The new phonebooks are here!

I was recently faced with a conundrum. As a huge fan of The Avett Brothers, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the September 29th release of their Rick Rubin-produced major label debut, I and Love and You. I’ve voraciously consumed all the information I can get my hands on about the album, and have absolutely fallen in love with the three tracks that were released in July as an advance EP. But. The place where I go to find music to download recently received an early copy of the cd for free download. Hurm.

In general, I don’t have a guilty conscience about downloading music. For starters, in the past three years I’ve lost an iPod, a case of 90+ cds, and a laptop to thieves, and much of the downloading I’ve done is merely replacement of music which I once rightfully, legally purchased. Other downloads are for music which I need for a particular purpose (like a wedding reception) or just to scratch a momentary itch. The current artists that I care about merit me making a trip to Cactus Records to buy an honest-to-gawd physical cd, which I then dutifully rip to my hard drive and transfer to my iPod. I believe that musicians, particularly those who are trying to be heard above the drowning din of the current popular culture marketplace, are worth supporting, and I try as much as budget allows to provide this kind of support.

Besides, there is nothing like the first listen-through of a highly-anticipated album. The moment when a piece of music grabs you, and sweeps you up in the euphoria (or whatever emotion) of its own particular mood is so uniquely thrilling. You can probably remember particular songs that did it for you that way, where you didn’t even have to finish listening to the album before you knew what your favorite track was going to be. I can rattle off the names of the songs that grabbed me that way without much deliberation. Blister by Jimmy Eat World. Chicago by Sufjan Stevens. I’m The Man Who Loves You by Wilco. Fake Empire by The National (the oh-so-rare first track homerun). The Grey Album’s version of 99 Problems. Black Magic by Jarvis Cocker. Okay, now I’m just padding the word count…

Often these are the moments when you become a fan for life. While I’ve been a fan of the Avetts for a while, hearing the three tracks off of the upcoming album was like an epiphany. These guys should be HUGE. The aggression, harmonies, and unbridled enthusiasm of all their previous work have melted together along with a newfound pop sensibility to create some of the catchiest, most sincere music I’ve ever heard. And they all put it together in one song. And then then next song. And then the third, final song. I immediately put the little EP on repeat. It was better than it should be, a quantum leap forward as a band, and hopefully as a presence in the music world.

And that was just three songs. So now, the golden apple is dangling in front of my face. Free download. Nine more songs I haven’t heard, or of which I’ve only heard snippets. Craaaaaaaaaaap.

I’ve got to hold fast. I don’t want to ruin two Tuesdays from now. Besides, I’d rather have my first listen on my superior car stereo instead of these tinny computer speakers.

City Boy Resurgence

I’ve grown accustomed (and fond) of living inside the Loop here in Houston. For those of you out of towners, the 610 highway encircles the core of Houston, the first of 2 1/2 concentric highways that give a map of Houston a look not unlike an ever-expanding onion. The innermost loop has experienced a renaissance in the Aughts, as the sports teams built stadiums downtown and people flocked inward from the suburbs to be closer to the action.

I was a child of the suburbs growing up, but didn’t really realize it until moving to the inner loop almost four years ago. Living in Memorial, wedged between the inner and outer loops, I was caught between urban and suburban, but I unconsciously identified more suburban. Being a Texan complicates this dichotomy; every Texan feels (rightly or wrongly) that deep down, they’d cut it as a cowboy if the opportunity presented itself. How else do you explain lawyers who drive F-350 ranch trucks to and from downtown every day?

So as I made my one residence outside of Houston in College Station, the desire to identify as something other than a city boy became acute. It can be said that, though they have a similar enrollment, Texas A&M feels like a small town, while the University of Texas feels like a small city. It’s only natural then that my life goals soon after graduation centered on eventually having some land in Washington County and buying a larger truck than the one that I then drove.

But as I returned to Houston and spent a large amount of time socializing in Katy, I began to see the limitations of suburban/pseudo-rural life. I didn’t want to eat at Chili’s again. The City Boy Resurgence began.

