My So-Called iTunes Life

[OK, so instead of going out and enjoying this nice sunny Sunday, I'm being a hermit and playing GayProf's meme:]

[Your life is like movie outline. Open your music player and select your entire library. Place it in “shuffle” mode and see which songs come up for each of these questions:]

[Opening Credits: "Skin The Cat," Schnell Fenster. OK, we start surreal. This early-90s Aussie/Enzedd group was composed of various ex-Split Enz members who didn't transition to Crowded House. This track asks "hey, man, why'd you skin the cat/hey man, why'd you do that?" Hmmm. Is this life merely karmic retribution for deeds committed previously?]

[Waking Up: "Hot In The City" Billy Idol. Yeahhhh! My life gets started with the most obviously trash/flash of 80s sleaze. This is getting better all the time.]

[First Day of School: "Hanky Panky Nohow," The Hope Blister. One may have woken up ready to go crazy, but this wistful 4AD track reminds us to get serious when building your life's foundations. You can get hot in the city later...for now, settle down and get serious.]

[Falling In Love: "Miss Punta Blanca" Jane Siberry. This short bit of acoustic nostalgia has our heroine ask someone named Mike to pour her a glassful. Ac-cur-ate - just as one's getting on track, one's getting right off again.]

[First Song: "Empty Bottle Blues," They Might Be Giants. Which makes sense, since after the first glassful, come many more glasses, until your life is a woozy pseudo-Latin trumpet blare announcing that the booze is all gone. Too many of my loves have indeed incorporated this theme.]

[Breaking Up: "From: Disco To: Disco," Les Rythmes Digitales. Hahahaha! Yes, when love closes one door, it opens another, usually on the dancefloor. My life isn't like this, but maybe it needs to be.]

[Prom: "Coffee & TV," Blur. "Do you feel like a chainstore/One of many zeroes/Kicked around and bored." OK, by now we realize this list is somewhat heteronormative: I went to three proms in high school, all before I fell in love, broke up, etc. in college. So...I choose to interpret "prom" as going dancing as an adult, and yes, I have felt like one of many zeroes out there on the floor more than once.]

[Driving: "Let It Will Be," Madonna. Once of the less dancy tracks on Confession on a Dancefloor, it seems to describe life after the disco shuts down: the beat's still reverberating between your ears, and you see things as they really are. This is pretty true of one's drive home after the club. Golly, I think I actually need to go dancing to experience any of this.]

[Flashback: "Voodoo Ray," A Guy Called Gerald. "D-d-d-danger!" You pull into the driveway, and that last little bit of whatever it was you ingested kicks in. You forget to put the car in park, and slide backwards a yard. You slam your foot on the brake just before slipping into oncoming traffic. Another narrow escape. (Make what metaphorical hay you will of THAT little scenario...)]

[Starting a New Relationship: "Valentine's Day," Betty Boo. Uh, yeah. Shallow, dated, repetitive: clearly, we're in short-term, rebound territory. Possibly you're getting back together with your ex, but only for a weekend.]

[Wedding: "Robert DeNiro's Waiting," Bananarama. "A walk in the park can become a bad dream/People are staring and following me." If I ever got married, I have little doubt that this is what it would be like.]

[Birth of Child: "Waiting For a Girl Like You," Foreigner. Two interpretations: the likelihood of my siring a child is as likely as my listening to this classic rock ballad with any regularity (all kinds of weird stuff exists in my iTunes), or b. the arrival of my niece, Most Advanced and Most Cutest Baby Ever, was the answer to a question I was actually asking.]

[Final Battle: "Honey," Moby. I like this, for some reason. It stomps, it pulses, it includes old and new elements. I'm going to need all the help I can get at the end.]

[Death Scene: "Strut," Sheena Easton. I just don't know what think about this. Better to die in full, trashy bravado? I'd rather die than listen to Sheena Easton's mid-career work? I'm stumped.]

[Funeral Song: "You Think You Know Her," Cause And Effect. "But you'll never forget the day she went away." Clearly, there will crowds wailing and gnashing their teeth that they never knew the real me.]

["Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard," Paul Simon. It ends as it began, surreal but simple, and containing a hint of the outlaw.]

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