Sunday, August 14, 2005

And I'm not my perspective or the lies I tell you every time

Ok, can I first say how much I hate this weather? When the heat idex tops 100 degrees for days in a row, I get very very crabby. I just want to spend today either sitting in a cool pool (which ain't gonna happen.....you know, since I let my Soho House membership lapse) or trapped in a meat locker (or even a movie theater, except that yesterday I already saw two movies to escape the weather and there is nothing left to see until the 40 Year Old Virgin opens next week!). Even with the air confitioning going in my apartment, I'm drenched in sweat. I know, it's not a pretty picture. I just tell you so that perhaps my depresso, bad mood post has an excuse. Like, perhaps I'm grumpy because I've sweated off 5 pounds since I went to sleep last night, not because I'm a whiny bitch.

First things first, the shows I saw this week were great. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah drew the biggest crowd I've ever seen at South Street Seaport and I ran into this cool girl from work, got introduced to Kelefa Sanneh (which is like meeting a celebrity to me!), and (even though I went to the show by myself) randomly ran into like 10 people that I knew. The weather was perfect, cool and breezy (by August's standards) down at the seaport, and the band really sounded great. The next night, Bill and I went to see Pit Er Pat (who were a little too hippy, jam band-ish for my taste, but the tribal drumming was AWESOME!) and Need New Body (who were sort of like an acid trip come to life). I can't put my finger on what exactly it was, but there is something very "Philly" about them. Bill said it was their "we're underapreciated" vibe. The show felt weirdly underattended, but it was ok. When the Knit gets to crowded, I've been known to faint.

The real reason I decided to post today (aside from the fact that my internet is finally letting me--after 5 days of claiming, yet again, that I have no cookies enabled) is that I was inspired by Shaya's last post to check out what my most played ipod songs were. The results were kind of disturbing. Not because I'm embarassed or the band's are bad (on the contrary, some of my favorite bands are represented), but because I feel like there is a very sad lyrical thread that weaves between all of my most played songs. I told Shaya that I feel like one's most played songs are a like a Rorschach test. I've been sort of obsessed recently with the idea that ones likes and dislikes tell you so much about a person. (Its like Rob says in High Fidelity: "It's what you like, not what you are like, that's important.") For example, I have been wondering recently what it means about my personality that I've been rooting for the "bad guy," JR, on my soap opera (yeah, yeah, I watch All My Children, wanna make something of it?) because I feel bad for him (after his ex-wife fucked his brother and ran away with his child, telling him his son was dead) and totally understand his need for revenge, or that Shaya and I almost had an argument watching last week's Six Feet Under because she feels bad for Brenda (who I kind of hate) and I feel bad for the adulturous Quaker that was with Nate when he had his episode.

The funny thing about my most played list is that the top 3 songs have each been played upwards of 70 times, and the rest of my most played songs have only been played 20 or 30 times. So, these songs resonate twice as much with me. Or I need to hear them twice as often.
They are:
Does He Love You, Rilo Kiley
Portions for Foxes, Rilo Kiley
and The Absense of God, Rilo Kiley

Gee, you think I like Rilo Kiley?? The thing is, while I love these songs, they aren't necessarily my favorites. In fact, they aren't even my favorite Rilo Kiley songs. But there do seem to be a lot of occasions when these songs are appropriate or times when I really, really want to hear them. Well, what does that mean, what are they about? Let's see, we've got a slow song about being the other woman, a mid-tempo jam about bad news fuck buddies, and a sadly romantic song with a string section about different people's ideas of what love is that includes my favorite line ("We could be daytime drunks if we wanted, We'd never get anything done that way baby."). What the hell does that say about me? That's almost as embarassing as admitting that I watch All My Children enough to have bothered to take a side in the JR/Babe/Jamie love/hate triangle.

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