During, Go

Summer Vacation.

July's been nuts. I cannot be the only one to think so. The heat wave that's been oozing over the nation made a lovely, long stop here in the Middle West. It's had a diminishing effect on my ability to think. Not all hope is lost, though. To escape from the muggy misery of a 115 heat index, I accompanied my better half to Durango, CO for a wedding. It was, in a word, breathtaking. Durango, for those unfamiliar, is up in the mountains, far from...anything. It is wonderfully isolated, a serene place where the silence was broken only by the occasional train departing the station. While the wedding itself was in town, the reception was even higher up, roughly 7,000 feet above sea-level, at Blue Lake Lodge. It was even more isolated and astounding than Durango. Food, atmosphere and fellow guests were all fantastic, but like any trip I've come away with a short list of observations and lessons learned. Since this is my only trip this summer (due to the recent home-acquisition) let's jump in and break it down. Without further ado, here's what I learned on my Summer Vacation:

- The older I get, the more anxious I become while flying. I know the stats and how unsafe car travel is. I don't care. Rocketing through the sky in a a metal tube strikes me as defying man's place in the world, even if physics wants us to stay aloft.

- I abhor hotels. They are, in my neurotic mind, filthy places full of invisible evils that threaten to hitchhike home in my suitcase. I can't tell you the white knuckle neurosis I struggle with while checking in to a room.

- At some point since the development of the above-mentioned neurosis, I've also adopted the mind set that if I'm going to be miserable in a hotel, I'm going to console myself with indulgent food. This usually involves me sitting in bed, anxiously eating chocolate while poking my iPad like a lab rat.

- Weddings are immensely more enjoyable to attend once yours is out of the way. Being at a wedding and thinking about planning your own (or talking your better half off a ledge from planning it) is an exercise in long-form torture. Now that the pressure is off, the really are a celebration of love.

- No amount of corniness can conceal it. I love seeing two people in love get married. I don't care about your politics. Gay or straight, if they're in love, let's all celebrate the fact that two optimistic, idealistic people found each other in this cold universe. How can someone not marvel at that?

- Hipsters are apparently omnipresent and of a universal quality, not unlike hippies. There's always at least two at every wedding and the are as reliable in their expected behavior as I am in mine. Nice to see how I could be dressing or living, but usually it's an affirmation I'm happy with who I am. That being said, they are very nice if you know how to handle them.

- Durango, especially higher up the mountain, is serenely beautiful. Long stretches of unbroken quiet. Views like you wouldn't believe. Landscapes that seem impossible constructed. No mosquitoes! A very relaxed pace at which the citizens live, a with a bit of cowboy/granola ethos. Hard not to drink the Kool Aid in such a place.

- High altitudes are much easier to handle when you've quit smoking and gotten back down to an appropriate shape. Had I not kicked the habit and been running, it would have been a miserable weekend. I remember being exhausted and winded when I would visit Boulder as a smoldering tub. This way, I could actually see the sights.

- That being said, at 7,000 feet, I'm a cheap date. No amount of starches and water can alleviate that bloated, red in the face feeling of a couple high altitude drinks crawling right on top of you. Considering how wonky one feels in a plane (cabin pressure is roughly equivalent to 8,000 feet) it's no wonder I had to take it easy when imbibing.

- Why did no one tell me about putting hot sauce in beer? Are we that repressed in the Middle West? How has such a basic concept never made its way here? I am disappointed at how much I missed out on. Tabasco, here I come.

- Connecting flights are the worst. It's stressful enough to have to deal with security and the airlines, but giving them twice the opportunity to wreck your travel arrangements? I've learned to just avoid these situations altogether.

A fantastic trip to a breathtaking place. Good friends getting hitched. Good food, altitude hijinx and airline dramatics. I learned a lot, and had an amazing time. Here's to enjoying the rest of the summer.

Rags On Paper

Welcome back! 


As promised, here's the interview I conducted with the band via email. For more info, check out their Facebook page here and follow them on Twitter for tour dates and dispatches from the road and studio.


So how'd the tour go?


Tour was amazing.  It was our first time traveling across the United States as a band and getting a chance to play a ton of concerts outside of the northwest.  Getting the opportunity to play shows every night for a month straight is perhaps the greatest thing an aspiring band like us can ask for.  



