Album: Petri Dish of Pop
Cookies to the first to say what song this entry’s title is from. I challenge the cognoscenti (you know who you are).
While Wilson Phillips may hark back to the prehistoric era of cassette tapes, I find that every listen is still a renewal. How could Hold On (which single, I distinctly remember, was No. 1 the day I turned twelve.), Release Me, Impulsive, You’re In Love, Eyes Like Twins ever grow old? Sap, you say? Oh, but isn’t that the one sentiment that will always hold?
It is no exaggeration to declare that this album ruined for me pretty much every other pop effort for years after its release. This is the soundtrack to my twelve year old self’s elbow grease laborings (sweep the floor—which I would always be pants at, and coco husk it to a red shine—which I could never be bad at), unsound imaginings (I felt every word of Release Me, and to this day don’t know why), and nighttime drama rituals (hymns before prayers).
It is one of my woebegonenesses that subsequent collaborations amongst Chynna, Carnie and Wendy were not quite up to par with their first, but then again, I am certain that very few other works are. On the matter of certainties, I end by referring to a cheddar cheese author, whose tour de force (hahaha) I may have referred to in my LAE interview (cringes), “I have one thing to say, one thing only, I’ll never say it another time, to anyone, and I ask you to remember it. In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you have.”
Notes:
1. A et moi were supposed to review West Side Story. She was to be Objective, and I was to be my Fangirl me. That is, I was to rush to the defense of Christian Bautista, who all natterings of ‘miscast” aside, was… pretty good. Hah. This, from someone who thrives on superlatives.
2. Ever-loath to keep anyone on tenterhooks, the uninitiated can listen to the seventh or eighth track in this link. That is the title. And that is sublime.
3. A, Dreamy Dreams with M aside, this is possibly our best topic yet.
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See also: The Sun Might Rise in the West
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A foxhunt, scheming and plotting, family conferences, more scheming and plotting, weddings and divorces, yet more scheming and plotting, births and beheadings, still more scheming and plotting. All told, this is the lushly-appointed, substance- challenged, and rather good fun The Other Boleyn Girl. Based on the novel by Philippa Gregory (which I haven’t read), this is likewise a moral tale, heavily disguised- so heavily disguised it never quite molted- as a Melrose Place melodrama in corsets and leg-of-lamb sleeves.
If heaving bosoms (less Natalie Portman’s and more the hypermammiferous Scarlett Johansson’s), racy romps in drafty castles (both Natalie Portman’s and Scarlett Johansson’s), and bluebloods in tights and fur capelets (i.e. Eric Bana in P. Diddy duds) appeal, then this may very well be one’s type of entertainment. It wangles quite a few laughs, all unintended to be sure, manages to draw nil sympathy, which could not have been intended, and inspires… jewelry design, which for me at least, is a happy and redeeming accident.
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This snippet ran in the pre-Valentine's Special of a broadsheet some months ago: "I love that line from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet":'My only love sprung from my only hate.'
It's spoken by Romeo who's a Montague who finds out that Juliet is from the enemy Capulet clan. I like it because I am able to relate to it based on my experience."
Diether Ocampo, actor, model, sometime-restaurateur, frequent shirt-shedder
And somewhere, in the chancel of a church in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, the mortal remains of one W. Shakespeare flurries in vociferous protest. You would think that Mr. Ocampo would’ve left the Bard of A. alone. Really, you would. The trouble with quoting he who is the quotablest of quotables, is that everyone knows that the line is Juliet’s. Methinks Mr. Ocampo is better off taming his errant wife. Or getting an anime cut-and-color. Or flexing his pectorals for an apparel endorsement. Or possibly, even reading The Alchemist.