MUSIC QUIZ!

So I normally have no love for Facebook-chain-type personalized-quiz things, but a friend had this posted, and I found it to be a brilliant idea.

Everyone, have a go at this! The song list below is pretty eclectic, so there's likely a few that you'll know...

Directions:
Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 50 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Bold out the songs when someone guesses both artist and title correctly.
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
Step 5: If you like the game post your own!

Karla's Lyric List:
1. Jackie Cane was everybody’s sugar / she gave it all, wherever it took her
2. Stand up, sit down baby / It’s gonna be a formal dress-down heyday
3. Don’t tell your man what he don’t do right / nor tell him all the things that make you cry
4. Something has to change / un-deniable dilemma / boredom’s not a burden anyone should bear
5. What do I do to get your attention / what do I do to get this through/ Not the cool kid’s clique / Not the cool fake hits
6. To pretend no one can find / the fallacies of morning rose
7. Can’t explain all the feelings that you’re making me feel / my heart’s in overdrive and you’re behind the steering wheel
8. Black fingernails, red wine / I wanna make you all mine
9. (Check 1 1 2) I came into this world as a reject / Look into these eyes, and you’ll see the size of the fact
10. Consider this a sign / This is a train in the night / And now it’s time for you to go / you know you’ve had a healthy life, boy
11. Must have been mid-afternoon / I could tell by how far the child’s shadow stretched out and…
12. I found me a reason, so check me tomorrow / we’ll see if I’m leaking
13. In pitch dark, I go walking in your landscape / Broken branches trip me as I speak
14. Load up on guns, bring your friends / It’s fun to lose and to pretend
15. And you know you’re gonna lie to you, in your own way / And you know you’re gonna lie to you, in your own way
16. I am sitting in the morning / At a diner on the corner
17. See that boy just standing over there? Stopped me today and said he liked my hair
18. Ahhh… Living without you / I know all about you / I have run you down into the ground / Spread disease about you over town
19. So I’m all surrounded by the things I thought I’d put away / And I’m all surrounded by the things I thought I’d put away
20. I am falling, drifting, trapped inside the story / Am I chained to the moon, or will the sun take over in the morning?
21. I’m taking back the knowledge / I’m taking back the gentleness / I’m taking back the ritual / I’m giving in to sweetness
22. Bones, sinking like stones, all that we fought for / Homes, places we’ve grown, all of us are done for
23. I wanna know where my confidence went / One day it all disappeared
24. Looking out a dirty old window / Down below the cars in this city go rushing by
25. Here’s my new century, I’m erasing history / You need to make corrections! You need to pay attention!
26. Lights go out and I can’t be saved / Tides that I try to swim against
27. And the sky was made of amethyst / and all the stars, just like little fish
28. Over and over I keep wondering why / Then I give up and see that look in your eyes
29. Sometimes I feel like I can’t move on / Nothing in life is turning me on / But I still see clearly when I see you smiling
30. And so ya wanna be with me, I’ve nothing to give / Won’t lie and say this loving’s best
31. They’ve got you where they want you / Nothing’s ever gonna satisfy you / You think they’ll never buy you / They’re doling out affection, just like a confection
32. Anytime I need to see your face I just close my eyes / And I am taken to a place where your crystal mind and magenta feelings take up shelter in the base of my spine
33. She’ll only come out at night, the lean and hungry type/ Nothing is new, I’ve seen her here before
34. Did you happen to catch or did it happen so fast / what you thought would always last / has passed you by
35. A long time ago we used to be friends / but I haven’t thought of you lately at all
36. Red rain is coming down / Red rain is pouring down all over me
37. The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down / Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
38. (Hi, my name is Stereo Mike) … I woke up again this morning with the sun in my eyes / when Mike came over with a script surprise
39. Fuck you, you’re drunk and acting tough / I know you’re scared, you’re not the only one who feels like that now
40. Maybe the time is not for the taking / it comes like a dream when your spirit is aching
41. (HEY!) Some are gonna make it look easy - say moderation is the key
42. Watch the band through a bunch of dancers / Quickly, follow the unknown
43. Break the skin / ‘Cause I can’t tell where your body ends and mine begins
44. How I don’t know how to sing, I can barely play this thing / But you never seem to mind / And you tell me to fuck off when I need somebody to
45. Colour me once, colour me twice / Everything’s gonna turn out nice
46. There’s always the diamond friendly / Sitting in the laugh motel
47. I hold you in my hands, a little animal / and only some dumb idiot would let you go
48. Mine, immaculate dream made breath and skin / I've been waiting for you
49. On your third broken window / your hair full of glass / throw your clothes in the hallway / just a sheet on your back
50. Talking to myself all the way to the station / Pictures in my head of the final destination