I know no band or artist likes to change moniker mid-career, but you guys seemed to make a natural move. Any particular signifigance to the new name, or do you simply like alliteration?


Ha!  A very well thought out question JT.  We got a little bit of frustration from some of our fan base who had been with us for awhile but after the first several weeks, everybody has seemed to survive.  When we first chose our original name, Galaxy Farm, we were starting to play shows in Portland and just needed a title to be known by.  We kind of settled on Galaxy Farm.  Then two years later, we started getting a lot of feedback that we needed to change our name and we kind of felt the same way.  We chose Rags & Ribbons because of the imagery it conveys and indeed, the alliteration is nice.  Plus every other name we thought of was taken.

How do the songwriting duties break down - is it collaborative or does someone show up with strongly developed concepts?


Each song is a little different but overall our music compositions are very collaborative.  There is no question that Jon has a big hand in the composition process because of his music composition background but often times any one of the three of us will come in with a rough idea and then between the rest of the group, a lot of the final pieces get smoothed out together.  We would say, Chris is definitely the rhythm master, Jon is the harmony master, and Ben just tries to screw everything up just enough to make it work.

What do you consider influences, musically? From your youth to today, what acts shaped your development?


All of our influences vary a lot and we think that is what gives us such a unique combination of musicianship.  Chris grew up with a lot of interest in progressive rock and will site bands like the Deftones and Dredge.  Jon has always been a huge fan of well crafted indie music like Sufjan Stevens, Keane, Rufus Wainwright, and a lot of classical music.  Ben has been a fan of big pop and alt rock bands from the Killers and Muse to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.  Overall, none of us really identify with a particular scene.  If the music is good, we can be influenced by any genre or band.  For example, Jon and I have been listening to a lot of Frank Ocean and the Weekend lately.  Totally out of our genre but super smooth and cool music.


Do you have a unified theme or vision for your sound, or do you follow an instinct to create 'whatever works'?


Initially, no.  It took us about 2-3 years to figure out a unified sound that we were going for.  Additionally, we are just now starting to figure out how to craft songs that share a unified vision.  After writing our first record, seeing how people responded to the new material, and seeing how people responded to our live show, we are now really starting to define our vision and sound.  Everything is very intentional and thought out.  We spend a lot of hours analyzing and critiquing ourselves.

What are your earliest musical memories?


We all started playing the piano when we were young.  Jon started when he was around 2 or 3 and he was the only one that ended up sticking with it.  Chris picked up the drums when he was 12.  Ben remembers being forced to take piano lessons by his mom.


What was the first piece of music you bought?


Jon- Boyz II Men
Ben-  Michael Jackson-Dangerous (on cassette, Oh Yeah!)
Chris- YES


Name some (musical) guilty pleasures. 
Ben: Last summer, I got free tickets to Kesha, Britney Spears, LMFAO, and Usher.  I definitely went to all of them, and I definitely loved them all.
Jon: Is it too soon to like Chris Brown?
Chris: Djent-weird nerdy drum stuff.


You seem to be a pretty sincere, earnest group. Does that set you apart from some jaded, world weary scenesters? 


We're just really excited about what we do.  We're aware that not everyone gets this kind of opportunity where you can share your music with people.  That experience keeps us far away from ever feeling jaded.  We hope our optimism translates to our audience, and helps them connect with us.

Do you try to recreate the sounds of the album live, or did you try to capture the live sound for the album?


We really think of the studio and the stage as two different worlds and we try to make the best of both environments. The studio exists to create the best sonic record of our music in a controlled environment.  The stage exists for a raw, human presentation of the music through performance. 


Name a modern sound/group you adore. Name a modern or recent sound/artist/movement you wish would go away.  


Jon: I adore Sigur Ros and Sufjan Stevens. There's a little bit of music that I love, and the rest of it doesn't have to go away, I just won't listen to it. 


Ben: There's some top 40 that I love and some top 40 that I hate.  If it's done well, I can get down with any genre; if it's done poorly, I'll tell you that I don't like it.


