Setsuled's Journal

I walked right into a Best Buy to-day and bought a copy of Who Killed Amanda Palmer. I remember having to walk miles uphill for a Dresden Dolls album, now I can find an Amanda Palmer solo album in a big electronics store. Do the kids these days appreciate it? I tell you they don't.

I've already listened to the album while drawing to-day and I really love it. Particularly "Blake Says" and "Guitar Hero" in which Palmer mines many of the same elements of modern culture which I suspect Daniel Clowes could use to write a great sequel to Ghost World*. I've already detected one reference to The Velvet Underground, and of course I love the title's invocation of Twin Peaks, but mostly Palmer's lyrics remind me of Morrissey. I don't think there's another lyricist who so perfectly captures the layers of ego power plays and Caliban's mirror troubles while at the same time managing to be heartbroken.

While colouring a couple days ago, I listened to a 1937 American radio production of The 39 Steps, an Alfred Hitchcock movie made in England and Scotland two years earlier. The radio production stars Robert Montgomery and Ida Lupino and was hosted by Cecil B. DeMille. During an intermission, DeMille conducts an interview with a man who was actually a spy for the United States during World War I. Astonishingly, not only did it sound as though the man was reading from a script, it sounded, with its many biblical references, as though the script was likely written by DeMille himself.

Ugh, there's a fly in this room. I'm going to go out to lunch . . .


*When I typed the word "Ghost" first, it automatically disappeared. I must have hit something but I don't know what . . .