I’m feeling ironic. Really liked this one
- MsMr
Hurricane - Tristan Prettyman
I Was Gonna Marry You - The Violet Burning
Blind
Irony Pinot Noir
April 19th, 2011Starbucks Cards
April 9th, 2011Test
An Hour Today, A Lifetime Of Change
March 23rd, 2011
You can help the planet, by turning off the lights and participating in Earth Hour. An eco-minded movement that began in 2007, Earth Hour encourages a united display of support towards the sustainability of our planet. On March 26, 2011 at 8:30 PM local time, join people and businesses across the world in turning off the lights for one hour.
The global need for change continues beyond the one hour display on March 26th. There are many small lifestyle changes that can have a positive impact on the environment. A simple idea is purchasing foods that have had little negative impact on society such as buying local produce or products marked with the Fairtrade logo. Other ideas include telecommuting to work, riding a bike to your local store, and reading eBooks on a reader such as the Kindle from Amazon. Aim to go digital instead of tangible, anytime you can.
Turn off the lights this Saturday. But when the lights come back on, consider what other changes you will make in order to help create a more sustainable planet.
Working Hard Just To Shake The Yawns
March 2nd, 2011I added new songs to my home page under “Songs On Repeat.” I’ve been really digging these songs lately, and continuously hitting back on my ipod or car or itunes (too bad you can’t hit repeat on Pandora). I hope you enjoy them too. And in case you weren’t aware, there is a little “play” button next to the song on the home page where you can listen to the song.
It has been awhile since I was able to post one of these, or any post for that matter. My site went through a reprogramming by the great people at Gorirra Consulting. Mix that in with the awesome progress we have had at Matters of Grey (185K visitors per month!) it has been a busy time of life.
As a warning, all three of these songs have some swearing in them.
Green Lights
Written Thursday
e-dubble
You may recall that I featured this artist last time I made a Songs On Repeat posting. I also had the privilege of interviewing him for a Matters of Grey post. He went 52 straight weeks creating a new song. I don’t think there is anything I can do for 52 straight weeks, let alone something that takes so much creativity and talent.
Most of his tracks speak of his challenge, working hard, chasing his dream. I can listen to his tracks one after the other, and I come away inspired and motivated. When I am struggling with time for life, jobs, websites, I think of him and his determination. He recently did a mix tape of many of his “freestyle fridays.” You can download it for free. The dude is amazingly talented, and he will continue to kill it in 2011.
His track that I lately can’t get enough of is called Green Lights. This song both pumps me up, and tears me up. I get sentimental for him when he is told by his father of the pride he feels in him for chasing his dream. It also talks about people and situations pulling him down, but he recants that notion by saying that “all he sees is green lights” and that he is going to keep pushing for his dream.
If you know what has been going on in my life lately, you might be able to know why this resonates with me. People and situations may be trying to bring me down, but I’m going to keep pushing through.
cuz’ they keep pullin’ us down
but I ain’t stoppin’
cuz’ all I see are green lights
and even when I’m wrong I mean right
Please believe I-
know I’m gonna need to revise
but this life don’t give retries
so I’m on it
and up at the break of dawn
workin’ hard just to shake the yawns
Rootless Tree
Live At Fingerprints: Warts and All
Damien Rice
Damien Rice is an amazing poet, song writer, singer, musician. He doesn’t have many albums out there, because the process he goes through in writing a song takes such an emotional toll on him. His songs are loaded with emotion.
I love his song Rootless Tree. The original version is an angry song. This live version is stripped down to a pure level of raw emotion.
What i want from this is to learn to let go
No not of you of all that’s been told…
…Let me out let me out let me out
Hell when you’re around
99 Problems
Free Download
Jay-Z featuring The Dap Kings
I downloaded this track somewhere. Maybe here. It features the brilliance of Jay-Z with a smooth jazzy accompaniment.
Jay-Z raps about being kept down by many different factors of racism and discrimination. But he sees the silver lining in the situation saying that he may have a lot of problems, but he has a good woman and a good support system and he won’t be kept down.
I’m like fuck critics you can kiss my whole asshole
If you don’t like my lyrics you can press fast forward
One Crazy Summer
February 25th, 2011I last edited this post back in August. I meant to add more images and post it. But like the post said, I got busy. Posting it now, unedited. C’est la vie
I feel like I haven’t really written anything since the beginning of May. It has been a whirlwind summer marked by spring-time like weather (I think we have only had 1 or 2 days over 90 degrees), fascinating events, and remarkable mini trips. Ever since, and including, the world cup, my summer living has been quite a busy one. Here are some of the going on’s, a hodgepodge collective:
I have been spending any of my writing energy working on Matters of Grey. MoG is a little project that some friends and I began officially back in January, that we hope to one day become a big project. As our Facebook description reads:
A geek collective writing about things us geeks want to know about. Whether it be web design, usability, social networking, social medias, SEO, technology, quantum physics, nerd humor, cool ringtones, or about anything that will make us geek out.