Chris: I love anything techy.  With that kind of stuff comes amazing musicians, and most often GREAT drumming.  The band has really been loving poly-rhythms at the moment, and we're working on a song in 7/8 that really grooves.  I dislike a lot of music.  I love some lo fi indie stuff, but being a musician, there's some new thing going on where it seems like people like singers that sound terrible and sing out of tune, believing that they are so original.  Country lyrics often make me laugh.  


A couple songs from the EP reappeared on the album. Why those tracks and not others? 


Prelude and Lady In The Midnight Sun were songs that we felt combined well with our new material and could continue to have significant value to our audience.


Who do you consider your contemporaries/compatriots? Any acts you wish would get a wider audience?  


No Kind of Rider and Tango Alpha Tango are other local Portland bands that we are very close with and have had the privilege of going on tour with.  Their music is fantastic.  


There's a real sense of light and heavy alternating and coexisting/competing in your work - is that intentional or a manifestation of different influences/voices? 


It is intentional.  We like contrast and the musical roller coaster ride that sometimes comes with it. 

Talk a bit about the excellent video for 'Even Matter'.  


We had some concepts slightly fleshed out, one weekend with the lovely Lucy Martin, and we went and filmed one of the ideas on some family property.  We had new ideas while filming, and got a lot of content and left the final product up to Lucy, her vision, and her editing.  We lucked out with Jasper, the boy in the video.  He looked great in the film, and his acting was so genuine.  The weather even turned out in our favor.  It had snowed the night we came up, and the snow and ice in some of the scenes really gives it an excellent look and feel.  Much of what that video is came down to luck and good fortune!


Who decides who sings what part? 


Chris does.  :)   We don't have a specific method on choosing who sings what, but we do try to have our songs alternate nicely from "Jon" songs, to "Ben" songs, and dual vocal songs.  

Do you practice on your own time, or do you try to only work as a group?  


We all practice on our own time, and I think that's integral to the sound we have as a band.  Each member practices different techniques and songs they love from genres all over the spectrum, and those different influences come together in the practice room to make something special.  


Name some non-musical influence.  


We all owe so much to our families for support and influence.  Friends, coworkers, relationships, work, play, nature, tour.  There is so much that influences us, it's hard to even think about cataloging it all. 

Cadaver Caper

I really should be saving this for next Halloween.

You know what? I can't - this story is too good to share and I don't ever want to forget it.

My better half had a coworker who, contrary to her bright, life-affirming disposition, had a previous career as a mortician's assistant. While this, in and of itself, is worthy of ample amounts of dissection (dear goodness, no pun intended) over a happy hour, the seeming disparity between her persona and the occupation are not the heart of the matter. No, an event on the job, a particular incident, is what prompted me to jump to the keyboard. This was simply too amazing and horrifying to let slip into the ether. I feel compelled to share it with the world.

So.

A brief word on the nature of our inevitable end. 

We're all doomed. Death is one of the few things in the world we will all experience. There is both a universality and taboo surrounding it. We are fascinated by it, yet speak of it in hushed tones. Our lives are seemingly spent in denial of it, yet only when we embrace it do we live to the fullest extent. We are meat containing something special. When that light behind the eyes goes out, all that remains is a vessel, a shell. What we leave behind is not us, but a reminder that we are something more than bags of mostly water. There is, to say the absolute minimum, a mental phenomenon unlike anything else we've seen in the universe. It is to be treasured and valued. Having been present at the moment a loved one has passed, there is certainly clear distinction between "they are with us" and "they are gone". It is simple, yet wholly distinct. 

Now.

What I am about to impart is meant in no way to desecrate that remarkable, ephemeral essence. Instead, it elucidates the mechanical nature of our existence that we mistakenly assume to be the beginning and end of who and what we are. But enough preamble. On to it.

This happy little pixie of a woman was a mortician's assistant. She assisted, among other duties, in the preparation for burial through the embalming process. This process involves draining the body of fluids and replacing them with substances that preserve our remains. At some point in the process a high powered suction device is used to drain the body cavity. It would seem that one must always be mindful of where you place such an item when taking a break, because this happy-go-lucky woman made the unfortunate mistake of dropping the suction device on the open throat of a deceased person. The suction and force of the device dropping onto soft tissue allowed it to break through the wind pipe, and begin drawing air (backwards) through the throat and over the vocal cords. The uncanny scream that erupted from the deceased's throat was enough to send the woman sprinting from the room, too terrified to return until the physical reaction was properly explained. All the while, due to the mechanism of the vacuum, the impossible screaming continued.

