2005.12.12
For music in the car, I tend to get kind of stuck on whatever CDs happen to be floating around. Lately I've been listening a lot to a lot of Gwen Stefani's "Love. Angel. Music. Baby." disc. (I got it because of all the cool marching band percussion and horns in "Hollaback Girl"...incidentally videos for that and a few other songs are available off of her website.) Anyway, one of the other songs I've really been digging is "Bubble Pop Electric" (a kind of counterpoint to Meatloaf's infamous "Paradise By The Dashboard Light") where Gwen sings to her sutor that "tonight I'm gonna give you all my love / in the back seat."
But there are two parts that I really relate to...one is from the voiceovers (unders?) that play through the song, dramatizing the tale of the boyfriend picking up Gwen from her house. It's the way he says "Hi Mr. Stefani!", and you can almost hear the goofy grin on his face...cracks me up every time, I remember saying the exact same thing to Marnie's folks (substituting their last name of course, though it also starts with S and has 3 syllables, which maybe is why the song strikes such a familar chord for me.) In fact, Marnie's mom nicknamed me "Eddie", because I reminded her of that punk kid in "Leave It To Beaver" who was always so bright and cheerful with the parents.
The other thing I dig is where the boyfriend asks "so baby where you wanna go, huh", and the background chorus answers, sounding an almost ethereal "drive-in movie..." which repeates but gets (almost imperceptably) changed into "drive in, move me" and finally morphs to "Drive into me..."...yowza! That's Dave Matthews Band-esque in its starkness when you start to think about it.
So, those are the lyrics that have been bouncing around in my head lately. Thought I'd share with you all.
Cartoon of the Moment
 | --"Ghost of Christmas Present"...a cartoon I made for the Guest Ramble of the latest issue of Love Blender Digest. |
Dueling Viewpoints of the Moment
Boingboing linked to a NY Times piece about the difference in Americans and Brits' smiles...later followed up with a different spin on the same research by a UK paper. The Americans say that the Brits' smiles are more forced and aware of the social hierarchy, the Brits say the Americans' are more shallow and easier to fake.