winter

it's here. it's about 32 degrees outside today. it's time for winter music. that means the following artists will be returning to my stereo:

1. scott walker
2. leonard cohen
3. the rolling stones
4. yo la tengo
5. lou reed

weird how 3 of the 5 are singer/songwriters, not bands.

has anyone watched the new office with andy as the boss? i haven't really liked the first few episodes, but this week's was pretty good. i watched it this morning. i woke up super early today, like around 7:30. now i'm pretty tired. i should take a nap. i don't like taking naps though because i wake up feeling like all exhausted and mushy brained, like i can't think straight.

is it impolite to say you don't want to hold someones baby? i'm not big on holding babies and i'd really rather not in most situations. there are a few where i would, like when ana had a baby. i held her baby. but like people you're not that close to, i would rather not hold their baby. is that rude? can i just not be in the mood to hold babies? is that an affront to the babymaker?

you say tomato, i also say tomato

these are our tomatoes. they are from our garden out back. i posted some photos of our garden about a month or two ago. this is probably the last batch of red tomatoes we'll get. we still have plenty of green tomatoes. the weather is changing and it's getting colder. they don't do great when it's cold. that's why we've had so many grow down here in denver. you talk to people in the mountains and they can't grow tomatoes. we had some strawberries too, but we eat those right out back. we usually jump and down in excitement while we eat them. they're about the size of a dime. tiny, tiny strawberries. they taste awesome though.

we saw 'the ides of march' last night for free. it kind of sucked. i love clooney. this was not his best work. the most entertaining part of the night was the people. there are people there who go every week and line up and stand in line for hours to see free movies. there was a guy who knew like ever fourth group of people. he went to every little group and told each group what an amazing cast this movie had. and then he would name each person in the movie and walk away. and i could hear him each time. he was loud and very excited. and then later, he'd come back and tell each group that he would save them some seats. it was great. i ate so much popcorn though. big time. too much.

death and all of his friends

i don't normally have dreams that i remember. last night was an exception. i don't actually remember the whole dream. i don't really know what it was about in the beginning.

all i know is that i was going to die. i knew it. i felt it. i was scared, but ready. when you die in dreams, you usually wake up. at least i do. so i don't think i've ever really died in a dream or at least i've never gone all the way through the process. last night, i did. i was lying in a bed. and as the time came, my body quickly tightened, not in a way that hurt or was uncomfortable, but it was as if my body made one last gasp. and then it released. and i was dead. my mind didn't stop though. i just left my body. and i think i spent the rest of the dream as a ghost.

but the main point is that i felt my body constrict and stop. i'm not absolved of all my fears of passing. but something about that dream made me comfortable with the process. of course, i could still slam into another car or something like that. i'm sure that won't feel great.

in other news, we went to estes park this past weekend. it was incredible. i love that place.

in other, other news, we had a mouse in the garage. we actually had two mice. one was killed in a trap we set with peanut butter. the other was killed by some poison we left out. the mouse ate so much of the poison, his scat turned green, the color of the poison. we found him in the back of the garage.

in other, other, other news, i took my test this past weekend and i was actual able to look myself in the face after taking it. i have never had that feeling before. i hope it translates into a passing grade.

do you realize pt. 2

it's official. both the braves and red sox are out. the only word is: wow.

do you realize?

do you realize that i could miss two of my preseason baseball predictions on the last game of the season? i had the atlanta braves going to the playoffs, as well as the boston red sox. i correctly nailed milwaukee, philly, ny and texas. i missed on colorado and minnesota big time. but i can't miss on both boston and atlanta too! and on the last game of the season?

i was hoping the astros would do me a personal favor and win tonight and knock out st. louis. yeah, the cardinals scored 5 runs in the 1st! nice way to end the season 'stros.

got to keep the faith that i'll go six for eight. because four for eight doesn't cut it!

does anyone want more youtube videos concerning silver manipulation? because i have them.

the daily mail

talk about a tale of two bands. i saw radiohead on snl. they were gross. then, i just watched them on the colbert report and they were awesome. incredible. whatever four syllable word you can think of. stupendacious.

i just rediscovered my love of peanut butter crackers. i've eaten like ten packs in two days. that's my dinner tonight. maybe i'll eat an egg too.

we're heading to estes park this weekend. no one in denver reads this blog right? well, no one with breaking-in tendencies. i take REG on sat. morning. i've taken it once. i missed passing by five points. i have studied my ass off in these last two-three months. i changed my approach. i accepted that i had to adapt to pass. i feel like i'm there. we'll see. actually the worse part is, i won't see until mid-december. that's a long time to wait. i'm ready. i feel like rocky after he lost to mr. t who's character was actually named clubber lang. he lost to clubber lang and mickey died too so he lost his fighting mojo. but then adrian confronted him and he realized he was afraid. and he and adrian talked and he realized it's okay to be afraid. you have to take that fear and use it as a strength. i was afraid of the test. i'm not afraid anymore.

there's so much you can learn from rocky i-vi. not much for part v, but still.

did anyone see ron paul on the daily show? i love ron paul, but i can't see how the free market is going to keep corporations from polluting and things like that. you need regulators because the market is never truly free. i agree with him on most everything else though. especially his thoughts on monetary policy.

hyman minsky said the market was essentially unstable.

Wilco - One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)

i can't stop listening to this song. i love the first few lines, "this is how i tell it, oh, but it's long."

speak into the rose

i purchased the new wilco album tonight at twist and shout. i also entered into a drawing to win some swag. i guess it's not swag if you have to enter into a drawing to get it. i also picked up the new girls album, the new aa bondy album and a used copy of the jayhawks sound of lies. good pickup.

must be in a good place now

twist and shout is an awesome record store in denver over on colfax. i've mentioned it a couple times with most people. i really like the place. the other day, they had an in-store concert. the lead singer of the fruit bats and the lead singer of vetiver played a little, intimate show. that's them at twist and shout in the bottom picture. so i met demitria there after work and the show was great. i had seen the fruit bats before at walters on washington in houston and i really like them. vetiver is good too, but i'm not super familiar with their music.

anyway, they had a drawing for the concert that night. both groups were playing at the bluebird. and guess what? we won! we talked to both guys and told them we won and we were going to see them at the bluebird. until the concert, we hung out and had a couple drinks. it was a great night. the show was awesome. we stayed out way too late for week night. but it was worth it. you got to get out and get lucky in life. and i think most of the time the luck just has to do with you getting out. plus it was bruce's birthday so i think there was some good karma in the air.

we'll be heading back to twist and shout on monday night. they're having a wilco listening party for the release of their new album and selling it the night before it comes out. i'm actually listening to it right now on npr.org.

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"