Gnarly.

A horrifying little tale, no doubt. However, it reaffirms the absurdity of our mortal confines and allows me to thoroughly creep out friends around Halloween. I just wanted to make sure I could share it with everyone before the memory escaped me. So have fun with that, and feel free to share!

Enlarged Heart

Hi hi hi.


I've been watching footage of my wedding. It was exactly one year ago today that I married my best friend and the love of my life. Having celebrated this past weekend and watching the footage a year later, tonight, it all seems so ethereal now. It's this amazing bundle of footage of all of my family and best friends in one room, laughing and eating and hugging and drinking. Watching it gives me that same, heart-full feeling I had that night, where you can't believe there's so much love in one place and everyone is so happy to be together.


It is super cornball, but you're super corn dog for calling me on it.


At some point, my snarktastic brothers pinned me with the labels of wistfully reminiscing and idealizing, especially when I have a couple drinks. Yeah, I'll cop to it. So long as I'm looking at my past with rose colored lenses, I'll take that charge for my wedding. It really and truly was a joyous day filled with everyone our hearts could fit and good lord this does sound corn ball doesn't it?


Right.


The point is, sometimes it really is as sincere and sappy as it sounds. I love my better half with all my heart, and all of our families and our friends. I am fully aware of the sickly, self indulgent vanity of it all, but the world can be a cruel, uncaring place sometimes and you need to take pleasure when it comes along. If I want to embrace a very focused day of self importance, I'm going to. My better half was and continues to be the most beautiful woman I've ever known. Sometimes I worry that my family and friends don't know how much I appreciate them. Seeing the footage of one massive, amazing party helps to reaffirm the notion that these people care and care very much.


If you've been in my life and shared something special like this with me - thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Please know if you're my friend or family, I don't say the L word that much (beyond the context of media consumption, admittedly) but I feel it in my heart. Like all Americans, I'm vain. But I'm also full of gratitude and love.


Thank you.


Thank you for reading this. Thank you for celebrating with me. Thanking you for supporting me when I'm down. Thank you for being as awesome as you are and putting on a good face even when it feels like the whole world is against you, because when YOU make believe like life is easy, I believe you. No joke, all love.


My heart is still full.

Nightwing

This is the only post my parents asked me not to write.


They relented, though, after determining the statute of limitations had probably put them in the clear by now. I doubt Los Federales will come knocking but I can understand their trepidation, I suppose. You see...we had bats. Lots of them.


As I explained last time, our house was very, very old. Such old houses have a way of becoming host to uninvited guests. I never saw a mouse or a bug (that started when we moved to the country - HUGE spiders) but damn did we have some flutter-mice. The attic, technically the third floor of the house, was host to who knows how many bats, sleeping and pooping during the day and leaving and swooping at night.


It wasn't a constant, swirling maelstrom of nocturnal nuisances, but it was definitely a problem. You would be sitting and watching a movie with the lights off, not even considering the risk of rabies, when a dark shape would flit across your field of vision. Instinctively we would all duck and cower and make a bee-line for our parents room, which contained our only method of pest control.


A tennis racket.


Wii remotes have nothing on the feeling of swinging a tennis racket as hard as you could, connecting with a terror-inducing bat (Bruce Wayne was a dick, it seems) and sending that little airborne menace flying across the room. Seeing them thwack against the wall and drop to the carpet, lifeless, we would then grab a folded newspaper and sweep them onto it, to be deposited in to the trash barrels outside. So it would go, for the foreseeable time - them, occasionally finding their way into our living space instead of the night sky, us killing a protected species in a shameful act of self-defense/cowardice.


The dynamic shifted one day when my father said he'd had enough. Enough shrieking children. Enough cats doing nothing while a free meal circled overhead. Enough siting up in bed, grabbing a racket that was sitting next to the damn night stand and killing them without even getting up. He had hit his limit. He created something that astounded and horrified us all.


The Bat Trap.

You see, bats can't take off like a bird. The have to drop from a perch and swoop up to take flight. My dad figured out which eave of the house they were mostly flying out of at night and set about devising a solution. A containment system. Risking a broken neck, he climbed up to the top of the house (an impressive height, especially without scaffolding or any safety gear whatsoever) and affixed a bucket and pulley mechanism. At dusk he would raise the bucket. Bats would drop in by the dozen, unable to alter course in time. In the morning, he would lower the bucket full of bats and do something horrible - kill them all. I won't divulge the method he initially attempted, but I'm still impressed and horrified he was able to do it and then put on a clean shirt and have a cup of coffee. After this disastrous first attempt he realized he needed to simplify and streamline his approach. The solution: put water in the bucket. Bats drop in, bats splash around, bats sink. Voila.


Secret best part to the story - he found out he had to kill them because he tried simply burying them alive one morning, only to have a league of furious bats claw their way up from the earth, obviously in search of vengeance. So my dad decided "I'll have to kill them before they can rise from their grave."

Being a fresh homeowner now, I can sort of see how he arrived at his course of action. I just hope I'm not driven mad in a conquest against a similar vermin like some villain from Batman.

Kitsch/in

Hi kids, ya miss me?


It's been an interesting couple of weeks, getting settled in our new house. There's no finish line anymore, essentially. It's the kind of thing where you just keep improving and fine tuning. All of our furniture is in, a strong majority of the boxes are unpacked and it feels like a home. Not necessarily OUR home yet, but at least A home instead of an empty building where we've been crashing. We just need to give it time while we make it ours. Wallpaper needs to come down, things need to be rearranged, designations need to be assigned. We need to get our scent in there, you know?


In the meantime we're trying to resume life as we knew it. We've slowly been regaining the ability to prepare a decent meal instead of just sandwiches and salads. Cooking is what makes it feel like home, it would seem. Also, we still have no Internet. That makes getting posts done a lot harder. As a mea culpa, I thought I'd share a few anecdotes I recall about the house in which I grew up.


The Big Butt Alarm.


You see, our house was already over 100 years old when I was a kid (for vanity's sake say mid 80's to mid 90's). While it was a great old house with loads of...character...it had definite flaws, one of which was a stove/oven deal from the 70's that had a broken face plate on it. It still worked just fine, but the knobs and dials on the front for setting the oven required a bit of familiarity/intuition. Not really a guessing game, but you would be much better off leaving the cooking to someone well versed in its idiosyncrasies.


As a result of the broken plastic on the front, a timer would occasionally go off when jostled. It sounded like an incorrect answer tone from The Family Feud. Lean a little too close to the stove and touch this innocuous little knob and "BZZZZZT!" you get the sound of angry bees. Having a family of five in a small, outdated kitchen, our table barely fit in the space we used. Anyone who tried to sit on the stove side of the table ran a significant risk of knocking their butt against the knob as they sidled into their chair and setting off what we all began to refer to as the Big Butt Alarm in that short-hand way all families make jokes. Being a bunch of miscreants, we would all announce it when it went off.


My mom also tended to sit opposite of stove side when she would have coffee with her friends, most of whom were not aware of our dumb jokes. So when a friend of hers slid into place one morning with a cup of coffee and brushed against the faulty knob too hard, my mom gave the Pavlovian response when it buzzed and called out "Big Butt Alarm!" to her own dismay.


She told me her friend looked mortified and cocked her head askew, asking just what she was talking about. Cue my mom's profuse apologies and her swearing up and down that it was something the family joked about, and not a personal dig.


We don't have a Big Butt Alarm at our new house, but I'm sure we'll find something.

Crown Jewel

Hi, gang.


It's been stressful times, as of late. I'm not speaking solely of the moving process; in fact given the potential for stress and heartache in a huge move like that, I think it went amazingly smooth. No, I mean more in the last 8 months or so. Basically, since the time I stopped having a place of my own. It wasn't solely the living situation, though, and I mean in no way to impugn my wonderful housemates. I mean more the external, coincidental factors coupled with being a married couple cast adrift while we weathered the seas of uncertainty.


