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    Wednesday, January 31, 2007

    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.

    Monday, January 29, 2007

    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

    Wednesday, January 24, 2007

    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.


    Monday, January 22, 2007

    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.

    Friday, January 19, 2007

    Box In A Box

    Because equal time is important

    Tuesday, January 09, 2007

    March of the Emporers

    Very, very cool ad.


    Tuesday, January 02, 2007

    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.