Me and my friend iTunes.

I recently bought a bunch of songs on iTunes and made a cd. In case you didn't already know,

iTunes is rad.

I am an addict. It is so simple yet simply amazing. First off, I am greatly affected by music. Thinking about a song or an artist, wishing I had a cd, wishing a cd I had wasn't scratched, these thoughts race through my head ad nauseum. Every thirty minutes. I wish I was kidding, no I don't, I love it. I breathe it. From an early age.

Fifth grade I started playing the alto saxophone. It’s the easiest of the saxophone family. It looks hard but it’s not. But it’s not a glory instrument either. The saxophone by itself is a bit awkward unless you’re Kenny G. By himself he can be pushy or pressed but with all the other pieces, the timpani and the brass, the alto saxophone makes perfect sense. Sometimes I wish I had picked one of those glory instruments, the trumpet or the piano, but I guess playing the saxophone helped me see the bigger picture.

The bigger picture is enormous. And if you let it, it will make you want to be a rock star.

Standing in front of sixty kids playing musical instruments and waving your arms in front of them, directing their pitch, their pace, their volume; listening from day to day as cacophony eventually turns into something beautiful and almost tangible is a good long way from being a rock star but it’s pretty stinking neat in its own right.

The bigger picture almost always involves a really good, solid bridge. A solid bridge and a solid vocal. And mystique. Curiosity. A good song is like a good date or a well-played hand in cards. It is a good date and a well-played hand. It’s not pushy and it’s also not a sure thing. It cannot be formulaic but it doesn’t necessarily have to generate this larger than life coup de grace either. The bigger picture is framed in subtlety.

So here is the cd I made that makes me wish I could play something well.

Mr. Brightside - The Killers *** so good
Float On - Modest Mouse
Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand *** tempo is an undeniable member of the band
what's wrong with you - Kimmet & Doug *** look out… I called it.
California - Phantom Planet
The District Sleeps Alone - The Postal Service
* - Martha Wainwright *** Rufus’ sister, haunting voice
Cannonball - Damien Rice *** a month ago “O” lived in my cd player
Pink Moon - Nick Drake
Close Your Eyes - Jump, Little Children
Such Great Heights - The Postal Service *** huge fan of this song
The Sound of Settling - Death Cab for Cutie
If She Wants Me - Belle & Sebastian *** Brian Christens turned me on to this
Bye Bye Baby - OK Go
Move On - Jet
Somewhere Only We Know - Keane
Last Nite - The Strokes
Give a Little Bit - The Goo Goo Dolls *** I know it’s a cover but I can’t help but smile
The Shining - Badly Drawn Boy *** wow
Vindicated - Dashboard Confessional

With the exception of Kimmet & Doug, you can get all of these on iTunes, and you should, immediately. Once you have, call me and we’ll start a band.

"Can you do that?"

A while ago I was reminded of "the good stuff". It is mildly upsetting to me that apparently this is also a line from a wildly popular country music song. I will continue as if I never had heard of that song. "The good stuff" for me refers to a period of three or four years while in Auburn where everything was fun and uncomplicated. The future was to be dealt with and thought of in a time and place far from then and far from there. Vague generalities sufficed for who we collectively were to become. Those thoughts were for different people, older people. They were for the poor alumni who failed miserably at discarding serious faces upon returning to the plains of their youth. They were curious with their hair cuts and pressed pants, pressed smiles. They wore school colors for association, bleeding us of our identity. "I was here, really, I was," was the corporate cry of their button down uniforms. We didn't wear school colors. If we did, it was entirely by accident. But you couldn't change your clothes, no sir. By doing so you would have to acknowledge the worst. Deep down you didn't want to leave the good stuff behind. Throwing water balloons at Taco Bell. Walking around in flip-flops.
But you knew you had to. Eventually, you would leave that era, there was no choice. So, to be repulsed by looking like "them", even if by accident, would be to hate what you had no choice in becoming. You certainly didn't want to embrace it but you couldn't rightly hate it either. So you didn't change your clothes. But you also didn't comb your hair.
I was reminded of the good stuff when someone asked, "Can you do that?"
- While at Auburn, we made a movie. We bought coveralls and fake guns. Filmed it in the graveyard by our apartment. Parts of it were of course filmed on location in Florida. One particularly funny line from that film was "Can you do that?" It involved a special-order at a drive-thru window with a deep south Alabama accent. It makes me smile.
When I heard it said not too long ago, I was coolly happy but within moments became sad. The future had crept up on me, had overtaken me. Direction beckoned. I no longer have a drawer filled with balloons. I know people who do and I want to be them and not. It is perplexing and it makes you sad.

