i heart colored vinyl 45s

I have a tendency to find one thing I really love, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand obsess and obsess and obsess. My iTunes music collection is not as extensive as it should be partially because I have an issue of having anything that I am not completely in love with.

I want to obsessssssssssssssss over everything that on my playlists - life is too short to listen to something you can't completely fall in love with.

Anyway. That's that.

And that said, "Lydia" by Keith John Adams is quite possibly one of the most perfect pop songs I've ever heard. Balanced, short, peppy, actually quite a good little bit of storytelling and well-written, amusing but not cutesy lyrics.

It makes me want to bounce up and down for hours on end.

define yr. terms

In my own foray into the world of blogging - publicly and unabashedly - I wanted to have some sort of gimmick, a request blog, a specific subject, something else crazy.

I've written semi-pro blogs for specific purposes, things that have belonged to my friends that I've worked as a hired gun for, but never anything that I've really come up with and for on my own.

And specific information is really what people read things on the internet for. Unless, of course, they're your friends.

So if I want anyone else to read what I have to say, I have to find a niche.

But what exactly would that be?

I have a niche in my career. I am a middle school band director, and I love my job. I get to run around and play with kids, but not have to clean up after kids who pee their pants. I can work with musicians who are starting to get into complex music, but without the attitude of high school and the ridiculousness of the marching band world. I am a perfect fit for my job, and I am also getting to be awfully damn good at it.

But I don't want to write all about that. In order to be really great at what you do, sometimes, you have to have some distance from it. Sure, there are some jobs and some people who can 100% just do what they do, and be good at it, but I'm not one of them. I need some distraction to be any good at anything I'm doing. Does that make sense?

I had a social niche back in my hometown of Orlando. I miss my backward little southern outpost in the midst of a swamp. I grew up around Orlando and I went to college there, and I have a ton of friends, ranging from Giuliani-backing republican engineers to d.i.y. indie rock local gods to married high school sweethearts with kids of their own.

I live in South Florida and it's not so easy, for a number of reasons. My social niche been thrown all askew. Despite the fact that SoFla is not nearly as cool as New York or San Fransisco (I've never been to the latter but I'm still sure of this fact), people my age move away for all the same reasons: unless you have some sort of amazing job or an equally amazing reason to be there, it's too expensive, and it takes too much from you on too many levels to live there. There's a lot of suburban-y places here that aren't so bad, where people my age come back to nest with their parents and teach and what not.

And as far as what I have to say, in regards to culture and politics and what I do? What I love? What I know? I'm all over the place. Music is everything to me, and while I know a lot about various genres, historical periods, a few obscure bands, woodwind instruments, but I'm far from an expert on anything. I can't describe what I love or what I care about in a neat little package, but it'll show in what I write about in general.

Although I do teach seventh graders, I love fart jokes, I watch a lot of bad movies, I feel as though I live in the area where high and low art tend to meet. Maybe I'm one of the quasi-psuedo-intellectuals of my generation who takes a highbrow interest in that which is lowbrow.

But while I'm teaching those seventh graders, I talk about programmatic music and why they should care about idee fixe in early 19th century symphonies. I explain that boys can play the flute because one of the foremost fluists in the world is a guy, with a full on beard and a wife he loves and who's a knight and so they shouldn't worry about being called lame if they're guys who play the flute.

So for me to bridge the gap between "high" and "low" art, in the way that Bernard Gendron, a sociologist/philosopher and researcher on 1970s NYC punk rock and avant garde defines it, is an important thing that I do.

Maybe that's my niche? Intellectualism meets Adam Sandler movies (at least 1993-1998; post-Wedding Singer is just crap)? Academia meets rewarding pre-teens with gold stars on their name cards? Haydn meets Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records? Walter Benjamin meets Ben Folds?

We'll see. I figure when all else fails, just to do like that Polonius dude:

"This above all — to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

I also really love the movie Clueless. I don't care what anyone else says. And I wish blogger had the option to underline instead of italicize.

Worth Asking...

It seems that conservatively based media has taken up the cross to defend Sarah Palin. Which of course, is an honorable thing. Take care of your own. Be careful.

But I was just flipping through the channels (without a remote, with basic cable, what not), and saw that Bill O'Reilly is going to offer a "No Spin Look" on an election issue - Obama's parents.

Because they're fair game. Obama's mother had him out of wedlock, as will Palin's daughter have her child. And as almost did Palin. She and her high school sweetie eloped, and in pretty convenient time, too. But we have to examine the sort of things that Obama's parents instilled in him, how they raised him. How what they will affect his presidency. And what Sarah Palin has instilled in her kids has nothing to do with what she hopes to do with the country.

Y'know. Just sayin'.

Total Request - Live!

I'm toying with the idea of making this into a request blog. I have a lot on my mind, and as far as a non-personal blog, I like the idea of using it as a writing exercise as well as a vehicle by which to express myself.

So - what do you want to read about? What do you wonder about? What do you want me to know? What opinions do you want me to express? What would you like to challenge me with?

"Indie" rock (that I hardly keep up with anymore)? Old 90s pop music trivia? Opinions on bassoons and/or oboes? Political obsessions? (Looking to keep that to a minmum...) Bad movies that I've seen a thousand times? Why so many screwed up people live in Florida (and what is still with this Caylee Anthony dominating the national news?!) and what it's like to live among them?

