The Golden Compass

I'm Thankful For...

Apple pie, coffee, Charles, Cliff, Tanith Lee, Louise Cooper, Batman, Brita Filters, cell phones, pocket knives, Legos, dark chocolate, fishnets, Death Valley, Mom and Dad, Kitten, Doctor Who, John Barrowman, sliced deli turkey, salt flats, La Femme Nikita, Allison, NaNoWriMo, fanfiction, Star Wars, string cheese, oatmeal, Irish Cream, Joss Whedon, french fries, college ruled paper, my iPod, White Wolf, capes, pea coats, fuzzy slippers, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Ray Bradbury Theater, Have Gun Will Travel, Australian meat pies, perogies, ravioli, Greek Mythology, Pyramids, Mac and Cheese, constellations, Old Time Radio, Cole Porter, Oreos, Bailey, Wikipedia, The BBC, Law and Order, CSI, blogs, Kevin, stamps, Irish accents, English accents, the Roman Empire, Shakespeare, books, pound cake, fudge, fuji apples, honeycrisp apples, Aerosmith, Flogging Molly, inflatable beds, tents, fire, electric blankets, butter, Ryan Reynolds, Billie Piper, very rare steak, Highlander, Balthasar Gracian, vitamins, hot chocolate with marshmallows, grilled onions, Hard Lemonade, Jello, Henley shirts, sneakers, high heels, rain coats, flip flops, fish tank filters, water heaters, swimming pools, chocolate malt shakes, cream of mushroom soup, french onion soup, pancakes, DVDs, octopus clips, plaid skirts, boots, peanut butter, granola, hash browns, Nigel Bennett, swords, Peter Wingfield, Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Jack Harkness, Methos, Wolverine, candy canes, Pocky, Roast Beef Ramen, Creamy Chicken Ramen, Frosties, cappuchino, H. P. Lovecraft, David Boreanaz, Reece's Cups, dogs, car wax, and zip drives.

For all the other things and people I'm thankful for that I couldn't immediately think of, thank you too. Life wouldn't be the same without you.

John Barrowman's Another Side

John's new CD premiered about a week ago in the UK. You can get it on Amazon, but be prepared to pay for it. Possibly with severed limbs and kidneys.

That said, the CD is good. Really good. Especially if you like to sing along. John sings really well and I'm not sure if he was going for a theme here, or what, but I swear it's almost every song we've all ever sung in the car or shower. And in the case of "All By Myself" sung badly.

If it was titled "John Barrowman's Ultimate Sing Along" it wouldn't be inaccurate.

First, we have "All out of Love", which he manages to sound very sweet in. Then "You're so Vain" which I saw on the youtube clip when he was on the National Lottery. I like it a lot better on the CD, because the video dancers in the background were way out of sync and the studio recording sounds so much better. I have nothing to say about "She's Always a Woman to Me" and "Your Song". "Time After Time" sounds completely different from every other cover of the song I've ever heard, which I have to give him major kudos for. "Everything She Does is Magic" is preposterously good. I've almost started singing along in public in time with my iPod, and I'm going to pretend I didn't do some goofy footwork dance move on the stairs. Thankfully no one was watching. But John can dance too! He sang the song on Strictly Come Dancing the other night, which I think is sort of like Dancing with the Stars. "If You Leave Me Now" is cute, and very seventies sounding. And "Heaven" (which it took me a moment to recognize, since it sounds similar to his cover of "Time After Time") startled me. It was one of those club anthems a few years ago, when it seemed a new remix of it was playing on the radio at least once a week. Part of me wants a techno remix of his version, honestly.

However, prize of the whole album is his cover of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good". I had to listen to Nina sing it this morning and Michael Buble too, to catch everything about it. "Feeling Good" is one of those songs I don't think I've ever heard covered well enough that I thought it stood up in awesomeness next to the original. I've never watched Six Feet Under but I love their commercial featuring the song. Makes me wish I could skate. Nina is a hard one to top, simply because I think she's so incredibly sultry at it, and it's a sultry song. Even the background music sounds sultry. It's perfect. And that makes all the covers automatically fail somehow. Michael Buble sounds like too much of a good boy to really carry it off, even if the instruments seem to get it more than he does in some places. Up until the first "And I'm Feeling Good" he sounds like he has no business singing it, and then all the sudden the trumpets start up and he suddenly sounds like the cat that got the canary. Unfortunately by the time he's almost about to sing that line again, he's back to good. The trumpets carry the rest of the song, really, and I know I'm nitpicking about his tone; he does a good job with it regardless, especially at the end when he gets passionate sounding and his voice frays.

John starts the song off sounding lovelorn, which is brilliant. And by the time he's gotten to the first "good" he's worked himself into a raspy tone. He doesn't sound as sultry as Nina, but I've pretty much given up on anyone ever matching her in that category. He sounds really, really good, and I don't know much about acoustics but it sounds like where-ever he's singing is big and empty because there's a slight echo of his voice. Somehow that really works. He ends it well too; he carries "feeling" only slightly longer than I can, and spends the last minute of the song rasping the lines in a very sultry way. What I was disappointed by was the band the put him with. There's not one trumpet. A lot of strings, which do this clever shivery thing, and some cellos, and a piano. No trumpets.

Now, if someone out there had clever music software and could put John's voice with Michael's background music, then we might have a real challenger to the awesomeness of Nina.

On a non-musical note, his cover picture is to die for.

Nanowrimo

Also, I added a link to the right so you can see my nanowrimo account. There's an excerpt there, and you can see what my wordcount is with all sorts of clever graphics and charts and stuff.

Bed Hog

It's a huge picture. You should click on it to see how panoramic it really is.

I woke up this morning not because the alarm went off, or it was time to wake up, but because my leg was cramping up from being folded too long. The dog had gotten into bed with me at some point and decided to remind me it's really her bed, and she just lets me sleep in it. It's hard to tell in the picture since I cropped it so close, but the far right is where I was sleeping, which amounted to about a foot of space (the bunched covers on that side make it look like there's more room, but there isn't), and just above her head is where my other knee was at, since my leg was jack-knifed to make room for her.

Look at her. She can't even really bother to wake up enough to look at the camera.

Isn't she cute?

Not So Whispered Words

It's hard not to eavesdrop on the cafeteria porch when the person at the table next to you is loudly spilling all their intimate secrets to crowd of interested buddies. Sometimes it feels like it's even harder not to join in and say something. I grabbed a corn dog from the Krystal while I was going over the last three acts of King John, and listened to a tale of... well, not romantic woe, I guess, but I'm not sure what else to say it was.

Apparently, this guy took his girlfriend to a party, and he wound up sleeping with another girl at the party, and his girlfriend walked in on them. She's "acting like a total bitch about the whole thing" and won't give him a definite yes or no answer if they're still going to a concert next week.

His guy friends chimed in with sympathy as to how women are completely insane, irrational, and take offense at *nothing*.