CharleeWith2Es

Hello long lost friends. It has been awhile and that’s my fault. My only excuse is that there are lots of things going on in my world.

Whenever I write/rant about music it typically involves an indie band or an unknown singer/group. I love mainstream too, I just don’t tend to write about it because you should already know about it. How can you not when radio stations, TV shows and music channels inundate you with top hits and chart breakers. But…..this artist is making a comeback and deserves some talk about. Eminem. His new album 'Recovery' is receiving rave reviews and even entered the charts at number one and might I say, well deserved. The lyrics in these songs are more than just words. They are deeply personal to the point that you feel like you are intruding on someone’s private thoughts or as if you are eavesdropping on a therapy session. Bravo to him for putting it all out there. Music is always better when it comes from truth, passion, experience….Life.

I don't tend to find rap music on the top of my favorite lists. In a lot of occasions the lyrics are down right stupid. Enough with the hoe, bitch, booty crap. Sure the beat might be good but if you really listen to it you'll seriously pull a WTF move. This is not the case with this album. You'll feel the complete opposite. Give this album a chance. I promise you, if you need to be won over it will win.

My absolute favorite song is Love the way you Lie featuring Rihanna. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkKx_3pNEDA

Not Afraid is truly empowering and hopeful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5-yKhDd64s

One thing this album is not is the old Slim Shady. There has been a great departure from the old days but it has been a departure in the right direction.

Eminem, I salute you.

To sample songs off this album go to Eminem’s MySpace page here: http://www.myspace.com/eminem

I watched this video today and literally started a waterworks display. The kind where you laugh so hard you cry, your stomach hurts, you gasp for air then comes the phlegm cough. I had a serious case of phlegm cough after I watched this video. I should have stopped after watching it once but it was impossible. I watched it over and over again. It's just too good to watch once.

This is a video of Salma Hayek, Maya Rudolph and Maria Bello at a press junket for their upcoming film Grown Ups. Watch Salma, then listen to the screams, then watch her climb Maya Rudolph. This my friends is viral video gold. Warning, you just might pee you pants.

http://vodpod.com/watch/3803153-snake-on-a-set-watch-salma-hayek-freak-out

In case you weren’t sure what she was freaking out over….it was a snake.
Watching Salma climb Maya was AMAZING. I break out into a fit every time I even think of it.

Enjoy!

Hey Friends. I came across this Australian brother/sister group, Angus and Julia Stone on a gossip blog today then went to their MySpace page to check them out. I love MySpace for this reason. I love how easy it has become to share your talents with the world. This is how it should be. I think we would all be surprised to learn how many talents were discovered from their MySpace pages. I can spend hours/days on MySpace searching out new music. It’s not a waste of time; it’s a passion because music just makes life better.

They have nine songs on their MySpace music player with a considerable amount of views. After listening to the full gamut I think Paper Aeroplane and Big Jet Plane are my favorites so far. There is an ethereal charm to some of the lyrics that bring back nostalgic thoughts of your youthful days while others help you ponder the soon to be great moments of your future. It's one of those musical bridges from what has been to what is to become.

Julia and Angus share lyrical responsibility making it feel like you are listening to two different groups. It’s a very unique approach making you less likely to become bored by song 5. I seem to favor the songs sung by Angus but that’s probably because I prefer male singers. Julia has a folk sound while Angus is more alternative. It would be pretty amazing to do something like this with a sibling. My brother and I were at someone’s house once who had a quasi studio so we had a little fun and took a ‘staged’ photo of him playing the guitar in the background and me singing into the mic with my eyes closed and one hand over one ear as if I was really focusing on pitch. We both have that picture framed in our house. It’s a bit of a dream captured in a picture. Who cares if it’s not real? At least we had fun.

Check out their MySpace page here: http://www.myspace.com/angusandjuliastone

Visit their very cool website here: www.angusandjuliastone.com

Angus and Julia are currently on tour promoting their sophomore album Down The Way.

I hope you enjoy the new find.

It’s no secret that I have a bit of an obsessive disorder. Not obsessive compulsive. I don’t need to turn the light switch on and off ten times to makes sure it’s off and I don’t wash my hands five times in a row to make sure they are clean. I just obsess over things. Like new favorite foods, music, movies. I develop a very fast comfort zone and I very much enjoy my comfort zone.

Over the weekend I saw the trailer for Matt Damon and Emily Blunt’s new film called The Adjustment Bureau. Oh. My. God. I can’t stop watching it. The emotional build up of the music is so intense. And their chemistry….I never pictured them together but now that I see them it makes perfect sense. Check out the trailer here http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/universal/adjustmentbureau/ then we’ll talk about it.

Okay, did you watch it? Because we can’t talk about it if you didn’t watch it. It won’t make sense.