Any ring a bell? Post a comment and see if you're right! ;-)

The Week of Concerts

This past week, Dave's parents came to visit. It was their first time seeing the new house, so naturally, getting their thumbs-up was fairly important.

Not only did they like it, they even helped out with some work around the house! What great guests! ;-) Thanks to them we now have a dryer vent to connect to our dryer. Thanks, guys!

Another big event of the previous week is the Nine Inch Nails concert we attended on Tuesday. Three words: IT WAS FANTASTIC. It started out as a simple, stripped-down rock show, and then evolved into an ultra-psychadelic spectacle involving layered LCD screens. All the best songs were played, even going back as far as 1989's hit, "Wish". Better still, because of Ottawa isn't exactly a hub for angry, artsy music, Scotiabank place was merely a third full... meaning, with minimal pushing and shoving, I was a mere 30 feet from Trent Reznor!!!

One day I will probably write an entire blog post about how wonderful Trent is -- musician, showman, promoter, artist, collaborator, businessman, etc -- but that will have to wait for another time. In the meantime, suffice to say that the concert more than met my expectations, and thus I needed to buy a shirt.

There were a number of cute shirts to choose from, some with the basic NIN logo, some with stylized silhouettes of flying birds... and then I saw the one that was meant for me.

"Art is Resistance"

Brilliant! And absolutely true, too. This shirt and I were clearly made for each other. You'll likely be seeing it on this blog sometime soon.

So, as if that wasn't enough excitement for the week, we also saw Grand Analog and Herbalizer in concert the following Friday.

Grand Analog was a great show, and as it turned out, from Winnipeg! We were chatting after the show, and he was reminiscing about his days at Kelvin High School, trying to sneak over to talk to the St. Mary's girls. We even knew some of the same people! What a small world.

Herbalizer was also a lot of fun, but I must add that they were much older and whiter than I had pictured them. Great music, and it translated well to the tiny club where we saw them. Dave bought his own cool tee there, which is an awesome watercolour/ink design.

Both Herbalizer and Grand Analog are currently touring westward, and I would highly recommend anyone seeing them. Keep an eye out for them!

That concert wrapped up around 2:00AM, so Dave and I decided to drop in on another party we'd been invited to. We had it on good authority that it would be going until sunlight, and indeed it did. We arrived at 2:30, we jammed, danced, and partied with a crew of rowdy statisticians until just after 5AM.

Then, on the way home, we saw a funny sight down Gladstone ave in the wee hours. On this busy, ultra-urban street, moseying down the sidewalk at 5am was... a skunk!!! Who knew there were skunks in the deep downtown of Ottawa? ...and more than that, that they casually stroll down sidewalks like the rest of us? If it had been holding a Starbucks cup, I might not have even looked twice.

If having too much fun is possible, that may very well have happened throughout last week.

This week is looking action-packed as well... tomorrow I fly solo in an hour-long, division-wide presentation (gulp!!). My parents are also flying in for the weekend, and for better or for worse, I can always count on adventure not being far behind them. Plus, tomorrow is the finale of my guilty pleasure, Americas' Next Top Model, so Bea is hosting a party to watch it. Once that show is over, I can finally find out who will take all my money in the ANTM pool I had entered. AND we are spending time with a friend of Daves' who has flown in from Victoria.

