I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: VAMPIRE WEEKEND-“Blurred Lines” (2013).

Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” is a huge hit (with a NSFW video).  And I gotta say that I find it insanely catchy, too.  It’s pretty irresistible.  So why not cover it?

Vampire Weekend’s new album is less formal than their first two–relaxing styles and adding a bunch more humor to their sound.  And they make a surprisingly good cover of this song.  Their version is quite faithful to the original (even mimicking the sound a lot).  But at the same time, the band is having a lot of fun with the song as you can tell primarily from the backing vocals.

You can tell hear it’s Vampire Weekend, but it also doesn’t quite sound like them–a neat trick.

Check out their cover (which is not a live concert track, but was recorded for BBC’s Live Lounge (so it sounds good)) at Stereogum.

[READ: July 15, 2013] “Firebugs”

This was, I think, the longest story I’ve seen published in The Walrus.

It begins with several paragraphs describing fire–physical, psychological, intense descriptions.  Since I didn’t realize the story was so long, I actually wondered if the whole story would be like that–if there were going to be no characters in it.  But there are, and quite a few.  And the story is focused on two of them.

Blake Kennedy Jr was a firebug as a kid.  Then he became a fireman (seems this is not so uncommon of a history for firemen and may stem from the desire to control fire).  After many good years, he was injured during training and had to get a desk job. Now he investigates suspicious fires.  Perhaps coincidentally, there was a rash of arson during the year he was born.  Those fires were technologically set–the arsonist used the spark from a telephone to ignite a can of gasoline. Of course, the killer would place the call when he was far enough away.  And he was never found.

This year’s arsonist’s is much more simple–a milk jug of gasoline with a homemade wick left on the front porch.  It is a slow burn, with the gasoline not exploding.  It’s actually the fumes that catch fire, not the liquid.  So, when the wick burns down, the whole thing doesn’t ignite until the milk jug melts and the gas spills out.

Blake is investigating the death of Detta, an older woman who tried to run out during the fire (the state of her feet must have been incredible, he determined).

Blake has a younger sister, Franny.  Franny is in an asylum because when she was 12, she tried to kill herself with a gun and lobotomized herself instead.  (The suicide attempt can after she saw a poor animal at the zoo, but there was clearly a lot more inside her head).  Franny also became obsessed with fire–terribly fearful of it and yet unable to look away from it.  Indeed, when Franny was younger she set fires in alleys herself.

And now, she has been wandering out at night (without permission of course).  So Blake tries to put two and tow together.  Especially after he hears that a witness to the fire saw a woman in a nightgown running down the street with a torch blazing.

Franny, as only certain people can, is very logical about fire–believing that fire reduces all thing back to carbon atoms, the basic blocks of life.  And that that is wonderful.

It seems clear that there is a connection and yet, apparently his sister has not been out the last couple of nights.  Something else must be going on.

This was a surprisingly philosophical look at fire, firebugs and firefighters.  And the details were very gripping.