Laura Occasionally Blogs

Okay, lots of things to tell you.

I. The Sprouts
Are doing well!



Most of the pods sprouted, and the tomatoes were getting real tall and spindly, so I moved them to the window. I've been keeping them under my daylight-spectrum drawing lamp, which hopefully will work as a grow light. They seem to be doing well. I'm not sure when I'm supposed to transplant them to new homes. I'll give it some time, since I can't put them outside yet anyway.

II. New Pieces of Metal for Springtime

I got a bike!



Still working on not falling off, but having the equipment means I can practice.

I also got some new/old piercings: third lobe and helix on the right. (The left side is the same, 2 lobes.) I've gotten my helix redone like three times now. Third time's the charm!!



III. My New Games

1. The Fitness Game

I've never been one to count calories. I don't have a big problem with my weight and it changes so slowly that it doesn't seem to have anything really to do with what I eat or don't. (I know it does, but it doesn't FEEL that way.) Little did I know that I was MISSING OUT on a GREAT GAME!

I started using the My Fitness Pal app to track what I eat and any exercise I do. It was just out of curiosity, sort of to see where I am instead of to change anything, but it has influenced me to make different choices in order to meet my daily calorie goal. If I only have 50 calories left, I have a square of dark chocolate instead of a scoop of ice cream for dessert. When I go over, I'm like, "Okay, time to exercise." I still don't super care about weight, but I'm making better general fitness choices, doing things I agree I should do.

I have always tuned out when people started talking about calories, but I get it now. Without the numbers, I wasn't motivated to make these choices in the moment. Now, I not only KNOW INTELLECTUALLY that the most efficient way to improve my general diet is to replace my morning bagel and cream cheese with a lowfat yogurt and sugar-free granola; I FEEL it. With my HEART.

And maybe someday I will do it.

2. The Radio Game

My trivia team always gets crushed on the music round, where we're played a short clip of a song and must guess the title and artist. I decided it's time to get serious about practicing.

Most of the music is from the 80s through today, so I auto-shuffled Pandora's pre-made pop stations for the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and "today's hits." Each time a new song comes on (unless I'm absorbed in something else), I write down what I think the title and artist is. I get one point for each one I get right. (I don't get the title point if I only get the title because they repeated it in the chorus, which wouldn't be played at the bar.)

It's amazing how many of them are very familiar to me, I can totally sing along, and yet have no idea of the title or artist. This is actually what makes the game fun. If it was just a bunch of music I'd never heard before, it would be too hard. For someone less remedial than me, it would be too easy.

Here's a sample of the first "round" of 8 songs I played. How many of the songs do you think you would have been able to identify before the chorus played (or ever, if they never say the name of the song)? I got 3 points out of 16.

Don Henley - The Boys of Summer
Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy
Rihanna - Stay
Counting Crows - Mr. Jones
JoJo - Too Little, Too Late
Icona Pop - I Love It
Shakira - Hips Don't Lie
Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want to Have Fun

I wish I knew who to give these feature requests to for real, but the one time I contacted Amazon they sent back a form letter telling me to call them. No, I will not telephone and have a chat about feature requests with your customer service rep. Then it won't even get forwarded!

1. Cloud Player-protected folder, or other way to remove certain mp3s (such as music I'm tired of, seasonal music, weak tracks from albums I've bought, comedy routines, audiobook parts, etc.) from the cloud player without removing them from the cloud drive. For me, the cloud is primarily a repository for my music to download from or listen to individual songs, but I'd like to be able to listen to more or less my entire collection on shuffle! I do not want to add almost every song to my "almost every song" playlist, nor do I want to keep said playlist updated every time I buy new music.

2. Alternately: smart playlists, like itunes has, where you can define a playlist as "every song except those on x y z playlists" or "playlist a + playlist b + playlist c." I don't want to create "combined 80s and 90s playlist" and then every time I add a song to my 80s playlist, I also have to add it to 80s and 90s.

3. Alternately alternately: Ability to choose which folders from the cloud drive to load into the player, so I only have to organize my music into folders and not separately organize it in the folders AND the playlists on the cloud player.

4. Ability to rewrite metadata from cloud player. Come on now. Some of my uploaded tracks are just permanently "No Artist / No Album / Track 1."

5. Ability to quickly identify and delete duplicates in the collection, or in individual playlists. Or a warning when I try to add a song to a playlist and it's already on there. Or just don't let me! Listen, I don't actually want "Bohemian Like You" 19 times on the same playlist, I just forgot I already added it.

Pandora thinks I would like a Britney Spears song called "Hold It Against Me" which consists entirely of Britney repeating, "If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"

I never thought old chestnuts such as you might hear in a 1920s vaudeville show particularly sexy, but Britney disagrees; watch out for her next singles, "Take My Wife", "Doc Will I Ever Play Tennis Again", and "Inside of a Dog (Too Dark to Read Remix)".

Songs I'm working on:
* "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day: Can mostly play correctly without looking at the tab
* "Starlight" by Muse: Can mostly play correctly while looking at the tab
* "Why I Sing The Blues" by B.B. King: Practicing
* "Pink Panther": Practicing for silliness value, also hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides
* "Rebel Yell" by Billy Idol: Still figuring out (it's a lot of repeated notes but it's so fast!)

Songs I'm thinking of learning:
* "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World (seems easy from Rock Band, but requires drop D tuning)
* Maybe that other song by Green Day that always gets in my head after I play "Boulevard"
* Duelling banjos
* "Zebra" by John Butler Trio which is super hard but I can do the first 5 notes!! and there is HAMMER ONS
* Anything by Billy Talent (omg you guys, i love billy talent)
* WHAT ELSE DO YOU THINK??