But surely after this, it is time to rest...? Nay, I say! After my parents leave on Sunday, we breathe on Monday, and then Dave leaves for Toronto... and then it's the Vegas adventure!

Fun times!! :-)

Wedding and Spamalot

This was a very big weekend. On Saturday, a former room-mate of Dave's (also named Dave) got married. Congratulations, Dave and Jodi! :-D

Dave (mine) was the Master of Ceremonies, whereas I was the random-task-coordinator -- assisting the MC, ensuring the bride and her party had all the various things they needed, herding people from point A to B, helping coordinate the entrances, etc. (and doing all this in three-inch stiletto heels, too!) Anyhow, I was very grateful to have this role, as I didn't actually know anyone at the wedding aside from the bride and groom. Luckily, it didn't take long to hit it off with the awesome, wacky sister of the groom, and we both made sure our table was the rowdiest. (I love being at the "rowdy table"!)

;-)

And then yesterday was the closing night of Spamalot, for which Dave and I had second-row tickets. Spamalot is Monty Python's touring broadway musical, and was more or less an extended, song-and-dance-added version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Some songs were longer versions of the old and familiar ("We're Knights of the Round Table" and "Brave Sir Robin (Bravely Ran Away)"), and others were wholly new ("This Is The Song That Goes Like This"). The ending was altered to make more sense than the film version, and even included some audience participation. It was also the only musical I've ever attended which ends with an audience singalong. Overall, it was a lot of fun.

Personally, I was not as keen about Spamalot as I was for Wicked, which was another touring Broadway musical we saw back in August. Wicked is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, back when the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda, the Good Witch were boarding school room-mates. It starts out like a musical version of Mean Girls and ends up as a slowly unravelling conspiracy, spearheaded by the Wizard himself. While Spamalot was good, Wicked was spectacular.

In fact, Wicked was so good that it inspired me to name my new bass guitar Elphie, after Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. (But more on her later -- suffice to say, we'll be seeing more of her at parties.) ;-)

Nonetheless, it's an action-packed kickoff to a very busy November! Next to report will be Tuesday's Nine Inch Nails concert, and a visit from the in-laws… which event will involve more rowdiness? We shall see.

Hallowe'en in the New House

As some of you know, Dave and I recently bought our first house. We just love it. But more on that later.

We had been looking forward to our first Halloween in the house. Besides the fact that Halloween marked our first official holiday in the house, we were also looking forward to giving candy to trick-or-treat-ers. We even bought extra, so that we wouldn't have to turn anyone away.








...








And nobody came.

Not one kid.

It's so sad.

On the upside, though, we had a Halloween party to go to later that eve. My friend, Amanda, was hosting a costumed house party complete with a bonafide smoke machine and themed treats (which included cheesecake eyeballs). There was a dance party in the living room, an acoustic singalong later, and then an AC/DC rock-out after that. It was an absolute riot. For more photos, see my Flickr account.

The costumes were incredible, and here are a few highlights:

• One guy was dressed up as Facebook (the old version, not the new one, for those who are curious)


• One girl was a shower-gel pouff
  
• A couple was a perfect, 100% homemade Fred and Wilma Flinstone


• Another couple as Hal Johnson and Joann McLeod (anyone remember Body Break??)


• Another guy was dressed up as a Toronto Stock Exchange broker, in an expensive suit and dynamite strapped to himself.

Other great costumes include a post-Weight-Watchers skeleton, an injured hockey player, an emo fairy, a sunburned tourist, a coked-out musician (complete with upper-lip baby powder), a metal rocker, Mia Wallace, Legolas the elf, Mr. Clean, and a few toga-wearers. As for us, Dave and I were lucky to find anything to use as costumes at all, as most of our posessions are still in boxes! We were still able to throw together some decent costumes, making him into an All Blacks rugby player, and me as Princess Leia. There were even prizes for sexiest costume, most original, and best couple, and the winners had to dance to show off their duds.

At that point, my friend from Spain turned to me and said, "This party is just like the ones you see in American movies!!!"

How awesome is that? ;-)

...

So now, the only thing left is to decide what to do with all this candy… :-P