I was not the first person to have this idea apparently.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Track 21
When the smaller picture is the same as the bigger picture you know that you're fucked.
For so long the only picture I had was to finish graduate school. I had no plans beyond. I had hopes, dreams. For eight years, it was like trying to run through a race through treacle. There were constant questions. Should I try harder? Should I put in more time? Should I put in less time? Should I put less pressure on myself? The answers seemed irrelevant, as it seemed like my expectation of graduation had nothing to do with the quality or quantity of the amount of work I put in. Grad school seems like a presidential election. The election seems to solely hinge on how the economy has performed in the recent past. While pundits and academics sit around study, argue, and debate how much an administration's policy is to credit/blame, no one really knows. It's Mike's area of study and he was very interested in cases where there is a direct correlation, it's much harder to know if our government does anything at all, or whether the US economy is just the engine that has to keep running. The US is the bank that to big to fail among sovereign nations. If I'm the president and my degree is the economy, am I doing anything that brings me any closer to achieving, or am I just on treadmill? Do things just randomly happen that bring me closer (or farther away) from achieving that goal? Is it something that I really want? Is it something that is worth it? Is it something that you wanted? I don't really need to relate these insecurities to you. I'm sure you lived them. I'm sure you know them all. But I can't help but wish there was a concrete answer to any of them at some point.
When you're trading paper cuts for splinters you're out of luck.
What the alternative? If I jump off now, where do I stand? I don't see the happy alternative so I'll just stick with what I've got. "The devil you know..." Isn't that what they say. I wish I could be better friends with the people around me, but I feel like I don't fit in. I feel like an outsider. You make me feel accepted. Some old friends make me feel accepted. But, too often I let my own insecurities of not fitting in get in the way. I've felt that way my whole life, almost. You'd think I'd be used it by now, but I'm not. I can't really replace the people, so if I want to be happy, I should learn how to be happy with what we've got.
Like sharks don't sleep, and I don't take my eyes off you.
For so long the only picture I had was to finish graduate school. I had no plans beyond. I had hopes, dreams. For eight years, it was like trying to run through a race through treacle. There were constant questions. Should I try harder? Should I put in more time? Should I put in less time? Should I put less pressure on myself? The answers seemed irrelevant, as it seemed like my expectation of graduation had nothing to do with the quality or quantity of the amount of work I put in. Grad school seems like a presidential election. The election seems to solely hinge on how the economy has performed in the recent past. While pundits and academics sit around study, argue, and debate how much an administration's policy is to credit/blame, no one really knows. It's Mike's area of study and he was very interested in cases where there is a direct correlation, it's much harder to know if our government does anything at all, or whether the US economy is just the engine that has to keep running. The US is the bank that to big to fail among sovereign nations. If I'm the president and my degree is the economy, am I doing anything that brings me any closer to achieving, or am I just on treadmill? Do things just randomly happen that bring me closer (or farther away) from achieving that goal? Is it something that I really want? Is it something that is worth it? Is it something that you wanted? I don't really need to relate these insecurities to you. I'm sure you lived them. I'm sure you know them all. But I can't help but wish there was a concrete answer to any of them at some point.
When you're trading paper cuts for splinters you're out of luck.
What the alternative? If I jump off now, where do I stand? I don't see the happy alternative so I'll just stick with what I've got. "The devil you know..." Isn't that what they say. I wish I could be better friends with the people around me, but I feel like I don't fit in. I feel like an outsider. You make me feel accepted. Some old friends make me feel accepted. But, too often I let my own insecurities of not fitting in get in the way. I've felt that way my whole life, almost. You'd think I'd be used it by now, but I'm not. I can't really replace the people, so if I want to be happy, I should learn how to be happy with what we've got.
Like sharks don't sleep, and I don't take my eyes off you.
