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Below are the most recent 21 friends' journal entries.
| Thursday, January 7th, 2010 |
poptimists
[ credoimprobus ]
|
9:24p |
Fruits of procrastination, bass flavour
Xposting from my own journal, in case of interest: I just spent most of my day putting together a YouTube playlist illustrating the genre boundary-straddling camp in (so called) bass music that seemed to really explode last year -- the ever-expanding population of the borderlands between dubstep/funky/grime/house/d'n'b/idm/name yr electronic/dance genre, you know, that lot Joy Orbison was pretty much the poster boy for. There were just enormous amounts of exciting things happening in those parts of the scene last year; this playlist can be seen as a small (and very personally biased) primer for anyone who'd like to explore it a bit more. (It's also sort of a top list, of course, though it's obv somewhat limited by what's up on YT, and also lacks most of my more traditionally flavoured dubstep favourites of '09.) |
1bruce1
[ ew137 ]
|
11:20a |
Unicorns # 15 - Too Cool For the Unicorns
First, the cover. I couldn't find a photo of it anywhere, but no-one is missing much. Kimberley looks like an evil clown & just as iffy about the Eight jacket she is trying on as I am. There is a big deal made in this book & also The Best Friend Game about how the Eights always dress the same, but the two girls on the cover, who are both smiling at Kimberley & who I'm guessing are both Eights, are not dressed alike at all. This is when the books started being written in one person's POV, so we get Kimberley this time. Whoo. She was always my least favourite Unicorn. ( It's really not that hard to be cooler than the Unicorns ) Current Mood:  sleepyCurrent Music: Seven Wonders - Fleetwood Mac |
| Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 |
1bruce1
[ tommckayisgay ]
|
3:11p |
SVT #94 - Don't Talk to Brian
 There has been a lot of talk in this community about how badly SV butchers various issues – drug overdoses, anorexia, stalking, etc. – but I feel pretty confident that this book is the holy grail of Sweet Valley’s “issue books.” It was so bad that I had to put the book aside for over a month before having the courage to pick it up and write this recap. Oh, and a funny side note: Last summer, I went in this big new/used bookstore (searching for SV books – I’m not ashamed to admit it!) and discovered two copies of this book, plus a few others. Weird thing was, the books were in the “new” section. So I brought this book up to the front to buy and asked the guy about it, since they’re out of print and all, and the employee said that yeah, they are new and that they must not have been sold since they were printed. Which means this book was sitting, unsold, on the shelf since March 1996, just waiting for me to buy it. ( Sweet Valley tackles child abuse! ) |
poptimists
[ friend_of_tofu ]
|
3:33p |
Delphic: Behind the times already?
Just wondering if anyone else saw this article about Delphic on the BBC today.While this isn't any sort of comment on Delphic's music, I found some of the remarks frustrating: They are not, they say, a bog standard indie band of the sort that was in plentiful supply when they formed in 2007. They are not one of the many electro acts that, they feel, caused dance music to lose its soul. And they are definitely not one of those groups still desperately clinging to the Madchester glory days.Are we *still* fighting these battles? Do we still have to "prove" that dance music can have soul, and that guitars have something to offer? Really? I dunno, what do other ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) poptimists think? Am I getting mildly irked over nothing? |
poptimists
[ freakytigger ]
|
12:05p |
|
poptimists
[ katstevens ]
|
11:29a |
Yet Another Year In Pop: FINAL RECKONING
It's been a long twelve months in the charts - SIX different Lady Gaga singles, plenty of female singer-songwriters scuffling for Elbow room among the X Factor graduates, more electro-grime than we could shake a glowstick at. But what did YOU LOT think of it all? ( 2009 Chart Poll top 50! )As for the 2010 chart polls, I decree that the weekly polls will continue, but the 'NOT HEARD ANY' box will disappear. I will try and do regular monthly round-ups of the top 100 but I'm not promising anything :) As there was only one new entry this week, I'll tack it on to Monday's poll. |
poptimists
[ mostlyconnect ]
|
10:07a |
2009 poll lobbying
Um - I don't know if this is even eligible? But it's amazing - a year of pop I didn't much care for, reinvented as something really moving and special! |
| Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 |
1bruce1
[ strangerface ]
|
9:41p |
OCD!strangerface has been going through the tags and removing/renaming some. I'm trying to make it easier for people to find stuff. If you have suggestions for a tag, please let me know. Also, I found a lot of tags that could have been interchangeable. I removed SVT in favor of Sweet Valley Twins and SVH in favor of Sweet Valley High (only SVU remains in acronym form, since that's what it says on the cover). Reminder: There is no "Lila Fowler" tag because she demands respect. She is "Miss Lila Fowler." There is one tag issue that I thought I'd put to a vote. There are two tags for "Saint Elizabeth of Sweet Valley." One spelled out and one abbreviated. I'd like to combine them, but don't know which to make standard. Poll #1507808 [What?] Elizabeth of Sweet Valley
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 106 Which should it be? ( Some tag instructions for those who need them ) |
poptimists
[ katstevens ]
|
7:09p |
Remember Uffie?
