They haven’t recorded a music video? My next directing project: complementing April Smith and the Great Picture Show’s Colors with stop-motion animation featuring a donkey and a hamster on a trek through the Southwest, where they run into a talking cacti wearing a sombrero and ride off into the sunset on a little red wagon.

Named after Audrey Hepburn’s character in My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle knocks my socks off. But she lives in England. Why are all these indie pop singer songwriter chicks always in England? Settle in Philly!

Amanda Jenssen was originally named Jenny Amanda Katarina Bengtsson. Nothing to do with her style. She must hate people comparing her to Amy Winehouse, but there it is: kind of like the crazy crack hoe but not crazy, on crack or a hoe (as far as I know). OK, there may have been more elegant ways to compliment her. Regardless, love her voice. Her newest single is Happyland, included below… but my favorite song is still Do You Love Me?.

Canadian beauty Lily Frost wrote the unbelievably cheery theme song to the CBC’s Being Erica. (Being Erica is actually a decent chick-flick TV series… which means I can actually stand the show, versus basically EVERY single chick-flick show on US TV being absolute trash that makes me want to poke out my eyes with burning hot irons. Of course, it helps that Erin Karpluk is, and should be, everyone’s crush.) Lily tours with a swing band, references cool people like Emily Carr and Paul Verlaine, and hails from BC. Also, a press release states that she returned to Canada after “performance stints in Cairo and Tahiti, and adventures singing in Africa and busking in New Orleans”. I’m just assuming Lily Frost was a take a trip by herself kind of gal, as it totally increases the mystique. Cases in point: That reminds me of the time Caroline told me about her mother…. who rowed down the Amazon and did other really random adventures by herself when she was younger, and still cruises out to secluded islands for personal holidays every year. Or Brenna flying out to Ireland and driving around by herself, or Lisa in Morocco, or Stephanie somewhere in southern Africa… Anyways, to bring it back to Lily: all hail the queen. She was gypped by the Geminis.

Hard not to love Norwegian Marit Larsen. This video is awesome: she’s playing at a greengrocer’s stand with her band and random people are walking by. The creepy biker, the woman who got her groceries and is like WTF is this, the cars driving on past, the shopowner standing in the doorway happily listening. She’s playing on a kid’s mini-xylophone. Hot. Marit was one half of 2000’s girl-band M2M, the other half being Marion Raven (who has a nice ballad with Meatloaf on his last Bat Out of Hell album). Marit has done pretty well herself: she did a solo performance at 2008’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.

OK, so this one ALSO has a dude. Pomplamoose does some covers of big songs (try Telephone, La Vie En Rose and Put a Ring On It but their originals (Centrifuge below) are even more awesome. Dunno if they’re a couple… but it’s pretty cute watching their videos. Her face doesn’t really change while recording and they have this weird editing style… obviously no big budget and definitely aimed at quirky crowd rather than mass public.

Rewatched Avatar today. It was still as good as the first time, but slightly tarnished because of an IMAX snafu. The first time I saw it, I missed the IMAX showing because it was sold out; this time, I missed out because it was no longer playing in IMAX. Great. I think I may have a sore throat, It just started feeling iffy. I’m leaving to Toronto in 3.5 hours, where I will eat foods that my stomach will enjoy but my throat will curse me out for. Yay! And I get to stock up on Asian snacks, All Dressed chips from Hostess, Sour Cherry Blasters from Cadbury Schweppes Trebor Allan (who make Sour Patch Kids but don’t think Americans like Cherry Blasters? whoever made that policy decision… heads will roll!), and lots of Tim Hortons crullers. Oh, and 4 Harvey’s burgers (with jalapenos, relish, onions, ketchup and sliced whole dill pickle on side) before we cross back over into the States. They know how to do a burger right.

I mentioned Ireland earlier. I want to go back. I was at McGillin’s Olde Ale House as the latter half of St. Paddy’s Day celebrations last night – and I was just tanking off my flask of Jameson’s 20 Year Special Reserve, remembering the Guinness from campus and drinking some O’Hara’s Stout (which tastes like a more even-tasting but slightly watered down Guinness… kinda like the White Star) – and I remembered sitting on that hilltop in Ireland. I could hear no cars, could see only green for miles around and was sitting in the ruins of an old Catholic church where, I swear, I could still hear the ghosts of ancient monks chanting. Everyone was busy taking pictures, but I just sat in the grass enjoying the breeze and thinking that this moment was the happiest moment ever and there was no real reason why. For that, I want to go back.

Besides getting to hear the Dropkick Murphys and Sublime after a long hiatus, belt out Journey with a bunch of random chicks and drink a lot of O’Hara’s, I did get to meet some interesting people last night. Kate was fascinating: she got a Fulbright and went off to Malang for a year, where she taught English at a vo-tech school for Muslims. She learned enough Bahasa to volunteer as a competent translator for any Indonesians that come in to the clinic. Anyways, one of her stories was about being bothered in the markets since she was an orang putih that wasn’t Dutch: women would come up to her and ask her to touch their babies so that they’d stay “fresh and beautiful”. Yes, it was loud in there and maybe I heard wrong – but I swear I didn’t. I cracked up.

