Everyone’s a critic, Best music of 2007

I’m still not very hip. Many of the critics' favorites of the year are albums that I can’t get my pop-minded head into yet (I’m thinking of LCD Soundsystem, Of Montreal, Animal Collective, Okkervil River, among others). I’ve tried—maybe I’ll have caught up by next year.

This is the top 5 breakdown of albums that I listened to very frequently over the course of the past year (four bands tie for 5th place, as each had a good solid month, at least, of being the main event):

5. Jose Gonzalez: In Our Nature- This is more of the same from Gonzalez, but I liked the last album Veneer so much that it wasn’t a disappointment to have another album full of short, haunting, nylon-string guitar ballads. This album also scores high on the “your-mom-wouldn’t-object” meter.
Arcade Fire: Neon Bible- I recently watched these guys perform via Austin City Limits. Talk about chaos! Arcade Fire may have gotten too big to have the “indie cred” that they had after their first album, but this record has some really great tunes on it. If your mom likes Bruce Springsteen, she may like this album. (just saw this: cool?)
Feist: the Reminder- Feist had an amazing year. Apparently, getting on an Ipod commercial is about the equivalent of being one of Oprah’s favorite things. Your mom may already own this album.
The Shins: Wincing the Night Away- This was the major album of our California road trip over the summer. The Shins are one of the only bands that Tina really likes on this list, so they got a lot of love on Highway 1. There are a couple of really sweet tunes on this, my favorite of the three Shins albums. There is also a high possibility that your mom may like the Shins.
4. Iron and Wine: The Shepherd’s Dog- this one scores high on the sweet-o-meter but low on the your-mom-o-meter. I can’t think of anything else to say, so why don’t you just see for yourself.
3. Wilco: Sky Blue Sky- If the first half of the year belonged to My Morning Jacket, the second half was all about the Wilco. I have had Wilco on my Ipod for at least a few years, but never really “got” it. Then, while watching their hour-long Austin City Limits show (ACL is my gateway to cool, in case you haven’t noticed) I was BLOWN AWAY by what was happening on stage. It was exactly as I was describing in my post about the Jimmy Eat World show, except the opposite. These guys were creating something intensely personal and incredibly new on stage. The current lead guitarist of Wilco, Nels Cline, is—well—you’ll have to watch him in action to see what I mean. Your mom will not think that Jeff Tweedy is cute unless he is clean shaven (even then it's a stretch).
2. Andrew Bird: Armchair Apocrypha- Andrew Bird is my new favorite. I have been raving about him for months on the blog already, so no need to do that anymore. Please, please—if this guy plays your town—go and see him. You will not be disappointed. (it makes me kind of proud that I have been listening to AB via Squirrel Nut Zippers for years—though his solo stuff is so much different—and so much better—than his fiddle work with the SNZ). Your mom will be excited that, at least for somebody’s kid, those violin lessons paid off. There is something else Bird is known for; can you guess it?
1. Radiohead: In Rainbows- see this post for some Radiohead love. I love, love, love this tune and this tune and this tune especially. This gets my vote for second best Radiohead album ever (just beneath Kid A). Too bad for yooz who didn’t get the album free from the bad while you could, you can always buy it on o1.01.08 when it comes out for realsies. Your mom won’t understand when you tell her that Radiohead is our generation’s Beatles—maybe you don’t understand yet either. You will.

Honorable mention goes to these two bands that I am starting to dig, but haven’t spent a lot of time with yet. One may bloom into a longer term relationship, whilst the other is bound to remain a fling.

The National: Boxer
Band of Horses: Cease to Begin (this one is my favorite of the two.)


And albums that just keep hanging on for me from 2006:

• John Mayer: Continuum- I just love that JM is a blues guitarist disguised as a pop star. His guitar playing and song writing is of the kind that I would imagine myself to inhabit if I were actually a talented guitar player or songwriter. I mention Continuum here because I’m still listening to it and it is still getting better.
• James Morrison: Undiscovered- this is kind of a cheat because I didn’t get this album till that stop at Amoeba mentioned here, and didn’t technically listen to James Morrison till 2007, but I couldn’t put him on my list above because his album came out last year. I feel a bit funny about this one for some reason, but I don’t know why. Like the other JM, this JM writes a killer song, has a killer voice and I would love to be able to write a ballad as catchy as this song here.
• My Brightest Diamond: Bring Me the Workhorse: see my love for Shara Warden here and get excited about the next album to be released in 2008 sometime. I love great female vocalists.

Speaking of, here is some great local, female vocaled music worth checking out:
Awake and Alert: Devil In A Lambskin Suit (Mesa, AZ) (if you watch the video on this site, you’ll see yours truly sitting on screen-right during the set-up montage. Watch for my flip-flopped feet.)
Headlights: Kill them with Kindness (Champaign-Urbana, IL)


Also scheduled for 2008, a double Cure album. Here’s to hoping it’s good. And here’s to hoping you have yourself a merry little Christmas and a happy new year.

If you have had a great time surfing my favorite tunes and wish you could have some more, please listen to this great podcast where most of the bands I mentioned also get mentioned, but with some really great commentary and clips.

Feel free to comment with your favorites from last year as well--though they need not be "new in 2007." What are you all listening to? What am I missing out on?

breakin' (the electric booger-loo)

The first few days of break have been fun, if chaotic. Tina's twist has made for busy dad.

We did have fun today building this snowman.

Things in the queue:

• Blog my "best music of 2007" list (i know you've been waiting)
• Record some music... my "hummingbird" and "transparent, see?" (or sometimes titled as the response to that question: "transparent, si!") are in serious need of tape so I can move on and write some new tunes or something (gotta get some music recording software for this as I lost my old program in a hard drive crash over summer time). Once they are done, I will hook y'all up with some linkage.
  
• Watch two documentaries among other "catch-up" movie watching: "king of kong" and "helvetica"
• read some non-requireds, including the latest addition of our department's arty zine (or "arts and literary journal") 9th letter that has been sitting on my shelf since August.
• Play with photoshop and learn some really basic design techniques (gonna have to check out a book or something).
• figure out spring schedule
• start reading my textbook that I am teaching next semester
• roll up to Chicago to retrieve fab sis-in-law. Hoping for some cool lessons from her.
  

happies to report:

• quit the caffeine cold turkey a few days before I started writing final papers and stuff. Thought that 7 Zeros a day was just too much. I jonze after the cokage though and have been trying to fight it off with diet root beer and Illinois's favorite non-sugared carbonated beverage La Croix. Used to make me gag, now--not as much.
• made cool new header for this blog by ripping off some cool design and searching the last hour for cool fonts
• finally finished The Devil in the White City--the book that I started at the end of the summer--it stinks to only have read one fun book in 3 months. 'twas good, though I liked the world's fair stuff more than the murderer profile business. We are going to one of the few remaining buildings from said fair which currently is the home of this xzibit (not this one)
  
• Am more and more amazed each day (especially being home now 24/7) at the feat that is being a mother and the amazing one that my wife is (especially since she has been off her feet). Tina should wear a cowboy hat and shaps because what she does with the kids is nothing short of wrangling a herd (and a very cute herd at that) of cattle.
  
• have decided that writing in complete sentences is for the birds
• got back major paper that I spent nearly every waking moment last week writing with high marks and compliments (as well as compelling critique--which is so great... when there are equal portions of both).
  

we'll talk soon.

