My Momma Always Said...

...Be sure your sin will find you out. It's a shame that I never believed her. I always thought, when I got caught, lesson learned - I won't get caught that way again. I would plan my lies more carefully next time, be sure to cover my tracks or bribe witnesses (brothers and sisters). Next time I had to lie to do what I wanted, I'd be ready for you Mom.

Of course I always got caught the same way.

Derek Webb says that the best thing for all people would be to have their worst and darkest evil broadcast to everyone they knew, know, or ever will know on the evening news. Just consider the freedom of it, no longer having to try to be a better liar, everyone already knowing who you really are. Terrifying isn't it?

In an attempt to affirm that statement I'm going to look back on that three day period when Lacey told me she might be pregnant, scattering my fantasies, dreams, and ambitions to the wind; forcing me to come face to face with my life, something I'd been carefully avoiding for some twenty odd years.

I'll be writing this one in segments, consider this an introduction to an HBO miniseries. It certainly won't be any less dark, sordid, or human than anything on cable's most notorious network. Although it will probably be less entertaining. Anyway, here goes...the opening paragraph.

There are moments in your life that give you pause. The world doesn't actually slow down around you, it would be more accurate to say that you come to a screeching halt and life, like the ball in Raiders of the Lost Ark, keeps getting closer and closer. The problem is I wasn't Indiana Jones, a man on a mission with years of training and experience, the body of an athlete with the mind of a brilliant archaeologist. I didn't have a leather hat, whip or loosely buttoned shirt that exposed my sweat-matted chest hair. Shit, I didn't even have chest hair. Much less any direction, or idea of what to do with what was looming before me.

Monthly Mixtape...

July: I Aint Born Typical

This month has several new releases,
some stuff from when I was a kid,
All good songs you should have heard,
but because we have no time anymore,
you probably never did.

1. White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes

Have you forgotten what Beach Boys style vocal harmony sounds like? Well go buy Fleet Foxes debut and reminisce. This record is the sole candidate for debut of the year in my book. (I’m thinking of doing an end of the year awards, which should be fun, if not necessarily prestigious).

2. Goodnight Bad Morning - The Kills

Okay, so I am breaking one of my rules that I never told you about*, but The Kills released another excellently titled album (Midnight Boom, preceded by No Wow, preceded by Keep on Your Mean Side). This is their weakest album in my opinion, but then I have checked their website bi-monthly for the last year and a half waiting for their next project. So I was set up for the let down. The album still has some great moments, the lyric "You are a fever, You aint born typical" is probably the best couplet I've heard in the 21st century. Yeah that's right, period.

3. One Day Like This – Elbow

Elbow, a band with confidence and consistency and one of the few who can be considered to have their own sound; they’ve been making poignant, beautiful albums for a few years now and their new release The Seldom Seen Kid is my favorite album of the year so far. In case you’re wondering, that sentence was not a run-on.

4. Silent Sigh – Badly Drawn Boy

I’ve listened to a lot of BDB’s music and nothing has yet to top his work on the soundtrack of About a Boy (Probably the only movie where Hugh Grant rises of above the title of B-actor). This song is so bouncy you’d think it couldn’t possibly be melodramatic but the fact that it is…well, you get the idea.

5. City Bird – Of Montreal

I’ve been guilty of sucker punching my audience by picking songs that sound nothing like the artist whose song I select. This is definitely the case with Of Montreal. Words that describe them best are generally synonymous with frenetic, frantic, or frenzied. But don’t hesitate to check them out. They use words you’ll have to look up in the dictionary (lysergic stands out), but hey, that’s how you know it’s good.

6. Lovers In Japan (Acoustic) – Coldplay

Everybody has those moments when, like John Cusack’s character in High Fidelity, we want to listen to something we can ignore. If we didn’t, bands like Coldplay wouldn’t have a chance. For their new album they went with legendary (and yet you haven’t heard of him?) producer Brian Eno. If you know Eno’s work, you can guess how the album sounds, hence the acoustic version. Enjoy ignoring this playlist for the next 3 minutes 45 seconds.

7. If You Want Me - Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová

The movie Once won the Oscar for Best Song, a prestigious award (I think? I mean, Bob Dylan has his Oscar on stage with him at every show and that means something man). However, this song, from the same soundtrack, isn’t as good. But I like it better, so get over it.

8. Cartoon Music For Superheroes – Albert Hammond, Jr.

The lead guitarist from a former favorite band of mine released a solo album last year, generously titled Yours To Keep. Thanks, I just paid 12 bucks; I appreciate you letting me hang onto it. Failed attempts at humor aside, this is a great Brian Wilson-esque tune.