I have been mostly writing about happenings in Foursquare, Twitter, Google and other mainstream marketing scenarios. It has been a really challenging project for me because even though I am highly plugged in, I do not consider myself “geeky.” It has been an interesting experience trying to find a voice and an angle. But I continue to try and find things and ways that I can contribute. It is a good challenge for me.
We have recently climbed over 14K visitors per month.
I had always heard good things about the showtime show Dexter, but never got into the show because I didn’t need another need. But I have become addicted. Has anyone ever said a bad thing about this show? Everyone always raves about it, and now I am one of those as well.
When I had my knee surgery back in January, Joey was kind enough to loan me some movies and T.V shows. I decided to give Dexter a try. But I soon saw that he only had season 2 and 3, but not 1. But it was at that time that I made it a priority. A few months later, tracked down season 1 and I was ready to begin.
At hour-long episodes, and 4 seasons, it was a nightly occurence to watch 1-5 episodes. It is a dark grueling show, but it is indeed addictive.
I had been looking for Comic-Con tickets for quite a bit of time, as I thought that it might present itself with some opportunities to spread the MoG name. All avenues of ticket finding had failed for me. So I signed up to go to a networking type event on the USS Midway called the TweetHouse. Despite promising some A-list celebrities and many connected marketing and social media types, the highlights were brief, including a Hasselhoff sighting.
We arrived and got mistaken as celebrities, so we got a picture on the red carpet. The place was rather empty. We chatted with the iamstylin guy, and a few other social media folk. Greg and I found our way into a VIP area and started chatting up someone that works at Pixar and did some writing on UP. Other “celebs” we ran into was Red from that 70’s show, Data from Star Trek, and speaking of Trek, William Shatner.
On the Friday of the event, I was given tickets to Comic-con. I was excited and I had never been to one, so I did not know what to expect. It was a mass of people. Random crazy people dressed up as random things. It was so packed. As Joey and I waded thru the masses, we found ourselves at the Rock Band 3 booth. Sweet. I have been highly anticipating this game, and even writing previews on it over at MoG. But just as we get there, they start packing up to head to a panel. We try to follow them and find our way barely into the packed room. They demonstrated the new game and then, like Oprah, gave us all a copy of Rock Band Green Day.
I was pumped. Not only was it the main panel I would have wanted to see, but to randomly come across it, get in, and then get a free game, I was like a little school boy. That was the highlight for me.
I have friar pennant fever. I have been excited and amazed at how the Padres have done this year. Like most honest, smart baseball people, I did not give the Padres much of a chance this year. I even placed a friendly wager that they would finish with worse than a .500 record. Well, I am sure to lose that one, but as long as they make the playoffs, I will be happy with that loss.
I have been going to games and taking my Shrek Hairston sign. The players have been noticing me, and even recently got tossed a baseball from Nick Hundley because of it.
With Lisa taking flying lessons and needing air time, and Joey begging me to go see some stadiums on his bucket list, we took a quick jaunt to Phoenix for to watch the Padres vs. Dbacks game. Joey and I and our parents were paranoid. But we went for it, as you only live once, and more than likely everything would be safe.
We took off from Montgomery Field around 3:30 pm and arrived in Phoenix just before the game. We got these sweet seats from stub hub that put us 4 rows behind the dugout. The Padres owner was sitting a few rows ahead of us and we got him to autograph the back of the Shrek sign. At one point, a proposal was going on behind us, so I stood up, faced the dugout and held up my sign. Nick Hundley loved my sign and made me stand up so that he could show the rest of the team, including Scott.
The team lost, and then we boarded the plane and flew home. That’s right, we took a flight, watched a game, and turned right around. Crazy! So much fun though! What a way to kick off my birthday weekend.
The next night went with some friends to the Station Tavern and then to Hamilton’s Tavern. Other than an unfortunate skirmish, had a great time out. I blame the jalepenos that I put on my burger, and not the beers, but I nursed a mild hangover the next day.
Monday continued my birthday celebration as my mother hosted a mainly family gathering. We made our own pizzas, and had bday cake. It was perfect.
Tuesday was my actual birthday and I was able to go out to dinner at Karl Strauss and enjoy some bomb Ahi Poke. So delicious.
Wednesday of that same week I went to the Padres game and was given a ball by Nick Hundley. And then Thursday went to dinner yet again. It was a wild, fun, tiring and very awesome birthday week.
And Away They Go! I’ve been able to go to the race track on 2 different occasions. And I went to D.C to visit my good friend Josh Weir.
So it has been one crazy summer. Speaking of a crazy summer, I have always been a fan of the 80’s movie after the same name. And here is my favorite clip from that movie:
Hip Hop Medley
October 4th, 2010Justin Timberlake can do no wrong!
