Grand Rapids....come for the churches, stay for the Nascar and Deer Hunting.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
ANOTHER LIST
Almost every morning when I get to work I make a playlist of music to listen to for the day, or at least a portion thereof. I try to be sure that I keep cycling the new with the old so it all stays kind of fresh. I look at my recently played list, and then I don't use those artists for a little bit. One of the reasons I do this is because music has the same ability to trigger memories as smell does. You smell zippo lighter fluid and it reminds you of grandpa. You hear Reelin In the Years and you remember piling into a car at lunchtime to skip the afternoons classes and go to the park. I like all the remembering I do when songs come on.
Here's my playlist for the day, with little snippets of info to accompany them where I've deemed necessary. I'm always looking for great music...especially local music that I may not have had a chance to get exposed to, so feel free to "hip me" to those scenes if you know of any worthy artists.
Wednesdays Tunage, by Jonathan
1. Push the little daisies, by WEEN. It's just a great song to start a day with.
2. Got Messed Up, by R.L. BURNSIDE. from his album "Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down." He died on Sept 2 of this year and I hate the fact that he will not be sharing more of his music with us.
3. Jungle Room - DELBERT McCLINTON - It's Delbert...what can you say. Great stuff
4. ScareCrow - BECK - from his album Guero. A must own album. Seriously.
5. New Slang - THE SHINS - Got turned onto these guys from the Garden State Movie. They win lyrics of the day listed at the end of this post.
6. Franks Wild Years - TOM WAITS
7. Paper Airplane - WILLIE PORTER - This guy is AMAZING! Really talented and in touch. Listen to this song by checking out his site BY CLICKING HERE (you can hear more than just that song on the site) Willie Porter also takes part in 1% For The Planet which is an alliance of businesses committed to leveraging their resources to create a healthier planet. Members recognize their responsibility to and dependence on a healthy environment and donate at least 1% of their annual net revenues to environmental organizations worldwide. The alliance aims to prove that taking environmental responsibility is good for business.
8. And then I'm playing the whole Jack Johnson "In between dreams" CD, because its really good stuff even if everyone in the world has already overplayed this disc.
9. If they haven't let us go early by the time thats over, I'm going to shuffle about 6 cd's worth of cuban mp3's that a friend of mine gave me after recently visiting the land of Castro. I've been threatening to do the ballroom dance thing with my fiancee for years now, so I should probably start getting the rhumba, salsa, mambo juju coarsing through my veins.
Back to work now.
Happy thanksgiving to you all.
NEW SLANG - The Shins
Gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth. Only, i don't know how they got out, dear. Turn me back into the pet that i was when we met. I was happier then with no mind-set.
And if you'd 'a took to me like A gull takes to the wind. Well, i'd 'a jumped from my tree And i'd a danced like the king of the eyesores And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.
New slang when you notice the stripes, the dirt in your fries. Hope it's right when you die, old and bony. Dawn breaks like a bull through the hall, Never should have called But my head's to the wall and i'm lonely.
And if you'd 'a took to me like A gull takes to the wind. Well, i'd 'a jumped from my tree And i'd a danced like the king of the eyesores And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.
God speed all the bakers at dawn may they all cut their thumbs, And bleed into their buns 'till they melt away.
I'm looking in on the good life i might be doomed never to find. Without a trust or flaming fields am i too dumb to refine? And if you'd 'a took to me like Well i'd a danced like the queen of the eyesores And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.
True story. Happened to a buddy. Makes me laugh every time I think about.
It goes under the category "you know you're having a bad day when..."
First a little background....when you make the wrong choices and sleep with girls who have perhaps also made some wrong choices, invariably you will experience the joys of an STD.
When this happens you go to the doc for antibiotics...but the doc has to culture you by shoving a small q-tip straight up the ole willy. This ensures an accurate diagnosis so that the correct antibiotics can be prescribed.
This little q-tip swabbing around in there also ensures that the next few times you take a leak, it will feel very similar to pissing white hot pieces of broken glass wrapped in brillo and barbed wire.
AND....the actual process of swabbing is...how you say....freaking knee-knockingly painful.
with that said....
You know you're having a bad day when you go to the doctor to get your willy cultured and when it's all over you look down and see the doctor looking up with a sheepish look on his face saying "woops" and upon closer examination you see that the q-tip that was just in your willy is now on the floor.
Docs around the world...please....hang on to those q-tips.
