#abckaraoke Update

So far...

A: Alphaville - Forever Young
B: Blue Rodeo - Try
C: Chicago - Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is
D: Doobie Brothers - China Grove
E: Emotions - Best Of My Love
F: Foreigner - Double Vision
G: Guns 'n' Roses - Mr. Brownstone
H: Howard Jones - New Song
I: Isley Brothers - Who's That Lady
J:
K: K's Choice - Not An Addict
L:
M: Mike & the Mechanics - The Living Years
N: Neon Trees - Animal
O:
P: Propellerheads w/Shirley Bassey - History Repeating


Given the ones I've missed so far, I'm tempted to just do Jenny From the Block to cover all three letters.

March Travesties

33 songs. Quiet month due to stupid (i.e. what everyone else considers normal) work hours and stupid illness.

Up to 477 different songs sung in the database. I may have to start a pool on when I crack 500.

Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen (w/live band)
California Uber Alles - Dead Kennedys (w/live band)
Everlong - Foo Fighters (w/live band)
Feel Like Making Love - Bad Company
Good Times Bad Times - Led Zepplin (w/live band)
High School Confidential - Rough Trade
I Will Follow - U2
If You Could Read My Mind - Gordon Lightfoot
In The End - Linkin Park (duet w/Johnny Priceless)
Intervention - Arcade Fire
Johnny Come Home - Fine Young Cannibals
Kick Out the Jams - MC5 (w/live band)
London Calling - Clash (w/live band)
Lookin' Out My Back Door - CCR
Missing You - John Waite
Morning Glory - Oasis
Mr. Brownstone - Guns n Roses
New Song - Howard Jones
Not An Addict - K's Choice
Old Man - Neil Young
One - U2
Panama - Van Halen (w/live band)
Personal Jesus - Depeche Mode
Rock n Roll Suicide - David Bowie
Say It Ain't So - Weezer (w/live band)
See You Again - Miley Cyrus
Street Spirit - Radiohead
The Middle - Jimmy Eat World
This Diamond Ring - Gary Lewis & the Playboys
Waterfalls - TLC
Who's That Lady - Isley Brothers
Won't Get Fooled Again - Who (duet w/Rhea, w/live band)
You Sexy Thing - Hot Chocolate

I'm a Terrible Person

I fell out of sequence at #abckaraoke.

I was a week behind - still had to do my J song, even though it was K week - but by the time I got to Tequila Sunrise last night it was slammed, and I knew I would only be able to sing once, and I really wanted to try Not An Addict, and I was a bit tipsy...

Fail. Massive, massive fail.

Review: Source Code

Source Code (2011, directed by Duncan Jones)

We're two films into his career, and it's pretty clear what turns Duncan Jones' crank. Like Moon before it, Source Code uses science fiction trappings to explore humanity's free will and survival instinct. And like Moon, Jones isn't afraid to apply DJ sensibilities to filmmaking, mashing up genres and sampling from the classics to try and create something that is still unmistakably his own.

Unlike Moon, though, Source Code struggles to escape the gravity of those influences, and Jones' voice at times gets lost in the noise. It's hardly what you'd call a sophomore slump - Source Code is entertaining enough, with some interesting ideas and a couple of great supporting performances - but it's not career-defining either. (At least, I hope not).

If Jones gets anything perfectly right, it's the opening minutes of the film. The precredits sequence is flat out great. Over a score that sounds like it's cribbed from a top-notch 70s paranoid political thriller you've never seen, Jones intercuts between swooping aerial shots of Chicago and a commuter train hurtling towards the city. The music, the pacing of the shots, all scream one thing: something capital-b Bad is going to happen.

After that, Jones tosses the audience straight into the deep end of the plot. Jake Gyllenhaal wakes up on the train and finds himself sitting across from a woman (Michelle Monaghan) he doesn't know. In fact he doesn't even know how he got on the train - last thing he remembers, he was piloting a chopper in Afghanistan. The reflection he sees in the window isn't his face, and Monaghan keeps calling him by someone else's name. He's disoriented, angry, very nearly in a blind panic, and then boom.

No, literally, boom. The train blows up, killing everyone aboard. And then after blowing up, Gyllenhaal finds himself back in uniform, locked in a strange capsule with no memory of how he got there either while a different woman on a monitor grills him on the details of what he just saw...

