colleen vs. rodrigo: random rules

since we want to make this reception the dance party of the (albeit young) century, we've been thinking a lot about music.

we are of the firm belief that a person's musical taste is an interesting way to get to know them, and since we haven't seen many of you in quite a while, we stole this idea from the onion's a.v. club, in order to give people a taste of who we are through what's streaming into our ears.

here's how it works: we each grab our iPods, and set them on shuffle. then we comment on the first five songs that come up. then the other person is allowed to ask a follow-up question or make a comment. no hiding guilty pleasures (rodrigo!). it's us, in five-song increments.

#1
rodrigo
The Happy Song (Dum-Dum) - Otis Redding

I'm very glad this song came up first. There's no guilt in loving Otis Redding. I have to admit that I'm a bigger fan of his ballads. If you like Otis or Al Green or Marvin Gaye or Sam Cooke, we are destined to be friends. If not, we are going to have words. Stern words.

colleen: Which of Otis's ballads is your favorite then?
rodrigo: "I've Been Loving You Too Long" might be one of the top ones. The MGs (Otis's backing band) - their dynamics and their control is... solid. It needs to be studied.

colleen
Electioneering - Radiohead

I have to admit, I think this is my least favorite song off of this album (OK Computer). Not to say that it's a bad song, just that the other songs on this album - like Let Down, Karma Police and No Surprises - are blow-your-face-off amazing, that for me, this one pales a little. It doesn't quite have the Thom Yorke weirdness that I crave.

rodrigo: which thom yorke song satisfies your weirdness craving?
colleen: I don't even have to think about this one - "We Suck Young Blood (Your Time is Up)" from Hail to the Thief. it's so creepy and slow, with the thick hand claps and then the up-tempo piano freak-out in the middle. yum.

#2
rodrigo
Come to Me (Unplugged) - Björk

I'm not surprised Björk came up. I have an unneccessary amount of Björk on my iPod, that I've slowly trimmed from the 500+ songs that were on it. Or maybe it was one gigabyte. When we were first dating, we listened to a lot of her album Vespertine, and I still think that's a pretty perfect album. This Unplugged album is a pretty neat bootleg. Björk always finds talented and weird musicians to bring her strange little songs to life.

colleen: do you secretly want to make out with Björk? It's okay - I kind of do...
rodrigo: It's never been a secret.

colleen
The Empty - Le Tigre

"I went to your concert and I didn't feel anything." Ouch, Kathleen Hanna. I love Le Tigre. It's one of the few "loud" bands that I was obsessed with in college that I still frequently listen to. You know, in between all of the Yanni. And "Eau de Bedroom Dancing" off of this album is so beautiful - that weird mournful guitar and the Casio beat? There's a reason it's "Bedroom Dancing" and not "Kitchen" or "Garage Dancing." You dig?

rodrigo: I dig. Whose mustache do you admire more: Yanni's or JD from Le Tigre?
colleen: Well, considering that the hormones were against her and she was up against a Greek guy, I'd have to say JD's. It's formidable.

#3
rodrigo
Beat My Head Against the Wall - Black Flag

I was an angry youth. This is my favorite Black Flag record. They were getting real dark. Cynical. I once put the song "I Love You" off of this record (My War) on a mixed tape for a girl I was dating in high school. It really creeped her out.

colleen: I want to hear it. * Listens* Yeah - that's a restraining order waiting to happen, dude. Did you put it on the tape as a joke?
rodrigo: She was rightfully creeped out. The joke was, here's a mixtape full of potentially sentimental, definitely 'heart-on-sleeve' songs; and to end it all, the punchline is a song that is absolutely terrifying. I do like the song - it's a dark tune. The guy's losing his mind, going to some scary places.

colleen
Ragged Wood - Fleet Foxes

This song was the hook that baited me to first buy this album (Fleet Foxes). I love the harmonies so much, and how old-timey so much of their subject matter seems to be at first listen - it's a lot like Midlake in that way. Except Midlake actually does sing about old-timey stuff like mountaineers and raising barns. Fleet Foxes just sounds old-timey, but Robin Pecknold is really just singing about his family. When he's not raising baby birds in his beard. And now that I've listened to the album another, oh... 500 times, I'd say that "Blue Ridge Mountains" is currently my favorite track.

