My Depressing Tuesday song was going to be Johnny Cash's Ain't No Grave (Can Hold My Body Down), but I thought it would be inappropriate if I did so after mentioning the death of Elizabeth Sladen, TV's Sarah Jane Smith: 1 February 1948 – 19 April 2011 - not a bad run, I guess, and she's survived and remembered fondly, but still a shame. I always preferred Sarah Jane Adventures to Doctor Who, and on my first forays onto the internet I encountered a few like-minded nerds who liked bad 90s action movies and terrible sci-fi films made for twenty pence in a quarry but who were also into Who and had actually met her in person - this being before she resurfaced in the current franchise of Doctor Who and was appearing at old-school Who conventions - and the consensus was that she was a lovely, approachable and outgoing woman, which is probably worth noting given how most stories of meeting minor celebrities tend to be about how unpleasant the experience was for someone or other. I did not hear a bad word said.
This Depressing Tuesday ditty goes out to my boy Edge. Never the top draw, he was still an enthusiastic addition to the soap-opera circus of professional American wrestling and I did always like his raucous theme tunes - even the one by Rob Zombie who is a director or something now remaking good old films as bad new ones but who had some pretty good ditties back in the day.
I normally share my depression with everyone on a Tuesday with a sad, sad song, but this Tuesday I have been looking up comic artists' page-drawing speed and oddly, "a page a day" is a lot less common than I've been led to believe. Some of the rates are a bit sobering, actually. Don't know what to make of this new information, but I'm not as glum as I'd usually be at this time, and a Depressing Tuesday song might be hard to pick out... if I didn't used to be such a Radiohead fan.
Actually, Banana Co isn't even their most depressing song, that would be a toss-up for me between Exit Music or You Never Wash Up After Yourself, though Banana Co does have the virtue of embedding in blog posts. Radiohead for the most part I don't actually find that depressing, creating for my money songs that are less about outright depression and more about anxiety and paranoia, which is fine when you're fifteen and living in a working-class shithole and the weight of how limited your options actually are occasionally crushes the air from your chest, but once you're past 24 you're better off turning into a big music snob and telling everyone else in the factory that Leonard Cohen is where it's at. Me, I didn't even know who Leonard Cohen was until Neal off Young Ones (specifically on the dvd that came out in the late 90s with all the politically-incorrect stuff that originally made it near-the-knuckle was taken out so Ben Elton could chase a knighthood and Kenny Brannagh's friendship) lamented "I'm like a Leonard Cohen record - nobody ever listens to me." Suzanne is a good track, and he did give the world Hallelujah so Jeff Buckley could do the definitive cover before it became overexposed - but before it did, the song was one of my favorites ever since Mark Radcliffe played it on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks because it was his personal 'go-to' song at the time, presumably to get away from the fuckwits playing REM's Everybody Hurts every five minutes as they struggled to find an anthem for the tragedy to further package and brand it like they did when they started calling it 911. Mind you, not to blame Simon Cowell unduly, I found the song overexposed by the time the actor Alan "Jim From Neighbours" Dale had died of an onscreen heart attack to Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah in two entirely different tv shows (The O.C. and Ugly Betty).
Enough waffle, it's off to bed for me - have a good Wednesday, all!
Man, that is one popped-looking collar... 82 pages in the bag, just 28 to go, and I'm gonna have to pull some all-nighters somewhere down the line, I think.
Because your Tuesday may not be depressing enough:
Been playing Homefront, a game written by Red Dawn, Apocalypse Now and Conan The Barbarian screenwriter John Milius, in which he weaves an intriguing scenario exploring the militarization of civilian life during a ground invasion of America in the wake of peak oil production and energy shortages caused by the failings of capitalism and a face/heel turn by reforming North Korean leader (and current heir presumptive) Kim Jung Un, a largely secondary concern for me beyond the game's main selling point of playing a character whose only goal is the shooting of communists. My experience of unions is basically that I'd be better off taking my money, wiping my asshole with it, setting the money on fire, then just doing whatever my employer tells me regardless of any concerns I may have. This course of events may at first seem irrational, but it serves to eliminate hope from the equation, and once you do that you tend to just get on with things. Anyway, unions are bloody useless and if I don't like them, you can imagine my feelings on communism, a political ideal based on everyone having the same thing: fuck all. If ever there was a disingenuous lot worthy of being shot like farmyard vermin, it's the communists, and on that score Homefront floats my boat just fine. Another big selling point is that the stealth bits are entirely optional - which is good because when I see thirty commies working a mass grave the time for sneaking is over and it's time for Old Painless to get his day in the sun. All you do is shoot communists, occasionally for variety's sake shooting them with rockets, shooting them from a helicopter, or shooting them from the top of a jeep that will run over anyone you don't shoot. Basically, any game that has communists set alight by white phosphorus to Elvis Presley's Burning Love was always going to get my vote, and while I'm not saying I would gay marry it, so far we've got a healthy bromance going.
Now, because Tuesday is that most depressing of the days of the week, here's a Tori Amos song that's haunted me for years even before I discovered it's a song about her miscarriage. Love the buildup near the end, I think that was when it started dawning on me that far from just having a warble with that admittedly amazing voice of hers, Amos was looking for some sort of emotional release through her music, a sentiment I feel I should berate quickly before the music snobs make fun of me, or - worse - start banging on about Kate Bush being better - I can't help it that I'm not in my fifties, grandad.
