Sun and the Moon

Piggybacking on my other post about Duran Duran's Notorious, this morning I download The Sun and the Moon's "Peace in Our Time" and "The Price of Grain". The MP3 versions I had ripped from vinyl finally got on my nerves, especially with the latter song, where it skipped a couple times. I don't mind intermittent crackling and hissing, but skipping pisses me off.

Interestingly, the original album was self-titled, now it's called The Great Escape, with a bunch of B-sides and outtakes. The two songs I downloaded weren't cheap: close to $5; but I never cared for the rest of the album . . . a pale shadow of the vocalist/bassist and drummer's old band, Chameleons UK. The same formula with different guitarists just didn't work. Ya can't substitute chemistry!

Why am I on a music-buying binge (I also bought The Dimestore Haloes' Singles Going Unsteady)? Probably because on Xmas I was around my cousin Michael and his daughter Sara, both who, around 36 hours later on Monday morning, woke up with COVID. I got my booster 11 days before Xmas, so I think I'm fine, though I have had an occasional headache, but I think that's more with anxiety, plus it's been slow this week at work, I've been sleeping restlessly, and I haven't been exercising much, though I plan on correcting that with this three-day weekend.

Duran Duran: NOTORIOUS

I finally got sick of the old MP3s that I ripped from my Notorious LP (I had bought the album when it first came out in '86); a couple tracks skipped at the most inopportune of times. I downloaded the regular version of the album, not the remastered deluxe version. I'm wondering if I made a mistake. In the car it didn't sound that high quality, though now on my MacBook Air, it sounds fine.

Anyway, I may remove "Skin Trade" from my iTunes library. Always hated that song. Lyrically and musically, it's the worst representation of the '80s. Still can't believe they released it as the second single. I may also get rid of "So Misled" — just never did it for me. Overall, though, good album. Before they started to suck!

THE STAGES OF MEDITATION by The Dalai Lama

Took me two-and-a-half months to listen to this audiobook. Pretty pathetic, since it's only three hours and thirty-nine minutes. Just couldn't get into it. A similar thing happened when I read Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain. I've moved on from a religious mindset, that when I read something spiritual, it's like listening to some crazy guy on a city street corner — they have has no basis in reality. I dunno, maybe I'm too tethered to this world and lack imagination or a higher state of consciousness. I give The Stages of Meditation two stars.

RAISING HELL by Run-DMC

For some reason, recently, Run-DMC's "It's Tricky" was stuck in my head. I had on an old zip drive with "Peter Piper", "It's Tricky", and "You Be Illin'", so I decided to pick up the whole album. Good stuff. Nice companion piece to The Beastie Boys' License to Ill. Though I removed Run-DMC's "Dumb Girl" from my iPod because it's slightly misogynist. And I like the extended version of "Walk This Way"; the 45 I bought as a teenager didn't have Joe Perry's impressive guitar work at the end . . . forgot what a great guitarist he is, since he's overshadowed by Steven Tyler and Eddie Van Halen.

THE LIAR'S DICTIONARY by Eley Williams

I gave up on this novel after about 40 pages. The introduction/prologue was way overwritten. And I have the habit of looking up words up I don't know — I was doing that at least five times a page . . . got old after a while. Also, I have average intelligence, and this book seems like light reading for graduate students.

THE PERFECT NANNY by Leïla Slimani

Philistine I am, I only recently heard of the Prix Goncourt, apparently France's most prestigious literary award. Unfortunately, the novel by this year's winner, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, isn't out in English yet, so I picked up from my library the 2016 winner, Leïla Slimani's The Perfect Nanny. I give it 2.5 out of 5 stars. Her writing style reminded me of Amélie Nothomb: relative short chapters. Thankfully, The Perfect Nanny is a pretty quick read at around 200 pages. I didn't find the characters very believable. My sense is that Slimani was more concerned with examining class that focusing on plotting. Hopefully the other Prix Goncourt winner I reserved at my library, Hervé Le Tellier's The Anomaly, is better.

YOURS CRUELLY, ELVIRA by Cassandra Peterson

I picked this memoir up as a lark at my local library. Figured it would be light reading, and that it is. I give it 3 out of 5 stars. She does a good job with pacing in telling the story of her 70 years. I can't believe she's made a living off of one character. Wow, America's a crazy place. And, of course, the socialist in me got turned off by all the commercials and licensing she's done with her Elvira character. Kind of crazy both of her sisters died relatively young because of substance health issues; that coupled with Cassandra's pursuit of fame makes me wonder what type of house of horrors she grew up in.

Oak Ridge Boys

Back when I was 12 or 13, I dug the Oak Ridge Boys' "Elvira", so for my birthday I asked for one of their albums. My Aunt Maryann got me, I believe, The Best Of The Oak Ridge Boys. I remember being completely disappointed. Even though I was still a good Catholic boy, I couldn't believe the quartet I heard on the radio and probably saw on Solid Gold was a gospel group.

Anyway, I've been reading Cassandra Peterson's memoir, Yours Cruelly, Elvira, so the Oak Ridge Boys' "Elvira" has been on my mind, therefore I picked up one their greatest hits, 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection. It covers their golden period, from the late '70s to the mid-'80s. Pretty good. I was going to very selective but decided to keep all but the last track (had no heart) because I'll probably never buy anything else by them. Fortunately, there are no gospel tracks on there.

For All Mankind

* * * CONTAINS SPOILERS * * *

Finished watching the first season last night. Wow! Much better than The Expanse. Pitch perfect. I like how they set up that Wayne Cobb basically becomes Karen Baldwin's therapist, and how she starts to change but not completely when she comforts Marge Slayton after the news of Deke's death (her husband). That scene got me a little verklempt. It reminded me why I enjoy TV series so much. You have at least a handful of episodes to get to know the characters, and when an emotional scene like that comes up, if acted and written well, it just blows you away and stays on your mind for days. Something, I find, films fail to do because they only have two hours to work with.

Can't wait for the second season!