Friday Roundup: Friday the 13th edition


Happy Friday the 13th. I spent a lovely fall morning strolling in Central Park, kicking up the autumn leaves and getting sniffed by enthusiastic dogs and humming Simon & Garfunkel tunes softly to myself and avoiding the stinky patches of fallen ginkgo berries. Ginkgo: Rhymes with “stinko” for a reason. Their leaves are so lovely, and yet their berries smell like rancid feta.

(Ginkgo leaves are a gorgeous gold this time of year, not green as in this photo. I swiped the picture from my sister’s Flickr account.)

Nothing much to report this week. I saw Spectre and enjoyed it well enough, I think, but the details didn’t care to stick around in my brain for very long. I remember liking Q and Moneypenny a lot, but that's about it.

Also, I have a new Duranalysis up, if you’ve missed it. This week, I examined the video for 1988’s “All She Wants Is.”

Here’s a quick look at some of the Google search terms people have used to find this website over the past month:

the concrete overcoat affair
One of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’s finest episodes. Might be my very favorite, mainly because Janet Leigh is so very creepy and amazing in it. Also, it's tawdry. I’ve been seeing a whole lot of recent search traffic for this episode, so I presume it aired on television somewhere in the past few days. My recap is here.


seattle to spokane flights
Fly Horizon Air, if you have a choice in the matter. Their planes are tiny, so you’ll have to walk out on the tarmac to board, and it can get awfully bumpy as you fly over the Cascades, but they’ll pass out complimentary glasses of Columbia Valley wines and local craft beers to ease your nerves. Their parent company is Alaska Airlines, so you’ll have to book through the Alaska site. Horizon flights are very, very subtly marked; when it comes to choosing your flights, look for the itty-bitty footnote next to the flight number that identifies it as a Horizon flight. (Alaska is a perfectly lovely airline, with much bigger planes and nice amenities, so there’s really no wrong choice. My heart belongs to Horizon, though, simply because of the free wine.)

if i can't take you with me by heather stewart
Purchase the song (or either of her albums) here, through Heather’s official site, and pat yourself on the back for having such awesome taste. Heather is one of my dearest friends and favorite people in the world; as a bonus, she’s also talented as all hell. Please throw money and praise her way. She deserves it.

man from uncle baddies
THRUSH! Gloriously incompetent global terrorist organization THRUSH! THRUSH is the Cobra to U.N.C.L.E.’s G.I. Joe. Actually, that’s an excellent analogy, come to think of it. If you’ve never seen The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (I’m talking about the series, naturally, not the movie), and you’re unsure whether it’s your kind of thing, ask yourself this question: As a kid, did you like the 1980s cartoon series G.I. Joe? If the answer is yes, then absolutely, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is for you. If you’re unfamiliar with the madcap world of G.I. Joe, ask yourself this question: Do you enjoy deliriously entertaining and stylish television? If the answer is yes, then again, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is for you.

moonbeam city sucks
Yup. Moonbeam City is pretty assy. I keep watching it, though, because it’s absolutely gorgeous and it occasionally makes me chuckle, but I’m sure not going to argue with anyone who thinks it sucks.


psycho character who is actually a corpse crossword
This is probably coming much too late to help you with your crossword but—spoiler alert!—it’s Norman’s mom.

matthew rhys looks like julian mcmahon
Hadn’t thought of that until you brought it up, but… you know, you’re right, he really does.


what is parmigiana
A delicious Italian dish, featuring deep-fried breaded eggplant, veal, or chicken, which is slathered in tomato sauce and cheese and then baked.

napoleon/illya
This pairing pretty much writes itself.


duran duran pleasure off
I can only assume and hope that this is some weird porn parody of “Pressure Off”.

mr t dead or alive
Alive! Mr. T is very much alive and well, appearing FUZE commercials dressed as a butterfly while being charming and sweet-natured and almost painfully sincere on Twitter. Mr. T is a national treasure, and I hope he lives forever.

kajagoogoo hair
Limahl had amazing hair, back in the day. Here’s a fabulous Kajagoogoo story: The band had its big breakthrough when Limahl, who was working as a busboy in a club, struck up a conversation with a customer, Duran Duran’s glamorous enfant terrible, Nick Rhodes. Sensing a kindred spirit (I mean, the hair alone…), Nick ended up producing Kajagoogoo’s debut album; the single “Too Shy” hit number one on the UK pop charts in early 1983, before Duran Duran ever reached number one there.



