excuses

with all the great albums coming out this year, one is being unjustly overlooked. the big echo by the morning benders is a freakin' great album. it was produced by one of the dudes from grizzly bear. check out the first track and it's overall beach boys tone. promises, the next track on the album, has a video. go here. you will not be let down by checking out this album. add it the list of great albums from 2010.

don't forget the flowers

this is an amaryllis flower. at my last audit, i was standing outside a building taking pictures of this flower to show my wife and the owner of company, who is like 80, i should say owner and founder of the company comes over and starts talking to me about the flower and he tells me to take three! he gives me his pocketknife and says take it and leave it with the secretary when i'm done and take three of them. that was awesome. what is funny is that i actually went to a banquet honoring this man a few months before hand. he is a kind dude.

anyway, enjoy the flower.

remember the alamo

last night i had a dream that for some reason we had to reenact the battle of the alamo. now most reenactments are staged, where no one really gets hurt or killed. this one, however, was going to be a real, brutal reenactment of the battle. i have no clue how i was picked. i just remember preparing the day before the battle was to take place and looking around going, "tomorrow, i'm going to die at the alamo." and everybody seemed to be okay with it. there were just a few of us, obviously, like the real battle. one was andy bernard from the office. he was there.

so the day of the battle, i called my mom and told her goodbye. she was upset about what was going to happen to me, but didn't question why the hell the battle was taking place in the first place. that's what makes me think it had to be done for some serious reason between the u.s. and mexico, like we had to do it again for mexico to feel better about itself or something. i don't know. but she was sad.

so they bused us over there to the alamo. now, mind you, this is modern day san antonio. so there are buildings all around the alamo. big ones. and hotels and shops and all sorts of crap. they bus us right up to the alamo and let us out and start putting us into place. my place was on top of the alamo, the actual cathedral part. i get up there and look out at about 5,000 mexican troops, who i believe were normal people like me. i started chanting U.S.A! U.S.A!, which got the crowd going, but i felt stupid afterward because i should have been chanting something about texas. that made more sense.

now if you have read this far, you will disappointed because i woke up. just like that. no battle. no start to the battle. nothing. i woke up before a single shot was fired. i had already picked out who i was going to shoot first and i woke up. i was so seriously worried about how i was going to die at the alamo that i think my brain let me off the hook and didn't make me worry anymore. it was terrifying.

that was my battle at the alamo.

here is pitchfork's review of the national's new album.

here is the avclub.