Kitten Mittens
September 16th, 2010So with a spurring from Joey’s recent post, Nick being requested to type quieter, and the season premiere of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia tonight, I bring you Kitten Mittens.
Somewhere Is Better Than Anywhere
August 5th, 2010
I have known Matt Jenson, I think, since my junior high school days. We grew up in the same town, we went to the same schools, we played in marching band together and went to church together. He is a great guy, who I always enjoy hearing his contemplations and wonderings. He is an avid reader, and unlreated, has a deadly hook shot on the basketball court. Matt is an accomplished author, as well as a college professor of Theology. Matt is many things, including, my friend.
Anywhere But the Suburbs
by Matt Jenson
There are occasional days when I heartily affirm with Randy Newman: ‘I love LA!’ More often, I hate it.
On Tuesday morning I flew back to Los Angeles, with its cars and concrete, its hurry and hustle and hassle. I had been in the Southeast for two weeks – with good friends in Nashville and Washington, DC, and a long, meandering drive in-between. When I opened my car door late on the night I arrived in Tennessee, I was taken aback by the sounds of crickets and frogs, instead of the trains from back in suburban Orange County. Everything in Tennessee was green. I rode a lawn mower for two hours just to cut my friend’s grass. He had that much grass.
It was even better as I wandered through the small towns of Kentucky and North Carolina. I’ve been reading Wendell Berry for a while, and like most of his readers, I want to live in Port William, Kentucky. Short of that, it seemed a nice idea to drive to unincorporated Henry County, to the town of Port Royal, on which Berry bases Port William. At dusk, I was driving along the river (‘Watch out for the deer’, they told me), basking in the warm light of the end of the day as it shone on abandoned barns and run-down farmhouses. Why can’t I live here?
I’ve begun to realize that I am reading Wendell Berry poorly. To me, his novels have been an escape – a thoughtful, literary escape, of course, a respectable one. Nostalgia for agrarian society is all the rage among us academic types. I am coming to realize, though, that Port William isn’t the romantic utopia that serves as my intellectual equivalent of comfort food. It is a home for a ‘membership’ (Berry’s word) who have to struggle to receive it in gratitude as their home. Port William is to its members as LA is to me.
This is how Port William’s own Hannah Coulter put it near the end of her life:
‘Most people now are looking for “a better place,” which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. I think this is what Nathan learned from his time in the army and the war. He saw a lot of places, and he came home. I think he gave up the idea that there is a better place somewhere else. There is no “better place” than this, not in this world. And it is by the place we’ve got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven.
‘I think of Art Rowanberry, another one who went to the war and came home and never willingly left again, and I quote him to myself: “Something better! Everybody’s talking about something better. The important thing is to feel good and be proud of what you got, don’t matter if it ain’t nothing but a log pen.”’
Suburban Orange County is a lot more than a log pen; but if I’m honest, the one thing needful, the feeling good and being proud of what I’ve got in this home is one of the more difficult aspects of my life. My impulse is to change, and in this I find I am of a piece with the membership of Orange County. We don’t like something, so we change it, abandon it, throw it away – because the whole point is that we are supposed to be happy.
But what if the whole point is that we are supposed to be holy? (Gary Thomas makes this argument about marriage.) And what if being happy were bound up with being holy? Funny. I’ve been a Christian for thirty years, and I am still convinced that dissatisfaction is only ever to be lamented, that is a problem immediately and at all costs to be solved. The dissatisfying suburbs become thus a place for me to flee, nothing better than a log pen. What if the loving Father wanted to conform me to the image of his Son, to make my holy, by teaching me to love the suburbs?
Dave and Lisa Everitt have referred to Cambodia, where they are missionaries, as Paradise for as long as I can remember. I’ve been there. It’s beautiful in parts, but also filled with the poverty and pain flowing from the atrocities of its recent history. I’ll never forget Dave’s story of enjoying a swimming hole only to realize it was one of a string of perfectly round holes, courtesy of a flurry of bombs.
I don’t think it’d ever occur to me to call Phnom Penh ‘Paradise’. But to Dave and Lisa, it is just that. Not because they’re blind to the difficulty of living far from their loved ones and home culture, or because they have romanticized this corner of the developing world.
No, it is Paradise because it is what they have been given by God.
I suspect, too, that it is Paradise in faith and hope that what they have received from God cannot but be a paradise. And, I suspect that it has become a paradise over the years of loving, sustained attention they have given to it, as they have come to know and be known by the membership of Cambodia.
The difference is that my friends in Cambodia, and those in Port William, know themselves as bound to a place and, in muddled and inconstant ways, seek to live within the limits of where they have been given. Me, I keep thinking of greener grass – of anywhere but the suburbs. On this point, I think I am wrong. I disagree with myself. I repent. Flannery O’Connor was right: ‘Somewhere is better than anywhere.’
