Playlist Pick: Kesha, ‘Tik Tok’

I’ve been venturing back to more modern times for my pop playlist this week. I’m considerably behind with the UK charts (hence why there haven’t been any New Hits Friday posts or Now! reviews for a LONG time… I’ll get back to them eventually). Still, it’s been nice to enjoy a few favourites from my 2010s list over the last few days. Not every single pop song was awful in the 2010s! Just… most of them.

Geth has been watching The Simpsons on Disney Plus recently and has reached the episodes from around 2009/2010. As such, I’m getting fairly major nostalgia for pop music from early 2010, which was when, after many years of being Too Goff (TM), I started following the chart again as part of a slightly pretentious project to study ‘cultural history in the making’ for an entire decade. Side note: I can’t believe that at age twenty-five, I already felt far too old and out of touch for pop music when listening to the charts. It really is a teenager’s game.

Anyway, this offering from late 2009 has been in my head for a fortnight now due to being featured in the opening sequence of a Simpsons episode that Geth put on twice (he fell asleep the first time it was on). Enjoy!

(By the way, I’m sure you’re all aware that the song is nothing to do with the TikTok app, which is a far more recent source of societal decline.)

Another Tuesday

I did my interval session somewhere different this morning…

…which was nice. Geth and I seem to have timed our runs well as since lunchtime it’s been raining and grey – one of those days where you need the lights on all day long.

I don’t mind it being typical autumn weather in the afternoons and evenings as it’s the time of year when I like to curl up and watch TV, and in the current situation that’s all we can do anyway. I do mind in the mornings, because I’m really having to psyche myself up to go out for my runs in the cold and wet. It’s always fine once I get out there, but when I first wake up, getting out of my nice warm bed to go running is the last thing I want to do, especially on a Tuesday when I need to do a tough interval session.

I always get out and do it eventually though. That’s the beauty of the run streak – I need to go out for at least a mile to maintain the streak, so I might as well go and do the run I’ve got scheduled.

I had a bit of day job work to get on with this afternoon, and am now finishing off my admin so that I can watch some Hallowe’en TV this evening. I started my annual Simpsons ‘Treehouse Of Horror’ marathon yesterday, and have also been recording all the Hallowe’en shows on Food Network. These days, for me, Hallowe’en is always about staying in and enjoying the atmosphere, so it feels like it’s the one celebration that the pandemic can’t affect this year.

I’m still sleeping later than I’d like, partly because I’m tossing and turning and worrying about world things late at night. Hopefully I’ll manage to get my run done fairly quickly tomorrow, as there’s a few things I want to check before taking the car for its MOT on Thursday.

Maisie meets her match, 1984
I loved this book as a child. It describes an ’80s Hallowe’en in Morningside, Edinburgh, and thus perfectly captures my childhood Hallowe’ens – all the Scottish traditions and customs. I wonder if it perhaps isn’t sold or has been changed these days, as Maisie’s ‘Red Indian Chief’ costume would be considered culturally insensitive now.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Liam Payne and J Balvin – ‘Familiar’
Bananarama – ‘Really Saying Something’
Wham! – ‘Club Tropicana’
Prince – ‘1999’
Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett – ‘The Monster Mash’
Barenaked Ladies – ‘One Week’
The Black Crowes – ‘Hard To Handle’
Pet Shop Boys – ‘On Social Media’

Tabletop spookery

Today was mostly taken up with Hallowe’en boardgaming – Geth and I had some friends round and we played a couple of seasonally appropriate games that I’d been wanting to try for ages.

The first was Last Friday, which is a hidden movement game that…let’s say ‘pays homage’ to summer camp slasher movies such as Friday the 13th. In this regard, it has the same theme as Camp Grizzly, another favourite among my collection, though they’re very different games – Camp Grizzly is a simple and not-very-replayable Ameritrash game, and while it’s thematically brilliant (and hence will always have a place on the game shelves), Last Friday is so much more in-depth and long-lasting as a game.

The second game we played today was Ghostel, which is a nice short dice placement game where you control ghosts competing to scare off the most hotel guests! Very easy and fun.

After the boardgaming guests had gone, I started the annual Hallowe’en TV-watching traditions with a few ‘Treehouse of Horror’ episodes of The Simpsons. Looking forward to a few nights of this!

Ghostel
Not an OOTD: the Ghostel board. The plastic ghost pieces are so cute!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Duran Duran – 911 Is A Joke
Duran Duran – Secret Oktober
Duran Duran – White Lines