Fortunately, I found a church home inside the Loop, with a large group of friends, many of whom never grew up in Houston (and thus never knew a Houston life besides the urban one they now lived), and I fell back in love with the city, the city I didn’t even really know. It was like reconnecting with an elementary school friend with whom you shared some fond memories, only to find that they were even more well-suited to you now than before.

Now The City and I hang out frequently, and while I don’t regret any of the path that brought me here, I do wonder if I wouldn’t have gotten here sooner if I’d gone away to the small city instead of the small town. At very least, I would’ve traded in my truck a little sooner.

On Vacations

I neglected to mention in my setup yesterday that one of the key rules of this 30 day project is that it not be self-referential, i.e. talking about the fact that I’m writing every day. That’s a crutch that I’m not going to allow myself.

Part of my recent spurt of imagination stems from the therapeutic effects of a recent vacation. Hold on, you might say, aren’t you marginally employed and recently married? Didn’t you just escape to another island idyll just four short months ago? Yeah, but.

Vacations, by definition, force you to leave all of your normal day-to-day existence behind at the airport, to be picked up at baggage claim along with your luggage. Even the leash of a Blackberry can be severed (as it was in my case) by wonky cell signal and the urge to throw the damned thing into the crystal blue ocean like a Corona commercial. You exist as Yourself Minus; minus job (haha), minus extra-curriculars, minus most friends, minus your cars, house, and possessions that wouldn’t fit in the Samsonite. It allows you time and clarity to see yourself as you are without those things. Which, strangely, is not nearly as pretentious as it sounds; it’s merely comfortable in the way that staying in bed on Saturday morning is comfortable.

A brief moment creased the armor of this particular vacation, a phone call informing us that a tree had fallen on our car, followed by a second call downgrading the crisis to small branches on our more sturdy vehicle. The sheer panic of an unexpected Responsibility encroached and receded, and was forgotten except as a funny story to tell over rum drinks.

I’ve never been one for vacations. When I leave a job, I always have excess vacation days remaining, sometimes weeks worth. In the seven years since I graduated from college, I’ve taken the odd extended weekend here and there, but the only real vacation I’ve had was my honeymoon in March. Having two trips close together has implanted the importance of these breaks. As much as we all pride ourselves on work ethic and willingness to go the extra mile, we also serve a God who ordains rest. As thirty taps me on the shoulder and hands me its business card, I’m starting to see the wisdom in rest and reset.

The 250: An Experiment

After a painfully long hiatus from this blog, and something like a creative dry spell, I’m geared up about writing again. But not just in a perfunctory, “I should write something” way, no, I want to kick start my creative juices by pulling a stunt, by assigning myself a task that will get me thinking like a writer again.

My recent career meanderings have called into question whether I have any right to lay hold of the title “writer”, and while I’m pretty sure that the jury is (and will be) out on that point of order for a while yet, I can certainly do what I can to settle the question in my own mind. To that end, I’m resolving to write two hundred and fifty words a day for the next 30 days. It may be on this blog. It may be on Houstonist. It may be elsewhere on the web. The only exclusions are message board posts, Tweets, and Facebook content, all of which are taking up a large degree of my attention lately and subsequently making me a little stupider with each 140 character missive. On the upside, this experiment should make my Twitter more interesting, too.

Two-fiddy isn’t oppressive. Heck, it’s taken me a hair over two hundred words just to set this up to this point. All told, it’s 7500 words; roughly the length of a decent short story. Which is exactly what I’d like to start writing at some point as soon as I can think about writing fiction without breaking out in a cold sweat. Baby steps, people.

So that’s the manifesto and the goal. The carrot that’s mostly for me moreso than you. (Sorry) I’ll post links to stuff that I post elsewhere, maybe on a weekly basis or something. So keep your RSS well primed, because I’m gonna spam it for the next few weeks.

You Couldn’t Make a Safer Bet

Right song, right time

When in doubt, just make a list about music. It’s been working for Rolling Stone for the past two years, since all their long articles are just about how Barack Obama turns water into wine. Anyway, as I was driving around late one night, I got to thinking about how much music I listen to in my car, and how it provides something of a soundtrack to the moments that play out while I’m behind the wheel.

