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.

from Hopscotch to How Do You Like...

Day 679, Session 125:
When/Where: Tuesday April 29th - At the desk scoping Craig's List for work and then running a hard mile around the neighborhood.
First song: Hopscotch by Mothfight!
Last full song: How Do You Like the Sound of That? by Amplified Heat
Progress: 2007-2031 of 5907
Total Songs Heard: 1613

After my senior year of high school I finally moved to Ohio to live with my parents. (I think I mentioned that they moved after my junior year, but allowed me to stay back and finish high school. My parents are smart.) This was not a good summer. Everyone I knew (at least everyone I knew that I wasn't related to) was an 8 hour drive away. Now-a-days this wouldn't be such a big deal, I'd be able to hop online and e-mail, chat, even game with those folks no problem. I'm not much into going out, so interacting with friends that way would suffice. But... this was 1994, the internet was still in its nascent stages. At least at my house it was (we had Prodigy.)

So yeah, I was pretty miserable. To compound matters, I had to find a job. My previous 3 high school summers had been spent volunteering/working at a camp for handicapped kids. I loved it there. I knew of no place like that in Ohio, so I was reduced to going door to door at a local shopping mall filling out applications. After about a week of that I was hired at Famous Footwear. Yep, I was spending my summer at a discount shoe store.

I'm pretty sure I was hired to fill a stock boy role, but before long I was moved out onto the floor where I got to spend a lot of time looking at stranger's feet. Have I mentioned I was miserable?

The store featured a never changing line-up of muzak designed to lull the suburban mind into purchasing an additional pair of sandals, or maybe (and this was big if you could get people to buy this) some shoe cleaner (which I took to calling shoe-poo.) I went through most of the day paying no attention to the muzak (truthfully most of my focus was going towards trying to entertain an attractive co-worker (I don't think I need to say that this didn't work.)) There was however one song that consistently drew my attention every time it came on (which I think was once every 6 hours:) House At Pooh Corner by Loggins & Messina.

Every time that damn song came on I went from miserable to disconsolate for the length of the song, longer if it was slow and I could take time for some self-pity. The strange thing, I like the song. I'm a big Winnie-the-Pooh fan. I had a stuffed Pooh Bear of my own that was one of my favorite "guys." (The "guys" were the assorted stuffed animals that made up my band childhood friends.)

Hearing this song in the middle of a long shoe related day made me look around and wonder how exactly I had wound up in the middle of nowhere, er Ohio, so far away from so many of the people I cared about. It also made me sad that that particular era of my life was on the verge of passing on. I was now based out of Ohio. Even when school breaks would come, I wouldn't be going back to Philly and to my friends there for anything more than a visit. I could go back, but I wasn't ever going to be part of that place in the same way.

Sigh (it all seemed very dramatic at the time. Of course many people who would go back faced the same thing, but hey, I was 18, I wasn't looking at the bigger picture.)



In the interest of making this perhaps the wussiest post ever, I will admit there was also a secondary sadness in the song. Despite the fact that I was 18 and didn't exactly play with the guys anymore, that didn't mean that I had completely forgotten them. In fact, that summer, having no other friends in the area, I had taken to talking to some of them when I needed someone to talk to (including Pooh.) I knew that this was not going to be acceptable behavior in a college dorm setting and I would thus be leaving the guys when I went to school. The idea of leaving the guys behind? Also sad.

Stupid song. (Muntz would have a field day with this.)

from Home Soon to Hopelessly Devoted

Day 672, Session 124:
When/Where: Tuesday April 22nd - Mopping the kitchen floor - ah glamorous life (someone please give me a job!)
First song: Home Soon by Oh Susanna
Last full song: Hopelessly Devoted To You by Clem Snide
Progress: 1983-1996 of 5889
Total Songs Heard: 1588

Three versions of Homeward Bound today, two proper Simon and Garfunkel versions and one off the cuff concert version from Fruvous. Hearing these songs got me to realizing that this particular musical treasure has absolutely no application to my life whatsoever.

When I was growing up, my Dad (at approximately the same age I am now) was going out of town all the time for work. He spent days upon days working and driving around Nowhere, West Virginia and Middle Of, Kentucky. Actually I believe he used to go to Hazard. Every time he got back from Hazard I asked him if he saw the Dukes. He never did (probably because the Dukes were in Hazzard, Georgia, not Hazard, Kentucky.)

Back when she was an engineer, the wife spent a lot of time on the road, mostly in Florida.

Even my professional student friends take extended trips away from home to exotic places like Antarctica and Rwanda.

I have been on exactly one business trip in my life. I went to Portland, Oregon and wasn't gone long enough to start thinking about Homeward Bound. I know everyone who does travel for business eventually tires of it, but there's a part of me that is really excited by the idea. So, yeah, if you've got a job to offer me, don't hold back just because it involves travel. I'd even be willing to get a passport.



Two other things I head today that I wanted to share. Being a nerd, I'm a big Weird Al fan, and one of my favorite things he does are his mash-up polkas, so here's one I heard today:

Hooked On Polkas - Weird Al

And being a theater nerd, I suppose I'm contractually obligated to be a fan of "Grease." The movie is ridiculous and I hold a grudge against the stage version based on the time I was on the crew and I almost had my ankle crushed while moving a piece of scenery, but I do like the music well enough. I especially like this cover by Eef Barzelay. He takes all of Olivia Newton John's manufactured Australian-playing-1950's angst and completely blows it out.



One more thing about "Grease." At the end of the movie when Sandy goes from good-girl to bad-ass-leather-girl... am I the only one who finds the transformation totally unattractive? I mean, completely ignoring the "you have to change yourself to get your man" message that it sends, I just find her hotter when she's playing the good girl. Am I the only one? Please use the poll over on the right to tell me whether I'm right, or whether I'm crazy.