Thanks everybody!

my paper is in revision status at the moment...but I'll be done tomorrow morning for sure!
I appreciate those who responded to my questions--especially those of you who I don't know! Wow!
So, with vacation right around the corner, be expecting some fun posts from me in the near future!
It's close to midnight and I am feeling very exclamatory!
My blog still thinks its in Arizona! See below post time!

What blogging is like for me... (a reader survey)

Writing...we're all doing more of it, aren't we fellow bloggers? I am now halfway done (ok, maybe 3/8ths) done with the writing I need to accomplish by late next week. This past week's writing was tortuous. Really, really hard--the kind of hard where it takes halves of hours to write single sentences.

That kind of writing is difficult to get through. It becomes not fun. It threatens to engulf your sanity... and it really did engulf mine. Brain power was lost to the extent that I lost my PDA one day and only a few days later lost my wallet. These are costly tragedies for another post. (Wallet search swallowed up nearly a whole work day yesterday to no avail--PDA search will resume on Sunday when I return to the scene of the crime-of-memory).

As I start the writing for my last project, which is also my first serious seminar paper proper and I am hoping to have a different experience. I want to have some fun with this business because the subject is right for it (see below), the professor is open to fun-serious approaches to topi, and I really can't endure another week of brain wringing. I mean, it was my PDA and wallet last week, next week by this time I could very well be leaving the house without any pants on.

My writing project on the plate for the next 7 days, is really an extension of what I was trying to muddle through in this post a few months ago. Which means that it is about the very thing that I am doing right now: Blogging (specifically, genres of personal writing on the web)--and here's where you can help, dear readers!

I am interested in examining the following questions and your takes on them would be very (very!) useful:

1. Do you imagine your blogging to have an underlying theme?
2. What is it about blogging that is attractive to you? What makes it worth your while? What "work" does it get done? In essence, why do you blog?
3. How much do you worry about your posts--what you write, what not to write, who you might offend, etc. and connected to this question--do you think much about how others may perceive you via your blog? (this may be especially true when you think about people who you may not have ever met who read your blog and get a sense of the "you" presented there.)
4. How often do you read blogs of people you have never met? What attracts you to those blogs, for which there is no real "communication" factor involved?
5. Finally, do you use any kind of rss feed reader to view your blogs (do you even know what that is?--if not please indicate)? If not, do you use tool bar bookmarks--or just links from the blogs you read to the other blogs you read?

Sorry. I know that is a lot. Feel free to answer only those that you want--but the information that you doll out will be very useful to me so, if you have the time, put some thought into it!

UPDATE! Found the wallet this evening in the one place that we hadn't looked because...well you'll see why. I went in to Jonas's room to get him a belt, and saw something dark in the crib. Who knows how it got in there--just glad that it was and not in the hands of some, dark, dishonest stranger .

end of the semester anxieties...

...I've got 'em bad. They come in waves of thoughts like "I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about so how can I possibly write a paper about this subject?" Of all the things about school--serious school--this is the one thing I hope to get better at--not freaking out when faced with doing the real work of the academy. This is the business that makes for intellectual growth--it shouldn't surprise me that it's actually really difficult laborious work. I will get better at it. I must get better at it.

On a lighter note: shh, don't tell Tina, but I really like the chilly weather. I like the brisk walks, the warm clothes, the beenie caps. When chilly becomes bitter cold, I may change my story. And I don't like how my desk downstairs is right next to the patio, floor to ceiling windows and door. My fingers get so cold, I have to put on my cool new fingerless gloves (with attached mitten coverings). It is an undisputed fact that typing with mittens on is just plain less-effective.

live life live

These past few weeks have been a bit rough. I am moving from read, read, read mode to write, write, write mode (which, ironically, still includes read, read, reading). The kids have been sick, so the late nights spent studying have sometimes got much later. Last week, in fact, I didn’t get to bed earlier than 1am a single night and a few nights it was later than that.

I remember last year at this time as I was scrambling to get all of my information together for my grad applications how overwhelmed I felt—so much was riding on the polish of my writing sample and statements of purpose. I poured over them, revising, reordering, rethinking, and produced (especially in the various SOP texts) documents that I still think about when I think about what the writing process is really about. I guess I didn’t realize that getting into graduate school meant that I was going to be repeating that process at the end of every semester until the end of eternity (ok—maybe just until 2013).

Tina has been gracious enough to allow me to spend some time away from the house doing what has become, really, one of my only true escapes from the stress: live music. I was about to change the grammar of that last sentence, but I think that it is an accurate way of thinking about it: doing live music. Doing includes a participatory function that isn’t just listening, it’s being there.

Watching well-crafted music being performed live is a special experience (watching not-so-well crafted music being performed can be an excruciating experience). There is something really exciting about a musician (or musicians in concert, or together) displaying their unique combination of musical and poetic art for a live audience. These experiences are most exciting when they are precise and sharp—when you know that what you are beholding is the result of hours of practice—but also when you are watching that art being innovated in front of you…when you know that no one else has heard this song the way that you are hearing it at that moment before. Sometimes it is in the artist’s energy and presence on stage (Ben Folds is like this live), sometimes it is in your sense of raw talent being displayed (I felt this way at the Andrew Bird show I went to earlier in the semester), and sometimes, when it is most fun, you can sense it in the way that they are looking at each other and smiling—they know something new is happening too (this is rare at big stadium shows—but happens all the time in small local shows that I have seen, which seems backwards).

That being said, I must report a bit on the Jimmy Eat World show I went to last night. It was held at the huge basketball stadium in campus about 10 minutes from where we live and I got there late on purpose in order to miss the first two not-so-exciting bands. When Jimmy and crew came out to rock, I was in about the third row of heads from the front directly in front of the guitarist Tom Lindon. The band was great—what follows is not a criticism so much as it is an observation. This is maybe my 4th time seeing JEW play. They are always good. This time—and this is really similar to how I felt the last time I saw Weezer play live way back in 2001—it just felt flat. I could sense, especially from the non-lead-singer members of the band, that this was just another night, another crowd, another time through the same old songs. And the songs were played perfectly. I watched Tom play especially since he was standing right in front of me. His parts—if I may be so bold—are not that hard. I realized, in spite of that hidden rock star that lurks somewhere in my subconscience, that If I were him I would probably be bored (gasp!) . Maybe it is because the songs were played so perfectly, so according to formula, that it was flat. There was no jamming, no innovation, no real fun happening on stage: merely performance. They played one "new" version of an old song: Your House, from Bleed American--it might have been the best tune of the night. The other really great moment was during a song that I hadn't heard until last night called Disintegration. I don't have the EP that it appears on, and while the song is long, intense, and complicated, my excitement may have been more about the fact that it was new to me.

Regardless, it was an escape and a welcomed one at that. Here are some bad pictures from my phone:

Dinner and Self-portrait (composition sans writing utensil)

Last week we made sushi. You can see a picture of what I would call a Philadelphia roll instead of a California roll (we used cream cheese because our avocados were not ripe yet) over at Tina's much more interesting and fun blog. I will just mention how pleased I was at the flavor and look forward to doing this again soon (the rice takes some time and patience). Oh, one more thing: I got the recipe/technique 100% from an episode of Good Eats on the ol' Tivo. Love that Alton Brown.

