Saturday, November 19, 2005
The latest blog updates
The observant among you will have noticed that some new doodads have appeared... but 1st, an update on the new blog exchanges. BlogMad, which the weird eyeball gif in the sidebar links to, is still in the "taking pre-registrations" stage, so, if you haven't already, pop over there and sign up so you get the bonus credits. BloggerSwap took SIX days for the unnecessary approval of the change of email addy for my account, and then finally started working... but very, VERY slowly-I've got nearly 4000 page view credits with them, but in the 5 days I've been active my ad has only been shown 134 times. Hopefully, the 1:1 ratio of displays on my blog to displays of my ad will start taking effect some time soon.
I'm showing my love of critters in my sidebar now; every few days, "Animal of the day by TheWebsiteOfEverything" switches to a new photo and blurb, the idea of which is to get people interested in, and thinking about, animals... there's lots of info on their site, too, so if you want to see more cute pics and maybe learn something, give a click.
I've been tempted many times to add a word of the day script to my blog, as I enjoy $10 words, but some don't even give the definition with the word (they make you go to their website to see it, which most folks won't bother with), and the others never seemed too well thought out, so I'd never taken the plunge; when I found one with the definition AND a thing to click to hear a sound file of the word being said, so you can be sure about its pronunciation, though, I knew I'd found the right one... especially since I have many visitors for whom English isn't their 1st language.
And, coolest of all, I now have a doodad that shows what cities the last 15 (I may change that to 20) visitors to my blog are in, courtesy of MapStats, which is one of the BlogFlux services. This was probably the toughest piece of code to get installed of all time: First, there's something wrong with my account on their site, because the links that are supposed to bring up my customized code just lead to other pages with links, that lead in turn back to the original page. Second, the tech support guy I asked to fix the problem was unable to figure it out, and eventually just stopped responding to my emails; NOT a classy move, and one that I've never understood... if you give up on something you're supposed to be fixing for someone, let the poor victim KNOW, don't just blow them off. Third, I had to therefore take the sample code on their site, and the customized code on the blog I'd found this service on, my buddy Gary LaPointe's excellent site
http://garysaid.com/
and try to determine what MY code should be; it took some work, especially since I had to get the code for their banner set up before the script would run, but I DID it, AND customized it with a more readable font color and size in the bargain, in addition to resizing the box and its margins to fit better in the sidebar. Fourth, although I had a working display, the text was inexplicably being affected by the div command I use to right-justify all the doodads, so, although it's supposed to be centered, it was doing guess-what instead, which looked kinda grim. Fifth, I tried to insert a centering command in the code every way I could think of, to no avail. Sixth, I asked for help at the tech forums, and not one of them knew how to fix the problem. And now we get to lucky #7, which is when I consulted Jayson the Tech God, whose very advanced blog is here
http://blog.hypercubed.com/
with the result that you can see-the code works perfectly now. I don't know how he did it, in particular I don't know why the width of the box has to be defined twice, although it clearly does, as removing either of the commands messes up the display in ways whose cause and effect are beyond my comprehension... it looks like magic to ME. (Edit: Jayson tried to explain it to me, and all I understood is that he split the width command and put more code in the middle, which sounds like quantum programming... in other words, MAGIC, lol.)
It's fascinating to see where my readers are coming from; for example, I seem to have a daily reader, or maybe even a couple, in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia, since that city keeps coming up, and, even more astonishingly, a regular visitor from Cow Flat, Australia (it isn't listed in any of the almanacs I checked, so it must be as small as it sounds like it is, which means it's not likely there's more than one reader there). I love seeing cities and towns, even American ones, that I've never heard of, and the more exotic the country, the more exciting it is; currently on the list are Sint-Anna Pede, Belgium, General San Martin, Argentina, and Fa Yuen, Hong Kong... it doesn't get much better than that.
I'm showing my love of critters in my sidebar now; every few days, "Animal of the day by TheWebsiteOfEverything" switches to a new photo and blurb, the idea of which is to get people interested in, and thinking about, animals... there's lots of info on their site, too, so if you want to see more cute pics and maybe learn something, give a click.
I've been tempted many times to add a word of the day script to my blog, as I enjoy $10 words, but some don't even give the definition with the word (they make you go to their website to see it, which most folks won't bother with), and the others never seemed too well thought out, so I'd never taken the plunge; when I found one with the definition AND a thing to click to hear a sound file of the word being said, so you can be sure about its pronunciation, though, I knew I'd found the right one... especially since I have many visitors for whom English isn't their 1st language.