She's still kind of annoying BUT her new single is produced by Mr Oizo and is rather good IMHO: |
| Monday, January 4th, 2010 |
1bruce1
[ imakittiecat ]
|
4:06p |
Adventures in Boredom!
Feel free to delete if this isn't relevant, but.. well.. I was bored. Spacing out to House of Wax (yum, Chad Michael Murray..) and looking through the recaps, and realized I had no idea what the names of the books that WEREN'T recapped were! And it hurt my brain to think about it!!
SO! I made a list of all the books that HAVEN'T been recapped.. I'm hoping to slink up to my attic very shortly and see if any of my SVK books survived the super throwout of '09 that I planned. (I can't think about what was thrown out, because then I get very upset with myself.. But if I'd kept it all, it would have defeated the purpose of cleaning it out).
So now, I give you....
( The List!! )
Edited to fix borked HTML and to add: Is it weird that on my IJ name list, I have elizabeth wakefield? I guess at some point I wanted to rp SVH... |
1bruce1
[ strangerface ]
|
1:41p |
Sweet Valley Kids #17: Caroline's Mystery Dolls
Sweet Valley Kids #17: Caroline’s Mystery Dolls I love the title of this book. LOVE IT. I mean it’s, well, mysterious. Caroline has dolls? What kind of dolls? Why are they a mystery? I don’t get it! Check out the cover! Jessica is wearing some kind of horrid red spangled top and it’s tucked into her Mom jeans. And their faces! They look like they found a BODY in that box! Perhaps one left for them by a tiny Crazy Margo? LET US HOPE. ... You know? I’m really starting to wonder about Tiny Crazy Margo. She’s the same age as the twins. What was she doing when all this happened? What aliens visited her for advice? That’d be an awesome book series. If you’re out there, Francine Pascal, you should get on that. It’d be like Dexter for the grade-school set! A market that is yet to be cornered! ( Okay, now for the actual book. ) |
poptimists
[ byebyepride ]
|
4:33p |
Best of '09 lobbying!!
I think someone somewhere on the internet mentioned the possibility that this album might be good at same point last year. It is! Here is the most awesome track. |
poptimists
[ katstevens ]
|
1:05p |
Yet ANOTHER year in pop?