First we need to talk about Emily Blunt. I’ve decided that she’s my new favorite actress of the late 20’s/early 30’s age generation. I first remembered seeing her in The Devil Wears Prada. I just hated her character. Remember, she was Emily…Meryl Streep’s other assistant. God she was great in that movie. We’ve also seen her in Sunshine Cleaning (a fantastic independent film), The Young Victoria (we all know how much I loved this one http://charleewith2es.blogspot.com/2010/04/young-victoria.html ), The Wolfman - saw this one over the weekend and I must say it was far better than I expected. Think old school horror flick kind of feel. So now she’s doing a movie with Matt Damon. It has a Bourne Identity type of feel with the secrecy and all the running/escaping but with more of a romance element to it. I’m loving the comeback of the fedora in this movie. Matt Damon, can you please wear this hat in all your movies?

In every frame of this trailer you can sense the emotions. The desire, the anxiety, the despair, the confusion, the will, the passion and when it all comes down to it, the choice.

Do you remember hearing the line, “All I have are the choices I make and I chose her.” Please…that line is killer. I would love to write a line like that someday.
This is the kind of movie you go to not only expecting to watch it but also expecting it to pull you in and make you feel like you are them. When Matt Damon says “I need you to trust me,” I automatically want to say, “Yes Matt, I trust you”, and then when the other character says “They’re making a run for it,” I half expect to get up and start running.

This movie hits theaters on September 17th. I will be there for sure. I hope the music in the rest of the movie is as good as this trailer music. Here is the link to the song from the trailer: http://youtube.com/watch?v=rGvDvMEX4U0&feature=related it’s called Breath and Life by Audio Machine

Go ahead, watch it again.

Over the weekend we spent some much needed time catching up with two of our best friends. They are busy, we are busy, life gets in the way – you know how it is. Pretty soon half a year has gone by and you’re left wondering where the hell time went. Anyway, a new restaurant/club opened up in the downtown core and we decided to venture out of suburbiaville to try something new. This place was a twenty five and older type of joint. This is a good thing. My friend is a teacher and the last thing you want is to run into your students trying to get into a bar with a fake ID, then witness you letting loose. Oh God the embarrassment. No, you should never actually see that your teachers have a life. There’s just something so wrong about that.

Anyway, as we ate, laughed and told stories about what has been going on in our lives, we all performed the ‘seat dance’ at our table. The music in this place was awesome. Think Dance Mix 94. I’m not kidding. Each time a new song came on, we’d all stop for a second to recognize then a big “oh my God, I love this song” would escape from someone’s lips…then the seat dancing would continue. After awhile we decided to check out the dance scene so we ventured up the stairs to a second level. The dancing was amazing. How can it not be with such great music? But, I’m not really blogging about the dancing or the music. The real point to this blog is the girls.

I haven’t been ‘clubbing’ in a long time. Actually, I’m not much of a clubber to begin with. I’ve always been more of a pub/kitchen party kind of girl. But even when I did go to clubs, I remember the usual club attire being something like a pair of jeans and a bar top like a tank or something. If it was a ‘higher end’ club we would wear black pants and a top. The point was never to look sexy, it was to get drunk and have fun. Well, let me tell you something…the mini dress has become the new black pants. I was shocked. Almost every girl in this club was dressed up like they were attending a winter carnival dance…mind you it would have been a sluttier version of a carnival dance. They had up dos and perfectly applied make up. I felt very under dressed and uncomfortable in my jeans and long sleeved t-shirt. I guess this is a sign of the changing times. Girls like to dress up in skimpy tight dresses to go clubbing in hopes of looking super sexy and ‘picking up.’

I once read in a book that women will subconsciously dress scantily when they are ovulating because it’s nature’s way of attracting the opposite sex to ultimately procreate and at that time they are most attracted to the smell of a man’s armpit sweat. The only conclusion I can come to is that there was some serious mass ovulation going on in this club.

The boys shouldn’t be left off the hook either. Although most of them were pretty normal in jeans and button up shirts, we did witness a few that had been slapped with the Jersey Shore pandemic. They had the spiked up hair, steroid induced biceps, fake tans and I’m sure a closet full of Le Chateau for Men. My husband went to the bathroom at one point in the night and witnessed two Jersey Shore’s complementing each other on their hair. Oh God help the youth of our nation.

In the end, the only thing that matters was that we had an awesome time with our friends. Cheers to that.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of exciting stuff on the go lately however there are a bunch of things coming up very soon that are setting me on the verge of a clappy jump frenzy. It all started last week when Oprah interviewed those Twilight kids in preparation for the June 30th release of Eclipse. For the past few months I have been happily living my life without the need to call upon my Twilight friends. (Don’t worry; I completely realize that I’m a total geek, you don’t need to remind me). I was patiently waiting for June 30th to arrive but then I watched Oprah. It wasn’t so much the interview that got me excited it was the clips they showed. Boys oh boys, it looks good. Better than the first and second installments. I think the cheese factor has been considerably reduced…let’s hope.

