my IQ - ani difranco

when I was four years old
they tried to test my I.Q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong
but when I was 13 years old
I woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that I live in a breakable takeable body
an ever-increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
deface me
see,
my body is borrowed
yeah, I got it on loan
for the time in between my mom and some maggots
I don't need anyone to hold me
I can hold my own
I got highways for stretchmarks
see where I've grown
I sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud
as the noises you make
I'm learning to laugh as hard
as I can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then I could relax
but a good brain ain't diddley
if you don't have the facts
we live in a breakable takeable world
an ever available possible world
and we can make music
like we can make do
genius is in a back beat
backseat to nothing if you're dancing
especially something stupid
like I.Q.
for every lie I unlearn
I learn something new
I sing sometimes for the war that I fight
'cause every tool is a weapon -
if you hold it right.

Lazing on a Sunny Afternoooooon

The Kinks are one of my favourite bands. In the Beatles vs Stones binary, I vote for the Crouch End boys every time (and not only 'cos I'm hoping to join the 'hood).

Seeing Ray Davies was one of my life's highlights. True story.

Money for Gurnischt

Bizarrely I love the original. The intro fires me up like nothing else. And this version does it for me too. I am an unabashed fangrrl of quirky reimaginings.

Enjoy!

Cuban Brothers Do Radiohead

The Beauty of a One-Hit Wonder

... is that you don't have to stick around for the second song!

I'm really glad that Edie Brickell

ended up with Paul Simon.

Good lyricists rock. Literally!

How Totally Meta-Meta!

I don't normally follow a music clip with a music clip but I just found this track:

Which is only relevant because I am sitting in that blue room in Archway. Which hasn't been blue for at least ten years, since Mr P bought the house from Martin Carr, lead singer of the Boo Radleys. Who left a note, the parting words of which were "Take care of the blue room, and she will treat you well."

She has treated us so, so well, Martin. We have loved and lived and fought and fucked in this room. And selling it has been hard.

But the pain of yours truly, the most immature cow on the planet, has been somewhat alleviated by the fact that predictive text characterises her new hood as "Crotch End" ...

From "Mockingbird" to "Mockery" in sixteen seconds. Surely there's an award for that?

Join me in a sing-along!

In Treatment at the moment and in dire need of release.

My child-self needs some approval, people. My therapist said so.

4 Chords

The Axis of Awesome at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, 2009 = Awesome!!

Favourite Song?

Someone asked me the other day. I generally dislike "favourite" questions if denied the right to multiple responses; part of it is a fear of being categorised or essentialised, I guess.

But I have thought long and hard. This may not be it,

but it is definitely one of the top 5, possibly down to the fact that Tom and Bette do it for me separately, and what first seems incongruous quickly dissolves into honeyed, whiskeyed, sexy seamlessness.

What's yours? You're allowed five.

Away We Went.

Dr. P's Inaugural, Possibly One-Off, DVD Recommendation:

Away We Go

The music clip above has nothing, I repeat NOTHING, to do with the film (dir: Sam Mendes; script: Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida; starring: Maya Rudolph, John Krasinski, Catherine O'Hara, Jeff Daniels, Maggie Gylleanhaal). I really liked the music in it, so Mr P went to find a track that was in it, and it turns out this wasn't in it but I really liked it anyway

Hope you do too ...

Gleek

My name is Dr. Plog and I am a Gleek.

There, I said it.

I tried to resist it, I really did. For starters, I am already over-committed, televisually, especially since I am trying to reduce my overall couch potato-mashedness in a new year's false promise to a new-me. Also: I am instinctively programmed to resist trends du jour on the very basis of their seemingly sudden mass-desirability. I call it the Dan Brown effect - though now my Da Vinci Code aversion (it's so freaky to suddenly see everyone across the world toting the same badly-written book) has now found new life in The Girl with the Dragon Earringmania. Ipods can pod off; I haven't even graduated to tampons, letalone Ipads.

