LOST: There’s No Place Like Home
The two-part season finale of Lost begins next Thursday, May 15, at 10 p.m. Included above, in case you didn’t stay tuned to catch it last night, or in case you just want to see it again, is the first trailer for next week’s episode.
Um, can we say awesome. Yes, kiddies, I think we can.
In other Lost news, the Hollywood Reporter is reporting that seasons five and six will each be seventeen hours long. That’s an hour longer than originally intended, and it’s because of the hours lost to the writer’s strike.
.Mac and iPhone 2.0
A little birdy has apparently dropped by the offices of The Unofficial Apple Weblog to spread the rumor that a .Mac relaunch is coming just in time for the release of iPhone 2.0. TUAW’s informant says that the revamp could include .Mac syncing on Windows, among other things. As I’m sure you’ll recall, I’ve been thinking a lot about synchronizing data lately, and particularly about syncing data between my iMac and my Dell laptop. If this rumor becomes reality, I might actually have to give .Mac a try.
Last Week on Lost: Something Nice Back Home
Teasing tonight’s episode for Entertainment Weekly’s Doc Jensen, Lost executive producer Damon Lindelof says, “Nothing like a good jungle trek to give Locke and Ben a chance to discuss the notion of fate—and even Jacob weighs in on the topic.”
As I’ve said before, I’m not a huge fan of John Locke right now. But any episode which features Ben in a prominent role is going to be a good one. So, thank you Mr. Lindelof for getting me a wee bit more excited than I was before. Today’s going to be a long day, but I’ll definitely be staying up for this one.
In the meantime, here (below the fold) are some of my thoughts on last week’s episode, “Something Nice Back Home,” which I re-watched on the bus ride into work this morning (all the while trying to ignore my laptop’s inability to keep the video and audio in sync while on battery power).
NIN Oeuvre Blog: March of the Pigs
Editor’s Note: This entry originally appeared on the blog Ten Thousand Lies on June 3, 2007.
There is something missing from the studio version of “March of the Pigs”. Having heard so many live renditions of it, I am always saddened to remember, upon listening to the original studio version, that there is no instrumental outro after the second “Now doesn’t that make you feel better?”. In every live version I’ve ever heard, there is this amazing outro that comes in just after the final piano notes fade away, an outro featuring all the musical explosiveness of the verses, along with the single, repeated lyric, “All the pigs are all lined up.” And though I love the studio version very much, I can’t help but wonder how much more amazing it would be if that last bit were included.
I remember the first time I heard that outro live*. During my first NIN show, in January of 1995 (also my first concert ever), they launched into “Pigs” pretty early on. It was the second or third song in the set, I believe. And it was right around then that the crowds to the right of us, who were rushing the floor in an attempt to get past security by sheer force and join that sea of a mosh-pit below, ended up breaking the metal staircase. The railings on one or both sides buckled (I can’t remember if it was both), trapping two rather thin friends on the bottom (they both made it out, eventually). Trent was goading the crowd to “Step right up,” to march, and to push, and that’s what they were doing. And then, with the staircase now blocked by a groaning mass of aching humanity, they were jumping over our heads (we were seated in the level just above the floor, but it was at least a ten-foot drop). The railing in front of us became unstable, and security moved us back a few rows while they fixed it. “Pigs” segged into something else, and eventually we got back to our seats.
In “Last" post, I wrote that the music of Nine Inch Nails is nothing if not participatory. “March of the Pigs” is the perfect example of that, and no NIN song before or since comes as close to making the audience feel as if they are a vital part of the song than this one. And that’s the other thing that’s missing from the studio version of this song: listening to it by yourself, be it on a car stereo, on your home stereo, or on some portable music device—that experience is never going to come close to the experience you’ll have when hearing it live.
*I’m not counting the time I heard it live during the broadcast of Woodstock ‘94, because that’s not really live now, is it? It was live for the people there, but I was just watching it on TV. Anyway, that aside, I will admit that I love the ad-lib in the final line before the outro: “Now all of you miserable, muddy fuckheads are alright.”
Topics: Nine Inch Nails
Boston Apple Store Opening May 16
ifoAppleStore.com is reporting that Boston’s first Apple Store will open on Friday, May 16 at 6 p.m. I just walked by there on my way into the office and it definitely looks like things are getting close.
I’m sure I’ll be at the back of a very, very long line, but I know where I’m going after work that night.
New Nine Inch Nails for FREE
It’s been two weeks since Trent Reznor posted his latest ‘Two weeks’ message, and Nine Inch Nails has delivered the goods yet again. The Slip is the second Nine Inch Nails record of 2008, and this one is a completely free download. I actually had my credit card ready to go as soon as I saw the link this morning, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that we’d be getting this puppy for absolutely nothing. I know what I’m listening to on the bus ride into Boston this morning.