From there, things settle down into a rhythm. Gyllenhaal is part of a covert anti-terrorism initiative trying to thwart the next attack by the train bomber. Through the magic of quantum physics, he's able to re-live the last 8 minutes of the life of one of the train's passengers over and over (and over and over) again, to try and find clues pointing to the identity of the terrorist. As he does so though, and despite being told repeatedly by his superiors that the people upon the train are already dead and that there's nothing he can do for them, Gyllenhaal starts to care about his fellow passengers (especially, of course, the pretty one sitting across from him) and tries to save them as well as complete his mission.

If that sounds like a Frankenstein's monster sewn together from equal parts 12 Monkeys and Groundhog Day, well, that's because it is. But there's a spark created by the collision of those two concepts that propels the film, and the script gives enough credit to the audience's intelligence that it never bogs itself down with exposition, although a large degree of credit for that needs to go to the always awesome Jeffrey Wright. He plays the scientist in charge of the project with a preening intellect that is simply astounding to watch. His one attempt to explain to Gyllenhaal how the project works lasts all of about thirty seconds and simultaneously gives you just enough information to suspend your disbelief while also making it clear how tired he is of dumbing down his genius for lesser minds. It's phenomenal, as is the rest of his performance. Why Wright isn't a bigger star is one of the great mysteries of modern Hollywood.

The other standout performance is Vera Farmiga as the face on the monitor, Gyllenhaal's liaison with the project HQ. Like Gyllenhaal, she finds herself trapped between her orders and basic human decency, but unlike Gyllenhaal her dilemma is a lot less theoretical. She takes what might have been a very jarring transition from ruthless model of military efficiency to bleeding heart, and makes it seem natural and inevitable. It's not a showy performance, but it's a very, very good one.

As for the leads? Well... Monaghan's sweet-natured cutie role is certainly necessary to get you as invested as Gyllenhaal in the fate of the passengers, but it doesn't give her a whole lot to do other than smile and occasionally scrunch up her brow in confusion. And good ole Jake, bless his heart, just doesn't have the over-the-top personality of a Willis or a Cage to really ever become a full-blown Everyman action hero, but in a role like this which is lighter on action and heavier on emoting, he's entirely adequate.

There's one other thing that makes Source Code slightly more than the sum of its parts, and that's its metaphysical underpinnings. Speaking as someone with a great love for pop culture bastardizations of quantum physics, this movie handles the whole 'multiple universes' concept as well as any big Hollywood production I've ever seen. Every time Gyllenhaal goes 'back' to those eight minutes, his choices create a new universe branching out from the old one. Since they all end in the train blowing up anyway (thus collapsing the wave, if you're following this and your eyes didn't glaze over a couple of sentences ago) Wright dismisses any of Gyllenhaal's concerns as nonsense. There's only one 'real' universe, and it's the one Wright is standing in. But as Gyllenhaal keeps pushing the envelope on what he can get done and get away with in those eight minutes, he becomes more and more certain that these universes aren't just shadows of probability, and are just as real as the world he's being sent from. The payoff on it all is really quite well done, even if it does raise some curious moral questions.

In short, Source Code is a fairly well-shot (one unfortunate CGI shot aside), reasonably clever movie with a couple of really good performances. Just so long as you aren't expecting to have your mind blown, it's worth checking out.

ABC Karaoke Update

A: Alphaville - Forever Young
B: Blue Rodeo - Try
C: Chicago - Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is
D: Doobie Brothers - China Grove
E: Emotions - Best Of My Love
F: Foreigner - Double Vision
G: Guns 'n' Roses - Mr. Brownstone
H: Howard Jones - New Song


Trying Best of My Love was a nightmarishly bad idea, for the record. I kicked serious ass on the GNR though. It all balances out.

My J is already set in stone - John Lennon, Jealous Guy (which I sang playing Rock Band and pretty much nailed.) I'm torn on my I though, between two songs I've long wanted to try. Iron Maiden's Run To the Hills is the obvious choice, but even after the Emotions train wreck part of me still thinks I could semi-pull off Who's That Lady by the Isley Brothers.

February Travesties

30 songs. Not bad for a short month, especially considering that I started back in to the 9-5 office grind and wasn't able to stay out late as often.

Have to add them to the DB later, but I should be over 460 different songs sung.

