I was tagged by @allgremlinart in a "top 5 no-skip albums" tag game! i am very much more an albums person than an artists person and i have strong opinions so i am very excited to write this post :))) these are not in any particular order!
transangelic exodus- ezra furman
let's be clear. this could be pretty much any ezra furman album. there's a world in which this list is just five ezra furman albums*, but i'm trying to be restrained, and while ezra has many no-skip records, this is the one where skipping is going to do you the dirtiest. this genre-hopping, transformative, trans-formative, gorgeous album is furman at her very best. queer rage and fear and joyjoyjoy in this teeming pop AND punk rock album take us on a flight-for-our-queer lives trip across america. angel, i'll be your guardian if you'll be mine. This album has deep personal significance for me in my life as a queer jewish person. it is survival music. love-yourself-or-die music. it took a long long time to find the border of a kingdom of love outside the reigning order. i found my angel on a motorcycle i'm a queer for life outlaw outsider
2. darkness on the edge of town- bruce springsteen
okay. i mean, yeah. i'm a springsteen fan. i like the boss. but i am a springsteen fan in that i am from new jersey. a springsteen fan in that when my parents were first seeing each other, they would meet for dates in the bruce section of a tower records in manhattan; in that my father grew up in monmouth county in the 70s, doing his underage drinking at the stone pony, then became a man who wanted to rock his toddler in the rocking chair before bed but didn't know any lullabyes so used to sing me to sleep with thunder road. i'm a bruce fan in the way i am a brunette--it's hereditary, a happy accident of genetics. my relationship to darkness is a little different. it's the first bruce album i approached on my own and really spent time with, and man, what a place to start. so complete, so fresh, so moving. also, the best and most sensitive queer album ever made by an ostensibly straight man** (in my opinion this album is gay af). i think the song that makes this a no skip is candy's room. after all these heavy guitars, getting shocked with that song, hearing it build is like getting splashed with cold water in a good way. i feel like i don't breathe listening to this album.
3. sunday in the park with george obcr, music and lyrics by stephen sondheim
i am at my most funadamental a musical theater bitch baybee! sorry! deal with it! sunday isn't quite my favorite sondheim*** this is my favorite sondheim recording. man, the music in this show--have you listened to sunday recently? all those voices in perfect harmony (harmony!) as the image comes together. the real delight is listening to patinkin and peters playing off each other--listen to color and light rn! one of my favorite moments in all recorded music is mandy's triumphant "and the care, and the feeling, and the life! moving on!" sunday is my favorite art about making art, and of course this gives us move on, which has the best art making advice in the world: just keep moving on. anything you do let it come from you then it will be true. give us more to see.
4. dogrel- fontaines d.c.
i don't have a long speech about this one. i have listened to some or all of this album at least once a week since it came out in 2019 and i still don't know how to talk about it. it's just fucking perfect. it's perfect. even if we just think about the opener and the closer--how is this an album with both big and dublin city sky on it??????
5. tea for the tillerman-cat stevens
this album is a part of my dna, basically! it's inside my skin! when i was very small, the music playing in my mom's car would always be either the la cage aux folles obcr, jesus christ superstar, or cat stevens (my parents are cool in my opinion! sue me!) and these songs in particular got so deep inside my imagination. they've never let go, nor do i want them to. my childhood was spent wondering what a moonshadow was, and would the faithful eye find me, picturing the frightening world described in where do the children play, or imagining sad lisa's tears, or seeing the father and son arguing, staring out the car window, wishing they could reconcile--knowing somehow that they wouldn't. this album taught me melancholy, but also beauty and mischief and joy--god, the brief burst that is the title song at the very end! magic, every time!
(honorary mentions: contra-vampire weekend, joy as an act of resistance-idles pretty. odd-panic! at the disco (leave me alone) sigh no more-mumford and sons (LEAVE ME EVEN ALONER) pony-orville peck, jesus christ superstar movie soundtrack-webber/rice many others i'll think of later probably)
Thank you to gremlin for the tag! you can probably tell i had a lot of fun with this one. i'm going to tag @danielkahndyke @hopelesslyfree @apocalypse-friend @bruce-wayne-simp and if you guys respond i will pretty certainly be combing your lists for recs (hey hopelessly i will listen to any taylor you put on there back to front even if it's not 1989 😘)
:)
*the full list would be, in no particular order, and only counting full length releases in the post-harpoons era: exodus, year of no returning, day of the dog, twelve nudes, perpetual motion people. all of us flames gets left out bc i still find that it leaves me pretty raw. it's a tough listen for me. this is the furthest thing from a critique.
**to me, this album is fundamentally about being queer and strange and from new jersey and having a dad. to me.
***attend the fuckin tale, baby...or go into the woods. or...have company over? or, or... i like sondheim
which dc hero would get an in-universe, spiderman: turn off the dark esque copyright nightmare of a musical and why is it green lantern
think about it - ur a hack musical theatre director and u make up ur own self-insert who gets their own power ring. only it's like... a mood ring? so every lantern has the potential to be any colour depending on how bummed they're feeling at any time. ur musical sucks so everyone is indeed bummed. they have a fun little oath u made up that sounds like a discount dua lipa track. it's a pop musical. several lanterns are played by muppets. every time someone transforms into their lantern uniform they do a fun little twirl and rip half their costume off. josh groban plays a lantern veteran named "hank morgan". andrew lloyd webber tells u to kill urself because green lantern: into the rainbow charts better than bad cinderella. bruce wayne shakes ur hand at the premiere. booster gold is a consultant for the project. guy gardner almost strangles him at a jsi meeting.