If I've ever taken my eyes off you, it's because I wanted to graduate. Then we'd finally be free. I remember trying to solder a circuit board in the lab with only one good hand, because I was still regaining use of my left hand. What was I even doing? I could solder better one handed than most of the undergrads we might have gotten to help, but why was that even important at the time? You never slept, but did you see any of this? At the time, I was just happy that use of my hand was coming back. But slowly, but surely, this just gave way to despair as that didn't seem to make any difference. And I was just angry at anyone that told me this was a setback, it would take time. I didn't have time. I had seen some of your friends graduate quickly and move on. I was supposed to do that, to catch up to you, so that we could move on together. It must have been really hard to see some of your friends get done so quickly. I know I didn't handle it well when my friends finished before me. Hell, I didn't couldn't even find it in my to be so happy when you got done. My friends/peers became your friends more than mine, though. So that might have helped. But it probably just made things worse when they started to move on too. I couldn't even deal with it happening once, but you had to deal with it twice.
That's the cruel joke that is graduate school. If you want to want to stay healthy and balanced about it, you can't let it define who you are, because you're going to fail a lot more than you succeed. And yet here's this thing that says, "You're going to put in years and years of work, and it the end, it may be fore something, or it might not." How does that not take over your life? How does that not come to define who you are when the prevailing feeling is that if you don't give yourself over 100%, then it's all the more likely it will amount to nothing?
The architecture's shit and my cheeks are all ruddy and bruised.
In the winter it's always cold and it's always so fucking windy. Sometimes, I be in before light and come out before dark. Coming out of the cold the your beautiful cheeks were always ruddy. And in the summer, try as you might you could never stay on your bike. While your, cheeks might not be bruised, but your knees certainly were. You bruised so easily, so delicate.
And it hits as hard as a blow to the head or a smash to the skull or a knee to your chest.
I fell off my bike twice as I can remember. Once, riding my bike back home the dark, failing to find footing as I stopped at a stop sign. I fell into the bushes off the side of the road. An ambulance stopped to see if I was OK. Nothing was hurt (but my pride). That was my only attempt to ride McCormick in the dark. From then on, I stayed on the better lit 52. I wonder, if I had suffered a blow to the head time, would the ambulance have taken me to the hospital? Would I have gotten a CAT scan? Would the cancer have been picked up 3 years earlier? Even if it had, I would have still had to go through the surgery, but still... You know, a lot of people try to tell me the seizure was a blessing, because that's how they found the tumor. Which is a bunch of bullshit. Seizures are what happens when cancer decides to say, I'm going to try to kill you now. There's nothing special or unusual about it. It's just what happens. You do hear a story every other year or so about an NFL player who discovers a brain tumor as part of physical they took when signing with a team. I guess with concussions, they want to check out the noggin'. That's the kind of freak occurrence where it seems like something special has happened. Even I had hit my noggin' falling of my bike, I was wearing a helmet. Bike helmets are overrated.
The other time was coming home in the late afternoon summer along McCormick, I had some nice road burn on my knee and forearm. That time I learned not ride so close that edge of the road that I might go off and have my tire taken out by the ruts next to the road.
Sweet dreams, sweet cheeks. Oh tomorrow. Oh tomorrow. Oh tomorrow.
Sometimes I imagine the singer saying "Sweet Cheeks" in that sort of old timey '40s or '50s manner that's sort of misogynistic. You know the way private detective might talk to woman in film noir movie or something. Sometimes I think about the sweet dreams. I often have sweet dreams about you. I always wondered why your dreams were so bad. I always thought that was something I could fix by sleeping next you. You know, scare away your bad dreams. But I never could.
All these mercy killings have got my conscience spilling over.
(We've paid off the judges and we're taking advantage.)
I probably don't need to tell you how into music I was (or am I guess). I always have too many songs on want to put on these mix CDs. So, partly because I was stuck on my thesis work until almost April and partly because the excess of songs always causes me to start on the next CD immediately after finishing the last, I actually had a most of mix CD I was going to have ready to go for our trip to Alaska ready to go. It was/is (I still have it ready to go) going to be very heavy on singable songs by female artists and songs from the nineties/early aughts semi-ironically included. It's been sitting on my computer to make a CD for over a year now.
And the buildings ornate but it's lacking in soul and character.
(Pleading our defense in binary a smiley apology montage.)
