nightswimming

another great REM song. definite highlight from automatic for the people.

it's the end of the world as we know it

REM broke up today. i'm not really saddened by this news. i feel more put in my place, if that makes sense. REM's music was never top notch to me. i liked them for sure. but i didn't love them. but they've been a part of the music scene since i started listening to music. i remember "shiny happy people". i remember the theme song to "get a life" was "stand". i bought "out of time" on cassette and let derek gosney borrow it. i never got it back. so i don't mourn the loss of REM. i will miss them because they've always been there. like when a building gets demolished. you don't really miss it. you just sense things are changing.

radiohead, wilco, the flaming lips. i'll feel it when those bands break up. but best wishes to REM. thanks for the tunes. man on the moon is my favorite REM song. i used to play it on the guitar late at night in huntsville after several rounds of drinks.

heroes and villians

november 1st! the smile sessions will finally be released. i've obsessed over this album for more than a decade. i used to put together my own smile versions when cd burning first appeared. i had all different versions. brian singing this song. mike singing that song. add in a barnyard. take out an instrumental. i can't wait to hear every note. every moment of studio banter. the greatest never released album is finally being released.

standing o

npr is streaming wilco's new album.

i have a complicated relationship with wilco. as anyone who's read this blog more than once knows, i bring them up often. they are my beatles. my stones. my bob dylan. my chevy chase. they are the band i hear when i think back to major moments in my life.

being there- i remember listening to this at bruce's house on the upstairs stereo. to be honest, i bought the album because it was a double album but best buy was selling it for 9.99. it was on the rack they have where they feature new bands. can you believe best buy was once cool enough to be featuring wilco? i didn't love it at first. i let bruce borrow it and he dug the first track on both records. so i gave it another listen. and fell in love. it was a little angry. a little excited. a little stunned. in 1996, that's pretty much what i was in a nutshell. in and out of comedy. in and out of new experiences.

summerteeth- this album was in the post-high school, early college nebulous phase. it was at that point when everything seems possible. that the chains are just starting to be taken off your life and it's about to springboard into some new world order. what's funny is that summerteeth is one of the most depressing albums you've ever heard. read the lyrics. jeff is at his lowest on this album. yet it sounds so beautiful. and it was the soundtrack to this new euphoric period.

yankee hotel foxtrot- sam houston. huntsville. 9/11. all those things come to mind. staying up late at EVN drinking or at my apartment playing cards. released after 9/11 right at the beginning of the most amazing period of american history known as bush part two. there was room to exist in that album. i could hide in it. i heard a voice saying things that didn't make sense from a straightforward perspective. they made sense if you looked away and not directly at it. kind of like peripheral hearing. i still rank that album as one of my favorites of all time.

a ghost is born- i had graduated and moved back to houston. i was working the overnight shift at fox sports. i was somewhat confused about how i ended up at that point after college. working at night. working with strange people. i was living on my own for the first time. no roommate. i was staying up late on my nights off. writing. furiously writing. somehow the world looked different at night. a ghost is born is the sound of someone staying up too late. they should have gone to bed. there are extended frantic solos. there are tracks that are quick and cutting. there are tracks that are marathons, leaning on you as you listen. almost trying to get you uncomfortable.

sky blue sky- back in school. only two albums later i was back in school. i was engaged and living with my fiancee. i was a calmer person. wilco was now a calmer band. jeff had reconfigured the band. the sounds were serene in a way. very forward looking while still looking back, if that makes sense. thinking about where you're ultimately going in life while knowing that what got you there can't be ignored. i remember one sunday i had a paper to write and i stayed in front of the computer almost all day writing listening to sky blue sky streaming on wilco's website. i was upstairs right around the corner from where we hid from the hurricane. there are places to hide from hurricanes.

wilco the album- this is a very confused album. there are all kinds of parts of wilco. nothing seems to fit right. and some of it kind of sucks. by this point i was married and wanting to get out of houston. as fast as i could. i had a job i hated but didn't want to leave because of the economy. there were parts of me pulling at me at all times. wanting this. trying to get there. and it sucked.

the whole love- ah, love. not only love, but the whole love. the reinvention is done. i am in colorado. i am working away. things are going well. the pushing and pulling is finished. but although the immediate reinvention is done, there is still work to be done. eventually you accept who you are while knowing you can still be better. little things like making coffee and getting up early make you happy. listening to 'wait, wait don't tell me' on a saturday morning with the windows open and a cool breeze in your house almost makes you cry because it's so peaceful. it's more than you could have imagined you'd get out of life. the whole love is playing too. i'm making lunch with my wife. soon we'll be in the garden. the whole love is still playing.

i think i'm growing old with wilco. and the relationship is complicated because that's what happens when you get older. there's a lot of baggage. but underneath all that weight, is a respect and admiration that pulls it all back together. so there it is. that's the soundtrack to my life so far. we'll see what other songs are still to come.

