Birdwings

These are just some of my favorite or most memorable stuff I heard and watched this year, starting with songs embedded in the stories themselves, transforming their original meaning in all manner of pleasant ways going forward.

12 Monkeys was especially good at this task, and made excellent use of incidental music throughout. 'Arms of Mine' turned into my second favorite Otis Redding song because of it, and 'Don't You Forget About Me' by Simple Minds has been granted permanent rotation in my playlist. More impressively, this show elevated songs I hadn't found more than indifferently tolerable before, like Foghat's 'Slow Ride.' I always thought of it as a dumb hard rock song - not the worst but far from the best. This year, whenever it comes on the radio, it carries the charming image of Cole in sunglasses and a bad 70s shirt. This makes a huge difference in my outlook. Even a song I utterly loathe, 'I've Had the Time of My Life' (by... no idea, and I sure ain't looking it up), has been positively affected, in that while I still think the song is annoying, the last time it came on the radio at work I got a gigantic grin on my face in memory of Ramse.

Those were songs I already knew in other contexts. Meanwhile, Hard Core Logo introduced me to the Headstones (Hugh Dillon's band), and I went cruising around YouTube discovering that I liked the film version of 'Sonic Reducer' considerably more than the Dead Boys original (sorry) and that the Headstones did a powerful rendition of 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' in 2019 which is much faster than the original, and done with great passion and a beautiful music video (also, Hugh Dillon is remarkably handsome without the mohawk).



( Other stuff )

I'm five posts away from a hundred posts, so any excuse is a good one. ( Read more... )

I was giddy just getting to watch this episode. Plus, basking in the crystal clear visuals due to the lack of YT uploading pixellation. I really had no clue just how pretty these people are! ( Read more... )

I'm combining two. The first was a plot-driven downer, the second a character-driven highlight. ( Read more... )

In which Anna Gunn is random victim of the week and things get deliriously over the top. ( Read more... )

Finally an ensemble episode. It gave me a stronger sense for how these three work as a group and how they relate to one another in their downtime. I do start to wonder how they're paying rent out of all this. ( Read more... )

Hospital horror. Darn. Computer voice. Double darn. That's two in a row with paralytics as a plot point and three in a row about medical miracles, but never mind the plot (which was a step down from the prior two) because I continue to be sold on the leads. Well, two of them. ( Read more... )

Had spare time today so I threw this on. The short opinion: Creepy as hell. I loved it, although I'm not sure how much of that is based on this show's unique flavor as opposed to what it shares with others I already love. ( Read more... )