Does this movie have Muppets in it?

How good is the internet? Today I felt like it existed just for me.

First, NPR is streaming the new My Morning Jacket album, Circuital. There’s some weird sounding stuff in there but the more I listen, the more I love – and these songs are going to sound awesome live. “Holding On To Black Metal” is so irresistibly random.

Then this trailer was released for Green With Envy. But much as I adore Jason Segel, there’s something not quite right about this by-the-numbers rom com...



“Whoah wait, wait, wait, STOP. Does this movie have Muppets in it?!”

!!!

So, to recap. New songs from my favourite band and a first taste from the new Muppet movie I’ve been obsessing over for so long. Surely things can’t get any better?

Whoah wait, wait, wait, STOP. Does this My Morning Jacket album have Muppets in it?!

Um. Just about. What I thought was just a rumour I had dreamed, but figured I should google just to be safe, turned out to be not so far-fetched at all. I mean, if you’ve ever seen the Jacket live you know that Jim James is basically a human muppet, and there have long been those who’ve compared his voice to Kermit the frog. But, quoth James to Rolling Stone earlier this year:

Some of the first songs written for the disc, including "Wonderful" and the power-poppy "Out of My System," were originally intended to be played by Muppets: An exec recruited My Morning Jacket to record music for a new version of the Electric Mayhem band (the one with Animal on drums), promising a Gorillaz-style tour where MMJ would play behind a curtain while Muppet holograms bashed away onstage. The psyched band began writing and demo'ing, but the exec got fired and the project disappeared. (In any case, the lyrics of "Out of My System" — "They told me not to smoke drugs, but I didn't listen" — probably wouldn't have worked out.)

James also got a call to write a couple of songs for Jason Segel's new Muppet movie, but they didn't use those either. "So now, twice, Muppet glory has been within my grasp," says James. "It's pretty heartbreaking, but it did propel us just to kick into high gear and finish our own record."

Dear people of the internet: Please, can we start some kind of campaign to make the My Morning Muppet collaboration a reality?

Not because we're far apart

I finally just watched the second half of Paper Giants. God, so good. All the magazine talk, plus all the 70s fashion and design and archival footage, plus the Packer in-jokes... And so beautifully, thoughtfully produced. Asher Keddie became Ita Buttrose so well, I've loved her acting since Love My Way but this was something else. And of course the music.

The chorus of this song, "Because I Love You" by the 60s Aussie band the Masters Apprentices, is so well-known it seems to have seeped into our cultural DNA. I feel like it's been making ads and montages seem 250% more "free-spirited" my whole life. But the best part of the song is the verses, when it is an altogether different creature. Lithe and mysterious, an airy wistful riff that sounds like balancing on nimble tiptoes in the wind. Pretty apt for a tune about hitting the road, the distances between people and the ties that bind them regardless. My sister and I became obsessed with the song for a while when it was part of a storyline on Seachange.

Some of the beard close-ups in the video are a bit graphic though, sorry. Somehow it put me in mind of the Tumblr that's going nuts at the moment, Dads: The Original Hipsters.

Things I Love Thursday: April 14

Can you believe how far into 2011 we are? This year is flying by. I hope you're finding time amidst the rush to enjoy life's little pleasures. Things like:

Rainy mornings + porridge, cinnamon & golden syrup

Rainy nights + a good book + tea + Green & Black's Maya Gold dark chocolate. This stuff is my crack.

Subsituting ridiculous, made-up facts when you don't know the real answers at trivia (after all, you never know when you might be awarded extra points for humour).

This incredible list of flapper slang, which is frankly the duck's quack, the cat's particulars and the monkey's eyebrows simultaneously. Ie, it is fantastic.

Amazing purple and orange sunsets over the Brisbane river. The cityscape gleaming in almost unnaturally golden light, cranes poking up here and there like bendy straws in an elaborate cocktail.
Yoga. Oh my, it is so good. Stretching out all those random sets of muscles, cracking up at all the animal-named poses (cobras, cats and cows, locusts, eagles and the dreaded downward dogs), tantalising aromas wafting from the Indian restaurant down the street, almost falling asleep in the meditation at the end of the session, even the ommmm-chanting is kind of cool with everyone making the same sound in a darkened room. Especially since our instructor is the first yogi I have encountered who actually has a sense of humour. I had to laugh, though, at Garance's all-too-familiar take on yoga - the inching boredom of the class, the awkwardness of the poses, the all-consuming smugness once it's over and raving to the uninitiated about how balancing it all is...

Writing about the impending zombie apocalypse, YouTubing the Bush Tucker Man and researching data visualisations... For my job!

Having a job.

Continually confusing Deerhoof and Deerhunter... Listening to and loving them both, anyway. Deerhoof Vs Evil is fantastic, by the way.

Contemplating taking to Baby Blue's forks with a sharpie, inspired by this amazing bike refurbishment by illustrator Pete Fong. If only I could draw beards that well...

This afternoon I left work on my bike, the sunset fading to lilac and the new My Morning Jacket song in my ears, and out of nowhere had this overwhelming rush of euphoria. Be it slap-up broke pasta dinners with my sister, swapping music with old school friends, Sunday afternoons playing trucks with a one-year-old, road-trip-planning emails from Pakistan or hours on skype with the cutest boy in all of Brooklyn... I feel profoundly motherfucking lucky at how many first-rate people are in my life. I hope you do too. xx

Bicycle rights!

This kinda says it all about militant fixie hipsters... From Portlandia. Don't look the show up on YouTube if you're predisposed to wasting endless amounts of time laughing at hipsters. But just so you know, the funniest clips are "Did You Read...", "Dream of the 90s" and the adult hide-and-seek league.

Handlebar moustache

Stumbled across this great T-shirt design in Brooklyn Industries a week or so ago. Drawn by Bartow, the "Handlebar Moustache" illo was actually a competition winner. Personally it warms the cockles of my heart to see two of my favourite things - bikes and facial hair - united on hipster chests. And there's likely to be double (or quadruple?) the fun when said T-shirt wearers are also rocking wheels and a 'tache.

Don't look now (ok, do) but Brooklyn Industries have a whole heap of bike-themed tees, bags etc. After last week's episode of 30 Rock though, I can't help but wonder whether the Halliburton-backed indie outfitters where Liz Lemon found the perfect (albeit exploitative) pair of jeans, Brooklyn Without Limits, bears any more than a passing resemblence to Brooklyn Industries. For mine the best line was when Lemon reeled off BWL's cool locations in "Gaytown, White Harlem, and the Van Beardswick section of Brooklyn."