The workplace was a drag tonight. It provided no monetary justification for getting out of bed today. I should have called off and played with the kids. But I don't call off. My work ethic easily surpasses its rewards. Now it's midnight and I am contentedly perusing my online favorites as the family sleeps.
While on break tonight and listening to podcasts, I learned about Hotel Chevalier, the online-only prequel to The Darjeeling Limited. Keywords remembered include "Natalie Portman" and "naked." Knowing I'd be watching that download soon after returning home kept the drudgery amidst the time clocks bearable.
Download complete. Signing off...
Sunday, September 30, 2007
I just roll with it.
"The person who brings up the bags and opens the room for you should get $1 or $2, unless you have a whole trolley of luggage, when it should be more." - New York Times
Of course, you can always require three whole trolleys for your numerous and heavy boxes and shrug it off with, "I'd tip you but I'm all out of cash." I just keep it polite and hope that tomorrow is a better day.
Anyone hiring?
Of course, you can always require three whole trolleys for your numerous and heavy boxes and shrug it off with, "I'd tip you but I'm all out of cash." I just keep it polite and hope that tomorrow is a better day.
Anyone hiring?
Saturday, September 29, 2007
You know you've married the right girl when...
Jonell Mosser plays the Courtyard Concert series finale.
My friends and I would often head down to 12th & Porter to hear Jonell Mosser back in those record store days. She'd hit and hold those notes with such passion and we knew how lucky we were to be there in attendance to hear talent like hers. The comparisons to Janis Joplin were unavoidable. We music lovers were always in awe, so lucky to live in Nashville if only to bear witness to the power and soul of Jonell Mosser.
I only ever saw her at 12th & Porter, but most fans of hers have probably seen her any number of times at Nashville's famous Bluebird Cafe. A true fan of the artist, the staff at the Bluebird notoriously wastes no time in shhhh-ing any patron who dares to talk at all while a musician performs in the tiny venue.
Catch Jonell this Wednesday, October 3, when she sings at the grandfather of the almighty "shhhh": the local library.
Dates: Wednesday, October 03
Time: 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Location: Main
Phone: 615-862-5800
Sponsor: Nashville Public Library Foundation
I only ever saw her at 12th & Porter, but most fans of hers have probably seen her any number of times at Nashville's famous Bluebird Cafe. A true fan of the artist, the staff at the Bluebird notoriously wastes no time in shhhh-ing any patron who dares to talk at all while a musician performs in the tiny venue.
Catch Jonell this Wednesday, October 3, when she sings at the grandfather of the almighty "shhhh": the local library.
Dates: Wednesday, October 03
Time: 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Location: Main
Phone: 615-862-5800
Sponsor: Nashville Public Library Foundation
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Wildest In The World
Call it a block, I've got nothing lately. Well, don't let that stop me from revisiting old times...
I think it was the summer of '93. My Nashville record store days. The chapter where I was in one of those "none of our friends could tell if we were dating or just close friends" relationships. I had come across the first hip-hop artist I could get into a year or so before when I worked at Turtles on Nolensville Road. My store was stocking top sellers like The Geto Boys and N.W.A., and hip-hop may as well have been as gangsta as the rest of the guys in the rap section to my uninitiated ears. One day the BMG rep stopped in and handed me a stack of discs for in-store play. These stacks that the label reps would give us were always like manna to us music lovers -- some good stuff, some bad stuff, and you could always count on one clerk finding his or her newest favorite next great artist among the unfamiliar CD spines.
On this day one stood out to me. Me Phi Me. From Murfreesboro as I recall. After one listen, he was my newest favorite next great artist. So unlike what I was used to hearing from the rap world, Me Phi Me's "One" disc featured so much actual music. Not just samples of old songs behind rap, but fresh and original guitar tracks. "Not My Brotha'" opens with a cool harmonica and sings a song about not being pressured to remain tight with a trouble-maker just because that trouble-maker shares a skin color with you. Where Ice-T was earning his dead presidents while singing about a "Cop Killer" in his heavy metal outfit, Body Count, just a year earlier, Me Phi Me was singing and writing about peace, love, and education. The positivity within was simply uplifting and hopeful. Me Phi Me should have at least been as big as P.M. Dawn.