But some songs and some bands are much better suited to certain situations than to others. Would I listen to Eagles of Death Metal on the way to church? Probably not. But I also wouldn’t listen to Explosions In The Sky while driving to a pub. So without further ado, these are the bands that capture a mood for me, paired with the moods. (Note: I briefly considered making this a matching quiz that you could answer in the comments, but that’d just get confusing)

Band:Situation

The National: Driving to meet friends

Any metal, but let’s say Isis: Cooking

Ray Charles: Reading

Explosions In The Sky: night driving

Justice: Getting somewhere fast, late at night

M.I.A.: sunroof weather

Lyle Lovett: rain

Sam Cooke: wedding planning

The Avett Bros: road trip

The Racontuers: auditory caffeine boost

Queens of the Stone Age: driving really fast around the Dog Park (aka Waugh/Memorial cloverleaf)

Wild Sweet Orange: sunset

The Hold Steady: leaving work

Zookeeper: riding with my favorite passenger

Wilco: sing-along music

Stars: driving to the airport to pick up aforementioned passenger

Ok, that’s all I can really think of.  Naturally, this list is far from comprehensive, as it doesn’t cover all the artists to whom I listen, nor does it encompass all the situations of everyday life. (I prefer absolute silence when I’m brushing my teeth, for instance)  But regardless, every moment does have a soundtrack, even if it’s just La Bamba stuck in the back of your head.

Rambling down the aisle

I’m like a recovering alcoholic with this blog: I fall off the regular posting wagon with alarming regularity, and then return with renewed vigor and commitment to frequent posting only to repeat the cycle once again. But with the wedding on the horizon, a date all but set, and a scant three months before Mich moves back to Houston, I might as well take another swig of the Blog Juice.

- Survived Ike safe and sound, thankfully without damage to the apt. Power was out for two weeks, so I stayed with my folks in Katy. The commute from The Boonies was great until the second week, when I-10 became the world’s largest parking lot. Being at the Chron during the storm recovery was a rush, and definitely a career highlight for me. (no, not just my not-even-half-year time at Texas St. The whole post-college career)

- Pleased with how the Astros finished the season, Ike notwithstanding. Resign Wolf and pick up another free agent pitcher, and we’ll be more than ok going into 2009. Also, someone please remind Hank Steinbrenner that the NL Central is baseball’s toughest division, not the AL East.

- Wedding planning is fun. Seriously. When else do you get to pick your own liturgy?

- Also, for the Ausmus-loving ladies in the readership, go to www.astros.com and view the tribute video that played before his last game here. Jeff Bagwell: great 1^st baseman, lousy comic timing.

- Bachelor party + friends who home brew = win.

- Among the songs that would be hilariously wrong as a wedding dance song: Better Man by Pearl Jam, Smack My Bitch Up by Prodigy, I Married Her Because She Looks Like You by Lyle Lovett, Fat Bottom Girls by Queen, I Will Survive as covered by Cake (now with 100% more F-bombs!), and I Love You Because I Have To by Dogs Die In Hot Cars. There are more. Lots more.

- I’m getting a custom shirt made at Billy Reid for the wedding. I’m way more excited about this than I should be. Now if only I could find a solid black suit with flat front pants, three buttons, and narrow lapels, and a skinny, black tonal-paisley tie.

- The Chron’s post-Ike power database was the best sociology experiment I’ve ever seen. The mood swings, the petulance and lack of perspective were all appalling and hilarious at the same time. Centerpoint, et al. did a helluva job in the days after the storm; they just need a new PR strategy and more honest customer service.

- Not especially blown away by the new St. Arnold’s Divine Reserve. It’s not bad, it’s actually quite good. But it’s not the home run in the way that the last two were.

- After becoming enamored with The Hold Steady after buying their “Boys and Girls in America” album, I’ve lately come to realize that their first album “…Almost Killed Me” is my favorite of theirs. Raw and rugged where their recent albums are more cohesive, confident and technically adept, the songs just fit their Midwestern bar band persona a lot better. It’s an uglier world, but it’s more exhilarating because it’s more scary.

- Finally, since it is Schadenfriday, I only have this to say to every Cubs fan who brought a sign cheering for Ike to the Astros’ “home” games in Milwaukee: do not tempt the Baseaball Gods, for they are cruel.  Have another lonely October, jerks.