Here is a picture of our dinner this evening: Spaghetti with scallops, sun-dried tomatoes and spinach (in a cream sauce) with roasted yellow & orange bell peppers, mushrooms and carrots:

My Brightest Diamond (aka Shara Warden)

A year or so ago, Sufjan Stevens was on Austin City Limits and I noticed this striking brunette singing back-up for him (as well as playing various instruments). I soon learned that this woman was in fact Shara Warden and she had a band of her own (My Brightest Diamond). After listening to hear album stream numerous times here, I had to buy it and did when we were in Berkeley over the summer break (at Amoeba). On my last weekend in Phoenix, Shara played a solo show that I was able to attend and she blew me away with her vocal, guitar, and over-all creative talent.

So I need to share (this is a good look at what was like in solo mode):



And here is a full band version (I know the same song is in there):



Enjoy.

Coming soon: my first foray into the land of sushi making.

shells with shrimp, sauteed peppers and garlic

I made a decent dinner tonight, and though I didn't manage to get a picture of it (Sorry Mom and Michelle. I was too hungry!). Basically, I wanted to have a noodle dinner we could eat with a spoon and the dish is constructed to that end (and from stuff left in our fridge). Here's what I did:

I cooked a pound of small shell noodles, gave the kids their portions with some sauce from the fridge mixed in and set the rest aside.

We bought some raw shrimp a few weeks ago. I cooked them in just a little bit of olive oil until they had only just just turned pink and set them aside.

I diced three cloves of garlic and set the small pile aside.

We had three halves of bell peppers (red, orange, yellow). I diced them into very small squares and started them sauteing in some butter and olive oil.

While the peppers cooked, I cut the now cooled shrimp in small chunks and then added it to the peppers with a bit more oo.

I added the garlic now and turned down the temperature (cooking with garlic is tricky--it cooks quickly and therefore burns quickly too. I usually add it as late as possible).

In the pot that I cooked the pasta in, I started about 2 cups of whole milk heating up. When it started to steam, I added about a cup of graded parmesan.

After that cooked down just a bit, I poured in the shrimp/pepper/garlic mixture and let it cook some more (oh yeah--I added the shells now too). At this point, I realized that I probably shouldn't have used so much milk--it was taking a long time to thicken up--but it did eventually.

That was it! What was cool about it though was that the sauce had this really nice roasted pepper/shrimp flavor. I don't know if it was the fact that we started with raw shrimp, but they were especially tender. I served it with slices of lime which I added, but Tina didn't.

I was pleased--especially since I was flying by the seat of my pants. You should go for it too.

tree at sunset

Here's a cool photo I took a few weeks back on a park trip with Tina and the kids. In real life there was even more pinholes of light escaping through the trees. One day I will have a camera that will be able to capture that...

Is it really a blog if...

...the dude never posts?

I am sorry folks. Wasn't I just whining about how I seemed to have so much to say that I needed two blogs to contain it? I just typed and then deleted a pledge to post daily as an exercise in both writing and discipline, but let's face it: It probably won't happen. So at least I am being honest with myself about it... or something.

This week it's gotten a bit colder. Tina taught me the proper (or at least fancy) way to wear a scarf. It's been harder to get out of bed--especially after being up half the night with restless kids with runny noses. This morning was the first morning that I full on skipped both parts of my other daily activities pledge (30 min study/30 min exercise) that I started after General Conference. So, with all of these horses on the move, it's hard to know which ones to get get back on after the initial fall.

More posts in the near future: likely.

Potential for anything very thought provoking or worth-your-while in those posts: unlikely.

Keep checking back anyway though.

Everything in its right place

(I have been sitting on this blog for a few days wanting to put more links to cool Radiohead stuff in it. I just haven't had the time. If you check back, there will be more fun stuff to play with.)

Tina and I are watching the first season of Alias on DVD. It’s taking a while, but we like it. We get in one or maybe two episodes a week. I check out the discs from our library’s huge movie holdings. There are literally thousands of hours of media, all free to students—one of the perks, I suppose. The other night, we were watching one and during a swanky, under-double-cover moment that should have been intense and interesting, an old song by Smash Mouth started up. It made the scene funny. Now, I am fairly certain that the scene wouldn’t have been funny if I had seen it in the context of its original air date (2001). I don’t know that there is anything very significant about that story, but it made me think about music, media, and context. I know one example of a movie that was re-scored—the pop soundtrack it was released with was replaced with an orchestral one—in order to alleviate the cheesiness of viewing the movie post-1984 (interestingly, I'm wrong here...you'll see what I mean if you click the link). It’s interesting that sometimes music, even old music, helps maintain the “moment” for viewers—like in something like, say, Say Anything, and sometimes music makes things hopelessly silly.

On a different note (there’s that pesky pun again), if you haven’t downloaded the new Radiohead album (In Rainbows) yet, you should do it right now. Some of you may have heard about how the band released the album all on their own and made it available for a you-name-it price (a move that totally shakes things up in the music business). You can legitimately pay nothing for it; I paid 1 Euro (the equivalent of $2.14). It is really really good. I’m not really that good at deciding if it is the best music they have ever put out. As my buddy Mat said last week, their Kid A might be the best album of all time.

I came to Radiohead late in the game. When I was in high school, Marisa H. made me a copy of their first album. I was mildly interested because of their hit Creep (every 14 year old’s theme song) but wasn’t really moved by any of their songs—later, once Creep had been played out, and the Bends came out, I was much more interested in the louder, more aggressive music that was coming out at the same time. I left on the mission right as Paranoid Android was being debuted on Mtv, and while I sensed that there was something interesting about the band (I only know this because I mention a notice of the release of OK computer in a letter to Tina from Palo Alto), I didn't pay much attention to the music or what the critical mass was saying. But then, Radiosilence.

When I got home, it wasn’t until Amnesiac was released—particularly the enchanting Pyramid Song in the summer of 2001—that my attention was piqued. I remember listening to it in San Diego with Tina on our first anniversary. I quickly learned that I had been missing out on something special.

If you are not a fan, you have too.

I’m a reasonable man, get off my case.

New Music...Cycling Trivialities

Three great new albums came out on Tuesday:

Iron and Wine, "The Shepherd's Dog"
Jose Gonzalez, "In our Nature"
Stars, "In Our Bedroom After the War"

Nearly every song of each new album is streaming on their respective Myspace pages (which I have linked above). I wish I had more time to write a nice review for each of them. It is going to have to suffice to say that the Iron and Wine is my favorite, if least commercial. Sam Beam obviously has more going for him than superb beard growing abilities. The Gonzalez is much like his first album, "Veneer"--same sweet nylon string guitar, same calming vocal tones, new melodies. The Stars album is the one that I think that may be the easiest to consume by a new audience: Very poppy, very dance-around-in-your-kitcheny. There are two vocalists, a man and a woman. The man's voice sounds like a less sanctimonious Morrissey, the woman's...hmm... like clean, unpasteurized goodness. So check it out.

A side note here, if you are not into buying music and you have a current school email address, may I suggest Ruckus as a way to (legally) stay up on most of the new stuff that is coming out?

