Bouncy, Bouncy....

QT, Roly Poly, Monk By the Sea, David Gray, Where the Wild things Sing

Someday, when you're feeling low (oops, James Dean song), go to the QT and fix this excellent perk up. Go to the fountain drinks, and mix together some of the Rooster Boost Energy Drink (just a little, on the bottom for Strawberry Flavoring), then Dr Pepper, then add the Vanilla flavoring. Mix, Pay, and slurp.... sooooo good (what it does to your blood sugar is another story.)
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I just went to the Roly Poly restaurant by Kroger on Ga 138 in Conyers, and got a sandwich (while waiting for my car to start, which it didn't.) wrap (philly cheese) and some of their potato salad. As one of my friends would say, OMG, you have to get some tater salad!!! It's amazing!!! I'm gonna go get a big container of it for $4.99.
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Take a look at Friedrich's painting Monk by the Sea. Most Art teachers will tell you it is the magnificence of Nature (and for Friedrich, that meant God) surrounding the insignificance of man. The dark colors and angry sky suggest power and sometimes indifference to the small soul on the beach. Much like Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat." But, if you look at it another way, isn't the magnificence of Nature including the man standing on the beach? We are included in that Greatness, that God created us as he created the sea, the sky, both dreadful and beautiful. As are we. Both dreadful and beautiful. Acts of both monsterous cruelty or benefinence.
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Haven't you always wanted to rewrite movie scenes, ones where you just wonder what the character was thinking. Take My Girl for instance. Macauley Culkin's character was allergic to bees. If I remember correctly, he knew he was, had an epi-pen to undo allergic reactions. Yet there he was, away from home, walking through the forest, and he sees a hive-like object on the ground. So he kicks it..... and gets attacked. And now that scene lives on for eternity in movies. And some million years from now, citizens on Alpha Centauri will watch that scene and say, "What was he thinking!!!"
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Quick Reviews: David Gray's Draw the Line. On the heal of Life in Slow Motion, it looks like David wanted to intigrate the Pro Tools synthesizers to live symphony recordings. And while I appreciated the albums by Matchbox Twenty that have been criticized for being overproduced. This album actually is badly overproduced. You can't hear the words all that well, although the lyrics are ingeniously done and very Dylanesque. He needs to take this album back to the simplicity of White Ladder and New Day at Midnight. Or, better yet, there is a live album he cut in 2007, called Thousand Miles Behind which pays amage* to folk singers that came before him. He covers songs by Tim Buckley, Bob Dylan, and others that I haven't discovered yet, but will. Excellent singing, amazing lyrics, and the instrumentals are good too. So find that one somehow (it's not in the Borders database....maybe online), and listen to it, even if you're not a David Gray fan or know who he is. Although, if you do get the new album, get the deluxe edition, because the second CD has a mix of live tracks and B-sides which are really good, especially "Babylon," his most famous song.
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Where the Wild Things Are Soundtrack: It is what it is. It is sung by Karen O and the Kids, along with what a reviewer called "primitive folk music." It reminds me a lot of Sufjan Stevens style of folk. Pan flutes, piano, guitar, some with a modal melody (meaning, in Tom Leher's dictionary, that they play a wrong note every now and then), and the laughter of kids. It is the raucous melody of children playing on the playground, the screams and shouts, first annoying, then infiltrating towards something nostalgic and wonderful, that sparks our imagination. In short, the Soundtrack puts into sound what the book puts into words. And hopefully, what the film will put into a colorful and meaningful piece of art. To me, the film should not be just a children's flick, but something that reaches into the hearts of adults and finds what remnant of childhood each of us still has left.