And, coolest of all, I now have a doodad that shows what cities the last 15 (I may change that to 20) visitors to my blog are in, courtesy of MapStats, which is one of the BlogFlux services. This was probably the toughest piece of code to get installed of all time: First, there's something wrong with my account on their site, because the links that are supposed to bring up my customized code just lead to other pages with links, that lead in turn back to the original page. Second, the tech support guy I asked to fix the problem was unable to figure it out, and eventually just stopped responding to my emails; NOT a classy move, and one that I've never understood... if you give up on something you're supposed to be fixing for someone, let the poor victim KNOW, don't just blow them off. Third, I had to therefore take the sample code on their site, and the customized code on the blog I'd found this service on, my buddy Gary LaPointe's excellent site
http://garysaid.com/
and try to determine what MY code should be; it took some work, especially since I had to get the code for their banner set up before the script would run, but I DID it, AND customized it with a more readable font color and size in the bargain, in addition to resizing the box and its margins to fit better in the sidebar. Fourth, although I had a working display, the text was inexplicably being affected by the div command I use to right-justify all the doodads, so, although it's supposed to be centered, it was doing guess-what instead, which looked kinda grim. Fifth, I tried to insert a centering command in the code every way I could think of, to no avail. Sixth, I asked for help at the tech forums, and not one of them knew how to fix the problem. And now we get to lucky #7, which is when I consulted Jayson the Tech God, whose very advanced blog is here
http://blog.hypercubed.com/
with the result that you can see-the code works perfectly now. I don't know how he did it, in particular I don't know why the width of the box has to be defined twice, although it clearly does, as removing either of the commands messes up the display in ways whose cause and effect are beyond my comprehension... it looks like magic to ME. (Edit: Jayson tried to explain it to me, and all I understood is that he split the width command and put more code in the middle, which sounds like quantum programming... in other words, MAGIC, lol.)
It's fascinating to see where my readers are coming from; for example, I seem to have a daily reader, or maybe even a couple, in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia, since that city keeps coming up, and, even more astonishingly, a regular visitor from Cow Flat, Australia (it isn't listed in any of the almanacs I checked, so it must be as small as it sounds like it is, which means it's not likely there's more than one reader there). I love seeing cities and towns, even American ones, that I've never heard of, and the more exotic the country, the more exciting it is; currently on the list are Sint-Anna Pede, Belgium, General San Martin, Argentina, and Fa Yuen, Hong Kong... it doesn't get much better than that.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Art imitates life
Tonight, I finally saw "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=153243&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
which, considering that Tim Burton directed it and Johnny Depp starred in it, should have been MUCH better, darker and more twisted; there was one scene, however, that gave me chills in a manner that Burton didn't plan on. Willy Wonka has a flashback to his childhood when asked about the 1st candy he ever ate, and we see him trick or treating, coming home, and having his father ask to see what he got; the father says that the caramels will stick in the boy's braces, the lollipops are just cavities on sticks, and that, since some children are allergic to chocolate, the boy shouldn't "risk" eating any... and he throws ALL of the candy into the fire (except for the one piece that falls to the side, to be recovered later, of course). Although my own father never bothered with discussions or explanations, or even pretending to have rational reasons for the things he did, or that they were allegedly for my benefit, and we never had a fire burning for him to throw things into, he DID throw out all my Halloween candy every year, and because I'd never heard of this fate befalling any other child, much less seen it portrayed in movie, that scene really packed a wallop.
The final touch was when my husband chose that moment to have his annual flash of comprehension of how I might feel (as opposed to normally when even the most thorough explanations leave him still claiming to not get it), and piped up with, "Boy, that's really eerie for you to see that, isn't it?"... and mind you, he couldn't see my face from where he was, and I hadn't said anything, so he made the connection all by himself.
So how do I feel about something that was shown to portray a freakish childhood being a toned-down replica of what I actually experienced? About how you'd expect... but fear not, I've got sufficient Godiva chocolates on hand to remind myself that the present, unlike the past, is sweet.
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=153243&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
which, considering that Tim Burton directed it and Johnny Depp starred in it, should have been MUCH better, darker and more twisted; there was one scene, however, that gave me chills in a manner that Burton didn't plan on. Willy Wonka has a flashback to his childhood when asked about the 1st candy he ever ate, and we see him trick or treating, coming home, and having his father ask to see what he got; the father says that the caramels will stick in the boy's braces, the lollipops are just cavities on sticks, and that, since some children are allergic to chocolate, the boy shouldn't "risk" eating any... and he throws ALL of the candy into the fire (except for the one piece that falls to the side, to be recovered later, of course). Although my own father never bothered with discussions or explanations, or even pretending to have rational reasons for the things he did, or that they were allegedly for my benefit, and we never had a fire burning for him to throw things into, he DID throw out all my Halloween candy every year, and because I'd never heard of this fate befalling any other child, much less seen it portrayed in movie, that scene really packed a wallop.
The final touch was when my husband chose that moment to have his annual flash of comprehension of how I might feel (as opposed to normally when even the most thorough explanations leave him still claiming to not get it), and piped up with, "Boy, that's really eerie for you to see that, isn't it?"... and mind you, he couldn't see my face from where he was, and I hadn't said anything, so he made the connection all by himself.
