The sailor said Brandy

- Music

"Brandy" by Looking Glass. Google tells me that this song was a #1 top 40 hit in 1972. That's before my time!
I always stop and listen when the song comes on the radio, but I'd never thought to find out who performed it or how old it was. Until tonight that is.
I think I like it because it's a straight-forward story. Some pop songs are 'in-your-face' about expressing ideas ("Make em say UHHHHHHH!") and other pop song rely on simile ("My love for you is like a truck...")
but Brandy is a serving girl who serves whiskey to sailors. She loves one in particular but he won't give up sailing for her. He's honest, like the song. No pretense.

"Meet Me Halfway" by Black Eyed Peas. I think we've all gotten a little sick of the Black Eyed Peas by now but this song has me hypnotized. Part of the appeal comes from the video with it's trippy outer-space imagery and Fergie looking unusually hot. It's arranged as a duet and Fergie's vocal part is hypnotically beautiful. Setting that aside for a moment, my interest is derived from the lyrics again. At surface value there's nothing particularly interesting going on, it sounds like a pretty standard love duet, but there seems to be a note of dissonance between their respective promises. Fergie 'wants him so bad' but she's only willing to meet him halfway for some reason, and Will.i.am is apparently willing to sail the seven seas for her, but why isn't he there already then I wonder? And why is she reduced to pleading with him? And why am I thinking so hard about a Black Eyed Peas song?
My high school art teacher used to talk about 'happy accidents'. Sometimes you'd try something that wouldn't work out the way you expected, but if you keep an open mind you might find that you stumbled onto something better than what you'd intended. In the case of the Black Eyed Peas it's hard to believe that this 'layer of dissonance'  is anything more than just a happy accident. And what's wrong with that?
About Fergie.... she's pretty annoying. There was a time when the Black Eyed Peas were new and her 'lovely lady lumps' hadn't been over-exposed just yet, but a fella can only take so much. I think the band works better when Fergie is singing an accompaniment rather than as the centerpiece.

- History

I was reading Greek history tonight which covered Athens and Sparta of course, and when I put the book down to use the bathroom I had just finished reading about Sparta's refusal to help Athens finish the war with Persia. Well the pad in the urinal was marked 'Spartan' brand and so I took some pleasure out of pissing on the Spartans.