Je vais vite
What the French kids are listening to these days:
Showing posts with label I Want My MTV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I Want My MTV. Show all posts
20 June 2009
27 March 2009
06 February 2009
Dragostea din tei
.
♪♫♪Vrei sa pleci dar nu ma, nu ma iei!♫♪♪
I never knew that T.I. and Rihanna loved Romanian boy bands so much! Did you?
Another thing I didn't know was that turn-of-the-century Eurotrash videos could be just as good –or even better– than videos from the 80s. You learn something new every day.
28 January 2009
You're My Preset Number in Hawaii
Some things that I thought everyone had seen, but apparently not, so now I'm sharing them with you!
Goldfrapp — Number 1
The Presets — This Boy's In Love
The world definitely needs more videos of boys beating each other up in milk. Hawt!
The Ellen DeGeneres Show — Hawaii Chair
Goldfrapp — Number 1
The Presets — This Boy's In Love
The world definitely needs more videos of boys beating each other up in milk. Hawt!
The Ellen DeGeneres Show — Hawaii Chair
02 December 2008
11 November 2008
25 May 2008
Hands up Baby
More to come soon on my amazing adventures in the French countryside. But in the mean time, lets take a moment to reflect on the amazingness of the Eighties:
01 March 2008
All day, All day
Still no decisions vis-à-vis my homecoming, but maybe some sizzling-hot Puerto Ricans will take your mind off it.
You know Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe just sat around thinking of video concepts where they would need to, um, "cast" swarthy young guys to take their shirts off and frolic about in the surf. Dirty old scoundrels! I loves it!
Pet Shop Boys
"Domino Dancing"
My favourite part is at the begining, when she's walking past the construction worker who's so hot, she just chucks her bicycle into the street. Loves it!
You know Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe just sat around thinking of video concepts where they would need to, um, "cast" swarthy young guys to take their shirts off and frolic about in the surf. Dirty old scoundrels! I loves it!
Pet Shop Boys
"Domino Dancing"
My favourite part is at the begining, when she's walking past the construction worker who's so hot, she just chucks her bicycle into the street. Loves it!
13 February 2008
Daddy needs a new pair of taglines!
I need two taglines, and I'm having trouble coming up with something snappy. Now who better to help me than you? Yes, you!
I need a tagline for all of the amazing 80s videos I'm discovering. It was a crazy, interesting time for music videos back then, experimenting and throwing it all together with a shoestring and a dream. Everything was exciting and everything was possible. —Sure, videos nowadays may have syncronised laser pyrotechnics and choreographed booty poppin', but where is the randomness? The fun?
In the interim, I've labeled these posts I Want My MTV, which was their original slogan when it first went to air in 1981. We didn't, however, have MTV in Canada until a few years ago, so I think there must be a better choice.
I've also decided to collect all of my stories about ÉSIT – the bumbling excuse for scholasticism that is my "university." I know there's tonnes of lyrics, movies, Simpsons quotes and Chinese fortune cookie sayings about schools and/or languages, but absolutely nothing is coming to mind right now.
All thoughts, feelings, emotions are warmly welcome!
Merci pour votre aide.
I need a tagline for all of the amazing 80s videos I'm discovering. It was a crazy, interesting time for music videos back then, experimenting and throwing it all together with a shoestring and a dream. Everything was exciting and everything was possible. —Sure, videos nowadays may have syncronised laser pyrotechnics and choreographed booty poppin', but where is the randomness? The fun?
In the interim, I've labeled these posts I Want My MTV, which was their original slogan when it first went to air in 1981. We didn't, however, have MTV in Canada until a few years ago, so I think there must be a better choice.
I've also decided to collect all of my stories about ÉSIT – the bumbling excuse for scholasticism that is my "university." I know there's tonnes of lyrics, movies, Simpsons quotes and Chinese fortune cookie sayings about schools and/or languages, but absolutely nothing is coming to mind right now.
All thoughts, feelings, emotions are warmly welcome!
Merci pour votre aide.
02 February 2008
Eighties Video Amazingness Continues!
New Order - True Faith
Sure, videos today might have solid gold jets filled with rappers' girlfriends dressed in Catholic schoolgirl uniforms, but do they have giant monopod turtle-humans who know sign language?
Also, it is the first week of February and there are already flowers in the park!! I'm so glad winter is basically over here. Winter is certainly one thing about Canada I will never miss!
31 January 2008
10 January 2008
Fesbulous!
(Some musical accompaniment for your reading enjoyment; both in traditional and classic formats. Fesbulous photo album here.)
Morocco was so much like a trip to another planet, I'm not even sure where to start. (But I'm told the beginning is a very good place).