But anyway, my semi-obsession to be constantly in the know about the best new bands coming out had not been extinguished by grad school. Well, the biggest thing cut down on my desire to go out and buy something from an unknown new bad at the local record store was probably when I started listening to podcasts. When I discovered Mr. Tony randomly on iTunes, I all of a sudden had found something to listen to that made me smile and kind of forget about drudgery of things that soldering circuits or aligning optics in the lab could be. I hadn't been aware that he had a show previously, but it was just starting up again because Mr. Tony had stopped doing Monday night football and, it being newly available as a podcast, showed up in iTunes top ten. I thought, hmmm... I'll give it a listen as a lark. I kept up with PTI mostly through podcast at the time anyway. It was really funny and I haven't stopped listening. Of course this was the era of the same day podcast and Junior. (Those were the days.) Of course, sometimes, when I'd kind of get lost in my own head, (which I do far to often. Sometimes I just think I should say everything I think out loud so people understand how I get from point A to point B. Of course, at the same time I enjoy cultivating an air of mystery about myself. Probably too much so.) I'd burst out laughing for seemingly no reason, but I was reliving something that had been on the podcast in my head. (Like the time Nigel had to censor McManus because she said "circlejerk". Really, just a seminal moment because every was so shocked they had to drop Jeanne's audio. The best Mr. Tony moment ever, I think is the time he was trying to read an e-mail that started to make him laugh so hard, he couldn't finish, so he handed to David Aldridge to read and he couldn't get through it either. I wish I could remember the episode, or what the e-mail was about, but it's been awhile.) You got so fed up with me for laughing at Mr. Tony stuff that you started listening to it, so you could understand what I was talking about. I should have known that you would enjoy listening to a crotchety old man every day. I feel responsible for not get you in on Mr. Tony at the ground floor. You missed about a year I think.
We're burning five story buildings laying man traps at the fire exits.
(Like dignity is equal to desperation and self effacement.)
I'm trying to tell a story, but I just can't seem to get through it because my mind gets so scattered and goes off on tangents, so that sometimes I can never quite get back to the original point I was trying to make. This is my greatest weakness as I writer I think. I have to many ideas that come out unformed, and I have trouble reorganizing it into something readable. ANYWAY, I remember enjoying eating at Boiler Market the first couple o' years, because it was Von's was right across the street. Even though Von's was only a marginal record store (no Ear X-Tacy for sure) going to Von's for an impulse music would could kindle fond memories of days when I listened to more music than I could rightfully keep up with and went to shows as often as I could, hopefully with a good friend or two. We always said that Purdue that, Indy wasn't so far away. Chicago was far but manageable. Going to an awesome Six show or two shouldn't be too hard. But time went on. Things changed I guess. Most weekends, all I could think to want to do was relax. But before I stopped going to shows, before I started listening to podcasts, before WOXY went under for the final time, I would put it on the lab (as I was really the only person to work down in that dungeon. Oddly happier times.) It was on WOXY that I first heard the shambolic Los Campesinos!. The last band I formed an attachment to in an adolescent, starry-eyed, "Wow! I need to buy their stuff the day it comes out and go to their shows!" kind of way. The song was "You! Me! Dancing!", which I hope you are familiar with.
Playing feedback over tannoy systems. You look Desperate! You Look Pathetic!
(We're holding on to our own grandeur with careful compliment placement.)
Another reason I've listened to music far less than I used is because of how I drive. Most of the music I fell in love with, I fell in with on long drives. Drives to Cincinnati. Drives to Louisville. Drives through the wastlands of Texas. Drives to West Lafayette because you graduated ahead of me. Drives to go see Mike in Columbus. Drives to see a band just about anywhere in Columbus, Indy, Louisville triangle. Just a lot of long distance that left a lot of time for listening and thinking about why or why not I like the CD I had just put on. (Which is why the CD length album format means so much to me. My CD binder was in alphabetical order so I could find the next CD I wanted to listen to on these drives with out having to flip around looking for it.) I fell in love with music while driving. But a couple of years after coming to Purdue, my car stopped be usable for long distances because of the the fact that bearings in the transmission needed replacing because I hadn't replaced the differential lubricant when replacing the CV joint, as you may recall. The last long distance trip I dared take on my own in the Saturn was to go to Louisville on a a weekday in the summer of 2008 and formally ask your parents for permission to ask for your hand in marriage. Rufus said it was unnecessary, but I said it was important to you. I so got in my car and turned the music up load to drown out the sound of the grinding sound coming from "gearbox" as they would say in Britain. It was 360 miles there and back and I think I sang along nervously more than usually, nervous to be around your parents on my own and nervous that my car would break down, but I couldn't very well ask to borrow yours for the day. I remember you calling me at some point (I had finally gotten a cell phone) to ask if I wanted to have lunch with you and Kari in the quad. I vaguely said that I was busy that day, but I'm pretty sure that once I proposed, you remembered calling me that time and putting together that I wasn't available for lunch that day. Anyway, from that day forward, my car was unfit to drive long distance. Most of my long driving trips were with you from that point on anyway so it wasn't just me and my music to keep me company on long drives. But you didn't replace my music. You were my music.
