ashes eat all

BEDA has gone splendidly so far. I've had a lot of fun reading through other people's blogs. Lots of cool stuff.

So I shall be continuing my 'things that make me happy' thing. I doubt I'll make it all the way through April doing this, but YEAH, it's FUN.

TODAY: Tallahassee

Tallahassee is an album by the lovely, lovely Mountain Goats (who are so jokes). The album chronicles the Alpha Couple, spouses who have fallen out of love, their relationship a crumbling, bitter, race to the bottom, full of alcohol and violence. The couple features prominently in many of John Darnielle's songs, and Tallahassee delves deeper into their destructive, horrible story.

At the start of the album, the Alpha Couple have just moved into a nasty, decaying house in Florida, thinking, or at least hoping, that this will somehow make them better, not screwed up, not hating each other, though they both really know that it'll never happen. I really love the metaphor of the dumpy house/their marriage. So great.

And then stuff happens, la la la, drinking, hatred, despair, hope, death wishes, it's fantastic. In the last song in the album Alpha Rats Nest, the Alpha Couple begin to resign themselves to their fate: Ah the fitful sleep and the fire engines/ That I dream of when I dream/ Some day we'll both wake up for good/ I will try hard not to scream. The song itself is upbeat, happy, nearly gleeful, and that makes it all the more amazing.

So yes, what I mainly wanted to talk about was a particular video on the album's companion-y site thing (lets you explore the Alpha Couple's house, so many fantastic metaphors and GAHHH-SO-GOOD-SO-TRUE-THIS-IS-SO-BRILLIANT things). In the living room, if you click on the television, this pops up, and it is most hilarious and hard-hitting, painfully true dialogue back and forth banter salesman game show showcase ridiculous.

BUT FIRST. First you must listen to Game Shows Touch Our Lives, part of which is quoted in Paper Towns, so you KNOW it's awesome.

Now:


I freaking love that video.
That is all.