I Am Yet Still Full of Languid Ennui, And Who Better to Express Languid Ennui Than Bryan Ferry?
Posted on November 12, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 37 Comments
Given the choice between Anna Nicole Smith and a game of solitaire, he chooses solitaire. Now that’s ennui, my friends.
Is it really? I mean, if it were some captivating, intelligent woman who possessed true beauty rather than the artificially shellacked version, perhaps it might be.
Well, maybe she’s playing one of those in the video, KIA.
You… DO remember she’s dead, right? I would also take solitaire over keeping company with someone dead. They tend to not be great conversationalists, no matter what “Pushing Daisies” says.
She was alive when they made the video, though. Also, solitaire sucks.
John,
Go to your 360, download Braid from XBLA, and play. If you’re going to get all emo, you might as well do with a clever platformer.
In answer to Brian’s question,
“Not if you keep ignoring me to play solitaire, you twit.”
This was supposed to be an angst ridden misogynistic melodrama right?
By the way, I don’t think anyone in the world doesn’t know that she’s dead. She was on the news for months after her OD. Between the OD coverage and the multiple dads lining up to take of “our” daughter, it got nauseous.
I ended up actually feeling sorry for a women that became a caricature, mostly through her own doing.
Oh, now I have to go listen to Slave To Love. Which will inevitably lead to The Cure somehow.
Are you feeling post-election letdown?
No, just lazy.
Mmmmm…languid ennui. Goes well with a light cream-based sauce and a dry white.
John said: “Well, maybe she’s playing one of those in the video, KIA.”
Nevermind me. I’ve been accused of being a curmudgeon. In truth, it’s a title I feel I must accept. Harrumph.
He is far too young for her.
I keep hearing you’re concerned about my happiness, but all that thought you’re giving me is conscience, I guess if I were walking in your shoes I wouldn’t worry none. While you and your friends are worrying ’bout me, I’m having lots of fun counting flowers on the wall (that don’t bother me at all), playing solitaire till dawn with a deck of 51, smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo. So don’t tell me I’ve nothing to do.
A good helping of Beatles music on my MP3 usually snaps me out of my funk. Journey should do it for you.
Um… Could we have some grunge? I mean you came of age in the early nineties, John. Surely something more aggressive played by guys in flannel shirts?
And they have pills for when your ennui is languid. Consult your physician if languidity does not return after four hours as this could be a sign of a serious medical condition.
Or just a reason to brag.
Wow. You really are boring today.
I’ll take Dylan anytime
Greg: It sounds like you’re speaking in 80s song titles.
My iPod just blew up. Ferry led to The Cure, which lead to the Pretty in Pink soundtrack. And now I’m Running Up That Hill with Kate Bush.
And it’s all Scalzi’s fault.
The Bryan Ferry that does it for me is his version of “The In Crowd”, which he deconstructs to show the inherent fascist undertones of the song. A friend of mine once referred to it as ‘Nuremberg Rock’.
She keeps disappearing in the opening of the video. I think she may have some sort of phasing problem, intersecting with a parallel dimension. That cuts down on the dating prospects, methinks.
Dr. Phil
I prefer the early glam Roxy, with Ferry languishing against the rise and fall of a wall of guitars and Eno/Jobson’s angular textures. That music was so exhilarating. And then there were the…ahem, album covers. Had to buy an export to get the Country Life cover – it was worth it.
Please let this place be Anna Nicole free. For some reason my wife now feels emotionally invested in her daughter because of the nonstop barrage of coverage of the kid on ET and I really need the rest of the world to be free of ANS.
If loving Ferry’s cover of “Like a Hurricane” better than the original is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
That’s not ennui–that’s just good sense.
Some of you act as if there is something wrong with shellacked, fake-blonde bimbos with big fake boobs? I have two words for you: Sheyla Hershey! Ahhhhhhh, my crushing despair lifts at the sight of Sheyla’s empty-headed, Brazilian bombshellness.
Now, as far as ennui goes, I thought Robert Smith patented the damn stuff and sold it as aftershave? I mean, “Wish” alone has enough ennui in it for ten regular pop albums.
Ahh how I love Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music. His voice is just so remarkably soothing.
I think If we pressure Greg London @ 12 he’ll come clean and admit he is directly quoting an old Statler Brothers song from around “66
You can look here.
The Chorus started at “Counting flowers on the wall…”
OK, I’m old enough to remember the 60’s.
I feel his question’s entirely inappropriate to my social sphere. If the question isn’t a bland “will you still love me tomorrow”. That’s so passive. It has no qualifications. Love songs for the discerning 21st Century Geek will have lyrics like :
“will you whack me over the back of the head with you MA-5 when stick a plasma ‘nade to me and run off giggling tomorrrow”
or “will you watch a back-episode of Babylon 5 with me tomorow”
or “will you still think that the nonlinear absorbtion of energy through a scattering medium is interesting tomorrow”
or “When we re-read Mars Phoenix’s last tweet, will you still cry a tear with me?”
Geeks don’t give their love away on hyperpneumatic boobs or trowel-applied make-up. We give our love where it counts.
*sniff* 192.168.0.1 is the loneliest number…
Oh I so loused that first one up. “Will you still whack me over the back of your head with your MA-5 then stick a plasma ‘nade to me and run off giggling tomorrow” was what I meant to say.
I so ruined a romantic moment there.
Oh I give up.
“Solitaire sucks…”
So did Anna Nicole…but only if you were really old, and really rich.
Jeff S @24 –
I’m feeling your pain about being old enough to remember the 60’s. And with another birthday coming up this week, really feeling it, although actually I’m a 23 year old disguised in a 53 year old body!
Do what I do Wendy and count birthdays in hexadecimal (base 16) – that way you’ll only be 35.
(Or go the whole hog and use base 25 – then you really will be 23……….)
And on that subject, a joke that Mark at least will appreciate:
Why couldn’t the programmer tell the difference between Halloween and Christmas?
Because OCT31 = DEC25
(Ummm – feeling a bit random ATM)
Yeah, but when you say you’re 2A, people give you funny looks.
Dangrgirl@16, not titles, just the lyrics from a single song.
It’s a weird mix of really depressing lyrics sung in a happy, upbeat tempo. non-languid ennui?
oh, and you heard a clip of it if you happened to see the movie “Pulp Fiction”. Bruce Willis is listening to it on the radio in his car.
WendyB_09 @29
I probably wouldn’t be worrying about it as I am but I turned 50 this year and received an AARP card in the mail.
The discounts are all well and good but having that card has all sorts of negative connotations that I have to deal with.
Which I’m obviously not doing very well at the moment…
I’m planning on joining the CDF at age 75, turn green, live a probably short and dangerous life. Oh wait, That’s fiction?
Damn, that means I still have to deal with the AARP card thing.
I think one might characterize Mr. Ferry’s performance here as “limp.” On multiple levels.
Well the Solitaire was a better conversationalist .
Having been introduced to this video by this Whatever entry four years ago, I caught it again via YouTube last night and finally realized that Smith & Ferry are not in the penthouse apartment together — they’re only vividly thinking of each other at the same time in the same mindspace while being physically apart, thus the telephone sequence.
JJB