#4
rodrigo
Good Times - Sam Cooke

I have a lot of favorite Sam Cooke songs - this is one of them. "Come on and let the good times roll. We gon' stay here till we soothe our souls... if it take all night long." Such a great lyric. So simple. Sometimes you need to stay longer than all night to soothe your soul. That's how we wound up together.

colleen: And doesn't the xylophone marimba in this song remind you of the cartoon skeleton playing his own ribs?
rodrigo: It does. I'll think of it as one of those clever musical metaphors that Sam Cooke managed to work into his songs: even the guy with neither dermis nor epidermis can get down and make the best of the situation. Play his ribs, join the party.

colleen
I Can't Really Talk About It - El Perro del Mar

Because she is Swedish and has a bit of an accent, I thought for about six months that she was actually saying " I Can Really Talk About It," which really changes the dynamic of the song. Like - " I could go on and on about it, girl!" instead of the correct "It's too hard for me to talk about it right now," or maybe "the person that I'm mad at is in the room right now, so I can't really talk about it." Either way, she has a really unique way of capturing the sound of Motown girl groups, making it sound a bit more depressing (probably because of the lack of light in the wintertime in Scandinavia) but also sugary.

rodrigo: Because she repeats "I Can't Really Talk About It" over and over in the song, it's funny to think of it being heard as "I CAN Really Talk About It." As if she's threatening to actually talk about it, without ever actually saying anything about it, or ever getting to it.

#5
rodrigo
Eleanor Rigby - The Beatles

This is a brilliant song. This is one of the Beatles songs that's been covered with the least degree of success, I think. Aretha Franklin did an okay job. I think Irma Thomas did a version that's kinda wack. It's very hard to improve upon this original, let alone reinterpret something so singular.

colleen: Well said, Palma. Well said.

colleen
The Big Guns - Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins

The tussle over "alt-country cred" aside, I really enjoy this record. I think Jenny Lewis has a nice songwriting style that gets overshadowed a bit in all of the Rilo Kiley pomp. This album seems simpler, but still heavy on narrative, and those Watson Twins are phenomenal. This song's guitar and drum sounds have definitely been done before, but I think Lewis takes inventive risks with her lyrics. However, I do not really enjoy the cover of the Traveling Wilburys' song "Handle With Care." Sorry, Conor Oberst. You O'Whine too much.

rodrigo: Do you like Jenny Lewis more for having had a small role on a Golden Girls episode?
colleen: There are no small roles - only small actors. And since she was seven or eight at the time, she was pretty small. Especially standing next to Bea Arthur. R.I.P.

Volcanoes are awesome (the true story of how we came to be betrothed)

Colleen and Rodrigo were engaged on December 25th, 2008, at Parque Nacional Conguillío, Chile. The proposal involved a cherry-flavored ring-pop, a lava field, and a disposable camera. They decided to interview each other (via gmail chat) in order to tell this story.

CB: Are we gonna do this thing, or what?
RP: What?
CB: No - let's do this. First question.
RP: OK. Did you have any expectations of how the day would unfold on the morning of December 25, 2008?
CB: Nope - I expected only to go to a park and see some volcanoes and some trees that look like weird q-tips.

Question for you: how long did it take you to find a cherry-flavored ring pop (my engagement ring of choice, which was delicious by the way), and where did you find the chosen ring?

RP: The ring pop was surprisingly difficult to track down. I started looking for it when I returned home from a tour in May - I thought a specialty candy store here in Chicago might carry it. They only had wacky fruit fusion and tropical twist flavors, no cherry. I started hunting around 7-11s in Chicago. No luck. I finally found a cherry-flavored ring pop at a truck stop we always pass through when we visit Michigan. Hiding it from you while you purchased water bottles was a little tricky. By this time it was early October, but the ring had to be the right flavor.

I know this, but others may not: why the ring-pop, and why cherry?

CB: Well, rings (of the jewel-and-metal variety) aren't really for me. I never wear them, and having anything of genuine value on my person at all times would make me a nervous wreck. And I adore candy. Adore as in - if I could build a house out of candy and just lean over and bite the wall from time to time, I would be blissfully happy (and probably toothless). And since my favorite flavor of everything is cherry - pies, popsicles, ring pops, etc. - it had to be cherry flavor. Thanks for going through all that trouble - you are very sneaky! I had no idea you had a cherry ring pop while in my presence at the Flying J! Usually, I can smell candy from twenty yards...