I’m going to leave you with the video for “Too Shy”. Have a wonderful weekend.


Comments

Anonymous said…
wtf is happening with the redheaded nagel girl's left hand in that moonbeam city picture. why is her pinky so long. why is her ring finger bending so strangely. i've spent about half an hour now trying to make my hand do that around my fist, just to make sure i'm not making this comment without reason, and it just isn't happening.

...honestly, i haven't been able to think of anything to say on this post or the duranalysis besides "that was the one video i could think of that was an obvious candidate for duranalysis that hadn't been done yet, nicely researched, i see why you omitted the notable nick anecdote (tm) for that one because you had enough there and between that and calling out the hairstyle it would've been a bit mean-spirited*, keep up the good work." and none of it really seemed worth posting. but i'd like to encourage you by commenting throughout your duran-filled journey through the rest of 2015, so here i am anyway to rag on a tiny piece of a picture.

*i've had to have a life mask made, and my reaction was about the opposite of nick's, so i find it pretty funny.
Morgan Richter said…
Thank you for the encouragement. I spent part of yesterday glumly poring over Duran Duran's videography, trying to find some hidden gems that I haven't yet Duranalyzed, but I'm starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel. I'm down to the ones where a Duranalysis is *possible* but doesn't sound that much fun (Someone Else Not Me? Femme Fatale? All those damn Notorious-era videos?), and the ones where scraping together enough grist for a Duranalysis seems doomed to failure (White Lines, What Happens Tomorrow). It's getting bleak. I have the feeling there's going to be a lot of, like, Power Station and Band Aid posts creeping in over these next few weeks.

Damn, her pinky *is* bizarrely long, isn't it?
Anonymous said…
maybe the artist just forgot that there are two joints in the average human's fingers, pinky (and ring finger. i see you, monojoint!) included. it's an easy mistake to make, especially if you're going in with the base knowledge that in that pose the pinky really would be slightly out ahead of the ring finger. guess he didn't have any hands sitting around to look at or - oh wait

wow, so this really is the end of the line for music videos. (it's gotten to where someone else not me is even on the table? yikes.)

i could see how blindly wandering youtube in search for an interview where nick *isn't* simply going over the same talking points for the 9000th time that release cycle could wear you down, but i guess you could always open it up to requests, in a sense. have people name their favorite interviews (except you've already gotten mine... i'd have to settle for my second favorite, oh no!), combine some of the shorter ones into one post, and so on.

or, we can all hope that they'll have a video out in a timely manner for what are the chances, saving you for a week.
Morgan Richter said…
If you've got anything you'd like to see Duranalyzed, please let me know. Yeah, the list of remaining videos is looking a little grim (Violence of Summer?). I have *some* ideas for future subjects, but nothing that has revved me up enough to spend several hours working on it.

Lord. They seem to really like performance-based videos these days (Girl Panic was a lovely exception), so even if they release another one in time, I'm not optimistic.
Anonymous said…
[gasps] i'd completely forgotten about everything to do with liberty. just have a post that's nothing but gifs of nick chewing gum. ta-da! that's one week

so on an actually helpful note, there are seven thursdays left in the year. let's see if i can come up with seven requests, so you have a little bit of leeway

1. arcadia, feat. erica ehm and high (on life (?)) simon - this one i've already linked you to (i used to be a capitalizing anon. then, i got comfortable.)

2. moma (googling "duran duran unstaged moma" brings this up right away) (i'm not sure how funny this is without the context that john always zones out during interviews when nick is reciting facts, and with the sheer number of same-y interviews they did during the anyin era it got really noticeable. the audience is mostly made up of dedicated fans, so...)

