from I'm A Wheel to I'm Gonna Make You Love Me

Day 754, Session 131:
When/Where: Sunday July 13th - Wandering around the kitchen making spaghetti dinner.
First song: I'm A Wheel by Wilco
Last full song: I'm Gonna Make You Love Me by The Jayhawks
Progress: 2125-2132 of 6062
Total Songs Heard: 1653

4 straight Wilco songs to start the day. Of course 3 of them were I'm A Wheel so it wasn't that surprising.

What is surprising and disappointing is news that Barenaked Ladies singer Steven Page was arrested for possession of cocaine. Say what now? One of the guys from BNL and cocaine?!? That is disappointing but, strangely, I wish I was more disappointed by this news. I guess I'm too old and jaded now to be surprised by much of anything among the artists I admire. (Even one whose most recent release was a kid's cd.) The band has taken a wait and see approach to this news and I guess I'll do the same.

(Sorry for that unexpected foray into actual news, I was in the middle of typing this up when The Wife found the story of the arrest.)

I'm Going To Go Back There Someday - The Muppets (specifically Gonzo)

Towards the end of The Muppet Movie, before the big showdown, the gang stops in the desert and sleeps out under the stars. I know I've written about it before, but the sense of home is still elusive. When I here Gonzo sing I also hope to go back there someday. I'm just not entirely sure where there is. I don't think Gonzo exactly knows either which is probably why this particular song connects so well.

I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers

I'd like to think if I had a twin brother, this is what we would sing at karaoke. Use of Scottish accents would be entirely dependent on how much we had to drink. BTW, if you're like me and wonder what this means:

And if I haver yeah I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who's havering to you.

"Haver" means "to talk nonsense" at least it does if you believe everything you read on Yahoo answers.

I'm Gonna Make You Love Me - The Jayhawks

If only the romancing was actually so easy.

1) Find the one you want.
2) Make them love you.
2a) Have them recognize that you're never going to fulfill their idealized view of what they were looking for.
3) Stay together for a million years.

This song is catchy enough to make me think it could work.

from I'll Never Fall... to I'm A Rover (Live)

Day 748, Session 130:
When/Where: Monday July 7th - Enjoying the living room AC before a walleye dinner.
First song: I'll Never Fall In Love Again by Elvis Costello
Last full song: I'm A Rover (Live) by Great Big Sea
Progress: 2090-2098 of 5984
Total Songs Heard: 1645

And we're back...

New computer is up and running with as many scavenged parts as I could manage. (That's right, I went right back in and started tinkering with the new machine. The lesson here? I am probably a moron.)

What is it about June? Last June a combination of work turmoil and basement flooding sucked my will to live. This June iTunes and my broken computer conspired to make what should have been a simple operation into something akin to removing to "bread basket" piece from the game of Operation. (I was awful at that game btw, I have a terribly unsteady hand under pressure.)

So where were we?

I'll Never Fall In Love Again - Elvis Costello

Actual line from the song:

What do you get when you kiss a girl? You get enough germs to catch pneumonia.

Here's an idea... if you're with a girl who seems to have a heavy upper respiratory infection, perhaps you shouldn't be using so much tongue. Just because you were trading tonsils a little too deeply with a lunger, don't assume you should completely give up on love. It can't really be that hard. I had mono my senior year of high school and managed to not transfer it on to my girlfriend.

I'll See You In My Dreams - Giant

I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm fascinated by the whole process of dreaming. When I was a kid I had the idea that you could only see specific people in your dreams if they were actually dreaming about you as well. So your dreams would be a big psychic chat room where you could hold a conversation with someone you know while falling from a very tall building or while trying to figure out why they hadn't told you about the test you were about to take that you had completely forgotten about.

Obviously once I started dreaming about supermodels this theory was shot to hell.

I'm A Rover - Great Big Sea

The Great Big Sea tune I'm A Rover reminds me of the time just before the wife and I started dating. We were in the habit of stopping by the others house after our respective nights out to check in and say hi. (Seriously, we would just chat a bit and then go home.) If someone was still out, we would leave a note on the pillow letting the other know we stopped by. (Yes, we were very cute.) This worked out fine until one night I stopped by very drunk tired. I wrote the note and then thought I would rest my eyes for just a second...

Four hours later I woke up still alone in her room. I blearily stumbled out of the house and made the 250 foot walk back to my place, without seeing The Wife or waking her roommates. My first thought was, "Phew, I got a way with it!" My second thought, "Shit, she didn't come home last night!"

Turns out, neither was the case. The Wife had come home and found me passed out sleeping peacefully in her bed. She left me there and went downstairs and slept on her sofa. Lucky for me she wasn't mad.

Happy Slurpee day everybody.

What's going on around here

So, where are we now?

