tired thoughts

Ok, I’m a little tired and was up till stupid o’clock last night, so forgive me if this post rambles on a bit.

 

I don’t even know what I’m about to write about. I started putting on music on youtube that I’m probably too old for and would never let anyone know I listen to, and its gotten me thinking in that soap opera OC teen drama with a supercool soundtrack way.

 

It’s becoming a real struggle, by this, the third paragraph, not to make this into a nostalgia post. I did enough of those on livejournal and no one needs to hear it again. Instead, I think I’ll think about the music, and the drama.

 

There’s a reason that TV shows and films put so much effort into soundtracks. The right song at the right moment can have the most profound effects, raising emotion on subjects you thought long since resolved, or never even knew were there. It makes me wonder just what it is about music that can do that, underline a feeling or idea or emotion so incisively and powerfully. Although I suppose its not just music – a good book can do it, a favourite comic book even (All star superman issues 6 and 10), a work of art or a photograph. It strikes me that these things work really well in twos. I’ll champion comic books – American and Japanese and from anywhere in the world – till I die, an obvious marriage of words and pictures. The aforementioned TV use of music and moving pictures can work wonderfully and for some reason always surprises me. There are apparently a few comic book writers out there who see a strong link between comics and music, which is something I’ll need to read more about. Adding music to a comic, making it move, it feels like making it more like reality. Books go through it too, only with the added stage of storyboarding – a process I find suspiciously like a comic book. The book becomes a comic, which then becomes filmed. We read it, then we can see it, then we can see it in motion, the steps away from reality are becoming less and less. Of course, we watch our films and TV shows and know they aren’t real, and maybe that’s where the music comes in. We can suspend our disbelief over a bridge if we want, but we still know its not real. As much as we can connect with the emotions, they aren’t real emotions. Maybe the music helps. Its either a big neon sign saying “be sad here” and “smile at this” or it’s a two pronged attack, to make up for the lack of emotional kick that the medium just cant escape.

 

Last year in uni, my lecturer asked the class why we studied English. Why should a university put so much money into studying books? I always thought the obvious answer – its about communication. We try and get across our ideas and feelings and thoughts whatever way we can, whether we realise it or not. A raised eyebrow is as much communication as a written letter, sometimes moreso. Studying English was really just a study of communication, analysis of tone and structure and word choice, related to everything around it.

 

I’ve actually totally lost my train of thought and have no idea what I was going to say, so I’ll stop here save for some one word comics reviews…

 

 One Word Reviews – Comic Books

 

Ultimate Fantastic Four – Namor (Note: this one word should say it all)

 

Batman and the Outisders – Dropped

 

The Flash – Gorillas

 

Final Crisis – Rogue’s Revenge – Awesome.

Accelerate

As has been pointed out by my irritating if good intentioned friend, it has indeed been over a week since my last post proclaiming I’d try and update weekly. Sorry. It’ll probably happen again, but I hope its for good reasons, like this time.

I would have of course updated on Monday but I went directly from work to a small gig in Glasgow to see two excellent bands, The Andersens and the Starlets.Then I would have updated on Tuesday night, but I had a driving lesson for two hours, so that killed most of my evening. However, both gig and lesson were good for me and came equipped with the same message – Drive! Seems obvious enough, I know, especially with the driving lesson which gets that message home pretty powerfully, but bare with me.

Coming on second, the Starlets had alot to comepte with if they wanted to stand up to the Andersens, and they did very well, owing not least to the banter of frontman Biff Smith. He painted a picture familiar to me, of growing up in a small town and feeling utterly trapped there. All that changes, he says, when one of your friends learns how to drive, and all of a sudden you can go beyond the town borders as and when you please. The song he sang was called “we can drive”, and I daresay it made me want to join them.

The Andersens are from Japan, and were in a bar in Glasgow. Just made me realise how cool it’ll be when I’m from Scotland and sitting in a bar in Japan. The Andersens didn’t drive to get here, they flew.

One Word Reviews – Comic books

New Avengers 42 – Explainitory

Secret Invasion 4 – Promising

JSA 17 – Calm

Trinity 6 – Expositional

Ultimate origin 2 – Unnecessary

Final crisis: Requiem – Fitting

Action Comics 867 – Interesting

Booster Gold 1,000,000: Perfect

Return

Ok, so operation “good blog” didnt start off so well, but that doesnt mean it has to stop. I made this decision when I started this blog that it wouldnt have anything to do with my life, just a bunch of musings, reviews and general geek chat. Then the occasional thoughtful thing crept in, like my last post. Trying to keep my life out of my blog is entirely pointless. Even if I just write reviews, I’m still putting across my personality, my views and my outlook, even if its not to do with my life directly.

Everything to do with this blog so far has been entirely indicative of my personality. I started with the best of intentions, just wanted to talk about my favourite things, keep myself hidden away from it. Then I started to think a little more than I intended, and we got some posts on suicide. Then I let my life get in the way of this, and it fell by the wayside. I imagine if I hadnt been so against posting things about my life then this blog would have been peppered with posts.

So I am making a change. In alot of things, but lets just focus on the blog for a moment. I’ll still do reviews and the like, rant about my geekish peeves and the state of society, but the blog will probably not be as dedicated to the reviews as before unless in special cases. I’ll try and post every week on something, and maybe include a few paragraphs at the bottom of some reviews of comics or tv shows or manga or anime or whatever. The bulk of my blog, I hope, will be of substance. be it about my life or just life or just something, I’ll just do my best to make it interesting for you.

Here it goes then, blog take two. If it first you dont succeed…..