9. On My Way – Ben Kweller

If there was justice in the world, we would all know Ben Kweller better than Coner Oberst. Freakishly young, talented songwriters may be few and far between, but I guess the world was just too big for the two of them, as virtually no one outside of Texas has heard Kweller’s name, while Oberst has been erroneously labeled the next Bob Dylan. This song, with obvious roots in a deep love of Dylan’s style of songwriting, is more genuine than anything Oberst ever wrote, and the guy can sing.

10. Things Grandchildren Should Know – Eels

Next to Bob Dylan, Eels songwriter-frontman Mark Oliver Everett has influenced me the most. This song is, like a lot of his work, painfully touching and revealing. Look in the mirror if you dare, cuz this guy will hold it up for you.

*= The rule being not to repeat an artist, other rules include always having a pick from a soundtrack and referencing Bob Dylan.

The way it works is...

...The train moves, not the station.

The man best remembered for his work on Thomas the Tank Engine (as the magical, miniaturized Conductor) has joined the great gig in the sky. If you were thinking Ringo Starr, cease your mourning, the luckiest Beatle on the planet is still alive and kicking. George Carlin died last Sunday, it's just taken me this long to come up with a fitting tribute to my knowledge of him. My favorite Carlinism has got to be his description of religion, with which I heartily agree.

"Religion - at best - is like a lift in your shoe. If you need it for a while, and it makes you walk straight and feel better - fine. But you don't need it forever, or you can become permanently disabled. Religion is like a lift in the shoe, and I say just don't ask me to wear your shoes. And let's not go down and nail lifts onto the natives' feet."

Religion is of course, as he well knew, either a crutch or a club. If I wasn't crippled I wouldn't want to be offered a crutch and unless I was a masochist I certainly would have no interest in being threatened with a club. I can only hope that Carlin figured out that loving Jesus isn't anything like religion.

Ben Gibbard's a Calvinist...

Death Cab's new single "I will possess your Heart" was a shocking disappointment when I first heard it. The lyrics, transcribed below, are almost sophomoric in comparison to the nuance and depths Ben Gibbard has penned on albums past. However, I realized the other day, that if you consider this, not some juvenile and cloying romantic love song, but a plea from God to his children on earth...you kinda have to draw the conclusion that Ben Gibbard's a Calvinist. Taken in this light the song sounds like a description of irresistible grace.

How I wish you could see the potential, the potential of you and me
It's like a book elegantly bound, but in a language that you can't read
You gotta spend some time--love, you gotta spend some time with me

There are days when outside your window, I see my reflection as I slowly pass
And I long for this mirrored perspective, when we'll be lovers, lovers at last

You reject my advances and desperate pleas
I won't let you, let me down so easily, so easily

I will possess your heart.

Jakob Dylan's new album sounds like praise music...

And that coming from me is something of an obscenity. I'm sorry, but if you're Bob Dylan's son and you decide to become a musician...change your mind. I mean what do you expect will happen? That you would actually be able to rise above people saying things like "it sounds pretty decent but nothing like his dad" with this mediocre solo album following your career with a mediocre band?

Of course if it's what he loves to do than he should keep doing it, I just wish he would suck less. The type of generic acoustic guitar on the album is only tolerable when coupled with good-to-great lyrics and tonally gripping vocals. And please, naming a song with an homage to Ray Bradbury (one of my favorite authors), when the song is awful, only makes me more irritated.

I would never want to do anything that my father did, unless I could do it better.

Which is why I am steering clear of the IT industry. Not my cup of tea, and my dad is already very successful doing it, and I want nothing to do with it. Me and my dad hung out at Starbucks a few weeks ago and it was a lot of fun, it was also the first time I had seen any sort of youthful joy or energy in him in ages. If that's what working on computers for a living does for you, no thanks. I'll keep my soul. Of course, he's got a million other reasons to be drained all the time, well, 9 anyway.

I need to get back in school if only so I can be refreshed on how to compose a sentence of length without using six or seven commas (DJ, a little help?)

Joel Osteen Vs. Rick Warren And The Winner Is...

Satan.

Forgive the hyperbole, first I want to say that I'm as guilty as anyone of judging a movement by it's momentum rather than what motivates it. I've been listening to these guys, pastors of the two biggest churches in America become more and more disconnected from Biblical truth over the last few years. If you want to try and deny it, just look at their interviews with secular media (their respective interviews with Larry King were both saddening) . Matt Chandler hit the pandemic nail on the head when he said,

"Christianity has shifted from being a small movement that impacts the culture to a gigantic impotent one."