Wasted time.

I just typed for two hours about how wonderful music is. How much I am affected by it. What it's like to play a song, to lead a song, to listen to a song. I wrote about a reverant appreciation for how difficult it is to actually sound good and play well. I gave a shout-out to Kestin. I lost it all. I'm so mad I don't even want to try and put it back together. It was really long and I am defeated.

Bluesteel and Magnum

My friend Dan from college giving us all...



Bluesteel.

and...




Magnum.

Crickets and PB&J.

For me, everything in life finds an audience with crickets. Crickets. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yes, also peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When a bad day turns into a bad week, gains speed and becomes a bad month, flexes its new muscles into a bad year; when it seeks out to define you and give you a new name and identity, crickets can nearly always save the day. You see, crickets just don't care, and I don't think they live very long either, but that doesn't bother them. They just wait till dark then sing or chirp or whatever it is you call the noise they make and are apparently ok with that. Crickets sing (we'll call it singing) because they can and because in some sense I guess they figure that is what they are supposed to do, what they were made to do. They probably have no knowledge of a creator or of fast food or cars or that their life is short and insignificant. They don't know this. They sing. And they are fine with that. They die and if you're good you can put them on a hook and catch a fish. What am I talking about? How could I gain any comfort from that?
Crickets help me realize that God really is that big. He created the insignificant cricket and the amoeba for that matter for his good pleasure. He creates the blueprint for, creates a diet for, determines a lifespan for, and builds a home for the paltry cricket. And he says that he loves me.
That usually saves the day, most of the time even a week.
Eventually my sadly garden-variety faith becomes meager faith in the God that created the cricket. The God that says the things he says. This is when I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Then I realize.
A mind thought of a way to turn sand into glass by setting it on fire and devoloped a machine to mass produce this into a suitable container. He met with another mind who grasped the idea of plastics or metals and molds or presses and that mind mass produced a lid for the glass jar. Another mind cultivated the peanut (George Washington Carver), then another mind crushed up his idea added oils and preservatives and created peanut butter. Then comes the grapes, sugars, gelatin, etc. and the mind that figured all that out. At some "New Idea" convention the minds come together with their varied expertise and make some corny joke aobut great minds thinking alike and lo and behold we have a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jelly. If I am really feeling desperate and lost I also think of the bread bag, twist-ties, and sliced bread and the minds involved in that. A lone tear falls on the plate.
How much more complex is my liver or my knee-cap or even my fingernail than a jelly jar? And he fashioned me after himself.
God created an incredible mind. God's existence is proved in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. His love for me (he says that he does) is shown in the great and vast difference there is between that cricket and myself. Despite my shortcomings, he prefers me. He beckons. You are weak and weary, come and rest.
Then I eat the sandwich and listen for the crickets because it's usually really late by then.

Over the ear.

Yesterday I got a haircut. I learned that you have two choices in regards to your hair's relationship to the ear when getting it trimmed. Option one is to trim back the hair but leave it "on the ear". Janet tried this first. My head looked somewhat like a bell. When I pulled my freshly trimmed hair behind my ears it flipped out into the look of mulletdom I was trying to aleviate. Next we tried "over the ear". I say tried, we really didn't try, you can't try with a haircut, you simply- do. We did. Janet cut "over the ear". I am once again 12 years old. A 12 year old with smile lines and developing-crow's-feet. My hair was out of control and this is typically of no concern to me. However, I reasoned that until I write and sell a book (multiple copies hopefully) I should have a hairstyle that is a little more conducive to the selling of automobiles (minus the pomade). Call me a sellout. I should have at least waited a day. Tonight my brother and his "label-buddies" are coming into town for a show. Two days ago I had the dishevelled look of resistance. Today, I may as well be "the man".

It's snowing.

Tony Danza has a talk show now. It is unbelievably terrible. It's called "The Tony Danza Show". He's singing "The Lady is a Tramp" and he's not that bad, it's just a bit offsetting.

Insurance companies are all saving you money. No, they really are. They are all cheaper than everyone else. Everyone saved big money by switching last year. Think about this, if they are all saving you money, there has got to be some insurance company out there charging a million dollars. As long as you're not with them, you're a-ok.

My favorite comedy: Raising Arizona

Jake and I are watching RKO281 and it's pretty good. It makes me want to watch Citizen Kane again.

It's snowing outside. Not enough to sled.