dessa is good company

Sometimes I listen to Dessa because I have a penchant for smooth easy going stuff during the work day. Maybe that balances out listening to people complain about printers like it's the end of the world.

Music videos are so funny, the masks and furries theme is just about as played out as referencing "whiskey" in a song. Tell me it's not! Like, if you really think about it man... (that phrase is high speak). But the whiskey thing, it's part of a checklist used in alt rock country southern rock. Funny how people feel the need to subscribe to a particular culture and fit into it perfectly. Shit, I play alt rock country folk, gotta talk about whiskey and the battles I constantly lose against it.

Oh yeah, Dessa has a song called "children's work" about growing up with her brother. This line really says a lot to me remembering my childhood and now with raising my own kids - "children aren't as simple as we'd like think". Someone made this video for it and it's really hard to focus on the song while watching it because, well, it's hilarious in a bad way. Try and get through it without laughing, if you can you have no soul.

the process

More specifically, the creative process. The other day Jerm came by and put down some bass tracks on some songs that I wrote. While he was here he mentioned something that was pretty interesting to me about what the point was of recording the music and/or playing shows. What's the end goal? It was striking to me because it wasn't something that I hadn't really given any thought to. I responded something about the mental exercise of it, which I believe to be true.
What I also believe to be true is they enjoyment of the process. The creative process, personally pushing myself to learn to play better and make music. The art form and the mathematical approach to creating music. Blending something so analytical as time and measures while making it interesting to listen to isn't really that easy for me. I can be so regimented in my 4 bars of this and then 4 or 8 bars or that. While trying to incorporate the same techniques that make the music I enjoy in my own music. I'm an amateur, a beginner. I try to ape the bands I enjoy stylistically. I might even try to rip them off more completely if I knew how. (Isn't it strange to bite your idols when the whole reason you liked them in the first place is their shit wasn't recycled? - Aesop Rock)
I don't live entirely in a vacuum when it comes to music, I want people to enjoy it. I do enjoy some validation for my creations, I'd be lying if I said any different. Although, I would still create music regardless if anyone was going to hear it. As it is now only a few of my friends have heard my music, I've yet to make a myspace page for it so the same half dozen friends could hear it, or otherwise promote it.
What you can count on is that I'll write a complete record within the next year. I'll make artwork for it and hopefully get some more collaboration from my friends.
Create something today my friends!

Jonah Keri is a funny guy

“Do Pat Burrell+David Ortiz slump into their beanbag chairs, devour Bugles + commiserate on their Hello Kitty phones over their pending DFAs?” - Jonah Keri tweet and the corresponding image. The idea of Burrell and Ortiz having Hello Kitty cell phones is awesome and not totally unbelieveable.

Morgan Ensbergs Blog

Is really pretty interesting for coming from a ex pro ball player. I know that sounds mean to say but listening to a lot of pros is bad enough, reading them is even worse.
Perfect example, color analysts from baseball telecasts that are ex players (AHEM Kevin Kennedy not everyone wants to hear your thoughts on catching every night). Or even worse, ESPN guys like Aaron Boone. I know you played the game and were good at it, that doesn't mean I want to hear your stupid bias.
So yeah, check out Morgan Ensbergs blog:
http://morganensberg.wordpress.com/

AL RESCATE!

Yesterday I went out of a little lunch surf. Waves were small but it was better than nothing. I grabbed the longboard and caught a couple. I saw something floating in the water but didn't think much of it. It didn't look to be anything interesting at all.
Apparently there was someone closer to it that saw it better than I and paddled over to check it out. It was a pigeon that was wrapped in fishing line and seaweed. The bird was so exhausted that it was just floating there with its head just out of the surface of the water and it let the surfer pick it up. He said "it's a bird!"
So I paddled over and the kid said "If you can get him in I can get something from the pier office to cut him free". I gladly scooped up the bird and put him on the front of my board and started paddling him in. The bird was so tired it just sat on the front of my board and didn't resist at all.
Once into shore I remembered that I had my tool kit in the truck from work. In the tool kit I have clippers that were perfect for removing fishing line from a pigeons foot.
One of the other surfers held my board down on the beach while I walked up the rocks with the bird and got out my tool kit. This poor bird was so wrapped in string that there is no way that it could have freed itself. I was able to cut it all off after about 5 minutes of work and I sat him down on the sand. He just sat down and rested.
Meanwhile one of the other surfers found another pigeon floating in the water. There was nothing tangled on him but we scooped him up and put him next to the other one. This one wasn't looking good at all. Completely weak and frail, I'm not sure he made it.
We found a shady covering of bushes and sat them both in there to rest, recover and dry out. I hope the birds felt better after a little rest and were able to take off again.
It was amazing to me that a couple random surfers have interest in saving the life of a pigeon at the beach. There were lots of onlookers and I had some comments from the old ladies passing by. "Someone has to help the birds, god put us here to help them". I'm not really sure that god put us here to help them and would let them get tangled and nearly drown at the same time. It's a good thing that there's people who have compassion to help out animals, helping because of other humans stupidity. (I am not a fan of fishing line for this reason)
If that kid hadn't noticed that was a bird floating there wrapped up in fishing line he would have drown for sure. Here's to you kid!

Drill two of deez...

Not too much I can really say but the thought of the oil spill in the gulf is killing me. Just knowing there are thousands of gallons of oil spilling out unchecked into the gulf right now with literally nothing we can do about it is a pretty powerless feeling.
Just consider how closely tied to the ocean or gulf any coastal city is and realize the impact of something like this. No beach, no fishing, no seafood, no tourism for years, it's literally debilitating for the humans. Sad.
Being that I grew up on the gulf and live close to the ocean now and am literally at the beach several times a week, or more. I've seen the beauty of the ocean and all of the animals in it. Just thinking of the turtles, the birds, the fish, the dolphins, the entire ecosystem being destroyed is awful. Every level of the food chain is effected causing every level that isn't directly being killed by oil to suffer and possibly die.
There's no price that can be put on this.
Of course we can argue about oil and how much it's needed and where it comes from and who we give our money to endlessly. The point is we are caught in this because of an infrastructure we didn't create and using products we didn't invent. The change will be slow and gradual but it needs to come from the top. Sure driving less would help and consuming less would help but really... our society is built around the automobile. My argument is that any city infrastructure that was set up after the invention of the automobile is tied to it and damned to it.
That and the country that supports and invents new and green technologies will remove itself from the ties of oil. This is the new industrial revolution and if our country can support the invention of these new technologies and refinement of the ones we have it will better position ourselves for the future.
Unfortunately there's too much money in oil to really have anything change right? Money out of politics now please...
Drill these two nuts in your teabagging mouth bitches.