I would add "that is mocked by culture" to the end of that quote if only to be symmetrical.
This isn't a call for small house church leaderless Christianity (I've read barna and viola's book Pagan Christianity and it doesn't have an answer regardless of how effective it is at identifying problems).

I wish, like most Christians, not to be thought of as socially, psychologically, or intellectually inferior to the rest of the world. Am I wishing for the equivalent of world peace? Probably. But I would settle for the so called "open-minded" intellectualism that grasps even the most uneducated of our society to actually espouse what they claim to believe.

There's nothing open-minded about writing someone off as a fundamentalist when they say they believe the Bible.

I probably just need to quit bitching and read the Bible more.

Constantine...

I watched it again. I think I'm a sucker for any movie that portrays the catholic church in a semi-superheroic light. Fighting demons with sacred tap water or yelling in latin, it hits the spot. I really liked the end where Constantine prays for divine assistance...

"I know I'm not one of your favorites, and that I'm not even welcome in your house, but I could use a little attention. Please."

I can definitely identify with that feeling of loneliness. The coolest thing I think is the theological depth of the films thesis. Which is essentially Ephesians 2:8-9

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast"

Constantine spends his whole life trying to redeem for the mortal sin of his suicide at a young age by deporting demons to hell. He says at one point, "I've been trying to send as many of them back to hell to secure my retirement." I think most Christians at one point or another get sidetracked by trying to earn what's already been given. We may not be waging spiritual warfare in an attempt to earn our way into His good grace but we certainly place a lot of emphasis on morality and piety. Don't wear a hat in church, tithe 10%, don't use four letter words, avoid association with sinners. Some of those things are important, but I think we need to live our lives with the feeling that we've just been given the best birthday, christmas, or graduation present. Think about that euphoric generosity you feel when you recieve something that is deeply satisfying. Checking off lists, crossing t's and dotting i's loses importance pretty quickly.

My Boyfriend's Back...

I don't know if jokes that are give off that homo false positive are cool with everybody, they make me laugh loud and long. But my good friend Evan really is back on 10 day leave and right now I kinda wish tomorrow wasn't Father's Day so I could kick it with him the whole day.

Evan's back,
from boot camp,
Drill Instructors are
loud, harsh, and mean
he said, he had fun anyway.

I don't know if I'll always write in what vaguely looks like free verse, but I'm probably going to start posting all blog entries in that format unless they are purely informational.

I was having a fairly energetic debate with a gay coworker (he definitely puts the boy in flamboyant) about whether gays and straights were different at a a deeper level than where they put their...(well you get the idea, and if you don't you're blessed with a rare innocence I wouldn't want to corrupt so stop reading my blog).

Anyway, Irving was saying
(After I asked what it meant to be gay)
"It means to be cool"
(I know I don't dress,
with the colors of Dr. Suess books)
"But straights can be cool too"

This format won't work for this particular entry, so Irving (who is an airhead, well that's untrue, he's a cokehead...seriously the guy does blow like it's 1994) who can't formulate a thought or complete a sentence, attempts to further explain himself. I argued using the example of celebrities (best way to debate with a fag is to use pictures, preferably pictures he's...seen) that the ratio of cool straights to cool gays is the same as the portion of straights to gays (like 80-20 according to the census bureau of my imagination). I mean how many cool gays are there? One of his responses was George Michael, at this point I knew I had him on the ropes...

Of course I eventually had to get back to work and couldn't deliver the one-two punch. But my point is that how many of my fellow readers (I really hope there's at least five of you, but that may be too much to ask) especially the Christian ones, actually talk to gays? And I mean, after you find out they're gay and they make some not too subtle jokes about the, let's call it mechanics, of their nature?

I have two gays I talk with regularly and one is a very mature adult who, if I hadn't met a gay like that, I would probably still consider them caricatures of humanity, like serial killers or child-molesters. And then I know Irving, poster-gay for gayness. He's the reason why people like me used to make up slogans like "Homosexuality is Gay" which still makes me laugh, but seriously, the sinfulness of homosexuality is not a greater sinfulness than that of lust, greed, pride, gossip, slander, or sloth.

Matt Chandler (great pastor of The Village Church) says "I grew up in a denomination where the church's unofficial-official position on gays was that the HIV virus was God's judgment on them, now do see what ground we have to make up?" (Now if you're reading this and thinking, "Hell yeah, them fags brought that on themselves," I really don't have anything to say to you, I would probably consider you further from salvation than any homosexual)

I guess that Christians who resort to "outreach" tactics like picket lines at abortion clinics and trackbombing (another Chandler term, the guy is the madnotes) have forgotten that in Paul's trifecta of faith, hope, and love the greatest is love and self-righteousness isn't on the list. I forget it all the time.