Anyway, 1993 found me working at another record store -- Waves Music in Green Hills Mall. The clientele was quite richer and certainly whiter. There was little if any demand for the hard rap that was so popular at the little store next to Harding Mall. If anything, we sold movie soundtracks and original scores to Broadway plays there. The Saturday matinees would conclude and here would come their audiences, moved by a Van Morrison track that played as the credits rolled, they were at my counter with a credit card ready for swiping.
If the customers' tastes of Turtles-Nolensville Road were more of the outlaw variety (popular sellers from Merle Haggard to DJ Quik), then Waves-Green Hills had the "life is easy and safe" crowd covered (Kenny G. to Barbra Streisand). But one genre that sold well at both locations was hip-hop. At both brik-and-mortars, I could sell a lot of Arrested Development ("Tennessee") and Digable Planets ("Rebirth of Slick") with minimal in-store play. US3 was also pretty huge in '93 with their jazzy "Cantaloop." What frustrated me was my inability to convince a lot of people that Me Phi Me was their newest favorite next great artist. He didn't have the street cred that the Nolensville Road shoppers required and his music wasn't in enough movies for the Green Hills kids. (Actually, his "Revival" is in Reality Bites and we did sell a ton of that movie's soundtrack, but it seems that Lisa Loeb's "Stay" was the only reason anyone bought that.)
I was at least able to bring the love of Me Phi Me's music to my close friends. He played a show at 328 Performance Hall one night and we all squeezed into my Ford Tempo, cranked David Baerwald's "Triage" disc ("I am your waiter/I am ordinary/and the wildest in the world!"), and made our way to 328 that hot summer evening to dance and party to the organic and seductive sounds of Me Phi Me in a venue where we more often heard the likes of Dash Rip Rock and Mojo Nixon. Sadly for the artist, it was far from packed, but those who were there had the big time. There was plenty of room for bad and buzzed dancing for lost in the moment 20-somethings like us. What was educational and enlightening on CD was absolutely sexy and primal in a live setting. The world spun solely because those at the show were cool enough to let it.
Angie and Hollie and Ray and Susan were my fellow dancers in crime that night. Susan was my undefined relationship. If there is one thing I like about this current era of MySpace and Facebook, it's that there is the good possibility that I can look up one of those old friends and exchange a few emails where one of us will ask, "Do you remember the night when we saw Me Phi Me at 328 Performance Hall?" and the other will reply, "Wow. Yeah, wasn't that an awesome night?"
We've all surely changed so much since then, and I bet that we all like where our lives are now. But it's nice to reflect back, filling in the forgotten details with imagined cool scenarios, and remembering that we were once the wildest in the world.
I think it was the summer of '93. My Nashville record store days. The chapter where I was in one of those "none of our friends could tell if we were dating or just close friends" relationships. I had come across the first hip-hop artist I could get into a year or so before when I worked at Turtles on Nolensville Road. My store was stocking top sellers like The Geto Boys and N.W.A., and hip-hop may as well have been as gangsta as the rest of the guys in the rap section to my uninitiated ears. One day the BMG rep stopped in and handed me a stack of discs for in-store play. These stacks that the label reps would give us were always like manna to us music lovers -- some good stuff, some bad stuff, and you could always count on one clerk finding his or her newest favorite next great artist among the unfamiliar CD spines.
