In this edition of The Neurotic Monologues: Whining, videos, music, stupid micro reviews, and more whining. All unnecessarily numbered to pretend there’s a logical order to this mess of a blog.

1 . Back from the dead… This is the part you can skip, the whining part.
I’ve been working on a video project for about two months. It was a great project and I got to work with friends who, when asked what they wanted for the video, they simply said “Be happy. Do whatever you like”. This freedom I was given ended up not being as great as it sounds. It was, after all, a government job and all the creative responsibility fell on me like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. Thankfully they liked the end product and I finally got a much needed full weekend of pure laziness. But the whole process (mostly, the pressure I felt, which was purely self imposed because I’m a raging psycho) drained my soul and turned me into a decaying zombie with a bad case of anxiety, stomach pains and insomnia, and once I snapped out of it I realized that maybe I don’t want to edit video anymore. At least not on a regular basis. I mean, do I really want to live like that? I know I am the problem, not the job, but If I get a job at a local TV channel, is that the way I’ll feel every day? I guess I’ll find out soon, as I’ll be sending out my resume to a local channel I’ve been told is run by screaming banshees. I’d already sent them my resume about three years ago but apparently if you don’t have connections within the channel, they won’t even look at your resume; this time it seems I have a contact there. Yes, I am having a professional crisis again. My love-hate relationship with my chosen career seems endless, because as most people who get bitten by the film and TV bug, no matter how much things suck, we just want to make that sucker work. If only I could get a good paying blogger job…

2. Recent musical discoveries.
Because this video job I was working on was relatively low budget, I had to use royalty free music, which can be tricky to find if you don’t know where to look. So my first choice was Moby. A section of his website, mobygratis.com, is dedicated to licensing previously unreleased instrumental music for independent projects. It is a great source if you like Moby’s music.

After getting the license for three tracks (of which I only used two), I was two tracks short. So I kept looking and somehow stumbled upon the best find EVER: the Free Music Archive. It provides free music downloads from many genres, selected by curators, for different uses with a creative commons license.

For job purposes I stayed within the experimental, blues and folk genres. Here are some of my favorite finds:

P.G. Six’s The Divine Invasion

Cooper_Moore’s (h) Banjo Arba Minch Garden

Ergo Phizmiz’s Otterman

Ergo Phizmiz’s Voila Eskimo Witch Dance

Dylan In The Movies’s Girl With The Black Tights

Chuck Prophet’s You And Me Baby (Holding On)

Marlo Eggplant’s Instrumental salad

Vieux Farka Tour’s Awei Womei

Delta Dreambox’s Queen of Loneliness

Bombay Laughing Club’s Working boy Blues

Zombie Prom Queen’s Baby’s Got Morphine Eyes


3. As for TVland…
This past weekend was not only about pure laziness, but also was my unwatched TV marathon weekend. Here are a few quick observations:

  • My love for Stargate Universe is now deep and powerful, and not just because Robert Carlyle is in it. One of the things I love the most about it is that it is vastly different from Stargate (which I loved) and Stargate Atlantis (which I completely ignored). It has Battlestar Galactica’s vibe and is more character driven. And the story is developing at a pretty good pace.
     
  • There is no better pacing on TV at the moment than The Vampire Diaries. I’d say it’s the most efficient TV show in terms of storytelling. 
     
  • V is getting really good. Flash Forward is slowly improving. 
     
  • Fringe is truly great when it focuses on its mythology and tends to fail with the stand-alone episodes. Just my stupid opinion. And now that Peter discovered who he really is, things can only get better. Although this week’s episode is a musical and I just don’t know about that…
     
  • Supernatural is so good right now that I fear for next season. How can you top the apocalypse? 
     
  • I LOVE Community. Enough said.

4. Another musical discovery…
With all the iamamiwhoami speculation, I finally discovered Fever Ray, solo project from The Knife’s Karin Dreijer. Here’s the video for a song of hers I’ve been obsessing with:

Fever Ray’s Seven

Also, here’s iamamiwhiami’s latest video. It’s beautiful.

5. A future project for this blog.
I’ve been on a writing and general creative dry spell for a few years and it occurred to me that I might be able to use this blog to partially solve it. So sometime soon I’ll begin a 10 part writing exercise and post it here. It will have one main character and the stories will be based on tarot cards or something else. I haven’t decided yet. As soon as I work out the rules, I’ll begin.

6. And to end this blog post, here’s a TED talk by game designer Jane McGonigal and why I like her style:

 Until next time… Live long and prosper.