Miscellaneous Alfred Pennyworth headcanons because he is immortal and you can't tell me otherwise
Alfred HATES musicals. Hates them. Especially Broadway, do not get him started on Andrew Lloyd Webber. He has a vendetta against the man not only because he thinks mega musicals are cheap schlock, but also for RUINING his son for a good 4 months after Phantom of the Opera came out. That shit was Bruce's MCR. he's skulking through the manner in a blanket cape with dark eyeliner playing the title song at deafening volume. Harvey enables him for months just to get on Alfred's nerves. Besides that, the batfam insists he doesn't like musicals as a genre because he can't sing. They are correct.
In my heart of hearts, Alfred was the OG 'finders keepers applies to wayward children'. When Bruce started working with other heros Alfred started checking in on them regularly, especially the ones who were far from home or lost their families. It's not uncommon to see Hawkgirl or Diana or J'onn at the manor when they're feeling homesick.
If a league member has at least one parent that's able to be contacted, said parent is invited to monthly get togethers with the rest of the league parents. They have a little club to talk about their kids. Okay it's more of a support group
If someone needs to be looked after due to sickness or injury and the league can't spare a team mate to do it, they're brought to the manor. Its no secret that most hope for this outcome.
It's a running joke that everyone, everyone gives Alfred a gift on fathers day.
One such Father's day the teen titans made "if lost return to Alfred Pennyworth" shirts for every batfriend (somewhere around 20+ people when alls said and done). They have a big group photo with them all, Alfred in the middle with a shirt that says "keep them".
Alfred watches soap operas regularly, and has seen every episode of Dynasty to date. Where he finds the time nobody knows, but he is knowledgeable on all the TV drama within the shows and behind the scenes. He has pretty ecclectic taste too, given he speaks a couple languages.
One time, while deliriously sick, Jason found him watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. All of the batkids insist this was some fever induced hallucination. They are wrong.
Alfred is a world class pot stirrer. There is so little of substance at the myriad of galas he has to attend that he makes his own fun, sue him. It's a leftover pass time from Martha's days - people were objectively cruel to her and gossipped at her expense often, so she returned it in kind. She was truly a legend in this regard and Alfred was her right hand man. They were experts at sewing seeds of doubt with a single comment ("Oh I'm so sorry sir, I assumed the woman over there was your wife") and watch the world burn, wine in hand. He missed having a partner in crime in that regard - eventually, Jason and Steph fill that role.
Bruce and Alfred have been locked in a decades long battle for Bruce's posture. He will go into shrimp position if given any opening and Alfred is determined to not let that happen. Idk if anyone else's parents did this, but Alfred is absolutely the type of parent to poke/push the small of your back until you sit up straight. He also does this for every batkid, even unofficial ones. Tragically it is too late for Tim.
Both Alfred and Bruce are fond of pen pals, though Alfred kept his up for much longer. He writes letters to his few friends back in England, to the Kents, various heros, he even manages to get mail to Themyscira.
To anyone under the age of fifty (excluding Bruce, maybe) his natural handwriting is completely illegible. Peak old person cursive, it is supernatural how his friends manage to read it. He writes very neat and very small, with very little space in between the lines. Its nightmarish. He does know how to write legibly for the sake of the kids, but his personal notes are practically in code.
Okay this one's a little out there - Alfred's posh accent isn't his natural one. It's natural now, since he's been using it so long, but growing up him and his family spoke in a more country/cockney accent - except for his mom, who had the more posh recieved pronunciation one. I've rewritten Alfred's entire backstory so bear with me She was the head housekeeper for a wealthy family, and she came from a more 'refined' area, so she carried herself with the more stereotypical fancy British manners. Alfred loved his mom, looked up to her more than anything in the world, so he adopted her mannerisms (and accent) whenever he could. He was teased mercilessly for it as a kid, so he stopped, but once he left home to join the military he fully adopted the persona to distance himself from his father and brother. The only time the original accent would slip through was when he was really, blindingly angry or upset, and only Bruce and Dick have ever heard it.
He has a flat within the manor, like a little apartment for his own space. It's initially sparsely decorated, but over the years it accumulates a borderline absurd amount of photos. Some of them are of him, mostly military friends, him with Martha and Thomas, or souvenirs from his theater days. The vast majority are his kids though. Pictures of Bruce from every stage of his life of course (the kids have a field day when they find them) and a smattering of pictures Bruce has drawn for him over the years, from crayon scribbles to charcoal portraits. The halls are lined with photos of the grandbats, many big milestones but also personal ones caught on candid camera: the first time Damian smiled while being hugged, Cassandra and Bruce playing bridge, Dick and Jason asleep after their first mission. On the wall at the end of the hallway hangs the old family portrait - Martha, Thomas, 6 year old Bruce, and him. Though he's not particularly spiritual, it's placement makes him feel like Martha and Thomas can see how their family has grown.
These are the images that popped into my head when Matthew Goode said this at the special screening of Freud's Last Session in LA on 4 Dec. Especially the top right one 😆.
He said he could be in the bath for 6 hours a day preparing for his role as C. S. Lewis. This is probably the cleanest role you have ever done said his wife 🤣. Well it's certainly not Burning Man 😉
📷 Colour photos from Pink Shirtmakers (A Life in The Pink with Matthew Goode, 2019 Autumn-Winter campaign). B&W pics by Bruce Webber for Vogue Italia (2010). All via matthew-goode.net.
🔊Voiceover from FLS special screening (LA 4 Dec), clip posted by Amanda Baller (dawnyb) on Twitter