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.”
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
...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.
Damn, her pinky *is* bizarrely long, isn't it?
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.
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.
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.
-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. :\
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