Faster Than The Slowest Camper

Giant Robot Camels

Very Demotivational

I have a list of blogs I like to check on a semi-weekly basis; Awkward Family Photos, People of Walmart, FailBlog is usually good for a few laughs. But my new favorite is Very Demotivational. We've all seen those horrible motivational posters in every classroom & corporate meeting room (well not me personally but I know they're there). I hate those things. People are so impressed with themselves when they hang an eagle on the wall with the word Leadership under it. Who is an eagle leading? Anyhow, Very Demotivational takes that idea and turns it on its head, or its fanny.

12 Steps To Greatness

Well maybe not greatness but, no yeah let's go with greatness.

We decided to try and pull off a living room redesign before Christmas. It's something we've been talking about since summer that would give us a little more breathing room in there and with family coming for the holidays, why not. Unfortunately, or fortunately come to think if it, it's not as simple as moving the couch & the TV. Each move affects another move and then triggers another move which avalanches again into yet another move reaching out to other rooms all over the house, til before we knew it we were neck deep in a five room switcheroo that we had to break down into an easy 12-step process.

1. clean/organize the mess of photos and cards in the upstairs back bedroom on the oval table and entertainment center
   
2. take down the oval table and entertainment shelf in back bedroom
3. move the green table from the dining room to the office
4. move all photo-related materials (e.g. photo scanner, photo printer & photo albums) from upstairs back bedroom into the office
5. move the bar out of the downstairs back bedroom to make room for boxes & Christmas stuff
   
6. bring the Christmas stuff in from the shed to make room for the oval table & entertainment center we took down
7. move all guitars and amplifiers and any related materials into upstairs back bedroom
8. take down and pack up all CDs and the shelves they were on
   
9. store CD shelves in the attic & remaining shed space and boxes of CDs in downstairs back bedroom
10. remove the patio chair cushions from under the landing, clean them off & bag them up to go in the shed for the winter
    
11. rearrange the couch, leather chair, coffee table & cubes, and move & rewire the TV under the side window
12. ...... maybe you only need 11 steps to be great

Either way, we're halfway thru step 9 and we just started this round 8 last night. Not bad. Here's just a couple photos as we have been busy.

What? Doesn't everyone move they're furniture upstairs like this?

This may the last time any of us see this display.

These guys didn't really do anything other than stand around eating our grass.

Are These Guys Serious?

Every Game At Once

Dudes. You ever watch this NFL Red Zone Live thing? It's insane. Every game being played on TV at the same time. No commercials, no breaks, no time outs, no time between plays. NOTHING! They show every touchdown, field goal, every interception & fumble, every long pass and run, every play that you'd actually wanna see from every game, as it happens. Sometimes they have two games on the TV at once, both in play, both with sound, you don't know what the hell is going on! It's great. I had a hard time trying to figure out who was playing who. On a day like today where my team isn't playing and I can't decide which game to watch, this Red Zone thing is the bee knees. I was watching 7 games at once! And I have no idea who won any of them! Awesome day.

Mixtape> 11.8 thru 11.28

Oodalolly Oodalolly Golly What A Day

1. Patients - Not In Nottingham
2. Surfer Blood - Swim (To Reach The End)
3. Langhorne Slim - I Love You, But Goodbye
4. Simon Jeffes - Prelude & Yodel
5. The Big Pink - A Brief History Of Love
6. Dawes - When You Call My Name
7. St. Vincent - The Party
8. Tartufi - Fear If Tall Giraffes, Fear Of Some Birds
9. The Voluntary Butler Scheme - Split
10. Advanced Sports - 75% (G For Genius)
11. Systems Officer - Sand I
12. Animal Collective - Also Frightened
13. Kings Of Leon - Use Somebody
14. The Postmarks - The Girl From Algenib
15. The Swimmers - Anything Together
16. [ingenting] - Halleluja!
17. Andrew Vincent - Ruffian
18. Peter Bjorn And John - Living Thing
19. Yeasayer - Ambling Alp
20. Lisandro Aristimuño - Puente
21. UUVVWWZ - Castle
22. Norah Jones - Young Blood
23. Devendra Banhart - Angelika
24. Language-Arts - Where Were You In The Wild?
25. Doveman - The Burgundy Stain
26. Biffy Clyro - Bubbles
27. Magneta Lane - Gambling With God
28. Hallelujah The Hills - Allied Lions
29. Mira Belle - A
30. Javelin - Soda Popinski
31. Portugal. The Man - The Sun
    

I know it seems like I've been putting up a lot of mixes, but this is just the regualr mix that I put up every couple of weeks. The other two were special mixes; one for an exceedlingly great roadtrip playlist, and the other for an equally auralistic random play on Thanksgiving. That's a completely different thing for you to ignore. This is back to the semi-regular mixes that you can ignore and go about your day.

