Who goes there? Please leave comments so (An Aries Knows)!
I am obsessed with this site and I don’t know why. It’s not like I live in New York, and I’m sure as hell not a socialite. But for some reason, I’m compelled to go here.
Hey, at least this is not a post about a dog. And it’s not my next post, which will be a post about periods. Not the punctuation kind.
I had no idea there was actually a term for this until I read Hot Toddy’s blog: earworm
‘Earworms’ Bother Women, Musicians Most
by Daniel DeNoon
WebMD Medical News
Feb. 27, 2003 — They bore into your head. They won’t let go. There’s no known cure. Earworms can attack almost anyone at almost any time.
No, it’s not an invasion of jungle insects. It’s worse. Earworms are those songs, jingles, and tunes that get stuck inside your head. You’re almost certain to know the feeling, according to marketing professor James J. Kellaris, PhD, of the University of Cincinnati.
Nearly 98% of people have had songs stuck in their head, Kellaris reported at the recent meeting of the Society for Consumer Psychology. The 559 students — at an average age of 23 — had lots of trouble with the Chili’s “Baby Back Ribs” Jingle and with the Baha Men song “Who Let the Dogs Out.” But Kellaris found that most often, each person tends to be haunted by their own demon tunes.
“Songs with lyrics are reported as most frequently stuck (74%), followed by commercial jingles (15%) and instrumental tunes without words (11%),” Kellaris writes in his study abstract. “On average, the episodes last over a few hours and occur ‘frequently’ or ‘very frequently’ among 61.5% of the sample.”
Here’s the students’ top-10 earworm list:
Other. Everyone has his or her own worst earworm.
Chili’s “Baby Back Ribs” jingle.
“Who Let the Dogs Out”
“We Will Rock You”
Kit-Kat candy-bar jingle (“Gimme a Break …”)
“Mission Impossible” theme
“YMCA”
“Whoomp, There It Is”
“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”
“It’s a Small World After All”
Stuck song syndrome annoyed, frustrated, and irritated women significantly more than men. And earworm attacks were more frequent — and lasted longer — for musicians and music lovers. Slightly neurotic people also seemed to suffer more.
Kellaris hasn’t yet found a cure. Women are more likely to try to get rid of the offending ditties. Men are just as likely to do nothing as to fight their earworms.
What helps? Kellaris doesn’t know. But he found that when people battle their earworms, nearly two-thirds of the time they try to use another tune to dislodge the one that’s stuck. About half the time people simply try to distract themselves from hearing the stuck song. More than a third of the time people with songs stuck in their heads try talking with someone about it. And 14% of the time, people try to complete the song in their heads in an effort to get it to end.
Here are my answers to questions originally directed to Fabrizio Moretti, drummer of The Strokes, in Jane magazine.
What do you think happens when you die?
We change into another form of energy.
What word makes you cringe when you hear it?
Moist.
When was the last time you pulled an all-nighter, and why?
February. Manuscript deadline.
What’s the craziest place you ever had sex?
Alabama.
Would you rather lose all your hair, like Phil Collins, or make a sex video, like Tommy Lee?
This question makes me grateful I’m not a celebrity.
The self-interview concept is from Shawn at everythingandnothing.
Last night, Tim and I were talking about a short story we’d both read, and although it had a feature which the two of us usually find annoying, we forgave it. I know why I forgave it: because the story was well-written and provided that lovely feeling of possibility that a happy ending delivers. I like happy endings, even if they’re implausible.
Then today, thanks to a link from Josh and Josh, I saw some videos people had made to various songs using clips from (forgive me for once again referring to the most overused two words on the Internet) Brokeback Mountain. By now, no one in the world except maybe some political prisoners and children in potential venues for Survivor doesn’t know that this movie doesn’t give us a happy ending, so I’m not spoiling anything by saying so. But as I was watching the videos, I thought again of the bittersweet satisfaction that all of my favorite fiction and movies deliver summed up in one word: yearning.
We are born wanting. We want food and sleep and a clean diaper. Later, we want Bratz dolls and PlayStations. We want people to like us and be nice to us. We want to win at Candyland and go to Disneyworld and make the team and get our driver’s license and graduate and go to London. I think even Buddhist monks want something. Tibet. World peace. Harmony. Wanting just seems to be an innate feature of human existence.
But yearning… I think that we don’t understand or experience true yearning until we fall in love. I’ve never been one to dismiss young love, either, with a smug, Oh, you have no idea what love is yet. When we fall in love for the first time, even if we are fourteen, we are loving to the capacity that a fourteen-year-old can love, and it’s just as real as falling in love at forty. And if yearning is part of that love–the sense that it can never be, no matter how we long for it–we get to marvel at how something can be so wonderful and awful at once.
Happy endings make me–well, happy. But yearning makes me miserably happy. Crazy, isn’t it?
From my online Rolling Stone this morning:
POISON’s C.C. DEVILLE and SMASH MOUTH’s STEVE HARWELL are among those casted in the sixth season of VH1’s “The Surreal Life,” which premieres on March 19th. Playmate ANDREA LOWELL, actors SHERMAN HEMSLEY and ALEXIS ARQUETTE and model TAWNY KITAEN also made the cut.
Break out the whipped cream!
And in other entertainment news, happy 59th birthday, Ry Cooder.
It always amuses me when people criticize the Oscars for being self-aggrandizing: an industry patting itself on the back and inflating its accomplishments. Um… Yeah. It’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences giving awards for outstanding film achievements. I think most industries have a way of recognizing achievement and accomplishment among their ranks.
Continue reading “HUGE Snub from Oscar”
This isn’t the first time I’ve ferreted out celebrity secrets. There was Cher, Anne Rice’s other son, and of course, that thing with k.d. lang. And now:
Continue reading “Celebrity Ferret strikes again”
From my online Rolling Stone:
“To be called an elder statesman is so unbelievably insulting. Brad Pitt is exactly three years younger than me.” — MICHAEL STIPE of R.E.M.
One Degree of Separation:
Bono and Brad Pitt
If you haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, you might not want to see its entire plot summarized in half a minute. But this is priceless.
It won’t make sense if you don’t watch Project Runway, but my moment of bliss today was hearing Timothy Lambert’s impression of Santino’s impression of Tim Gunn reciting Nine Inch Nails lyrics.
