Lionsgate and Little Women and King Lear producer Playground Entertainment have teamed on a major fantasy project – a television adaptation of Tamora Pierce’s expansive Tortall Universe series.
I absolutely adore Tamora Pierce, and I cannot overstate how excited I am about this.1
[The companies have] hopes of turning it into a tentpole series that crosses over between fans of Game of Thrones and YA novels.
Obviously, everyone hopes their show will be the next Game of Thrones, but I do think Tortall offers a large enough universe to pull it off. And, again, I would love to see Pierce’s work getting the big-budget approach.
Did I sit down to write a blog post about it for the explicit purpose of making sure there’s some buzz about it online? Yes. Yes I did. I’m trying to encourage them to make it and make it well. ↩
Technically, I have an improved version of it; now I’m tinkering with giving it the ability to do the links for me, too. ↩
Been having fun with this one in the scripting – string manipulation in AppleScript isn’t my favorite, and I wound up switching to Swift. ↩
I wish I could say this was in here because Halloween, but no, I kinda forgot that Halloween was a thing until the day of. ↩
Singles like this are the downside to including the album title in here as well, but I kinda like having more data points to narrow down which specific version of a song I’m talking about. ↩
This goes in with Billie Eilish on the “if you get a HomePod, play this on it” list. ↩
So, this is on here twice, and missing a link in both cases, because there’s a Story about this. Loeks pulled the song from… everywhere, really, shortly after I published my playlist last month. I spent some time trying to figure out if it was a bug, found out it was gone from all the services, found his website, and sent him an email asking about it. He’s reworking it, and going to rerelease a new version at some point in the future, but was kind enough to send me a copy of the original version. That’s the second one here; I left the first, even though it’s not playable, as… part of the historical record, I suppose.
Anyways, it’s a good song, I’m looking forward to hearing (and sharing) the new version, and in the meantime, go check out the guy’s other music. ↩
Fun to sing along to! I have yet to get the lyrics right, but maybe eventually! ↩
Listening to EDEN reminded me of how much I miss Majik. ↩
This month’s winner for ‘favorite new addition,’ I think. ↩
Surprisingly hard to track down – if you try to Shazam the bit of this that made it into the meme (and yes, I’ll admit it, that’s how I first heard it) you get a rap song that sampled it in the intro before making a joke about the meme. Shazam, you have failed me. ↩
For the list, though, I’m just using the output of my iTunes automation. ↩
Just now realizing that I have no evidence for strongly assuming Mr. Hudson lives in New York City other than the name, and like… that’s not necessarily how names work. ↩
Sometimes I’m a little mad that Bon Ever exists, because the whole “disappear into the woods for a while, then reappear with an album of wonderful, weirdly-titled music” niche is one that definitely used to be one of my life goals. ↩
I don’t want to admit to how long it took me to figure out what “Llt” stands for. ↩
I’m slowly building an entire playlist around this song; it’s a good one. Very calming. ↩
I originally found this one via the music video, which I also recommend, it’s kinda fun. ↩
I have a strong desire to recommend this to all my music major friends. ↩
Fun fact, if you use the full title and artist’s name in the iTunes search system, it just… stops working. It’s a great platform with no problems whatsoever. ↩
My brain keeps replacing this with “Thorin Oakenshield” and I would like to clarify that I’ve never read nor seen Lord of the Rings. ↩
This song was, in part, the inspiration for my playlist backup automation – I wanted to have a ‘nostalgia’ playlist, sorta built around Cologne, but my “gotta have history” thing wouldn’t really allow it. So: git. ↩
Similarly to Cologne, I’ve now got a playlist built around Before You Knew It Was Me. It’s good for late at night, when you want to be tired but not fall asleep. ↩
I like this song, but the album art doesn’t really work for me; it looks like a screengrab from a lyrics video on YouTube. ↩
One of my favorite things about iTunes is that it can show me play counts for songs; I think it’s neat to see what my Clear Favorites are. ↩︎
Two songs by Mr. Hudson on this list now, and I only started listening to him because I hit the wrong thing while trying to play Coldplay one day. Gotta love random chance. (Or a good marketing strategy, I suppose.) ↩︎
Found this song by way of Elementary, who usually have pretty good final songs. And speaking of Elementary, it’s ending this season, I believe. I’ll be needing a new Sherlock Holmes show soon… ↩︎
One of my top two favorite additions this month; not the album art I chose, though, because Elliot Moss had an excellent design. ↩︎
I… do not want to admit to how long it took me to figure out that this was Chris Martin singing. Just a lot of “wow, I didn’t know Avicii sounded so much like the Coldplay guy!” ↩︎
My other favorite addition this month; some serious Bon Iver circa 2016 vibes. ↩︎
Eventually I’m gonna have an entire playlist of songs that I picked because they reminded me of the excellent sound design in the opening to Passengers. ↩︎
Lyrically, at least, this is sorta… Evanescence-y? ↩︎
Similar song on this list: “How You’ll Be Remembered.” Sadness and piano, definitely my aesthetic. ↩︎
Reminds me of when I used to listen to Noon Pacific. I wonder if they’ve stopped doing the whole “Spotify-only” thing?
