In Which Ellen Page Fills Our Heart To The Brim

the iTunes Playlist: Ellen Page

Oh to be Ellen Page! We already want to be a lesbian, and Ellen takes it up to another level. All music is new to Ellen. She heard of music about three months ago when Sean Penn told her who Eddie Vedder was. Ellen was produced via an immaculate conception somewhere in Halifax, much like Howard Norman's classic novel of the city, and one of our favorite books of all time, The Museum Guard.

Ellen probably has an addiction to cute pills, otherwise it would be difficult to look like this all the time. I wonder if when she stares at Alison Janney and Catherine Keener she thinks that is what she will become. Diane Keaton is v. jealous of Ellen. Jack Nicholson is jealous of Ellen. Fuck, we all are. Being a cute little lesbian like Ariel Schrag in Potential is pretty much as good as it gets.

The celebrity playlist she made for iTunes follows.

"Possibly Maybe" - Bjork (mp3)

I adore Bjork. The swan dress and all. This is probably my favorite song by her. Feels like someone stuck in their head while falling for another, but not knowing how the other individual feels. Intense, beautiful, and scary.

"Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" - Broken Social Scene (mp3)

I would love if some sort of machine existed that could tell me just how many times I have listened to this song. I guess iTunes tracks it, but I only recently got into this iTunes thingy. Anyway, the point of that ramble is to say that I adore this song. Emily Haynes (from Metric) singing with Broken Social Scene. It's just a cosmic blend of awesomeness.

"Wild is the Wind" - Cat Power (mp3)

I am crazy about Cat Power, she is one of my favorite musicians. I could create an entire playlist with just her songs actually. In any event, here is a cover of 'Wild is the Wind' that paralyzes me. It is so gorgeous.

"Honey or Tar" - CocoRosie (mp3)

This song is beautiful, still, but very dirty. Elements that I love compacted into one stunning song. CocoRosie is fantastic.

"Gymnopedies, No. 1 (Bank of America)" - Erik Satie

Erik Satie's music is the score for my favorite film, The 400 Blows. I cannot even describe how his music makes me feel. So simple, but full of so much emotion.

"En Gallop" - Joanna Newsom (mp3)

When I first heard Joanna Newsom, I immediately fell in love. She was all I listened to for awhile. Both of her albums are insanely amazing. This song fills my heart to the brim.

ellen & catherine keener are the same person at different times

"You Love Me" - Kimya Dawson (mp3)

Kimya Dawson inspires me to no end. She has an enormous heart. She is one of those people that makes me feel better about being in this world. This song is extremely touching.

"Please" - Mary Gauthier (mp3)

This album was just recently introduced to me. I am loving Mary Gauthier. Her voice blows me away.

"In a Manner of Speaking" - Nouvelle Vague (mp3)

I was obsessed with this song at one point. There are no words.

"Ice Cream" - New Young Pony Club (mp3)

Wow, all the music so far is incredibly beautiful and also very mellow. So here is one that makes me feel sugar high. It makes me feel other things too...as in it gets me pretty excited...tee hee.

"Break It Up" - Patti Smith (mp3)

Patti Smith is one of my icons. This song is from one of my personal favorite albums of all time, Horses. It makes me want to tear off my clothes and run through a field or something. Is that weird?

"Entertain" - Sleater-Kinney (mp3)

This song makes me freak out, basically when I listen to it I can't control myself. For intense, their album Woods should never be playing if I am driving. I love these girls, but I am also totally jealous, because I will never be them.

"Love Will Tear Us Apart" - Susanna and the Magical Orchestra (mp3)

This song knocks me out. It is so beautiful, honest, and sad. Sends a feeling straight to my gut.

"Lover's Spit" - Broken Social Scene (mp3)

Leslie Feist singing this Broken Social Scene song...need I say more? Let's just make out.



In Which Kenny Powers Is An Average American With Extraordinary Hair

Born On The 4th Of July

by MOLLY LAMBERT 

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY MOTHERFUCKERS! ♥, YOUR FRIENDS AT THIS RECORDING.

I FUCKING LOVE FIREWORKS! GOD FUCKING DAMN IT I DO!!! PYROTECHNICS RULE!!! 

KENNY POWERS COMES BACK IN SEPTEMBER FOR EASTBOUND & DOWN SEASON 2!

This is the explosive long rumored under wraps until now rap inclusive volume 4 of the Kenny Powers mix. If you can't handle going electric, get the fuck out of my free country! It's 2010! The only acceptable musical transitions are Three 6 Mafia into Lynyrd Skynyrd and David Allan Coe into 2Pac. Fighting racism thru iTunes integration.

Do you like music that is heavy as fuck? Music that drips with sweat like a longhair's guitar after a blistering solo? Heavy with sweat like Lil' Wayne's dreadlocks after proving all night that he is a pussy monster? Then you will enjoy Kenny Powers Volume 4. Bump it at your BBQ while you grill and in your truck when you off-road. 

KENNY POWERS BALL 4: EXTRA INNINGS

DJ MOLLY LAMBERT

The Stealer - Free

4 My Town (Play Ball) - Birdman, Drake, & Lil' Wayne 

Mississippi Queen - Mountain

Fucked Up - Lil' Wyte ft. Three 6 Mafia 

I Ain't The One - Lynyrd Skynyrd 

Diamonds & Cadillacs - Jackie Chain

I'm Alive - Spooky Tooth

Stupid Wild - Gucci Mane ft. Lil' Wayne

Green Eyed Lady - Sugarloaf

Box Chevy Pt. 3 - Yelawolf ft. Rittz

Working On The Road - Ten Years After

Goodies - Freddie Gibbs

Rock Candy - Montrose

Never Been - Wiz Khalifa

Cocaine Carolina - Johnny Cash ft. David Allan Coe 

Is It Cool To Fuck? - 2Pac ft. Rated R & Macadoshis

Love Track - Wiggy Bits

Batter Up - Nelly ft. The St. Lunatics

Greensboro Woman - Townes Van Zandt

All 4 Volumes Of The Kenny Powers Mix

STRIKE 1: SPRING TRAINING

STRIKE 2: REGULAR SEASON

STRIKE 3: WORLD SERIES

BALL 4: EXTRA INNINGS

Molly Lambert is the managing editor/resident 70s rock completist at This Recording. She tumbls here.

