Right now I should be doing something that I'm supposed to finish Monday - but I'm not. Instead, I'm obsessing over The Spinto Band's song "So Kind, Stacy". I've been listening to it non-stop since Friday, since I re-discovered it as one of my thumbed up songs in Pandora.
I usually want something blaring in my earphones when I'm doing work. But then, whenever I hit a roadblock, even minor ones ( how do I store values in an array in ASP.net, again?) - I tend to easily call 'breaktime' and Google up anything that comes to mind. Yes, I'm that geeky - my form of relaxation is to surf the net and get my mind some useful or useless trivia. Since this song was playing, I googled up the band to find some interesting new facts to add to my plethora of trivia odds and ends. This is what I found out:
"So Kind Stacy" was actually an entry to the weekly online song contest at SongFight! It was an entry from a band called Carol Cleveland Sings who later became the Spinto Band. The Carol Cleveland Sings version is a cute little electronica number. Hearing the new Spinto Band version - I'm glad they remade it. Not that the old one's bad, it was actually really good the first time around (even though it didn't win) but much much better the second time they did it (so I've got two songs to listen to now!). I'm actually craving more for this band and I already got me a copy of two of their songs - the Stacy song and Oh Mandy (no relation what-so-ever to Barry Manilow's dog song). Now I wish I could download their whole album. I already used up my downloads for the month at eMusic and my favorite Russian-mafia run mp3 download site suddenly disappeared from the face of the internet world without any trace. Now, I either wait for my downloads to refill, which will take a few days or find another mp3 download site. I do miss that Russian site though, they have selections that even eMusic doesn't have - the Foals, the Concretes, I'm from Barcelona... I wish I should've dowloaded them before that site dissapeared into thin air :P
In any case, here's the Carol Cleveland Sings version of "So Kind Stacy" and the Spinto Band one. You should also try checking out SongFight.org - they've got quite an interesting music selection there. All entries are downloadable. I was listening to the challenge of the week entries and couldn't help but laugh out loud to some of the entries. It's like the being a judge at the early elimination phase of American Idol. It's also provides a nice music fix for music junkies like me whose mind's always saying - new music, now! grumble..grumble (that's like a tummy grumbling, but it's just my mind going through music withdrawal).
Oh, and yes - this is how bad I'm craving for new music...if you guys want 50 free downloads on eMusic you can send me your email and I can send an invite. I get 50 new downloads too if you do decide to open an eMusic account. I know this is kind of a longshot since (1) nobody really reads this blog (2) if somebody does, eMusic requires you to place a credit card on file to register (which nobody really likes). The credit card on file is in case you do decide to continue your subscription, since you can cancel it once all your free downloads are used up. I've actually done their free music thing (you get 25 downloads free to sign up) and cancelled after using up my downloads. It was pretty easy and painless. However, a few months after, I decided to sign up again since I found some tracks in eMusic that I couldn't find anywhere else. Help the needy if you want - send me a message and I'll send you the invite for the 50 free downloads - don't worry, I won't spam ;)
As I'm writing this, my son's making meowing noises - he just read the title and thought kiddies was the same as kitties.
It's been a couple of weeks since I've written..more than a month I think. Let's just say, things got busy and I hate writing about bad stuff that's been going on with my life. But right now I've got reason to rejoice - I just discovered that my son and I have the same music taste! Forget the fact that I've been brainwashing him with my own music whenever he's in the car. He's actually telling me what songs he likes and requests for it!
It's a great jump from totally being into singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to humming songs by Architecture in Helsinki. Yes - that's the band, his first favorite band (which will be my most memorable favorite band for years to come).
Every so often I burn a CD of different new songs and listen to it in the car. My son usually ignores it and does his own little thing in the car - like telling me the colors on the traffic lights or mention a car, tree or flower we passed by. One time I threw in a CD with a couple of Architecture in Helsinki songs. They're always so fun to listen to and I've sworn off depressing/angry music for the time being lest they bring me thoughts of killing myself - though I'm sure Architecture in Helsinki has a couple of depressing lyrics too (but they make depressing topics oh so light and upbeat!). The song Tiny Paintings came up - I've only been able to hear it once or twice and just threw it in to the mix so I could listen to something new. My son immediately loved it. It was the Tuba and that air releasing tiny piston sound the song had at the beginning. He laughed and laughed and requested it again and again. So I thought, I should burn a copy of the whole Architecture in Helsinki album and listen to it. He kept requesting number 3 (since it was the third track in the album). 'Tiny Paints!' he'd say. I keep telling him it's 'Tiny Paintings', but he still keeps on calling it that. Which reminds me - he's got a lot of his 'own version' words like 'porkymine' for 'porcupine' and 'airpork' for 'airport' (I'm not sure what it is with pork). Anyway, 'Tiny Paints' was his first ever song-that-love-to-hear-that-i'll-keep-playing-it-again-and-again-until-i-get-sick-of-it song which is actually a nice good start for my budding music lover.
