Category Archives: Fans

Fuck Them All, by Mylene Farmer

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Mylene Farmer, a simple Farmer's daughterWhat is it about French female singers? Last time I got this verbose over a music video was Vanessa Paradis’ Coup Coup, which was indeed a sweet little video, even if her voice was never going to set the world on fire. This time it’s Mylene Farmer, an unspeakably beautiful and delicate (and, apparently, immortal) redhead with a voice that would charm, if not the birds out of the trees, at least all the slackers off the sofa and to the window, and whom I first ran across on MuchMusic, our godforsaken Canuckistani music channel, and then a couple of years later at my friend Alain‘s place. He wanted to show me this amazing CD he’d gotten, all in French, from a friend of his who was a flight attendant. He was rather shocked I knew the songs, but who could forget Comme J’ai Mal? Both the song and the video, with Mylene transforming into an exquisite butterfly/moth hybrid are absolutely unforgettable, and it doesn’t hurt that she followed that up with California, one of the best, and most brutal, synopses of the SoCal experience in music. It kicks Hotel California into the dust, particularly if you know what the words actually mean, which is always optional in Hollywood.

And she’s a Canuck, too. We all look like that, honest.

But this is her comeback song, from 2005, and it’s called Fuck Them All. She hasn’t aged a minute, although something about her face screams really expensive work done, the voice is as amazing as ever, and so is the sense of theatre. Enjoy this Goth romance/feminist emancipation/war protest song. It just may be the most beautiful protest song ever filmed. Translation coming TK; I don’t trust my own French. Volunteers?

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French lyrics and English translation over the jump, courtesy Mylene Farmer International Forum, which also has some interesting interpretations of the song. Follow the link for those.

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new game: the raincoaster challenge

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TIALookie everybody! All that famewhoring paid off: I’ve got my own game.

Me and Kevin Bacon, we’re likethis. Even William Fucking Shatner hasn’t got a GAME! If you thought I was insufferable before, just watch out, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!

Check it out: the raincoaster challenge, by Richard Mahoney over at Envelope Filter: tasty harmonics in a creamy static sauce.

  • Anyone can play. Everyone should play. Tell your friends.
  • Raincoaster should be in the first 10 results, partial credit for first 20.
  • Successful searches should be posted in the comments.
  • Use of the term ‘raincoaster’ in the entry kind of defeats the point, in case you hadn’t guessed.
  • Funniest/weirdest term wins bragging rights.
  • Visitors to the site should hit google with the search terms in the comments. If we get over twenty or so in a day it turns up in her blog stats.

But the FIRST RULE of the raincoaster challenge is, you must go show the luv to the inventor of the game. G’wan, give him a hit; he deserves to be hit, for feeding my ego!

I'm so totally important, though. Just ask anyone! Well, anyone who's heard of me.

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two songs, one title: Hold On

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Inspired by the interesting contrast of Jesus Jones‘ and Van Halen‘s songs both called Right Now, I’m posting these: two songs, both called Hold On, both optimistic and arguably existential in different ways, and both outstanding examples of their genre.

In this corner, Wilson Phillips, girl band extraordinaire:


I know this pain
Why do lock yourself up in these chains?
No one can change your life except for you
Dont ever let anyone step all over you
Just open your heart and your mind
Is it really fair to feel this way inside?
Chorus:
Some day somebody’s gonna make you want to
Turn around and say goodbye
Until then baby are you going to let them
Hold you down and make you cry
Dont you know?
Dont you know things can change
Things’ll go your way
If you hold on for one more day
Can you hold on for one more day
Things’ll go your way
Hold on for one more day
You could sustain
Or are you comfortable with the pain?
You’ve got no one to blame for your unhappiness
You got yourself into your own mess
Lettin’ your worries pass you by
Don’t you think its worth your time
To change your mind?
(chorus)
I know that there is pain
But you hold on for one more day and
Break free the chains
Yeah I know that there is pain
But you hold on for one more day and you
Break free, break from the chains
Some day somebodys gonna make you want to
Turn around and say goodbye
Until then baby are you going to let them
Hold you down and make you cry
Don’t you know?
Don’t you know things can change
Things’ll go your way
If you hold on for one more day yeah
If you hold on
Don’t you know things can change
Things’ll go your way
If you hold on for one more day,
If you hold on
Can you hold on
Hold on baby
Wont you tell me now
Hold on for one more day cause
It’s gonna go your way
Don’t you know things can change
Things’ll go your way
If you hold on for one more day
Can’t you change it this time
Make up your mind
Hold on
Hold on
Baby hold on

 

And in this corner, Tom Waits, the bard of the Black Rider himself:

They hung a sign up in out town
if you live it up, you won’t live it down
So, she left monte rio, son
Just like a bullet leaves a gun
With charcoal eyes and monroe hips
She went and took that california trip
Well, the moon was gold, her
Hair like wind
She said dont look back just
Come on jim
(chorus)
Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You gotta hold on
Well, he gave her a dimestore watch
And a ring made from a spoon
Everyone is looking for someone to blame
But you share my bed, you share my name
Well, go ahead and call the cops
You dont meet nice girls in coffee shops
She said baby, I still love you
Sometimes theres nothin left to do
Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here,
you got to just hold on.
Well, God bless your crooked little heart st. louis got the best of me
I miss your broken-china voice
How I wish you were still here with me
Well, you build it up, you wreck it down
You burn your mansion to the ground
When theres nothing left to keep you here, when
Youre falling behind in this
Big blue world
Oh you go to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You got to hold on
Down by the riverside motel,
Its 10 below and falling
By a 99 cent store she closed her eyes
And started swaying
But its so hard to dance that way
When its cold and theres no music
Well your old hometown is so far away
But, inside your head theres a record
Thats playing, a song called
Hold on, hold on
You really got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
And just hold on.

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would you watch Saddam Hussein die?

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This got started in the comments section of another post, but it seems to me more than deserving of its own post; it is far more important than Saddam Hussein’s last words. I started to watch the Daniel Pearl video, then I stopped it and did not go on. But I have read all kinds of banned documents, including the manual of Afghani Jihad, and I think I would watch the Steve Irwin video if his family would allow it to be released, so why I draw the line here but not there, I am not really sure I know.

Here’s the debate so far:

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Saddam Hussein’s last words

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NOTE: This is not the thread in which to pimp out the death video. There IS a thread to discuss whether or not you’d watch the video, and that thread is here. Not here. I’m getting rather cranky about this and future such comments will probably be deleted. Deal with it.

Saddam Hussein in custody

No, I’m not going to show the video. I’m not even going to watch it. Watching an execution to me is unconscionable, but recording someone’s last words is quite literally the least we can do.

The Guardian is reporting that, according to witnesses, his last words were taunts and boasts, followed at the last moment by prayer, and there you have the Platonically perfect end to a secular and opportunistic dictator.

By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq’s savior, not its tyrant and scourge.

“He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians,” Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Another witness, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told The New York Times that one of the guards shouted at Saddam: “You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution.”

“I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans,” Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times.

“God damn you,” the guard said.

“God damn you,” responded Saddam.

New video, first broadcast by Al-Jazeera satellite television early Sunday, had sound of someone in the group praising the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed in 1980 along with his sister by Saddam.

Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.

Then Saddam began reciting the “Shahada,” a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site.

Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad.

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