So how do I feel about something that was shown to portray a freakish childhood being a toned-down replica of what I actually experienced? About how you'd expect... but fear not, I've got sufficient Godiva chocolates on hand to remind myself that the present, unlike the past, is sweet.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
The posting dilemma
Actually, there are SEVERAL posting dilemmas, the primary one of which is how to find time to write AND sleep, but the one that's been on my mind today is; what sort of posts do people come here to read?
This blog chronicles what's on my mind each day, and part of the reason I don't have commenting is to not get sucked into catering to the readers rather than giving vent to my undiluted voice, but as my 2 year blog-iversary draws near, and my average # of daily hits edges upwards, I'm increasingly aware that I've got an audience, some of whom have been reading, and even linking to, me for an amazingly long time, and, although I still don't want to start 2nd-guessing what I should be writing, there are plenty of days when there are several things that suggest themselves as possible topics, and then the dilemma begins:
How about a science essay? People think science is boring, though, don't they? Who that cares about string theory or the latest medical breakthroughs would be reading blogs?
I could write about something from my childhood, but that's pretty depressing stuff, and who wants to read about someone else's long-ago woes?
Then there's my current life... but why would people who don't know me be interested in my latest fight with my husband or interaction with my critters?
I've added new stuff to the sidebars... but who wants to read a bunch of technical gobbledygook? People either don't understand it or it's non-revelatory to them and so no cause for excitement.
There's a movie, TV show or ad I saw that caught my attention.. but that's trivial stuff.
And of course there's my spiritual journey, which is the central theme of the blog... but why would anyone want to read about a belief system so unusual that it has no name, or even anyone else who shares it?
That's the thing of it; the subjects that really interest ME are of little interest to the vast majority of the population, so looked at objectively there doesn't seem to be any reason for people to take time to read what I write... yet, miraculously, they DO. All I can figure is that, since obviously there couldn't be any topic that I'd be the ONLY person in the world to care about, I've managed to gather in some of that small % of people who think protracted rants on odd topics are fun to read... and, although I'm sure most of you don't love ALL my posts, you must like a fair # of 'em, in which case I should just keep on writing whatever's uppermost in my mind and stop worrying which essays people are happy to see and which ones make them roll their eyes and decide to try back tomorrow.
Fat chance, lol; I'm a natural worrier, agonizer, over-analyzer and obsessor, and part of me will always be concerned about whether or not I'm providing my long-time readers with whatever it is that started them reading here in the 1st place. That's ok, though; as long as I can still come up with a topic every day, as long as I have ideas bouncing around my brain, I figure I'm still ahead of the game... because it'd be far worse to have nothing to say.
This blog chronicles what's on my mind each day, and part of the reason I don't have commenting is to not get sucked into catering to the readers rather than giving vent to my undiluted voice, but as my 2 year blog-iversary draws near, and my average # of daily hits edges upwards, I'm increasingly aware that I've got an audience, some of whom have been reading, and even linking to, me for an amazingly long time, and, although I still don't want to start 2nd-guessing what I should be writing, there are plenty of days when there are several things that suggest themselves as possible topics, and then the dilemma begins:
How about a science essay? People think science is boring, though, don't they? Who that cares about string theory or the latest medical breakthroughs would be reading blogs?
I could write about something from my childhood, but that's pretty depressing stuff, and who wants to read about someone else's long-ago woes?
Then there's my current life... but why would people who don't know me be interested in my latest fight with my husband or interaction with my critters?
I've added new stuff to the sidebars... but who wants to read a bunch of technical gobbledygook? People either don't understand it or it's non-revelatory to them and so no cause for excitement.
There's a movie, TV show or ad I saw that caught my attention.. but that's trivial stuff.
And of course there's my spiritual journey, which is the central theme of the blog... but why would anyone want to read about a belief system so unusual that it has no name, or even anyone else who shares it?
That's the thing of it; the subjects that really interest ME are of little interest to the vast majority of the population, so looked at objectively there doesn't seem to be any reason for people to take time to read what I write... yet, miraculously, they DO. All I can figure is that, since obviously there couldn't be any topic that I'd be the ONLY person in the world to care about, I've managed to gather in some of that small % of people who think protracted rants on odd topics are fun to read... and, although I'm sure most of you don't love ALL my posts, you must like a fair # of 'em, in which case I should just keep on writing whatever's uppermost in my mind and stop worrying which essays people are happy to see and which ones make them roll their eyes and decide to try back tomorrow.
Fat chance, lol; I'm a natural worrier, agonizer, over-analyzer and obsessor, and part of me will always be concerned about whether or not I'm providing my long-time readers with whatever it is that started them reading here in the 1st place. That's ok, though; as long as I can still come up with a topic every day, as long as I have ideas bouncing around my brain, I figure I'm still ahead of the game... because it'd be far worse to have nothing to say.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Who would you bring back from the dead?
