We caught Vienna Teng’s concert at the Roxy in April, a few weeks after the album came out. The Paper Raincoat opened for her, and I picked up their EP (and later, their first full-length album).

#2 Vertical Horizon, Burning the Days – After years off the grid (they’re best known for “Everything You Want,” which came out in 1999!), Vertical Horizon finally got back together and recorded a new bunch of songs. It’s not quite as good as the Gin Blossoms’ comeback, but it’s absolutely recognizable as Vertical Horizon and yet still new. (Well, mostly. “Welcome to the Bottom” sounds an awful lot like “Inside You,” though it does have more words.) Musically it’s similar in style to Go (a mix of hard and soft rock), but the lyrics are better, more on a level with Everything You Want.

#3 Butterfly Boucher, Scary Fragile – It’s been about five years since Butterfly Boucher’s last album. We heard “Another White Dash” the first time we listened to Indie 103.1 back in 2004, then caught her opening for both Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, but her second album was delayed by contract problems with her ex-label. As it turns out, it’s very good — Katie described it as the best sophomore album she’s ever heard. It’s a sort of indie rock sound. It was really tough for me to figure out whether to put Burning the Days or Scary Fragile in the #2 spot, but I finally settled on the one that I’ve been playing the most lately.

We saw Butterfly Boucher in concert last June at the House of Blues in San Diego.

I thought a major point of PulseAudio was to let applications share the sound card cleanly. *grumble* Sound worked fine before Fedora switched. I can’t even blame it on a bleeding-edge distribution, since from what I hear, Ubuntu has similar problems.

At least now I know (sort of) why it stopped again after applying the Complete guide to fix PulseAudio and video/audio VLC Media Player issues.

• Hard disks should not sound like buzz saws. #
• Slashdot article “FOSS Sexism Claims Met With Ire & Denial”…gets met with ire & denial. *headdesk* #
• Listening to lightsaber sounds from across the office. I think my coworker w/ the new Android phone found an app for that. #
• Vertical Horizon‘s Burning the Days is growing on me, but I think Vienna Teng‘s Inland Territory is my favorite new album this year #MusicMonday #
• TNT, its nice that your video streams are Mac-compatible, but when your ads require Windows, don’t prevent me from finishing the episode! # (I’ve gone into this in more detail.)

• Listening to new Vertical Horizon. Hope their tour makes it out to SoCal – the last concert we saw was really good. #MusicMonday #
• Got honked at because I actually stopped before turning right at a red light & paused half a second to see if the pedestrian at the corner would step in front of me. #
  

Movies: Coraline

YouTube also has the trailer in HD.

I discovered Sandman late, borrowing the trades from one of my (younger) brother’s friends around 1998 or so, then immediately tracking down my own copies. I lucked out and got a complete set on eBay for something like $70. Since then I’ve devoured most of Neil Gaiman’s work, be it in comics, prose, or movie form. The original novel of Coraline was very good, and it’s been adapted by the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is among my favorite movies…and what I’ve seen of the film suggests that they get it. It’s hard to believe it’s only two weeks away!

Other movies: Oddly enough, I’m only mildly interested in Terminator: Salvation, Transformers 2: Can’t Remember the Subtitle, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (the films have been steadily deteriorating after peaking with #3, IMHO), Star Trek, and Watchmen. I’ll probably see all of them, but none of them have me nearly as excited.

Comics, books, music, etc. after the cut:

Comics: Scott Pilgrim, Ignition City, and Fallen Angel

First up is the fifth volume of the Scott Pilgrim series, Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, coming in just a few weeks. This series is just plain fun: mindless action with a video-game sensibility, something of a coming-of-age story, and a huge dose of absurdism.

I’ve only read a fraction of Warren Ellis’ work, but I’ve subscribed to his “Bad Signal” email list for years, and he’s been talking about the ideas that became Ignition City for a long time. Basically, take all the old space hero archetypes (Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, etc.) and look at what happens when the future passes them by. I think someone described it as Flash Gordon meets Deadwood. I tend to like Ellis best when he’s doing science fiction, so this is a must read. Coming in April.