One blink for yes, two blinks for no.
Anyway, Los Campesinos! was sort of a connection to a bygone era. The last album I bought and listened to ad nauseum in my car before I started podcasting and before I started biking around town more than I drove. The last band I kind of kept tabs on to see if they were playing a show anywhere close. The fact that they used strings a lot and oft performed with musicians in the double digits (but not quite Polyphonic Spree numbers) made them seem like a Welsh guttersnipe version of Arcade Fire. But their music didn't make me sad to be a human being the way Arcade Fire's second album did. But being British/Welsh, it didn't take long for their songs to turn more dismal in the future.
They played Ohio State's campus in 2009. I took trip out to see Mike and the show. My car no longer being driveable, I borrowed yours, fiancée, to make one last solo road trip across the Ohio wasteland. It was sort of a "get the band together one last time moment" although I didn't know it at the time. The show was pretty good. Mike seemed unreasonable excited about the opening act Titus Andronicus who seemed like a loud angry noisy punk band to me. But maybe it was place Mike was in. Mike wasn't really in a good way. He only graduated one year earlier than I had, but that extra year of grad school can make all the difference in your will to live. It didn't help that he didn't get to live close to his fiancée the way I had, although I'm not sure they were engaged yet. He compensated by drinking a lot. I know I always say I shouldn't drink, because I'm a sad drunk. But, I actually have fun drinking when I'm relaxed and around friends. But I'm a sad drunk when I'm anxious. The anxiety changes into detached isolation and sadness. Weird, as most people drink to reduce anxiety. Towards the end of grad school the anxiety took over way too much and I failed to manage it very well. I'd love to go out and get a beer with you right now. But anyway, the show was pretty good, I had fun with Mike, but in retrospect I feel like there should have been a "Get out while you can" sign somewhere. It's really the last show I ever went to. The one I stumbled into in Madison barely counts. Listening to the song I wonder, "Good god, did I officially get old after that?" Definitely, things were to come that weren't entirely under my control that made it hard to stay "young". For whatever reason, in the future, I became more concerned with Welsh soccer teams instead of Welsh music. But this isn't the first existential crisis I've come across since grad school started. Regardless of whether I have cancer or not, whether this is middle of my life mathematically or not, I shouldn't be going through what feels suspiciously like a mid-life crisis right now.
I thought I knew what lied ahead for me. I don't anymore, if I'm honest. The only way I get by sometimes is to hang onto optimism in the face of ridiculousness. This involves (maybe to your chagrin) a hope that my future is still with you somehow. To defy the stupid lyrics that end the stupid song I picked. I would put sad or breakup songs on these mixes because I thought they were still good songs, beautiful in their way. It wasn't anything deeper than that. Some naive idea that to have loved and lost... Honestly, since sometimes I don't listen to lyrics very closely, I'll hear one line out of context and focus on that and turn it into love song. In this case it was, "Like sharks don't sleep and I can't take my eyes off you." That's what I hold onto.
Sweet dreams, sweet cheeks, we leave alone.
And it hits as hard as a blow to the head or a smash to the skull or a knee to your chest.
