happydalek: (Default)
Posting two days in a row? It's like a Lent Miracle! Actually, I'm hard-core procrastinating on all the Things I Should Be Doing. But I'm also celebrating the fact that I had an awesome interview today for a summer internship. I've been led to believe by a few of the people involved that I have a very, VERY good chance of getting the position this year, but I refuse to buy into that wholesale, since I was led to believe thesame thing last year. In truth, I think I've got it pretty much locked up, so the denial is partly a self preservation measure.

ANYWAY, here's a bit more of Bowie Appreciation.

I have a weird relationship with the late 90's. I was in middle school/early high school during that time, so the major theme was "awkward." It was when I began to become aware of the larger youth culture around me, and was first confronted with the issues of personal identity that proceeded to dog me for the next ten years. Right or wrong, I mostly remember that time scored to the works of "Nickelback," which I discovered via my younger sister's CD collection. Truth be told, I have a soft spot forNickelback that tends to evoke embarrassment from my RL friends. Whatev. I kind of love Nickelback's soppy "save the world" ballads and I don't care who knows it. Either way, though, I'm sad I didn't manage to discover David Bowie's 1997 album "Earthlings" during that time. Because it is, quite frankly, one of the most incredible things my agitated, drunken mind has ever encountered and is singularly amazing. And kind youtube member SuperDiamondDogs has been good enough to make the ENTIRE ALBUM available as one single supersizedtrack on the internet (the individual tracks are also there):

Apparently SME is being a little bitch about playback rights, so go to youtube and LISTEN TO IT. Because even though I sure as hell can't describe what's going on in most of the tracks, I CAN tell that it consists largely of David Bowie kicking the late 90's music scene in the ass with his electronic and saxophone-tainted awesomeness. Seriously. Dude was like, 50 years old when he made this, and it is just unbelievable. It gives me foolish hope that I might still command the respect and street cred of the younger generation when I'm 50. Regardless of age, it is just plain cool, and might be the thing to finally break me of my obnoxious Nickleback habit.
Oh, who am I kidding; no, it won't. But it's still an awesome album.
happydalek: (Default)
YOU GUYS.  DAVID BOWIE IS A FABULOUS ROCK STAR, GUYS.  Did you know that?  I KNOW IT NOW, TOO.

Also, this is a very lovely planet you guys have here.  Earth, you call it?  Not the prettiest-sounding name, but ok.  I'm really enjoying the variety of cultures you humans have here.  So much to see and experience!

Okay, then.  DAVID BOWIE.  I knew who David Bowie was from a fairly young age.  Of course I did.  I don't remember when I learned of him for the first time, probably one of those cultural osmosis things, but I know my idea of him was fairly well cemented by Labyrinth, which I saw for the first time in middle school.  So for me, David Bowie was basically Jareth.  Tight pants and mostly unpalatable (to me, at the time) tunes from the late 80's and early 90's.  I knew the song "Starman" and that he'd been some kind of glam rocker in the 70's, then played an alien in "The Man Who Fell To Earth" and then released more music in the early 2000's and had kind of ridiculous 90's boy band hair, and did that hilarious cameo in "Zoolander."  So yeah, I knew of David Bowie, and if anyone had asked, I would have said sure, I was a Bowie fan.  I liked Labyrinth, and that song of his they used in "A Knight's Tale."  So of course I was a Bowie fan. 

It turns out, however (and this should be painfully obvious to ANYBODY), that I had NO IDEA what David Bowie was all about.  So, a coworker who found out that I loved sci-fi stuff, was appalled to find out that I'd never actually heard all of "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," so he burned me a copy of it.  This happened at least six months ago.  Two months ago, I got a car with a CD player in it, and last month, I finally popped in the Ziggy Stardust CD and listened to it.  I probably wouldn't have if it hadn't been Bowie's 65th birthday in January and a friend of mine posted a 1972 performance video of Bowie performing "Space Oddity."  I did a little google-fu and found her the original 1969 music video of "Space Oddity," and it has changed my life.  I wasn't crazy about "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" at first, but over the past two weeks, it has wormed its way into my mind in that borderline dangerously obsessive way that such things occasionally do.  I developed a craving for more things Bowie.  I started at his Wikipedia page (don't judge), and that's when I discovered that he had an absolutely incredible career between the Ziggy I'd just met, and the "Zoolander" cameo I knew from just a couple years ago.  I started looking up songs and performances and interviews and suddenly I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS GUY'S MUSICAL GENIUS, GUYS.  He is everything I've always wanted in a musical artist but never thought could possibly exist in one person's career.

I want to share my newfound Bowie appreciation with you all, but it's 2 AM here, and I simply cannot do it in a single post, so consider this the first of probably several Bowie Appreciation Posts to follow.  For now, let me simply direct you to the video that started it all, both for David Bowie's incredible career and my new obsession over his incredible career, 1969's Space Oddity:


 


 
happydalek: (loony grin)
Why, oh why does my brain always latch onto weird, hokey stuff? 

I sooo should be working on my schoolwork right now.  At the very least, I should be pounding out the last three parts to 'Fission' and finish the dumb thing.  Instead, the only productive thing I did all week was go to the gym a couple of times.

Such is life.

I have to confess, though, since I saw 'Rocky Balboa' last week, I've gotten kind of obsessed. I mostly can't get over how incredibly great he looks in his Rocky fedora, then and now.  


You see the state I'm in?  My brain is broke, I tell ya!

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happydalek

August 2012

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