Last Week on Lost: The Shape of Things to Come
Teasing tonight’s episode for Entertainment Weekly’s Doc Jensen, Lost executive producer Damon Lindelof says, “Remember after the finale last season when everyone was asking us why Jack was blathering on about his father in what turned out to be our first flash-forward? It was just the booze and pills talking, right? And hey...why did he start taking pills in the first place?”
All interesting questions, Damon. I hope that you guys manage to answer at least one of them tonight, because it’s been a terrible day and I really need some Lost awesomeness to pick me up right now.
Until then, let me attempt to reconstruct the piece I wrote about “The Shape of Things to Come” on this morning’s bus ride, which was before my laptop’s hard drive decided to shit the bed.
New Movies Available on iTunes Same Day as DVDs
Now, this is more like it, Apple.
According to a press-release issued by the technology company earlier today, new movie releases from all of the major film studios will be available for purchase on the iTunes store on the same day that they are released on DVD. That’s not “for rental,” which was the major drawback of the new iTunes initiatives announced earlier this year at Macworld, but for purchase.
A smattering of films had been seeing releases like this over the past couple of weeks (including Juno, which I’ve been aching to see), so I suppose this announcement shouldn’t come as a total surprise. But, surprise or not, it come as most pleasant news on the day on which my iPod decided to play dead and stop syncing with my iMac and on which my laptop’s hard drive, based on the noise coming out of it right now, decided it wanted to audition for lead singer in a death metal band.
Translating the Bible into lolspeak - LOLCat Bible
Pop17 has an interview with Martin Grondin, the man behind the LOLCat Bible. A LOLCat, if you’re not familiar, is “an image combining a photograph of an animal, most frequently a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as ‘Kitty Pidgin’, ‘lolspeak’, or Lolcat.” And what Martin is doing, in case it isn’t obvious, is translating the Bible into lolspeak. You can find the results here.Here’s a snippet from Genesis to whet your appetite.
Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs
1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.
2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.
3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.
4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.
5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1
6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.
7 An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.
8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.
For more LOLCat fun, check out I Can Has Cheezburger.
NIN Oeuvre Blog: Last
Editor’s Note: This entry originally appeared on the blog Ten Thousand Lies on June 1, 2007.
“Last,” the third song on the Broken EP, was my first “favorite” NIN song. I can’t remember what order I bought the albums in, but I want to say that I had a copy of TDS first, and then PHM, and then, finally, Broken. Whatever the case, it wasn’t until I got heavily into Broken that one song emerged from the fray as a “favorite”. Before then, every song was on equal footing with me. But “Last” changed all that.
Maybe it’s the lyrics that did it for me. To this day, the images that Trent paints in “Last” are some of the ones that stick out most strongly in my mind. “Fresh blood through tired skin,” conjures an image of sickly, paper-thin flesh in my mind, and of the strange and somewhat grotesque sight of a vein pumping beneath it. “My lips may promise, but my heart is a whore.” Well, that line comes up in my brain so often that I long ago decided, if ever I was to do a follow-up to what was arguably my most successful song under the moniker of Pop Bubblegum Trash, a ditty entitled “Little Fascist Panties” (after a Tori Amos lyric, yes), then it would be called “My Lips May Promise,” or else, “My Heart Is A Whore.”
And, of course, the name of this site comes from “Last,” too. “Look through these tired eyes. You’ll see ten thousand lies.”
I was listening to a Pandora Podcast on song lyrics just last night, on the way home from work, and they got into a discussion about the power of repetition in popular music. They made the point that, while repetition doesn’t really work in poetry, it can do wonders for a song. I believe the song they used to illustrate the point was something by the Kinks, but I think there are quite a few NIN songs that could be given as examples, too. And “Last” is certainly one of them.
Consider the power of the word “come” in this song, the repeated invitation it offers. The music of Nine Inch Nails is nothing if not participatory. Trent invites the audience to “step right up,” in “March of the Pigs,” and here, in “Last,” he pleads with us to “come, come, come on.” And if we are at all hesitant, the driving guitar line is right there to give us a firm nudge.
Every song on Broken is amazing in my mind, from the opening crunches of “Pinion” to the hidden gems “Suck” and “Physical”. But the anger that’s oozing out of every corner of this EP is most palpable on “Last”. The Woodstock ‘94 version of “Happiness in Slavery” won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance in 1996 but, in my opinion, “Last” is the most metal song Trent Reznor’s ever written.