So, I spend a lot of time commuting these days. It bugs me on a number of levels, but I do my best to fill the time. One of the things I fill it with is podcasts, including an episode of Fresh Air recently in which reviewer Ken Tucker gushed at length about the new Aly and AJ album, Insomniatic. Note: I had to that point never heard of Aly and AJ, presumably because all that time I spend commuting prevents me from sitting in front of the TV while the kids watch the Disney Channel. But the review piqued my interest, so I downloaded a couple of songs (“If I Could Have You Back” and “Closure”), and then spent most of a trip to and from the office listening to them repeatedly. This led to my buying the rest of the album, most of which I really, really like.

This is weird, right? I brought this up with my 16-year-old daughter, telling her I’d heard a review of a teen-pop sister duo, and how I’d listened to some of their songs and actually liked them a lot. And part-way through the story Julia interrupted me to say, “Wait. Are you talking about Aly and AJ?” She went on to explain that while there probably were 13- and 14-year-old girls who listened to them, and maybe even a few 15-year-olds, she didn’t think that any of her 16-year-old friends would have them on their iPods.

So, I guess Aly and AJ have a slightly skewed demographic: pre-16-year-old girls. And 40-plus-year-old men, like me and Ken Tucker. So, again, weird, and even vaguely creepy, I’ll grant you.

And it gets even weirder: A little browsing around on YouTube unearthed the above music video, in which Aly and AJ perform a version of Chemicals React sung entirely in Simlish, with the video consisting of Sims machinima.

I spend my life in a car sealed off from the real world as I zip back and forth. I watch videos of unreal people singing songs in an unreal language in an unreal place. I play Halo (Halo 1; all subsequent incarnations are lesser essays in the craft), and sometimes find myself thinking of Blood Gulch as being more of a real place than my actual backyard. I’ve certainly spent more time there lately.

Enough weirdness. Even in the noosphere, people need to sleep from time to time.

This entry was posted by jbc on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 12:29 am and is filed under music, net.kooks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.