That night, after the vision of those clips had been stewing in my mind, I decided to grab my copy of Eclipse from the book shelf and begin reading. Problem…the reading didn’t stop. I finished the book over the weekend. And it was a beautiful weekend. The nicest one yet this year. I don’t know how this happens to me. It’s not like I don’t know what happens in the end. But still, it sucks me in. Now I really CANNOT wait for June 30th to see this book come to life on the big screen.

TV: The second to last episode of Lost is on tonight. This season has been epic. Just when I thought I could live without Lost, now I don’t know how I will go on without constantly being in a state of confusion. Lost provides me with my weekly WTF moments. It’s one of the only scripted shows out there, which is not a legal or medical drama that makes you think…and think of crazy stuff. It let’s your imagination play.

MUSIC: Today is a great day. Today marks the official release date Band of Horses third studio album, Infinite Arms. My recent obsession with Band of Horses is still going strong, hence the clappy jumps for their new album. Here’s the best part. You can listen to the entire album from their website. I'm listening right now as I write. SO GOOD!: http://stream.bandofhorses.com/ Check it out, fall in love, become a fan, go buy the album and then let’s talk about it.

TRAILERS: I was perusing the apple/trailers website over the weekend and came across Charlie St. Cloud. I’ll be totally honest with you. I had no interest in watching the trailer because it starred Zac Efron. I automatically assumed it would be a teeny bopper type movie. But then I remembered a quote my band teacher always used to say, “Never Assume.” So I clicked on the link and started watching. Um, WOW. Goosebumps immediately. Tears in the eyes. Then all the sudden Zac Efron kind of grows up in front of you. This isn’t a teen movie. This is a movie based on the book ‘The Life and Death of Charlie St. Cloud’ and of course I now must go out and buy the book. Hopefully this movie takes Mr. Efron out of the Teen mold and grabs the attention of a more adult audience. He’s a good actor with enough talent to become great. Take a look at the trailer here: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/universal/charliestcloud/

On a sad note, the 10 part miniseries, The Pacific ended on Sunday. I cried…not so much because it was sad, but because it ended. If you didn’t get a chance to catch this while it aired on HBO then you should pick up the DVD's when they are released. This the phenomenal telling of a true story most people could only fathom as fiction. It was powerful, frightening, nail bitingly amazing and gives me that much more pride for the soldiers who still fight to protect our freedoms and the freedoms of others.

I hope you have a clappy jump moment today.

Wow, it’s been awhile. Apologies. I have been rather lazy lately, but then this little gem came along and naturally I had this great urge to share it with you. Yes, that’s me, compulsive sharer.

Have you ever heard of the band My Morning Jacket? My music pimp had played them from time to time and I always liked what I heard, but it wasn’t until this weekend that I fell in love. We picked up three of their albums and listened to them all. My favorite is their live album, Okonokos. In the words of Barney Stinson… Legendary. I’m not kidding, I sent one of the songs to my brother and the only thing I said in the email was: “Be prepared to have your life changed!!”

As a side note: Isn’t it great when the person you share your life with enjoys the same kind of music you do? It’s this thing that bonds us together even more than we already are. We have this great passion for great music. I couldn’t imagine it if we didn’t have the same taste when it came to musical artists. There’s nothing better than laying on the couch listening to music without saying a word to each other. Just sitting there appreciating the music…man, that’s a great feeling.

My Morning Jacket is an indie rock band out of Louisville, Kentucky. Notice I said the word Indie. That means, if you like Band of Horses, Iron & Wine, Kings of Leon then you will love this band. When you listen to their music, each track will hit you with a full body blow, immediately finding the beat or the melody then carrying you into the core of it. Your head will bob and your body will rock from the second you press play then lasting long after the album ends. It’s the kind of music that stays with you. You’ll think about the lyrics for hours...maybe days. I could live without television, but don't ever take away my music...EVER!

My favorite song of the moment, which happens to be the favorite song of many people out there, is Wordless Chorus. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OMpaFvTOFk

Evil Urges is another great one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv7v7lQ3Gas

Touch Me I’m Going to Scream part II is pretty wicked also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpdwwa7lsUI

You won’t hear these guys on the radio. Why? They are way too cool for the radio. Listen to this band, fall in love with them then share them with everyone else you know. Your cool factor will go way up, even if you’re the only one who notices.

If you’re lucky enough to see them live, DO IT!!!! Check out their tour schedule here: http://www.mymorningjacket.com/gogo/shows/

Rock on my Friends!