for pete's sake

i had this really good blog idea about the nature of colorado and how much i love it and then i started watching little clips of jimmy fallon and forgot all the beautiful things i was going to say. i love jimmy fallon. greatest late-night show going right now. i'm not sure about conan anymore. i saw his show a few times while i was out of town and it was okay.

anyway, the nature here is wonderful. that's all i can come up with now. i have eggs boiling in the kitchen.

that smell

well we've got our first obama administration scandal. the cronyism supposedly on the way out with our current administration, well, it's uh....it's still around.

check out the story here.

or if laughing while crying isn't your bag, go here.

dawned on me

today was a good day. i took a two hour lunch. i went to the bookstore and read some magazines. then i went and got a fish burrito. then i went back to the bookstore and bought "the creature from jekyll island" which is a massive history of the creature and culture of the federal reserve. i can't wait to start reading it. then i finished working and drove home.

did anybody else see that sarah palin was involved with glen rice? that's the most random thing i think i've ever read. glen rice? former heat/rocket guard? strange. that's like an article coming out linking carol burnett with steve bedrosian.

the astros lost their 98th game of the season. worst ever. this is officially the worst astros team of all time. all time! well what a way to join the american league. does anybody remember when the astros were relevant? seems like a long time ago. we have the texans now. remember when they were terrible? oh wait, that was last year. i do remember that.

how did people use to cut their fingernails? did they cut them with scissors? or file them down?

we will rock you

i know peyton manning didn't play. but, how can you not be excited about the texans this year?!?!?! i'm telling you. i already predicted them going 11-5. maybe 10-6. but that will totally be enough to win the division. this is the year. texans baby!!

bushwick blues

tomorrow is the anniversary of 9/11. the ten year anniversary i should say. it doesn't feel that long ago, but when i examine the details, it looks like ages ago.

i had just transferred to sam houston state in huntsville, texas, to get my radio/television degree. the morning started the same as usual. i woke up, turned on the television and flipped it to sportscenter. there was some long story on about golf or soccer or something. i had no interest in it. so i started flipping around and to my amazement i see one of the towers in flames. i wake up kassy, who was my girlfriend/roommate at the time and we watch it. at this point, the reports indicate that it was a plane that accidentally flew into the towers. we couldn't believe it. we finished getting ready and walked to class. by the time we walked to class, which was about a fifteen minute walk, another plane had hit the second the tower. someone has wheeled a television into our class and we all sat and watched. needless to say, the class was canceled. but no one went anywhere. we didn't go home. we didn't know what to do. we just sat and watched, slowly realizing this was something bigger than any of us could have imagined.

finally, around noon, we walked home. i called my mom and my dad. i had to make sure everyone was okay. because that day every horrible thought seemed possible. they were fine. so i watched more at home. finally, i couldn't digest another image. kassy, natalie and i went bowling to escape the madness of the day. we bowled for a few hours, trying to get some sense of happiness or normalcy out of that day. finally we went home and i sat and watched more. i called my dad again. as i talked to him, i watched dan rather sign off. he must have been on the air fourteen hours that day. it was after midnight. i hung up with my dad and sat in the dark for a while. i didn't know anyone who died. i just knew most of them were regular people like me with regular families. they couldn't have predicted that day. how horrible. things were going to change going forward. we had the support of the world. we were going to respond and vanquish those that were against us.

it's ten years later. bin laden is dead. we are still in afghanistan. we are still in iraq (that's another story altogether. i'll let history tell that one). we're in midst of a great recession. we have a completely useless governing body. the people of the united states are unprepared for what's coming. how can you prepare for a jobless, inflationary state when you can't afford education, health care or a house? get ready to add food to that list.

how could that one event have thrown us so far off track? or did it have anything to do with it? we were headed towards a recession when bush took office. the dot.com bubble had burst and the housing bubble had not yet been hatched. deregulation was already in full swing. who knows what alternate state was ahead of us. either way, it didn't happen. we must deal with what we're presented with.

tomorrow, and today since i'm writing this, think back to that day and the people that were lost then and going forward in two wars. think about the decisions we've made since that day. vow to yourself that we won't get fooled again. question those in power. a healthy distrust of government/media is what we need. because i have news for you: every time we blame our problems on the poor, every time we blame our problems on gays, every time we blame our problems on illegal aliens, there is a corporation laying off hundreds of thousands of people and using that money to give to your freely elected representatives and senators to court favor and gain more power to cut health care for you and your family, to cut unemployment payments, to offshore their profits and not pay taxes on them, to use forced and exploited labor in other countries, to disable regulation allowing them to pollute more, merge with other companies and grow in power/influence and finally pass legislation to make it all legal.

the poor cannot influence power. only power can influence power.