Tonight I watched an episode of "Babylon 5" that circled around the Brakiri night of the dead, on which someone important to you who had passed away would come back (in their physical body, not as a ghost) for one night, and you could make of your time together what you wanted. My husband asked me who I'D want to bring back under those circumstances, and this is what I came up with as my choices:
1) Beloved relative #1, who died of a heart attack after dementia had taken most of her mind; I'd just like to see her one more time, but only if she still had enough going on mentally to know who I was and understand what was said to her.
2) Beloved relative #2, who died of congestive heart failure when she was very old but completely mentally sharp; she still had things to say, and I'd want to hear as many of them as I could.
3) Several relatives that I didn't really know but might have benefitted from knowing, especially my maternal grandfather; I know so little about what went on in my family before my parents were adults, and then only from their warped perspectives for the most part.
4) Friend #1, who committed suicide; I want to understand the pain that drove her to blow her brains out, and have another chance to be sure that her crushing depression hadn't blinded her to how much she was loved.
5) Friend #2, who died from round 2 of breast cancer shortly before she was going to come and see me again; I'd met her online, and only spent one precious day with her in person (she did visit me twice after her death, but that's a different thing altogether; I posted about that on 3-12-04), and it'd mean alot to be able to double our time together.
6) The therapist who saved my life, who also died of round 2 of breast cancer; she knew me better than anyone else ever has or ever will, and there are so many things I'd want to tell her about my life after the last time I saw her, to get her feedback and show her how well I overcame my past... and I'd want to give her the gratitude that I couldn't all those years ago, when all I could do was try to survive one day at a time.
7) Wildcard; one of the characters on the show had a visitor who had very little to do with him when he was alive, but had something important to tell him. There have to be SOME people I once knew but am not in touch with who are dead; who might they be, and what could they have to say that would be meaningful to my future?
Who would it be? Who would I choose, and who'd be chosen for me if it were part of the script? The B5 episode already had a wildcard, and a suicide, so the best storyline left would be one of the family members with some sort of revelation that'd change my life. As to which one I'D choose; the feeling of unfinished business is most powerful with the therapist, with the friend who committed suicide a close 2nd (she came to me in a dream and gave me pretty good closure about her death, but not concerning her reason for killing herself).
Who would YOU choose to bring back?
1) Beloved relative #1, who died of a heart attack after dementia had taken most of her mind; I'd just like to see her one more time, but only if she still had enough going on mentally to know who I was and understand what was said to her.
2) Beloved relative #2, who died of congestive heart failure when she was very old but completely mentally sharp; she still had things to say, and I'd want to hear as many of them as I could.
3) Several relatives that I didn't really know but might have benefitted from knowing, especially my maternal grandfather; I know so little about what went on in my family before my parents were adults, and then only from their warped perspectives for the most part.
4) Friend #1, who committed suicide; I want to understand the pain that drove her to blow her brains out, and have another chance to be sure that her crushing depression hadn't blinded her to how much she was loved.
5) Friend #2, who died from round 2 of breast cancer shortly before she was going to come and see me again; I'd met her online, and only spent one precious day with her in person (she did visit me twice after her death, but that's a different thing altogether; I posted about that on 3-12-04), and it'd mean alot to be able to double our time together.
6) The therapist who saved my life, who also died of round 2 of breast cancer; she knew me better than anyone else ever has or ever will, and there are so many things I'd want to tell her about my life after the last time I saw her, to get her feedback and show her how well I overcame my past... and I'd want to give her the gratitude that I couldn't all those years ago, when all I could do was try to survive one day at a time.
7) Wildcard; one of the characters on the show had a visitor who had very little to do with him when he was alive, but had something important to tell him. There have to be SOME people I once knew but am not in touch with who are dead; who might they be, and what could they have to say that would be meaningful to my future?
Who would it be? Who would I choose, and who'd be chosen for me if it were part of the script? The B5 episode already had a wildcard, and a suicide, so the best storyline left would be one of the family members with some sort of revelation that'd change my life. As to which one I'D choose; the feeling of unfinished business is most powerful with the therapist, with the friend who committed suicide a close 2nd (she came to me in a dream and gave me pretty good closure about her death, but not concerning her reason for killing herself).
Who would YOU choose to bring back?
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
"Woo hoo...
... woo hoo hoo."
If you're in America, as soon as you read that you probably started hearing the theme from the Vonage commercials running through your head; if you're elsewhere, just imagine those same syllables repeated over, and over, and OVER. Actually, you don't have to imagine anything; it turns out, much to my astonishment, that what I'd thought were just nonsense syllables are part of an actual SONG... but wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.