But I'm hooked on this silly show!

Cheeky covers? Check. Subversion of seemingly same-same stereotypes? Check (That shameless display of artificial affected alliteration? Check, check, check!). Maybe I'm just impressed that a single show that is, on the surface, as samesamey as your subpar nineohtwooneohmelroseplaceremake staple, would have not just one token Jew but, like, four - rendering them somewhat less token - and one breaking the mould, majorly. Noah Puckerman, I'm talking to you! Mr P said I'd have had a field day with you if I was still writing my thesis.

Ok, it's not as groundbreaking as some would have you believe. A recent facebook status of a local wit (whose critical eye I trust implicitly) declared she was "whelmed"* - neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed. I love that category. And I totally get that response.

****************************************************
*Slightly off-topic but there are so many words that have no counterpart. Mr P sometimes shakes his British head at me and labels me "incorrigible", to which I reply, "No, I'm actually quite corrigible". Also are you always "appropos of nothing" or can you be appropos of something? I know you can be but I think nothing is more common, usagewise Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?

Answers welcome in comment section below. Join in! Don't be shy!

****************************************************

But I think, even in shitty times, a lot of our escapism is occupied by/ mired in the ugly. I gave up 24 on those grounds. And the Ruth Rendell habit I inherited from Mama Plog. And reading the paper from cover to cover. But Glee makes me happy - filled with joy, utterly content, gleeful, if you will (and I know you will).

Nothing deep there. But try living with hepatitis. That's hard!**


**I LOVE Jane Lynch. And though I never got into Nip/Tuck (creepy-as-fuck more like!), I adored Ryan Murphy's early career masterpiece Popular (which appropos of nothing (see!) I used to watch with my dad over a bunch of weekday afternoons in the early 00s. Good times.)

Nina. Milk. Honey.

Mr P and I were in San Francisco earlier this year and visited an exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum titled "And You Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Our Vinyl" based on this book. One of the highlights was discovering the myriad non-Jewish artists who have covered Jewish classics: The Temptations, Connie Francis, Arlo Guthrie, Johnny Cash and Pat Boone amongst them. But I really think Nina kills this. Enjoy!

Florence Et Machine

Last night, Shepherds Bush Empire.

Power, thy name is Florence.

Happy Birthday, Judy Reynolds!

I can't get you on the phone so here's a little song for my Judy, from your Barbra.



May all your days be happy. Shkoyakh! x

Frances "Baby" Gumm

Frances was only seven years old when she recorded this song in 1929.

You may know her by the stage name she later adopted: Judy Garland.

Shpil, Balalaika, Shpil!

For Digger and Roni - freilich zol zayn.
xxx

Happy Carnival Day!

A shout out to Mr P and our pals - Risa, Dustin, Madeline, Cyn and Dash amongst them - and all other souls brave enough to face the crowds to fight for our (collective, inalienable) right to part-ay ...

all the way from this northeasterly couch, lazily dotted by the speckled sunlight, with The Street's Dry Your Eyes Mate quietly, LDNly, emoting in the background,

happier, she wrote, than I've been in days.

Happy Carnival, y'all, no matter where you are and what floats your proverbial. Different strokes for drummond folks, vive la difference, yadda*

(*to the power of 3)

"The Big Chill" at The Big Chill

Have you seen the '80s film "The Big Chill" (Kevin Kline, Phoebe Cates, Jeff Goldblum)? It centres on a group of friends going through all this heavy psychoshit over a weekend? Well Team Chill - members of the April and Oscar Send Off posse - had many, many memorable moments but instead of angst and drama, we had crazy giggles, messy debauchery and the bloodiest best. time. evah!!!! In fact, from now on, I shall refer to it as Bestival - 'cos it's the best (fest)ival I've ever been to!

The following videos are a bit dumb. Should I remove them? Vote "yes" or "no" in the comment section.

Eat Your Heart Out, Ally McBeal ...

Spotted on the Embankment, Monday July 27th 2009.