And finally: the relaunch of Peter David and J.K. Woodward’s Fallen Angel in July, with a crossover with Angel‘s Illyria.

There’s also Flash: Rebirth, which I’m looking forward to with a mix of excitement and dread. On one hand: Geoff Johns returns to the Flash and writes all of them, with Ethan Van Sciver on art. On the other: the more I learn about it, the more I get the feeling that the subtitle should be “Barry Allen is teh gratest Flash EVAR.” If that’s it, then no, thanks, I’m not interested. *sigh*

So, yeah, DC seems to be doing its best to push me away from anything they publish that doesn’t have “Vertigo” on the cover. I’m hearing rumors of a Welcome to Tranquility miniseries, but then that’s Wildstorm, so still not much DC-branded appeal. And the one Marvel series I read, The Twelve, is on hiatus (and it’s a mini anyway). Not going to be much coming out from the Big Two.

TV: Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Flash Forward

Of the TV shows returning for the spring season, I’d say Battlestar Galactica is the one that has me most intrigued. They’ve managed to throw new wrinkles into the Human/Cylon conflict and make viewers question basic assumptions about the show in the lead-up to the series conclusion. Next up is Lost, which has successfully moved past the Gilligan’s Island/Voyager problem of getting them off the island.

I’m also watching Heroes and Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, though neither of them has me champing at the bit for new episodes just yet. (Actually, I’m more interested in SCC than the new Terminator movie, which is kind of odd to realize.) What I’d really like to see is the last few episodes of Pushing Daisies. I’m still torn between bitterness at the show’s cancellation and knowing that at least it got to go out while it was still good, rather than after deteriorating.

As for future shows, the one that I’m most interested in seeing is Flash Forward, based on the novel by Robert J. Sawyer, in development for next fall. I’m also curious about Dollhouse, which starts in February, mostly because of Joss Whedon’s involvement. And I’ll certainly check out the BSG spinoff, Caprica.

Books

Not a whole lot, actually. There’s Robert J. Sawyer’s new book, “Wake,” (part 1 of a trilogy) coming in April, but I haven’t decided whether to buy his stuff in hardcover or stick with paperback. And the final book of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time epic, A Memory of Light (being finished by Brandon Sanderson) may be coming out by the end of the year, or it may not.

Other than that…I haven’t heard anything about Greg Keyes’ plans now that Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone is done. I don’t think Neil Gaiman’s got any new novels planned for this year, though I’ve only caught about half of his blog posts over the past few months. Naomi Novik might have a new Temeraire book by the end of the year, maybe.

Music

Tori Amos, Vertical Horizon, and Butterfly Boucher all have albums coming out, though I haven’t heard anything beyond “spring/summer 2009″ on any of them. Tori Amos has basically never slowed down, except for a break between record companies, and it’s only been a year and a half since her last album, American Doll Posse (which was very good). Vertical Horizon has been out of the picture for a few years, though their stuff still gets played. (I heard “When You Cry” at the mall yesterday when I went to lunch.)

You’ve probably never heard of Butterfly Boucher, but Katie and I caught one of her songs on Indie 103.1 when it first launched. Then she opened for two different concert tours that we saw over the next year (IIRC, Barenaked Ladies and…Sarah McLachlan?), and we picked up her debut album, Flutterby. She’s been playing a lot of music, but this will be her second album. (A few weeks ago she posted a note about how she was finally free of her record contract, which meant she could finally release the album she finished two years ago.)

Cross-posted at Speed Force

Got tech support question in Spanish for wrong company. Replied in bad Spanish with link. Checked against Google Translate. Google has a better vocabulary than I do. #

Links of the day:

• Not good: even with data disabled while roaming, the G1 still hits the internet. #
• All right! A new Vertical Horizon album next spring! #
• Roger Ebert dismantles Expelled (via @mikesterling). #

One example would be Vertical Horizon’s breakthrough hit, “Everything You Want.” The chorus repeats:

He’s everything you want,
He’s everything you need.
He’s everything inside of you that you wish you could be.
He says all the right things at exactly the right times,
But he means nothing to you and you don’t know why.