A few other musical side notes (hehe, bad pun):

I went to this amazing show the other night. Andrew Bird--you gotta check this guy out. He used to play violin for that great old 90s band Squirrel Nut Zippers and he has "gotta little something new" going now. His two solo-solo albums: "The Mysterious Production of Eggs" and "Armchair Apocrypha" are really really great. But seeing him live just really blew it out of the water for me. It would take me an hour to write up a description of how he runs his show, so let me just say that with the aid of carefully cued delay petals, he is able to perform as a band--even though he is just one guy on a stage. It is amazing. Not only is he a classically trained violinist, he plays guitar, is am amazing vocalist, and (get this) a world class whistler. You heard me right: the man whistles like nobody I have ever heard.

Finally, I thought it would be fun the other day to listen to Stevie Wonder's "At the Close of A Century" four disc anthology all in one sitting. So I did. 5 hours straight Stevie...and man oh man. He is the best. I didn't just sit there and listen, mind you--I did other stuff. I taught my class, went to my seminars, etc. But the old Ipod stayed on the Stevie dial and ne'er did it deviate. (Come to think of it, I actually did the same thing except with the Foo Fighters--who also had a new album come out last Tuesday--a few weeks ago. That was fun too.)

I have thought it might be fun to approach some of my favorite artists this way--listen to whole catalogs at a time(even though the 5 hours of Stevie is hardly his whole catalog).

Imagine listening to the whole Cure catalog in one sitting, or the whole Beatles catalog (or Dave Matthews Band if you are M&B). It would be really fun, if you have the patience for that kind of thing, to pay attention to the trajectory of the music styles...especially in regards to when the music kind of flattens out and stops changing as much (as it almost always does). This may give way to interesting questions. Why, for example, did Stevie write his last big hit in the 80s? Why can't Sir Paul write another Blackbird or Yesterday? What happens?

Those questions left for you to ponder, it's amazing to me that modern technology even allows the multi-album marathon. As first uttered by the Reverend MC Hammer: Sweetness (is my weakness).

Update: New Radiohead next week! Guess what artist marathon is next on my list?

Mamma, if that's moving up, then I'm...

Moving out. Well--maybe just setting up duel residences. Don't worry, Mamma--I'm talking about blog residences. I think that it in the end it is only somewhat (rather than completely) presumptuous of me to move over into two spaces--lest, as one reader puts it--I subject myself (literally and figuratively) to being seen in my swim shorts by folks who didn't sign up for that kind of show (thanks, Audrey).

Throwing up some generic boundaries, which are (as we are learning in that class I mentioned) not very thick and allow for some modulation, will allow, I hope, for a bit more pointed kinds of topics and discussions on both blog spaces. Here is how it will break down as far as I see it at the moment:

My new blog, Stone's Soup (and if you have never read the fable "Stone Soup," you should go to the library and check it out--it usually appears as a picture book and there are at least 10 versions), will be a place where I talk about the issues that, arguably, I care about most: family, friendships, faith, flowers, fiddles, and fish sticks (Okay--got a little carried away with the alliteration there). The Guide will stay basically the same, sans long vacation monologues and other topics where it is likely that there may be swim trunks sightings (again, both literally and figuratively).

So your question may be, "which should I read?" And I guess that is the beauty. You can read both, but at least now you will be more prepared for what you're going to get.

In search for a genre: a blog in crisis

There has been relative radio silence from the Guide (I’m taking to referring to my blog in the third person) in the last few weeks. Understand that it is not from lack of things to say. Rather, it may be attributed to the relative plethora ("Effe, would you say that he has a plethora of piñatas?") of things to say, share and talk about, but the absolute lack of time to say and share them. So for this, dear readers, I apologize.

We are entering the second month of school out here at the UIUC and me and the Academians (yes, I just made that term up) are up to some serious no good. Well, okay—there is actually much good to be said about what is happening here. Which leads me to the first (and only) topic for this evening’s humble post:

I am taking this cool (if mindblowing) class in Genre Theory. In it we have been reading theory about why and how genre is a (sometimes) useful way of classifying and organizing text, action, speech, etc. It’s got me thinking about the genre of this here blog. It’s feeling kind of random for me. Part of the reason that I am feeling this way is that I don’t really have a clear idea of its readership, yet I know that it is no longer just a vacuum blog with no audience whatsoever (it used to be that way). I’ve been teaching my students that composition, to be effective, should have a clear idea of the intended audience. Some blogs do a really good job of this kind of “audience awareness.” Tina and her friends have a nice blog circle going. Michelle, too, seems very aware of and secure in her blog genre. Other bloggers, while not necessarily doing the blog-as-a-way-to-keep-in-touch, organize their blogs around some sort of central theme or rhetorical purpose (I’m thinking of you in particular here, Brandon). I like the idea of blogging within a genre—it seems to give a certain pointedness and purpose to the prose. Blogs that fit within a certain genre somehow communicate more clearly. Maybe it’s because the reader doesn’t have to peruse through the writing to decide if a post has something that they will be interested in. They already know that it will—previous “generic” experience has already proven this to them (and for those of you only used to seeing the word "generic" in a retail situation, work with me here).

This isn’t to say that bloggers like Michelle and Tina only blog about one topic (although they may). Michelle, as most of the readers of this blog will know, blogs about a variety of topics, from Zane wrangling, to gardening, to (most recently) sewing and textile design (which she may not think that I take notice of or think is cool—but I dooo (read that last part like Nacho Libre)). But there is something unifying about the prose that exists there. Perhaps it is Michelle’s personality, wit, writing style (most likely a combination of each of these) that makes the blog compelling to read. Whatever the reason that we read it, it retains certain generic elements that provide readers with expectations for what a new post will contain before we ever click on it. Would you agree (and thanks for letting me use you as an example Shell). A lot of folks’ blogs that I read and admire in the wide world of the academe have similar unifying generic undertones in their blogs. Many of them (actually all of them) are liberal arts professors or grad students, so a common theme in their blog writing is, um, writing (what they are working on, what they hope to do future work about, how their projects are coming along, dissertation progress, etc.). Many of them have other (often related) interests which see some light from time to time—and usually these interests are totally awesome and hilarious (I am thinking specifically of Spencer’s “Found Friday” series.) But usually (I may even go for that “always” change again), those interests outside of what may be considered academic, are interesting in that they serve to give clues toward their personalities—perhaps (and especially when we don’t know them as well), to make more “human” connections with them. That's always nice.

Anyway—that is a lot to say to get to my point which is basically this: I don’t feel like my blog really has a very unified genre that it fits within…and I kinda wish that it did. It is attempting, at once, to be a family, friend, academic, music, food, faith, book review, art, & random funny stuff blog. It has no real sense of audience, I think. If we took a poll, I think we would find that the majority of my readership is family—there are a few of my closest friends sprinkled in there (though I think that you might be the only one reading, Mat), and perhaps one person in the academic world reads (thanks Spencer). If I have left you out, don’t be offended—only let it add to my continued struggle for some sort of understanding of who I am writing for.

