YouTube Tuesday: Black Mountain Side

A board, a deserted road, and gravity.

Freedom.

YouTube Tuesday: The (Analog) Digital Music Video As Performace Art

Tonight's clip is a video of a vinyl record playing on a turntable.

That the song, "Blank Generation" by Richard Hell and the Voidoids, is a major favorite of Mine ends up being almost an afterthought.

Perhaps it's just Me, but I sat and watched that turntable spin for three minutes and it felt like thirty seconds. It was hypnotic -- watching (and listening) to the analog . . . digital . . . something about it carried Me away.

And the song, well . . . I love the song.

"I was sayin' let me outta here
Before I was even born
It's such a gamble when you get a face
It's fascinatin' to observe what the mirror does
But when I dine
It's to the wall that I set a place . . . "


The Cosmic Pep Talk For The Cosmic Pep Talker


I was talking to a girl who had just broken up with her Mistress, and I mean just, at the time we were talking.

I've written before of The Cosmic Pep Talk, which can be summarized as follows: Not everything that happens to the submissive is about the submissive.

And that is meant in both the positive and negative senses, in that, not only is everything that goes right not necessarily the sole result of your wonderfulness, but also everything that goes wrong certainly isn't a result solely of your horribleness. It's amazing how easily a submissive will accept the first part yet have a very difficult time accepting the second part.

In this particular case I didn't deliver the Cosmic Pep Talk per se. The breakup was a little too fresh . . . it wouldn't have had the appropriate impact, I thought.

But being in that situation, talking to someone fresh from the loss and the hurt (and the anger, simmering beneath the surface, but there) ends up being good for Me, because it reminds Me of the simple truth and overwhleming importance of the Cosmic Pep Talk.

Because, after all, if everything that happens to the submissive isn't about the submissive, then there's no escaping that everything that happens to the Dominant isn't about the Dominant, as difficult as it can be at times for My ego to accept.

YouTube Tuesday: Who Do You Love?

One of my favorite things about youtube and its ilk are the videos where someone just decides that X might go with Y, even though X and Y are so seemingly different.

Tonight's clip is a great example of that. Take clips from the movie adaptation of Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned and pair them George Thorogood's perfect, rollicking cover of the Bo Diddley classic, "Who Do You Love?" To call that non-obvious is an understatement.

It's hot, it's creepy, it's nutty, by turns. It works. Kudos to its creator.

Brief

Health issues have been more or less consuming lately, and the blogging/writing energy just isn't there.

Will be better soon. KAHTATUS.

YouTube Tuesday: Sabotage

Sometimes, it just has to be the Beastie Boys. They've been around a long time in a crushingly competitive, relentlessly forward-moving genre where acts come and go like fireflies.

They've done that by maintaining a unique sound while not coming off as inflexible. Their videos are far above the hip hop standard for creativity, and they can still write and still rhyme.

"Sabotage" takes 70s cop shows (particularly Starsky and Hutch, I get the feeling) as its inspiration. It's fun, ridiculously exaggerated, yet somehow reverent to that style at the time.

"I can't stand it I know you planned it
But I'm gonna set it straight, this Watergate
I can't stand rocking when I'm in here
Because your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear
So while you sit back and wonder why
I got this fucking thorn in my side
Oh my, it's a mirage
I'm tellin' y'all it's a sabotage"


YouTube Tuesday: Super Freak

Tonight's clip is "Super Freak" by the late Rick James.

There are things in life that one might describe as "compellingly hideous" (or "hideously compelling," I suppose), but few can match early 80s style in that category.

Rick James, with "Super Freak" takes it all to some other level. The girls. The clothes. The glitter in his hair. The song about sex, more or less, that is incredibly non-erotic.

This video takes the carbon of a time and style and presses it into a cheesetastic diamond of pure, wildly enjoyable, horribleness.

Enjoy. You will feel physically dirty after doing so. But at the same time, so right. I promise.