Finding some solace from an evening of detachment through music that resonated with longing.
"The old bastard left his ties and his suit
A brown box, mothballs and bowling shoes
and his opinion so you'd never have to choose" - Bastard
"Fred sits alone at his desk in the dark
There's an awkward young shadow that waits in the hall
He's cleared all his things and he's put them in boxes
Things that remind him: 'Life has been good'" - Fred Jones (Part Two)
"By the time the buzz was wearing off
we were standing out on the sidewalk
with our tattoos that looked like rings
in the hot Nevada sun" - You to Thank
"So now she's gone and broke my heart goddamn her
Turns out she's been fucking this drum programmer
She likes his style, she likes his rock start glamour
Well she's an infant! he can damn well have her!" - Hiro's Song
"Down the tracks
beautiful McMansions on a hill
that overlook a highway
with riverboat casinos and you still
have yet to see a soul" - Jesusland
"The daily dramas she made from nothing
So nothing ever made them right
She liked to push me and talk me back down
Until I believed I was the crazy one,
and in a way I guess I was..." - Landed
"In a haze these days
I pull up to the stop light
I can feel that something's not right
I can feel that someone's blasting me with hate
And bass
Sendin' dirty vibes my way
'Cause my great great great great Grandad
Made someones' great great great great Grandaddies slaves
It wasn't my idea
It wasn't my idea
Never was my idea" - Rockin' the Suburbs
"Good morning, son
In twenty years from now
Maybe we'll both sit down and have a few beers
And I can tell you 'bout today
And how I picked you up and everything changed
It was pain
Sunny days and rain
I knew you'd feel the same things" - Still Fighting It
"Sara spelled without an 'h' was getting bored
On a Peavey amp in 1984
While Zak without a 'c' tried out some new guitars
Playing Sara-with-no-h's favourite song" - Zak and Sara
"Smile
Like you've got nothing to prove
No matter what you might do
There's always someone out there cooler than you" - Always Someone Cooler Than You
One of the features Amazon has built into its recommendation engine is the "Frequently Bought Together" section that, I'm guessing, is supposed to inspire you to think "WOW! If other people are buying that, I should probably by it too!"
In the case of a recent purchase of, however, (and what I'm sure isn't a rare occurrence) there were two pieces of media that I could never imagine going together... ever. You see, the concept of "Frequently Bought Together" would indicate to me, more than once. Now I could buy into the fact that perhaps no one who had purchased that Ben Folds' University A Cappella! CD would necessarily buy the same second item before leaving Amazon. I more than expected the second item in the side-by-side purchase push to be another CD by Ben Folds or similar genre pounding piano rocker. I was shocked to find out that, as evidenced by the "Frequently" recommendation, the most popular accompanying item was the DVD Repulsion by Roman Polanski.
Ben Folds CD is described as "a great mix of pop-sounding arrangements (with beat-boxing and voices substituting as drums) and more traditional a capella singing (with lovely harmonies, etc.)"
Polanski's Repulsion, on the other hand, "shows us, in simple but effective terms, the horrors that lurk inside a troubled psyche. While obviously working on a shoestring budget, Polanski recreates with disturbing impact the strange and unsettling horror of a mind that has begun to turn upon itself. Carol Ledoux is not on a strong emotional footing as the story begins: she's at once compelled by and terrified of her sexual needs, and she displays an unhappy emotional distance from others that suggests a mild form of autism. When Carol is left alone after her sister leaves on vacation, her fragile connection with the rest of the world gives way, and. as she isolates herself in her apartment, Carol's mind fragments into a hallucinatory state, which Polanski manifests on-screen with an apt surrealism. Within the increasingly grim and shadowy confines of the flat, revolting images of rotting food and buzzing flies mingle with things that shouldn't or couldn't actually be there, and Polanski's impressionistic use of odd angles, visual distortion, and blunt, shocking violence make Carol's world seem as frighteningly alien to us as it must be to her."
Now those Ben Folds haters out there might think themselves clever by saying... "I get it. Ben Folds REPULSES me!" But to use film commercial techniques, I believe I can make the case for the tie...
The new Ben Folds CD is "simple but effective". Its "strong emotional footing" will convince detractors as "the rest of the world gives way". A "frighteningly" "apt" selection that will have an "impressionistic" "impact" all over the "world".
Although every Burt Bacharach song comes with a certain degree of kitsch, I've never enjoyed one more than when Ben Folds Five tore into "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" about ten years ago.