One Sick Psi Guy: Voting fever!!!

Everywhere its voting, voting, and more voting. There's the US Presidential elections, the Malaysian General Elections, American Idol selections and UK elections. First things first, US Presidential elections which are of no major concern to me ... too lazy to read up on the voting rights, details, constitutions etc (unlike my cousin 'cos its part of her ADP core subjects, hee hee hee). What I do like however is seeing how people make fun of these elections. MadTV (of which I was and still am a big fan of) had a hilarious sketch that parodied Hilary Clinton and Obama with the song Umbrella (Under-ba-rack-O-ba-ma, ba-ma, ba-ma hey hey hey).

********************

Next up are the American Idol competitions. This week the guys were once again stronger than the girls in my opinion. The one Idol that got my vote this week was David Cook with his rendition of Lionel Ritchie's classic 'Hello' in rock ballad style ... top marks for reinventing the song and giving it a new edge. Who'd have thought that such a slow ballad could work so well with a nasty bass line with electric guitars and drums. In one word ... cool. You can view that video clip here

Looking back, I realised how much I love remakes and rearrangements of classic songs such as

Blake Lewis and his own beat-boxing style to Bon Jovi's You Give Love a Bad Name.
Baz Luhrman remixing and fusing various songs in Moulin Rouge.
Whitney Houston and Brandy with Rodger & Hammerstein's classic Cinderella in the Disney TV remake.
Paul Oakenfold's remix of Elvis' Rubberneckin
Jay Z and Linkin Park's Numb Encore
THe OST to Alvin & the Chipmunks with their takes on Daniel Powter's Bad Day and their own classic Witch Doctor (so cute)
Marié Digby's Umbrella ... 'ella ... 'ella

But then there are the bad ones too

Britney's retake on I love rock & roll was a poor copy of Joan Jett's version
Meatloaf's horrendous Its all coming back to me now
MSP's Umbrella

Anyways, to sum it up ... I love the concept of remixing and rearranging a song to make it fresh. Those familar with my arrangements will notice this very obviously in my scores. Its always great to have that surprise factor running alongside familiarity of a song.

********************

Moving on, the Malaysian general elections. What can I say about this ... I'm neither pro or against any party though I do have some opinions on what the candidates are talking about. I won't voice them out here though as they are my own thoughts and I don't intend this to be a political blog. With two days to go, things are still pretty low-key except for a few issues such as the last minute decision of not using indelible ink to mark voters thus resulting in the EC chief's property being vandalised.

The banners, flags and colours have been flying everywhere for the past two weeks but I'm estimating the bulk of it represents the BN party. Not only content with on road advertising, they have TV ads, online ads and emails coming in ... sheesh talk about mass campaigning efforts. It's literarily stuffing information down my throat (which by the way is still VERY sore).

Driving around to and from work its obvious to see which housing areas have more Chinese, Malay or Indians based on the flags. Places like Puchong and Damansara areas are very Chinese biased with majority of BN and DAP banners but go into places like Pulau Meranti and Kayu Ara is where you start seeing flags or green moons and blue eyes (PAS and PKR for those not in the know). Funny thing is, drive all the way to Cyberjaya and you see absolutely nothing ... not one flag, not one banner. Its like the place has been excluded from the elections chaos, else nobody is bothered. I think it falls under the Sepang district so I guess their efforts of campaigning is probably more focused at housing areas.