Lemmings

Sometime back in the 90s, my friend rented Lemmings for the Super Nintendo, and we played it a bunch. It's a fairly simple puzzle thing, but it has these endearing creatures that you're supposed to save, and its music is just legendary. (You'll have to trust me on this. It's all chiptunes, but so many of them have an incredibly epic feel, and they have remained firmly stuck in my head in the decades since I played it.) Before I went home, I memorized my password to the tune of one of the game's music pieces. (LGSSCZL)

To give you an example of how I feel about the music: there is exactly one piece of piano music that I can play with both hands without having to practice and scrutinize written music, and it's an arrangement of the Lemmings tune with the Pachelbel's Canon chord thing in the background. I worked it out from memory one summer at my grandma's house. (I later wrote sheet music using Noteflight. A PDF is here.)

I don't love everything about the game. For one thing, you can't save all the lemmings. In fact, you have to blow some of them up. (It's just pixels flying, so it's not gross or anything, but it's not exactly a good plot point.) And some of the hazards that can take them out are a bit disturbing. And the game can get hard, in the tedious way. I mean, it's also challenging to use your various skills to make the lemmings a path to the exit. But even when you know exactly what to do, it's easy to make one little mistake that messes you up.

There are versions of the game for the PC and pretty much everything else that was out at the time. And there's a modern fan-remake called NeoLemmix, which adds quality-of-life improvements to fix that stuff. But I do care about intellectual rights. So, like 30 years after I played the game, I bought it on eBay and continued where I left off. It was just a few levels away from the end of the easiest difficulty level ("Fun"), so I have finally beaten the game!

If I keep playing, I'll probably use the NeoLemmix version. But either way, the music is on my internal playlist forever.

"This Christmas"

This is about the song, not the holiday. You know the song. The super whiny one about the guy whose girlfriend broke up with him last Christmas. Sadly, it was the first Christmas song I heard this year. It bugs me on many levels; hopefully writing them down will help me move on.

I guess first of all we need to clarify the narrative. Apparently the singer pledged his love for a girl the previous Christmas, and she didn’t immediately shoot him down. But the next day she told him that things weren’t going to work out. The singer was devastated. It’s unclear what happened over the course of the year, but when Christmas rolled around again, he pledged his love for someone else, then wrote a song to let the first girl know that he has moved on (and implying that she has missed out).

So here’s what’s lame:

1. “I gave you my heart.” So the singer thinks that by asking this girl out, he was giving her a gift. In reality, though, he was asking her for a favor. And doing this on a holiday was a bit manipulative, since saying no would presumably dampen whatever other festivities were going on. Just imagine the dejected look she’d have to deal with on what is supposed to be a happy day. (Now, I suppose it’s possible that the girl had been sending positive vibes and that he may have been legitimately convinced that she would consider his “heart” as a gift. But I think that interpretation is unlikely given the other issues here.)
2. The notion that the girl did something wrong by breaking up. If she wasn’t interested, she was under no obligation to continue the relationship. Of course the singer is justified in feeling disappointment, but this song goes beyond disappointment (as described below).
3. “To save me from tears” – So the singer asked another girl out to avoid tears? Shouldn’t the motivation behind a relationship be a little deeper than that?
4. “Someone special” – Obviously the singer considered the first girl to be special. So how is giving his heart to someone special different tactical choice now? This line is just a cheap insult to the first girl, but at the same time it paints the singer as pathetic. “You’re not special!” Who says that?
5. Speaking of how special the first girl really is to him, why is he bothering to write her a song when he just got a new girlfriend? Does this girl know that he’s still pining over the previous girl? Does the singer even like the new girl, or is this whole relationship just a vehicle to launch the before-mentioned cheap insult?
6. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that the song consists of the same two sentences repeated over and over.

Of the three people in the song, the new girl is the one I feel most sorry for. Fortunately, since this song comes on every year, I think we can safely assume that the singer gets shot down every year on December 26th, so the poor ladies involved don’t have to deal with him for too long.

