Round like a fishbowl

The Met Gala is coming May 4, and this year's theme is "Costume Art." The planned exhibition at the Met for it, opening to the public May 10, sounds rather interesting but for the Gala...? The dress code is "Fashion Is Art," which is so open it's nearly useless, though the Elle Decor article here says, expect references to art movements—Rococo, Baroque, Pop Art, and Surrealism are all likely touchstones—alongside trompe l’oeil figures, sheer garments, breastplates, and exaggerated silhouettes that interpret the body as canvas. Saint Laurent designs will likely be popular on the red carpet given the brand's sponsorship. I'll believe the non-Saint Laurent bits when I see 'em.

Some folks are considering a boycott because Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos are lead sponsors for this year's gala and exhibition and also serve as honorary chairs.

At least Beyoncé is back, as a co-chair? After an absence of ten years. Maybe she'll give the public something to look at.

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I've been watching Tokyo Revengers for some time now, and I am dying to finally get some answers as to wtf is going on. It's gotten a lot of mileage out of its protagonist Takemichi being clueless and somewhat dim, but I. Need. Answers. That thing with the car. WHY. Explaining that one to Naoto will be fun.

(The universe is really forcing this underachiever to make something of himself, huh?)

Nine Inch Noize has me in a chokehold, which means I picked a bad time to borrow the Alan Parsons Project CD or Ten Summoner's Tales from the library, because with my blood up and thumping from this techno industrial a lot of other stuff seems slow, soft, and somewhat insipid by comparison. Someday soon my musical taste will calm down and stop aggressively (metaphorically of course) waving a sledgehammer around.

I tried a Fantano video about Nine Inch Noize but couldn't make it all the way through since he didn't seem to have much of interest to say. The comment section had some rewards for me though, like that several people there really liked a reworking of "Sin" that was played on the tour but didn't make it to this album. Why you gotta do me like this, Trent? Some of those folks thought it should be on the album instead of "The Warning" but I disagree since "The (reworked) Warning" had me listening to the original again for the first time in years. By the way, several people agreed with my take on all the Year Zero songs included in the set and why they might be there, with one saying we're living in Year Zero right now. (There are some days this year when I think I might almost be grateful if aliens came down and obliterated humanity.) Personally, I'd remove "Came Back Haunted" to get "Sin," since the rework doesn't improve over or add anything good to the original. The comment section listed the reworked "Heresy" as the standout song but was polarized over "Closer"'s reworking. I didn't "get" the new "Closer" on the first listen, but it grew on me. It's a fun alternate version of a song that's over 30 years-old(!).

Folks, in 1995 "Closer" was considered by many to be the unofficial song of the senior years of both my brother and I, him in high school, me in college.

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I posted a new chapter to the Encanto WIP on AO3. So far, the only comments it's gotten in all the months I've been posting were spambots. I'd hoped for better, but nah.

I still don't know who's been programming the music selection at the Plainview, NY Trader Joe's store, but I salute them. During today's visit, I heard "Connection" by Elastica, "Metropolis" by the Church, and "Age of Consent" by New Order. (Previous three visits: "Behind the Wheel" by Depeche Mode, "Life in One Day" by Howard Jones, "Only Happy When It Rains" by Garbage, and "Metal" by Gary Numan.)

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I'm still working on the long Encanto WIP and I can't help thinking that if I broke these various scenes I'm writing up into different fics, I would come off as so accomplished this year, but instead it looks like I haven't done much. It's currently nearly 40K words.

Spring flowers continue in Queens, so I've been doing a spring tromp through my area's cemeteries and started putting some photos up. My knees have been bothering me a bit while picking my way along All Faiths Cemetery's uneven ground, but my podiatrist-mandated sneakers have mostly kept me from turning any ankles.

You can see my photos at my Flickr.

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I enjoyed the Nine Inch Nails & Boys Noize set at Coachella, so I bought the album attached to their tour. Then listened to it tonight while driving down the highway in my car, truly the best way. It was sometimes difficult to stay within the speed limit doing it but y'know. Ten out of ten, would bob my head and drive too fast to this a hundred times.

I do wonder if the inclusion of "Heresy" and "The Warning" in this set is a pointed reference to current events. (Hey, proportionally, there are a lot of Year Zero songs reworked in this set, and Year Zero's whole thing was the apocalypse, militarism, weaponized religion, and environmental devastation. Just saying.)

This album brought back to me how much my neck is involved in enjoying and experiencing some music. I don't, can't, headbang, but I do bob and throw my head back a bit sometimes as I'm really feeling it. Makes me glad the doctors didn't fuse my neck as they thought they should maybe do to decrease my pain 20 years ago. But the traction they thought would make me feel wonderful actually greatly increased my pain and dizziness, made me panic and feel like I was dying. Thanks to that, I now understand animals that gnaw their own feet off to get out of a trap because the getitoffgetitoffgetitoffgetitoffGETITOFF I felt....

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For some reason, Sting's music recently came to mind, starting with The Dream of the Blue Turtles, so I've been borrowing his albums from the Queens Library system. For whatever reason, Ten Summoner's Tales has been listed as "In Transit" for over a month, so I got clever and put in an order for another copy of the album a few days ago. And picked it up today. If the other copy ever shows up for pick-up, I'll take care of it. Otherwise, the request will time out in July.

My new iPhone is still screwing up the album cover images on my music, so Ten Summoner's Tales has the cover of Weird Al Yankovic's Mandatory Fun when loaded onto my phone.