5 of the Weekend

Time for an update on tunes I have been listening to recently.

1. George Harrison - What Is Life: This song was stuck in my head ever since the Sheryl Crow concert I went to last week. It is the song she plays right before she begins, after the volume is cranked up, on this tour. Many thanks to the people on the forum for kicking me into remembering who sang it. Killer guitar riff if it doesn't do anything else for you.

2. Julien Civange and Louis Haeri - Lalala: This was actually one of the free iTunes tracks a while back, and I finally got to listen to it. Fantastic rock instrumental, I could have sworn I was listening to The Who.

3. Rascal Flatts - Life Is A Highway: This is from the Cars soundtrack. It also happens to be a remake of one of my absolute favorite tracks of all time, and a track that just so happened to be on the first CD I ever purchased. This is a spot-on remake, and it appears in a perfect portion of the movie.

4. Panic! At the Disco - I Write Sins Not Tragedies: Thanks to Blender and others, this group has become much more popular than I anticipated. I find this track very quirky and cool, just beware that it may become overplayed.

5. Handsome Boy Modeling School Feat. Del The Funky Homosapien, Barrington Levy & Alex Kapranos - The World's Gone Mad: This is off an album that Ryan let me listen to on Friday named White People. Fantastic stuff, and this immediately jumped to my short list since it was a Del track I hadn't heard before. Dan the Automator wrote and produced nearly every song on the album, so if you know who he is, that should be sufficient.

(Sorry, no iTunes links on any of these. My iTunes, although I can still purchase songs and listen to my library, will no longer let me search through the music store. It just dies. I'm not reinstalling though, so tough.

The Wasteful and Excessive Department

I thought this was a joke when I first read it. Directv today came out with their latest satellite TV package, the Titanium package. It is $7500 per year. No, I didn't stutter, you heard me, $7500 freaking dollars a year for television.

Why would you pay that much? Apparently so that you can have every single possible channel, all of the time, including all the porn you can eat (hope that didn't make you sick). You just know this will be the latest killer item to have on MTV cribs. "Yo, I got ma tiiitaaanium package right herrrr".

Groan...

Sheryl Crow Kicked My Ass

No, not literally. Although she did talk about jogging/riding on the Cedar Valley Trail, so she is probably in better shape then me too. We went to see her in a makeup concert Saturday night in Cedar Rapids.

Whether you like her music or not, I really don't care. I have liked it from her first CD, and I do now also. I had been a bit down at first on her latest album, but I realized more recently that like many others out there now, you have to just ignore the over-played radio junk, and find the gems on the rest of the CD.

After the concert, I find that even more true. All of the songs she did from "Wildflowers" were awesome, as were all the rest that she did. Her first set before the encore was very long, which was refreshing. She ended up doing over 2 hours, and multiple songs from all of her albums except "Cmon Cmon" before the encore. This also included her new song featured in the opening for the movie Cars (which I mentioned that I saw today in my last post). Excellent song, and it fits the movie perfectly, although I really thought for sure that "Steve McQueen" would have been used -- I guess it was too obvious.

Having seen her 2 other times, this time was hands down my favorite. It helped that we had fantastic seats. It also helped that this was a very rocking, up-tempo show, which I prefer, and the song balance was nearly perfect. She ended the show with a rendition of "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin that was freaking amazing. Between her and the guitar player, you would have thought that Page and Plant were onstage themselves, it was very cool.

The thing that impressed me the most this time though was her wide range of musical skills. She has pipes to go up against any other singer out there, I already knew that. I also knew that she played bass herself on her entire 3rd album, and she did often during the show. That alone just blows me away. However, she also played harmonica on several tracks, piano, lead guitar, and acoustic. Almost all while also singing like mad.

All of this just made me feel pathetic for not even being able to play the bass by itself well. I can write networking drivers, create protocols, and design whole computer platforms in my sleep (sometimes literally). Does anybody get excited by this when I tell them? Not really. When they find out that I play the bass (badly) though, they are always very interested. Sad. I know that this guy is interested in coding and playing bass though, so I'm not the only one with that mix at least. Need to find more time to practice...

Last note. If you play a synthesizer, you are not cool. Your instrument sucked in the 80s, and it still sucks today. Go home.

Father's Day in Reverse

Today was Father's Day. Most of you knew that, some might not have, since it doesn't have nearly the push of other Hallmark holidays. It did seem to me that it was a bit more publicized this year than others though, or maybe I was just paying more attention.

In any case, what I did today would seem odd to many. The stereotypical day is doing something that dad wants, or letting him sleep in and watch TV, etc. Instead, I spent my day working on the family vehicle (because I had to, not because I wanted to), painting the kids playset, and then taking them to their favorite pizza place, and finally to a movie they had been wanting to see (Cars).

Yes, I also love Happy Joe's, and I wanted to see Cars as well. However, it was still essentially a day of getting things done for the kids. I thought about this a bit and wondered why that would surprise anyone. Why shouldn't the day also be about helping out the kids, and doing things that both enjoy. That seems to make the most sense of all to me.

Cars is definitely another hit for Pixar also. Especially for a car/race lover like me. As I was properly warned, make sure to stay for the credits, they may actually be the best part of the movie.

Pictures of some hot, backdoor action

...of my hatrack.

Picture pages, pictures pages, lots of fun with pictures pages

Just thought I would post some pictures of some goofy looking people from the class of 1996. Hollaback.