Yeah Right

Wind And Waves

This past Sunday afternoon, I was positively aquiver with excitement.  My favorite sporting event was only hours away.  Two teams of highly skilled athletes were set and ready to become the latest combatants in a contest with a long and storied history.  Millions of television viewers from around the world would be tuning in to see the action.

The thing is, not one of those television viewers would be from the United States.  You see, no American television network was interested in this particular sporting event.  I suppose it's just as well since the Super Bowl would be taking up most of their attention anyway.

So what in the world am I talking about?  Well, step back in time with me, won't you...

In Defense of The Who

I once turned down a chance to see The Who live, because I thought it would be sad to see the band so far past their prime.   That was about 20 years ago.   And yeah, the Super Bowl performance was about what I expected -- pretty lame (though I never expected to see Pete Townsend whiff on one of his windmill guitar moves). 

But let me now defend The Who, one of the truly great great bands of all time.  Their debut album is simply one of the most cherished pieces in my collection.  My fingers can't find the right superlatives on the keyboard here to express how much I love even the filler tracks on that record.  And then Tommy is obviously a special (if spotty) piece of music, and Who's Next, completely amazing.  And so many other singles and cool bits.  Quite a legacy.  It's a shame they've been recycling the highlights for so many years and degrading the memories in the process.  But the old tapes don't lie.  It would be more conventional to point you to these takes of Baba O'Reilly and Won't Get Fooled Again, but I'll embed instead "A Quick One" - their pre-Tommy attempt at (mini) rock opera.  Goofy as can be, but undeniably great, and a reminder of how much more energetic they were than any other band on the planet circa 1968.  If you're pressed for time, just go to the ridiculous "you are forgiven" finale around the 6 minute mark. 

Gumby on crack

That's all I could think about when I saw the preview for A Town Called Panic.

I like LEGOs and Metal

So, naturally, I love this.

File Under: Huh?

American Psycho...the musical.

Red Eye

How bad are things at CNN?  So bad that it's entire prime-time lineup now has lower ratings than Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld, the funniest show I've never seen due to the fact that it airs at 3 AM.  I've seen clips, though, and it's kind of like Salvador Dali on acid, only weirder.  Red Eye also just celebrated its third anniversary, which they commemorated with this best of clip consisting mostly of scenes from their second show and and a series of juvenile insults.  Congrats Red Eye - I hope I get a chance to see a whole episode sometime in the next three years.  

Movie Monday: The Young Victoria

Before we get into the gloriousness that was The Young Victoria, let's digress and talk about the previews.  All the previews were for action and/or horror movies, which is an odd fit for an English period drama, but I guess the marketeers were going for the disgruntled boyfriend market.  The lamest of the lame previews was for The Crazies, an upcoming thriller starring Timothy Olyphant and/or Josh Duhamel because I can't tell them apart.  Something weird is happening to the townsfolk...dun dun dun!  Think Children of the Corn meets Day of the Dead meets a Sci-fi channel original movie.  Normally I'd brush this off as a stupid looking movie with a dumb name, but then a moment of music blasphemy happened which motivated me to trash The Crazies here on Yeah Right.  What song played throughout said trailer?  "Mad World" by Gary Jules...aka the Donnie Darko song.  Some songs are intimately connected to a movie and it feels like cheating to have them in another.  Think "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" in Kill Bill Vol. 1 or "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" in Pulp Fiction.  "Mad World" falls into that category for me.  So two thumbs down for The Crazies.
 
Onto The Young Victoria, which was fabulous.  The acting was superb, the plot was engaging, and the sets (including interior shots of Buckingham Palace [Victoria was the first monarch to live there] and Kensington Palace [where she lived with her mom before becoming queen]) and costumes were breathtaking.  From what I know about Victorian era England, it was a pretty accurate portrayal of the events (minus the fact that Victoria was left-handed and Prince Albert never got shot).  Even with the added dramatization, the simple facts of Victoria's youth were bound to make a good plot: King William is super old.  Victoria, the queen in waiting, is only 17 and has been largely shielded from the royal court from her mother.  There was intense pressure for her to sign a regency agreement (basically turning over power to someone else) since she was so young.  Victoria refused to sign said regency agreement.  King William holds on until Victoria turns 18 then promptly keels over.  Victoria becomes queen (three cheers for the coronation scene) and promptly flubs a lot of things up because she doesn't quite know what she's doing yet.  And all the while, countless adults are trying to manipulate her and countless suitors are vying to be Mr. Queen Victoria.  Hello, real-life drama.
 
Even with all the interesting history and political conflict, the central force of The Young Victoria is the love story of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, played brilliantly by Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend.  They had great chemistry for a couple whose courtship consisted of brief visits and lots of letter writing.  Clearly that worked out for them, as they were quite the tag-team of rulers.  After Albert died, Victoria even insisted on wearing a toned-down crown so as not to be flashy in her state of morning (which lasted a really long time, as she was the longest serving British monarch).
 
Verdict: Four stars.

Song of the Week

As previously mentioned on Yeah Right, New York's Hello Tokyo rocks.  My favorite Hello Tokyo song is "The Affair."  It has a haunting vibe, highlights Kat's great vocals, and is the Song of the Week.  Here's a live clip from a show in NY:

Groundhog Day Debate

A couple days late getting to this, but an interesting question at A Million Monkeys.  I'm guessing ten years is about right.

Songs for Enduring the Next 24 Hours

Back in the early days of YeahRight, I was good about posting some MP3's under posts titled "Songs for the Weekend."  Well, it's been awhile.  But today, I offer three good'uns that popped up in my iTunes after doing a certain word search.   See if you smarties can figure out the theme!     

Galaxy 500, "Snow Storm" 

Rivers Cuomo, "Lovers in the Snow"

A Bullet for Fidel, "Buried in Snow"

Hank Snow, "I'm Moving On"