(no subject)

[thewingedword]

I've been burning up some of my iTunes giftcards on Tori Amos music, which is very good, particularly Happy Phantom and her cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit. If you didn't think that song could be done with nothing but a piano and a chick for vocals, think again; it's fabulous. However, despite my obsessive nature (and I am obsessive, passionate and absorbed and devoted, once something triggers the instinct) I don't think I'll become one of her horde of Really Truly Fans, mostly because she simply has too many albums and EPs and b-sides and god knows wot for me to ever catch up. I'll dabble, and enjoy. 

(It's probably a good sign of my obsessiveness that I originally started listening to her music because Neil Gaiman likes her. Shut up, I can love him if I want, it does no one any harm.)

Speaking of Neil, I've finally hammered out my thesis; or rather, it cleverly evaded me as I groped around blindly for it in the dark, until it finally flicked on the lights and I saw it perfectly clearly. I'm going to talk about what gods were, what gods are, and how Neil bridges the gap between the two. It should be marvelous fun, since I get to use my favorite classical gods and myths, and Neil!

We finished Hamlet and started the movie with Mel Gibson, which makes my song choice dizzyingly appropriate. Seriously, the scene with the ghost? Went from twitchy, to wrong, to really wrong, to what the fuck?, and then the ghost showed up in the middle of it and I realized that we'd really only taken a quick sail past what the fuck? before docking firmly in the harbors of holy shit. Someone had issues, or wanted other people to develop issues, because that was never in the play. Weirdness. Also, the soliloquies are incredibly easy to spot, because each and every single one starts with a slow zoom until all I can see is Mel Gibson's talking face. (And the beard really throws me off; I know Hamlet's thirty in the play, but I can never think of him as over 25, and it's kind of jarring.)

However, I am madly in love with Horatio. The end. It doesn't hurt that the movie-actor is kind of pretty, from what I can see through the noise of frizzy hair and stubble.

Comments

::second try to comment::

[marielyuy.livejournal.com]

Neil Gaimannnnn! Are you going to post the essay thing when it's finished? It sounds interesting. (And speaking of gods, I finally watched Tall Tales from SPN. Trickster gods! EEEE.)

Re: Hamlet
Oh man, the movie gets even stranger. The fight between Hamlet and his mom (later in the play) takes on a sexual connotation and left my entire class going o_O. There were more issues there that just...just...dude, he was humping her leg. NOT IN THE PLAY.

Re: ::second try to comment::

[kitaloon.livejournal.com]

*shifty eyes* If I get a good grade I will. Probably people would want more to read that than my random music-copyrights essay, including me. It's more fun to write.

Yeah, that's the scene I was talking about; the second scene with the ghost, I should have clarified. Where he was basically pounding her into the bed with her wrists pinned, and she was making those odd whimpering noises, and then they started making out? And then, as he's hitting second base with his mother, his father's ghost shows up? And all this happened after his aborted attempt to murder his stepfather. Definite Oedipal issues there.

[lunachickk.livejournal.com]

My favorite album of Tori's will always be her first one, "Little Earthquakes".

It is BRILLIANT. All of the songs are amazing.

[kitaloon.livejournal.com]

That's the one I bought, it seemed a good place to start. I do like the songs, although it screws with my head a little when I have to switch from very... lavishly produced songs like Tear in Your Hand to the rather intimidatingly a cappella example of Me and a Gun.

Since I've got that, anything else that seems a good place to continue? I tend to like the more simple, piano-y songs, but I'm not exclusive.