin' it up with the Boys)
But I'm a lazy bum. Besides why should I worry about a silly little thing like that, after all, my future's so bright, I'm going to have to wear shades.

Timbuk3-The Future's So Bright

So you happy now? If not at least you should be feeling glad.

Gorillaz-Clint Eastwood

Well, it's very nice to have sunshine in a bag, but I'd rather have an atom bomb!

Fluke - Atom Bomb - AMV with Ghost in the Shell: 2nd Gig

Man, I love a woman who knows her way around a gun. (You try making sex puns when you're very tired, actually you probably shouldn't, if you succeed it'll just make me feel bad, mwaaah!!!) But the thing about all that firepower is you got to watch out, the heat can give you away in Infrared.

Placebo - Infrared

But if you're in the infrared you must be pretty damn hot, maybe even down in hell after dealing with the Devil.

The Charlie Daniels Band - The Devil Went Down to George - AMV with Futurama

And if the Devil did get your soul, well then he'd have the best of you.

Foo Fighters - Best of You

(This is another song I've used before, several times in fact, most notably here)
But maybe deep down, it's not a problem with your soul. Maybe you're just not as cool as me. Hey, it happens. Some of us are awesome and brown, and then some are just white and nerdy.

Weird Al - White and Nerdy

However, even if you're white and nerdy (or even if you're black and hip) you can still be a rockstar.

N*E*R*D - Rockstar

Case in point for white and nerdy rockstars...

Weezer - Buddy Holly

Yep, when those boys are dissing your girl, because in the end all that matters is what's in your heart.
And on a 99% unrelated note...
Bon Jovi - You Give Love a Bad Name - AMV with Inu - Yasha

So that's a number of videos, and that took me longer than I thought, likely because I was often distracted, often by the very videos I had hoped would save me time.

Still all the songs and videos were awesome weren't they?
Hate to say I told you so.
The Hives - Hate to Say I Told You So

Why all of this? Because I wanna.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

You can't stop the music, even if you wanted to

And still the beat goes on. I've been putting off doing a music session for a while for a while because of a bunch of reasons really, I guess I was frustrated with YouTube and the often shallow selection of AMV's there (I mean come on people do you really have put every single song to Fullmetal Alchemist, and Naruto, come on people why Naruto? (I think I actually understand why Naruto appeals to people, it combines a fairly straight forward fighting anime with simple comedy and drama elements, nothing especially fancy, nothing especially well integrated, and not up to great standards, but I can see how people could like it, especially if this was the first anime they saw (or simply the first they saw after Pokemon and Yugi-Oh))). I was also just generally avoiding doing a real session because, well, things fall apart.

And things aren't well, now, but still we must press on, even if we'd rather stop.

Anyways, even though I touched on this before I thought I'd start things off with:

1. A Perfect Situation by Weezer - From the album Make Believe - I'm not going to go too deeply into it since like I said I touched on this song before in this previous session. But it is damn good song, so chuck filled with emotion that at the end all you can say is Ooooooh, Ooooh, Oh, Ooooh, except it time and melody with the song, alright fine, Ooooh doesn't work well when written out.

Lyrics

Weezer's video - An awesome video, funny, cool and still it reaches into your heart and gives it a little squeeze

A Perfect Situation AMV - anime - Midori Days - Despite the anime being about a guy with a girl on his hand (no, this is not porn), the anime's filled with that wishfillness for romance just like the song, and this AMV really brings out that emotion, sometimes its a bit too literal it its imagery but it connects the video with the song and comes out better for it so well, well done video maker, well done.

2. Sunday, Bloody Sunday by U2 - From the album The Joshua Tree - This is an immensely stirring song. It is about the Bloody Sunday Massacre, you can check a small primer on the matter on Wikipedia. It was part of the greater Northern Ireland conflict, but ulitimately the song boils down to a roar against violence. And this was before Bono became so goody-two-shoes that it just makes you want to smack him upside the head.