I fell off my bike twice as I can remember. Once, riding my bike back home the dark, failing to find footing as I stopped at a stop sign. I fell into the bushes off the side of the road. An ambulance stopped to see if I was OK. Nothing was hurt (but my pride). That was my only attempt to ride McCormick in the dark. From then on, I stayed on the better lit 52. I wonder, if I had suffered a blow to the head time, would the ambulance have taken me to the hospital? Would I have gotten a CAT scan? Would the cancer have been picked up 3 years earlier? Even if it had, I would have still had to go through the surgery, but still... You know, a lot of people try to tell me the seizure was a blessing, because that's how they found the tumor. Which is a bunch of bullshit. Seizures are what happens when cancer decides to say, I'm going to try to kill you now. There's nothing special or unusual about it. It's just what happens. You do hear a story every other year or so about an NFL player who discovers a brain tumor as part of physical they took when signing with a team. I guess with concussions, they want to check out the noggin'. That's the kind of freak occurrence where it seems like something special has happened. Even I had hit my noggin' falling of my bike, I was wearing a helmet. Bike helmets are overrated.
The other time was coming home in the late afternoon summer along McCormick, I had some nice road burn on my knee and forearm. That time I learned not ride so close that edge of the road that I might go off and have my tire taken out by the ruts next to the road.
Sweet dreams, sweet cheeks. Oh tomorrow. Oh tomorrow. Oh tomorrow.
Sometimes I imagine the singer saying "Sweet Cheeks" in that sort of old timey '40s or '50s manner that's sort of misogynistic. You know the way private detective might talk to woman in film noir movie or something. Sometimes I think about the sweet dreams. I often have sweet dreams about you. I always wondered why your dreams were so bad. I always thought that was something I could fix by sleeping next you. You know, scare away your bad dreams. But I never could.
All these mercy killings have got my conscience spilling over.
(We've paid off the judges and we're taking advantage.)
I probably don't need to tell you how into music I was (or am I guess). I always have too many songs on want to put on these mix CDs. So, partly because I was stuck on my thesis work until almost April and partly because the excess of songs always causes me to start on the next CD immediately after finishing the last, I actually had a most of mix CD I was going to have ready to go for our trip to Alaska ready to go. It was/is (I still have it ready to go) going to be very heavy on singable songs by female artists and songs from the nineties/early aughts semi-ironically included. It's been sitting on my computer to make a CD for over a year now.
And the buildings ornate but it's lacking in soul and character.
(Pleading our defense in binary a smiley apology montage.)
But anyway, my semi-obsession to be constantly in the know about the best new bands coming out had not been extinguished by grad school. Well, the biggest thing cut down on my desire to go out and buy something from an unknown new bad at the local record store was probably when I started listening to podcasts. When I discovered Mr. Tony randomly on iTunes, I all of a sudden had found something to listen to that made me smile and kind of forget about drudgery of things that soldering circuits or aligning optics in the lab could be. I hadn't been aware that he had a show previously, but it was just starting up again because Mr. Tony had stopped doing Monday night football and, it being newly available as a podcast, showed up in iTunes top ten. I thought, hmmm... I'll give it a listen as a lark. I kept up with PTI mostly through podcast at the time anyway. It was really funny and I haven't stopped listening. Of course this was the era of the same day podcast and Junior. (Those were the days.) Of course, sometimes, when I'd kind of get lost in my own head, (which I do far to often. Sometimes I just think I should say everything I think out loud so people understand how I get from point A to point B. Of course, at the same time I enjoy cultivating an air of mystery about myself. Probably too much so.) I'd burst out laughing for seemingly no reason, but I was reliving something that had been on the podcast in my head. (Like the time Nigel had to censor McManus because she said "circlejerk". Really, just a seminal moment because every was so shocked they had to drop Jeanne's audio. The best Mr. Tony moment ever, I think is the time he was trying to read an e-mail that started to make him laugh so hard, he couldn't finish, so he handed to David Aldridge to read and he couldn't get through it either. I wish I could remember the episode, or what the e-mail was about, but it's been awhile.) You got so fed up with me for laughing at Mr. Tony stuff that you started listening to it, so you could understand what I was talking about. I should have known that you would enjoy listening to a crotchety old man every day. I feel responsible for not get you in on Mr. Tony at the ground floor. You missed about a year I think.
We're burning five story buildings laying man traps at the fire exits.
(Like dignity is equal to desperation and self effacement.)
