The best songs never to be sung by Corey Feldman: by CYNDI LAUPER
Let me tell you teaMMatt's official opinion on covers: they are great.
Now let me offer some tidbits of Matt the Great's history with covers:
For YEARS, I loved "Hazy Shades of Winter." I thought, "Gee, this is such a great Bangles song!" Then, one day I heard a crunchy cover of "Hazy Shades" and thought it was a cool way to re-interpret the song. Turns out, the re-interpreters were Simon and Garfunkel, and they re-interpreted it a solid decade before the original!
The best part of Christmas this year was
Ladystein's 'How Ladystein Saved Christmas' concert. This was in February. They sang "Jessie's Girl." I died. There was more trademark Ladystein apathy packed in that familiar post-chorus pause ("...Where can I find a woman like that? / [
pause] / [
guitar chords resume]") than in my entire middle school career.
I know all the words to "Ring of Fire." I didn't learn them from Johnny Cash. I learned them from Blondie.
I know all the words to "Heroes." I didn't learn them from David Bowie. I learned them from Blondie.
Did you guys know that "Comfortably Numb" isn't a Scissor Sisters original? I didn't.
The Swedes will always beat us at pop music. Totally. But Erasure manages to beat ABBA at Swedish pop music.
But when I heard that Cyndi Lauper's catalogue was to get the cover treatment, I found the end of my Cover Lovin'. Don't fuck with the masters. (see: Roundabout Theatre Company) But then I learned that the person charged with covering the twelve tunes was actually quite capable and worthy of my trust. That person is Cyndi Lauper.
Her holiday season release record was The Body Acoustic, and on it, she restyles her old and new classics with acoustic makeovers and special guest stars. The acoustified "She Bop" makes you feel severely guilty for every time you've ever masturbated...ever. You want to go to church, badly. We see lez-rock favorites Ani DiFranco and Sarah McLachlan (On a Cyndi Lauper cd. This is why we are now seeing all this women's heart disease stuff. Lesbians are exploding.). Japanese pop-brat stars Puffy Ami Yumi giggle on "Girls..." It's great.
Matt the Great's official favorite Cyndi song is "All Through the Night." Here, it's perfect. She calls on Shaggy to help her out on this one--a very good choice. His function is to weave his rap thang in and out of her singing as well as to bring it home on the breakdown. It creates the hybrid of Alanis Morissette's "Front Row" and Erasure's "Take A Chance On Me." It's subtly Zydecoed up (she loves her Zydeco).
Across the album, we hear that strain in her voice that no doubt comes from having to squint her eyes all the time. The album sounds as if she said, "OK, we're doing each song in one take, and if it's not perfect, then fuck it," but in a good way. In a live concert sort of way. Playing the cd really brings up the emotional journey you go through at one of her concerts, and since I've been to a couple [14] of her concerts, I do consider myself somewhat of an authority on the Lauper Live! sound.
There's been a lot of Cyndi Lauper business lately. I saw Threepenny. I wanted to write about it, but this site doesn't cover outings at the "Gay Store," as Popzilla calls Broadway. (Watch out for this Popzilla. I believe Popzilla is the new Pink Is the New Blog.) When you clicked on Popzilla's link, you surely saw the Madonna/Cyndi collaboration post. You're right, P, Chelsea just imploded, and so did I. I'll leave now with this Lauper Live! short story: when Jaclyn and I saw her on The Today Show at Bryant Park one summer (cooking bundt cakes with Emeril), someone in the crowd yelled, "You're so much cooler than Madonna." Cyndi just rolled her eyes and kept singing.
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And for the record, the Celine Dion "Drove All Night" cover: it never happened, as far as I'm concerned.
100% Intense [New Feature!]
One of the best internet finds, as most twenty-/thirtysomethings totally already know, is
Television Without Pity.
The site is a forum of the kids who were dorks in high school, but are on the cusp of inviting the formerly popular kids to blow them because their next jobs will be for
The Daily Show,
The Onion, or
South Park. Essentially, they explain what happens on TV each week. Often, the episode redux takes about an hour and a half to read though the episode itself was only thirty minutes long. The recappers have, at times, really screwed things up, such as that time theu moved
Commander in Chief to Permanent Hiatus after Episode 3, but we allow them to err because so often they provide us some of the greatest moments in Western literature:
It's like when you walk into Diesel and there's pieces of t-shirts stapled onto other t-shirts and first you think, "Björk made this!" and then you think, "Oh. I could make this." (Unknown)
[Top Model's Brittany] is also wearing kind of an obnoxious hat, which isn't
helping matters. The hat always seems to give people license to act more
annoying, which is why Mayim Bialik was such a freaking pill. (Potes)
Unfortunately, TVWoP does not recap Degrassi: TNG, and they never will:
What about Show Y -- can we expect recaps of that?