Lyrics

U2's video - a standard concert video, which I suppose in its simplicity underlines the seriousness of the emotion, but I prefer a later fan made video made with clips from a movie depicting the events of Bloody Sunday, U2 video stuff, and some photos from the day itself.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday AMV - anime - Neon Genesis Evangelion - A damn good AMV, I must say. It certainly connects in terms of energy and mood with the song and much of that connection is due to the choice of elements by the AMV-maker. Still it strikes me as interesting choice thematically since Neon Genesis Evangelion is all about Senji's struggle to find a reason to fight and Sunday, Bloody Sunday is well about not fighting. But the great anguish of war, that's the connecting element the AMV picks out well.

3.London Calling by the Clash - From the London Calling - The desperate, insanity. The utter energetic pessimism. The nihilisticly joyous anger. Ahhh, that's the stuff. That's the ROCK!!!!

Lyrics

The Clash's Video - Now like the U2 video for Sunday, Bloody Sunday this is largely just the guys playing their music (although not at a concert), but the setting, the lights and shadows, the angles and the cutting all create a better video. Just a little tip for you aspiring video directors. (Note this is actually an altered version with some video edits and remastered sound, if you want this is the original video)

London Calling AMV - anime - Rurouni Kenshin - Now I don't like to repeat myself with animes I have unsure opinions on (I used to watch this a couple times but I didn't really get into it then, maybe I'll watch it some time in the future), but I really wanted to have a London Calling AMV and this one captured the chaos of emotions that swirl around in this song, and it does it with swords!!!

4. Best of You by the Foo Fighters (keep on fighting that Foo guys!) - From the album In Your Honor (it's in my honor, not in you guys', I'm the special one here) - I always felt this song was about the struggle to maintain hope and passion against tragedy. Least that's my ways of it, but this much I know, and I know this for trues, this song is awesome.

Lyrics

The Foo Fighter's video - insane video, but if this song isn't about insanity, it's about something mighty close to it.

Best of You AMV - anime - various - This AMV belongs to the cutting edge of the genre, where people use really nice video editing software to punch up their videos with fades and live action implants and the like (as well as obnoxious opening bits), but none of that would be enough without the meat and cheese of AMV craftsmanship (by the way my little sister has gone vegan which means she has given up both meats and cheeses), scene selection, tonal matches, energy correlation, etc. And this succeeds, it contains a sense of strength, of yearning, of deep struggle, of passionate emotions, and of mental anguish. Maybe not exactly what I got from the song but plenty close enough to the song to enhance it and let it shine.

5.Eye of the Tiger by Survivor - From the Rocky III Soundtrack - Dude, anyone who listens to this song before a performance or competitive event and does not get pumped up has no soul, or doesn't the song (but then they're just lame).

Lyrics

Survivor's video - alright this isn't actually Survivor's video, but it's close enough since the song was designed for Rocky III (besides you can't tell me what to do! You're not my real mom (unless mom is reading this)!)

Eye of the Tiger AMV - anime - Naruto - After griping about Naruto before, why feature a AMV with Naruto? Because I can! Also I'm willing to give that Naruto is a decent fighting anime (although I'm not crazy about all that jitsu stuff, I mean I know it gives a systematic sense to made up martial arts, but after a while it just sounds lame), and it is occasionally able to throw its characters into some nice combat scenes that can be nicely sliced up, smacked together and turbo-charged with the awesomeness of this song to explode into greatness (although I will smack this AMV a little for incorporating a lot of scenes from a Naruto plotline actually featuring a special eye (you can tell this if you read the subtitles that are left in (little tip for AMV makers, unless you plan on incorporating the subtitles, just use a dubbed version))).

So that's it for the music biz. And that's the biz with music and siz. It's nice to really invest some effort into a session like this. Even if these music sessions aren't as intense as the normal sessions (and that's a real if, since I'm always surprised by how long music sessions actually take to put together), it gives a little sense of accomplishment, even if my readership is small enough that I could beat them up with one hand tied behind my back and the other connected to an electric beating machine.

Little side notes: Congrats to old Piro and his wife Sera on their baby Jack!