I'm trying to tell a story, but I just can't seem to get through it because my mind gets so scattered and goes off on tangents, so that sometimes I can never quite get back to the original point I was trying to make. This is my greatest weakness as I writer I think. I have to many ideas that come out unformed, and I have trouble reorganizing it into something readable. ANYWAY, I remember enjoying eating at Boiler Market the first couple o' years, because it was Von's was right across the street. Even though Von's was only a marginal record store (no Ear X-Tacy for sure) going to Von's for an impulse music would could kindle fond memories of days when I listened to more music than I could rightfully keep up with and went to shows as often as I could, hopefully with a good friend or two. We always said that Purdue that, Indy wasn't so far away. Chicago was far but manageable. Going to an awesome Six show or two shouldn't be too hard. But time went on. Things changed I guess. Most weekends, all I could think to want to do was relax. But before I stopped going to shows, before I started listening to podcasts, before WOXY went under for the final time, I would put it on the lab (as I was really the only person to work down in that dungeon. Oddly happier times.) It was on WOXY that I first heard the shambolic Los Campesinos!. The last band I formed an attachment to in an adolescent, starry-eyed, "Wow! I need to buy their stuff the day it comes out and go to their shows!" kind of way. The song was "You! Me! Dancing!", which I hope you are familiar with.
Playing feedback over tannoy systems. You look Desperate! You Look Pathetic!
(We're holding on to our own grandeur with careful compliment placement.)
Another reason I've listened to music far less than I used is because of how I drive. Most of the music I fell in love with, I fell in with on long drives. Drives to Cincinnati. Drives to Louisville. Drives through the wastlands of Texas. Drives to West Lafayette because you graduated ahead of me. Drives to go see Mike in Columbus. Drives to see a band just about anywhere in Columbus, Indy, Louisville triangle. Just a lot of long distance that left a lot of time for listening and thinking about why or why not I like the CD I had just put on. (Which is why the CD length album format means so much to me. My CD binder was in alphabetical order so I could find the next CD I wanted to listen to on these drives with out having to flip around looking for it.) I fell in love with music while driving. But a couple of years after coming to Purdue, my car stopped be usable for long distances because of the the fact that bearings in the transmission needed replacing because I hadn't replaced the differential lubricant when replacing the CV joint, as you may recall. The last long distance trip I dared take on my own in the Saturn was to go to Louisville on a a weekday in the summer of 2008 and formally ask your parents for permission to ask for your hand in marriage. Rufus said it was unnecessary, but I said it was important to you. I so got in my car and turned the music up load to drown out the sound of the grinding sound coming from "gearbox" as they would say in Britain. It was 360 miles there and back and I think I sang along nervously more than usually, nervous to be around your parents on my own and nervous that my car would break down, but I couldn't very well ask to borrow yours for the day. I remember you calling me at some point (I had finally gotten a cell phone) to ask if I wanted to have lunch with you and Kari in the quad. I vaguely said that I was busy that day, but I'm pretty sure that once I proposed, you remembered calling me that time and putting together that I wasn't available for lunch that day. Anyway, from that day forward, my car was unfit to drive long distance. Most of my long driving trips were with you from that point on anyway so it wasn't just me and my music to keep me company on long drives. But you didn't replace my music. You were my music.
One blink for yes, two blinks for no.
They played Ohio State's campus in 2009. I took trip out to see Mike and the show. My car no longer being driveable, I borrowed yours, fiancée, to make one last solo road trip across the Ohio wasteland. It was sort of a "get the band together one last time moment" although I didn't know it at the time. The show was pretty good. Mike seemed unreasonable excited about the opening act Titus Andronicus who seemed like a loud angry noisy punk band to me. But maybe it was place Mike was in. Mike wasn't really in a good way. He only graduated one year earlier than I had, but that extra year of grad school can make all the difference in your will to live. It didn't help that he didn't get to live close to his fiancée the way I had, although I'm not sure they were engaged yet. He compensated by drinking a lot. I know I always say I shouldn't drink, because I'm a sad drunk. But, I actually have fun drinking when I'm relaxed and around friends. But I'm a sad drunk when I'm anxious. The anxiety changes into detached isolation and sadness. Weird, as most people drink to reduce anxiety. Towards the end of grad school the anxiety took over way too much and I failed to manage it very well. I'd love to go out and get a beer with you right now. But anyway, the show was pretty good, I had fun with Mike, but in retrospect I feel like there should have been a "Get out while you can" sign somewhere. It's really the last show I ever went to. The one I stumbled into in Madison barely counts. Listening to the song I wonder, "Good god, did I officially get old after that?" Definitely, things were to come that weren't entirely under my control that made it hard to stay "young". For whatever reason, in the future, I became more concerned with Welsh soccer teams instead of Welsh music. But this isn't the first existential crisis I've come across since grad school started. Regardless of whether I have cancer or not, whether this is middle of my life mathematically or not, I shouldn't be going through what feels suspiciously like a mid-life crisis right now.
