Filed under: Music
So on December 17th, I wrote that you should listen to the Intimates, and I should hope that you’ve done your homework, but what with Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s festivities, I should think you didn’t, especially if you quadruple dipped, mostly because it was a sidenote. Now, they appear to be dead or broken up; from what I’ve gathered, problems arose in September of 2005 while they were still doing shows, and allegedly, it had to do with their vocalist, Malory McDonald (who, like all three other girls, is a brilliant musician), and it was official by January. I doubt she got a case of the divas. I wish I had some official set-in-stone answer, like if they wrote a blog about it on their Myspace. They didn’t, though.
See, part of the appeal of the Intimates is their utter trendiness, fashionwise, of course, which would explain why TeenVogue did two spreads on them, one in April 2005 when all were 14 years old and the other in February 2006; I’d guess they were all 15 then, which would leave them today at about 16 like me. They seem to wear whatever they want, including very 70s dresses, flats, cowboy boots, colours, mixing and matching–and you can’t forget accessories, even hats and bows and pretty clips. They’re a good band to look at, and that’s what originally caught my eye, back in ’05 as a freshman when my virgin ears had never even heard of Rilo Kiley or Bright Eyes or the Arcade Fire. Their image, actually, made an imprint on my brain, and it’s what made me come back and give them a chance, a year and a half later.
Each TeenVogue article dubbed them as having a likeness to Rilo Kiley. This is true probably most especially in their style, musically and fashionably, but they lack the Blake Sennett to make them Rilo Kiley, and Malory lacks the sheer edge to her voice that Jenny Lewis gained from being an actress. Lead guitarist Tess Lecklitner does a fantastic job, but I think that for the Intimates to be more Rilo Kiley, she’d need some hot solos, which I’m confident she’s capable of. Grace Denis is the epitome of the bass girl, leering at the camera in the April 2005 spread, and I think she could take Jenny out with a few glares. As for drummer Katey Berman, I’m obsessed with her name. Well, really, all of them have really diverse names from those you’d typically find at least on the East coast (they’re in Cali), but I like Katey’s name quite a bit. Little RK, though, has way diverse percussion including bells and they’re very synthy, which isn’t percussion, but it’s a keyboard. I can see the resemblance, the essential resemblance, and I could see how the Intimates could evolve into Rilo Kiley, but they hadn’t quite reached that point when they broke up.
I hate that phrase, “broke up.”
The Intimates are far more similar to the Like, who I’ve also written about and went crazy over. They’ve got wishful, yearning lyrics and a floaty, heavenly vocalist. Personally, though, I think that although the Like have caught on and stuck a little more and more rapidly, that’s only because they’re signed to a huge label and they have fathers who are big in the music industry. They don’t have the chic appeal of the Intimates, and they don’t have the youth appeal of the Intimates; although the Like are young as well, they’re in their early 20s and not in their mid-teens. It’s just cooler that younger girls became so popular locally and then nationally by just picking up instruments instead of picking up instruments and then having parents with big $$$ to sign them to Geffen when they graduated high school. The Intimates had to work hard to get where they were when they split, and their fanbase is ever-increasing despite their end. That’s not to say that the Like didn’t have to work hard; every successful band has to work hard, especially the all-girl ones.
Ugh, I wish, though, that they would record maybe just one more song, because they’re addicting.
Filed under: Uncategorized
My last entry leaves off where tomorrow begins, basically. I’ve been sick, coughing, producing unnatural and disgusting amounts of phlegm, laying in bed, spending horrible dazed spaz attacks on the computer looking for photographs of Sara Neufeld or sugar gliders. New Year’s Eve didn’t leave me hungover like it did many sixteen-year-olds in Richmond; it left me coughing in bed, blacking out every few hours on the black and purple, overgrown and scary path leading to the mysterious new year of 2007. And that baby new year is like one of those little Heartless with munny for eyes (from Kingdom Hearts, duh) in a diaper. It’s a bitch. I’ve been fighting a cold and fighting loneliness by watching Scrubs and America’s Next Top Model obsessively, honking at Dr. Cox’s sarcastic remarks and cheering on Elyse or Yoanna or Adrienne or Shandi or whoever my current favourite girl is. It changes a lot, even within each season.
