from Fuckin' With My Head to Fumbling Towards Ecstacy

Day 534, Session 102:
When/Where: Thursday December 6th - During a quick walk around the neighborhood.
First song: Fuckin' With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock) by Beck
Last full song: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy by Sarah McLachlan
Progress: 1514-1519 of 5568
Total Songs Heard: 1208

I find it somewhat hilarious that a guy who believes that all of our bodies are filled with the tortured souls of long dead aliens who were murdered by a galactic dictator wrote a song called Fuckin' With My Head. (Of course, people are free to believe what they want, and if you want to follow a religion founded by a science fiction writer, more power too you. Who knows, maybe in 2000 years L. Ron will be the next jeebus and Dianetics will be one more holy text that people can be sworn in on in court. (This is assuming of course that 2000 years into the future we're not being judged and juried by the robots that have turned against us. They probably won't have the need for us to swear in. They'll just use their robot nano-probes to drill directly into the truth centers of our brains (where they will, no doubt, find tortured alien souls shoveling coal into our brain engines.)))

Now who's crazy?

I'll tell you who's crazy: MC Chris. Crazy awesome that is. (Worst. Segue. Ever.) I present to you today Fuckin Up My Christmas. The timing seems pretty good as we're only 11 days away from celebrating when the son of god was born in a barn to a woman who conceived him without having sex. Uh oh, that sounds a little bit crazy too. Let's agree to never talk about religion again ok?

Warning: This song contains language of the adult variety (the title should have given that away) and has nothing to do with Christmas.

Fuckin Up My Christmas - MC Chris

MC Chris' first cd can be downloaded from his website.

from Easy to El Fin

Day 221, Session 79:
When/Where: Monday January 29th - In the air between Nashville and Chicago.
First song: Easy by Barenaked Ladies
Last full song: El Fin de la Infancia (Live KCRW 1996) by Cafe Tacuba
Progress: 1060-1075 of 4791
Total Songs Heard: 922

***Updated 7/6***

What happened to June? Apologies for the absence... a short vacation and work and the general feeling that I needed to pull my brain out of my skull and scrub it off have kept me away. And when I was so close to finally being caught up again... anywho, this doesn't really count as a post or anything, just wanted you to know I wasn't gone. More to come.
_______

Ok. Good riddance to you June. The topper to a real winner of a month? Flooding. 3-inches of water in our basement. Goodbye 2 mattresses, a bunch of books, a PS2, a box full of letters from college (ouch,) most of my Dayton radio career (double ouch,) probably a couch, and possibly a rug that we just dropped a good chunk of money on less than a year ago (not to mention the super thick carpet padding that made the carpet so awesome, but that ended up being around 350 pounds of soaking wet grossness.)

So yeah, June was shit.

The good news is, with this post. I am now officially caught up on everything. What does that mean? I haven't listened to any new music in order since January 29th. What have I been listening to in the meantime? Podcasts, lots of podcasts.

Allow me to recommend the following:
Slate's Explainer and Story of the Day podcasts
NPR's Story of the Day and Unger Report
The Onion Radio News
This American Life
and
The News from Lake Wobegon from A Prairie Home Companion (that's right, I recently turned 60)

So the next time I go a month without updating, try listening to some of those and reading this.

What's next? First, another vacation (hooray for the Jersey shore!) Then, the return of "regular" updates written the same day as the listening (what a novel idea!) And if we're reaching... the hope is to have a lot more actual music linked through the blog.

Thanks to everyone (all 5 of you) who kept stopping by during my absence. Things will fire up again around July 13th.

In the meantime, here is the final song heard during the first stage of this project. The title means "Childhood's End." Usually I'm against that sort of thing, but in this case (since I don't understand the words) the end of childhood sounds like a rollicking good time.

Cafe Tacuba - El Fin de la Infancia

from Dutch Wonderland to Earthquakes

Day 218, Session 78:
When/Where: Friday January 26th - In the air between Chicago and Nashville.
First song: Dutch Wonderland by Josh Joplin
Last full song: Earthquakes by Moxy Fruvous
Progress: 1053-1059 of 4791
Total Songs Heard: 906

Busy day here. Rolled the song count over from 899 to 900 (Dutch Wonderland by Josh Joplin) and moved the alphabet from D(ysfunctionally Yours by Wally Pleasant) to E(arly Morning Rain by Gordon Lightfoot). All this while listening outside of my normal train/work based comfort zone (flying down to Nashville for a weekend of drinking/hockey/video games/trivia/drinking.)