On this day one stood out to me. Me Phi Me. From Murfreesboro as I recall. After one listen, he was my newest favorite next great artist. So unlike what I was used to hearing from the rap world, Me Phi Me's "One" disc featured so much actual music. Not just samples of old songs behind rap, but fresh and original guitar tracks. "Not My Brotha'" opens with a cool harmonica and sings a song about not being pressured to remain tight with a trouble-maker just because that trouble-maker shares a skin color with you. Where Ice-T was earning his dead presidents while singing about a "Cop Killer" in his heavy metal outfit, Body Count, just a year earlier, Me Phi Me was singing and writing about peace, love, and education. The positivity within was simply uplifting and hopeful. Me Phi Me should have at least been as big as P.M. Dawn.
Anyway, 1993 found me working at another record store -- Waves Music in Green Hills Mall. The clientele was quite richer and certainly whiter. There was little if any demand for the hard rap that was so popular at the little store next to Harding Mall. If anything, we sold movie soundtracks and original scores to Broadway plays there. The Saturday matinees would conclude and here would come their audiences, moved by a Van Morrison track that played as the credits rolled, they were at my counter with a credit card ready for swiping.
If the customers' tastes of Turtles-Nolensville Road were more of the outlaw variety (popular sellers from Merle Haggard to DJ Quik), then Waves-Green Hills had the "life is easy and safe" crowd covered (Kenny G. to Barbra Streisand). But one genre that sold well at both locations was hip-hop. At both brik-and-mortars, I could sell a lot of Arrested Development ("Tennessee") and Digable Planets ("Rebirth of Slick") with minimal in-store play. US3 was also pretty huge in '93 with their jazzy "Cantaloop." What frustrated me was my inability to convince a lot of people that Me Phi Me was their newest favorite next great artist. He didn't have the street cred that the Nolensville Road shoppers required and his music wasn't in enough movies for the Green Hills kids. (Actually, his "Revival" is in Reality Bites and we did sell a ton of that movie's soundtrack, but it seems that Lisa Loeb's "Stay" was the only reason anyone bought that.)
I was at least able to bring the love of Me Phi Me's music to my close friends. He played a show at 328 Performance Hall one night and we all squeezed into my Ford Tempo, cranked David Baerwald's "Triage" disc ("I am your waiter/I am ordinary/and the wildest in the world!"), and made our way to 328 that hot summer evening to dance and party to the organic and seductive sounds of Me Phi Me in a venue where we more often heard the likes of Dash Rip Rock and Mojo Nixon. Sadly for the artist, it was far from packed, but those who were there had the big time. There was plenty of room for bad and buzzed dancing for lost in the moment 20-somethings like us. What was educational and enlightening on CD was absolutely sexy and primal in a live setting. The world spun solely because those at the show were cool enough to let it.
Angie and Hollie and Ray and Susan were my fellow dancers in crime that night. Susan was my undefined relationship. If there is one thing I like about this current era of MySpace and Facebook, it's that there is the good possibility that I can look up one of those old friends and exchange a few emails where one of us will ask, "Do you remember the night when we saw Me Phi Me at 328 Performance Hall?" and the other will reply, "Wow. Yeah, wasn't that an awesome night?"
We've all surely changed so much since then, and I bet that we all like where our lives are now. But it's nice to reflect back, filling in the forgotten details with imagined cool scenarios, and remembering that we were once the wildest in the world.
Monday, September 24, 2007
The Sibling Dynamic, Part Two
There are those who know that ducks are to be merely observed...
and then there are those who know that ducks are to be chased.
and then there are those who know that ducks are to be chased.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Quiet Time (and all is well)
My wife is out of town right now and I took the weekend off to watch the kids. We've been having the big time, spending big chunks of the days at the playground and taking walks around the apartment complex. Across the street, there is a new housing development going up. Nothing more than huge piles of dirt right now, it looks not unlike the desert planet of Tatooine from Star Wars, a cool comparison that is not lost on the four-year-old Star Wars fan of the family.
