MixBlog 1-23-11

Lately I have really been kind of in a rut, even more than usual. The weather is not helping. I hate the cold to begin with, but this winter has been borderline ridiculous. My house is drafty, which makes it worse. I've always thought I'd never really consider moving away from Philadelphia but right now I'd love to just ditch this place and move somewhere warm. I don't know how I could possibly make that happen, with my finances being what they are. Tonight's forecast is for the coldest overnight low yet...

  

...and Wednesday may bring us more snow (or possibly rain). But hey, check out the bottom of that screen cap -- at least people with migraines will feel better today.

Just finished watching the end of the Flyers game. In their first meeting since last year's Stanley Cup finals the Flyers beat the Chicago Blackhawks 4-1. They are so much more consistent this year (despite a loss yesterday to New Jersey, a team that's having the same type of disastrous year that the Flyers did in 2006-07). The win puts the Flyers' record at 32-12-5, and their 69 points leads the entire league. That, of course, means little when it comes to the postseason, but the consistency combined with their depth is a very good sign. Hiring Peter Laviolette as coach was a genius move on the part of GM Paul Holmgren.

Meanwhile, in the strange recesses of my mind, I got to thinking about Taylor Swift earlier. Really.
I was reading the latest Entertainment Weekly (the one with "Glee" stars Chris Colfer and Darren Criss on the cover, for their report on gay teen characters on TV) and their Must List included the video for Swift's "Back to December," saying: "The singer's stark, lovely new spot from her smash album Speak Now finds her bereft on a bleak winter's day, working through her melancholy over the love she let go."

So it got me to thinking: she writes all these songs about ex-boyfriends (I think this one is supposed to be about Taylor Lautner). Now Jake Gyllenhaal is an ex-boyfriend of hers as well. As soon as that news became public the jokes were flying about how she's now writing a song about him. And in that moment I realized something.

Her questionable judgment in choosing appropriate men aside, Taylor Swift can't win for losing. If she writes songs about her love life, everyone makes jokes. But if she turns around and writes songs dealing with social issues -- war, poverty, bigotry, whatever -- she'll be torn apart by most of the critics and probably lose a chunk of her fan base, even if they're great songs. She's damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. Some of this is our fault. If an artist tries something different, we say to "stick to what you're good at." If he or she takes that advice, though, it's "oh, it's the same old thing every time." We human beings are very inconsistent.

So I'm going to try and be a little kind when it comes to Taylor Swift. As long as she keeps her hands off of Jake Gyllenhaal and other men who should belong to me, that is.