I thought I knew what lied ahead for me. I don't anymore, if I'm honest. The only way I get by sometimes is to hang onto optimism in the face of ridiculousness. This involves (maybe to your chagrin) a hope that my future is still with you somehow. To defy the stupid lyrics that end the stupid song I picked. I would put sad or breakup songs on these mixes because I thought they were still good songs, beautiful in their way. It wasn't anything deeper than that. Some naive idea that to have loved and lost... Honestly, since sometimes I don't listen to lyrics very closely, I'll hear one line out of context and focus on that and turn it into love song. In this case it was, "Like sharks don't sleep and I can't take my eyes off you." That's what I hold onto.
Sweet dreams, sweet cheeks, we leave alone.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Track 20
and it's lesser known sequel...
It makes sense why you wouldn't like Prince and think I'm ridiculous. (Be sure and watch the PTI video... Classic Mr. Tony.)
Also...
But it could be worse...
Prince brings joy to so many people (except for record label executives). Just remember, when the elevator tries to bring you down, GO CRAZY!
Track 19
I just like this music. I used to be able to find the video on YouTube, but it's been blocked.
Bring up Season 2 Episode 1 of Mad Men and skip to exactly 18 minutes.
It's even a Valentine's Day scene. I've heard it in other places, but this is the version I included.
It kind of feels like Mad Men is a bit forgotten in the TV landscape these days. Sometimes I feel like going back and watching the early episodes...
Bring up Season 2 Episode 1 of Mad Men and skip to exactly 18 minutes.
It's even a Valentine's Day scene. I've heard it in other places, but this is the version I included.
It kind of feels like Mad Men is a bit forgotten in the TV landscape these days. Sometimes I feel like going back and watching the early episodes...
Track 18
Great Moments in Spoken Word Pop Music
Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah
(popularized with a bit more melody by Jeff Buckley)
Moody Blues - Nights in White Satin
(skip to about minute 6 for instant awesome)
Pulp - F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.
(sexy time - kind of wish there was a video, but it would certainly be NSFW)
Electric Six - Broken Machine
(This is what I get for surrounding myself with technology.)
Dick Valentine is king of the spoken work interlude, but "Broken Machine" is the apex of his prowess.
The White Stripes - The Union Forever
Weird Al - Albuquerque
(I think this is really funny.)
Leonard Nemoy - Ballad of Bilbo Baggins
(I guess he kind of sings? - R.I.P. Spock)
William Shatner - Everything
(His entire life is a spoken word pop song.)
(More Pulp!)
Jimmy Dean - Big Bad John
(I prefer this ridiculous political ad as featured on the Daily Show.)
C.W. McCall - Convoy
(What's funnier, the original or The Simpsons?)
Lou Reed - Take a Walk on the Wild Side
Saul Williams - List of Demands
(Sure, I could list about any rap song, but I've gone way of the rails by now. And there is a legit spoken interlude.)
Das Racist - Combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell
(Really, the zenith of what the genre is capable of.)
Monday, March 2, 2015
Track 17
Part 3 of 3
Three songs called Blue Jeans!
Three!
THREE!
THREEEEEEEEEEEE!
3!
YAHTZEE! It's a record.
Regarding the actual song...
Does it make you think about coffee?
You fail at advertising Nespresso!
The eternal question remains: is Lana Del Rey talented?
