An Earworm is a term for a portion of a song or other musical bit that gets "stuck" in someone’s head and repeats continually against a their will. Often, relief comes only when it is swapped with a newer fragment from another tune. Research indicates that the people who get the most earworms tend to listen to music frequently and are more likely to have other neurotic habits, such as biting pencils or finger nails or tapping fingers. In Oliver Sacks latest book, Musicophilia, he defines the phenomenon as “involuntary musical imagery.”

And I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.
-- Lee Greenwood

I'm an absolute nut fan when it comes to David Lynch. This thrilled me to no end:


Au Revoir Simone, performing live on the Amoeba Haight Street Stage, Sunday.
Yes, tomorrow - Sunday January 27th, at 2pm in the afternoon.



Free and all ages. That's how we do it.

Thank you Mr. Lynch for your mind, and thank you for sharing it with us.

I finally got around to watching the most recent 北野 武, Takeshi  Kitano  dvd the other night; 2005's  Takeshis' ...


It  concerns  an established actor, Beat Takeshi, and his crossing paths with a struggling actor, Takeshi Kitano. A significant number of the cast play dual roles which I was embarrassingly  slow to comprehend, given the fairly confusing abstractions within film.  As Beat Takeshi,  Kitano plays himself as boorish  and self-important and satirizes his own artistic conventions to comic effect.  In his film-within-a-film,  he plays a  bandaged yakuza character. Annoyed by cicadas at his Okinawan hideaway, his character "unexpectedly" shoots his girlfriend before turning the gun on himself.

The second half of the film grows even less conventional.  Sometimes it just seemed strange for the sake of being strange.  It moved toward abstraction like David Lynch's last few films have, as if to bait the deluded fans into comparing their own narrative reconstructions.  I started to lose a bit of interest at that point since that kind of "artistic innovation" became pretty cliché before my parents ever met.


One ingredient I quickly realized was possibly detracting from my enjoyment was the absence of longtime musical collaborator Joe Hishaishi (or, Hisaishi Joe, Mamoru Fujisawa's Nipponized version of "Quincy Jones"), whose moody, jazz  & Japanese -influenced scores have always contributed to the tone of Kitano's previous films so complimentarily. I guess Takeshi Kitano and Joe Hisaishi got into it on the set of  the amazing "Dolls" a few years back and lamentably ended their artistic arrangement. Apparently, Kitano saw Hisaishi walking in the rain with Hayao Miyazaki.
 

Finally!!! Twin Peaks season 2 is now available. It just came out this week. It has been over 5 years since season 1 came out on DVD! Like many of you, I sold my vhs box set years ago in anticipation of the release of this show on DVD. I am so excited I now get to revisit my favorite show and watch it all from the beginning. David Lynch is a genius and was really able to show the world just how brilliant he was with this amazing ground breaking television show.  Season 2 originally aired in the 1990/1991 season. While the 1st season only had 8 episodes, season 2 had a full season of episodes with 22. This was the year it was nominated for some Soap Opera Digest Awards.

Sheryl Lee was nominated for best death scene as Maddie Ferguson. And I have to agree...she was amazing. She was brilliant in her second role in the series as Laura Palmer's strangely almost identical nerdy cousin. Kyle Maclachlan and Piper Laurie were both nominated for outstanding acting. The show was nominated for outstanding Prime Time Show. It won no soap opera digest awards but did walk away with a couple golden globes. Amazingly the soap opera digest awards still happen. However last year was the first year it was not televised and it went straight to magazine. Not a good sign for the future of the awards show.

I seriously have watched this show a lot. It aired on Bravo many nights for many years late night. Most of those nights I was watching it. If you are a fan of any of the serialized TV shows such as Lost or Prison Break and have never watched this show...you seriously need to do so right now. This was the best thing ever on television. I have yet to see anything come close. The cast was also one of the best. Unfortunately it seems to be somewhat of a curse for its cast. Nobody on the show has ever done anything near as good since this show went off the air. Besides maybe Kyle Maclachlan's role in Showgirls and Lara Flynn Boyle's in Happiness. Most of the cast has been mostly seen in small TV roles or Lifetime movies of the week.