Enthusiastick Journal

This Summer, a villain will rise.

(No, I'm not talking about the Dark Knight. I will talk about the Dark Knight eventually, because it was staggeringly good. But later.)

I'm talking about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog which, as of last night, is no longer free to watch but is still available on iTunes.

I think my friend Jaywalt put it best when he said, "It's like Joss Whedon got together with the internet and made a musical for you." He's absolutely right about that. Ever since I became obsessed with Jonathan Coulton I've had a thing for music about mad scientists (prior to Dr. Horrible, the latest incarnation of this obsession came in the form of Paul & Storm aping JoCo's style for the Masters of Song Fu contest with the inestimable song "Live".)

Take that thing and multiply it's awesomeness a thousand fold. Throw in Joss Whedon writing fantastic and positively Sondheim-ian musical numbers, Nathan Fillion being a laugh-riot mook and mugging for the camera, Neil Patrick Harris being funnier than he is in Harold & Kumar and darker than he is in How I Met Your Mother, a running gag about a Mr. Ed-style equine super villain (Bad Horse, the Thoroughbred of Sin), Felicia Day standing around looking sweet and pretty, Simon Helberg being unpleasantly sweaty... the list goes on and on. The number of cool elements in this thing is staggering. Every time you think it can't get better, it does.

It's a 3-act musical, with each act consisting of an episode about 14 minutes long. If you've somehow missed the tremendous internet buzz that this thing has generated, then I'm telling you now to get on board. You'll be walking around humming the songs for days to come.

I'm crazy tired today. Last night the Mountain Witch finally came to an end (for the curious, a recap can be found here.) After game many of the players retired to the Asgard for food and drinks. The past few times the Story Games Boston crew has hit up the Asgard late on Wednesday nights we've been confused and intrigued by the existence of a karaoke corner by the bar, where drunken Bostonians congregate to howl the classic rock into a microphone. Every time it makes me kind of antsy, because I love karaoke and am drawn to it. I said as much to locke61dv, as I always do.

Only this time around Richard, who is young and brave, actually went and signed up. I could hardly let that stand, so I followed after him and signed up as well, and the rest came out to cheer us along. Soon we were all poring over the song selection books and debating what makes a good karaoke song. locke61dv copped out as not drunk enough for this, while foreign_devilry seemed willing so long as he could get someone to sing with him. Richard shouted a little Rage Against the Machine (for though the little karaoke corner is a random thing, their selection depth is entirely respectable) to the amusement of our crew and the guy running the karaoke. The rest of the bars patrons did not seem equally amused. Then I went up and murdered Fastball's "You're An Ocean," always a favorite of mine. I am totally out of practice. Which is a very dangerous thought.

Any way, I was out late enough that I missed the last train out of Central. Eric and April were gracious enough to drive me and the others home (except Richard, who is apparently walking distance from Central, because he's an undergrad at MIT.) And so I am a bit bleary today, because I'm operating on too little sleep. I don't think I have any plans tonight, though, so I can just relax and take it easy. I mean, I really want to get home and become a crazy vortex of cleaning and organization, but its probably not going to happen.

Back around Christmas I and two of my three sisters were driving in our mother's car. We had just done the big extended family Christmas shindig and, stuffed full of food, were driving ourselves back from Massachusetts to Connecticut (I go back and forth a fair bit around the holidays.) The rest of the family was in other cars, because there are many of us and also a dog and so we caravan almost everywhere we go.

Being in the Mom SUV meant we didn't have any real tunes aside from her CDs and the radio, and so we settled on the latter. The radio is of course horrible, but we found songs here and there that were agreeable to all three of us, mostly in the form of pop music from the 80s. I was in the passenger seat, and since the driving conditions were less than ideal that put me firmly in charge of twisting the radio dial anytime commercials or icky bad music came on. Eventually I stumbled across one of the Snow Partrol singles, the one made most famous by the Grey's Anatomy season two finale. Its called "Chasing Cars," and if you haven't heard it then the rest of this entry may not make a whole lot of sense. Anyway, I lingered on the song long enough to determine it was near to the beginning and then sat back to listen.

"Uhhh, depressing," griped my snarky younger sister from the back seat. And at the time I just sort of shrugged the comment off, because I guess its sort of a moody-sounding song, but I like it. The song came up again this morning, on my way to work, due to the wonder and mystery of the shuffle feature on my iPod. And I actually got to thinking about it for a minute, because that's the way my brain works, and I realized that I should have spoken up and voiced my disagreement. Because while its got sort of a downbeat emo sound to it, I don't find the song depressing at all. Exactly the opposite, actually. The start of the chorus goes:

if I lay here
if I just lay here
would you lie with me and
just forget the world

And the thing is I'm pretty sure its a love song. Simple love, expressed starkly. The kind of love Paul wrote about in his first letter to the Corinthians that's such a popular reading at weddings. You know the one. The love that isn't boastful or proud? Of course, in context, its not love he's writing about at all, but rather Christian charity. But for our purposes that is very much beside the point. The point is that this song, with its slow tempo and haunting, almost mournful vocals, is actually quite uplifting if you listen to the lyrics. And I know I pay too much attention to lyrics. I know that sometimes I fall in love with a song because it has a pretty turn of phrase only to later realize that its musically awful and grows unbearable on repeated listening. And I know that reading too much into the lyrics of pop songs is a disorder you're supposed to outgrow in adolescence.

But I didn't, and I doubt I ever will. The fact of the matter is I don't want to.

I wish I could tell you that I was going somewhere with this line of thought. Or at least somewhere other than "Whee, I've got childish qualities, and I'm perversely proud of hanging onto them!" But, well, I'm not going anywhere with it. There's not a whole lot going on with me right now. Between keeping my head down at work and this unexpected bout of actual Winter weather in Boston I'm just sort of on auto pilot. I bumbled past Imbolc without a second thought, and all of a sudden its hard not to notice Valentine's Day on the horizon. And I guess in that context having a long song on my mind maybe isn't so hard to understand.