Sometimes he'd forget to request the song again after it finished, so the next song, 'Wishbone' would play. As with all albums, the next song that's on the playlist after your favorite song is the one you'd usually like next - which is exactly what happened . Now he's all about playing the song 'Wishbone' everytime I'm with him. Now, I'm hoping he'll get addicted to the song that comes after too - which is my favorite Architecture in Helsinki song of all time ('Maybe You Can Owe Me'). With 'Wishbone' he loves that it begins fast and slows down in the middle of the song and then picks right up again. He actually makes it a game to say 'Wake up!' just before the drums begin to play when the song start to become upbeat again.
At the moment, he's got three AIH songs that he keeps requesting to hear. The third one's Hold Music (the one in my last blog entry). He likes how they're all noisy singing 'Hey-yaya-hey-yaya-hey-yayaya' . As for me I love the fact that at 1:50 minutes into the song, the singer sounds exactly like Bert when he gets all crazy-angry with Ernie. Listen to it, I think it's the part of the song that makes it totally endearing to anyone who gets hooked with it.
Yeah, I get amused easy - but really, it is a great reason to rejoice, now I have my own little 4-year old music buddy. I might give a shot at teaching him how to play drums next. We'll see :) In the meantime, here's a cool clip from AIH's Take-Away show. They asked a couple of people from the street to sing with them and positioned themselves to peer out from the windows of an apartment building to facilitate the whole sing-along bit. Pretty fun stuff.
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I did mention that the Postal Service was my son's favorite band before..but Architecture in Helsinki's his first real favorite band . With 3 favorite songs and counting...he also likes to draw pictures of the singers too. :)
I was preparing for a few days of rest and relaxation and started out to browse a couple sites and check out some music videos. Good thing I checked out this Architecture in Helsinki video first -
So I was just watching it, thinking - 'haha - they all look so silly - jumping up and down on those trampolines!' . Then suddenly my mind went 'TING!' - like that sound that the oven toaster makes when you're food's ready...and no it doesn't mean that my brain got toasted..but you get the picture. (Wow, I just sounded like my son there when tells me a story. Maybe I need to end this story with a 'THE END!').Anyways, I just remembered that my son needs a trampoline..and a beanbag chair too. It's what his Occupational Therapist recommended - to cool him down when all his senses get overloaded. Apparently, Paolo also gets sensory overload since he's very sensitive to sights and sounds. Trampoline jumping can help him stay focused since it dissipates all the energy that gets wound up inside him while a nice huggy little bean bag chair can cool him down and make him feel relaxed. The bean bag - I'm not sure if I can find one in IKEA....but I don't think they're hard to come by. As for an affordable trampoline - that I may need to hunt for. Anyone in the Greater Vancouver area, got a little trampoline they can part with?
September's almost here. Paolo's going to school and my parents are going home when next month ends. It's going to be crazy/busy in the homefront when they're gone, and I am bracing myself. And...just because I have the case of jittery nerves and I'm also expecting an impending panic attack if I ever get the call that my little one slugged someone in class - now is a good time for good old dance music...
The first track is Hummer by Foals - it's sort of like a cross between Alice In Chains' "No Excuses" and that Prince song in the first Batman movie when the Joker was throwing out money in the streets of Gotham. Pretty good.
The second one's the Soulwax Nite version of Gossip's "Standing In the Way of Control".
There's an obvious link between these two songs, but I ain't going to tell. :)
I just had a glimpse of what Paolo dreams of - he actually told me one of his dreams! For a mom who had nagging doubts of Paolo ever being able to tell me stories about what he did at school or daycare - my favorite little autistic boy has come a long way :) Since his Lolo and Lola came, he's improved quite a lot in the extemporaneous self-expression field, making me have a glimpse of his brilliant, creative young mind.
Here's how his dream goes: He'll eat a planet, it's not big, it's small - small enough to fit in his tummy. It's a small purple planet, with spots and a chimmney that spews out sprinkles. Then, he eats a little red planet and a blue one. His tummy gurgles. He goes to the potty to poop . As reward, Lola will give him chocolate kisses. The End.