So, let's get down to the nitty-gritty: the "big day". Was it driving you nuts having to wait all day until we arrived at the lava field in Conguillío where you wanted to propose? And - were your palms all sweaty??

RP: I was mostly excited. I got a little nervous when we got a little lost near the park. You would think, a volcano, drive towards it, it's hard to miss. I got more nervous when we kept stopping and especially when my aunt took us on a wild hunt of abandoned cabañas in the woods. The sun was creeping downward and we hadn't made it to a particular lava field--that's where I planned to propose. I was racing against time, the fact that neither my aunts nor cousins that were part of the trip knew of my plans, and the fact that I only had a vague idea of where this particular lava field was. That’s what made my palms sweat.

Prior to the big moment - what was your impression of Conguillío? Of our little detours and the dust?

CB: Ah, the dust... I was filthy by the end of the day! Having the windows open while driving along a series of dirt roads might not have been the best idea... But I thought Conguillío was beautiful (if a bit hard to pronounce - con-ghee-YEE-o). Volcán Llaima was so majestic and lovely, and the forests and lakes and streams were beautiful. And groping along an unkempt trail in search of some cabañas that your aunt remembered from her childhood was a hoot. Although for about five minutes there, I was certain we were lost, and I was trying to figure out how "S.O.S." would translate into Spanish...

Ok, ok - back to the big moment. Did you have it all planned out, how you were going to propose? I liked how you basically just showed me the ring, no questions, no "down on one knee." Was that the original plan, or were you just at a loss for words?

RP: The only things that I was certain about were that it had to be the lava field on the east side of Volcán Llaima, by the lake (ensuring that you wouldn't be able to escape), that I would have the ring-pop, and you would have the camera (ensuring photo documentation). No speech, and I’m glad because I did get totally tongue-tied when we got out on all that solid lava.

Was what was your frame of mind by that time of day? I know it had been quite long and we were covered in lava dust, snow-covered peaks, pristine lakes, and bizarre trees aside.

CB: By the time of the proposal, I was exhausted. We had circled the park for hours, and I was ready for a shower and then bed. I actually felt a little out of my mind. By the time we got to "the" lava field, I was able to admire it from inside the car and felt pretty okay about that - the idea of actually getting out of the car made my soul hurt. But you were strangely insistent that we get out of the car and take some pictures from atop the strange moonscape. If my brain hadn't been numb with sun and dust, I would've come up with a better excuse, but as it were, I drew a blank. So we got out of the car, climbed up a small slope of lava rock (where I almost fell and pumiced my face off), and you threw a marriage proposal at me. I went from somewhat grouchy to very happy in less than a minute!

So... were you worried I would turn you down?

RP: Well, since we had chatted about getting married many times before, not really. But to be honest, in that moment, the possibility of any non-yes answer was intimidating. I think that added to my timid tongue. The exchange was more along the lines of you asking me to turn around for the photo, me holding the ring-pop for the photo, you asking me if I was serious. I think I said, "yes" first! Anyways, I think after some tears and kisses, I asked "so... will you?" and here we are.

What was the reaction of the people that went along on our trip? That is, my cousin Mauricio, his wife Priscilla, his mom (and my aunt) Maria Elvira, my Aunt Maria Iliana, and her husband José?

CB: Mauricio and Priscilla didn't believe us. They kept asking us "en serio?" Once we finally convinced them that we were, in fact, serious, they jumped out of the car and gave us hugs. Then everyone got out of the other car to see what all of the hubbub was about. I believe your aunt, Maria Iliana, asked very excitedly whether I was pregnant, but seemed just as happy to find out that instead we would be getting married. We all jumped around a bit, and took some pictures, then decided to get back in our respective cars and head back to Temuco once we remembered how tired we were. The rest of the ride home, whenever Priscilla caught me licking my ring pop, she would say, "don't eat your ring!" Jokingly, of course. But I couldn't help myself - it was so delicious!

Did you wake up in the middle of that night in a cold sweat, lamenting your terrible, terrible mistake? Or were you pretty much as happy as I was?

RP: I wake up most nights in a cold sweat lamenting my mistakes, but this particular decision was a source of calm. Wedding planning aside, I’m excited and happy to get hitched. Can I still call you my 'super buddy' after October 3rd?

CB: You got it! Can I still call you "Rodrigo," or will you finally reveal to me your true identity once we are legally wed?

RP: Well, a little mystery should keep our marriage exciting.