WILCO - "Born Alone"

Jeff Tweedy performs the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling"

little pad

i've been threatening to do this for some time. so i finally went out back yesterday with my little camera phone and took some pictures of our garden area. the bottom picture shows the many dead bodies of the yellow jackets that tried to take over our backyard this summer. we had a pretty big problem with those guys. this little contraption worked really well though. the next picture up is of one of our morning glories on the back fence. demitria planted those in between the two flower/vegetable boxes and they took off in the last month. it's really cool because they open up in the morning and then close up during the day when it's hot. but now that it's cool all day, that's right all you folks in texas and elsewhere, it's cool all day here already, they stay open all day. the next shot shows the pretty little tomatoes that will be picked in a few more days once they ripen up a bit more. demitria picked eight the other day. and we still have more coming. the top picture shows the entire area. we have two boxes with tomatoes, herbs, jalapenos, strawberries and wild flowers. the bees love it out there. but they don't mess with us the way the yellow jackets did. so that's our backyard that we put together in our denver house. i think when we get our own place, we're going to have an amazing garden because once i pass this test i can't think of anything better to do on the weekends than garden and read economic books. who would have known those would have become the enjoyable moments in my life? crazy, huh?

one sunday morning

could you kill a honey bee?
driving, sometimes
makes me drowsy
and in between
i believe
there are scenes in trees

funeral flowers keep all winter
how natural, is this place
and this piece of prosthetic
pumpkin puppetry
it's all lost on me

i saw a picture of a paramour
dead in a catalog, scratching
mixed screams of heavy confusion
buried in love and redemption
he was never a real authority

whole love

art of almost

wilco is streaming their new album for 24 hours at wilcoworld.net. i'm listening to the first track right now.

caroline says II

last night, i watched lou reed's berlin documentary. that album has always held a special place with me. it's a perverse, macabre dance of stunningly emotionally torturous prog-rock songs. i first heard it after listening to transformer and loving it. the poppy style, the david bowie production, it was great. then came berlin. much like the talked about dividing line in the aforementioned city, this album divided every part of me. i had trouble listening to it in it's entirety. the song cycle follows a drugged up mother who verbally and psychologically abuses her man and he in turn physically abuses her and leaves her. she then turns to more drugs and men of no virtue. then loses her kids and kills herself. that is the album. and when the last note has played, you feel like it just happened right in front of you. i only bought one more lou reed solo album after that.

"sad songs, sad songs...."

popular

i haven't heard this song in probably 6-7 years. i have no idea why superdrag's "sucked out" got stuck in my head today which for some other reason led me to thinking about this song nada surf's "popular". it was a roundabout of one-hit wonders from the 90's. next week i'll be dissecting the primative radio gods, dishwalla and white town. if anyone can name the songs of those one-hit wonders i will personally put a picture of them on my blog and explain why they are a superstar. no cheating though. superstars don't cheat.

do you know the way to san jose?

because i do. i'm in san jose. i'll be here a week for training. awesome? not really. i'm ready to be home. i've been gone for about six weeks of the past seven weeks. the weather is super nice though. i just ate some lame sushi though. and i don't think my a/c works that great. and i just drank some grapefruit water that nearly made my mouth fold in on itself. so pungent. there was also cucumber water, but i chose poorly. i'm not going back down there. the lobby is a like a club. with grapefruit water.

i think i'm going to bed early. i need to post some pictures of our tomato plants. i hate tomatoes but our plants are awesome. we also have these morning glories on the back fence. they open in the morning and into the day, but then close up for the rest of the day. i'm kind of babbling because i'm tired and i just had an hour long conversation at dinner about work after listening to work training all day.

there is no comedy central on this cable. and no russian television like in kansas city.

i just reread this post. it's really just a long whine.

a grand don't come for free

so my buddy from denver is headed to london today to work and hang for about two, maybe three years. i wish him well. i know he'll do great and love it. me, well i'm happy here in denver. but if the opportunity were to arise for me, i can't say i'd say no to living and working in a foreign country for 2-3 years. maybe longer. we'll see. i really like it here in denver. but to live and work in iceland? awesome. france? awesome. myanmar? not awesome. i think i'd pass on that. although i hear they have amazing roasted tree bark. and the government hands out diapers to anyone who wants them. you can't beat that.

tomorrow i'm going to play in a kickball tournament. i haven't played kickball since 6th grade probably. i feel like i am going to rock it. there is no substantial information to stand behind that assessment. just bravado. and little hot sauce.

i love whistling in pop songs.

gimme shelter

apparently there was an earthquake in colorado yesterday or monday night or something. i didn't feel it. i did however feel love in my heart when i heard air supply on the radio yesterday.

in other news, the astros came to town and got swept by the rockies. i didn't get to go to any games unfortunately. but wandy rodriguez might be getting traded to the rockies. i can have more wandy. isn't that all what we want? i can't help but think of a certain beach boys songs:

"wandy, wandy what went wrong? oh so wrong....
we were together for so long"

i wonder if they were really singing about wandy rodriguez. i bet they were.

in other new, fanta has rushed to the top spot in the cola wars......