If there was an award for Most Creative Extemporaneous Story Telling of a Dream - he'd win in for sure. It was short, sweet, highly descriptive and very original. Five Stars...and hugs and kisses from Mommy. I figured he was telling me stories to keep stalling bedtime too. It actually worked - he got a 30 minute bedtime extension. I admit, he pulled a fast one over me, but it was all good. Tricky little genius. But now that I've got him talking, I think I better watch out for my little cutie-pie from being a smartmouth. Just a while ago, he passed by a lady who didn't greet him back a 'Hello' after his two animated 'Hi's'. He promptly concluded by saying "She doesn't have a brain" within earshot, the lady finally answering back a delayed 'Hello'. In the end, he got what he wanted - which makes me think...is he really austistic or is this one big intricately woven prank he's pulling over us?
Since I always post songs here now, and it's my Feist themed weekend - here's a remix of Mushaboom by my son's favorite band The Postal Service....
Long weekends are the best....especially when next week's going to be the start of my killer 4 by 10 shift (9am to 8 pm) at work. It's only for a few weeks though - I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it won't spill over to the time when Paolo begins school - if it will, I'd be going through burnout a few days after.
Weekend started with Paolo getting sick with a really high fever and a bit of asthma. It's good that I had my personal doctor at home (my mom) who gave her grandson the full treatment of a 24 hour vigil on his fever, a nice refreshing spongebath and lots of love and attention. I'd have done it myself if Paolo hadn't chosen to sleep on Lolo and Lola's bed after a little spat with me when I tried tried to give him medicine he didn't want. Paolo is now feeling much much better now. Thank you Lola!
He's sleeping right now, with a blue star shaped balloon floating above his bed. He brings it everywhere he goes. He loves those kind of things, colorful balloons, flowers - tons and tons of them. When he picks wildflowers, he always wants me to wear them, tucked behind my ear. He loves wearing red - something about being a 'strawberry boy' -a thing he made up. His imagination goes wild sometimes, telling me about a new friend, a little boy named John who has black hair like him. Considering that we don't have any neighbors his age named John and he's the only boy in daycare...makes us think it's an imaginary friend. He talks in his sleep too...about cookies and brownies, about saying 'please' and 'excuse me' and he tells me directions too, like - 'go there mommy'. Wherever 'there' is, I don't know. I keep guessing what his dreams are all about. Could they be made of sweets and treats, of tooth fairies and talking cats - the usual 4 year old dreams? He's been singing a lot lately too and invents songs along the way - like that one song 'water the tress, makes the plants grow..'. He made it up when we were in the car. He sang along to the Postal Service song too and surprisingly, hummed along to my favorite song by The Bees. I wonder if he'll like Feist? Her songs have been stuck in my head for the past few days...one of them has counting - not too good counting by the way, it's much like U2's ' uno, dos, tres, catorce' (she leaves 7 and 8 when counting to ten - which is absolutely understandable since 7,8, 9). Rayms hates it, and I'm thinking, maybe I should get an ally with Pao - he'll absolutely love the video with all the colors. It's pretty amazing too, the way all those people seem to come up from nowhere - something that they did with creative positioning, camera angles and crazy choreography.
The "Mushaboom" video is pretty interesting too - sort of like what dreams are made of:
I've been carpooling with Rayms for the past few weeks, so I haven't had lots of opportunity to get quality music listening time inside my car. As of late, in the limited time I've had driving myself to and from work - two songs come to mind as road favorites: Architecture in Helsinki's The Cemetery and Sugarcube's Motor Crash.
I'm not sure if a sub-conscious death wish is making me like these songs or if my mind is preparing me to crash to my death while head bobbing to Bjork and Friends. The songs, however morbid the titles sound like - are far from gloom and doom. Aside from being upbeat and fun, which is a contrast of what the songs are all about - I find them quite entertaining in the way they pronounce two words : cemetery and bicycle.
If you've been with a lot of Filipinos - you might notice that a big chunk will speak English without any accents even if they weren't born here. As a Filipino myself, who's been born and raised in the Philippines, some people ask why I've apparently lost my accent or have none at all (I actually have one and I also have a weird way of wording things too - stick with me for a while and you'll notice it). A big reason for this is that having an accent - pronouncing words in the not so normal way - is a great source of humor for us Filipinos. This is why in local Philippine TV comedy, you'll often see some guy (usually someone from the South of the Philippines - Mindanao or Visayas) , our version of the typical country hick, is seen speaking with a thick accent and mispronouncing a lot of words along the way. So, conscious as we are, not to be the laughing stock of the crowd, we learn to speak it the way them English speakers speak 'em ;) Then again, I could always tell them the real truth why I don't have an accent - I watched waayy too much Beverly Hills 90210 as teenager.