Follow-up, having taken a break to go check: no, they’ve gone deeper into it and won’t even show song names now. Exclusivity: it’ll reduce your audience! ↩
I heard this playing on the radio the other day and was thoroughly confused, and then confused about why I was confused. I think the moral of the story is that I don’t really understand the concept of radio anymore. ↩︎
This one keeps getting more fun to sing along to. ↩︎
About two weeks after I’d added both of these songs to this list, I was like, “oh, maybe I should try listening to the rest of the album.” So, y’know, look for that next month. ↩︎
Pretty catchy, but I do have to ask: is this actually something people say? ↩︎
This would actually work pretty well in one of those ‘gentle alarm clock’ type apps. ↩︎
This pops up whenever I’m in a nostalgic mood, because I just go to the folder of playlists from a past year, and iTunes sorts by artist first, so this is up a the top. ↩︎
I think this is the catchiest addition this month. ↩︎
The problem with having these playlists be in order like this is that I wind up with the ‘vanguard’ of stuff that’s made it through months of the playlist, and I don’t have any new comments to add to them. ↩︎
In my head, the origin story of this song involves the two guys in Daft Punk just being… paralyzed by introverted terror when The Weeknd walked into their studio ↩︎
This is… pretty off-brand for me, gotta admit. But hey, it sounds good. ↩︎
This is one of two blocks of “it’s time for some throwback music!” in this playlist. ↩︎
Tycho is excellent “lazy Saturday morning” music. ↩︎
Fun fact: if you just search for “Alejandro” in Apple Music, you’ll get several covers of this song, but not the original. ↩︎
Found out that a friend of mine recently moved to the neighborhood where I live, and immediately got this album stuck in my head – it came out right when we moved out here, and I spent a lot of time listening to it while getting deliberately lost so I could learn the lay of the land. ↩︎
This is the fourth keyboard replacement since I got it last summer; gotta love that butterfly keyboard. ↩︎
There are some excellent jokes about Hozier’s new album, but I won’t be repeating any of them, because I like to pretend I’ve got a better sense of humor than I actually do. ↩︎
This didn’t make it into my playlist on the first listen, but then I came back to it and liked it more, and I’m glad I gave it a second chance. ↩︎
Instagram’s little ‘share a song in your story’ thing is a good way to discover music. Not as good as it could be — if they’d give Apple Music links instead of only Spotify, I’d be happier. ↩︎
I wrote a paper about this song, and haven’t the faintest idea of what grade I got. The moral of the story: stressing about grades has always been pointless. ↩︎
I found an interview this guy didwhere he described his music as “feeling nostalgic about something or feeling some weird sadness about something,” which is exactly my aesthetic, given that I describe my taste in music as “sad hipsters crooning into microphones.” ↩︎
Considering that Majik recently broke up, sorta, I was really happy when this came out and was a great addition to their repertoire; it feels a bit like a return to what they sounded like when I first started listening to them, which is, not coincidentally, why “Friends” is also in this list. ↩︎
I love this, because it makes me nostalgic for the ‘80s. And not in a Thor: Ragnarok “look at how Aesthetic(TM) this time period was!” way, but I genuinely miss my experience of everyday life as a 20-something in the ‘80s. Which is impressive, given that I wasn’t born until the ‘90s. ↩︎
This goes as a shoutout to my sister, who made me listen to this whole album. Told ya it’d wind up in my playlist. ↩︎
Fun fact: I consistently read this title as “‘reliant,’ but pronounced wrong” ↩︎
The first line is great, just “I’m not magnificent” ↩︎
Probably my favorite off this album – “Jenny Jenkins” is really catchy, “Astrovan” has some great lyrics, but “St. George” just has the most visceral emotion in his voice. ↩︎
This feels like the auditory version of a really good horror movie, and I love it. Which is weird, considering that I really don’t like horror movies. ↩︎
Ooh, this is a weird note to end on, just ‘hey, time to be Sad’. Like, I love it, but I would’ve preferred to end on a slightly higher note than “let’s discuss your mortality” ↩︎
Joshua Tree National Park has been on my ‘places to visit’ list for quite a while. Honestly, I’m not sure how it wound up there, but I’m happy it did – from what I saw, it’s a pretty cool place.