Also my sympathy to Ryan Sohmer for his recent loss of his cat, baby (the comic on that is here and he has a blog entry on it here).

Odd how that ended up. I've never met these guys, but I've always admired them (to a degree), and they inspired me in part to get onto this interweb, so well, well that's that.

As to my own stuff, well, it's my own, and I have other feelings and shout outs I'd like to give, but I don't care to be coy or irreverent and so I no longer care to continue this session (although I should be back for another one tommorow, why? Because I'm just that awesome).

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Karaoke equals awesome

Now I'm just saying. That's how I disarm all objections to all of my idiotic statements, I'm just saying. But Karaoke equals awesome is true and you know it, I know it, and if you're snickering because I said it, it's because you're lamitude is just so massive it's cutting off oxygen to your brain.

So since Karoke equals awesome and awesome band equals awesome, Live Band Karaoke (if you have an awesome band, which was the case with the Human Karaoke Experience) equals mega awesome, and so I had a good night last night.

I hit up Live Band Karoke, hosted by the Rutgers University Planning Association (RUPA!) (always a fan of their work) and I partied like it was some year that's highly associated with partying. It would have been cooler if more people had been there but...

Well, let me say before I just ramble on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

Ok, well why was this so cool:

First of all the band was pretty sweet.

Second the song list was massive. Not completely massive, but pretty massive.

Third the singers were pretty good. I mean some were a little tone deaf, a little off beat, a little sloppy with the lyrics and didn't know exactly when to start and stop (ie, some of the singers were a little bit like me), but there were a lot of impressive voices on display.

Fourthly, you're always discouraged from singing like a jackass, so why not go somewhere where you're actually encouraged to sing like a jackass.

So that was cool. And it was fun. It was good to have fun. It's been a taxing week, and so it's nice to feel alive like that. I only wished I felt the same off stage as I did on stage. On stage, or at least once I got about half-way into the song, I felt like a king, like I could do anything. But I step off, and I bit by bit I slip into my anxiety shell again. Most of the night I was sitting by this pretty girl and she even seemed to like my performances on stage, but did I say anything to her? No. Sure I didn't know what to say, but screw that, if I had tried at least well I could say I tried, but I didn't.

Well, in honor of karaoke and all those times I should have asked a girl out and didn't (including times when everything was so perfect, but...) (Weezer's Perfect Situation):

What's the deal with my brain,
Why I am so utterly insane, (completely)
In a perfect situation I let love down the drain,
Here's the pitch
Sure and straight
All I need to do swing
And I'm a hero
But I'm a zero (sound familiar)

Lonely nights once again, (Oh yeah)
Now this is getting unbelievable
Because I could not have it better (maybe I could but things are getting pretty good)
But I cannot get no love
From the girls all around (They never give no love to the Rand-man)
As they search the night for someone to hold on to
They just past through (They always do)

Singing Oooooh
Oooooh
Singing Ooooh
Oooooh

Get your hands off the girl
Can't you see that she belongs to me (well that never happened to me really)
And I do not appreciate this excess company
But I can't satisfy all her needs (well, that will probably happen to me later)
And so she starts to wander,
Who can blame her? (I sure can't)

Singing Ooooh
Ooooh
Singing Ooooh
Ooooh

Tell me there's a reason out there
Leading me to be prepared
For that day something really special might come
Tell me there's a moment for me
I don't want to be lonely
For the rest of my days on earth (sing it brother!)

(Guitar Solo! (that's one thing about the Human Karaoke Experience, awesome guitar solos))

Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh

Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh


So that was not exactly Weezer's lyrics, that was my recollection aided by a lyrics site, you can find probably more close to Weezer's lyrics here. Also I feel obliged to tell you that this is from Weezer's recent album, Make Believe. It also has a sweet video, it's not a 1-1 translation of the lyrics but it captures that same emotion of longing. And here's a cool AMV with Midori Days, (an anime and manga that's awesome), that also captures that terrible loneliness despite all the love you see around you (although it's a more literal video that Weezer's).

Anywho, I need to go and well, go home, but for all you cool cats out there, stay awesome. And take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember, Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!