I'm back from vacation. I have a new computer. We're really down to one problem... the new computer is set up for SATA hard drives, the old one had an IDE hard drives.

What _that_ means is that all my music is stuck on my other hard drive. Yes, I could just load everything back onto the new machine manually, but I'm holding out hope that there's an easier way (and yes, if I were smarter I would have thought of this before I bought the new machine, then again, if I were smart I wouldn't need a new machine at all.)

Moral of the story: we're close, but not quite back yet.

Hey, here's something about music! If The Swell Season come to your town and you like great music and hilarious Irish-accented story telling you must go see them. If you saw the movie Once, you already know how awesome the music will be, but the concert experience part was also outstanding. Glen Hansard is a madman (in the good way) and Marketa Irglova is just as charming on stage as she was in the movie. Also, she's 20! Are you fucking kidding me? 20?!?! Yes, she looks young, but 20?!?! Fuck me. I need another shot at my entire 20s and her 20s just started.

Ahem. Sorry. Anywho, if they come to your town: GO!

These people had much better seats than we did (at a completely different show:)

from Hurt to I'll Fly Away

Day 702, Session 129:
When/Where: Thursday May 22nd - Pounding the pavement on the post office route.
First song: Hurt by Johnny Cash
Last full song: I'll Fly Away by Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch
Progress: 2018-2025 of 5870
Total Songs Heard: 1636

Hurt. I hurt my computer today. Ok, technically it was a few days ago. The important thing for everyone to know is that you shouldn't try to upgrade your computer unless you're sure you know what you're doing.

I did not.

I ended up bricking (see definition 4, try to avoid the other definitions) my machine.

I am an idiot.

My computer is in the shop. I'm hoping it can be saved. (Processors can be replaced right?)

First I can't post songs the way I like anymore, now my whole computer is dead. Bad blogging times.

Speaking of the music not posting right anymore... I need to ask: Is the music I post here important? Do you listen? Cause if you don't, I suppose I shouldn't worry about it, but if you do I need to find a new way to do it. Obviously I have all the songs already, so I don't need it, but I like the idea of sharing. So, vote in the poll and you can help determine the future direction of this here blog dealee.

Not sure when the 'puter will be back, but I do know that posting will be sparse until it comes back (I've hijacked the wife's work laptop for this entry.) Thanks for stopping by, hopefully I'll be back at full strength soon.

from Humble Daisy to Hurricane Eye

Day 693, Session 128:
When/Where: Tuesday May 13th - Pounding the pavement on the post office route.
First song: Humble Daisy by XTC
Last full song: Hurricane Eye by Paul Simon
Progress: 2056-2064 of 5946
Total Songs Heard: 1628

I'm running into recurring problem now where whenever I want to load something new onto the iPod, I have to unload something else. (I've probably mentioned this before.) Today, something else has taken the form of Hungry by Draxon. As I hit more and more of these "metal ballads" I've really started to wonder what the hell people were thinking when this type of music became popular. Sure some of it ended up having staying power, but so much of it is crap. Total crap. I refuse to take blame for it as I'm pretty sure metal ballads came into play while I was too young to be the target audience. My target audience years come with the rise of grunge and "alternative" music so I think I'm ahead on that account. If you're doing the math at home, you've probably noticed that I'm cutting a pretty fine line here. I'm 32, but I'm perfectly prepared to throw you under the bus for the metal ballad years if you're between say 35 and 42. Same way I'm blaming you between 21 and 26 for the boy band era.

Of course, maybe you love this song and have been looking everywhere for it. Who am I to deny you?

His goal in life was to be an echo
Riding alone, town after
town, toll after toll
A fixed bayonet through the great
southwest to forget her

That's how Hummingbird by Wilco begins. This song has become one of those reasons I'm glad I'm doing this whole thing. Somehow when I first listened to "A Ghost Is Born" I missed the goodness of this particular song. I love the idea of being an echo. The faded memory that still occasionally reverberates off the gray matter of someone I once knew... or maybe even someone I didn't know. A path crossed and an impression made that I didn't even know I was making.

I have echoes. They come to me when I sleep. People I haven't thought of in the light of day come and we talk. They look like I remember them even though I know they wouldn't really look like that now. When I wake I usually take a few minutes to try to figure out why I heard that echo and most of the time there's no reason. I always feel good about remembering, even if only for a minute, before the echo fades and the day comes in.

Being an echo seems like a good enough goal to me.

This particular version comes from one of Wilco's live concerts in Chicago. It features a favorite moment of mine from any concert; the moment when the band steps back and lets the audience sing.



