a dream that seemingly sings (Friday's Sunday's Poem/Hot Actress 63)

Polka
Yves Klein Blue
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Brother hold your head this way,
and bustle to the front of the line;
cos if they catch your eyes before you get inside
Well, you'll never be allowed.
People got a name for us
cos we escape the strain of the days
Oh we stretch at the sides and bend in the middle
But we never ever break.

But if you're feeling that way now,
Or if you ever feel so inclined -
Skip past the doors of boring forty somethings and rise.
Oh, and if you want to lose your frown,
Or your name or even your face -
Lick up a dream that seemingly sings with whistling neon breath.

Come and have a drink with us,
A little wine or a nice champagne?
Oh thanks that's nice, and I would decline,
But at night things seem to change.
People got a name for us,
cos we escape the strain of the days -
Oh we stretch at the sides and bend in our minds
But well never ever change.

And if you're feeling that way now,
Or if you ever feel so inclined,
Well, kick in the shins of all those fucking whingers and rise.
Oh and if you want to lose your frown,
Or your name or even your face,
Lick up a dream that seemingly sings with whistling neon breath.

Sid was at the gates of dawn,
And Jimmy said ride the snake:
So we bent our spoons and howled at the moon
To find what science replaced.
And it turns out it ain't that much
Though I may have missed it in the haze -
Oh drips in the mind and fills up your eyes
But well never be the same.
(Shhh)
But if you're ever coming down,
Or if you ever take too much -
Remember that's much better than never ever getting enough.
So if your want to lose your frown,
Or your name or even your face,
Lick up a dream that seemingly screams with rushing neon death.

All your spirits gone, and you are barely alive.
You hand me a smoke, though its like you hardly notice.
And its sad I suppose - When I look into your eyes you say:
It seems to go this way, no matter whats at stake,
Oh it seems to go this way with everything I start!

So if you're feeling that way now,
Or if you ever feel so inclined -
Skip past the doors of boring forty somethings and rise.
Oh but if you want to loose your frown,
Or your name or even your face -
Lick up a dream that seemingly sings with rushing neon death.

________________________________________________________________

About the poem: I love these words. I cheated, maybe, a bit, today, because Polka isn't actually a poem, it's a song. But I love to listen to the singer sing it in rhythm and I love the wordplay, and I love the way whistling neon breath becomes rushing neon death at the end, a subtle shift that makes the song morbidly fascinating and hints that in many pursuits that make us feel alive, it's the risk of danger or death that makes it so intoxicating.

And I like the line about seeing what science replaced - -hearkening back to the magic that humanity believed in.

But most of all I like that in reading the song, it takes on a different life than it does when sung; it's more apparent that it's a speech, a monologue, from a hipster to a guy he's inviting into a crazy night of revelry. The song doesn't convey that, as good as it is.

I can't embed the song, because Yves Klein Blue feels that the video is only worthwhile if you watch it on Youtube, but you can find it here.

About the Actress: I'm not going to watch Hawaii 5-0, because I don't watch remakes, and I've never forgiven anyone involved for wasting my time with the horrible ending to Battlestar Galactica, but Sweetie wasn't around so I had to pick someone on my own, and she was it.

First Basketball, Then I'm Going To Take The Boy Down, Heavy Rain Style.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of PlayStation(R) Move. All opinions are 100% mine.

The Boy's had a PlayStation 3 since they came out -- I remember taking him to get it, getting up at about 4 a.m. to go get in line to pick it up.  I was as excited as he was, because the PS3 meant the next generation of games for us to compete at -- and I'd NEVER lost to him, up to that point.

Up to that point.  Once he got the PS3, I found myself on a losing streak like you wouldn't believe.  Going down 62-0 on Madden, wiped out on that Star Wars battle game without a single kill, I couldn't do ANYTHING on it, and the problem was that I was an old guy used to simpler controllers; the PS3 is so powerful that the controllers can do about 473 different things at once -- and The Boy was better than me at using the new controllers.

But now I can turn the table.  The new PlayStation(R)MOVE is out and with it comes hope for me -- because the PlayStation MOVE doesn't have a million little buttons on it.  Instead of a tiny controller with more things to hit than my DVD remote, I get a simple, handheld wand that I can move intuitively and use to control things on the screen (like a gun, or sword, or me) without having to grow three extra thumbs.  And it's compatible with NBA 2k11 -- which is AWESOME for me, because I've never been able to beat The Boy at basketball, not in real life, and not in video games, but with the MOVE, I'm betting that all those tricky things that I couldn't do on the controller are going to be simple, making me into a little video LeBron (absent the controversy, of course.) 

I'm not even waiting for The Boy to get it on his own.  It's only $99 for the whole MOVE Bundle package -- the controller, camera, sports game, and preview of other games, so I can just go get it, and surprise him when he comes home from college this week.

Surprise him by DUNKING on him.  Maybe then he'll clean his room.

Question of the Day 73

Can you cheat on a magazine?

This wasn't my original question; my original question, up until Saturday, was going to be Why do they have peanut butter, but not things like cashew butter? But then I found cashew butter, so that mooted my question, and I then decided to go with today's question. (Although now I'm kind of wondering, do they have a butter for every kind of nut? Filbert butter?)

I thought I was the only one this idea would ever occur to. I had to go to the doctor's office last week, and when I got there, the only magazines they had were an old Sports Illustrated and the current issue of The New Yorker.

I wanted to read The New Yorker, but had a problem: I have a subscription to it on my Kindle, and I'd actually begun reading that issue at home the day before. So as I picked it up and began to flip to where I'd left off reading, I felt guilty -- as though I was in some way being disloyal to my magazine at home, or cheating the system somehow.

I gave up trying to read that and paged through last year's Sports Illustrated instead, and then later, confessed the whole incident to Sweetie, expecting her to put another note in whatever notebook I'm sure she records these things as evidence to be used towards my involuntary commitment in the future. Instead, she agreed with me and said she'd had the same thing happen to her when she was getting her hair cut and the only magazine they had for her to read was one she had at home, too.

Sweetie's worse than me, though -- she opted not to read anything rather than cheat on her subscription.

If anything, the whole incident proved to me that Sweetie and I are made for each other.