In Which If You Want To Be Happy Don't Think

We've Been Hanging Out

by ELEANOR MORROW

Skins

creators Brian Elsley and Jamie Brittain

All art about young people comes across as hopelessly naive and bracingly sentimental. Kids changed all that, but it wasn't very good. Harmony Kormine went on to a sterling career as a writer of less comprehensible films, MTV ran Undressed to corner the market in PG-13 pr0n, Larry Clark founded an island in the South Pacific where he could be with whoever he wants, and then E4's Skins tried to fill the role of "telling us all about our young people."

Set in Bristol, the show follows kids through sixth form, when they are 16 and 17 years old. The idea was to follow kids from relatively difficult economic backgrounds, although we might want to rethink those ideas about class. In most ways the men and women of Skins are identical to their upper-class mirror images. Because Skins is one of the most imaginatively conceived shows of this genre, it deserves an American audience, and not in its soon-to-be dumbed down form.

What sorts of children are these? For the most part, they are desperate for love, so transparently pathetic that we forget about the evil things they do. The protagonist of the show's first two seasons, Tony (Nicholas Hoult) is straight out of Cruel Intentions, but hold on, because we never can hate anybody we know everything about. (It's partly why we love our children.) If they make a Barbra Streisand biopic  — scratch that, when they make Barbra Streisand biopic she will come off as completely sympathetic and will most likely be portrayed by Alexa Chung.

The early virtues of the show consisted of its variously successful attempts at an earthy realism. You can't help but imagine that a beer-soaked copy of Less Than Zero was being plagiarised wholesale in writer's meetings, but the resulting blend of regular drug abuse, mental illness, and total alienation from the world is highly entertaining. Rebooting the series every two years was an inspired idea, and also ensures that Skins alumnae can come back to be killed off, or turned into M.I.A. in the case of the minority representative Jal.

It takes a special madness to take the joy out of being a child, but we are accustomed to effecting this as quickly as possible. It is not for the Luddites that we bemoan this worldly process, it is because we are sapping the thrill of discovery from new travellers. Instead of a reason for joy, education is turned into something we resent because of what it takes away from the rest of our lives rather than what it adds to it.

Kids portrayed this in a way acceptable to Roger Ebert, which is itself a kind of violation. There was something deeply disturbing about watching HIV-positive Telly infect the neighborhood, although it's not as horrifying to watch today and in fact feels like a period piece along the lines of Emma or The Bostonians.

The use of birth control on Skins is relegated to those moments when teenage sex is planned in advance, which is to say never.  Condoms feature prominently in only one of the show's episodes, and then only to emphasize that Anwar (Dev Patel) has never had sex. This is perhaps a subtle hint to Britain's youth to keep reproducing at a rate commensurate with that of their Muslim peers. The sex mostly consists of shifting between various sexual positions in a rough manner so as to indicate eagerness. Once, in the first season, eight straight lines of dialogue were "I love you", and it was accurate in every case.

if only your mother from slumdog millionaire could see you now...oh wait Joyless and solemn the boys of Skins are, though the women rarely fare better. The sexist march of lowered expectations is painfully obvious in Michelle (April Pearson) whose greatest desire was to ape her mother's tremendous series of husbands. The men, in contrast, are burdened with all of the unpleasantness and as such are permitted a greater freedom of expression.

The sort of friends you have when you're young are always a sorry lot. A neighborhood is full of them — you simply can't avoid the people you live with, any more than you can avoid having extra-sized ears if you're Katie Holmes. Most entries into this genre turn the neighborhood youth into adults with smaller bodies, and Skins does some of this, including the reading passions of its erudite antihero.

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. There's also a hefty dose of afterschool special, proving straights and gays equally enjoy sitting on the green, crying and smoking spliffs. Going to sixth form is pretty much a dream with a lot of free time and your classmate is the guy from Slumdog Millionaire. Without mentioning the contemporary culture (outside of dubstep and heroin injections) more than once, Skins is entirely of this time, where some kind of unpleasant notoriety is always lurking on the periphery.

One of the biggest myths about adolescence is that it is full of important decisions. In fact, adolescence is all about never having to make a decision. Can we even imagine what an alien race would think of us, going from piano lesson to the orthodontist with a frequency unknown outside of this dying planet? More than anything, contemporary day-to-day is fraught with completely variegated experience, an acquired taste for most of us and entirely unknown to those who've never experienced it. The adults of Skins, because they're from the previous generation, can never really understand.

It's actually somewhat funny that a show which insists on portraying the reality behind young lives is so painfully bad at imagining the mystery and purpose of adult ones. Yes, things are rightly more dramatic when experienced for the first time. This is a strong virtue of such moments, distinguishing them from everything else. But it is a weakness to be innocent.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Manhattan. She last wrote in these pages about the HBO series True Blood and The Wire.

"Good Times Gonna Come" - Aqualung (mp3)

"Sea of Glass" - Tom Middleton (mp3)

"Coconut Skins" - Damien Rice (mp3)