And It’s All Vanity
August 3rd, 2010I created and mailed 3 new compliations to my friend Josh this week. As usual, I used some photography from my trips for the artwork. Another usual for me, is naming the disc from a lyric on that particular disc. Click on an image for a larger view and the ability to scroll.
World Cup Memories
July 14th, 2010The World Cup just ended this weekend. I am sad. But my body is rejoicing as that means no more 4:30 am games to wake up for, and the ability to sleep in on Saturday as well.
1994 hosted in USA
The first year that I remember the World Cup. USA was hosting, and therefore there was TV coverage. Although, all of the games were not on tv, only a select few. I remember specifically the game on July 4th. USA was playing Brazil in the knockout stage. The USA was wearing these garish blue uniforms with stars all over them, and red shorts. I believe it was a Sunday and after church, found my seat in my parents room and watched the TV. It was a 1-0 loss. I don’t remember much else from that year’s event. Robbie went to a game in Pasadena (with Lane?), saw Camaroon play. He bought me a souvenir shirt. I kept that shirt, and believe I still even have it in storage.
1998 Hosted in France
This world cup was the first time I had watched more than just USA games. I had graduated from Westmont only a month before, and had been home for only a couple of weeks. We lived in Green Valley, and I had turned Robbie’s room into my living room. I had a couch in there, my stereo, my television, and my blue recliner. A summer earlier, I had been in France and seen a lot of the hype and build up to this event. Being fresh out of school, I did not have a job quite yet. This was going to be the summer I immersed myself into the tournament.
The first games of the day were around 6 or 7 am if I recall. This is very early in the day for a recent college student. I remember dragging myself out of bed daily, down the hall, and sitting in the recliner with a blanket as I listened to Dave Revsine do the pregame show. Still to this day, anytime I hear this guy’s voice, I think back to that wonderful summer.
So continuing, I would wake up early, watch the game while half falling asleep, and I would stay in that chair drifting between sleep and awake to watch all the games of the day. I don’t think I quite watched (or sat there for) every game of the tournament, but I think I came close. Though, I can’t tell you much about that tournament orther than blue recliner and an announcer, but it was my first full dive into the World Cup. I will cherish it forever.
2002 Hosted by Japan and Korea
I will consider this the Lost World Cup. I do not have much reccollection of this tournament. I know I watched some of it. I just don’t remember where and when and with whom.
It was the summer after I began officially dating Lisa. I was working at Tierra.net. Had I moved into 4s Ranch yet? Or was I still living at home? Hmmm
2006 Hosted by Germany
This was a really fun year of watching the World Cup. Other than the summer of 98, probably my favorite one yet! I was living in RB with Juan and Mike. I was working at Emerald.
During the day at work, I would have a window open on my computer to TVU. This is a program that plays tv from around the world. I would listen to the audio, and as soon as I heard some excitement, I would alt+tab to that window and watch live streaming television of the game. It was awesome.
Then, for the month long tournament, every weekend Juan, Lisa and Myself would spend the night at the Oceanside beachhouse. We would wake up early for games, and then nap and hang out at the beach all weekend. It was like a weekly holiday. I loved it! Having beach weekends all month, in the summer, with world class soccer, with 2 of my best friends will always be one of my favorite all time memories of the world cup.
This was also the first time there was a World Cup when HD TV existed. Fortunately for us, the beach house had an HD tv. I remember the final was played on a Sunday, and Tom and Sue also came out.
2010 Hosted by South Africa
Another fun World Cup. I nearly watched every game. But the schedule caught up with me. The first game of the day was at 4:30 in the morning, followed by 7:00 am game, and then a 11:30 am game. Some days, I would wake up for the first game, bright and early. I would shower and get ready for work during halftime. And then when the game ended, I would go to work so I could be there by 6:30.
I would then try to avoid scores all day, as my work no longer allowed the use of TVU. When I would go home, I would then watch the 2 games I missed, on Tivo. But being so tired from the early game, it would always be a struggle to keep my eyes open. Although, I did. And then I would go to bed at 8pm if I could.
On the weekends, I would go over to Juan and Lisa’s condo, and watch the first two games. Then at 9:30 am, would go nap by their relaxing pool. Then would watch the 11:30 am game after that.
For the finals, we had a little gathering at my parents house to watch the Dutch play against Spain. Everyone was sort pulling for the Dutch, except Juan and Lala. Dressed in orange, we had a fun time, and Spain won in extra time.
I look forward to 4 years from now, when the time zone will be a little bit closer. Brazil 2014. Where will I be then? For every World Cup I have watched, I have lived in a different house. What will change in the next 4 years?
I can hardly wait!
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbn3rOPmR9w