Times got to be overwhelming.


The little things, the simple pleasures got to be reassurances. I liked being able to cook a meal. I'm no foodie, but I am a growing sous-chef to my better half, who has become a talented chef on her own. Most of our free time was spent preparing meals and dissecting what made things good. She reads cookbooks like literature. I try to keep up, but mostly my skills have favored pouring wine and doing dishes. One little bonus we had lost was the ability to watch copious DVR'd shows from the Food Network and the Cooking Channel. Honestly I think it was about the only TV my better half would watch, save the occasional Simpsons or Daily Show. So being without a kitchen staple, missing the lovely white noise of those specific shows, took a toll.


There was a life raft, though.


While we had no cable to speak of, we had access to the local PBS-esque affiliates. Turns out, on a regular basis they show cooking and food related programming. The best of the best? Our cream of the crop? Old episodes of Julia & Jacques Cooking At Home. It's a bit dated, being filmed and broadcast in 1999, but it is all kinds of awesome. So while we go about our business, getting settled in our new home, we make sure we tune in whenever possible.

In short, it's a classic cooking program and Julia Child is every bit as legendary as you'd expect. She was 86 when they filmed these! That she would have the gumption to still shoot these instructional shows, with the energetic yet patient Jacques Pepin, is nothing short of incredible. One cannot help but admire her spirit and passion, even past the point most others would have simply retired and coasted. No, Julia Child is amazing. She's totally the embodiment of all the parodies and jokes and SNL skits. She's so sincere and genuine that you can't help but find her endearing. Whether or not my palate can handle the amount of cream and white wine in her recipes, the shows are still a sight to behold. There's nothing quite as astounding as seeing a woman as old as your grandmother grab a gargantuan meat cleaver and hack a gigantic fish in two, without skipping a beat. Nothing broke her composure. She was super fun. Plus, I'm learning just from watching.

The stress will alleviate over time, certainly as we get more boxes unpacked and more things put away. In the meantime, we can cook with the limited means we have available and tune in to these hidden gems from a generation ago. If this is suburban living, I'll take it. Even if it means doing more dishes until our furniture is delivered.

Warming

So I'm writing this as I lie on an air mattress.

I spent the day closing on and moving into my house.

Sure, there's a certain amount of white knuckle terror that keeps the blood and adrenaline pumping. But! There's also a fair deal of exhilarating freedoms that keeps the fish swimming! None of that made any sense, did it?

We're lying on an air mattress watching Wall•e right now, more tired but more alive than I'd care to admit. It's been a solid year or more of planning, but we made it here in one piece. Having spent all that time in preparation, it is a strange feeling to finally be here. We kept saying, since before the wedding, that we can "sort all this out once we get a house."

Well, we're finally here and we're gonna get all our ducks in a row. Long road and a longer haul, no doubt. But! We've got time and space out here, and by golly, we're gonna make use of it!

My apologies for the lack of updates as of late, but we needed to prepare for the big move. Now that we're here I can't wait to set up my office and ensconced. Most of my writing as of late has been via pen and paper, so letting a keyboard handle the weight sounds fantastic, as does the idea of a permanent home and a place to customize/trick out to my hearts content.

This is the next step into a new chapter. Boots on the ground, we're ready to make it together. I'll keep you posted.

Worlds End

I've been thinking about The End of The World. 

Not in the biblical sense, fire and brimstone. Although I suppose in this case it would apply. Moreover, it's in the sense of my life as I know it ending. 

Like any human in this modern age, I have too much imagination with too little to exert it against. I wake up, go through my work day and come home. During that time, things are always happening. At home, more stuff happens. Something is always going on. Decisions are being evaluated, plans are made and executed. Meals are prepared and eaten, chores and duties are dealt with. During all the usual stuff, I'm also writing, tweeting, consuming pop culture and doing the usual 20-something crap that seems important but in actuallity is frivolous. Also, I'll get up at offensively early hours and go running, sometimes in the dark but now there's at least a little sunlight. Despite all of this, that imagination never seems to run out. 

See where I'm going? 