In any case, I find it truly entertaining how Bjork's heavy accented bandmate pronounces bicycle as bye-see-kul and how the Aussies pronounce cemetery as symmetry - which is, to be quite honest, is how my good friends from Visayas and Mindanao would pronounce it. In a weird and disjointed kind of way, all of this reminds me of home :)
I just came home from seeing Maximo Park live :) The $18.00 downtown Vancouver parking fee was weirdly worth more than one ticket to the show - but it was well worth it! The show was absolutely fantastic ! I'm glad Rayms let me drag him into going ;)
Maximo Park is now my new favorite band :D
I have a soft spot for electronica. I figure, being a child of the 80's and having grown up with synthesizer laden songs - I will and will always be - fond of dancey-pop, casio-programmed songs. One of my all-time favorite songs when I was a kid was New Order's Bizzare Love Triangle ( which I listened to along with Debbie Gibson's Electric Youth and that other popular song at that time - Rico Mambo). When the 80's keyboard infused music waned in its popularity, I went with the crowd and got into rock and grunge. I still had that itching for those computer programmed beats though, and was kind of happy that Apollo 440 was there with electronica infused with rock-out guitar riffs to satisfy my music craving.
Right now, I'm being spoiled crazy with all these bands and artists opting for the 80's sound, occasionally injecting electronic music with their own.
While rock bands might not be having openings for keytar-ists (yet!), I've found two great acts whose songs have crazily gotten stuck in my head for the past few days.
PlayRadioPlay!'s 'At This Particular Moment In Time' is so catchy I think you'll get it stuck in your head too. Checking out this group's bio, PlayRadioPlay! isn't actually a group, but a one-man-band - a 17-year old kid from Texas named Dan Hunter. He sounds like a girl in this song which makes me think if he was the one who sang it and if it was recorded before his voice broke. In any case, it's a song that laments over his ladylove - 2 years older, going to college and favoring big muscled guys with big trucks over him. Personally, I can't relate to the lyrics at any level - but it has a killer beat. I'm not sure about the future of this song or this artist, since he hasn't broken through mainstream music yet. I may be denying that I ever liked this song once it gets repeated airplay over Radio Disney (if it ever goes there). But yes, at this particular moment in time, 'At This Particular Moment In Time' made my heart skip a beat just listening to it.
Another song lodged in my head is Ms. John Soda's 'Hands'. The first time I heard it, I thought it was likable - I didn't rave over it instantly but it sort of grew on me. It's like the time you realize that you've fallen for a person. You don't usually know it instantly when you meet them. You go through a series of events where you get together and it feels great when you're with them. It's not love yet, but then there's an 'a-ha!' moment where something clicks and then you know deep inside that you're in love with that person. For this song, I sort of had it stuck in my head one day just humming it, and didn't even know who sang the song and what the name of the song was. I was thinking, it was just a random song that I heard somewhere and just continued humming it. I woke up and it was playing in my head again, then I knew I liked the song.
Which makes me remember...that one movie I liked. Jude Law was in it - "Music from Another Room". He had this nice line on what love was like:
"You know how when you're listening to music playing from another room? And you're singing along because it's a tune that you really love? When a door closes or a train passes so you can't hear the music anymore, but you sing along anyway... then, no matter how much time passes, when you hear the music again you're still in exact same time with it. That's what it's like."
I told this to my sister and she didn't get it. I don't know, maybe I'm just a true blue music junkie or even a sappy romantic (or maybe both) but it sure hits home for me.
I hate getting reports or reading reports of assessments for Paolo. The time I got the official report from Sunny Hill about his autism, I felt really bad since the only thing that sounded good about it was the part for 'physical description' where they describe my son as a 'handsome good looking little boy'. Other than that, was all the other stuff that I knew about that I didn't want to hear again. But lately, now that we've been doing weekly therapy, things have been going a bit better with regards those reports. This is in part, because of the people that Paolo's been working with regularly now , our behaviour consultant's team of interventionists - fresh out of university. They've set up this binder for Paolo where they record all the things that have happened in the session, nice little informal reports of Paolo's therapy.
Now, instead of seeing comments like - "Poor eye contact. Has Receptive/expressive language disorder" I'm now seeing comments on his binder that go like "Paolo is very smart and cute but cannot let him get away with this as it will not help him in school" when recounting the time when he tried to get out of doing an exercise by pretending to be asleep on the couch with his blankie over his head. Or "Super cute!" when he was able to successfully copy a flower drawn by the interventionist. It actually warms my heart that they add these comments to the report - though far from scientific, which does nothing for me to know how he's going along with improvements in his condition - it helps to think that others find my son as cute as I do, even though he occasionally kicks or headbutts people the face or in the case of one of the interventionists, gotten a chair thrown at her and a toy bounced off of her head.
Now, I kind of have this assurance that violent tendencies aside, my son has proven to be charming with his super cuteness and smartness.