My husband's good at recognizing even the most convoluted versions of old songs, or pieces thereof, that are used in ads, so I asked him if the "woo hoo woo hoo hoo"-ing was from a song; when he told me he thought it WAS a song, I thought he was kidding, but since he wasn't, I looked up "woo hoo" and "Vonage" and discovered that he was RIGHT. :-O
The song is called, you guessed it, "Woo Hoo," and it's by a Japanese band called "The 5.6.7.8's," from their 1996 album "Bomb the Twist"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000003KYZ/qid=1132015780/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-8570383-1034463?v=glance&s=music
The next shocker was that, although I'd always assumed it was a guy singing the woo-hoo's, the band consists of 3 women, Sachiko Fujii, Yoshiko Yamaguchi, and Ronnie Yoshiko Fujiyama.
The NEXT shocker was that Quentin Tarantino had apparently found this song somewhere and put it in "Kill Bill"; I've SEEN that movie, and not that long ago, and I have no memory whatsoever of any woo-hoo's, possibly because I was in a stupor from the violence and gore. Curious as to where it'd appeared in the movie, I looked it up, and found a post about it
http://www.nightly.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=21;t=004574;p=0
"I'm almost positve that 'Woo Hoo' is the (2nd?) track that they play when we see that long shot that runs thru the whole club (including over the walls/to different rooms) ending in the bathroom where The Bride hears Sofie Fatale talking on her cell phone (I could be wrong about that)."
Good enough for me; I checked the "Kill Bill" soundtrack
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000C9V3T/002-8570383-1034463?v=glance&s=music&vi=samples#disc_1
and there it is; you can hear a sample of the song on that page, or the one for their album, in case you've seen neither the Vonage ads nor "Kill Bill."
AND, we can see here
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cast-crew/B00005JMEW/ref=imdbdppd_castcrew_1/002-8570383-1034463?%5Fencoding=UTF8
that the band was actually IN the movie... if it wasn't so hard to watch (non-stop slice and dice just doesn't do it for me), I'd see it again just to find out what they looked like. I wondered whether Tarantino had really personally come up with the idea to use this song, and the band; after a little digging, I eventually found the pure-Hollywood story here
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fm20031116sb.htm
"'Tarantino was in Japan for a 'Kill Bill' meeting and he was browsing in this thrift store in Ebisu. The clerk is a fan of ours and she was playing our record,' says Ronnie. 'It was the first six songs on the new album, actually. And Tarantino asked her to sell him the record.'"
The article also refers to "Woo Hoo" as a cover, and a few minutes on Google showed that it was originally done by the band Rock-A-Teens; here's a pic of the labels from the original 78 RPM single from 1959
http://users.telerama.com/~agp/Cool_200508.html
plus the story of the band and the single... which hit #16 on the Billboard charts. You can hear the original version of the song here
http://www.starcitypunk.com/content/music/rockateens_woohoo1.mp3
Legend has it that they recorded the tune in the back of a record store
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/music/artist/bio/0,,869796,00.html#bio
and it sure sounds like they did... listen for the echo accompanying the "yeah" in the background. I don't know what's more astounding, that this "song" was actually a HIT, even that long ago, or that a Japanese band somehow heard it and chose to remake it.
And there's MORE; apparently, another company used the song in their ad, not knowing that Vonage was using it too:
http://www.autoweek.com/news.cms?newsId=101706
"Chevrolet introduced the major TV commercial in its marketing launch of the Cobalt economy car during a New Year's Eve blitz.
A week later, the automaker pulled the spot to replace its theme music - after it discovered an Internet phone company was using the same song in its commercials.
Chevrolet would not say what it spent to yank and redo the spot.
The song, 'Woo Hoo,' was featured in the 2004 movie Kill Bill: Vol. 1.
Chevrolet used a different version of 'Woo Hoo' in the Cobalt commercial. It replaced the song with an updated version of 'Over Under Sideways Down,' a 1966 hit by the British band The Yardbirds.
Chevrolet's advertising agency, Campbell-Ewald of Warren, Mich., produced the Cobalt spot. Its chief creative officer, Bill Ludwig, says the original theme song 'had no value to us anymore' once agency executives realized the ad was sharing 'Woo Hoo' with the broadband phone company Vonage of Edison, N.J."
LOL!! Wouldn't you have loved to have seen their faces at Chevrolet when they realized the consequences of not having purchased exclusive rights to the song?
I found out something else interesting; the Vonage ads have people doing really stupid things to the tune of "Woo Hoo," and I'd always assumed it was all done by actors, but apparently it's all REAL:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/adtrack/2005-10-30-vonage_x.htm
"Among the mishaps in the ads: a young boy swings at a ball with a bat, loses his grip and sends the bat flying through a glass door. In another ad, a man cuts down a tree, which then falls on his car. In a third ad, a young man fooling around on a treadmill, loses his footing and is propelled off the back.
The stunts in the ads, by Arnold Worldwide, Boston, seem too outrageous to be real but they are actual footage, most licensed from the reality TV show America's Funniest Home Videos."
