Deadsplinter Up! All Night: Taking Comfort in the New Year.

I wanted to do songs about the Asian New Year, celebrated by our Cambodian friends (especially since I was revising the Feng Shui of our home to better work with the auspicious flying stars of 2020.)

But it dawned on me that it might be a culturally appropriating theme, even though I find a sense of peace/control in Feng Shui practice. Just like any belief system, from deity-based religions to more occult systems/tools like tarot or astrology, talismans and rituals provide comfort.

I take a lot of comfort from good music, and from the musical interludes provided by the good folks here on DUAN. Here’s a classic comfort song, CSN&Y Our House. What are your comfort songs?

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About Elliecoo 545 Articles
Four dogs, one partner. The dogs win.

24 Comments

  1. I’m going off topic tonight, as you may have guessed by my name, I am a huge Lakers fan & today is beyond a sad day for all Lakers fans. Trying to find a song for Kobe is hard because he was a very complicated person to say the least. You could have easily loved him or hated him but the one thing everyone can agree on is that he never gave in! Pato Banton – Never Give In

    • Sorry for your loss. I’m not a native Angeleno, but I’ve lived out here for a very long time. I know what he means to this city. He was the embodiment of its ego. There were definitely some complications in his history, but he did do good things for a lot of people. I became a Clippers fan when I moved out here because who wants to root for the fucking Lakers (no offense)? So, I’ll pay tribute to him how he would want me to, and say that I hated his goddam guts. RIP Mamba.

      • I get it. I was born in LA but grew up in Hawaii. Lots of Lakers had second homes or retired in HI. We also got preseason Laker games played there so Lakers became our team. He definitely would have been as motivated by your hate or my love.

        • My hate was my love. Or at least my respect. He and Michael are the greatest basketball players I’ve ever seen in person. And I’m old enough to have seen the Showtime Lakers as a kid. And Dr. J once. And I’ve seen Lebron. But nothing ever looked as spectacularly effortless as watching Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan play basketball. Although the Clips won the time I saw Kobe, haha.

  2. Jeffrey Daniel – Jody Watley – Howard Hewett

    Shalamar!!!

    Both Watley and Hewett would go on to have successful solo careers, and Jeffrey Daniel would teach Michael Jackson the Moonwalk!

  3. This is a good question. Besides a hug from a loved one, I can’t think of many things more comforting than a favorite piece of music. I have a lot of comfort songs. Thinking about this, I’d have to pick something by E.L.O. because their sound is like a warm hug a lot of the time and they were my first favorite band back when I was a wee one. This song is one of my faves.

    • I remember the first time that I heard E.L.O.’s “Evil Woman”.
      I was just a little kid, but that synthesized part in the middle just blew me away! Jeff Lynne, such an innovative genius and he’s still performing his amazing music today.

  4. I think of this as my theme song. I play it when I need strength, to reassure myself that things will be okay, and to celebrate my victories, small though they may be.
    Cat Stevens- Miles From Nowhere

  5. So….. is anyone going to bring up the absolutely DELICIOUS irony & schadenfreude of the fact that because Herb is the Herbiest Herb that ever Herbed, our original half-namesake is missing out on one of the biggest sprotz stories in modern history?!???

    Which ALSO means that Herb and the Vulture Capatalists are missing out on literally MILLIONS of eyeballs reading the Sprotz & Non-Sprotz stories about Kobe which would’ve eaten the DS feed ALL day all this week (possibly all month!), and that Herb&theVC’s are also going to miss out on allllllll those sweet, sweet, dollars from the ad sales they could’ve gotten😈😈😈🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

    Fucking DUMBASSES,in SOOOOOOO many ways.

    But primarily for not understanding their asset, AT.ALL.

    Reading the coverage *everywhere* else, yet seeing ‘ol DS be stuck at that damned old Pats story is simply Motherfucking DELICIOUS, knowing that at least one or two of the smarter Vultures is likely apoplectic tonight, over the loss of that sweet, sweet cash😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈

  6. I seem to have lost the comment I made earlier (my phone is glitchy over here sometimes), but is anyone seeing any stories yet/commentary on how much $$$ Herb&theVC’s are losing, by DS being *still down* while this Kobe (and multiple other folks passing tragically) story is happening?

    Seriously, digging into the legacy of Kobe (good and bad) would be 90%+ of the stories on the old DS site for AT LEAST a full week, perhaps even the majority of stories for closer to a *month.*

    Yet ‘ol Herby-Herb has the site shuttered & the current header is that old story on the Pats’ first loss of the season…

    It’s a bit mind-boggling, and a LOT of delicious schadenfreude, that Herb&theVC’s *won’t* be making any moolah off of it, but it’s a bit stunning, too.

    And if *I* were one of the Vultures on that board, I’d be DEMANDING a meeting, first thing tomorrow AM, and telling ‘ol Herb that he’d better have the site back up with their *one* writer(editor?) by the end of the day tomorrow, or he better be resigning.

    Because the Vultures on the Board are losing lots of $$$$$$$ by the ‘spin being dead–the kind of $$$ which is only attainable from potential news content like this extremely rarely (thank goodness!).

    • …I try to keep the tinfoil headgear in reserve as much as possible but it’s very much stuff like this that leave me hard-pressed not to view the antics of the herbiest herb of all as being quite literally designed to kill off the entire enterprise.

      …& if I’m honest it bugs the hell out of me that they’re getting away with it even if, as something of a sports-heathen, I was never a particularly natural fit for Deadspin?

  7. …comfort song is a tricky one…there’s an extent to which all songs are sort of comfort songs to me…even the ones that aren’t super comforting to listen to…it all depends on the context, I guess…so I’m going to have to go with a bit of a selection, I think?

    “if it hurts me more than it hurts you, then I won’t hurt you – I got more sense than virtue”

    “if you walking round thinking that the world owes you something ’cause you’re here – you’re going out the world backwards like you did when you first come here”

    “sometimes it’s not so easy – ‘specially when your only friend talks, sees, looks & feels like you…& you do just the same as him”

    “everything looks good tonight – & I’m singing”

    “I talked to god, I knew he’d understand…”

    …I’d go on but I ought to be putting together some kind of DOT?

  8. When my first marriage was cratering, I would play “Three Little Birds” on an endless loop commuting to work and back. And I tried to live the chorus: “Don’t worry, about a thing/‘Cuz every little thing’s gonna be alright.”

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