Friendly Technology Tip

Do yourself a favor and pick up a decent DVD-CD cleaner, particularly if you have kids and you play the same DVDs over and over again. I picked one up over the weekend and have since cleaned about 15 movies. Once again, we have the first three seasons of Spongebob clean and playable.

Because All The Cool Kids Are Doing It

I switched to the new Blogger.

Concert News!

The Wreckers are going to be at the Riverside Casino as part of the casino's Country Fest in late February. Pat Green is going to be at the First Avenue Club in March. Anyone want to go with me? Cause I'm going, even if I have to go by myself. And for the music portion of the post, here's The Wrecker's singing Leave The Pieces:



Followed by Pat Green singing Feels Just Like It Should and then Wave On Wave:





I couldn't find a video of my current favorite Pat Green song. It's called I'm Trying To Find It, and it's off the new, or relatively new, release Cannonball. It's a great, great song, and here are the lyrics

There's a road that goes to an old friends house
Where we grew up, where we hung out
I've been on this highway for three hours now
And I'm trying to find it

And I remember an old pinball arcade
Where I lived out all my yesterdays
And I'm sure it's torn down and gone away
But I'm trying to find it

And there's a feeling that I left behind
I felt it once running down my spine
The fear of God the joy of life
And I'm trying to find it

There's a spot on earth a man can go
To find himself and free his soul
A place somewhere between hell and heaven
Where no one hurts and all's forgiven

A door that leads to light and grace
But the keys are in the darkest place
Though it feels like I've been there before
Though I dont know what I'm looking for

And I'm trying to find it
I'm trying to find it

There's an attic in my old mans house
Full of history I need to know about
Of a life I've lived too long without
And Im trying to find it

And I know you're up there in your room
And I want so bad to heal the wound
But I've hurt you in so many ways
And I dont know why you choose to stay

And I know it's me that let it die
And there's a fire that's gone when I look in your eyes
An innocence that you once had
A piece of you I miss so bad

And I'm trying to find it

Well It's three AM and I'm on my knees
She cries and her eyes looked down on me
As I searched for the book
She loves to hear her daddy read
And I'm trying to find it

There's a road that goes to an old friends house
Where we grew up where we hung out
I've been on this highway for three hours now

New Links

Two new links – Ken Levine’s blog and Monkey Punch Dinosaur. Ken Levine is an award-winning tv writer from such shows as Cheers and M*A*S*H. Monkey Punch Dinosaur is, well, a collection of artwork, photos, etc. of monkeys punching dinosaurs. You can’t go wrong with monkeys punching dinosaurs.

Sweet Baby James

I love singing to Ethan. I’ve sung to him since he was a baby, mostly at night. When he was very young, he would wake in the middle of the night and the only way to get him back to sleep was to drive around. Many times I’d find myself driving him around town at 3:00 am or so, singing. I sang songs I loved, songs I knew by heart, I made up songs for him. One song I loved, one song I sang, was Sweet Baby James.

Sweet Baby James is the title song from James Taylor’s second album. Also on the album are Country Road and Fire and Rain. Think about it. Sweet Baby James, Country Road, and Fire and Rain all on the same album. Those three songs would be a great career for someone, and James Taylor had them all on the same album.

I know Fire and Rain by heart too, and love it dearly, but it’s not much of a lullaby. It’s very downbeat, even depressing, though a wonderfully written song. I mean, that opening lyric is great

Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone

How painful is that? And the close to the chorus,

I always thought that I would see you again

Takes on more and more meaning as you get older.

But Sweet Baby James, there’s a lullaby. And it’s optimistic, at least to me, with notions of setting out on your own, of being comfortable with who you are, not to mention wonderfully evocative. I've never seen the Berkshires, but I have an image of them I will never shake.