Spontaneous but Useless Song Ideas

A few weeks ago I was playing with little animals with my daughter. I was there for quite a while, so when I stood up, my legs got all wobbly, causing me to feel old. I commented to my wife, “My hips might not lie, but they also don’t work.”

Now tell me that wouldn’t be an inspired song, sort of a Shakira / Weird Al thing. “Hips Don’t Work.” What a missed opportunity.

The Star-Spangled Banner - modern version

My sister-in-law and I were talking about how the national anthem uses phrases that don't really work anymore, like "oh say". It kind of went downhill from there.
 

Here is the modern version of The Star-Spangled Banner:

Hey dudes, check it out -

Like, this stuff is tots great!

Hashtag USA

LOL, I like our flag.

 

Here are pics of my cat
and a YouTube debate
between Obama
and the right wing, set to rap.

I don't always fight wars,
but when I do, I win.
Hold on for a sec,
while I take a selfie.

tl;dr

“Pro” Singers in Congregations

We do a lot of singing in church. Abilities range widely, and of course that’s not an issue at all. I figure the main value from hymns is the message behind them, plus the sense of unity that comes from singing them together. And it invites the Spirit.

There’s one thing that bugs me though. It’s when someone feels like they’re so talented at singing that they need to belt the hymn out so loudly that you can’t focus on anything but them, and – this is the worst part – when they add that operatic pitch-fluxuating “flair” to their voice. I’m sure works fine on a stage, when the audience is supposed to be listening to one person (or a group singing in a predetermined harmony). But when you throw that kind of thing in with a hundred other voices, it just sounds bad. I’m sure the people who do this aren’t consciously trying to draw attention; they probably just think they need to put their “best” into it because after all it’s sort of a prayer. But come on, “best” doesn’t always mean “most elaborate.” I learned this in eighth grade choir – when you’re singing in a group, your goal is to blend in with the group so that no one notices your individual voice. You just hit the note and call it good.

So let the reader beware, lest you inadvertently drive the folks around you crazy next time you’re sitting in church. Thank you.

Party in the CIA and other glorious music

I love it when songs manage to take a topic that’s mundane or petty or otherwise unworthy of song and make it feel like something epic. What is this feeling? and Popular in Wicked do a glorious job of this. And so, of course, does Weird Al. Unfortunately there’s a ton of his stuff that’s hilarious except for “that one thing” that’s offensive and messes up the rest of the song. But it’s not always like that, and Party in the CIA is a glorious victory in that area. It’s a parody of Miley Cyrus’s Party in the USA, which I guess is itself a fairly petty discourse about being stressed about partying in California. But taking its catchy tune and applying it to something serious like espionage, while preserving the ditzy feel… okay, I don’t want to make it not funny by talking about it too much.

You can listen to it free on Bing Music:

http://www.bing.com/music/albums/detail?q=Weird%20Al%20Yankovic%20Alpocalypse&albumID=83B5CF06-0100-11DB-89CA-0019B92A3933&artistID=B4230200-0600-11DB-89CA-0019B92A3933

Movies with Disproportionately Good Music

It’s kind of interesting how some movies have music that’s way more memorable than the movie itself is. In some cases, I think people have this visceral notion that the movie was good, when really it just had a stirring theme song. Here are a few movies I think aren’t nearly as good as the music in them.

• Back to the Future
• Superman – none of the movies had very catchy plots, but the music pretty much defines superheroness
• Star Wars – not that I don’t like Star Wars, but in some ways it wins because it’s classic rather than because it’s flawless. And of course this goes double for the newer movies.
• Pirates of the Caribbean – it’s impressive enough that a movie about undead pirates could be good. But I really think the music is a big part of what makes you want to keep watching it. 
• Jurassic Park – revolutionary animatronic dinosaurs notwithstanding, this was not that great a movie. The music does more justice to the dinosaurs than the plot does.
• Mission: Impossible