Part of me wants to say that I am writing mostly for myself. But I think that isn’t really true. We write, usually, not just because we have something to say but because we have something to share—and that would require (by necessity) an audience. I do maintain an offline journal that I am trying to be better about writing in for the writing that may fit into the former genre. That solves part of the problem, I guess. I’m also thinking about the future of this blog space. Over the next few years, there is the potential of this blog being read by more of my peers within the academy. Especially if I publicize it as a space where I am talking about academic things. This, in many ways, puts pressure on what topics I should or shouldn’t entertain. Maybe it shouldn’t—but it will. Anyone who blogs is aware of the sensitivity that a real audience requires. Who, for example, has ever posted something—maybe even a sentence—and then deleted it? Who has ever deleted a comment? Self censorship seems like a kind of sad state to be in. But I really think that it is a reality for all writers to at least some extent.

Maybe faithful readers of the Guide will say, "No, Jon. Just leave it be. You don’t post that often anyway." And maybe you’re right. But I can’t help the thought that my mom is just not going to care about the Andrew Bird concert that I went to Friday night that I want to blog about. My brother Nick (and perhaps many others) probably didn’t get this far down on this particular semi-academic sounding post (if you did, Nick, way to be man. Way to be.). And there are other, potential future academic colleagues of mine who may have a passing interest in my home life, but potentially not in long descriptions of family vacations (like the series that appeared here over the summer). Taking the idea of “faithful” readers in a different direction, my interest in and pursuit of faith is something that surely puts me outside of the academic blog norm.

So there you have it: a blog in genre crisis. I am considering several alternatives—though the most obvious (multiple blog spaces) just doesn’t seem to fit at the moment. There are other ways to manage the variety of topics that I mention above--tagging is one obvious way. But even that doesn't solve the tension that I feel when I write about all the things that are of interest to me for a (maybe too) diverse audience. Never fear, I will continue as commenced until I figure this out. Until then, dear readers of the Guide, endure.

Update: After talking it over with Tina, I think I may move to two blog spaces (though that still sounds a bit presumptuous to me). Details to follow.

If you like Apes and Phil Collins as much as I think you do...

In the Air Tonight

From the 1967 film 1999 A.D.

*As seen at metaspencer

relieving the pressure

So, I took down poor Miss South Carolina's botched response. Is it fair to say that something like that could happen to any of us? Perhaps not to that extreme, but my intentions of putting her up weren't so much to poke fun as they were to attempt some kind of tele-empathy session. Is it any wonder that we fear public speaking more than we fear death?

Anyway, I finished up the first full week of classes (the first week that I speak of below was really only 3 days). Things are going well, I think. Though the pacing/routine hasn't yet solidified. Once that gets in place I think that I will start to feel more productive.

We've been in Champaign a month now. I have to admit that the fun "newness" has begun to fade. Which is good, I guess, because in it's wake is the feeling of familiarity and home. We know how to get around town now pretty well. We have a few favorite treat shops. Campus also has begun to be more familiar as well. I have done some exploring, begun studying in the same places (so far, the best reading place I have found is in the reference section of our Main Library--nice soft chairs, computers nearby for hourly email check/fix).

I think that the "newness" feeling may return once the weather begins to cool down significantly. It's been 20 years since I lived in a place where it snows. I don't even know what it is like to have to function productively in cold weather. My only exposure to cold weather since our move from Logan has been in vacation visits to my parents in Wyoming and Utah. And how did I handle the cold weather while there? By staying indoors and watching many movies. I remember the one time that I attempted driving while there was snow on the roads. It was during an attempt to start the trek home to Arizona from Utah. When our car slid off the road down the street from my parents' house, we drove back, got out of the car, and stayed for three more days.

First week: check

(continuing the "number of..." mantra from last post)

Number of actual seminars attended: one

Number of hours spent reading for that one class: 12 (this sounds bad—I guess to my defense, I have been reading really easy fiction for the last six months and my break from academic reading shows. I assume this will get better. :flexing intellectual muscles:)

Number of classes that I haven’t been to yet of which there is bound to be much more complicated, theoretical, reading to muddle through: 2

Number of class periods taught: two (so far so good!—I amazed myself and rattled off each of their names on the second day.)

Number of times attempted to get over to gym to figure out swim schedule: 0 :( (this week!)

Number of really cool, outdoor social or community events that I have attended and enjoyed with my family in the last week: 3 (this is significant because is surpasses the number of events comfortably attended in August during our YEARS in Arizona)

One little side thing to mention: I am wondering when meeting with and talking to the professors that I admire in our department will feel less like hanging out with rock stars. I hope it doesn’t fade too quickly. Since they are also so nice, hanging out with them makes me feel like I am FRIENDS with rock stars. Pretty much my boyhood dream realized.

More updates as they come…

the Champaign Campaign continues (a multimedia presentation)

We have been in Champaign now for 16 days. In those days, 3 is the number of times we have gone out to eat at Chipotle as a family (I've been one more time than that)--shout out "thanks!" to Wendy here. 3 is also the number of times that we have patronized a certain custard shop right down the street from us for 1 and 2 dollar ice cream waffle-cones. 3 is also the number of times that Seth has watched Star Wars in the last few days. He has decided that he is over his fear or the live action movies and is especially into "A New Hope" because it has both the Millennium Falcon and the X-wing in it.

The last four days for me have been spent in a new grad student orientation. One of those days it was just a general session (this is how many years you can expect to be here before receiving the PhD, this is how we support our students, this is what grad student life is like, etc.). The last three days have been teacher training days. I am teaching one section of Rhetoric 103 (basically Writing or English 101--maybe later I will go into the details of how they run freshman composition here). It has been good. My particular session has been with four other incoming grad students who, like me, have already had some teaching experience. So I am currently thinking a lot about the syllabus and class expectations documents that I am going to have to have ready when my class begins on Wednesday. Overall, I would have to say that I am very pleased with the people, the program, and the particulars of the department and campus. I have office space wherewith I can commiserate/share ideas with other students who are teaching the same material as I am. I am excited to being teaching and hope to have some fun experiences to share.

One of the things that was said numerous times at our first day of orientation was that a graduate student's first obligation is to their coursework and second to their teaching. There was some talk about how it is easy to let teaching be the thing that gets a lion's share of the time and resources devoted to it, because it is the thing that provides immediate rewards. Also, when you are teaching, there is no hiding if you are under prepared. You can hide out in a class that you haven't prepared for as much. This seems very true, and will be difficult to balance. I am much more confident (duh!) about my abilities in the classroom as a teacher than I am in my abilities in the ever-scary graduate seminar (class). I picked up several of the books for some of the classes that I am taking, but really had to rethink whether I wanted to take one of them merely by the materials that were required for it. This one class had more books (and tough materials at that!) required for it than all of my other classes put together! So, I am dealing with those kinds of anxieties.

I have been walking a lot. The institute parking lot that I have been parking at is clear on the other side of campus from the English building. My shin muscles especially (maybe because of all the stair climbing?) are sore. Either next week or the following, I will be making frequent visits to the gym. Maybe then I will stop feeling so out of shape and round. :)

There have been a few frustrating moments this week that have added a bit to the already stressful nature of beginning at the University. The picture below is a representation of one of those frustrations. At the beginning of the week, my old, indestructible Powerbook started giving me trouble. Basically, the little female adapter started coming loose so that it wouldn't recognize the male adapter when it was plugged in. Since the battery is already shot, this little problem caused it to completely loose its charge, eventually making it impossible to power up. I thought that maybe I could fix it (if you are laughing right now, don't worry, you're not alone. Somebody else seems to think that I am the antithesis of "handy"). I went to Home Depot and bought my first soldering iron.