(Can you hear that insane cackle when Kristin Wiig first comes out as Lana Del Rey? Someone's a little too excited.)
(I know you remember those movies we watched with Kris Carlson. Never got to the last one though.)
Anyway, I think Lana Del Rey is good, if not a little inconsistent. Maybe something like Taquan Dean, and who didn't like Taquan Dean?
Three songs called Blue Jeans!
Three!
THREE!
THREEEEEEEEEEEE!
3!
YAHTZEE! It's a record.
Regarding the actual song...
Does it make you think about coffee?
You fail at advertising Nespresso!
The eternal question remains: is Lana Del Rey talented?
(Can you hear that insane cackle when Kristin Wiig first comes out as Lana Del Rey? Someone's a little too excited.)
I actually was captivated by her on SNL. I had never heard her before and even if wasn't well performed, it was something different. It was clear there was something there. It was enough to get me to pick up her album at the library. Now it's not great. The songs are sometimes a little thin on ideas, but the production is all atmosphere that is both lush and has an air of desolation. Sometime it sounds like an appropriate soundtrack for a Sergio Leone spaghetti western.
(I know you remember those movies we watched with Kris Carlson. Never got to the last one though.)
Anyway, I think Lana Del Rey is good, if not a little inconsistent. Maybe something like Taquan Dean, and who didn't like Taquan Dean?
Besides, at some point I get tired of trying to figure if something measures up, nitpicking it to make sure I've analyzed it critically and my opinion is valid. Sometimes I'd just like to go with my gut reaction. Congratulations Lana Del Rey, my gut reaction is to like you! If Jon Snow can find himself taken in my an attractive redheaded siren, why can't I?
By the way, you remember how Keeping Up With the Kardashians usually came on before an episode of The Soup, because E! would rerun the shit out of that show. Well, I distinctly remember seeing a "Next Week On..." teaser for Kardashians where Kim says, "We're a ride-or-die family..." completely unironically. (Sometimes I wonder if Kim Kardashian is an ironic piece of performance art that ended up surpassing Andy Kaufman's wildest dreams...) Anyway, I was going to try to find that clip to work into this piece and quickly realized that that was an avenue of the internet I'd rather not turn down...
Track 16
"Did he just say Blur was the best Britpop band?"
"I believe he did."
"Well, he's wrong."
"You try telling him that, he seems very opinionated."
"What did he write on the twitter last time?"
"I think it was something like this."
"Hmm... well he likes Blur."
"I think he does."
"But it's obvious that he should like Pulp more."
"Why is that?"
"On general principle."
"What principle?"
"What's more British? Popular rock stars living a lavish life of excess, or railing against the injustices inherent in a classist society, while simultaneously acknowledging the crippling depression the extends from knowledge that they are powerless against it."
"You said British right?"
"Yep."
"I'll go with the depressing one."
"I know, right?"
"Maybe he doesn't like depressing songs."
"I don't think that's the case."
"Jeez, and I thought I had problems."
"How long did it take you to get through grad school?"
"I didn't go to grad school."
"Clever boy."
"Still, Pulp is better."
"Because they can write sad songs that sound happy?"
"It's a special skill."
"When was he born?"
"1983."
"When did Pulp first album come out?"
"According to Wikipedia... 1983."
"So you think he should have fallen in love with a band while in the womb instead of when he was a teenager?"
"They weren't popular until the 90's anyway."
"How long were they popular?"
"Accoring to Wikipedia... '92 to '96."
"How many albums in that time?"
"Three."
"How many Blur albums did he just say he liked?"
"Five?"
"Quantity over quality."
"I guess. Well someone build him a time machine, because if he liked Blur, he should have loved Pulp."
"You really think that's what he'd do with a time machine? Go back so he could be a fan of Pulp contemporaneously? I think he'd have some other things to fix first."
"Maybe, but I doubt this wouldn't fuck with the space time continuum as much."
"Are we assuming Terminator/Back the Future rules or Star Trek reboot rules?"
"The only rules that even make a nod towards scientific reality is Primer."
"Shit, he'd fifty before he could do anything about it then. Would he even still care?"
"I feel like we've gone a little off topic..."
* * *
For no particular reason, here's another really good song by Pulp.
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