Songs on a Rainy night in the Autobahn

© Joselito Briones

Nothing better than a long drive (Erlangen to Mannheim) to get reacquainted with classics.

After half an hour of listening to Ray Brown Trio's jazz versions of standards, I've decided to put on something that'd wake us up somehow. The first song in the complilation CD that I put on more than woke me up though, it made me hyper. The Knack's "My Sharona". I haven't heard the song for a while, but everytime I hear it again it never fails to lift up my mood. I don't even know what the song is about, all I know is it makes me want to bounce off my seat.

At the last hour of the drive, it started raining quite heavily, and having exhausted all the upbeat songs in the CD's that I brought, we agreed to play George Michael. Yes, every card-carrying friend of Dorothy has to have his CD on rotation, or the all-time favorite OST from "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", or of course, any of the tragic divas, else our membership is in danger of being revoked.

"The first time ever I kissed your mouth
I felt the earth move in my hand
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command...my love "

-Ewan McColl

For this drive, we had "Songs from the Last Century". I've forgotten how much I loved his version of "Roxanne" and "Miss Sarajevo", and how pointless is his cover of "The First Time Ever I saw Your Face". I still think this song has one of the best words ever put to music, and nothing will ever surpass Roberta Flack's crisp voice in delivering it (Johnny Cash' version is too devastating).


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Don't you just love it?

© Joselito Briones

It's brag time!

Don't you just love it when you see something that is very similar to something you've thought of first a long time ago? Six years ago, when the Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) animation technology was still relatively new, I did this animation, simply called "Portraits", to show my work in portrait photography. A year later I did another one, "Portraits 2". It was something new then, and obviously not done before, that I had plenty of email inquiry about it. I did a search of the topic in Google groups and this came up. Trust Google to find proof that you're not just writing BS.



Screen capture from DG website

I was going through my email subscriptions when this popped up from the Dolce & Gabbana newsletter (and don't even ask me why I'm subscribing to D&G, they should just keep me informed automatically, considering the money I spend buying their stuff). The technology obviously has advanced since then, because it's so much more interactive, but still...

What do you think?

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Theme

CD cover of "Kick, Push"

I've been thinking of a song to go with my letters to you, a theme, if you must. I've considered plenty of songs which I really like, but none seem to describe perfectly the state of mind I'm in the past few months, until I saw this video on TV.

The title of the song is "Kick... Push", by Lupe Fiasco. It's about something else altogether, skateboarding, in fact. But after listening to it a few times, I find that this is exactly the mood that I've been in for much of this year (and maybe last year, too). Sometimes I think it's a bit too late in life to be feeling like this, but at the end of the day, it is how it is. The only reservation I have for this song is that it might be just a bit too cool for these letters.

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P.S.
The very close second choice, which I decided not to go for because it's a bit too obvious, was a song by The Beastie Boys.

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