(It may be a while before the mp3s show up here. The service I was using has completely changed (man, the internet moves fast) and I'm trying to figure out how to log back in.)

from How Sweet It Is to Human

Day 689, Session 127:
When/Where: Friday May 9th - At the house, trying to work down the playoff nerves.
First song: How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) by James Taylor
Last full song: Human by Josh Joplin Group
Progress: 2041-2048 of 5916 (one skipped podcast)
Total Songs Heard: 1626

How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) - James Taylor: Would anyone ever actually be wooed by this song? I mean besides Mena Suvari in American Pie? Listen, there's a lot of James Taylor I do like but this song is so saccharine that I can feel lab mice getting cancer while I'm listening to it.

(skipped Podcast)

How To Fight Lonliness - Wilco: The best advice Wilco has to give? Smile all the time. BTW, Lonliness is officially how the cd database that iTunes referenced spelled the word. I've been lonely a lot over the course of my 32 years, but luckily for all of us, live blogging doesn't give me too much time to go into all of it.


Howard Is A Drag - The Rake's Progress: At the store on Tuesday I saw the worst looking trannie I've ever seen. Long curly hair appeared real, but the low cut blouse revealed a crop of chest hair and the make-up was doing nothing to conceal the 5-o'clock shadow. It took a lot of effort not to laugh. I know that's rude, but c'mon! If you're going to go through the trouble of cross-dressing, you can at least put a little effort into it!


Huge On The Luge - Moxy Früvous: Perhaps the last original song they released. If you go to their official website, it's still posted on the home page as being new despite the fact that it's been over 6 years. Man I miss those guys.


Hulkster's In The House - Hulk Hogan and The Wrestling Boot Band: The less here the better. The only idea that could possibly be worst than Hulk Hogan having a band would be Hulk Hogan starring in a reality series where he tried to turn D-List celebrities into professional wrestlers. What's that you say? Oh shit. (And yes, there's a good chance I'll watch it.)

Hullabaloo - Various Artists: Apparently Hullabaloo was a TV show. I know absolutely nothing about it.

Human - Josh Joplin Group: And this is where the wife got home and the live blog ends for the day. Go Flyers.

from How Do You Sleep to How Nothing Feels

Day 685, Session 126:
When/Where: Monday May 5th - Running to the post office and back.
First song: How Do You Sleep? by The Magnificent Bastards
Last full song: How Nothing Feels by The Promise Ring
Progress: 2030-2035 of 5908
Total Songs Heard: 1619

Oh those Magnificent Bastards. How Do You Sleep? they ask. How do I sleep?

When I was a kid I slept on my stomach. My right arm was away from my body and bent at the elbow so that head would have been lying on my right hand except for the pillow in between. My face always turned right. My left arm stayed in close to my body. Every night was the same. As a kid sleeping on my back was out of the question, I couldn't grasp how anyone could do it. One of the side benefits to sleeping this way was whenever I slept on the floor (at sleepovers for example) my right arm would end up completely numb. When I woke up with a numb arm and tried to move it, it always felt like the arm had pushed through the floor into the ceiling of the room below. It was cool feeling.

As I hit my teens I added sleeping on my side to my repertoire. This was made necessary by the awesome family legacy of sinus fun. Sleeping became a balancing act... too much time spent turned on one side meant that nostril was no longer good for breathing and it was time to turn to the other side so that all the head gunk could slide over. If I didn't fall asleep by the time the sliding was complete, it was time to roll back over and try again.

The other reason sleeping on the side became a necessary option around this time... sleeping with other people. Seeing as how most initial forays into this exciting new world took place on a twin sized bed, sleeping side by side was the only practical choice. Side sleeping still leads to an arm usually ending up under my pillow. Years from now I'm going to have circulation problems in my arms and I'm going to have to confess that I've spent about 1/3 of my life cutting off the blood to my arm. But hey, who needs arms right?

Eventually I did learn to sleep on my back, and with it, much to The Wife's amusement has come the snoring. I hate the fact that I snore. I see it as another in the ever growing list of symptoms that point to oldness. For a while I told The Wife that she must be imagining things, but then one night as I was drifting off to sleep I was awoken by the most awful sound. Yep, it was me snoring.

Currently, I don't sleep very well. Lots of nights with way too much time between when I get in bed and when I actually fall asleep. If I don't fall asleep within 5 minutes of hitting the pillow I know something isn't right. Two nights ago it took me 90 minutes. Stupid brain.

So how do you sleep?

ETA: The previous poll asking which was the hotter Sandy in Grease (good girl or bad girl) ended up being decided by Mike's vote for "ha ha you watch musicals" (he was going to vote for bad girl.) Good girl Sandy was victorious 3 to 2 (bad girl) to 1 (ha ha.) That reminds me of the time I voted for the third party candidate in the 8th grade elections and Rami Dakko ended up beating Kim Donahue by one vote.

It's that time again.