(I was told by a friend that you should really try to stay for the whole day, especially sunset, and just see what it all looks like with different lighting conditions, but unfortunately wasn’t able to do that this time; next time, though…)
I also climbed some rocks, but the ones I climbed were… less vertical.
The park was established in the 1930s by FDR. At the time, the Works Progress Administration – among other things – was running a poster campaign intended to inspire the American people, I believe along the lines of ‘look at all this neat stuff our country has!’
Panoramas are fun.
As far as I can tell, Joshua Tree didn’t get any of those posters, unfortunately; something about the federal government very busy all of a sudden.
Seriously, these rocks are fun to climb. I wish I’d brought some proper climbing clothes, I would’ve… probably injured myself much worse than the scraped elbow I got.
A lot of the posters that were produced are lost now, more’s the pity. It was an interesting aesthetic, and I’m a big fan of the whole “advertising for the national parks” thing.
The nice thing about making these with a DSLR and Lightroom as opposed to my phone is that I can pause and wait for people to walk by.
Fun fact about the Joshua Tree: they don’t form rings in the way that other trees do; when scientists want to figure out how old one is, the preferred method is to measure the height, then divide by the species’ average growth rate.
The moral of the story here is that our national parks are a treasure, and we should continue to support them. (And expand them! Write to your congresspeople about it.)
I titled this photo ‘support’ before I started writing this post, so it’s really just an amazing coincidence that I worked it in right after I talked about supporting the parks.
I used one of those “year in review” things to analyze my Apple Music data, and after I filtered out the playlist that I leave going when I’m asleep, this was, unsurprisingly, one of my top songs. ↩︎
This and Hide & Seek sorta started me on a nostalgia trip later in the month; you’ll see it in a bit. ↩︎
I really like this song, it’s a cool collaboration, but having half paid attention to the lyrics, I’ve gotta say, I think the guy’s being a dick. “Hey, congrats on the engagement/wedding, also I’ve been in love with you forever” ↩︎
May or may not have binge-watched an entire season of House while I was sick. That’s definitely a good show to watch while you’re sick, you just sit there diagnosing yourself with everything. ↩︎
I’m gonna be honest, I mostly just think this song is really funny, because you can hear him thinking “oh, this is gonna upset some suburbanites” with some of the stuff he says. ↩︎
This song is also hilarious, I love that there’s just a whole song about “ooh, sorry, there’s really no way to reach me, I got a new phone or whatever” ↩︎
Now taking bets on which will fall out of these playlists first: this song, or the latest bit of Coldplay. ↩︎
Originally I had a version of this that was released as a single, but it got pulled from Apple Music, so I replaced it with the version off the EP. Not sure what happened there. ↩︎
I didn’t actually realize this was on Apple Music until I was putting this playlist together, the version I have is a rip of the YouTube video. ↩︎
The downside to the Shortcut I have for putting these posts together is that, for whatever reason, it just can’t handle diacritics, so anything that involves áéíóú or ü or whatever just… doesn’t show up, and I have to look up the links by hand. Ugh, my life is so difficult. ↩︎
This is the single most emo thing I’ve listened to all year, and it’s kind of amazing ↩︎
This whole album is really interesting, I definitely recommend listening to it all. ↩︎
Second occurrence of indirect Imogen Heap in this playlist ↩︎
I’m like 95% sure this song is about being trans ↩︎
This song really reminds me of a friend of mine, which is weird because when I sent it to him and said as much he replied “I have never heard this before” ↩︎
Just a hint of Christmas music, here at the end of the month. ↩︎
Had to get out my phone during a game of Scattergories to prove that there’s actually a song called “Coldplay” ↩︎
Favorite review of this song I’ve heard, (paraphrased) from a tech podcaster: “during the day, put the volume on your HomePod really high, and then play this song. During the day, though, don’t do it at night, your neighbors will get mad.” ↩︎
I’ve actually got a joke I came up with about the way this song sounds, but thinking about it I don’t think I want to post it online, because I don’t want the internet knowing what my sense of humor is like. ↩︎
I haven’t actually listened to Jake Miller’s new single yet, it’s in my queue, but I’m still wondering if anyone’s told him that entire color theme screams “bisexual” ↩︎
does this one get stuck in your head as much if you don’t know Spanish? someone who didn’t take Spanish in high school, report in ↩︎
Probably my favorite song off the new album. That said, the whole thing is great; if you want to feel nostalgic, I recommend it. ↩︎
So far my impression of this guy is “a gay who decided ‘instead of being a Lana del Rey fangirl, I’m just gonna be her’” ↩︎