I tried to get that rare night of eight hours of uninterrupted sleep last night to no avail. I tossed and turned in the bed a good four hours before my normal bedtime and finally gave up and came into the living room to watch TV. Usually it's blogs that own my quiet time at night, but I used last night to catch up on a few shows I've been enjoying of late.
DVDs borrowed from the library and watched in their entirety over the course of the last two days:
Florida is battling Ole Miss on television early in the fourth with only a three point lead. Georgia travels to Alabama tonight for a contest that I am sure my wife will be following closely, whether or not anyone else at the wedding she is attending is scheduling its events with regard to kickoff time.
Off to read my newest issue of The New Yorker. Anthony Lane writes about Leica cameras. And I wish I was here.
I tried to get that rare night of eight hours of uninterrupted sleep last night to no avail. I tossed and turned in the bed a good four hours before my normal bedtime and finally gave up and came into the living room to watch TV. Usually it's blogs that own my quiet time at night, but I used last night to catch up on a few shows I've been enjoying of late.
DVDs borrowed from the library and watched in their entirety over the course of the last two days:
- The Muppet Show: Season 2
- Entourage: Season 1
- Black Books: Season 1
- Hotel Babylon
- Torchwood
Florida is battling Ole Miss on television early in the fourth with only a three point lead. Georgia travels to Alabama tonight for a contest that I am sure my wife will be following closely, whether or not anyone else at the wedding she is attending is scheduling its events with regard to kickoff time.
Off to read my newest issue of The New Yorker. Anthony Lane writes about Leica cameras. And I wish I was here.
The New York Times' Quotation of the Day
"Jesus said heaven is a place for people of all nations. So if you don’t like Clarkston, you won’t like heaven."
THE REV. PHIL KITCHIN, on the immigrants who have transformed the Clarkston International Bible Church in Georgia.
Friday, September 21, 2007
I knew she went to ABC but I never saw a thing she did there.
Amanda Congdon and ABC Part Ways
I found that I was more partial to the Rocketboom brand than to its host anyway.
When Amanda Congdon received a contract to host a weekly show on ABCNews.com, the 25-year-old was heralded as “the first video blogger to make the jump to a major network” and described herself as “bridging the gap between old and new media.”That bridge is closed, at least temporarily: Ms. Congdon’s one-year contract isn’t being renewed, ABC confirmed today. ... more>>
I found that I was more partial to the Rocketboom brand than to its host anyway.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Pottery Barn Teen is welcome to furnish my entire home.
One catalog that always gets my full attention is Pottery Barn Teen. Check out this cool shelf/iPod dock.
Daddy Blogger: Day One is upon us.
I'm off tomorrow (Thursday). And the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that one.I wasn't fired. I just have four days off in a row. My beautiful wife is going to Georgia this weekend for a wedding and I am staying home to watch the kids. I've got ten bucks, a car whose front, right tire has developed a slow leak, and...that's about it. But that won't stop us from having the big time. We've got a nice library just around the corner and an excellent playground next to said library.
I've got a camera to document the fun and a couch to rescue me from extreme exhaustion when the sun goes down. I just hope I don't look too scary by Sunday night. I won't be shaving my face since I won't have to shave my face. Between Day One of not shaving my face and Day Four of not shaving my face, there's a big difference. Between Day Four of not shaving my face and Day Twenty of not shaving my face, there's not much difference at all. So much for the full beard. But I should have the Just Broke Out Of Prison And Am Hiding From The Law look down good.
I just polished off the last of the Guinness from the fridge. If Pops drops in this weekend, there should be an infusion of Sam Adams beers. Two per night will do just fine. With the kiddos in bed by nine each night, Comcast On Demand's BBC America offerings on the television ("telly" for you hardcore BBC-ers), and my stinky feet on the couch, this has the makings of a wonderful weekend of leisure. (When my wife's out of town, I usually just sleep on the couch. That bed is just way too big for one person.)
So, fellow bloggers of Nashville, what are y'all doing this weekend?
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