I’m well acquainted with Layla. I let her sleep on my couch for a few weeks as a favor to my brother. We spent many an evening lounging in my apartment drinking rose water and herbal tea and taking turns cooking dinner. She was a horrible cook (sorry, Layla). I hooked her up with my friends at Avalon Studios. After she coaxed [my friend] Uncle K into leaving Maryland to meet us in Virginia and driving her to the Amtrak station in DC in what was one of the worst Washington snowstorms – the same one that nearly took my [former] personal trainer’s life – is when she seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth.
Until my brother called today and said, “Did you know Layla has a video on YouTube?”
They don’t speak anymore because he claims she stole a song they were working on together. Ah. The never ending drama of the people who provide us with entertainment.
June 21, 2008 at 2:59 pm |
Good for her on the video. It needs a cut away subject in close up though.
June 21, 2008 at 4:21 pm |
Not sure what you mean by that…do you mean too many people in the background and not enough solo shots of her?
June 21, 2008 at 5:34 pm |
They are doing some cool moving camera shots, cheating them a lot with cuts, but they are mostly working and the girl is pretty and the background and background action is interesting. The thing is, the shots are all medium shots or wide shots of focusing on a woman in a turtle neck and leather jacket which after a while becomes monotonous and low energy — there needs to be a focus intercut there that contains close ups and the close up subject could be anything. It could be her face singing the song in a different context, it could be some love story with hands and faces and a man and woman, it could be a flower blooming and fading away, it could be anything, but there needs to be a thread full of close ups, preferably not in a turtle neck and jacket, intercut there to make the visuals more evocative and energized. Does that make sense?
June 21, 2008 at 9:16 pm |
Regardless of whether she wrote it or stole it, fairly good taste.
Oh, and if you’re going to go out and get European slices of cake, why don’t you bring me a slice of sachertorte with Grand Marnier whipped cream, eh?
June 22, 2008 at 12:32 am |
That is hers. My brother was complaining about material written after this song was made.
FFE, excellent taste. I almost always get the Grand Marnier sachertorte. Here is a pic just for you.
Hey, Max, they sell Red Velvet cake across the street from my building.
June 22, 2008 at 3:46 am |
I have never seen the mythic red velvet cake. Is it good?
June 22, 2008 at 6:27 am |
Is red velvet cake good? Does the Pope wear a tall hat on Sundays? Does Dick Cheney’s immediate family wear body armor?
Way, WAY back when my grandparents would take me to visit my great aunt on her farm for Saturday lunch, she had a table piled (yeas, PILED) with fresh corn, lettuce, tomatoes, mashed potatoes, rolls, corn bread, their own ham from the farm and, when you didn’t think you could take any more, a big homemade red velvet cake with cream cheese and sugar frosting that the word ‘good’ didn’t begin to do it justice.
Yeah, red velvet cake is ‘good’ the way that total enlightenment is ‘good,’ that the miracle of birth is ‘good,’ and seeing George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin trying to kill each other was ‘good.’
June 22, 2008 at 6:31 am |
And the sachertorte . . . . there was a bakery near where I worked in Alexandria that made a ten-layer sachertorte. I would spend the four dollars for a slice every payday and drag out the experience for an almost tantric hour.