Wait, what?

I have titled this post as such because I have a habit of mishearing things. I often have to ask my friends and students to repeat themselves. It's something I'm working on.

The real idea that sparked this blog entry was the fact that I often tend to mishear song lyrics. I'm sure that I am not alone in this matter, but sometimes I get rather upset when I hear the wrong thing. I'm an English teacher, and I have been taughtt to critically read. Song lyrics are just poems set to music, therefore I pay a lot of attention to the multiple layers of meanings that come with lyrics.

The problem with this critical approach to lyrics coupled with my frequency to mishear lyrics is that I tend to form opinions of songs based on the lyrics I think I hear. When I eventually get around to looking up the words on various websites and I find that they are not what I think I heard, I generally get upset. I can think of three specific times this has occurred in recent times. All three of these instances revolve around a single misheard word, but these words seriously affect the meaning of the particular lyric and/or the entire song for me.

1) Jack's Mannequin - "Miss California"
I initially heard the lyrics to the refrain as "You'll be Miss, Miss California/ You'll be kissed by only me." As I was trolling the internets, I came across the slight tidbit of information that it is actually "You'll be missed, Miss California." And this could be an incorrect or way out there interpretation, but the repetition of "miss" versus "missed" when looked at in the context of the rest of lyrics of song causes me to infer that "Miss California" is not going with our narrator willingly. And that makes me dislike the message of the song a little bit. Instead of me hearing a song about two people running away from the prying eyes of the rest of the world, I now hear a song about a dude trying to sequester his lady-friend. Not cool.

2) Raine Maida - "Yellow Brick Road"
I've only just recently begun listening to the amazingness that is Raine Maida's solo album that features all acoustic instruments, spoken word, and oodles of those deep lyrics that I love to interpret as applying to my life and my life only as if they were written just for me. Narcissist in the house. Aside from Raine quoting T.S. Eliot in this song (and not just any old T.S. lines, oh no. It had to be one of my fav lines from my fav poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"), I initially heard my other favorite line in the song as "We were having a near-life experience." I LOVED the idea of this line, because I've heard all about near-death experiences, but who thinks of NEAR-LIFE experiences?? Brilliant! Then I looked up the lyrics, and found that all of the lyrics sites I checked stated that the line was actually "We were having a mere life experience." How cheap! To imply that these people that are described in this fantastic song are just "merely living" lessened the impact of that line. Thankfully, I have chosen to believe that my hearing of the lyrics is the correct one as I have now listened to the song about 20 more times, and I am convinced of an 'n' sound rather than an 'm.' I have also seriously considered creating a new Myspace in order to friend Raine Maida and message him this very question, "Near or mere, pal?"

3) Our Lady Peace - "Sorry"
Go figure, another Raine Maida related incident. This one is actually a lyric that was not "misheard" by me. I heard the first lyric of this song as "Today's a reason for living." All of the lyrics sites I have checked seem to agree with me. However, Boyfriend hears "Today's THE reason for living." Even though this is not my hearing of the lyric, it still creates an entirely different interpretation of the song for me. Instead of "today" being one of many reasons to live, when we hear "today" as "the" reason for living, I feel that it excludes a lot of other things worth living for. Tomorrow is a pretty good reason for living, too. Oreos, too. Laughter. The first season of Dollhouse on DVD with a super-secret-never-before-aired-epilogue-episode. Lots of other reasons for living. Although I could see that today being THE reason for living would lend itself to those "live for the now" people, I do like my interpretation better, and, since it seems that the interweb agrees with me, I have managed to stick with my reading.

I suppose the moral of this story (blog post?) is that words matter. Actions might speak louder than words, but the difference between "a" and "the" can be broad enough to blow your mind. So, choose your words wisely! You never know what crazy English teacher might be decoding and deciphering them at this very moment.

Things that make me mad #1

I have not felt compelled to blog for quite some time. Shame on me. Anyway.

I like that some of my blogger friends have frequent posts that follow the same theme or pattern. Thus begins "Things that make me mad."

Tuesday, I drove into Manhattan with Boyfriend to go see Our Lady Peace at Irving Plaza. (Things that make me glad #1?) The show was so amazing that I got the idea at approximately 2:35 this morning (approximately 10 minutes ago) to check LiveNation's site to see if there were any tickets left for the Philly show. Yes, OLP was that good. So good, in fact, that I would like to see them again in a little less than a month. That's just dandy, isn't it?

Well, here's the thing that makes me mad. You might think that there were no tickets available. Ah, but there were. I could not get them in the cheaper 4 pack promotion because it seems that there may be not be any of those promotional packs left. Alas. So, I checked for two adults, and I found two tickets available at the $20 price. Great, right? After Tuesday's show, $40 seems like a more than fair ticket price.

Then I saw the actual purchase page. On top of each $20 ticket price was a convenience charge of $10 and a venue fee of $2. Seriously? That made each ticket cost $32 apiece, and seriously made me rethink purchasing these tickets. I understand that the economy is shitty and we all have to make money some way or another, but is it really necessary for a THIRD of the ticket price to be random fees? Why not just say that the price of a ticket is $32 and leave it at that? It looks way better than saying the ticket is $20 and then spanking the ass of the unassuming consumer with a ridiculous amount of convenience charges. I love you, Raine Maida...but fuck that.

I've been doing a lot of reading about the whole proposed LiveNation/Ticketmaster merger/monopoly/cluster-fuck, and I really can't decide if the whole concert industry is going to get better or worse because of it. They say that by merging or buying each other out or monopolozing the concert industry or what-fucking-ever they're going to reinvent the concert-going experience and ultimately make live music by national and international touring acts (like badass Canadian rockers such as OLP) more affordable and accessible to the masses. LiveMaster or TicketNation will then save the world with the power of rock and the concert-goer will be happy and the venue will be happy and the artist will be happy and we'll all get naked together and have one giant lovefest-orgy of happiness. Maybe I'm just skeptical of corporate America, but I really don't see that happening.

I really loved the OLP concert because it was in a venue like The Fillmore at Irving Plaza. It felt like a club show because it was a small venue and we were packed in like sardines and Raine Maida is fucking crazy and climbs balconies. I don't think that I should have to pay $40+ for a club show because of ridiculous fees. I end my rant having no idea what I would like to see happen. I think that $32 is still way too high a ticket price for a show at a relatively small venue, so maybe more people would still balk at sky-high prices if the fees were just included in the face value of the ticket. I have no real answers; I just wanted to bitch for a little. Thanks.