Monday, July 28, 2008

To help you through another Monday

Just one more reason I never participated in rodeos as a kid. I'm not really even into watching them, but I can tell you from firsthand experience that it is fun to be a spectator for this event at least.

Friday, July 25, 2008

This One's a Downer

I like funny stuff as much as the next guy, but this post is going to be a bit of a downer. You've been warned.

Put new tracks on the SPs. First is Pedro the Lion. This is a band if you've not heard, you need to get on the ball. That's all I'm going to say about that. Next is an Elliot Smith track. If you don't mind listening to depressing music to hear something good then, Elliot is your guy. If you don't like/can't handle the depressing stuff then maybe it's better not to start down that road. Finally, a Ben Folds track. And yes, these tracks do have a connection... so here's the story.

Back in the fall of 2003 I was living in Salt Lake City and going to the University of Utah. One Friday night they put on a free show and the bands were Pedro the Lion and Elliot Smith. I took Sarah, and met some of my roommates up at the U to check it out. Pedro put on a good show, and afterward Elliot came out. The music was good, but he had to work through some technical difficulties. Once his amps and mics were all cooperating it was a good show, especially since it was free.

The odd thing about it all was that about a week or two later Elliot died. He was 34. It was probably suicide, but there is some speculation about it all you can read about by clicking on his name up above or just google it later. Now, it's not like I think of this often... after I heard I didn't wear black (a la Robert Smith) for a week straight or anything like that, but it is funny the sub-conscious effect things like this can have. I remember that night because Sarah and I were just about to start dating and so stuff like that just sticks out in my mind. I can't think about Elliot without thinking what happened to him, why would you chose to end your own life... especially by stabbing? I just feel so bad a person could get to that point.

So finally, what does this have to do with Ben Folds? Well the new track of his I put on (Late) is written for Elliot (as detailed here). It's not like I knew, or even ever met Elliot Smith, but the lyrics do resonate with me in a way... and the way you can tell Ben Folds is sad about the whole thing strikes a chord with me too. As a side note on the Elliot track, Luke Wilson's character in the Royal Tenenbaums makes a suicide attempt with Needle in the Hey playing on the soundtrack, so at least I can end with a cheerful thought... I'll make sure my next post has something happier in it.

Our Friends in Ann Arbor:)






















Up until this year we have been used to this kind of Fall. :( But now that the Rich Rod era is starting in Ann Arbor we will have football and basketball on locks:) I hope.



Here are a few cute pics meant to tease our dorky friends down the road.







It doesn't get much dorkier than this!














I didn't know they had a basketball team?


















Can anyone say extinct. See the next picture to see what actual wolverines look like in our state.















Wolvie(Cletis), Bo and Fritz: The board of directors of our local trailor parks' U of M football team fan klub, 100k strong. The other 12k people who attend the home games are not members of the fan klub, oh and actually attended the school, and by the way they don't have any children named, Wolvie, Bo or Fritz.





GO GREEN GO WHITE

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Reading List

Since this is a media blog I'd like to put up an interesting reading list. This comes from Sarah, and some other bloggers I guess. I think the list has a slight bias towards women readers, or at least women and guys who like "chick flick" style books. Having said that you'll notice from my list I've read some of them too.
I would also be curious to know who made up this list and how it came to be. For example does this list represent the most read books of the last fifty years or something? Did some random person just come up with a list that they could stack with their picks to impress their friends? Something like, oh look at this list I found that apparently (according to the The National Endowment for the Arts)the average person has only read six of these and I've read ninety-seven of the one hundred. Anyway, enough of the blah blah, on to the list. Note: the four instructions didn't come from me, I wouldn't have written number four as you see it there, but didn't want to bother with changing it. Also I put all the ones I've read as red so they would show against the black background better. Finally, I didn't intend to have any on the list in italics, but for some reason so are posting that way and I can't un-italicize them and don't feel like trying to fix this.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So there you have it. My magic number is twenty-six. I took care of the six book average by knocking out the first six on the list. Note: I didn't mark any of these as particular favorites, but these are some books I really enjoyed in spite of the fact there are a lot of them I won't ever read so number on the list could grow, but will never be perfect. Basically, no offense if you like Jane Austen, but come on... I've read two of her books (and I like them alright) which is basically like reading all her books. Not much changes except the names. And yes I realize that will upset the female readers, but really there's only one and she's my wife. She knows how I feel about this.

I'm also hurt by the fact that I don't particularly appreciate Dickens or Dumas who both have several books on the list. But I like the list idea as a motivator. I know I'd like to read War and Peace, as I feel Tolstoy was a genius. Beyond that I don't really have any specific plans to read any of the others (though I know I will) so I didn't mark any as planning to read as I feel like I need to have made slightly more of a commitment to myself to do so. Feel free to comment as I'd like to hear other's opinions and find out how many people have read.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Tim's 2fer

Hey I wouldn't say that I am quite the music critic that Aaron is but here are two songs that I have heard a couple of times and they make me laugh.  Very creative and funny.

