I caught this song recently while indulging in my going on six month love affair with XM radio in my car (they were supposed to turn off my free subscription after 90 days, SHHHH).
The opening bell (dulcimer?) riff, a motif carried through the rest of the track, sounds somehow appropriate for the holidays. The blast of energy that comes with the drum track kick will make your blood cells hop in joyous dance. Then comes the vocal melody, anthemic and carbonated, speaking so earnestly that knowing the lyrics, a triumph on their own accord, is irrelevant when you immediately begin singing along to the feeling. The siren voice of Alisa Xayalith (I originally thought this band featured a male lead using a chipmunk falsetto recently popularized by Michael Angelakos of Passion Pit) is really what makes this song unavoidably infectious, and if you think you can resist, just listen to her exclaim "eeeyeah" four times and try not to sing along. A smooth, synthy bass line drives the verse and gives way to the floating, pre-euphoric keyboards before the chorus ignites into a fireworks display of chimes and arena rock guitar; it delivers an instant high your ears will want more of.
The song also features fleeting periods of calm, like the bridge, which manages to slow your heart back down to the beat of the percussion while the voice of co-writer Thom Powers creates a feeling of reflection by lyric and sound. 2010 has been a long year often unfortunate year, and if ever there were a soundtrack for the final minute of this year, it would surely begin at the 2:08 mark. This minute is a chance to shed the past twelve months, the ups and downs, pains and joys, mistakes and triumphs, ("Count up all your mistakes, pair of forgivers. Let go before it's too late") in order to prepare for the coming renewal, signaled by the ball drop light explosion timed perfectly and serendipitously with the hook return at 3:05. To me, this song is the sound of hope and a renewal of the spirit of youth, which is captured in such a beautiful, artistic, and fun video chronicle of young people revolting against time while simultaneously embracing it. It's the sound of the "bittersweet between my teeth," the sound of an old burden "as it withers...crumbles and breaks," the sound of "one temporary escape." In short, I love this song, and I want to dance to it surrounded with beloved friends on a rooftop during a sunset. I know, I'm supposed to dodging cliches on this blog (forgive me). Give it a view and listen, then read the lyrics. The feeling of somber euphoria will mess with your heart and head: wrestle with it.
If I told you that a lack of clear and comprehensive procedure combined with sheer incompetence within an enormous government bureaucracy with a bloated budget of billions of dollars resulted in the compromise of hundreds of thousands of pieces of sensitive data that should have never been exposed to the public, you'd think I'd be talking about the Internal Revenue Service and your tax returns, or the Department of Health and Human Services and the results of your recent colonoscopy (Obama can see those too!) or maybe even everyone's favorite federal agency, the TSA and those hawt death-ray enabled passenger porn pics, right?
With Republicans in control of the House there's no doubt one can soon expect this massive, classic Big Government Democrat pet project to be immediately de-funded, just like ACORN. I'm sure Darrell Issa is already planning hearings.
This ad aired during Sunday's football fest (I saw it between watching my Eagles make Peyton their bitch) so as to ensure it would reach as many testosterone-fueled gamer-heads as possible. I'm not a Sensitive Susan but I'm going to exercise my right to bitch-blog and call shenanigans on this ridiculous and offensive commercial.
I understand the makers of Call of Duty (which is owned and published by venerated game-producer Activision) are obviously trying to sell their (impressive and addicting) product as the most realistic war simulation on the market. But in promoting this war GAME, one must take note of several important points: a) it's a GAME, b) we're still fighting the longest war in our nation's history that happens to also be one of the most brutal and tasking while having just concluded combat operations in another, equally grueling and costly war, c) we already live in a society where the wars we fight are largely ignored, either willingly or ignorantly, by the vast majority of the comfortable yuppie-class while America's low-income families send their sons and daughters to fight a determined enemy we can't even characterize correctly let alone locate on a map.
While Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel (??really??) smile satisfyingly at a downed helicopter or fumble comically over an RPG in order to sell a fun, exciting, really realistic war game to obese teenagers and lazy college students, America's heroes are being killed by RPG attacks on our Blackhawks in the Hindu Kush. Don't confuse me for someone who doesn't appreciate a good first-person shoot 'em upper. I'm currently working through 1994's classic Doom II again just for kicks; wasting alien hell-zombies with a double-barreled shotgun is fucking therapeutic. But no matter how realistic and/or epic and righteous Call of Duty or any other shooter game is, I would never, ever equate myself to a soldier, or claim my skillful hand-eye coordination in detonating a landmine would somehow make me a fine Marine. There is not a solider in all of us. If we were drafted to fight, we would fight, and most of us would do well given the best combat training in the world. But the fact remains that we did not volunteer. We stayed behind, and we benefit continually from the sacrifice of those who ran ahead. I don't want to launch into a rant about the glamorization of the perils and true costs of inglorious warfare (which certainly isn't a new phenomenon) but I have long felt a disconcerting disconnection between our contemporary society and the wars we (they) fight. The Greatest Generation included not only the brave young men fighting Over There, but the thoughtful and supportive populace back home for whom those men were fighting. They didn't just slap magnetic stickers on the back of their cars; they subjected themselves to food rations and recycled scrap metal for bombs. The circumstances of today's wars may not necessitate such similarly drastic sacrifices here at home, but that doesn't give us the luxury to ignore them, let alone conflate them with a damn video game. Playing war in the woods with twigs is part of growing up; now that we've grown, let's stop pretending we're soldiers (and equating our sports stars with them) and instead, on today of all days, solemnly honor those who actually are, unequivocally, warriors.
Here's the problem: while The Daily Show is making us laugh about Fox News egregiously and erroneously misreporting without performing standard journalistic practices something as ridiculous as how much a diplomatic presidential mission costs so as to paint this president as a splurging taxpayer-fucking don't-give-a-shit elitist xenophile, the millions upon millions of suckers who actually rely on Fox News as a legitimate source of journalistic analysis have bought the $200 million lie. Today, right now, the vast majority of Fox views (millions of people), still probably believe the president's trip to Asia actually cost $200 million a day, and most of those suckers are likely pretty pissed off about it. Oh good for CNN politely tweaking Sean Hannity on his hyperbole, now all 437 of its viewers are better informed as a result. The problem is precisely this: the folks who watch The Daily Show aren't the folks who watch Fox News, and vice versa. And the folks who watch Fox News vote much more than the apathetic crybabies who watch The Daily Show. The people who are being fed lies such as "President Obama's trip to Asia is costing all of us $2 billion dollars" and base their vote on them are the very people who will never be reached by the unassuming, reluctant guardians of truth calling shenanigans. We used to call those people "journalists." Now we call them "comedians."
A message for comedian Glenn Beck from an inspired artist with an old new sound:
