Too Bright to See Too Loud to Hear.

Tonight I did homework for a number of long hours.  While it was Wednesday I listened through the new Kings Of Leon album, “Only By The Night”.  Into Thursday I listened through the new Underoath, “Lost In the Sound of Separation”.  It was a satisfactory listening experience. On my big green couch.

 

The truth is I’m in the mood for anything musically after a certain time of night.  Everything starts to have more depth and meaning, everything becomes more elegant.  In the morning if I’m still really into what I was listening to the night before, it’s something I need to remember liking so much.  This applies.

 

I like both of the above albums quite a bit.   I don’t have anything musiciany or critical to say about either album right now, other than way to go Kings for kicking teeth in and way to go Underoath for being sharply creative and singing about Jesus from your scene little guts.  I enjoy your records, I like your sound.  Both of you bands.  Lets all be friends.

There is no music in outer space.

Music is made of moving air particles.  I blogged about that a little while ago I think?  Like maybe two posts back.

 

In space there are no air particles to move, so there is no sound and no music.  Just a thought.  This does not affect me, I probably won’t grow up to be an astronaut anyway.  That’s all.

Right Click With Two Eyes.

Here’s my theory on the next computer revolution.  Not serious, purposely poetic.

 

The eyes of this generation are stronger.  Side to side, looking up and down the keyboard on the screen, scanning to input letters.  They click by blinking.  Right click is closing two eyes and opening them fast.  The walls are all made of glass now.  All of them track where your eyes look, waiting for your gaze to intersect them.  Our fingers that clicked mouses and stroked keys now sit in our pockets as our eyes frantically glaze over every  hard surface, writing emails and checking on our electronic social lives.

Quantum of Solace and the Great Plains.

This weekend I drove to Olathe, Kansas with three of my friends to tryout for the DCC band.  Every year Campus Crusade for Christ has a gigantic Christmas conference where 1400 or so kids come to worship God and grow in their faith together.  Usually they book some big name band to do worship (usually a group my old band opened for at some point, i.e. Foolish Things or Tifah), but this year they want a student-led band.  That’s exciting.  So tryouts were on the Eastern edge of Kansas and we drove and drove to get there, finding the church finally after ten hours on the road and about nineteen bathroom breaks for Courtney.  The tryouts lasted all day Saturday, and I feel like all of us played really well.  On Wednesday we find out who made it, and I can’t wait.  I could be totally wrong, but I feel like all four of us (Dan, Jeremy, Courtney, and I) have a great chance of getting picked.  So that’s fun.

 

The only regret I have about the weekend is that the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, came out on Thursday night.  Phil, Dan, and I dressed up in 007-esque suits and went to the midnight showing after Crusade and the Roe CD-release show (pretty awesome, way to go Dave ).   Consequently the next day’s drive was made on a compromised number of sleeping hours.  

Dan took it like a man and got us there. I thought about the movie a lot throughout the drive.  Not just because I’m a shameless Bond fan, and not just because the Bolivian Bond girl was incredible.  I thought about the movie all day because it made me think of my life in a different way.  Sorry to take this blog in a thoughtful direction again, but this is worth hearing I think!  James Bond has a hopelessly unrealistic life, but I still want a life like that so bad.  He goes form country to country defeating countless bad guys and driving Aston Martins for her Majesty.  Never stays in the same room for more than a night, and never sleeps alone.  Always knows what his plan is, and never makes a mistake he can’t fix with his handgun.  I know God’s plan for my life probably doesn’t involve jumping from airplanes and sleeping with women to gain information.  Those are not good ideas.  I do however, have hope that God’s plan involves something as exciting and fulfilling for me.  I want to die having lived a life worthy of a movie series, but tonight, like most nights, I find myself sitting on my green couch with Kyle and Phil blogging on my computer instead of fighting global terrorism.  But it’s fun and I love it.  Even though my car is a 1997 Camry, and my coolest gadget is an iPod, I love my life after all.

 

It would have been cool if we learned from our mistake, but we watched Quantum of Solace again the night before we drove home from Kansas, again making the drive home on less than adequate sleep.  So worth it though!  The experience of the weekend was great.  Even if we don’t get “picked” for the DCC band, I really got to know just about every person who tried out.  This means I’m going to be connected to every member of the band this year regardless.  I love that.  I met some great kids this weekend and grew much closer to Dan, Courtney, and Jeremy.  For those of you who aren’t involved in a worship ministry, allow me to apologize, it’s a really wonderful thing to be a part of.

Apple Resurrection.

Two summers ago Brett Lane, our beloved bass player and friend, sold me his old 12″ Powerbook G4.  It was pretty broken at the time with a failed CD drive, a confused hard drive, and a battery life that lasted a whole half of ten minutes.  It served me faithfully in this condition throughout the first semester of college, but the hard drive finally went out a month before Christmas.  This timing turned out to be convenient however, and a new 20″ iMac showed up under the tree for me.  Thank you Santa Claus (my generous father) and his discounting Apple employee elf (Seanster) at the toy workshop in Park Meadows mall. With the new Mac on my desk, the old broken Powerbook got stored under the bed for about six months without seeing the light of day. 

 

Today I raised the dead.  I had ordered a new 120GB hard drive on ebay (an upgrade from the stock 40GB drive, which was amazing in 2003 when the computer was made…) and cracked open the case to switch them out when the new hard drive came in the mail.  The process took only a couple hours, but in that time I saw the delicate inner workings of my Macintosh and finally learned how they managed to fit an entire computer in that little metal case.  It’s a brilliant design.

 

So now the challenge is to figure out how to format the blank hard drive and install Mac OS X without a working CD drive.  I should have replaced that too while I was at it.  So this picture is of the inside of the computer.  I cannot wait to schedule a Genius Bar appointment and get my little Mac back into action!

JD in 1976.

Josh Mickelson, one of my favorite people, suggested this website called “Yearbook Yourself“.  Apparently this is me in 1976? I love it.

You should probably try it for yourself?

Guitar effects are far too much fun.

I’ve been playing music only a short time by most people’s standards. I started playing drums in 6th grade, and now that I’m in 14th-or-so grade, music is still most of who I am in addition to Jesus. So with that said, let me tell you about my new favorite part of being a musician. Guitar effects.

I have a whole bunch of these random old Boss single-effect pedals from the early 80’s. A great man named Austin Schauer gave them to me when I started to play electric guitar late last year, and now it’s time for them to go. I put an add up on craigslist, and already I’ve had a ton of fun offers for trades and such. Too much fun! I’m sure I can get a DL4 and maybe a cool overdrive out of the deal? I will surely consult my guitar mentors before any big transactions go down.

Tomorrow night I head down to Denver to play drums at ORCC the next morning with Seanster. Sean’s got a cool Marshall Delay for me there and I’m pumped. I find it strange that I have had the exact same tried-and-true drum setup for the last two or three years, yet in the seven-or-so months I’ve been a serious electric player I’ve already altered my rig numerous times. Hopefully this will be a healthy and continuing pattern.

I sat at home today for a long time and played guitar. My Calculus test was done at nine, and my new job doesnt start until noon tomorrow, getting off at one thirty (some lousy free training thing). So I’ve had plenty of time to spend on guitar learning. This weekend I’m playing at my church up here in Fort Collins, and I’m super excited. The college pastor here was in some punk band in the 90’s, and around that time invested in a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier. They’ve outlawed us to use it during the main service because you have to make it so loud for it to sound good, but this weekend I’m trying to use the cabinet (complete with four Celestion 30’s) in addition to my AC15. I discovered that you can change the output impendance on the Vox with a little switch in the back, so I can connect it to the Mesa cabinet. The sound is interesting, and certainly different than the Warfdale speaker in the Vox. Not sure if I like it or not yet. Trying something new I guess.

(This is my beautiful, friendly, and tastefully traditional church.  Sunday we introduce Desperation.)

 

This Sunday is an important one for Faith. We’re playing a loud, strong song by Desperation band called “I Will Go”. This isn’t my favorite Despo song, but I definitely like it. Regardless, this is the loudest, most driving song in our church history. We’ve got it nailed down pretty well, and our leaders, Dan Pahlau and Ben Schuchard, certainly sing the song more pleasingly than Jon Egan, the writer of the song. So it will be fun. Pray that this sound of music will be accepted more by the congregation. This isn’t our only “fast song” of the morning, but it is sandwiched by organ-led hymns. I love organ-led hymns, but more so when in addition to loud music written in the last 40 years! Should be an interesting Sunday.

Romeo Y Julieta Reserva Real, Tanzania Benefit Show

Tonight this cigar changed me. Just about. It was thick and so great. I don’t yet have the smoker’s vocabulary to describe exactly how it tasted (i.e. “hints of robust dark flavor”), but it was great.  That’s all.

It did just about end me, however. I was smoking this tasty cigar at the wonderful Edwards Pipe Tobacco in Fort Collins with my buddy Philip Waggoner (I’m sure you will hear about him a lot in this blog, he’s a good man), when Phil asked me something. I had a mouth full of smoke at the time and carelessly inhaled to say a few words to Phil that I soon forgot. I basically swallowed a liter of smoke and just about died right there in that black leather chair. I’ve been smoking pipe tobacco and cigars as a neat little hobby since Sean got me into it at a Cameron At Bay show in Canon City on new year’s about a year and a half ago. In my whole career of casual smoking, I have never had such a blunder. The whole store was laughing at me. But hey, you learn from stuff like that. Schwhatever.

Right now I’m about ready to sleep until who knows when. Jared Anderson from Desperation Band is playing a benefit concert tomorrow night at my church up here and I’m way pumped for it. My dear friend Ashley has been planning this concert to help her missions team go to Africa in about a month with the MILL, and we’re all pretty excited about it. I’ll probably blog about it later tonight afterwards.

Gotta throw out a thanks to my boy Seanster for getting me started with this whole blogging thing. I already really enjoy it!