Choose Your Own Valentine’s Day [Emotional] Adventure – 2017 Edition

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Just like in 2013 and 2014, BoxSpeaker’s got tracks to match any mood you’re in this Valentine’s Day. Choose your own Valentine’s Day Emotional Adventure below.

Feeling so in Love Like Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in The Notebook

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You feel so in love. Everything feels like a Chainsmoker’s music video – sunny days near the beach, traveling everywhere together with bae. One hand on the steering wheel, the other on her thigh. You think about how her kisses taste and how soft that patch of skin on the small of her back is. You just want to sink into her sheets, limbs a human tangle. Every morning with her feels like waking up to Ashley Graves in the Shoffy music video. She borrows your sweatpants.

That cute, sappy shit.

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine

Or you might feel like Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine – heartbroken and trying to find any way to fix it. You try to distract yourself with whatever you can.

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You’re most likely the one who fucked it up some how, so in between bouts of hating yourself for being an idiot, you try to figure out how to get her back. To convince her that you’re not going to be a fucking dumbass anymore. You’ll be better this time around. You’ll make more time for her. You’ll be more open and you won’t be scared to tell her you love her.

Ok, this is from Gangster Squad, not Blue Valentine, but still...

But maybe it’s too late. “Oh girl, take it back. I don’t want to end like that.”

Hyping Up Your Single Ass and the Squad to Go Out

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Maybe you just want to go hard like Sam Blacky.

All Valentine’s Day Roads Lead to Bed

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Enough said.

Friday I’m in Love: “Gimme Sympathy” by Metric (Demo Version)

If you’re reading this blog post, you most likely already know about “Gimme Sympathy” by Metric. However, you might not know about the “original” / “demo” version of it.

This post is about how the original lyrics in “Gimme Sympathy,” back when the band used to refer to the song as “The Hooks,” was part of the reason that I have the job that I have.

It all began in 2008 the summer before leaving for college. I was listening to Metric and checking out some of their music videos on YouTube while just sitting at home getting ready to go out for lunch or to shop or something. I think I might’ve gone out on a bike ride. (Or not. I think this was after the passing-out-after-2-blocks incident…)

Anyway, I found a bunch of videos of their special Myspace studios performance. It was them performing a new song from what would become their Fantasies album. I really loved the garage rock sound of their song “Gimme Sympathy/The Hooks.” I also really loved the “Every way I could I fine wine dined you” line because I’m a sucker for that kind of rhyme scheme. I also found the line “I’m sold – there’s no romance without finance” very intriguing because it seemed so cynical. At the time, I was still a naive romantic.

Fast forward to first semester sophomore year when I started kind of dating this girl. She’s the reason I began to spend every weekend in San Francisco. It didn’t really last long because she apparently wanted a sugar mama or something like that. She was always frustrated with the fact that I worked at a hot dog shop. She was always commenting on how I should get a better job and make more money. I didn’t really need a lot of money at the time (I was still in school and didn’t really have a lot of expenses) and really liked my job, so I didn’t listen to her. This also was the year (2009) that Fantasies was released. I remember listening to “Collect Call” on BART while heading over to her place.

In 2010, I began dating this other girl and it started getting “really serious.” I was head-over-heels into her, and she told me that it’s been years since she’s been into someone the way she was into me. (She was 26 at the time, and I was 20.) The beginning of the month that she and I began hanging out more (March 2010), I had actually gone to LA to visit friends and also to see Metric at the Hollywood Palladium. So I was on a Metric high again when we started hanging out.

I remember listening to Metric when we were hanging out at my apartment and that time when I basically said something like “You know their song ‘Gimme Sympathy’? Well, I really love this original/demo version of it. What do you think?” I LOVEEEEE the demo version, but she hated it. I couldn’t understand why someone would dislike a song so much, especially if it was still pretty much in old school Metric stylings. (This should’ve been when I dumped her.) But I guess it’s also how I’ll never understand how I could ever date her when she said she loved Tabasco but hated Tapatio and that Sriracha wasn’t a versatile hot sauce.

However, in retrospect, I sometimes wonder if she hated the demo version because of its slight reference to the reality of sugar mama/daddy-ness and money in dating. At the time, I was still working a few times at Top Dog (the hot dog place) and also at a bakery. I had also been doing some stuff off and on (photography and sometimes helping with filming events and a commercial) for the place that would become my job.