After what had to be an hour I finally got it to the state that you see below. Getting that little chip out and accessible was nearly impossible. You can see the little thing that I needed to fix sticking out in the middle. Sure enough, it had come unsoldered from the circuit board. I did what I could to reattach it and thought that I had been successful, but when I put it all back together, it still wouldn't work. Mat thinks I may have fried it with the soldering iron being too hot. I can imagine that happening because everything is so close together on the board. But still it stinks. Having that computer was super useful (and I am ever-so gracious to Mat for hooking me up with it in the first place). A new laptop, while it will happen eventually, is a little ways down on the list of current necessities, so I'm gonna have to make do without one for now.

Here, however, is a Home Depot success story. While we were there looking for the soldering iron, I came across several wall-hanging devices that I thought might work for my guitars. Space is limited here, so i thought it would be cool to get a few of them up on the wall. I found these broom/outdoor appliance hangers for 6 bucks and they do the trick quite nicely, I think. The acoustic guitar body is too deep to work, so I've got a little tribute to Fender going on instead.

We have done most of the picture hanging in the house by now. I am particularly pleased with how these pieces look--thanks, Mom, for the perfect IKEA frames.

Finally, one of the very best things about being here is that fresh produce is super-accessible. Yesterday we went to the Farmer's Market in Urbana and got some fresh tomatoes, cucumbers (small like the should be!), corn and onions. The tomatoes especially are delicious. We are looking forward to growing some of our own next year.

I had a proud moment at lunch when I made what was already destined to be a delicious BLT all that much better. We used spinach instead of lettuce, added red onion, two kinds of tomato, and right before eating it, Tina was cutting a pear and I thought, "ah-ha! that would be so awesome on it too!" And it was. Here is my first (hopefully of many) food pic. We were trying to figure out what to call it. B-Stop? (bacon, spinach, tomato, onion, pear).

p.s. I am not the biggest fan of the band "the Fray." I have kind of played them off because of their huge commercial success. I don't know. Maybe it's the dude's haircut. But I don't know that I can diss/resist too much longer. A few weeks ago when I was driving the huge Penske truck back to the Penske place, their song "Over My Head" came on the radio. There have been moments lately when I feel this same way.

Cardinal

I had a little visitor today while I was beginning to read the text that I will be using in the class I am teaching this fall. I hoped for a better, front-view shot, but this was as good as I could get. The color is brilliant though, isn't it?

Egg Volcanoes (repost from Bertnews)

Seth loves eggs. He especially loves eggs that have a runny yolk. When we first started feeding them to him, I coined the name "egg volcano" to get him excited about the yummy yellow ooze that would come out of the egg when poked.

Since then, we have a ritual for eating them--a song really. Everyone in our family knows it. It's to the tune of "Woody's Roundup" from Toy Story 2:

Egg Volcanoes
Come on and eat some eggs
Egg Volcanoes
They're so good for your legs
Oh well, it's time for egg volcanoes
They're the very best
They're the rootin'-est tootin'-est 'canoes
In the Wild Wild West
Egg Volcanoooes.

It's a cute song. We all love to sing it. We've noticed, actually, that Maryn likes to sing it as well. We'll be driving along in the car and we'll hear her little voice in the back singing "egg bolcanoes..." it's cute.

You should sing it too.

More pictures

Here are a few more pictures of the fam taken in the last few weeks:

At the base of the Arch

In front of the English Building at UIUC

In front of the famous "Alma Mater" statue (You know, Tow Mater's mom!), UIUC

28 years ago

There is this Ben Folds song on his most recent album titled “Sentimental Guy.” The chorus is actually a lament that he used to be a sentimental guy. Though the rest of the song isn’t really applicable to my own life, I would say that that one line is very much true for me. I used to be a sentimental guy. If there is one thing that re-reading those old letters that I sent to Tina while I was on the mission has reminded me, it is that once upon a time, I was a real sweetie. Not only that—I could also write one serious love letter. I’m afraid that I’m just not as heart-on-my-sleeve as I used to be. I’ll admit—living in this new world is less of an emotional roller coaster, but some of that old sweetness sure would come in handy on a day like today: My sweet wife’s birthday. So without many bells or whistles, let me just say this:

My wife is still, after 7 years of marriage and 11 years of togetherness the perfect girl for me. And more now than ever before, I am in love with her.

She is a wonderful mother. Our children are better people because of her love and patience. They will turn out alright, mostly because of their mom.

She has a sense of humor that is both smart and keen.

She is beautiful. Have you seen her? Good grief.

She is patient with my daily bouts of selfishness.

And most poignant of all right now, she followed me halfway across the country in order for me to pursue my dreams.

What a wonderful woman.

I love you sweet Tina. Happy Birthday.

Bertog news

Alert! Family bloggers: Bert News

Here is a great accounting of our trip, with pictures!

New Digs

I know that some of you (Mom) have been waiting all week for some pictures, so here are some (finally). Last night we got the remainder of the stuff put away, and now it's just a matter of getting pictures hung and that kind of stuff.

There is an update on the status of the jonstone.com purchase. The "other" Jon Stone finally has the cash together, so the site's days are numbered. It has been a good run. I am thinking that rather than mirror what is on the current site in a new domain, I am just going to start an online Picassa page with new pictures. I will send out a link to that site as soon as jonstone.com goes black (here's to hoping that whatever www.jonstone.com is about to become is not a naughty site that people will go to expecting to see our kids!)

Front Door

Front Room

Kitchen

Basement Playroom

Computer Area

Back Door

Backyard Area (thumbs up from Seth)

As you can see, the backyard isn't really that grassy, but the kids should have some fun exploring back there (that is, if Seth can overcome his fear of bugs!). I know that there aren't any pictures here of the upstairs rooms. I will get those up eventually. For now, just imagine three very small rooms.

More later, off to Chipotle!

the arrival...

We made it. And not only did we make it, but we made it without any serious incident or occurrence and even managed to have a little fun along the way. I assume we will get some pictures up soon--my internet has only been working for about 4 hours.

Champaign is lovely. It reminds me a little of Logan and Cache Valley but without the mountains. The homes here are nice and many of them are older but very well kept. The town has almost everything that Tina could want by way of shopping. And the University, of course, is beautiful.

I don't have to do anything school related until next Wednesday, so the next week can be spent organizing our home and exploring the town.

We are in the process of switching our phone numbers and stuff...when I get all that worked out, I will send a mass email.

When we first arrived on Friday night we went out into our little backyard area and were greeted with little flame-like flashes of light. Fireflies. None of us had ever seen them before and their tiny beauty was a calming welcome to us.

off to explore...more soon.

hitting the road

Everything we own is outside in a big yellow truck. We are packed and ready. My back is aching! After the glorious upgrade to the fancier truck, the load went smoothly--especially with the help from the four Bonanza men who helped us intricately place each item in its place.

Tomorrow's destination: Vega, Texas (9 hours from Tucson as the crow flies)

Thursday's destination: Springfield, MO (with a stop in Oklahoma City for lunch at Toby Keith's "I Love This Bar And Grill." (8 hours)

Friday we pull into Champaign after a stop in St. Louis at the ever-famous Arch. (6.5 hours).

