Our sister is watching Aerosmith tonight so we wanted to post that Saturday Night Live commercial parody from the 90s in which Adam Sandler is performing Aerosmith’s Greatest Hits 1990-94 and they all sound exactly the same. We couldn’t find it, but it is mentioned in the SNL archive—the episode was hosted by Jeff Daniels and the musical guest was Luscious Jackson. If anyone finds the video, could you send us the link?
Until we find that bit, here’s that scene from The Sweetest Thing in which Cameron Diaz and Christina Applegate sing an Aerosmith song to help Selma Blair get unstuck.
Every day for the last two months we have been jolted out of sleep by election campaign jingles blaring from vans going around the neighborhood. Most of them manage to be both loud and indiscernible: your eardrums get pulped, but you don’t know by whom—you can’t understand the lyrics. We’re not sure whom to put a curse on, but we do know that the lawyers for Carly Rae Jepsen and Maroon 5, among others, need to file suit for copyright infringement pronto. We seriously doubt that they’ve given permission for their tunes to get murdered.
Good news for our ears, for a change: the Tokyo-Manila Jazz & Arts Festival will be held on May 9 – 11 at Solaire Resort and Casino along Manila Bay in Parañaque.
Featured performers include Makoto Ozone, Yuki Arimasa, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto, Kengo Nakamura, Charito, AMP Big Band, Colby de la Calzada and the Philippine Youth Symphonic Orchestra.
Yes, Charito! The Filipino jazz singer based in Tokyo.
Concert Day 1 is at 6pm in Eclipse at Solaire; Day 2 is at 7pm in the Grand Ballroom. Workshops will be held on May 11 starting at 2pm.
Ticket prices: Php8,240 for VIP table seats; Php5,150 for gold table seats; and Php3,090/2,060/1,030 for theatre seats. For ticket reservations call (02)7061580 or Ticketworld, (02)8919999, ticketworld.com.ph.
Try getting this song out of your head. It’s been following us around for days. Of course we still have the Fleetwood Mac cassette in a bin somewhere. This was the cut we played over and over again, which was unnecessary because you only have to hear it once and that drum riff will take over your brain. Who gets the USC Trojans Marching Band to play on a song about a disintegrating relationship?! Fleetwood Mac did. That’s why we don’t mind growing old—the stuff from our childhood was so weird.
Our ancient iPod crashed some weeks ago, and as we were reloading music the other day, this suddenly played on our computer. The following day we hitched a ride with our friend, and this was playing in the car.
This afternoon we watched a screener from Jack City for their new series, The Americans, and this figures prominently in the premiere episode. It starts playing two minutes into the show, and that’s when we realized that any TV show that involves Tusk automatically wins our approval. And that every time we hear this song we have to shout the chorus: “You don’t say that you love me!”
In The Americans, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Phillip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) appear to be an ordinary middle-class couple living in the suburbs with their two kids. Wrong on all counts: they’re Soviet spies, they’re not married, those kids are part of the charade. It’s 1981 and US counterintelligence is hot on the trail of Russian agents.
The series was inspired by the unmasking of several KGB sleeper agents living in the US in 2010. It’s like Mr and Mrs Smith plus Salt, with Felicity instead of Angelina Jolie, doing stuff Felicity would never do.
In the premiere, Mr and Mrs Jennings are assigned to kidnap a KGB colonel who has defected to the US. The mission does not go as planned. The colonel triggers Elizabeth’s buried memories and Phillip’s secret aspirations…turns out he wants to be an American for real. Years of pretending have gotten to him. Elizabeth is committed to the mission, but her resolve is undermined by her unacknowledged feelings for her fake husband.
To ratchet up the tension, an American counterintelligence officer (Noah Emmerich) moves in next door. Yeah, that’s a bit much, but the series looks promising. Authentic period feel (See All the Wigs Worn on The Americans So Far), Keri Russell being a badass, geopolitical And marital tensions, and plenty of hand-to-hand combat. Okay, you’ve got our attention, we’ll watch the next episodes.
The Americans premieres on Saturday, 13 April on JackCity (UHF Channel 31, SkyCable Ch. 72, Destiny Ch. 60, Cablelink Ch. 40).
We’ve been reading a lot of late 19th-century literature so we thought we’d listen to music from the period. So off we went to Jackie’s to raid her music library (and dine on Yaya Andresa’s ostrich burgers, which are intense). We borrowed some Mahler, Brahms, Faure, Grieg and a double-CD recording of Verdi’s Otello starring Mario del Monaco (sounds like a bold star) and Renata Tebaldi.
When we opened the CD case we found that the foam liner had disintegrated and stuck to the discs. Ayyy! So we removed the bits of foam very carefully, then wiped the discs with alcohol. The discs had become translucent. They wouldn’t play, even if we tried them on different players. Otello was dead, a victim of CD rot.
“This problem was spotted in the early days of optical discs,” explains Juan the audiophile snob. (We are not allowed to use shoddy headphones in his presence.) “It happened to laser discs first. Apparently the seal on the two sides of the disc was not perfect, allowing air to seep in. Over time the substrate would disintegrate.”
(Digression: The first CDs Juan ever owned were the Chariots of Fire soundtrack and a Spandau Ballet album he bought in Tokyo in 1984. He also bought the newly-released Sony Discman. The battery back contained four D cells and was almost four times thicker and heavier than the player. Playing time was four hours or less.)
“The disc makers probably didn’t anticipate the chemical effect of the adhesive used on the reflective layer, and the manufacturing process was not perfect. The Japanese imprints were probably better than the American and European ones (Juan’s two oldest CDs still; some of his laser discs have gone kaput). Juan recalls a class action suit in the 80s against Pioneer, inventor of the laser disc. The CD was invented by Philips and Sony. The problem of CD rot was first reported in the west (The Otello CD was made in West Germany. There were two Germanies then).”
For more information: CDs are not forever. If you have any CDs from the 80s, time to check if they still play.
We like some musicals—Singin’ In The Rain, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Passion—but we’re not really into the genre. We are the only people we know who have never seen The Sound of Music in its entirety (We see the hills, we fall asleep). A few minutes into The Phantom of the Opera movie we had a giggling fit and removed ourselves from the theatre lest we be attacked by its devout fans. We’ve never seen Miss Saigon or had the slightest inclination to do so.
In short, we’re not the right person to review Les Miserables the movie. We’ll watch it eventually, when the crowds thin. If you’ve seen it, do us a favor and post your review. Bonus question: You lost 25 pounds for the role. How did you gain them back?
Actual conversation with Noel
- Umiiyak daw ang mga nanonood.
- Kung ganoon, opening credits pa lang, iiyak na ako.
- Sa umpisa pa lang daw, humahagulgol na.
- Pwes, habang bumibili ako ng tiket, meron nang papatak na isang luha sa mata ko.
- Competitive!
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Your reviews are fantastic. Thank you! From hereon we shall outsource all reviews of stage-to-film musical adaptations to you.
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