So these are the soundtracks, the distractions and pressing concerns (minus a few unpublishable concerns) that are rattling around in my head at the moment. Naturally, as the wedding gets closer, this space should get a little bit more newsy, unless I’m just too busy to post.

If you feel like dancing

This is a sequel of sorts to my previous post on jukebox etiquitte, but with the twist that while it is possible (and proper) to dethrone the tyranny of the clown who picked several consecutive selections from Nirvana’s Nevermind, it’s impossible to stop today’s topic of discussion once it has begun.

I’m speaking, of course, of wedding dance songs. While the overall playlist for a wedding reception is also open to debate (except the inclusion of the Chicken Dance. There is never a right time and place for that crap), what we’re going to focus on today is the criteria for choosing a song for the first dance between you and your beloved. As with the jukebox stuff, there are many different facets to consider.

1. This should go without saying, but obviously the fact that I’m saying it means that that can’t possibly be true: pick a song that’s actually danceable. Example: you can’t do anything to the complex, if beautiful, compositions of Sufjan Stevens. No matter how much you like To Be Alone With You or Vito’s Ordination Song, there’s no sustaining backbeat that allows you to dance like anything other than a limp cod.
2. The aforementioned Vito’s brings us to another point. Pick a short song. People didn’t buy you a blender so that they could watch you enact an entire three-movement dance performance. Three and a half minutes, MAX. This (for me) rules out the otherwise-perfect South Texas Girl by Lyle Lovett, which clocks in at over six minutes. If someone tried to force you to watch them dance for even four minutes, you’d be running for the buffet pretty quickly, and by minute six, you’d be seeing if you could take those Wuesthoff knives back to Williams-Sonoma. Don’t antagonize your guests.
3. Pick something that’s not completely obscure. This KILLS me, but as much as I’d totally try to find an acoustic arrangement of the Cabin’s Dance With Me, my indie-ness would be my downfall as my grandmother falls asleep and anyone who is a staunch 94.5 The Buzz listener wonders why I didn’t use a Three Doors Down “ballad” instead. Pick a classic, new or old; I don’t care if it’s Michael Buble or Dean Martin, so long as it swings enough to meet #2’s requirements.
4. Do not pick You Are So Beautiful by Louis Armstrong. That is a father-daughter dance, you sicko.
5. All of this has been built on the assumption that you’re going to dance. Dance. Dance whether you’re any good or not, or even if you’re Baptist. Just do it. Especially if you’re Baptist, because if you’re not giving your guests booze, they should at least get some entertainment out of watching your goofy “waltz”.
6. Don’t pick anything intstrumental, unless it’s so completely well-known that everyone in the room, including your aunt who only watches the public broadcasts of city council meetings, will recognize it. Speaking to the dudes: you need to whisper the lyrics to your new wife. All of them.
7. You need to have a big finish, so pick a song that actually finishes. If it fades out at the end, no dice. How else will you know when to dip the bride?
8. Watch out for awkward lyrics. I watched an A&E special where Lyle and the Large Band were playing live, and taking requests from callers. One couple called in to say that they’d danced to Nobody Knows Me at their wedding; Lyle gently reminded them that it’s a cheating song. So many great love songs (particular the great R&B classics) are about unfaithful partners promising afresh that they will always be true. Awwwwwkward. Keep your love songs straigh forward. This same principle applies to any songs that get even borderline raunchy; nothing against raunchy, but it’s a simple moment for simple pleasures. Translation: probably skip Marvin Gaye.
9. If it’s a song that could also be played at a funeral, forget it. I’m looking at you, Wind Beneath My Wings.
10. Finally, pick something you like. Weddings are not performances, they’re parties for you. Don’t pick a song because anyone other than you and your intended think it’s cool.

So why am I obsessing about this? Eh, it’s been on my mind for a few months now, and I’ve been to enough weddings over the past decade to choke a horse. More importantly, what is my choice? After hours of research, I’ve found it: Come Rain or Come Shine, as sung by Ray Charles. Classic voice, classic song, only 2:45 long. Perfect.  But then again, this decision should be democratic, so discussions are ongoing.