I'm working up an entry to address what went through my mind in that first week when I found out my girlfriend was pregnant, it's something I want to address, that week was a complete emotional roller coaster.

I'll try to start finishing thoughts in these entries sometime, but right now I've got to stop and go to bed.

Zombies are voting for John McCain...

To deter them I've come up with my own top five reasons to vote for Barack Obama (from the interweb, with pictures!):

5. Just look at him. A man with ears that big can't be evil.
4. John McCain hasn't been on the cover of Rolling Stone
3. He doesn't have years of D.C. political experience
2. Chief Media Advisor to McCain won't run against him
1. Bob Dylan Says To

Ahhhhh, politics. Of course, in this state we vote for the Re-publican. More so here than anywhere else (except New York and California) your vote in the election, really any election, is largely symbolic. Which to my mind means that we should think about who we vote for, I remember when I went with my mom to vote back in 2004, after we finished we talked about how we voted and my mom admitted to having just picked the republican on all the minor candidates after voting to re-elect Bush. I remember I voted for Bush because I didn't believe in voting for nobody and I couldn't vote for Jay Leno's cousin. I also voted straight party. I've since decided to be an informed voter (although the cynic in me wonders whether the information I'm being fed is unbiased truth). This election has been an exciting one, although it's been a drag waiting for the snow queen to bow out. I could go on and on but my point is that you should have better (and by better I mean more educated) reasons for voting for whoever you vote for. That top five list is cute, but none of those reasons mean anything, except for number 1, that one means a lot...I'm not even sure I'm kidding, I mean, if Jesus sent word from heaven that thou shall vote for Barack Obama I would find that endorsement more convincing, but not many earthly people have the power to sway my opinion like Bob Dylan (he changed my daughter's name for goodness sake!).

P.S. John McCain really is a good guy (or at least he was before he got the nomination), check him and Barack out to see what you think before you tell everybody else how they should think.

Suggested Reading...

This is the rider for Iggy Pop & The Stooges, for those of you who are unaware, a rider is a contract that a venue has to fulfill before a band will perform. This is quite possibly the funniest rider ever. 18 pages written by one of the band's veteran roadies, it's a better short story than anything written by, well anybody. Editor's Note: Colorful (read possibly offensive) language throughout.

Monthly Mixtape

June: Music Loves You Back

I'll be sharing music with my audience (ha-ha, I know, what audience?) in the form of a monthly playlist (like the itunes celebrity playlists just without the celebrity) . I'll write a little blurb about each pick to stretch my writing muscles and stimulate brain function.

1. Subterranean Homesick Blues - Bob Dylan
I picked this song because Haddie's name came about due in part to the movie "I'm Not There" a sort of arty biopic about Bob Dylan. This song plays on the dvd menu and is one of my favorite Dylan tunes.

2. Angel In The Snow - Elliott Smith
This is off of New Moon, a posthumous compilation album released last year. This song quickly became one of my favorites by this tortured sing-songwriter, probably because it's one of the few that doesn't make me want to slit my wrists.

3. An Owl With Knees - The Books
This indie duo mostly records acoustic songs mixed with sound clips from old non-musical recordings and movies. The two rarely actually sing, but when they do, you get great songs like this.

4. Making Time - Creation
Rushmore is one of the few movies I would want with me on a desert island. This song is from one of my favorite segments of the movie by a not-so-great band from the same era as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and The Who. Maybe if they had put "The" in front of their name they would have had more success.

5. Wait - The Kills
Another soundtrack pick, this one is from Children of Men an apocalyptic movie where women lose the ability to bear children. Since the birth of Haddie, I've been listening to this song a lot.

6. Hospital Beds - Cold War Kids
My favorite discovery of 2007, this California band mixes easy-going production values with some great musicianship and songwriting. The only turn off may be the singers high-pitched vocals, but I love it, so you should too. Editors Note: Kids, prepositions are words you shouldn't end sentences with.

7. Teenage Kicks - Nouvelle Vague
Two brilliant French producers came up with the novel idea of having their native pop divas perform breezy acoustic versions of classic 80's tunes. This one may be my favorite, though their covers of Joy Division, The Cure, and Bauhaus are a lot of fun too.

8. Keep The Car Running - The Arcade Fire
The Arcade Fire followed up their debut last year with an album that left a lot people asking "How great are these guys?" Now maybe I'm the only person who asked that question, but if this song doesn't answer it, I don't know what will.