For the record...this really did happen to a friend, and not me. When I had to go through it my doc at least hung on to the damn q-tip.
After experiencing a brief sojourn to the land of the shopping mall this weekend, I thought I might share some general "mall etiquette" for any of those people who could use it.
You will notice that mall traffic is kind of like a racetrack. Traffic moves in a sort of "band" much like race-cars do. The people are the cars. Fast people kind of pass on the "outside" while the slow people kind of meander...window shopping if you will. Stores are continuously on your right hand side. You can see the other stores on your left, and can proceed on your merry way knowing that as you complete a "circuit" you will INEVITABLY encounter the other store. There is no need to "shoelace" back and forth, dodging in and out of the well behaved traffic.
At any given moment you will see approximately 90% of the mall's occupants moving with this flow. The other 10% are either sitting in "resting chairs" that are provided at the mall's expense, or they are pissing people off. I think it's about 3% sitting in chairs and 7% pissing people off.
?
To those who are sitting: More power to you! You have recognized the fact that you are tired or bored or maybe the ole 'roids are acting up. Whatever. The point is that you have located the plethora of chairs provided by the mall and have parked your ass in one of them. You know you should sit and you do...in a reasonable place.
To those remaining who are not sitting: Fuck You! You have decided to go against the flow. O.k...so you're an individual and you march to the beat of a yada yada yada. Its great. Its "individual." But...for some reason when you're at the mall YOU have to get an attiitude. There is no need to get a pissed off, frustrated look on your face when you encounter resistance to your destination because you are, in essence, swimming upstream (against all the people who may very well have their own sense of "individuality" but have decided to march like lemmings for that short period of time so they don't upset the whole mall contiuum. Continuum, by Webster's definition, is: a coherent whole characterized as a collection, sequence, or progression of values or elements varying by minute degrees.)
And speaking of minute degrees...there is also no need to further express your dissatisfaction by sighing heavily while you have to wait for the PROPERLY moving traffic so that you can get into the store in front of you. The very same store that, by the way, would have eventually been in front of you if you had just gone with the flow.
The "no need to sigh and look pissed" thing goes double if you are pushing a baby stroller with twins and are tying your shoe prior to entering the store (directly in the middle of the stream of traffic). The "no need to sigh and look pissed" thing goes triple if you have triplets in strollers and a winnebago sized husband sporting a mullet AND you're trying to get into Fredericks of Hollywood but your OTHER 8 kids besides the triplets aren't exactly cooperating. Congrats...THE ENTIRE stream of well behaved shoppers has now been re-routed around you. Bravo. I'm not even going to get into the pretzels with mustard thing. And it all goes quadruple if you're all adults with no clue standing around with your heads up your ass. Cellphones? I will not go there at this juncture.
This one is for everyone, but especially the young men. The food court is for 2 things and 2 things only. The first is eating shitty food, and the second is to try and get into girls' pants. The "get into girls pants" things only applies to kids under 16. Lets face if... you're over 16, you should have a car and do your "pants getting into thing" in a back seat somewhere. However, if you're under 16, and have the extra cash to buy a hot pretzel for your sweetie, then by all means make your move. BUT ONLY IN THE FOOD COURT. This way, I don't have to look at you playing grab ass with some girl who hasn't even lost her baby fat yet. I know she hasn't lost her baby fat yet because it is spilling out over the size 0 jeans and lycra top that she is wearing as she heads back to the center of the mall to meet her mom who is wearing the same thing. It goes nice with the braces though....sort of a maturity hat trick.
And with all that said, I direct this comment to the 3 people who, at least 3 different times, I crossed paths with at Rivertown Crossings in Grand Rapids Michigan on Saturday at approximately 11:00 a.m.
If you are so lazy that you have to rest at the mall during peak hours, don't go there. If you have to go there, don't sit three across on the stairs that people use to get from the second level of the mall to the first level. Don't talk on your cell phones and eat pretzels while you're sitting there. Use the chairs that are provided to rest your lazy asses. Better yet, since you were all stuffing your faces with hot pretzels, sit your asses down in the food court. That way, I don't have to watch you eat, I don't have to dodge around you, thereby incurring the wrath of the people who are going UP the stairs, and who knows...if you hang in the foodcourt long enough you may just get lucky.
Name: Jonathan Home: Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States About Me: Just a guy who trying to eek out a living as a graphic designer in SW Michigan. See my complete profile
Name: Jonathan