We're only supposed to go 55 in the truck since we are pulling a trailer so it's gonna take us a bit longer.

There should be good Champaign folk to help up unpack when arrive.

See you when we get there.

Can't resist (but don't miss the new post below, too!)

just stumbled on this...

In my opinion, this is one of the best reasons I can think of to continue the pursuit of good music. Soooo pretty. Iron & Wine is my favorite.



And if you like bearded men singing tender songs, try "Golden" by My Morning Jacket:



This, by far, has been my song of the year. This has crummy video--just close your eyes and listen.

When we get to Illinois...

This has been the Stone catchphrase of late--our little "somewhere over the rainbow." I think the feeling of a fresh start isn't without some attention getting merit though. While I imagine that most areas of our life will remain the same when we get to our new destination, who's to say that a few things can't get better?

So, here's my list of what I hope does, if fact, get better:

1. My cooking. Life in the heartland should provide easier access to fresh fruits and vegetables--some of them perhaps even self-grown. I also plan on purchasing our first gas grill very soon after we arrive. We have gone FAR too long not to have one. The truth is, I guess, that it's just too darn hot to spend time outside grilling in AZ.

2. Exercise. Being at school everyday has one major health benefit for me: easy and free access to the University gym and pool. I swam almost every day that I was at school last year during my final coursework semester at ASU. I can do it again!

3. My guitar playing. I haven't written a new song in over two years. It's time to get cracking again. Being away from Jon Thwaits, my musical muse, will be tough. I will have to find new motivations for writing and also want to spend time adding popular music to my repertoire. How fun is it to have a guitar player in your midst if he doesn't know any familiar songs?

4. Being outdoors, in general. The AZ heat really sentences us, as mentioned above, to our houses. Tina and I have big plans for family walks and trips to the nearby parks.

5. Disciplined study of both intellectual pursuits and new hobbies. (This one speaks for itself--though "new hobbies" is fairly nebulous, I realize. Let's just say I bought a bird watching book last week. Who knows if that will stick, but I find within the birding hobby a great metaphor for all knowledge inquiry: the more we pay attention to, and seek to become familiar with the details that are already right before our eyes, the better accustomed we will be to knowledge acquisition in general. Midwest = pretty birds, am I right?).

As I think of anymore, I'll keep adding them. I should mention also that we use this phase to keep our kids excited as well. As far as Seth is concerned, Illinois is the land of milk and honey.

in the queue

When Jon T. and I were working on the material that would become the electronic iteration of our ongoing music project, I suggested we call ourselves "the Queue." I loved that it was both a word with a legitimate meaning and, of course, a letter. How many other letters can lay such a claim? (Ok, after some thought on the matter, it turns out that a whole bunch of them can: A, B, C, I, J, O, P, R, T, U, Y). But, it just seemed cool to me. Our music projects, in their various forms, have always had creative names, I think. Only Anything became U.F.O.A on our second self-produced album. Some time after that, we moved to "Lotham Scooter" which was reference to a cartoon show that Jon literally dreampt about. When I returned home from my mission, we started playing funkier tunes and called ourselves the New Moves. Which later became, ever so briefly Jonathan Marvel and the New Moves. Eventually, our electronica days became "Lancaster" after the street in Tucson where the Richins boys lived. But I still think about the Q. Maybe one day I'll go solo and call myself the Queue--people would probably line up to see me play. ;)

Anyway, I was writing to say that I have had this huge blog in the queue for over a week now about my summer reading and its general slack, but have had some trouble with the journaling software that I was using to write it. I wanted a journal that I could use on my laptop that could sync up with Blogger so that I could have a place to collect both my public and private writing. That way I would have an easy option for moving entries deemed share-worthy to my public forum. Alas, on the night I spent the most time trying to get the sync to work, the software failed and my ready-to-post blog was lost.

So, you'll have to wait a few more days for that. In the meantime, my I suggest that you dust off your old journal and put it back by the side of your bed? Consider this quote from Brenda Ueland (a probably very smart person that I have never heard of, yet whom was quoted by a smart academic person's blog I read [deep breath])

"We have come to think that duty should come first. Duty should be a byproduct. WRITING, the creative effort, should come first -- at least for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you will use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve."

Writing = good health. yay! So even this arguably pointless post did something for me. Sweet.

Maryn's Second

Here is a great picture of Maryn on her birthday last week--darn, TWO weeks ago. Check the website soon for more...

Fighting in the Google-ution

This afternoon marked the first Tucson rainstorm of the summer. As is typical during monsoon season, the day started off sunny and hot—barely a cloud in the sky. At around 3pm, the sky turned gray and it rained. Boy did it rain. I went outside for a few minutes and watched it. Smelt it. There is nothing like the smell of desert rain.

Summer has been chaotic. The accommodations have been fine. Sleeping at John’s house has been really fun—a treat to be sure. Ironically, we haven’t spent as much time together in the past years that we have lived so close. The three nights a week in Gilbert with the Heidenreich’s are somehow like nights 15 years ago we spent in “the fort.” I’m glad to be back in the fort—but also like then, the fort’s not home.

The feeling is similar at the Bertoglio’s house. We love being near Grandma and Papa. They are so sweet. But alas, it’s not home. I’m anxious to get on. To be home—even though home is now miles and miles away.

***

That said, I have to mention the little revolution I am having in web-land. Slowly—very slowly-- but surely I am learning how to actually use computers and the Internet. I know that sounds silly, especially to those who know how much time I spend in front of the screen. But I imagine that it is like they say about our brain. Most of us only use a small percent of it. In the past few weeks, I discovered that Google is much more than just a search engine. It started a month or so ago when Nick showed me what an RSS feed was. I know, I know. Get with it. For those of you who, as I was, aren’t with it either, an RSS feed is basically a text broadcast that your blogs give. RSS feeds are also broadcast from popular websites that you might visit—especially ones that are updated regularly like daily news or entertainment sites.

Anyway, there are a lot of things you can do with an RSS feed. I played with them first as a part of my web browser’s tool bar. The idea is that you can see, for example, if a blog has been updated with out actually visiting the blog—your indicator announces the new blog title and you can click it as a link to read the blog in full.

So that’s an RSS feed. Then I started messing around with some of the Google tools that I had heard a little about. I downloaded Google Desktop for my work computer (a cool tool if you have a lot of RAM… my home computer couldn’t handle it). At it's core, Desktop is a search tool. If you install it, you can run "google" searches for stuff on your hard drive and on the web. Desktop includes “Gadgets”—basically “Widgets” , if you are familiar with Yahoo's fun desktop tools. One of the Gadgets is an RSS feed tool—but this one is more fancy. When you click the title, a window pops out and you can read the blog update right there—without visiting the webpage. Cool.

This is getting a bit long winded… basically it all led me to a cool tool that Google offers called Google Reader. Google Reader is pretty much the coolest thing I have seen on the web for a long time. Imagine that every blog you read is an email, and every time that someone posts something new, Google Reader collects it, indicates to you of its newness and then puts it on the screen for you. So if Nick, Michelle and Brandon all have a new post on the same day, all you have to do is be watching on Reader and you can read each of them in the same location, one right after the other. Oh--and I forgot to mention that Reader and all of the things I mention below are accessed with your gmail login (gmail is also, of course, made by Google).