If a show has already started and it doesn't have a section on the site..., it's pretty safe to assume that we won't be recapping it.
Awwww, why not? You guys could do such a funny job with it!
Why, thankee. We do have good reasons for these decisions, though, so you'll just have to trust us (and refrain from blitzing us with emails about adding the show). ...if it's three weeks into the season and you haven't seen a recap, there aren't going to be any. Accept it and move on.
But --
No.
(source: TVWoP FAQ)
This is a bitter shame. I have discussed
Degrassi as quality television before.
Remember? So that means
I will have to recap
Degrassi: TNG. Just like The N's taglines for the show itself, my recaps will (a.) be
100% INTENSE, and (b.)
GO THERE. Teen pregnancy, drug dealing, gun violence, acne, coming out, sleeping with the teacher, racism, cheerleading squad coups, graduation, alcoholism, shitty locker assignments: get ready bitches.
Organized Shout-Out [New Feature!]
I made a policy on Day 1 not to make a list of friends' blogs' links. It's just tacky. But done in ordinance of the proper guidelines, I believe I can make linking to a friend's blog a little bit classy.
And such has been born "Organized Shout-Outs."
Organized Shout-Outs will be announced each month as an entry and appear for the entire month as a sidebar. Look. This month's is sitting right there to the right.
The inaugural OSO links to my friend Isaac, who was named after Track 10 on Madonna's
Confessions album, which I will see in live performance in Section 202 this summer. Isaac's a real link-whore, linking to such sites as Google, NYT, and Craigslist, but somehow not MTG's stellar webspace. Despite this, Isaac asked to be link buddies, so he gets to be not only Miss April, but my first ever Organized Shout-Out.
It's teaMMatt's very first monthly feature. Isaac: Happy April.
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Do you want to be next month's Organized Shout-Out?
Email me.
Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV This Week
Ian McWethy, you were the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV This Week.
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My friend and neighbor made his requisite debut on last Sunday's Law & Order, "Wasichu." Ian got a nice chunk of screentime, brooding as the apparently pivotal character Jud Rorich, the pot-trafficking or pot-using--something with pot, or maybe cocaine--teen. Ian brilliantly embodied everything that's wrong with American kids today, with their hair dye and rock music and apathetic detachment.
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Ian's co-star was Mr. Big, cast as the detective grilling Ian for something. Apparently Ian saw something out of the window that was important to the plot. I really don't have any idea what happened on the episode; it had something to do with real estate and drugs, and there was a murder, blah blah blah. But Ian was on it, and HE GOT TO CRY! He totally broke down. Awesome.
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All of Ian's Lavender Hill
(*) buds gathered in his apartment, and the big screening was unsurprisingly so well themed up. Ian's girlfriend
Carrie wrapped the apartment in police tape and placed all the utensils for her baked goods in ziplocks marked "Exhibit A," "Evidence: Do Not Tamper With," and such. And to celebrate Jud Rorich, Melissa came all gothed out. Yeah Melissa, as if you really needed to hotten yourself up even more with fetish-wear.
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At the first commercial after Judfest (as the scene will no doubt be called on the L&O message boards), everyone in Ian's family started calling to congratulate the cutest lil goth kid ever.
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(In a brief moment of earnestness, CONGRATS, IAN!!!)
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(*) - Editor's Note, 4/10/6: I had been sitting on this post for a while, waiting for Urban Dictionary to accept my definition of "Lavender Hill." Urban Dictionary didn't for whatever reason, maybe because I used words like "erroneously" or used "its"/"it's" correctly while they're going for a
different kind of
feeling. Here's the definition Urban Dictionary did not accept:
Lavender Hill - (N.) The uptown section west of Broadway in Manhattan's
Washington Heights, perhaps erroneously labeled for its
allegedly concentrated gay population. Referred to by realtors as "Hudson
Heights."
Ex.: I don't know what kind of place the Monkey Bar is trying to be, but it is
on Lavender Hill...
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