Since we've run off another 100 songs, it's time to do the math:

906 songs in 218 days = 4.16 songs per day
4791-1059 = 3732 tracks to go
Of 1059 tracks so far, 153 (1059-906) have been skipped/podcasts/added later/whatever = 14.4% skipped
3732-(3732*14.4%) = approximately 3195 songs to go accounting for skipped tracks
3195 songs/4.16 songs a day = 768 days to go (2.1 years)
Estimated time of project completion = March 2009

Well, that's still slower than I'd like to be. At this point reaching my goal of getting through this entire project by the end of 2007 seems to be a bit of the pipe dream. (Especially considering I haven't made any progress outside of writing these catch up posts for almost 4 months now.)

Dutch Wonderland was actually a place I visited several times during my childhood. Man did I love Holland. Kidding! Dutch Wonderland had nothing at all to do with Holland. Anyone who grew up in Eastern Pennsylvania will tell you that Dutch Wonderland was named that way because it is in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country and that the Pennsylvania Dutch were actually from Germany not The Netherlands. Dutch was a mispronunciation of Deutsch which managed to stick through the years.

Anywho, Dutch Wonderland is an amusement park for kids. But aren't all amusement parks for kids? Well yes, but this place is basically full of rides for people 4'6" and under. There are no looping roller coasters. There is a ride called the Lady Gay River Boat Cruise. (I can't decide if that is open minded or oblivious.) Many of the shows are described as edutainment. They don't serve beer. Yes I realize that sounds kind of lame now, but when I was a kid I absolutely loved it.

My family used to go there at least once a summer. I specifically remember one trip where we loaded the family plus a few more (Mike, I'm pretty sure you were there) into the blue Chevy station wagon (it was exciting because we sat in the back (this was in the days before seat belts)) and we rode the log flume about 20 times. Even when we took my little sister there (she's 7 years younger) I still enjoyed it. I'm pleased to report that Dutch Wonderland is still around so if I should ever have kids, I will take them there (and also to Sesame Place.)

The funny thing about Dutch Wonderland the song (which I love) is that it's a melancholy look back on all the innocence Dutch Wonderland the amusement park represents. I should probably focus on that but, well, how hard is it to decide to be in a good mood and be in a good mood once in a while?

Dutch Wonderland - Josh Joplin

from Dissing to Dog

Day 190, Session 68:
When/Where: Friday December 29th - On the beach, 100 feet from the ocean.
First song: Dissing Marilyn Manson by Barenaked Ladies
Last full song: Dog by Ben Folds
Progress: 943-960 of 4785 (3 podcasts skipped)
Total Songs Heard: 816

Dissing Marilyn Manson - Barenaked Ladies
Dit It All For Love - Phenomena II
DNA - Jonathan Coulton
Do As De La Does - De La Soul
Do Miss America - Ryan Adams
Do The Circulation - Joshie Armstead, Mary Sue Berry, & Maeretha Stewart
Do They Know It's Christmas? - Barenaked Ladies
Do What You Have To Do - Sarah McLachlan
Do You - Jewel
Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans - Louis Armstrong
Do You Love Me? - Fiidler On The Roof (Original Broadway Cast)
Do You Realize - The Flaming Lips
Does anybody really fall in love anymore? - Kane Roberts
Does Cindy Lou Really Ruin Christmas? - James Horner
Dog - Ben Folds

First things first. Despite the fact that it sounds like it could have been a featured song on the "Revenge of the Nerds part 6 - Booger's Revenge (of the Nerds)" soundtrack, I must say goodbye to Dit It All For Love. I don't know why you dit what you dit, but you sure ditn't do it very well.

I'd be remiss if I didn't include the link to DNA. It's available here. Not only is it a catchy tune... you may even learn something.

I was listening to this set about 100 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. I love the ocean (this includes Billy Ocean, who I usually refer to as "The Ocean") and most of the time the ocean loves me (not talking about Billy this time, I don't think he's aware of my existence.) Except for this one time last summer...

The Wife and I were at the beach for a few days after my sister's wedding (where I performed the ceremony. That's right, I've been the Reverend Matt DiMarco for almost a year now. Seriously. I'll show you my ID card.) I usually spend my ocean time body surfing (I'm not nearly coordinated enough for real surfing) and this day was no exception. I had caught some really good waves and was having a great time until one big wave snuck up on me. I got caught in between trying to ride it and trying to duck under it. My feet ended up on top of the wave. The left side of my face and my left shoulder and collar bone ended planted on the ocean floor. Then it got bad.

As my face planted the wave crashed over top of me and my feet came with it. As far as I could tell, the next thing that happened was my feet touched the ocean floor right next to my head (which was still stuck on the ground) and I heard two loud cracking sounds. At this point I finally began to roll with the wave and I also began to wonder if I would be able to get up when the rolling was done. Luckily I was able stagger to my feet. I ended up a little (ok, a lot) woozy, but otherwise unharmed. I never did figure out what those cracking sounds were.

What does this have to do with the music of the day? Whenever I hear the song Do You Realize? I think about the fact that everyone I know some day will die... and the last time I thought I was going to die was during those ridiculous two seconds in the ocean.