#25: 45,000 Votes and the Radness of La Casa Azul.

To say that yesterday was a huge voting day seems like an understatement--it was our biggest day ever by far, with over 10,000 ballots cast. The the big winner was Fort Collins, CO, who wound up with (drumroll please) over 15,000 votes. Wow! Did something happen there we missed? That was a new milestone for us, vote 40,000.

The even crazier news is what's happening today--before noon, we'd already received over 6,000 votes, most of which were for Jacksonville, FL, catapulting it back into a competitive second place spot.

A little while ago I mentioned my love for Milky Way chocolates, but there is another Milkyway my heart goes out to. His name is Guille Milkyway and he is essentially the Spanish indie-pop group La Casa Azul. The band's music is amazing, some of the happiest, most rump shaking songs you'll ever hear with shades of everything from bossa nova to soft rock to disco--Beach Boys via ELO and Camera Obscura, but that description doesn't do it justice.

Just as interesting is the fact that the co-ed "band" featured in their press photos, television appearances, and music videos is just a fictitious construction designed to reinforce the idea of the band's happy-go-lucky music. The band in the video is actually fake (project mastermind Milkyway writes, performs, and records all the songs by himself) but they are completely cute anyway. I am drooling over that pink dress in the photo.

Although I don't speak Spanish like Danny, I find myself singing along to his songs anyway. I'm sure it mostly sounds like gibberish when I do it, but the songs are so catchy and fun I can't help myself. The tracks exude happiness and cuteness. It's impossible to still be in a bad mood after watching their videos, in which Milkyway makes brief appearances.

Our favorite song of his is "Superguay" (which translates roughly as "supercool"). Despite the bright and cheery colors of the video, the song is actually about an ex-girlfriend who leaves the narrator for a hotshot scenester guy, only to be rendered "insubstantial" by his relative supercoolness. She seems so inconsequential by his side that the former "queen of disco-parties" now "cannot be seen without a microscope."

La casa Azul is seriously the number one reason I want to learn Spanish. Warning: extreme cuteness below!

Do you ever pick up the phone to call somebody and it rings in your hand just as you're about to dial and it just so happens it's the person you were trying to call? This happens to me sometimes and I get super excited about the stars aligning. Something similar just happened. As I was writing this entry about my love of La Casa Azul, Danny emailed me with the following video link. And in case you're thinking, well you both probably saw that video not too long ago and hence it's not too surprising you'd be talking about it now, the answer is no. I haven't watched it for quite a long time. It was just a crazy coincidence and I'm loving it.

I'm curious to know what other people think of La Casa Azul. Do you love it? Is it too cheesy for you? Does it feel like a glorified Gap ad or do you wish you could be shimmying in balloons?

Heart,
Nina