Well, when I got sick of model bullshit and feeling a low self esteem at being only 5’3″ and weighing as much as Elyse when she got her weigh-in (she’s 5’10” or in that ballpark and gorgeously slender–as well as exceptionally intelligent and stylish in a dark and subtle way that I appreciate a lot) , and when Scrubs wasn’t on anymore, and when I could walk without feeling like I was one of the pieces in the game Tip-It, I decided to play me some Sims 2 Nightlife.
My favourite family is Orenda’s. Orenda Rilo. Okay, fuck this confusion–when I first started playing TS2 on this computer, I thought it would be cute if I made a whole neighbourhood full of people (Sims, rather) resembling indie rock icons. Now, Jim Morrisson was not indie rock, per se, but he’s fuckable and fucking cool, so I named the whole neighbourhood Morrissonville. It’s got a beach. Pretty sexy. Shit, the first family came with a whole story I made with them. Kiley Rilo was a single mother of teen daughter Orenda Rilo, who somehow accidentally became bisexual because she and Meadow Thayer got too close, and she wasn’t getting any from guys. Kiley married Todd, some dude, and they had a bunch of beautiful children, using the Tombstone of Life and Death and the motherlode cheat to get them some serious fund$ if you know what I mean. Kiley got bored one day while Todd was working, so she fooled around with the maid, Remington, got pregnant and had a really gorgeous baby girl, and then she and Todd went back to making children. Orenda then grew up, moved out, married Meadow, I think, or close enough, (but in TS2, gay marriage is totally legal, and it’s cool) and then her childhood adult crush, Komei, honed in on her, and she had ugly boy babies with him, and then Remington showed up and she had a gorge daughter with him. So…Orenda’s gorgeous daughter’s sister was also her aunt, which is kinda, well, gross. But I love giving people (Sims) makeovers. All of Orenda’s kids are teenagers now, so they all look decent (uglier), but one of the ugly boys looks like good ole Draco, ’cause I got him bleach blond custom hair. Below is a picture of Orenda teenager, her stepdad Todd, and Kiley, Orenda’s mom. I’m so queer.
And while I was playing at this point, I decided I wanted Orenda to be bit by a vampire. You know, “No PROB!!” if you make her go out on the town, since it’s TS2 Nightlife, and you can do that. Well, the town took forever to load, and I kept her there for hours, and no vamps showed up. So I got way pissed off and brought her home and shit, let her go on the computer, revamped the house (by the way, I’m a sexy house designer in TS2–hell, I can design a mighty fine lot, what with my custom content), and then I remembered that handy little cheat, the Tombstone of Life and Death. If that can make men alien pregnant and kill people with flies, why can’t it move a neighbour into a lot? Well, it CAN. And I moved in Count Vasyl Kim, used the T of L&D to get him and Orenda Wenda to be best friends, and then…he moved in for the kill.
Let me say, though, that I had to give him a makeover first, and, well, I’ve never worked with a vampire, but black facial anything turns blue with them because they’ve got blue skin. It’s gross and it pisses me off. Plus, they have red eyes. He looked good, though, so I made him bite Orenda, but when he did that, she lost her custom skin, which was slightly tan and gorgeous, and thus, she lost her cleavage and leg and joint definition, and her face was far less flattering, and her hair, which was a hard find, but great and brown, didn’t match her skin, and then her eyes, which were a gorgeous green, were now red. It wasn’t a hot look. And Orenda, she’s my favourite Sim ever, since I’ve worked so long and hard on her, brought her from emo to goth to punk to preppyish intellect to indie hot mom, and I can’t let her go like that. So I’m thinking I’ll vamp up someone else but not my Rendy.
She’s fucking happy about that.
Bed, because I have school.
INDIEchouette 