3. answering questions triptych: bingo wall of death (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zttj8Z-WIs), truth or dare (http://filtermagazine.com/index.php/filter-unbound/ brings it straight up for me, but if it doesn't for you duran duran are apparently issue #7), mtv ema questions (https://vid.me/WH7e)

4. MAX HEADROOM FEAT. SO DEAD THE NOSE omg how did i almost forget that (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Law04XmLmLU) (i swear there's actually more of this somewhere - basically, max leaves them hanging through most of the episode, so there are short bits of them kind of wandering around this set - but i can't find the pre-interview stuff for the life of me) (this may be too short to hold its own? but idk what i'd pair it with)

5. ...tumblr just discovered a making of rcm video that's forty minutes long. i haven't even watched it yet, but here you go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjbask1naGQ

6. noooooo, i'm so close! um... random wedding album-era interviews like OH MY GOD I FORGOT THE THREE HUNDRED DOLLAR OUTFIT AT SEARS this should be, like, the third thing i thought of (http://style.mtv.com/house-of-style/collection/20120724/house-of-style-episode-23/ seems to have all of it. i thought it was on youtube, but apparently not anymore. they replaced all the actual duran duran music with generic stuff, why) also there's some stuff like when larry king had them on the show and clearly didn't know who they were, but really house of style is the crown jewel of the wedding album interviews. there's something else i remember liking where it shows them doing a photo shoot and other behind-the-scenes stuff, which i swear is another mtv or e!-related thing that someone uploaded to youtube, but i can't find it. :(

7. ugh, i'm so close! but all i can think of is stuff that just has little moments in it, like nick being baffled/amused at kids and rogers eating cake with their hands and john and roger talking about when best to marry each other. nothing that's quite enough to sustain analysis. my duran-related memory has been pushed to the brink, it seems. but who knows, maybe it'll pull through sometime in the next six weeks. for now, here are six suggestions.
Anonymous said…
some overnight brainwaves to add (bringing it up to seven, kind of):
-i'm expanding the moma suggestion to an unstaged-related post by adding the short clips with durans in them (such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh9zQZVcnfE; their channel has them all). i could have sworn they also did an interview for it where they sat in tall chairs and weird stuff happened on the screen that asked the questions. if that sounds vague, it's because it's been a while and i can't find it.

7 (maybe?). some of the short documentary-type clips they've done. though now that i'm actually typing that out, i feel like that still falls into the "there are moments but are there enough moments" category, only now with added length (especially in the case of that one backstage-in-italy one that goes on for over an hour). and in the case of the durans-visit-new-orleans-after-hurricane-katrina one, some of what i'm thinking about seems to have disappeared off the face of youtube. so in the end, i've still effectively only made it to six. :\
Morgan Richter said…
Wow -- very cool, anon, thanks for the suggestions! I've seen some of these, and some are completely new. Excellent. (The House of Style one had been on my list, but when it disappeared from YouTube I thought it was gone forever.) I'll go through them all and see what works. Anything to save me from the Notorious-era videos, which I keep glumly rewatching while wondering if there's something, anything I can do with them.
Anonymous said…
i just watched the rcm one, and i liked it a lot, in a three to get ready kind of way. i'm now optimistic that it'll work, if only because of simon's terrible-sounding spicy porridge.

i'm not sure if there's a science to what makes a good subject for duranalysis, but i tried to pick things that were either interesting from a behind-the-scenes standpoint or that i've found rewatchable. (i can quote an embarrassing amount of that house of style one, for example. i'm happy that i reunited you with it--nobody should have to go without being able to zip and dash!) i'm glad i could help!

as someone who has no idea if making people zip around the screen through green screen usage was an actual trend in the late '80s, the thing i find funniest about the skin trade video is that it's kind of similar to the video for buffalo stance. there's an angle, maybe. come to think of it, there are also flowers in buffalo stance, linking it to someone else not me... yeah, no, this is all a real stretch
Morgan Richter said…
Very good. I still haven't watched the RCM one, but that sounds very promising, what with Simon and his spicy porridge. Yeah, I think there's zero science to picking a Duranalysis topic, other than it needs to be something I can watch multiple times without my eyes glazing over from tedium. Which is sometimes harder than it sounds. I remember the Unstaged one you mention, with the tall chairs and the questions and the weird stuff on screen (and Nick apparently deciding to be extra-pretentious that day, that's honestly what I remember most about it--look, people, just don't ask Nick questions about what music he's been listening to recently. You should know better than that), though I haven't seen it since the night of the concert, when it first streamed.