So apparently NASA is running a contest where you can vote for the song to play at the next space launch. All of the choices are kind of delightful, from the obvious, cheesy, and wonderful choices like "Fly Me to the Moon", "Rocket Man", and the Star Trek theme; to the more out there options of "Moon River" and "She Blinded Me With Science"; to the oddly doom-and-gloom head-scratchers "Kryptonite" and "Enter Sandman." James Brown's "I Feel Good" I have no explanation for.

I can't decide which of my Christmas music is more hilarious:

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Nutcracker Suite which features bad-ass ACDC-style guitar licks

OR

The Alfred Deller recording of a song about coaxing baby Jesus to sleep which has fancy Renaissance-style choral voices singing, "We will rock you"

In the Baby-sitters Club book I'm reading, Jessi is giving a reading at a play audition, and the organizers ask her to sing a song. She protests she hasn't prepared a song, but they say they just want to hear her voice and it can be anything, even "Happy Birthday." Pop quiz, hot shot: without having much time to think about it, what song would you sing?

I know BITS of a lot of songs, and Rock Band has taught me the real words for several, but I don't know if I could do them all the way through. "Dani California," my best Rock Band tune, has a LOT of words. I also know half of some duets, like the Valjean/Javert confrontation and "Sisters," but that doesn't do me much good. Showtunes are a decent bet for me, though. The first tunes that came into my head where I know all the words, though, were "Stars" from Les Mis and "The Street Where You Live" from My Fair Lady, both out way of my range. I guess if cornered, I'd probably go "Stars," because it's too low for me, and I'm better at faking too low than too high. Jessi sang "I Won't Grow Up" from Peter Pan, which I think was a solid choice, but I wouldn't have thought of it.

Nick made up this game/quiz on Facebook Notes, and I decided to post it here, because it was fun and I don't think anybody reads Facebook Notes. The idea is you have to name bands that fit different criteria (see below). Unsurprisingly, considering all my musical knowledge comes from Rock Band, and I'm too proud to use references or think very hard (I think that violates the spirit of the game), I did a pretty crappy job (see further below).

1. Think of a band name that has a verb.
2. Think of a band name that has an adjective.
3. Think of a band name that has an adverb.
4. Think of a band name that has a preposition.
5. Think of a band named after a book or part of a book (character, etc.).
6. Think of a band named after a movie or part of a movie.
7. Think of a band named after a work of visual art.
8. Think of a band named after a person.
9. Think of a band named after a place.
10. Think of a band named after an object.
11. Think of a band named after a body part.
12. Think of a band named after a bug.
13. Think of a band name for each of the four elements.
14. Think of a band that has a name 5 words long or longer
15. Think of a band that has a name 4 letters or shorter.
16. Think of a band name that rhymes.
17. Think of a band name that’s alliterative.
18. Think of a band name that’s Onomatopoeic.
19. Think of a band name that’s an oxymoron.
20. Think of a band name that’s an acronym.


( My answers )

Also I thought of some more questions for your enjoyment!

21. Think of a band named after a figure in mythology.
22. Think of a band named after a method of transit.
23. Think of three different color band names.
24. Think of a band named after a textile.
25. Think of a band named after a leader of men.

I really wish there were a Broadway Karaoke Xbox game so I could put to good use the songs and lyrics I really know.

Some tracks it should contain:

• Les Miserables, "Confrontation" (Duet) (A Must)
  
• Jesus Christ Superstar, "Heaven On Their Minds" ("Superstar" also acceptable)
  
• Cats, "Memories" (Hey, this has to be Realistic!)
  
• Phantom of the Opera, "Phantom of the Opera" ("Music of the Night" also acceptable)
  
• Aida, "Enchantment Passing Through" (Duet) (Mostly because I want to say "There are no shackles on you!")
  
• Jekyll and Hyde, "This Is The Moment"
  
• West Side Story, "Something's Coming" ("Jet Song" obvs. acceptable too, but I don't know HOW many mics you would need)
  
• Wicked, "Defying Gravity"
  
• Oliver!, "Consider Yourself"
  
• Anything Goes, "I Get a Kick Out of You" ("De-Lovely", "Easy to Love" also acceptable)
  
• KIss Me Kate, "Too Darn Hot" ("Always True to You (In My Fashion)", "So In Love" also acceptable)
  
• The King and I, "Getting to Know You" ("It's a Puzzlement" would be...better, actually)
  
• Carousel, "If I Loved You" (Duet)
  
• My Fair Lady, "Street Where You Live"
  
• Candide, "Glitter and Be Gay"
  
• Cradle Will Rock, "The nickel under your foot" ("Moll's Song" or "Cradle Will Rock" also acceptable; NOT HONOLULU)
  
• I guess that one from Rent with all the math in it
  
• Sweeney Todd, "Pretty Women" (Duet)
  
• Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, "On the Rise" (Duet)

Come on Harmonix, I have been training all my life for this.

Things I am not convinced by in this music video of Mick Jagger and David Bowie singing the Motown standard "Dancing in the Street":

1. that Jagger is in any way in Bowie's class as a singer
2. that there will be laughing, singing, music swinging, and dancing in the street in any kind of scale - it's just the two of them prancing around empty lots and back-alleys for the whole three minutes.
3. that every guy should grasp a girl - there are no girls and they are just screaming into each other's mouths.

I am however convinced that it doesn't matter what you wear, just as long as you are there. And Bowie does say "Baltimore and D.C. now" as sexily as I've ever heard anyone say it.