This tool may be a bit impractical if you only read a few blogs—but wait, there’s more! As you surf the web, you will see the little RSS feed button all over the place. You can add page after page to your Reader and save yourself from having to click through all the links you have in your bookmarks. I have added feeds from all of the news sites that I read, all of the entertainment and art/design sites that I frequent, I have even gone looking for new blogs that I might just want to read. It’s so easy to read them—I am anxious to learn, see, discover.

You can tell I am pretty excited. Reader is pretty sweet. But it's not the only great tool. You can also individualize Google’s news site. See that "Individualize this page" button? Click it and go crazy. By using key word searches, I can search for any article being published on the web with the following (or any other) words: Champaign-Urbana, Street Art, University of Illinois. It’s really cool.

Picassa is another awesome tool by Google. This one is used both to organize the pictures you have on your computer and also publish them to the web. If you are tired of your computer’s picture organizing software (I am thinking of you Michelle), check it out.

Finally, you can use all of these tools on a personalized Google homepage called iGoogle.

So there’s a big commercial for you. Enjoy.

Suburbian Warp Zone

Opportunities for art are everywhere.

Experimental Post

So, I have never actually posted video to this blog before and thought that I might try today. As such, I am posting a video about a piece of Kinetic Sculpture--though I thought at first what appears in the video was computer generated, I am now quite positive that it is, as it appears to be in the film: manufactured.




Did it! It took a minute to figure out how, but I am on it now. More to come.

A piano, a guitar and 10,000 screaming fans

Last night Tina and I attended a concert together as a special anniversary treat. John Mayer was the name on the ticket, but we were also there for our old favorite Ben Folds and his current band. It was a great show and a wonderful time with my sweet wife who is currently working so hard in Tucson. But before my thorough analysis…

I must begin this blog by mentioning a sentiment of Tina’s that I share. During the half hour break between the two groups, she reminisced about the feeling of excitement that going to concerts used to give her. I remember those days—we would wait and wait for a show and when that day finally arrived, man-oh-man. Concerts that we wanted to go to were usually in Phoenix back in those days, and it’s almost like it was better that way for us Tucsonans. Driving up and back from the show was a big part of the fun. I remember, distinctly, sitting in the back of Marisa Henderson’s old convertible on the way home from my very first concert: Lollapalooza 1994. My ears were ringing and there was a melancholy smile on my face. I had just seen the Smashing Pumpkins. IN PERSON. And now it was over. I remember thinking that that summer day was, to that point, the best day in my life so far. That’s how dramatic it was. And it didn’t end there—I was hooked. My friends and I perfected the art of concert going. Later, we would fill every seat in John Heidenreich’s old Brown van and head off to see Weezer or No Doubt or Weezer again (I think we went to Phoenix to see Weezer on at least three occasions). We would show up early so as to secure our spot at the front of the general admission crowd and would be the last to leave the concert hall—just incase the band decided to come out and play one last song. We would often hang around the tour buses afterwards with hopes to meet the band, and on several occasions we did! I have Rivers Cuomo’s signature from three separate meetings. John and I snuck back stage and met Gwen Stefani and No Doubt; we met the members of the now defunct that dog., and I even was invited on stage with them at one show we went to. Those were good, good times.

Concerts in adulthood just don’t have the same affect on us anymore. I am fairly sure that if I added them all up, since returning from San Francisco in ‘99 I have been to twice the concerts I had been to as a teenager. But it would take me a while to sit and figure it out because I really don’t remember a lot of the shows that I have been to in the last eight years that clearly. There just isn’t that intense happiness that accompanies them anymore like theirwas in the days of yore. So, last night we mourned a bit over the loss of our childhood. As we approach 30, had three kids at a babysitter, and had to come to grips with going back to work the next morning, we were reminded (again) that the gap is getting larger.

But we still had a great time. We got to the Jobing.com arena (the lamest name for a venue since Cricket pavilion) during what I determined today to be Ben Fold’s first song, Gone (it killed me that we could have missed some of his set). The strangest thing about seeing a band you really really like (and readers of this blog know how much I love Ben) open for a different, much bigger band. In other words, they are definitely not the main event, and you can tell because everybody is sitting down. In fact, it is safe to say that a majority of the audience didn’t know who he was until late in his set when he played Brick. “Ohhhh,” the 8500 people who were there solely for John Mayer must have thought at once, “THAT is who this guy is!”

So we found our way down to our 12th row seats (Tina had forgotten that we had such great seats—which was fun. “We’re on the floor! Awesome!”). And sat there amongst all the John Mayer fans and belted along with Ben Folds as he sang. After the first song, the 50 year old guy that was sitting next to me said, sensing my enthusiasm, “Who is this guy?” So Ben Folds rocked the house and I sat there politely tapping my foot, every inch of me wanting to get up and shake my bootie. He played some favorites, including some great songs from the “five” days: All You Can Eat, Not the Same, Kate, Narcolepsy, 1 Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn faces, and a cover of Postal Service’s Some Great Heights come to mind at the moment. He had some songs where he added in some synth happiness—and I think I read somewhere that he is going to be using that synthesizer more on his next album. In classic Ben Folds potty humor, he mentioned studying up on the internet a very low frequency at which when felt/heard at a high enough volume, caused the listener to loose control of his bowels. He then played a note/frequency a few pitches above that note. As you might imagine, it’s a myth. But a funny myth, wouldn’t you say?

Ben Folds was over too quickly. The only Ben Folds t-shirt you could buy was a brown one that had the words “I ♥ Ben Folds” in the “I ♥ New York” fashion, except that over the white lettering, it had this alteration in red: “I ♥’d Ben Folds before he sucked” That pretty much summed up why he is the coolest dude ever.

The John Mayer show was what you might expect. Mayer is such an amazing guitarist. Maybe I will expand on this in some future blog, but the guy has one of the classiest careers in the biz (did I just say biz?). You gotta hand it to someone who has had so much commercial success, but yet remains so authentic and true to himself. Both times I have seen John Mayer (the other you can read about here), this sense of authenticism was the most palpable feeling present. The guy is just talented and can write a sweet melody to boot. You can take a look at the set list for last night’s show here. The highlights for me were “Bigger than My Body” and “Gravity.” Plus, unlike Tina, I LOVE all the jams and jam he did.

Watching crowds at concerts is fun. Next time you go to one, look around at how the people are behaving. A lot of people are like you, they are into it—dancing around a bit—definitely singing along. And then there are the folks who are REALLY into it. I saw a few of these fans during last night’s show. These are the fans that are SO into it, you have to ask yourself, “are they really into it or are they just into being into it?” There were these two girls who fit this description. Here’s how you can tell. During every song, they don’t actually look at the artist playing. They look at each other, hands in the air, dancing, singing every word to each other (as if to say, “we know every word to this song—and we know it TOGETHER!”). Then, in between songs, when there is a chance that John Mayer might be looking in their direction, they swoon for him—reach toward him, even though they are way too far away—like 100 feet and 45 degrees up—to touch him. So that was fun/pathetic to watch.

Final thoughts? I can’t wait to see Ben Folds in a crowd full of Ben Folds fans again. Then you know it will be me showing everyone I know EVERY WORD and reaching toward the stage, hoping to catch Ben’s eye, if only for a moment. Maybe I’ll wear a tube-top.