There is no shortage of stuff to deal with in this modern life. You get an extra hour and it fills up with obligations. Indulging in relaxing activites usually has a subcurrent of guilt permeating it, as though worrying about what I ought to be accomplishing makes it acceptable that I'm otherwise supposedly wasting time playing a videogame or reading a book. It's become hard to simply relax. The mind is constantly fretting, worrying, anxiously creating scenarios in which things go wrong or disaster falls or who knows what else. Having no actual dangers to avoid (war, pervasive crime, large predatory animals), my mind is constantly presenting potential scenarios, no matter how unrealistic, in which my world and life as I know them cease to exist and All Goes Wrong. 

Who cares? 

No one. 

Should I worry about it? 

Absolutely not. 

But see, that's the problem. Try to convince yourself that you shouldn't worry about a thing in the future. There's a reflexive instinct to reassert the notion that by not being concerned about it, it will come to pass in a negative light. 

This is not true. 

Worry is not a talisman against bad fortune. 

There is a world of difference between being prepared for bad fortune and constantly being wary of it. One is intelligent and resourceful. The other is a needless waste of energy. "But what if this and what if this and this thing could happen and then all this would happen" but it hasn't. Not yet. Odds are it most likely won't. This is just a wishful direction of energy in the hopes that we can exert some sort of control on the universe. 

The world hasn't ended. It won't. Even if it does, what does that change the here and now? Say I go broke, get cancer and lose everyone I love. Okay. Done. Then what happens? Wailing and gnashing of teeth? Perhaps. But whatever the series of circumstances, my life will have to continue on. War could happen, more terrorist attacks. What good, what possible benefit is there to fretting about it? It simply expends energy I could use to tell my better half I love her, or cook a nice meal, or finish the same book I've been slowly writing. 

Enough worrying. Enough self-caused anxiety. 

I'm going to go enjoy my day. You do the same. 

Voice Over

So that's it, huh.


I had known Beastie Boy Adam Yauch was sick for a while. I remember hearing about the band postponing albums and performances and being genuinely bummed about it, even though the shows were nowhere near me and the news of a fresh album had been beyond my knowledge. They are (now were) such an immensely likable, talented group that any ill that should befall them seemed to be a slight against all that was good in the world.

I know, I know. 


This all smacks of the bandwagon-jumping, post celebrity death fervor that grips the social current in the wake of a high profile death. I'm sure to some extent, that's exactly what it is. In my defense, however - I was a longtime fan of the group and adored them for same reasons anyone would. Not to be that hyper dramatic self-involved type that claims the closest relationship to the trauma or loss, I just mean to say it's a real sad loss of a talented, intelligent and funny person.

I can't even begin to summarize all of the amazing music and the impact it had on popular culture. More talented writers have said better about the significance of their mainstream success, being three Jewish rappers in the then-nascent genre. They went from being a hardcore outfit (with a woman on drums, to boot) to frat rap/rock before it was a thing, to some of the smartest, funkiest hip hop in the alternative landscape in the 90s and beyond. In short, they were amazing. 

Back when I was a pimply teenager, Ill Communication was the first rap album I bought. My stealth obsession with oddball hip hop was forged then, listening to the crazy loops and eclectic mix of sounds on the record. 'Sure Shot' is still one of my all time favorite songs of theirs. I remember the crazy anticipation for Hello Nasty and the absurd fun they had with their videos for 'Intergalactic' and 'Body Movin'. I look back fondly on bonding with my younger brother over his discovery and obsession with the group as soon as he started drumming. Above all, though, I remember falling in love with the group sound of Check Your Head. Read up on why I love it here, and check out Max Tannone's remixes that fold the album back in on itself like an ourobourus. 

The fact that MCA is gone is one I can deal with. He was sick, but he led an amazing life that saw him grow in huge leaps and bounds into the farthest thing from the horrible clips the news keeps showing, as though the only thing anyone ever knows them from is 'Fight for Your Right to Party'. Please. MCA was incredibly smart and talented, and that's why we're all so sad to see him go, but as a Buddhist, he wouldn't be. He's just moving on.

Now, let's remember the Beastie Boys for what they are - disembodied heads in jars, still dropping crazy lines in the 31st century. MCA had more rhymes than he had gray hairs, and that's a lot because he had his share.