we're a garage band, we come from garageland...
11.05.03 @ 11:09 p.m.
Today I decided that I don't actually hate the Beach Boys. I just strongly dislike any of their songs with the word 'surf' anywhere in the lyrics. Pet Sounds is a-okay with me. "Good Vibrations," hey, all right. The bootleg of "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" we listened to in class... uh, no. There's an exception to my "it's okay as long as it's not actually surf" rule. But hey, every rule needs an exception.
Once I told Martha all this, thinking she'd be at least a little happy that I don't totally hate them, I get two emails. The first? "You are wrong." After I replied asking how my OPINION was wrong, and wasn't it better that I at least sort of like them, I got "The Beach Boys can do NO WRONG." There's no pleasing some people. I think I want a copy of Pet Sounds now. All sad songs. Funnily enough, that album was hailed as an instant classic in England (after a rather poor showing in the US) but Keith Moon didn't like it one bit. He was really enamoured by the image of surf society portrayed by surf music.
I now totally adore Keith Moon, by the way. Poor, psychosis ridden fellow that he was. But loveable! Abusive to his wife, but quite charming!
I also adore the way the British pronounce "garage." Specifically, Joe Strummer in "Garageland" off The Clash. I took that album to school today and it's been running back and forth through my head all day. An interesting comparison with listening to "God Only Knows" four thousand times in the soundtrack of the Biography special on Brian Wilson. Christ. Oh, also a Rock History thing: We watched part of a video on the theremin, which is like, the first synthesizer. First electronic instrument, anyway. It makes that "wooooooWOOOOOOOOwooooooo" noise in old science fiction films. But the first blast of theremin we heard on the video totally traumatized my right ear because it was loud and I wasn't ready for it. It's a funny looking thing and I drew four or five pictures of it from different angles so I'd remember what it actually looks like.
If my novel weren't apparently fueled by the music of the Clash and maybe the Sex Pistols, I'd say it was time for a Nesmith revival. Speaking of the horrid novel, it's not going well. I'm about 750 words from quota today and my writing rate has been steadily falling. I ate up my whole thousand word lead. And I'm not likely to be writing much this weekend as there are big plans. Not only the friend plans, but also parental visit. And my dog! My doggy will be visiting me which makes me very happy. I miss her. I miss having a pet. I'm honestly tempted to get a rat again, except that it's always bloody cold here during the day and I was really bad at feeding my first rat every day and keeping it's cage clean. Still, little paws on your shoulder, whiskery nose in your ear... I miss animals. I'm stuck (in the novel) with my first scene of the story proper. Over four thousand words of prologue went amazingly quickly, but now that I'm actually writing about Celeste herself, things have slowed to a crawl. I think it's time to jump to a new scene. It makes me sad that Celeste is going to have to submit sexually to her hideous husband Gregoff, but alas. Gregoff's a very nasty man that killed her family and married her against her will (ooh, gothic) and, well, he's going to expect some rights whether she likes it or not. Luckily, Traveler will come soon and they'll leave. The future of this novel is really nebulous. I think maybe what I need is to pick up some random culture book in the cultural anthro section of the library and come up with some exaggerated cultures for them to encounter. And once Traveler comes in, I can have him tell the history of the Rangers. Whee. I already have some of that written and plotted out.
Um. I skipped Journalism yesterday and now I'm mildly paranoid about what tomorrow will be like. Here's hoping I didn't skip out on a test, eh?
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