She kept encouraging me to get a better job and to work toward a “career” and to make more money. But still, I couldn’t really see the point at the time because I was still in school and enjoying myself and didn’t have a lot of expenses. Then a couple months later, she began complaining about how she was always broke and how she wishes she could have a “sugar parent” to finance all her travels and activities. She would always make these subtle comments about me not making a lot of money and also of me being so young.

She talked about all the things she wanted to do and have. She wanted to live in San Francisco. She wanted to travel all the time everywhere. She wanted to go to Thailand with me.

So I decided to be proactive and do what it takes to get to where I need to be in life to be able to give her the things she wanted. I really liked the photography/video gig I had and definitely saw myself doing it more, so I  talked to my friend who would become my boss about turning my occasional film/video gig into an internship. I picked up more hours at the bakery. I kept working to graduate as soon as possible. (At one point, I was taking 18 units while working two jobs and also doing my internship.) I worked really hard and kept moving up the ladder at the internship and turned it into a part-time job. “There’s no romance without finance” kept running through my mind. I felt proud of my career trajectory and of being able to hopefully give this girl everything she wanted… eventually….

Then in March 2011 while sitting at a cafe/brunch place in Austin during SXSW, I found out that she had been cheating on me for months with a guy who was older and who made tons of money.

After getting over the shock, I decided that it is true that “success is the best revenge,” so I decided to “just work on myself” and just become so fucking successful that she’d feel like shit when she saw how big of a hotshot I’d become. I also wanted to make sure that my bank account and age would never be the reason anyone would ever do what she did to me.

And that’s how the line “There’s no romance without finance” in an old version of a Metric song is partially the reason I am where I am now.

 

Belated Friday I’m in Love Song: “Little Numbers” by BOY

I drafted part of a Friday I’m in Love Songs post yesterday, but forgot to finish it. 🙁

It’s okay that I didn’t finish it because it wasn’t that great anyway.

Today, I’d like to discuss “Little Numbers” by BOY – partyly because it’s such a cute song and also because I have a huge theory about the band that I must share with the world. I would’ve blogged about them before, but this whole time I already thought I did. Turns out I made a Facebook post but forgot to blog.

Anyway, as a Media Studies nerd, I have to admit that we have to take into account the fact that my theories and feelings about this song are caused by experiencing the song as a song, the music video, and also the song attached to girls and being a huge lesbo and dating and all that.

This song is pretty much the musical embodiment of me being infatuated with a girl. It’s so cute. I have to admit, whenever Valeska Steiner sings “Every song just makes me think of you because the singer sounds as if she was longing, as if she was longing, too” I can’t help but smirk because I’ve totally had those moments. And then there’s the part that goes “Seven little numbers, baby, I know yours by heart. Ooohhhh All the pretty things we can be.” Thoughts like that are what motivate me to just follow my impulses to go after girls I’m really attracted to. My friends call that me just following my horndog instincts. I call it being a romantic at heart.

However, I do have to admit a few things that I constantly think of because of this song.

  1. This song is a bit outdated despited having been released in 2011. Why? Because she mentions “seven little numbers” even though (at least in the U.S.) you actually need 10 numbers – the “seven little numbers” + area code that are, as a Mad TV skit calls, the “secret code that if entered telephonically it will pass me through to you.” [Sorry, I just HAD to]
  2. I wonder if the two members, Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass, are BFFs or lesbian lovers. I don’t want to start any rumors or anything. (Not that them being lesbian lovers would even hurt them in the entertainment industry – in fact, that would probably give them a huge cult following in the lesbian world. I forgot if it was Frankie or Stephanie, but someone mentioned that even if a band/singer sucks, all the lesbians would still go to all the shows just because we’re all just sooooo into any musician who’s gay.) Anyway, it’s because their music video makes them look so cute and girlfriend-y. I mean, come on, they keep staring into each other’s eyes all lovingly and stuff. Also, they’d be sooo cute together. Then again, what if it’s just t.A.T.u. all over again but attractive?
  3. Their video makes me want to just wander around some place in Europe in cute outfits being all lovey dovey.
  4. I fucking love their toy piano.

Anyway, like them on Facebook, buy their CD, and just keep watching them be all cute.