To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

One music rec today: Milo Greene, a band that deliberately set out to make rock songs that sound like sweeping film scores. Just my kind of music! There's also a strong whiff of eau de hipster in there, but that could just be the unkempt, bearded-and-behatted dude who stars in all their music videos.

Anyway, while "1957" and "Perfectly Aligned," among others, are wonderful, my favorite is actually this live version of "Don't You Give Up on Me." (The album version's not bad, but I like this one better.)

This is an odd association, I know, but for some reason all I can think when I hear that song is that it would've been perfect for an exhibition program skated by Kate Mosely and Doug Dorsey of The Cutting Edge. Something about the beat, the guitar line, and the cymbal crashes just says skating punctuated by jumps and lifts to me. I don't know. I think it would also be an excellent group number for something like Stars on Ice, because I can totally envision multiple people flying around a rink skating loops around each other and doing awesome things in unison/one right after the other to it.

(...Doesn't everyone choreograph to songs in their head? Just me?)

Speaking of Stars on Ice, I rediscovered the fact that YouTube is basically the perfect platform for archiving 4-minute-long figure skating programs, and spent much of yesterday happily watching random things. Like this: "Chair Men." To which I can only say, "I want all y'all's muscles. ALL OF THEM."

While I'm here, have my favorite of the things I rediscovered yesterday: Renee Roca & Gorsha Sur, "Everything Must Change." Aiiiieeee, so pretty. So many beautiful lifts. So much gorgeous extension. I love the way they express the music all the way to their fingertips. Since I'm reminiscing, I'll tell you that these two were my first introduction to ice dancing, with the equally lovely "Maria," and I remember being, like, twelve in 1996 or whenever it was watching this in stunned silence, then going, "WHAT WAS THIS BEAUTIFUL THING AND WHERE DO I GET MORE???"

Did I mention how great YouTube is for this kind of stuff? I remember tape-trading to get older programs of my favorites! /old*


* Speaking of which, happy birthday to me! 29, on the other hand, does not feel old, except perhaps for the point today where I realized that the crop of freshmen I taught in grad school is going to graduate in two months. WHAT.