I needed to get this down on paper before I introduced y’all to my fiancee. I love you, Mich; you’re my smile. Everybody else, block off some time next year and bring your dancing shoes.

She's my smile

On blogging, success, and an $8 peanut butter sandwich

Many of you (and by “you” I mean the five people who read this blog regularly and the sixteen people who were Googling for Looney Tunes slash fiction) have noted that this blog has gone un-updated for a while.  You have my heartfelt apologies, but I really didn’t have a darned thing to say for months.  Really.

When I began blogging four years ago, I decided that my little corner of the internet wouldn’t be a forum for my moping and whining.  It’s all to easy to come across that way, and especially given the stream-of-consciousness composition method that I use when I write, I very easily could’ve written quite a few posts that would’ve made a sixteen year old with a sparkling, seizure-inducing MySpace blush.  So when I would consider writing on here this spring, I always demurred, because I didn’t want to talk about the pressing, real-life concerns in my world: unemployment, crime, relationships, disappointment, writer’s block (of course), and finances.  Believe me, you wouldn’t want to read that dreck.

But why start writing now?  Well, I’m employed again (twice over) and haven’t had to talk to the police in almost a month, for starters.  Actually, that last part isn’t entirely true; I have had to talk about The Police.  For those of you who haven’t heard, I’m freelancing at the Houston Chronicle, and one of my recent assignments was to write a review of the Police/Elvis Costello show in the Woodlands.  Somehow, around the office here, this was deemed to be drawing the short straw.  For me, though, it was the first time in the five weeks that I’ve been here that I actually felt like something approaching a real journalist.  So that experience was the shot in the arm that I needed to start writing here again; it was something that I could re-tell here without it being so maudlin or boring that you’d click away to see what was posted on ManBabies today.

The quick timeline of writing the Police review, in chronological order: cracking myself up by thinking of fake interview questions for Sting (“what was it like playing the Goblin King in Labyrinth?”), figuring out how in the hell someone was going to edit my story at the ungodly hour it would be completed, receiving and then returning ALL the media tickets for the event, running into a nemesis,  cramming three people into Vesper for the return trip to town, a gigantic cup of coffee at Brasil, walking through the ghost town that Houston becomes on weekday nights, composing a caffiene-fueled piece while hoping not to be evicerated in the comments, meeting the creepy night editor, and slogging home too hyped up to sleep even though it was 3am.  Whew.

So back to the point, at heart I’m an optimist, and I’ve had plenty of reasons to support a more cheery outlook on life lately.  It even goes beyond the fact that I’ve got what amounts to my dream job right now (it is still a job, after), though.  On Wednesday, my post-deadline haze was rolled back under the influence of a sandwich and a conversation.  The role of the sandwich was played by the heavenly Fat Elvis at B’wiched on Westheimer, a pannini concoction of homemade peanut butter, caramelized bananas, and wild honey. (The King and the Big Puma would both be proud)  The conversation was provided by my dear old mum, who was somewhat out of the loop of recent developments in my life.  As I rattled through the litany of good things that’ve been happening, the act of relating them all in sequence brought to mind just how mind-numbingly blessed I’ve been lately.  As the great poets Chubawumba once said, I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down.

(It’s stuck in your head now, isn’t it? You’re welcome.)

Anyway, on the heels of all this introspection and reflection, I rolled in to work this morning, intent on blogging, when I read this article.  While I don’t think I’ll ever have the attention of a large part of a major American city like she did, her experiences did really help me to coalesce the thoughts on my self-imposed hiatus, leading to the very entry you find here.  Writing has suddenly become not only my passion, but my livelihood, and I’m still wrestling with the implications of that.  Hopefully, it’ll make my writing here more vibrant and more focused, or it could just make this the one outlet for my not-suitable-for-print ramblings.

we. shall. see.