Anything. You can see I wrote about not owning more frogs. Give it to me, people. Show me what'cha got. I'll turn it around within 24 hours, unless agreed upon otherwise.

the word I'm looking for

My friend Ryan came up with the challenge recently, for me to write about something in particular. About the feeling you get when you are more PFA than everyone else around you. The knowledge that you are the cool kids in the room.

It seems that I forget what that feeling is like. Living in South Florida to some degree takes that away, because you don't have the same sort of backward, clumsy, adorable folks that you do in Central Florida. The metro Orlando area, excuse me for saying it, is a place where people are trying so hard to be cool and fun and well, something. I won't say I was outside of that.

In the metro Miami/Fort Lauderdale/West Palm area, people already know they're cool and they give you dagger eyes most places you go. It's not so friendly down here, and it genuinely is harder to go out and find a place where you feel at home with friends.

There is a moment when you walk into a place, and you feel like you get it. You feel like it's a place for you, and that you may be the smartest and most interesting people in the room, but it's hard to do that without people who are your true and beloved (and much missed) friends. It's walking into Denny's with Marc and crew after a show, and discuss George Romero movies and minor Beatles references late into the night.

That happened for me in my hometown all the time. It was a fun way to be, I suppose. It sort of happened a few weeks ago when I had gone out to a club with my friends Elizabeth, Jessica, and Tim. The latter two I have made acquaintance with through Elizabeth, but there was a point where Tim and I, who were tearing up the dance floor on our own and simultaneously looking as dorky as humanly possible, just sat on the side and made snide comments about some of the other people there. Was it mean? No. Was it snobby? Maybe. Was it self-satisfying? Sure.

There was a little bit of it when I spoke to the fine Carmax salesman who is very likely (and hopefully soon) going to be selling me a car. He had picked up on the conversation of my friends and I while I was test driving a car, and starting talking politics and Thomas Friedman with us. That was a moment. When the boring circumstances around you sort of fade away, and you connect with someone as though you're the only person, or the only group of people who matter.

And that's a sense and a sort of friendship that I miss. I miss having a ton of people around me to point out others with icky attitudes and laugh at them. I miss being surrounded by people who can recognize actual pretension when they see it, and be pretentious enough to laugh about it. There's some of it down here, but not nearly as much as I was surrounded by in Orlando.

I was charged with finding the word to describe the feeling that you have when you walk into the room and you and your companions are able to see right through the bullshit around you - and most of all, laugh at it, and be yourselves.

Instead, I have once again found the feeling of missing my friends terribly. Maybe I will recall the words when I get to see my friends again, and pick out stupid greeting cards at Hallmark with them.

Why I Don't Own More Frogs

Only people who do not enjoy fine cinema ask me why I don't own more frogs. Because, I mean, come on!

Triplettes of Belleville. Magnolia. According to wikipedia, The Reaping. All movies that depict the rare but actually occurring event of frogs raining down on mankind.

Why would I be worried about this happening if I were to own a frog? Or several frogs, even. It sounds like a stretch, but whenever I think about frogs in mass numbers, these are the sort of images that cloud my brain. Sure, frogs are cute, mostly green (which is a color I appreciate), and generally harmless. I love Kermit, and I like actual living frogs, too. Even in Oviedo (the towns & gowns/backwoods suburb of Orlando), hearing the sound of frogs outside and thinking they were actual aliens. I remember this from age 10, but I was scared of everything then. That doesn't matter. I still like frogs.

But the idea of a true frog storm is a scary one. And a possible one. Particularly for me.

And I mean, the Bible predicting this is one thing, but Paul Thomas Anderson's deft use of the verse from Exodus 8:2 in 1999's tour de force Magnolia was not something I noticed when I first saw this film (having started it at about 2am, bad idea). The event in the film is foreshadowed with reference to an 82% chance of rain among other things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnolia_(film)#Raining_frogs_and_Exodus_8:2

Said rain really happens, too. The actual occurrence of raining frogs comes from frogs getting sucked into water spouts, and falling from the sky. I think of such a storm, and I think of "Reigning Blood", like the Slayer song, but the Tori Amos cover of it.

Let's take this into account - I live in Hollywood, south Florida, where it rains a great deal. Right now we're at an odd point that coincides with El Nino and election year cycles, and so we have more hurricanes in the southeast United States and much much more rain in Florida. From some of the leftover rain from the recent Hurricane/Tropical Storm Fay, every last road leading from my home to the nearest major road was flooded. My little Neon nearly sunk in the two feet of water on some of these roads, or canals as they were at the time. The excursion out of my home probably hastened my car's demise.

So an unnatural fear of a frogstorm, living in a particularly tropical climate - what else do I have to be afraid of pertaining to this, you ask?

82. As in the movie, the chance of rain is predicted at 82%, and the actual scene of the raining frogs ("If you don't let my people go...it will rain frogs") as depicted in the Book of Exodus is in verse 8, chapter 2. 8:2.

I am going to be 26 next month, which of course means '82 was when I was born. I'm not one to read the National Enquirer and get into Nostradamus type predictions, but there are too many risk factors.

I mean, have you people seen Magnolia? That storm scene was violent! There are frogs falling from the sky, taking things and people out, bleeding everywhere, it's terrible! I don't like to know that animals died so that I can eat them, so I avoid it at all costs. I can't live in the climate I do, watch the movies I watch, and have been born in 1982 and NOT think that I am going to get rained on by frogs.

So cute as they may be, and as much as I know it's not easy being green, I do not want to take these risks. I don't want frogs to rain down on my neighborhood.