summer seven

There's another meme running its viral little course through assorted blogs that I read regularly. I didn't actually get tagged, but, like your bratty kid sister, I wanna play too. So, I'm tagging myself... and posting the instructions, just in case any of my blogger friends should also desire to tag themselves. But don't feel obligated, mes amis!

Here's the low-down:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.

And now, Marjorie's Summer Seven:

1) The Black Keys, "Just Couldn't Tie Me Down"-- The whole album of Rubber Factory had been in very regular rotation in my car CD player for about a year. It's the perfect languorous summer loll of Dirty South blues-- even though the band's actually from Ohio. I always thought this song would make an excellent ironic, irreverent recessional at a hot August wedding. (Yeah. Don't tell me it surprised you that I'm not a fan of traditional ANYTHING at weddings.)

2) The Honorary Title, "Stay Away" -- I've just started listening to Scream & Light Up the Sky. Mostly, it's just a pleasant indie pop album in the vein of Guster and Wheat and maybe, Dexter Freebish. But I like the sort of melancholy chorus of this song.

3) Sigur Ros, "Gobbledigook"-- You guys all watched the video to which I sent you in this post, right? If not, get thee there. NOW. And get to know this band-- their new album release is immanent.

4) Paula Cole, "Feelin' Love" -- Paula Cole, I know, I know. You don't have to say it. For years after I made out with James Van Der Forehead that one time in college (Yep, I kissed Dawson himself. Oops. Had I not mentioned that here before? *sheepish*), every friend I ever had insisted upon singing the "doo doo doo doos" from "I Don't Want to Wait" to me every time they saw me. Thanks guys. I know it just means you care. But this song has sultry, nasty lyrics and a stripclub backbeat. Made for primetime TV, it's not.

5) The Raveonettes, "With My Eyes Closed" -- This summer, the Lust, Lust, Lust album is never too far out of reach. "Aly, Walk With Me" reminds me of Twin Peaks theme and the rest of it sounds like an early '60s girl group got in bed with, like, The Strokes or something. This song in particular, though, has the lazy tone of swoony Hawaiian surf anthems. What could be more apt for the clime? (A close runner-up for this list is "You Want the Candy"-- also from this album.)

6) Ryan Adams, "Come Pick Me Up"-- I found this song in a mix CD a guy I dated a couple years ago made for me-- one to which I'd never really taken the time to listen-- probably because of lingering feelings of ick as it was a very short-lived affair, to be sure. But now that I rediscovered it, I love this song. To me, it sounds like driving a rusted out jalopy down the dusty backroads with all the windows down and your hair enmucked into your sticky lip gloss. Here's the refrain:

I wish you would
I wish you would
Come pick me up
Take me out
Fuck me up
Steal my records
Screw all my friends
They're all full of shit
With a smile on your face
And then do it again
I wish you would

Damn, that's so sexily fatalistic. *swoon*

7) Vampire Weekend, "Walcott" -- OK, OK, Vampire Weekend gets plenty of flack for being pretty little white boys from the Upper West Side who like to ape assorted ethnic (African, Cuban...) beats to make snappy little pop songs. But, hey, newsflash, folks! What would this last 50+ years of American musical innovation be without white people appropriating ethnic cultural markers? It's what we do. At least these guys own it. And they do it with such sharp, class-conscious irony in their lyrics. To wit:

Walcott
The Bottleneck
Is a shit-show
Hyannisport
Is a ghetto
Out of Cape Cod tonight

Rhyming "shit-show" with "ghetto"? So good. And bonus points for working such an unpoetic word as "Hyannisport" into a song.

Happy summer listening. Just don't let cute boys bust you car-dancing at stoplights-- it's so embarrassing.

Now Hiring: fluent (and un-squeamish) German speaker to translate post-feminist smut

So, word of Charlotte Roche's novel feuchtgebeite (which roughly translates to "Wetlands") is worming its way through assorted internet publications that I read on a regular basis. Apparently, it's all the rage in gross-out feminist lit. Some say its both admission and embrace of all that is not-so-pristine in femaledom and others say it's nothing more than South Park for gender theorists. Here's a little blurb and excerpt from Jezebel.

Even if I didn't have myriad theories about the power of pheromones, I'm pretty sure the following sentences would have me chomping at the bit to get my own little fingers on an English translation:

"I use my own pussy juice the way others use their perfume bottles. I stick a finger in my pussy and then dab the slime behind my earlobes. It works wonders when you're kissing people on the cheek."

I know, right? For good or ill, bald curiosity alone has me wishing I could read German.


And on a related (weird, German) note, you've just GOT to go to this site and watch the video you'll find therein. (...and you thought Alan Cumming's cologne sounded dirty...)