Band On The Run - Paul McCartney & Wings
Behind Closed Doors - Charlie Rich
Best of My Love - Emotions
Dear God - XTC
Don't Pay the Ferryman - Chris DeBergh
Double Vision - Foreigner
Dreams - Fleetwood Mac (duet w/Erin)
Every Rose Has Its Thorn - Poison
Feel Like Making Love - Bad Company
Games People Play - Alan Parsons Project
Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac
Good Times Bad Times - Led Zepplin
High School Confidential - Rough Trade
I'm On Fire - Bruce Springsteen
In the Meantime - Spacehog
Iris - Goo Goo Dolls
Karma Police - Radiohead
Little Red Corvette - Prince
Love Lies Bleeding - Elton John
Mac the Knife - Bobby Darin
Maggie May - Rod Stewart
Mr. Brownstone - Guns 'n' Roses
New Song - Howard Jones
One - U2
Rebellion (Lies) - Arcade Fire
Save It For Later - English Beat
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window - Beatles
Sister Christian - Night Ranger
Song For the Dumped - Ben Folds Five
The Drugs Don't Work - Verve

January Travesties

The new year kicked off with a karaoke explosion: 48 songs.

I'm now up to 453 different songs sung since I started keeping track.

#1 Crush - Garbage
Age of Aquarius / Let the Sun Shine In - 5th Dimension
Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty
Because the Night - Patti Smith
Blue Monday - New Order
Bulletproof - La Roux
Changes - David Bowie
China Grove - Doobie Brothers
Common People - Pulp
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground - White Stripes
Diamond Dogs - David Bowie
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is - Chicago
Down In the Tube Station At Midnight - Jam
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter - Pearl Jam
Fly At Night - Chilliwack
Forever Young - Alphaville
Heart-Shaped Box - Nirvana
Heartbreaker - Pat Benatar
Heat of the Moment - Asia
How Deep Is Your Love - Bee Gees
I Don't Like Mondays - Boomtown Rats
I'll Be Around - Spinners
I'll Never Tell - Once More With Feeling (duet w/Lauren)
In the End - Linkin Park (duet w/Johnny)
Isn't She Lovely - Stevie Wonder (duet w/Steve-O)
It's Only Make Believe - Conway Twitty
Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
Maneater - Hall and Oates
Midlife Crisis - Faith No More
Miss You - Rolling Stones
My Back Pages - Byrds
New Girl Now - Honeymoon Suite
Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - The Band
Old Man - Neil Young
Raspberry Beret - Prince
Rest In Peace - Once More With Feeling
Ride Like the Wind - Christopher Cross
Rio - Duran Duran
Say It Ain't So - Weezer
Shakin' All Over - Guess Who
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes - Platters
Something To Sing About - Once More With Feeling (duet w/Lauren)
The Drugs Don't Work - Verve
The One Thing - INXS
This Boy's In Love - Presets
Time - Pink Floyd
Try - Blue Rodeo
Wild Horses - Rolling Stones

ABC Karaoke So Far

The tally so far at #abckaraoke:

A: Forever Young by Alphaville
B: Try by Blue Rodeo
C: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is - Chicago
D: China Grove - Doobie Brothers

Technically I haven't done the D song yet, but gimme a few hours.

Why Didn't I Notice This Before?

So I'm watching the Raptors-Grizzlies game, and at halftime they do a segment where Rod "Stupidest Man In Sports Broadcasting" Black quizzes Leo Rautins about Grizzlies history. When asked who the greatest player in franchise history was Rautins says, "Pau Gasol. Drafted by the Atlanta Hawks in the first round in 2001 and then picked up in the Shareef Abdur-Rahim trade, blah blah blah"

Three questions later, Black asks him who the best draft pick in Grizzlies history was. "Gotta be Gasol, right?" Sigh.

At that moment it hit me. Rod Black must be the inspiration for Ron Burgundy.

Look at their names. Ron, Rod... colour starting with 'B', colour starting with 'B'.

They both established careers based on having the right look and a solid broadcasting voice despite being incredibly, stupendously thick.

They both say stupid things on air. Black's legendary for his penchant for tasting shoe leather. The classic Black moment came after the gold meal game at the '94 world junior hockey championships in which one Canadian player has promised to win gold for his (now-deceased) father. Black's question to him after the team lost: Do you feel like you let your father down since you only won silver?

And then there are the moustaches:



Keep in mind that Ferrell shot the first Austin Powers movie (starring hockey nut Mike Myers) in '97. If the subject of idiot broadcasters had come up, surely Myers would have mentioned Black. And Ferrell had smaller roles in a few other films (such as Dick and the Ladies Man) that shot in Canada between Austin Powers and Anchorman...


Can there be any doubt that Ron Burgundy is directly and explicitly based on Rod Black?