If I hadn't seen it on a reputable website, I wouldn't have believed it.
And last, but not least, I discovered that the "song" was released as a SINGLE, I kid you not
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002C0J3O/ref=m_art_li_3/002-8570383-1034463?v=glance&s=music
Can you imagine spending $ in order to be able to deliberately listen to "Woo hoo woo hoo hoo, Woo hoo woo hoo hoo, Woo hoo woo hoo hoo, Woo hoo woo hoo hoo, Woo hoo, Woo hoo, Woo hoo woo hoo hoo" for 3 minutes? :-O
If you're in America, as soon as you read that you probably started hearing the theme from the Vonage commercials running through your head; if you're elsewhere, just imagine those same syllables repeated over, and over, and OVER. Actually, you don't have to imagine anything; it turns out, much to my astonishment, that what I'd thought were just nonsense syllables are part of an actual SONG... but wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.
My husband's good at recognizing even the most convoluted versions of old songs, or pieces thereof, that are used in ads, so I asked him if the "woo hoo woo hoo hoo"-ing was from a song; when he told me he thought it WAS a song, I thought he was kidding, but since he wasn't, I looked up "woo hoo" and "Vonage" and discovered that he was RIGHT. :-O
The song is called, you guessed it, "Woo Hoo," and it's by a Japanese band called "The 5.6.7.8's," from their 1996 album "Bomb the Twist"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000003KYZ/qid=1132015780/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-8570383-1034463?v=glance&s=music
The next shocker was that, although I'd always assumed it was a guy singing the woo-hoo's, the band consists of 3 women, Sachiko Fujii, Yoshiko Yamaguchi, and Ronnie Yoshiko Fujiyama.
The NEXT shocker was that Quentin Tarantino had apparently found this song somewhere and put it in "Kill Bill"; I've SEEN that movie, and not that long ago, and I have no memory whatsoever of any woo-hoo's, possibly because I was in a stupor from the violence and gore. Curious as to where it'd appeared in the movie, I looked it up, and found a post about it
http://www.nightly.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=21;t=004574;p=0
"I'm almost positve that 'Woo Hoo' is the (2nd?) track that they play when we see that long shot that runs thru the whole club (including over the walls/to different rooms) ending in the bathroom where The Bride hears Sofie Fatale talking on her cell phone (I could be wrong about that)."
Good enough for me; I checked the "Kill Bill" soundtrack
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000C9V3T/002-8570383-1034463?v=glance&s=music&vi=samples#disc_1
and there it is; you can hear a sample of the song on that page, or the one for their album, in case you've seen neither the Vonage ads nor "Kill Bill."
AND, we can see here
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cast-crew/B00005JMEW/ref=imdbdppd_castcrew_1/002-8570383-1034463?%5Fencoding=UTF8
that the band was actually IN the movie... if it wasn't so hard to watch (non-stop slice and dice just doesn't do it for me), I'd see it again just to find out what they looked like. I wondered whether Tarantino had really personally come up with the idea to use this song, and the band; after a little digging, I eventually found the pure-Hollywood story here
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fm20031116sb.htm
"'Tarantino was in Japan for a 'Kill Bill' meeting and he was browsing in this thrift store in Ebisu. The clerk is a fan of ours and she was playing our record,' says Ronnie. 'It was the first six songs on the new album, actually. And Tarantino asked her to sell him the record.'"
The article also refers to "Woo Hoo" as a cover, and a few minutes on Google showed that it was originally done by the band Rock-A-Teens; here's a pic of the labels from the original 78 RPM single from 1959
http://users.telerama.com/~agp/Cool_200508.html
plus the story of the band and the single... which hit #16 on the Billboard charts. You can hear the original version of the song here
http://www.starcitypunk.com/content/music/rockateens_woohoo1.mp3
Legend has it that they recorded the tune in the back of a record store
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/music/artist/bio/0,,869796,00.html#bio
and it sure sounds like they did... listen for the echo accompanying the "yeah" in the background. I don't know what's more astounding, that this "song" was actually a HIT, even that long ago, or that a Japanese band somehow heard it and chose to remake it.
And there's MORE; apparently, another company used the song in their ad, not knowing that Vonage was using it too:
http://www.autoweek.com/news.cms?newsId=101706
"Chevrolet introduced the major TV commercial in its marketing launch of the Cobalt economy car during a New Year's Eve blitz.
A week later, the automaker pulled the spot to replace its theme music - after it discovered an Internet phone company was using the same song in its commercials.
Chevrolet would not say what it spent to yank and redo the spot.
The song, 'Woo Hoo,' was featured in the 2004 movie Kill Bill: Vol. 1.
Chevrolet used a different version of 'Woo Hoo' in the Cobalt commercial. It replaced the song with an updated version of 'Over Under Sideways Down,' a 1966 hit by the British band The Yardbirds.