Happy new year Poptimists! We begin 2010 in the same way we began 2009, with Lady Gaga at number 1. As the charts were rather less than inspiring in 2009, I thought we might swizz stuff around for 2010. What do you think? Poll #1507063 2010 Chart Conundrum
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 18 How would you like the chart polls to appear in 2010? You have until 5pm today to vote in the 2009 chart polls (pssst! Go and vote for Bad Romance, dudes!) - I'll tally up the spreadsheet and post the results later this week. The 2004 polls will start up again next week (werk permitting!). |
poptimists
[ freakytigger ]
|
12:12p |
The Poptimists Tracks Of 2009 Poll
RIGHT let's do this - I know many of you have lists of your favourite TRACKS of last year kicking around, and this poll is always a good opportunity to spread the love about songs, since it generally only takes 2 or 3 mentions to place. Here's what you need to do. 1. Pick up to TWENTY favourite tracks of 2009 (though it can be fewer if you REALLY can't think of that many or just want to c+p a top 10) 2. Email your list to leagueofpop@gmail.com by THIS SUNDAY (the 10th January). 3. Expect lots of reminders between then and now. 4. Enjoy the cavalcade of results next week. COULDN'T BE SIMPLER! I have honestly no idea what the winner will be too - how exciting. |
| Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 |
diggerdydum
[ dubdobdee ]
|
11:35a |
goodbyes
don't worry, i'm not off anywhere, i'm just thinking a bit about the closing haha two-thirds of dr who -- cue murray gold emotokrieg, and dave saying goodbye to everyone in the multiverse one by one cue lots and lots of impatient hatas: and no surprise there, even if you don't factor in the EW GURLSTUFF COOTIES faction -- this was not plotstuff at all really, though why ppl turn to who for plot rather baffles me IT'S BEEN DOING WITHOUT FOR 47 YEARS FOLKS; this was more like the serried closures of LotR, and yes, of course hurrying youth want to jump to the next GOOD bit and yell things like JUST DIE ALREADY; this is like when yr aunt kisses you when yr 12, you screw up yr face and WIPE OFF THE YUCK! totally predictable and it's very sweet As for me, I teared up the moment I realised what RTD was going to do, and stayed teared-up even tho I care little for half these people -- cribbins and martha and sarah-jane can all eff off -- and even though i knew he wouldn't do it elegantly or even interestingly, he would merely do it relentlessly... as if i was saying to myself, ok, i want to know what happens if i let you press those buttons; not set up a shout of conventional resistance, for the sake of "better" plot-making, but chase the whispering need yr memory plays tricks: as i'd recalled it, the first ep of the revived who that i watched with my dad, on the day my mum died, was "father's day" -- checking up i see it was the more slapsticky and er er political "aliens in london I", ... and hence as i was watching last night, i was often also thinking abt the fact that, this xmas, my dad had rallied to come down for xmas afternoon, but tired by suppertime and eaten it with his carer in his room, the first time in 50 years i haven't had xmas dinner with him -- and we couldn't get the victorian video to work, so none of us watched who on xmas day this year; the nu-ritual ended accidentally; if dad noticed, he didn't say -- and of course the intruder who exploded most of the ritual is my two-yr-old niece, present at the rituals for the first time and shatterng many of them... the first who moment i remember watching in real-time is the bit in "dalek invasion earth" where the bedford van gets blown up -- at the place i lived and mum and dad worked, the staff transport was a white bedford van, and the whole scene was very therefore present for me, where susan and whoever's driving dive out for safety into the bushes... we didn't then have a TV in our flat, i would have seen this on the TV in the staffroom, probably alone... (and of course in the film version, cribbins IS one of the companions; the comedy policeman who blunders into the policebox) (and of course there was a tardis-type policebox by mytton oak road roundabout all of my childhood, just yards from the shop the bedford van would often have been going, with little me along for rhe ride; and only a little bit further along from the hospital mum would die in) partly i loved rose bcz her relationship to her mum was like mine with mine: strong exasperated gleeful friendship, and negotiating her mix of proud excitement and terror at my adventures in space and time -- not to say the add-on was ever handled much better than gesturally, but so what? it needed to be there, and someone else can refine into the type of convention we self-delightedly ooh and aah at i got to say goodbye to mum; my sister was still on the motorway -- dad is 79 in april, but doesn't have long now i don't think, certainly not five years: i think one of the things i have admired is that RTD, in