Your loss.

Mad-O-Lantern

Laura's Heart, I'm Soul

That's right it's Heart & Soul but we do it "Tom Hanks in Big" style so it's okay. But no Chopsticks yet. We'll save that for lesson #2...... next Thanksgiving.



I did hit the wrong note. Shhhhhh

Electricity Is Loud

We lost power this morning around 6am, right when Laura was leaving for work. That left me alone in the dark & eerie silence. I ate a candlelight breakfast...

Then Gabukobiwe & I played ball in a cup...

You know ball in a cup right?



My sentiments exactly.

Mixtape> 11.26: Thanksgiving Prep

Don't Tell Me That Your Throat Is Getting Tired

1. Monsters Of Folk - Say Please
2. Midlake - Bandits
3. The Beatles - Piggies
4. Great Lake Swimmers - Concrete Heart
5. Cat Power - The Moon
6. Beulah - Burned By The Sun
7. Bill Callahan - Eid Ma Clack Shaw
8. Joni Mitchell - Help Me
9. Devendra Banhart - Seaside
10. Jens Lekman - And I Remember Every Kiss
11. Bon Iver - Flume
12. Aimee Mann - Susan
13. Travis - Driftwood
14. A Band Of Bees - I Love You
15. Elliott Smith - Pitseleh
16. Eugene McGuinness - Those Old Black And White Movies Were True
17. Castanets - Ignorance Is Blues
18. Ornette Coleman - Focus On Sanity
19. Wilco - In A Future Age
20. Spoon - The Underdog
21. Califone - A Wish Made While Burning Onions Will Come True
22. CSNY - Déjà Vu
23. Tom Waits - Hold On
24. Simon Dawes - Lazy Daisy
25. Elvis Costello - Radio Sweetheart
26. Leonard Cohen - Stories Of The Street
27. Timber Timbre - I Get Low
28. Fleet Foxes - Textbook Love
29. Augie March - The Cold Acre
30. Le Loup - Grow
31. Ola Podrida - The Closest We Will Ever Be
32. Miles Davis - Ah-Leu-Cha
33. The Beatles - When I'm Sixty-Four
34. Tunng - Jenny Again
35. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Lay And Love
36. Nick Drake - One Of These Things First
37. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Gimme Some Salt
38. Bowerbirds - House Of Diamonds
    
39. The Clientele - Harvest Time
40. Talking Heads - With Our Love
41. Antony & The Johnsons - Fistful Of Love
42. Lambchop - I'm Thinking Of A Number

Thanks to my superior sorting skills playlists like this are possible. It can't be taught.

Our Eaglet

We went for a brief walk on Thanksgiving and found an eagle or something. He's ours now...

...except we lost him.

I think he went over there...

Giving Post Thanks

We survived our first Thanksgiving. But it wasn't easy. Determined to do nothing all day (except cook obviously) we flipped back and forth between network parade coverage, NBC far superior to CBS, what with Jamie Kennedy interviewing his Dad thinking it's hilarious to get old people to gobble and poor Michael McKean and that terrible interview. I may dislike Al Roker but we really had no choice.

After that we still had a little time to kill so I thought I'd give Laura her first piano lesson. I know, I thought she played piano already too! But she does not. At all.

It was a short lesson.

--------

Appetizer!

Then it was time to cook. Since I destroyed the turkey already we decided to cook the backup chicken, which turned out really good. Also on the menu:

• corn
• mashed potatoes (w/ bacon)
• stuffing
• cranberry sauce
  
• green bean casserole
• broccoli
• crescent rolls
  
• Waldorf salad
  
• Barb's infamous cornbread
• chianti
  

Put it all together it looks like this:

Wanna see a creepy Thanksgiving photo?

I think we did a really good job, considering the awful start we got off to. Guess we can try again next year. This year we were full.