Chevrolet's advertising agency, Campbell-Ewald of Warren, Mich., produced the Cobalt spot. Its chief creative officer, Bill Ludwig, says the original theme song 'had no value to us anymore' once agency executives realized the ad was sharing 'Woo Hoo' with the broadband phone company Vonage of Edison, N.J."
LOL!! Wouldn't you have loved to have seen their faces at Chevrolet when they realized the consequences of not having purchased exclusive rights to the song?
I found out something else interesting; the Vonage ads have people doing really stupid things to the tune of "Woo Hoo," and I'd always assumed it was all done by actors, but apparently it's all REAL:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/adtrack/2005-10-30-vonage_x.htm
"Among the mishaps in the ads: a young boy swings at a ball with a bat, loses his grip and sends the bat flying through a glass door. In another ad, a man cuts down a tree, which then falls on his car. In a third ad, a young man fooling around on a treadmill, loses his footing and is propelled off the back.
The stunts in the ads, by Arnold Worldwide, Boston, seem too outrageous to be real but they are actual footage, most licensed from the reality TV show America's Funniest Home Videos."
If I hadn't seen it on a reputable website, I wouldn't have believed it.
And last, but not least, I discovered that the "song" was released as a SINGLE, I kid you not
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002C0J3O/ref=m_art_li_3/002-8570383-1034463?v=glance&s=music
Can you imagine spending $ in order to be able to deliberately listen to "Woo hoo woo hoo hoo, Woo hoo woo hoo hoo, Woo hoo woo hoo hoo, Woo hoo woo hoo hoo, Woo hoo, Woo hoo, Woo hoo woo hoo hoo" for 3 minutes? :-O
Monday, November 14, 2005
Intriguing idea from Joel Osteen
In tonight's sermon, he said that your motives for doing things are more important than what you actually do; in other words, that what's going on in your mind counts for more than the actions you take. His perspective is of course that God's judgment can't be swayed or fooled by your pretending to be a good person when you're less than nice on the inside; he's usually dead-on in describing karma with what he says about the workings of God, though, so I always take what he comes up with seriously, as his instincts seem very sound.
It's a basic concept of my spirituality that every thought and feeling counts for something; what's less clear is how those things stack up against actions. If, for example, you do good works because you feel obligated to, and so do them with weary contempt for the whole idea in your heart, which has more effect on your karma, the good works or the contempt?
It goes even further, according to Joel; he says that "your heart and actions need to match up," that you have to "keep your heart pure"... that you have to actually feel like giving and being good for it to benefit you to do those things. He said that even giving to charity, going to church or reading the Bible don't get you blessings if you're doing them to be well thought of or to get attention and praise; although in our culture we see thoughts as the form and actions as the substance, he's saying that it's the other way around... and given the power of thoughts and feelings to shape reality, could he be right?
Osteen says that if you take action with the right motives, and a pure heart, blessings will come, and that they can come so thick and fast as to seem supernatural... but if your motives are wrong, it's a waste of time taking that action, because you won't be rewarded for it. He explained that when an opportunity comes for us to act in a way that we think will benefit us, therefore, the 1st thing we should do is check our motives for wanting to do it; we can't be trying to impress people, or use them, or manipulate them, or win their friendship by taking the proposed actions, we have to have a pure motive, one that's not looking for recognition of any kind, for the outcome to be the one that'll bring us blessings... and he says that if you give up the opportunities that you can't take with pure motives, God will more than repay you for what you lost out on.
It's not hard for people to see that having "bad" thoughts and feelings, such as hateful or envious ones, could produce bad results and block good ones. It's a little counterintuitive, but not that much of a stretch, I think, for us to grasp that emotions like fear and grief, although not "bad," are still negative and so draw negative energy and repel positive energy. BUT, if something as seemingly innocent, and even praiseworthy from our cultural perspective, as trying to gain the approval of others is also "negative," even if to a lesser degree, and can prevent us from benefiting fully, or at all, from taking laudatory or advantageous-seeming actions... that one's gonna be harder to swallow.
Nevertheless, it may well be true; for now, let's just ponder it and see what we come up with.
It's a basic concept of my spirituality that every thought and feeling counts for something; what's less clear is how those things stack up against actions. If, for example, you do good works because you feel obligated to, and so do them with weary contempt for the whole idea in your heart, which has more effect on your karma, the good works or the contempt?
It goes even further, according to Joel; he says that "your heart and actions need to match up," that you have to "keep your heart pure"... that you have to actually feel like giving and being good for it to benefit you to do those things. He said that even giving to charity, going to church or reading the Bible don't get you blessings if you're doing them to be well thought of or to get attention and praise; although in our culture we see thoughts as the form and actions as the substance, he's saying that it's the other way around... and given the power of thoughts and feelings to shape reality, could he be right?