Writing Under The Influence of B-12 & Lidocaine

There are times that I consider abandoning any semblance of reasonable discourse on this blog, and just forge ahead with nothing but the rambling posts that compose an inordinate amount of my time here.  But then I wouldn’t have room for high-concept crap like the jukebox thing, and my forthcoming missive on the theology of football.  (really)   But for nights like tonight, when I feel guilty about the frequency with which I post (or don’t), nothing quite hits the spot like a little ramble.  Kind of like how as a beer snob, I have to be in just the right mood to want a cider, but when that hankering takes root, there’s nothing but a Strongbow that’ll satisfy it.  Now off to the races:

- Among the gifts that I received for Christmas, one was a gift certificate to Brooks Brothers.  While I wouldn’t ever be caught dead in one of their sweaters, or any of their pleated pants, they are a bastion of classic style, and so I purposed to get some classic accessories there.  I’m now the proud owner of a fistful of quality handkerchiefs and a burgundy and blue bow tie.  For some reason, I’m more excited about the hankies.  Maybe it’s because they’ve already come in handy during one recent emotional evening, or because they can stand in as a white pocket square in a pinch, but I’m glad I’ve got them.

-I also grabbed one of BB’s killer non-iron dress shirts, that don’t have to be dry cleaned.  Perfect for procrastinators like myself who sometimes need a shirt for a meeting the next day and only realize this fact after it’s too late to get to the cleaners.   Their tag line should be “shirts for incompetents who want to look competent”.

- If I never hear the words “Roger” and “Clemens” again, it won’t be too soon.  Yeesh.  Look around, Rocket: no one else is going to these lengths to defend themselves against the Mitchell Report.  It doesn’t make you look innocent, it makes you look petulant like a kid who got caught stealing gum at the grocery store and tries to say that he had the gum already.

- The holiday season (and I say that not to infuriate Bill O’Reilly, but because I’m referring to both Christmas and New Year’s) was rather crazy, with several firsts established:  first Christmas where I didn’t actually see my folks on the 25th,  first New Year’s Eve spent at a hospital, first time to actually get a kiss at midnight, first time my current girlfriend didn’t break up with me on the 1st,  and first time to actually buck up and take back a gift that I didn’t really want instead of pretending I liked it and then have it sit in a forgotten corner of my apartment until I throw it out when I move.

- What a difference three weeks makes.

- I spent some time over the past couple of weeks catching up on the catalogs of musicians I’ve always been told that I’d enjoy, but never got into.  Several artists and albums stood out.  The artists: Fugazi, Ray Charles, Queens of the Stone Age, The Clash, and Minutemen.  The albums: Person Pitch by Panda Bear, Exile on Main Street by the Stones, Moondance by Van Morrison,  and In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel.   The biggest surprise was Panda Bear; it’s a retarded band name that doesn’t fit their/his sound at all, but it’s beautiful, dreamy, meandering pop, the sort of stuff that Brian Wilson would’ve made in 1969 if he’d had the technology.  I guess Wilson was in bed for all those years with the hope that he’d wake up in 2007 and be able to make this album.  I’m not saying that it’ll necessarily age as well as Pet Sounds, but Panda Bear made me want to revise my Best of 2007 list.

-  Speaking of music, after listening to their music since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out and I made it my first-ever “I’m buying this because of the hype” music purchase (though I did the safe thing by buying it for my brother as a gift), I’m going to get to see Wilco live in March.  With the band as it exists circa Sky Blue Sky, this should be a fantastic evening.  I may even have some company for the occasion.

- After an entire season on the Texans beat for Houstonist, I’m a full fledged convert to fandom.  I don’t have any Texans gear (that’ll change as soon as it goes on end-of-season clearance at Academy), but my heart is Battle Red.  Eff the Titans and their inexplicable local fans (whether of the pathetic “they’re really the Oilers” variety or the “Vince Young parted the Red Sea” ilk), I’m going with a team on the upswing.  They’re young, fast, and defense-minded.  Watch ‘em next year; they were a running game and a bunch of injuries away from the playoffs.  One player won’t change that, but a couple additions in key areas will.

- Fearless Critic and Houston: It’s Worth It.  Two books, one Christmas present.  One awesome girlfriend.

Yeah, that’s about it.  Still just crappy rambling.   But some day soon, I’ll explain why sports writers need to stop writing snarky columns saying “like God cares about football.  Pssh!” every time a player says something about God wanting his team to win.  Ooooh, exciting, huh?