Wednesday Media Consumption Post
Jan. 28th, 2015 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sereneReading: Just a murder mystery called Two Graves. There are a bunch of other things I'm ostensibly reading, but literally the only time I'm not too tired to read is during lunch at work.
Listening: I have a musical game I play with myself that I don't think I've talked about here.
My musical tastes are fairly... provincial? Whatever the opposite of "eclectic" is. Whenever one of my friends talks about how eclectic their musical tastes are, I am reminded that I basically tend to listen to one kind of music and nothing else: folk-rock singer-songwriters--people like Indigo Girls and John Gorka and Joni Mitchell and Richard Shindell and Sarah Harmer and Counting Crows and so on.
The past year or two, I've decided to branch out. For one thing, I would occasionally hear a song in another genre that I loved, or that spoke to me, and I would feel bad about my lack of knowledge of the music of that genre. For another, I think some of my musical tastes have some racist/classist roots (such as saying I'm not a fan of rap as a knee-jerk response, when I really haven't listened to much rap -- that's just a regular racist-white-person way to look at music, though I've always gone toe-to-toe with people who claimed it isn't music at all). I also like the folksier country music (and lots and lots of old country music), which puts an even more racist spin on things.
So anyway.
The game I play when I'm in the car goes like this:
1) Hit "scan" and stop on the first station that is playing music and not a commercial, no matter what the music is. Mariachi? Fine. Mantovanni? Cool. Hip-hop? Excellent.
2) Listen to that music as uncritically as possible and just try to feel it. Almost invariably, there ends up being a song or two I like, even on stations I never would have stopped at previously. One recent one I like is "New Dorp New York," but there have been others.
3) When a song comes up that I like, try to remember it so I can ask Twitter what it is. Might start using my phone's voice recorder for this part.
4) The conditions under which I'm "allowed" to change the channel:
a) a commercial comes on
b) it's a commercial-free broadcast and I've hated two songs in a row
c) something truly loathsome comes on (I made this rule yesterday when I realized that a song I'd never heard was on and it was "Blurred Lines.")
Anyway, I'm broadening my perspective. Another way I'm doing this is by adding other genres to my Pandora mix. I have a current R&B channel, a channel based on my friend Juba's homo-hop group DeepDickollective, etc. Also, James's surf-music and disco stations, some stuff my kid likes (cello music, J-pop), etc. Suggestions for more channels (or links to share yours with me) are welcome.
Watching: Hmm. Have I watched anything this week? I don't think so. New job, tired, etc. And James has a new game he's playing, so he'd rather play that than watch TV with me. So yeah, nothing, I think, unless you count (and I guess I should) watching my "videos that make me happy" playlist on YouTube, which I just created and which I'm really enjoying building. Recently added the Neil Patrick Harris opening of the 2013 Tony Awards. When he starts talking about inspiring young theater geeks, I lose it. Every. Time.
Playing: I uninstalled Two Dots and reinstalled it after I won the final level (which is currently 135, I think). Also still playing my other stuff. I really want a new puzzle game for android phones (hint, hint), but with the tired and all, haven't gotten around to it.
Listening: I have a musical game I play with myself that I don't think I've talked about here.
My musical tastes are fairly... provincial? Whatever the opposite of "eclectic" is. Whenever one of my friends talks about how eclectic their musical tastes are, I am reminded that I basically tend to listen to one kind of music and nothing else: folk-rock singer-songwriters--people like Indigo Girls and John Gorka and Joni Mitchell and Richard Shindell and Sarah Harmer and Counting Crows and so on.
The past year or two, I've decided to branch out. For one thing, I would occasionally hear a song in another genre that I loved, or that spoke to me, and I would feel bad about my lack of knowledge of the music of that genre. For another, I think some of my musical tastes have some racist/classist roots (such as saying I'm not a fan of rap as a knee-jerk response, when I really haven't listened to much rap -- that's just a regular racist-white-person way to look at music, though I've always gone toe-to-toe with people who claimed it isn't music at all). I also like the folksier country music (and lots and lots of old country music), which puts an even more racist spin on things.
So anyway.
The game I play when I'm in the car goes like this:
1) Hit "scan" and stop on the first station that is playing music and not a commercial, no matter what the music is. Mariachi? Fine. Mantovanni? Cool. Hip-hop? Excellent.
2) Listen to that music as uncritically as possible and just try to feel it. Almost invariably, there ends up being a song or two I like, even on stations I never would have stopped at previously. One recent one I like is "New Dorp New York," but there have been others.
3) When a song comes up that I like, try to remember it so I can ask Twitter what it is. Might start using my phone's voice recorder for this part.
4) The conditions under which I'm "allowed" to change the channel:
a) a commercial comes on
b) it's a commercial-free broadcast and I've hated two songs in a row
c) something truly loathsome comes on (I made this rule yesterday when I realized that a song I'd never heard was on and it was "Blurred Lines.")
Anyway, I'm broadening my perspective. Another way I'm doing this is by adding other genres to my Pandora mix. I have a current R&B channel, a channel based on my friend Juba's homo-hop group DeepDickollective, etc. Also, James's surf-music and disco stations, some stuff my kid likes (cello music, J-pop), etc. Suggestions for more channels (or links to share yours with me) are welcome.
Watching: Hmm. Have I watched anything this week? I don't think so. New job, tired, etc. And James has a new game he's playing, so he'd rather play that than watch TV with me. So yeah, nothing, I think, unless you count (and I guess I should) watching my "videos that make me happy" playlist on YouTube, which I just created and which I'm really enjoying building. Recently added the Neil Patrick Harris opening of the 2013 Tony Awards. When he starts talking about inspiring young theater geeks, I lose it. Every. Time.
Playing: I uninstalled Two Dots and reinstalled it after I won the final level (which is currently 135, I think). Also still playing my other stuff. I really want a new puzzle game for android phones (hint, hint), but with the tired and all, haven't gotten around to it.