Osteen says that if you take action with the right motives, and a pure heart, blessings will come, and that they can come so thick and fast as to seem supernatural... but if your motives are wrong, it's a waste of time taking that action, because you won't be rewarded for it. He explained that when an opportunity comes for us to act in a way that we think will benefit us, therefore, the 1st thing we should do is check our motives for wanting to do it; we can't be trying to impress people, or use them, or manipulate them, or win their friendship by taking the proposed actions, we have to have a pure motive, one that's not looking for recognition of any kind, for the outcome to be the one that'll bring us blessings... and he says that if you give up the opportunities that you can't take with pure motives, God will more than repay you for what you lost out on.
It's not hard for people to see that having "bad" thoughts and feelings, such as hateful or envious ones, could produce bad results and block good ones. It's a little counterintuitive, but not that much of a stretch, I think, for us to grasp that emotions like fear and grief, although not "bad," are still negative and so draw negative energy and repel positive energy. BUT, if something as seemingly innocent, and even praiseworthy from our cultural perspective, as trying to gain the approval of others is also "negative," even if to a lesser degree, and can prevent us from benefiting fully, or at all, from taking laudatory or advantageous-seeming actions... that one's gonna be harder to swallow.
Nevertheless, it may well be true; for now, let's just ponder it and see what we come up with.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Possum problem
The male possum was chowing down on the patio as he usually does for much of the night (which is why he's gotten so BIG), when suddenly he dashed into the plants by the fence and started thrashing around and making a scary, choking sort of sound; my blood just about froze solid in my veins at the thought that he might have something caught in his throat, or be having a seizure, or maybe even DYING... on a night when my husband was out, naturally, and my head was spinning as I tried to figure out how I could capture a convulsing possum and race him to the nearest animal hospital all by myself.
I dashed from window to window, calling anxiously to him and trying to see what was happening; he was bobbing his head up and down, and still making that noise, so I thought maybe he was vomiting. He took a few steps along the fence... and a silhouetted figure moving along with him showed through the slats. The lightbulb went on over my head; there was some sort of critter on the other side of the fence. My possum boy paused, and made the noise again; I belatedly realized, much to my relief, that he was "barking," not choking (I'd never heard him make ANY sort of noise before). As I watched in amazement, he tried to climb up the plants and get over the fence to the interloper; he's way too heavy, though, and only succeeded in dragging them down and trampling them. He gave up and went back to leaping around and barking ever more agitatedly; I'd had enough, so I put on my shoes and headed out the door and around the house to the other side of the fence... where I saw the shadowy form of, not surprisingly, another possum, presumably male given his size.
"Shoo, you bad possum!!" I hissed at him; he glanced at me, didn't seem impressed, and went back to looking in at my possum through the fence. I came closer, and he grudgingly retreated a few yards... and then started walking right back. Determined, I matched along the fence towards him until he finally trotted across the neighbor's yard and out of sight around their house. I hurried back the way I'd come, into the house and over to the sliding glass door; my possum was still at his post by the fence. I called reassuringly to him, and he turned to look at me; I kept coaxing him, and after a couple of minutes he waddled over to finish his dinner.
The other possum didn't come back, as far as I know, but I'm concerned that he and my possum boy might meet up without a fence between them and have a fight; worse, he might attack the little possum girl. All I can do is keep an eye on the situation; I really hope this other possum was just passing through...
I dashed from window to window, calling anxiously to him and trying to see what was happening; he was bobbing his head up and down, and still making that noise, so I thought maybe he was vomiting. He took a few steps along the fence... and a silhouetted figure moving along with him showed through the slats. The lightbulb went on over my head; there was some sort of critter on the other side of the fence. My possum boy paused, and made the noise again; I belatedly realized, much to my relief, that he was "barking," not choking (I'd never heard him make ANY sort of noise before). As I watched in amazement, he tried to climb up the plants and get over the fence to the interloper; he's way too heavy, though, and only succeeded in dragging them down and trampling them. He gave up and went back to leaping around and barking ever more agitatedly; I'd had enough, so I put on my shoes and headed out the door and around the house to the other side of the fence... where I saw the shadowy form of, not surprisingly, another possum, presumably male given his size.
"Shoo, you bad possum!!" I hissed at him; he glanced at me, didn't seem impressed, and went back to looking in at my possum through the fence. I came closer, and he grudgingly retreated a few yards... and then started walking right back. Determined, I matched along the fence towards him until he finally trotted across the neighbor's yard and out of sight around their house. I hurried back the way I'd come, into the house and over to the sliding glass door; my possum was still at his post by the fence. I called reassuringly to him, and he turned to look at me; I kept coaxing him, and after a couple of minutes he waddled over to finish his dinner.
The other possum didn't come back, as far as I know, but I'm concerned that he and my possum boy might meet up without a fence between them and have a fight; worse, he might attack the little possum girl. All I can do is keep an eye on the situation; I really hope this other possum was just passing through...