Flying on the morning of New Year's Day is never going to be fun, thus no one wants to do it and you can get fly to exotic Morocco on the cheap, which is what Polish and I did. When flying out of Paris you have two choices for airports: the shambolic slag-heap of Charles de Gaulle (watch for falling roof pieces!) or charming and efficient Orly. The only not-so charming thing about Orly is the special €7 monorail train you have to take to get there from the nearby train station. Why so expensive Orly? What gives? The monorail turned out to be one of the most expensive things of what turned out to be an otherwise fesbulous intercontinental holiday. Who knew I'd be back in Darkest Africa so soon?
Landing at Fes' cute-as-a-button little airport was sheer golden-afternoon gorgeousness, all breezy olive groves and mountains in the distance. And after struggling with some immigration-disorganisation, I was quickly struck by just how different everything really was. First thing I saw outside the airport doors: an old Berber lady with face tattoos walking between the orange trees. "This places is gonna be something else" I thought. As our dilapidated taxi lurched along to the hotel, I thought about how airport taxi rides in Asia often leave you with the feeling "this place is the same, only different." Fes, on the other hand, was different, period. Straight away there were minarets and goats in trees, djebellas and shepherds with sheep. Gliding past the Art Deco villas of the French-built 'Ville Nouvelle' towards the medieval Bab Boujeloud gate to the Old City, I couldn't help but feeling I was travelling through time rather than space. Our hotel, former British consulate and one-time host to young Winston Churchill, further added to my temporal confusion.
What a city! We walk down the Petit Talâa and the Grand Talâa –the old city's main streets, barely two meters wide. There are no cars in the Medina. Instead there are donkeys. Delivery donkeys, garbage donkeys, donkeys to pick up your Coke bottles and donkeys to carry camel hides to the smelly tanneries on the other side of the city. Some of you might have even gotten a postcard that was carried out of the Medina on a donkey (and not many people can say that!). We see veiled women at fountains, pigeons waiting to eaten, animal carcasses on hooks, a store full of pickles; the air smells of spices and smoke and the sound of Moroccan horns and drums tumbles out a dark archway. People offer us rugs, tangerines, tajines, pots, pot, Arabic clocks that sound the call to prayer, pewter teapots, Berber jewellery, slippers in ever colour, and at least two donkeys push us out of the way. –We've been there twenty minutes.
Fes is the most complete medieval city in the Arab world and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1981. The old city is built in a basin, with a spider's web of lanes all sloping down to the Kairaouine Mosque at centre. It's one of the largest mosques in North Africa and, arguably, the most important university in the Islamic world. The city, its people and its 364 other mosques all spiral out from here. Yet strangely, this heart of Fes is almost completely hidden behind the urban fabric of buildings, houses and shops. The best non-Muslims can hope for is a glimpse through an open doorway between prayers. (Lots of stuff in Morocco is off-limits to us infidels). Despite the overt religiosity of the Fes, it didn't feel particularly conservative. There were lots of women out and about, as many without a headscarf as with. Full on veils were pretty rare - I only saw a few.
Something we did see a lot of, however, was buckets and buckets of icy rain our second, third and forth days there. We got wet looking for the best fes-hat shops. We got wet searching the souks for socks. We got wet getting lost. "Will it rain tomorrow?" I ask. –"Only Allah can say" the fes-hat man answers. Barring a direct line to the Big Guy, I remember a valuable travel lesson: it always pays to carry an umbrella (meaning, of course, that you can't leave it in your suitcase at the hotel). "Inshallah it will stop raining soon," but it never really did. We were often wet and cold, but it didn't stop us from rockin' the casbah (though the shareef don't like it).
Overall, I give Fes five muezzins out of five for its dirt-cheap plates and rugs, delicious couscous and pastilla, and general medieval Arab fezmazingness. If I had to do it again, I'd go outside of diluvian flood season, I'd go up to the Merenid tombs where you can get a panorama of the entire old city, and I'd spend more time just wandering the tangled maze of alleys getting lost (which is something that we definitely did not do at all; no taking a wrong turn and walking into the teen hustler section of Fes, no sirree, that did not happen at all). If you decide to go; read The Spider's House by Paul Bowles and watch the Morocco Ab Fab episode.
I'm calling it now: Fes is my new favourite place on the Dark Continent. And though I wasn't able to sell Polish in the market for 2000 dirhams, I have to thank him nonetheless. Shukran for laughing in the rain and for rockin' Moroccan!
Shukran Fes! Truly Fesbulous.
Morocco was so much like a trip to another planet, I'm not even sure where to start. (But I'm told the beginning is a very good place).
Flying on the morning of New Year's Day is never going to be fun, thus no one wants to do it and you can get fly to exotic Morocco on the cheap, which is what Polish and I did. When flying out of Paris you have two choices for airports: the shambolic slag-heap of Charles de Gaulle (watch for falling roof pieces!) or charming and efficient Orly. The only not-so charming thing about Orly is the special €7 monorail train you have to take to get there from the nearby train station. Why so expensive Orly? What gives? The monorail turned out to be one of the most expensive things of what turned out to be an otherwise fesbulous intercontinental holiday. Who knew I'd be back in Darkest Africa so soon?