Group:  Natalie Portman's Shaved Head
Song:  Beard Lust
This song is right up Aaron's alley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O7PXeuLYIw

Group:  Hotstylz
Song:  Lookin Boy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZdSSG-FgFE
This ones out to Kurt,  you Hoosier daddy IU lookin boy

I might be taken off the permission to publish list after this post, so enjoy this post while it lasts:)

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

About the SPs

Ok, so a few posts ago I wanted some input about the playlist (which I will now refer to as SPs for Slick's picks because I'm just that lazy) and it turns out I don't think anyone cares too much. Sarah made the only comment that was positive, she said she appreciates a quick peek into my mind as I choose a song and why some songs make the cut and others don't so I wanted to comment on this a bit. This might not interest anyone except her, but I like to write it for her and it's kind of fun for me too. Besides, even if she is the only one who cares about the SPs she constitutes anywhere between a third and a quarter of the readership so I can't afford to alienate her.

With this in mind I'll talk about the SPs and if you don't care about them this might not be the post for you. The initial idea behind the SPs was that because I frequently listen to music at work on headphones, and that I'd make a group of songs that I'd like to hear. Basically some good stuff so I wouldn't have to have CDs and wouldn't have to go looking around for good music every time I used my headphones. At this point this blog was effectively dead. No one was writing anything and I'm guessing not visiting it often. Even though I knew this to be the case I wanted the music to be good enough that even strangers would look at the SPs and get a good sense of my tastes and hopefully find a good mix and some songs they'd like.

With those factors in mind I picked some new songs of bands I wanted to hear, but wanted to have some more popular groups too. So, I know you can't tell which tracks are new to me, but the SPs (that I am already familiar with) represent the things that I really look for in music. I wanted the SPs to represent the good things that people already know (little bits to keep people listening), and to also bring something new to people who might not listen to the things I like that they might too. I wanted a mix of musically interesting songs, but also some with lyrics that were interesting too. Many songs make the list just based on nostalgia and good feelings I have when I think about them or hear them. So anyways, like I said I started the SPs just for me and didn't tell anyone that I'd started writing post about some of the songs and was trying to write more often (though Sarah did know I started the SPs). Anyways, I am now at a point were the SPs are being mixed around pretty frequently. The changes are always subtle, a song dropped here two more added there, etc... and sometimes if one reminds me of something I want to share, or I am particularly fond of one, or I think it's interesting for some reason it becomes its own post. I didn't want the SPs to be overbearing or annoying so they only play if you chose them to. And I fully realize no one will sit and listen to all the tracks at once, but I would encourage you to listen to some of the stuff and you might be pleasantly surprised and if not you can always stick to some of the tracks you know and enjoy and skip through the stuff you don't like.

Well, this is starting to ramble and I do still want to talk about one of the latest tracks so I'm going to go ahead and do that. Added a track by Sun Kil Moon (SKM), which I think is either a really stupid or really cool name depending on when you ask me. SKM is really just Mark Kozelek of the Red House Painters and he started to SKM as new project to distance himself from his older stuff. The track is Pancho Villa, which I figured was about him. But if you listen to the lyrics, that doesn't make much sense. Turns out it's about him. And it's not just about him but about other boxers who died prematurely like him and him, and the album makes references to him and him too. That is one thing I like in a song, (no, not premature deaths you sickos) a good story and it doesn't hurt that it's a cool song musically too. Anyway thought it was an interesting song, album, story.

So I guess the point of all this is check some cool tracks, and feel free to tell me what you think about them. Oh yeah, and if you have dental work done and your dentist tells you to take it easy and rest don't go out and party instead.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Happy Monday

This may come as a real shock, I know I couldn't believe it myself. On another note, how would you type the sound of a cliche French laugh? Hu Hu Hu, is my best guess anyone else got a guess?
I know exactly what you're thinking... how could a country that gave us something so right, be so wrong.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Funny one, new tracks

Ok, so first a funny link. Especially love the "Hey, no fair fleeing over that slightly uneven terrain!" bit.



Also, put on a new My Morning Jacket track (on the playlist that is). It seems to be the most rocking of the new tracks I've heard. I listened to about three or four new tracks and I'm not sure about this new album, but it would be tough to top their last few albums. If don't know these guys, you gotta listen to some MMJ. Their last album Z, is full of great tracks so I can endorse it much easier than the new CD I'm not so sure about. I know the album cover is goofy, but give it a shot. If you're too cheap for itunes, etc... just listen on playlist.com it's worth the time (Note:this site might not be the best out there, but it's the best one I know of so if you know a better one... I'm all ears; lame pun not intended).

What do you think?

Lately I've been hooked on pandora radio, so I haven't been adding things to my playlist here on the blog. So the question is does anyone use the playlist? What do you think of the tracks, especially did you hear something new you liked/disliked? Finally, do you have requests for the playlist, no promises the songs are available or I'd put them on but input is appreciated.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Funny Article

I typically don't read much of the Onion, but my boss sent me this article. We've talked a lot about economics and investing and such. He thought that I'd get a kick out of it, which I did. Likewise, I figure that you guys would enjoy this eyebrow-raising article.

It puts a whole new perspective on the guys who scrounge around during the Spartan football games.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nations_poorest_1_now_controls_two