My Soul Reeks Of Botulism

Yes I ruined Thanksgiving...

Thank goodness we had a backup.

Thankful For This Morning

It's a foggy holiday

The desserts made it thru the night

Even the cats get a feast today

Open The Box Right Away

So tomorrow's Thanksgiving, and Laura, who was on her way home from work, called me to go over her last minute shopping list.

"We need fresh parsley & scallions, green beans, nacho chips and ice cream."

What is apple crisp without a heaping spoonful of vanilla ice cream to melt?

"Yes don't forget the ice cream."

"Hey by the way", this is still me, "we got some giant box from your parents today."

"What's in it?"

"Dunno. Figured I'd wait for you"

"Oh boy. Okay see ya in a bit."

Fast Forward an hour, Laura gets home and seemingly simultaneously realizes that, YES, she's forgotten the ice cream. I threw her off by asking her to pick up the ingredients for her amazing gameday chip dip. It's getting late and we have three dishes to cook tonight. What to do? We could live without the ice cream, but would that be a curse for all our Thanksgivings to come? We both hopped back in the car and made the 20 minute trip to Z's. She ran in and grabbed the gallon of Weis brand vanilla and a DiGiorno for good measure. We drove home, all the while discussing my infatuation with cataloguing and hoping I don't jump off the roof 25 years from now, and the hour went by quick. All that for some ice cream.

Fast forward again, about an hour. We've eaten the pizza and are peeling apples, also onto our second glass of Franzia's finest when it hits me...

"We never opened that package from Georgia!"

"Oh yeah go get it!"

I come back with nervous excitement. What have the Krupps sent us on this Thanksgiving Eve? Is it her mothers secret Thanksgiving recipes? Is it a special roasting pan passed down from one Krupp cook to another? Is it that timbale drum finally from last Christmas?

It was an ice cream maker.

With a note attached saying...

"I know you and Travis will just love making your own ice cream!"

Should've opened the box right away.

Oh and the timbale was in there too. I've already composed three tunes and it's driving Laura crazy.

Morning Meteor

Tis' A Season At Least

Someone's excited!

Looks like they started the party without us.

A Moderate Crash/Zooey Hair

I've been doing a lot of work on the computer after I picked up these hard drives (one which already crashed two days after I got it and started filling it up), moving files around, freeing up space. It's actually kind of work. Things are progressing, then I woke up this morning and iTunes for some reason had crashed and deleted my entire library of over 6,000 albums. That sucked. Then Laura had brought home some nice liquid candle fragrance things, a holiday cheer, and I broke one and the liquid spilled all over the table and ate away at the finish. So now there's this...

Lovely right... But Laura was right this morning when she said, "Everything in our house is damaged. It's our style." Fair enough. That's why I love her.

Other than that everything is fine. Giants finally won this weekend and they're playing on Thanksgiving against the mighty Broncos, so that should be fun. Plus Laura got her hair cut today. I don't know what it looks like yet because she went to her friends house on the way to work. I think it will look something like this...

That's her hero, Zooey.

Okay back to it. Counting down the hours til Thanksgiving, where by law I'll be doing nothing except eating a watching football.

Mixtape> 11.20: Front Door-Woodstown

It's Hard To Argue For This Life

1. Pinback - Walters
2. Boat - Let's Drag Our Feet
3. Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg - Sous Le Soleil Exactment
4. The Loved - You Must Have Been Out Of Your Mind
5. The Drift - Floating Truth
6. Beneva Vs. Clark Nova - I'm Twins (The Babies Said)
7. 31 Knots - Compass Commands
8. British Sea Power - Coneely Of The West
9. Brakes - Worry About It Later
10. Low - In Silence
11. Sigur Rós - Fesitval
12. Joni Mitchell - Free Man In Paris
13. David Bowie - Sweet Thing
14. Jookabox - Xxxiawn Shell
15. Honig - Choke On Bees
16. Lightning Bolt - Assassins
17. Ticonderoga - Northshore
18. Grandaddy - **** The Valley Fudge
19. The Octopus Project - Ghost Moves
20. Bon Iver - The Wolves (Act I and Act II)
21. Mates Of State - I Know, And I Said Forget It
22. Albert Ayler - Ghost
23. Grizzly Bear - Alligator [Choir version]
24. Youngblood Brass Band - The Movement
25. Frightened Rabbit - Keep Yourself Warm
26. Camera Obscura -If Looks Could Kill
27. Devendra Banhart - Angelika
28. Lateduster - Shaker/Flicker
29. Feathers - To Each His Own
30. Cats And Cats And Cats - Fight Fight With Fight
31. Jawbreaker - Lurker II: Dark Son Of Night
32. The White Stripes - You Don't Know What Love Is
33. Yeasayer - Wait For The Summer
34. Rilo Kiley - Spectacular Views
35. Blk Jks - Standby
36. Mew - Hawaii
    