Landing at Fes' cute-as-a-button little airport was sheer golden-afternoon gorgeousness, all breezy olive groves and mountains in the distance. And after struggling with some immigration-disorganisation, I was quickly struck by just how different everything really was. First thing I saw outside the airport doors: an old Berber lady with face tattoos walking between the orange trees. "This places is gonna be something else" I thought. As our dilapidated taxi lurched along to the hotel, I thought about how airport taxi rides in Asia often leave you with the feeling "this place is the same, only different." Fes, on the other hand, was different, period. Straight away there were minarets and goats in trees, djebellas and shepherds with sheep. Gliding past the Art Deco villas of the French-built 'Ville Nouvelle' towards the medieval Bab Boujeloud gate to the Old City, I couldn't help but feeling I was travelling through time rather than space. Our hotel, former British consulate and one-time host to young Winston Churchill, further added to my temporal confusion.
What a city! We walk down the Petit Talâa and the Grand Talâa –the old city's main streets, barely two meters wide. There are no cars in the Medina. Instead there are donkeys. Delivery donkeys, garbage donkeys, donkeys to pick up your Coke bottles and donkeys to carry camel hides to the smelly tanneries on the other side of the city. Some of you might have even gotten a postcard that was carried out of the Medina on a donkey (and not many people can say that!). We see veiled women at fountains, pigeons waiting to eaten, animal carcasses on hooks, a store full of pickles; the air smells of spices and smoke and the sound of Moroccan horns and drums tumbles out a dark archway. People offer us rugs, tangerines, tajines, pots, pot, Arabic clocks that sound the call to prayer, pewter teapots, Berber jewellery, slippers in ever colour, and at least two donkeys push us out of the way. –We've been there twenty minutes.
Fes is the most complete medieval city in the Arab world and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1981. The old city is built in a basin, with a spider's web of lanes all sloping down to the Kairaouine Mosque at centre. It's one of the largest mosques in North Africa and, arguably, the most important university in the Islamic world. The city, its people and its 364 other mosques all spiral out from here. Yet strangely, this heart of Fes is almost completely hidden behind the urban fabric of buildings, houses and shops. The best non-Muslims can hope for is a glimpse through an open doorway between prayers. (Lots of stuff in Morocco is off-limits to us infidels). Despite the overt religiosity of the Fes, it didn't feel particularly conservative. There were lots of women out and about, as many without a headscarf as with. Full on veils were pretty rare - I only saw a few.
Something we did see a lot of, however, was buckets and buckets of icy rain our second, third and forth days there. We got wet looking for the best fes-hat shops. We got wet searching the souks for socks. We got wet getting lost. "Will it rain tomorrow?" I ask. –"Only Allah can say" the fes-hat man answers. Barring a direct line to the Big Guy, I remember a valuable travel lesson: it always pays to carry an umbrella (meaning, of course, that you can't leave it in your suitcase at the hotel). "Inshallah it will stop raining soon," but it never really did. We were often wet and cold, but it didn't stop us from rockin' the casbah (though the shareef don't like it).
Overall, I give Fes five muezzins out of five for its dirt-cheap plates and rugs, delicious couscous and pastilla, and general medieval Arab fezmazingness. If I had to do it again, I'd go outside of diluvian flood season, I'd go up to the Merenid tombs where you can get a panorama of the entire old city, and I'd spend more time just wandering the tangled maze of alleys getting lost (which is something that we definitely did not do at all; no taking a wrong turn and walking into the teen hustler section of Fes, no sirree, that did not happen at all). If you decide to go; read The Spider's House by Paul Bowles and watch the Morocco Ab Fab episode.
I'm calling it now: Fes is my new favourite place on the Dark Continent. And though I wasn't able to sell Polish in the market for 2000 dirhams, I have to thank him nonetheless. Shukran for laughing in the rain and for rockin' Moroccan!
Shukran Fes! Truly Fesbulous.
12 October 2006
Ça plane pour moi
Looking out my office window, somewhat hungover, staring at the first freaking snow flurries(!!) of the year, i became instantly depressed. Blah! So I decided to post this here to make myself feel better.
How awesome is Plastic Bértrand? This new wave punk-pop masterpiece was named one of the best songs ever by Joey Ramone and is featured in pretty much every teen movie where the characters go to France (including a personal favourite of mine National Lampoons European Vacation).
"I am the king of the divan!"
(Maybe it's just the hot pink leather jacket, but does Monsieur Bértrand look like a really cute gay man or what?)
How awesome is Plastic Bértrand? This new wave punk-pop masterpiece was named one of the best songs ever by Joey Ramone and is featured in pretty much every teen movie where the characters go to France (including a personal favourite of mine National Lampoons European Vacation).
"I am the king of the divan!"
(Maybe it's just the hot pink leather jacket, but does Monsieur Bértrand look like a really cute gay man or what?)
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