I'm kidding, sort of. It wouldn't make very much sense to cast Chris Messina as Mick Jones in a biopic about Mick Jones, though if it happened I would obviously be very stoked and also make a big deal out of how I'm a prophet. But my greater point is, I'm just at a point in my life where my interests include, and are limited to, Chris Messina as Danny Castellano on The MIndy Project and songs Mick Jones either sang or wrote. So it would be nice if I could merge those things into one super-thing. Actually- I guess this very Thing of the Week is my Danny Castellano & Mick Jones Super-Thing! Aw, I made my own dream come true!
Anyway, I don't want to get too deep into talking about the Danny Castellano half of my interests, since one thing I have learned over the course of the past couple weeks I've spent obsessively binge-watching The Mindy Project is that I am one of only three people in the world who watch The Mindy Project. The other two people who watch The Mindy Project are my boyfriend the time he watched an episode of The Mindy Project with me and the person who wrote this highly-unsatisfying Buzzfeed listicle entitled "23 Reasons You Wish Danny Castellano Were Your Boyfriend," which lacks panache.
Anyway, here's a video of Danny Castellano dancing, the only Danny Castellano video on YouTube that has a chance of being even remotely entertaining to someone who doesn't watch The Mindy Project, AKA everyone.
The other day I was looking at the cover of Combat Rock and decided that my new goal in life is to be Joe Strummer on the cover of Combat Rock and Mick Jones on the cover of Combat Rock at the same time. About five minutes after deciding that, I was listening to "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" in my kitchen and I sang in the "Break it on down" part from "The Globe" by Big Audio Dynamite, and was really impressed by how "accurate" it sounded. Adding in the "Break it on down" part from "The Globe" whenever "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" comes on is my failsafe new pick-up line forever.
Anyway, here's the video for "The Globe" in case you have no idea what I'm talking about. Mick Jones very rarely looks cool in it, but that's the point of Mick Jones. He's the kind of guy you love more for never looking cool than you could ever love someone for being the coolest guy ever.
Yesterday I went on a "Mick Jones run." A Mick Jones run is when you go for a normal run but only listen to songs Mick Jones wrote or sang while you do it. The whole point of my Mick Jones run was for me to listen to "Rush" by Big Audio Dynamite and feel really empowered by it, you know, just connect with the splendor of my human muscles doin' their thing and zone into a "life is a HEAVY JOURNEY" headspace, but then the "Gotta get myself right out of here" part started making me nervous- the thing about me, right now, is that I'm waiting to find out whether or not I'm getting my visa to the UK, and so basically am just existing in a constant state of crippling anxiety that ONLY Mick Jones (and Chris Messina!) can MILDLY help me get through. Mick Jones is such a sweet, comforting presence. It's like the Clash equivalent of only listening to Paul songs when you're depressed because John Lennon's aggro "fuck life" energy only exacerbates your misery. Same with Joe Strummer, the last guy you want to have around when you're stressed out about something related to the government. I feel like Joe Strummer would have set my UK visa application on fire when I wasn't looking.
After abandoning "Rush," I pressed next on my "Mick Jones run" playlist and shuffle chose "Police On My Back" for me to listen to. It was the best thing the shuffle function on an iPod has done for me since New Year's Eve 2012, when I asked it to choose me a 2012 theme song and it started playing Donovan's "Colours" but then accidentally skipped forward to "Rocks Off" by the Rolling Stones in my pocket. I liked how it directly referenced the fact that I was physically running. I felt like I was existing in a little world with it, like it was more of a place than a state.
I listened to "Police On My Back" over and over again and ran faster and harder than I even knew I could. And I knew that as long as I was running fast and listening to "Police On My Back" I was okay and nothing could ever touch me.
LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Thomas Middleditch & Ian Svenonius
I have five things this week:
i. At like 9 o'clock on Wednesday night I went on Etsy and impulse-bought this T-shirt that says CAPECODCAPECODCAPECOD and has a picture of a sailboat and some dunes and some birds and a full moon. And then at 8 o'clock the next morning I went out for a run and the T-shirt was already in mailbox. Fastest delivery ever! The seller and I are surprise neighbors; I love my T-shirt so:
ii. Juliana Hatfield's cover of "Needle in the Hay" by Elliott Smith (which appears on the album I Saved Latin! A Tribute to Wes Anderson) is a dream. A nice lovely sad dream.
iii. Over the past week I've done this thing of listening to Juliana's "Needle in the Hay" and then the new-ish Chain and the Gang song "Devitalize," over and over again. I like abrupt mood shifts. I like how annoying Ian Svenonius is. I'm in love with his bassist Betsy and highly suggest stalking her Instagram, which is mostly all pictures of Ian Svenonius and Mary Timony and amps and guitars.
iv. I think Silicon Valley is a really cute show! I watched three episodes last night after a really stressy work day, and it soothed me. I have a crush on Thomas Middleditch but he looks so much like this guy I dated a few couple years ago so there's always this undercurrent of my feelings being betrayed, which I guess adds an interesting dimension of melancholy to the Silicon Valley experience. (My second-biggest Silicon Valley crush, btw, is Kumail Nanjiani, whom I saw at Largo last year and he was wonderful and then Louis CK came out as a surprise and told an amazing joke about how George Washington never wore his glasses. Kumail is distantly followed by the cute little boy who plays Marc Maron's assistant on Maron, and then after that I don't care though I do want to point out that I find Martin Starr intensely revolting nowadays. Being intensely revolted by Martin Starr is a weird experience for me: I loved Bill Haverchuck.) Anyway here's a picture of Thomas Middleditch wearing some lame "Beatles shirt:"
v. I also really like this definition of anger which I just read in a book - something like "anger is the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone for it." Helpful.
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