Crystal Bowersox is my American Idol pick. I love her folk contemporary sound, and she has a warm and rich voice that really complements all the song choices she’s made (or been made to choose) so far. I know some people don’t want her to win Idol because it’d tie her down, but honestly, she’s a single mom and it’s hard to make it as a musician – especially a folk musician – no matter how good you are. If Idol can get her a leg up, then why not? It’s up to her and her lawyers to make sure she can still remain who she is if she wins; having trouble with the winnings shouldn’t be a reason for her NOT to win. She’s good enough (based on everything I’ve heard her sing so far). And this song is just so… nice.

China is being freakin ridiculous with its censorship issues, as usual. They have this continual fear of sex, for some reason, and are worse moral police than many Islamist societies (and at least those countries have religion to back up being such moral absolutists). Well, at the very least, they’re finding employment for more people. Really now, don’t the security services have more important things to do than make sure you’re not simul-wanking with your mistress? Perhaps they’ve linked sexting with exploding birth rates, and it’s an emergency measure to control babymaking… the very fact that you sexted your girlfriend 3 hours ago means you’re gonna get hot and heavy that night and increase China’s billions by another digit in another year. Silly China. I’m sure there are better ways to control your people than getting them pissed off and muttering because they can’t express themselves sexually.

For those who like to spice things up by sending lewd text messages, be careful, or your short message service may be suspended.

China Mobile, the country’s largest cell-phone operator, is cooperating with the country’s public security administrations to crack down on unlawful texting activities, including smishing, racketeering and sending lewd content, the Nanfang Daily reported Wednesday.

Sending just one unlawful text message will result in suspension of the texting service. To get it back, the person would have to submit a written promise to the public security authority not to send unlawful messages again, said the report.

Anyways, the technical method by which this is supposed to happen is by filtering out keywords. However, Chinese Internet slang is already known for using homophone to convey the same meaning, so that’s a gigantic loophole. You can also get ratted out (by an angry wife pissed at finding your texts to unknown flame?) or rated for sending too many (aka giant spammer). Since that initial release posted above, all the other major Chinese mobile providers have also agreed to participate. To bring in some numbers, there are almost a trillion text messages sent annually throughout China, and cellphone penetration in China is way above 50% and rising. With the amount Chinese cellphone providers make with texting plans, think how much that text message flood will dry up if people are afraid to text for fear of being blocked or banned or maybe arrested (if the government is serious about the whole thing). That’s a lot of money those guys won’t be making, and that lost revenue might be a good reason to overturn such stupid rulings. But, of course, this is all about showing power and making money for corrupt officials. My prediction? To get around these rules, telecoms will pay officials to turn a blind eye and then business will go on as usual. The government will make an example prosecution every once in a while to show pretend serious, but they won’t really bother with doing anything more as long as the bribes keep flowing. At least that makes more sense than the security thing. I just thought of one thing though: perhaps they’re saying sexting just as a cover for the actual business of targeting separatists and terrorists, so those “criminals” won’t think they’re being specially targeted when the boot comes down since everyone is supposed to be watched? Ugh, there has to be some really good reason for such a ban.

Other stupid Chinese moves: pulling Avatar off of screens because it might promote revolution. Billions complained and Avatar was put back into theaters. No word on revolution yet.

Should mobile providers warn you if you’re getting charged ridiculous amounts for off-plan services? This guy got a refund of his $22,000 bill (for downloading 1.4 GB onto his phone, not an egregious amount but at a per MB rate, really expensive) for being newsworthy, but how about all the other slobs who don’t get data plans and don’t realize they can’t download stuff for cheap… and then the provider lets them download their way into personal bankruptcy. Too bad, so sad. Well, I’m still on the side of personal responsibility…. you did it, you pay for it. If you paid attention to begin with, you’d know you didn’t have a data plan (or tell your kids that when you give them the phone. If they don’t listen, cancel their phone.). However, on the matter of practicality, you can’t have consumers racking up $22k in charges because most people will NOT be able to pay it back. The provider will think it’s profit, but if it bankrupts consumers, they will no longer be your customers and you may not even get all of it if they have to default first. Also, the provider is just being a dick for leaving it so long, with no regard for other people. You don’t want to ruin people’s lives (by ruining their credit) for stupid stuff like that which is for the most part UNINTENTIONAL. You can balance your humanity with your profit motive by giving some leeway… letting them rack up $1k in extra charges (which should be manageable for all those people) which nets you a couple hundred percent profit, and then you start warning them. The same fools that get caught up with these huge charges are your BEST customers (because savvy customers typically are tightwads about getting more services), so it’s stupid to want to ruin them – especially because you can still persuade them to get on to your data plans if you’re not ludicrous (don’t want to be charged like this? INSERT REASONABLY HIGH CHARGE HERE. join our data plans! repackage your debt over the next 24 months if you sign up for a 2-year data plan.)

Interesting, TV promoting reading? shows that a Gujarati song and dance show subtitled in the same language helped improve reading skills in viewers. The songs are the entertainment draw, we can safely assume, and the subtitled words help viewers to sing along. If they can read, they can sing along; otherwise they can’t. This week’s Time mentions that it promotes liberalization of households: Indian women who watched TV had more liberal ideas about their rights than otherwise. We know that over here in the States, of course. What we see on TV we somehow think of as a reflection of our own society, and lots of kids get their beginning social cues from how people act on TV and in the movies. Ahem, Gossip Girl and Degrassi.

Holla. He’s watching Avatar, supposedly. Speaking of Avatar, here’s a video from some guy’s first assignment for film class.

CFV 426 – Avatar/Pocahontas Mashup FINAL VERSION from Randy Szuch on Vimeo.

I agree with Bill Maher.