This is what played on my trip down to camp on Friday. That's a photo of the sunset as I drove. I realize these mixes are not for everybody, they're probably for nobody, but sometimes in my quests I come across a random mix that defies genre bounds, tracks that could never find any any correlation, a playlist no human could compile, all part of my neverending quest to stockpile my library with only the greatest tunes, and sometimes, on the rarest occasion you get a gem like this one. No stars, no #1 hit singles, just quality brimming with cohesion. Space in time perfectly soundtracked like a Paul Thomas Anderson film, taking you back to a moment or pushing you over another, with surprises round every corner...

Go about your day.

Stefan Nadelman Videos

I'm a sucker for a good music video. Mainly because most of them are terrible.

Menomena: Evil Bee


Ramona Falls: I Say Fever

I'm Not Here

Balloons & Biryani

New York City, Upper West Side

November 21st, 2007

hanging out with cousin Rachel

seeing balloons for Thanksgiving Day Parade

and hijacked to an Indian restaurant

two years ago today

For Kitty At Christmas

Isn't that what they give me?

New Moon Was So Awesome!!!

I didn't really see New Moon. It's just all I've heard about today so I felt a little left out. No desire really to see it. In an act of boredom and desperation last spring training I watched the first one on Daniel's laptop and fell asleep halfway thru, but what I saw was pretty tedious...

anyhow..

Taking care of a few last minute things before I leave for the weekend. Cadets tonight and tomorrow and off to Sitao for Sunday, hopefully teach a bunch. Seems like I haven't been there in a while. Week went too fast and I'm guessing next will go even faster with Thanksgiving and all. It is the first time Laura & I will be preparing and eating the meal ourselves tho. I'm sure that'll go smooth. If anything it'll be a nice day off to spend together. Not too many of those coming up. I'm sure she'll want to start on Christmas decorations shortly thereafter, if not Thanksgiving Day (I told her she had to wait at least that long). But it'll be good to get into that shed and pull those crates of holiday cheer out, and make room for more mess. She wants the tree in the living room this year. I kind of agree, but I know it means we'll have to rework some furniture beforehand. Not too keen on that idea.

We did buy our flights to Georgia for Christmas yesterday. 6am flight first Friday of December. We like those early flights. No traffic and relatively quiet airports. Plus it gives us that whole day ahead of us and I haven't seen the Krupps in a while. Has it been since last Christmas? I'm sure there will be some very interesting gift exchanges going on and lots of group shots in front of the tree, not to mention a new baby and some down time.

After that Laura works six days a week and I'm out of town every weekend, so we'll definitely be looking forward to Christmas. Actually we'll be looking forward to February.

But one step at a time. Right now I'm looking forward to putting my head back on my pillow Sunday night and maybe having a glass of wine.

Ineffable Effable Effanineffable

Fawsja

Gabukobiwe

The Way Things Go

Ruined By A Pee Joke & Country Music

Okay...

So I saw 2012. I was really looking forward to it actually. It's one of those movies you gotta see in the theater ya know, with all the special effects and whatnot, and I gotta say, it did not disappoint. It was absolutely insane and worth the price of the ticket Daniel bought for me, but I'll be damned if they didn't ruin the whole previous 2 hours and 37 minutes in the last seconds of the film.

They made a pee joke.

That's right. A joke about a little girl peeing her pants. That was the last line of this $200 million dollar film drowning in special-effects and (up to that point) a script that didn't make you embarrassed to like it. With a pee joke.

And then to add salt to the wound, the credits roll with the nails-on-chalkboard rang-a-tang of some awful country song about the gay dude from American Idol wanting a kiss.

I couldn't run out of that theater fast enough, completely mindblown by the film I had just seen and simultaneously infuriated by the producers choice to go so American and ruin a completely tasteful film otherwise.