Most of the song presents this sort of detached, third-party view of someone who perhaps is concerned for a friend, but that’s all. Then the bridge hits, with lines like, “It’s only what you’re asking for,” and the intensity builds, until you get to the final chorus:

I am everything you want,
I am everything you need.
I am everything inside of you that you wish you could be.
I say all the right things at exactly the right times,
But I mean nothing to you and I don’t know why.

It suddenly becomes clear that the speaker is himself right in the middle of things, and the woman’s affections are in fact extremely important to him.

Another one would be the Jim Steinman song “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” made famous by Meat Loaf. The speaker keeps pleading with a woman that…

I want you
I need you
But there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you
Now don’t be sad
‘Cause two out of three ain’t bad

At the end of the song, he explains “There’s only one girl that I will ever love” and that, when she left him, “She kept on telling me…” at which point he launches into the refrain. Suddenly, this guy who sounded unreasonable throughout the entire song turns out to have been on the receiving end of the same dysfunction in a previous relationship—and he’s still messed up by it.

What other songs can you think of that do this?

Tuesdays, we go over for dinner and Farscape with Kelson’s family. Scapers, get ready to wail: last night’s program was “Self Inflicted Wounds.” Both episodes. For non-Scapers, yes, it was as big an emotional wringer as you may have guessed. When we got home after a round of coffee and sympathy, I checked a hunch on the lyric sheet for the latest VH album, Go. Bingo–”Won’t Go Away” has now officially joined the ranks of the video-able.

At the risk of sounding like an IMDb summary, get the full list here……

In chronological order of idea solidification:

1. “Everything You Want,” Babylon 5, Marcus and Ivanova. The first video idea we came up with, and I’m determined that one of these days we’ll actually do it.
2. “You’re A God,” Buffy, Ben and Glory from season 5. Has the possibility to be quite funny.
3. “All of You,” The Wheel of Time, Rand and his three (four? five?) women. Yes, a book video. It’ll never happen but those who know the books and the song know it’s interesting to picture.
4. “Shackled,” Babylon 5, G’Kar and Londo. This one didn’t really congeal until we hit on making it dual-POV rather than sticking to one character. Now it’ll probably the second one we try to do, if the DVDs all make it out into the world.
5. “Miracle,” Battle Athletes Victory. Done and well done by ErMac Studios.
6. “Give You Back,” Video Girl Ai. “I need to know if you were real/’Cause I’ve been known to get it wrong….”
7. “You Say,” Angel, season 3 finale and environs. We played this for Kelson’s family a few nights after the finale aired and got a pretty positive response. Again, it won’t happen until the appropriate DVDs materialize.
8. “Forever,” Buffy, Willow and Tara. This one is Kelson’s and I think he’s having fun with it.
9. “Goodbye Again,” Farscape, Chiana and D’Argo. As I have no idea what’s in store on that front, this video would have to be a slice-of-time piece from “The Locket” through at least “Self Inflicted Wounds,” with appropriate additional footage from other eps put in for theme and visuals.
10. “Won’t Go Away,” Farscape, Zhaan and Stark. I plan to play the song for the Farscape support group next week and see what happens.

The Wallflowers songs:

1. “Sleepwalker,” The Wheel of Time, dreamwalking and Tel’aran’rhiod. Don’t know how I’m going to handle the “Sam Cooke” bit if any visuals ever get made.
2. “Witness,” Buffy, evil Angel and the twisting of the relationship. ‘Nuff said.
3. “I’ve Been Delivered,” Buffy general video. It’s just too hard to resist a song that starts off with a line about breaking out of a coffin and actually contains the word “vampire.” There’s no way I can get a theme out of this, so it’d just be whatever fits with the song.
4. “Everybody Out of the Water,” Angel, all the apocalyptic season 4 stuff. There’d be some Buffy clips in there too, from season 7 and the other apocalypse-y thing. First in line to get made when the DVDs come out.

Anybody got any more?