his clumsy pellmell FUCK THE FUCKING LOGIC way actually fashioned something that does link lytton 3wing aged three and my dad aged say 77: that far from being a project in blandness or stupidity, this "something for everyone" is a ultimately project in emotional difficulty, in difft viewers being in difft places at dfft times; which intelligence or elegance or inventiveness wouldn't have solved (not to say intelligence or elegance or inventiveness are bad things to wish for; and not to disagree that RTD dispenses with their services way too easily) i am of the age where goodbyes get forced on me: and so while sometimes i want to skip that bit, sometimes i do not; sometimes "just die already" is the noise of a stupid little kid being stupid -- and hence of course sometimes i am also that stupid little kid and hence the squeemomess and the endless get-on-with-it! -- and the fart jokes in "aliens in london 1" and the fan-wank fodder an the basement jaxx video reruns andandandand: actually taking seriously that this story for "kids" is older than me, a fact with a tremendous tangle consequences, and not simply consigning whole levels of of its hopeful viewership -- the ex"kids" of how many generations now? -- to nothingness and nowhere; all-family viewing as the anxious mutually appalled squabble and gluey jabbered compromise it really would have to be, to be at all of course it's all pitfalls and of course he fell into every single one: as the spottiness of the archived documentation of 60s who reminds us, we are the first generation to spend all our adult lives in juxtaposition with the ever-more detailed return of the memories of a sketch of the idea of every moment of our infancy: dr who has become the crucible of the emotional exploration of this, this social fact without easy precedent -- and at the point of its revival in 2005, the revivalists had the option of junking this dimension; certainly it would make plotting meetings easier and hatas possibly happier but they didn't -- and good, bcz even if RTD didn't pull off abt 85% of the things that needed tackling as a consequence, they abide as witchy failed projects for others to complete |
| Friday, January 1st, 2010 |
diggerdydum
[ freakytigger ]
|
9:05p |
|
| Monday, December 28th, 2009 |
1bruce1
[ hellobrisvegas ]
|
4:31p |
SVK Super Snooper #7: The Case of the Alien Princess
You guys. You guys. The twins...and their friends...they go to space. To motherfucking space. And they meet an alien. Who's also a princess. An alien princess. ...space, people, space! Also, the cover:
 Jessica looks like she's in the middle of doing some sort of funky dance. The dweeby kid (Andy) looks like that Duckface guy who was in love with Stephanie in Full House. And Liz seems to be preoccupied with something stage left, and she's kinda cross-eyed. Oh, and the alien princess looks pretty normal, except for the teeny fact that she's an ALIEN PRINCESS. ( The twins go to outer space and have adventures. ) Current Music: "Space Oddity" by David Bowie |
| Sunday, December 27th, 2009 |
1bruce1
[ strangerface ]
|
1:20a |
Sweet Valley Kids #15: Fearless Elizabeth
I can't find an image of it but Elizabeth is on the cover of this book with a soccer/football ball. I'd like to point out how many sports Elizabeth and Jessica seem to play for one book and then never do again. There was a softball team in SVT and cross country running in SVJK and volleyball in Team Sweet Valley. I mean, if Liz was a good soccer player how come she didn't have more in common with Jeffrey French? Also, I'd like to further point out that Liz's top is tucked into her gym shorts. That's just... not a good look on anyone. I think that deserves a penalty of some sort. The back of the book tells me that Liz is goalie and she got hit with a ball and now she's afraid of being goalie. Dear Lord, please let Liz get hit in the head/face/anywhere really during the course of the book. I swear I won't ask for anything else for Christmas. Amen. ( Todd can't score on Elizabeth! ) |
| Saturday, December 26th, 2009 |
diggerdydum
[ freakytigger ]
|
5:03p |
|
1bruce1
[ isabelquinn ]
|
11:17p |
Unicorn Club #12: Five Girls and a Baby
Books narrated by Ellen are generally fabulous. Also, it’s always kind of funny when Sweet Valley tries to horn in on the territory of That Other Series.  This book was a lot better than I remember! I’ve owned it for years and I’ve hardly ever reread it. I blame this dismal cover. It’s so grey. Sweet Valley is many things, but dingy is not one of them. ( Unicorn Club #12: Five Girls and a Baby ) Current Mood:  bouncy |
| Thursday, December 24th, 2009 |
poptimists
[ dubdobdee ]
|
8:50p |
chart battle 2010
doctrah b3cky just confessed -- as we watched some wobs top 50 thingie -- that she always secretly wanted to have an xmas number one "which given that i have never written or recorded a note of music in my life is problematic, perhaps" WE SAY NO WAY: this must be so... |
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