There is a young cowboy, he lives on the range
His horse and his cattle are his only companions
He works in the saddle and he sleeps in the canyons
Waiting for summer, his pastures to change

And as the moon rises, he sits by his fire
Thinking about women and glasses of beer
And closing his eyes as the dogies retire
He sings out a song which is soft but it's clear
As if maybe someone could hear

Goodnight, you moonlight ladies
Rockabye sweet baby James
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Won't you let me go down in my dreams
And rockabye sweet baby James

Now the first of December was covered with snow
And so was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston
Lord, the Berkshires seemed dream-like on account of that frosting
With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go

There's a song that they sing when they take to the highway
A song that they sing when they take to the sea
A song that they sing of their home in the sky
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
But singing works just fine for me

So, goodnight, all you moonlight ladies
Rockabye sweet baby James
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Won't you let me go down in my dreams
And rockabye sweet baby James.

But we were talking about singing to Ethan, weren’t we?

So the other night, it’s bedtime. He’s not feeling the best, and he asks me to sing to him. I sing Old McDonald, and let him choose the animals. I sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I sing You Got A Friend In Me from Toy Story, his favorite movie. I then ask what else he wants me to sing, and he says “the cowboy song”. I’m puzzled, because I can’t think of a cowboy song, then it hits me. I sing the first lines of Sweet Baby James, stop and ask if that’s the one. He smiles, says yes, and I sing it for me. I don't know if he remembers it from when he was a baby - I sang it to him again just a few weeks ago - but I like that he remembers it.

And yes, I posted that in part because it gives me a chance to use this again – James Taylor and the Dixie Chicks singing Sweet Baby James.

Shoveling

So, as those who made it out to the old house know, the driveway (at least the one by the front door) was small. I’d say roughly a car and a half long and barely wide enough that when you got out of the car you stepped on driveway and not grass. I parked there in the wintertime, too. The garage was detached from the house, and sat at the bottom of a steep hill. The one time I parked in the garage and it snowed, it took a half hour to back the car far enough down the lane that I could get enough of a running start to get up to the top of the hill over the snow and ice. After that, I just parked in the driveway. So, when it snowed, it took maybe 10 minutes to clear the car and shovel the snow enough to get the car out. My mother’s house, on the other hand, has a two-car wide driveway that is two and a half car lengths long. Shoveling is a much lengthier proposition. This Sunday marked the second week in a row I spent about 45 minutes shoveling a driveway. Needless to say, I was not thrilled at this. Here’s hoping for little snow the rest of the winter.

Hey! Actual Text!

Sure, it's links to stuff other people did. But still. It's an improvement over You Tube clips.

Anyway, for the Star Wars fans, I give you a link to a person explaining how R2D2 is the genius behind the whole rebel alliance.

When you're done with that, here's the Buffalo Beast's 2006 50 Most Loathsome List. A sample:

14. Britney Spears
Charges: Boozy celebrity bimbos are replicating at an alarming rate these days, but the difference is this bilious tramp has two doomed children, both cursed with the warped ribonucleic helices of a beer-chugging swamp princess with a defective larynx and a lucky low-rent wannabe hustler who may actually be the more responsible parent. Spears’ marriage to a universally detested embarrassment to humanity was trashy in two flavors: showbiz in its brevity and trailer in its impressive babies-per-year output. But the worst thing about their unholy matrimony is that we ever had to know who Kevin Federline is. His fame is entirely her fault, and her fame has by far outlasted her initial perverse schoolgirl/jailbait appeal.

Exhibit A: If Britney had shown the world her bald crotch four years ago, it would have caused widespread rioting and possibly a national holiday. Today, even Madonna thinks it’s gross.

Sentence: Thrown from an airplane with a parachute that will only open if she can hit the high E above middle C.

Box In A Box

Because equal time is important

March of the Emporers

Very, very cool ad.

Fiesta Time!

Yes, the slow evolution of Corn O'Copia into a You Tube blog continues. But I couldn't pass this up - it's the last few minutes of the Fiesta Bowl, with the best ending to a college football game ever.