9. Cath... - Death Cab for Cutie
Let me take a moment to say that these guys should change their name to Death Cab, nobody calls them by their full name anymore. Anyway, this song is from their new album Narrow Stairs and is probably the only song that stands up to the greatness of Transatlantacism, their breakthrough album from 2003.

10. Oh Mandy - The Spinto Band
I was introduced to this song when I had a brief moment of online fame. A song I recorded was used in the trailer for the very-indie movie Four-Eyed Monsters, this is a better song from a different trailer.

11. Hold Tight - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch
Last soundtrack pick, this is from Quentin Tarantino's movie Deathproof. Tarantino does two things well, and they're actually the same thing. He takes a bad genre and extracts everything that's good from it and puts it onscreen. He does the same thing with music. This song is the only worthwhile recording from another forgotten sixties band with a name so incomprehensible it's even mispronounced in the movie.

That wraps up this months music update, I'll be back with more tunes in July.

Ramble One, Ready for lift-off...

I find myself answering the common questions you get these days (so you go to church?, so you're religious?, so you're a christian?, etc...) with the following statement...

"Not really, but I love Jesus."

I'm not really comfortable with saying anything more. I go to church, I do subscribe to many forms of religious practice, but I'm apathetic to all of these peripheral things. A teacher, though not one of mine, once said, "It's easy to prophesy from the periphery you need to come back to the center." I can't prophesy about the periphery anymore. Maybe it's because I'm busier than I used to be, or have traveled down enough side roads to see they don't get you anywhere. But I just don't have the urge to tell people about how good worship was last week (saying this is hypothetical, I haven't been to a service in the last 3 weeks) or what the pastor talked about, or how they should come to my church, because we've got it right over there.

I don't want to identify with Christianity, these days (as in, since the first century church was established) it does me and Jesus more harm than good. At this point I could say you should stop talking about stuff other than Jesus, but I don't even feel secure in deviating that much from just saying, "Jesus" (I may blending Jesus with Tao a little bit here). I live within a network of people where the ones who don't go to church or more kind, supportive, friendly, even sane, than the ones who do (what was I expecting though, that church would fix these people?). I think all of us do really, except for the ones who don't know anybody who doesn't go to church (which you would think would be impossible, besides unbiblical).

I'm not sure I'm doing anything but stirring a pot that doesn't need stirring, or throwing a rock in a hornet's nest. But I've got this weight on my shoulders that presses on me every time I stand still long enough for it exert enough force to be recognized. I just can't resolve God, the Universe, and Everything...with me and all these pompous Christian jerks. Here I am, a lover of Jesus (not the noble faithful variety, more like the "I love my new fashion accessory it's called Jesus!" variety) who is sick and tired of being lumped in with all these...these Christians. And it's not because they're all bad people (of course they are), but because they think, in fact are convinced, that they aren't. Maybe like Will Smith in I, Robot I'm the one sane person on the face of the earth (making me crazy) but can I get an Amen for admitting that I don't have it all together without adding but God fixed that and now my crap don't stink no more?

Let's face it, whatever imputation (read granting or gifting all you lay people) of righteousness there is in salvation (all you new perspective on paul people are listening now right?), I think we need to stop kidding ourselves and just say God loves you now, he hasn't turned you into the 24 karat limited edition version of you, but he loves you. If we could destroy the cliche that becoming a Christian is supposed to fix you we would solve a lot of problems. We wouldn't have to spend every waking moment of every day back-tracking...well, that pastor that molested that girl wasn't really a Christian or well, the people in the crusades and the inquisition were really misguided.

I mean come on, do you think the average nonbeliever would look at you with those raised eyebrows if he knew you knew that Christians are just as jacked up as everybody else? I mean not only that Christians are as jacked up as everybody else, but they know it and are trying to focus on the one thing in this planet that will facilitate change and satisfying endless longing? We'd be a valid system of belief instead of a coalition of willing self-deceivers. Jesus said you should remove the plank from your own eye before talking to your brother about the speck in his eye. This doesn't just mean we should live a perfect existence without wrong or evil, petty argument or depravity before telling somebody how to straighten up their act. It also means we need to see ourselves as the thief, murder, rapist. Both of us have wood in our eye, I've just got about twenty times as much as you do.

Christians have got this screwed-up vision of the world (myself included, 90% of every time) that they sin and we need to reach them. We don't even have the upper body strength to lift a pencil and we think we need to be pulling drowning people out of a rushing river.

In closing, I just want to say that I don't have an answer for any of this...except Jesus. He wouldn't be described as the way, the truth, and the life (or as I like to think of it: God, the universe, and everything) if he wasn't the be all end all solution to all our problems. I hate the WWJD slogan because it distorts and commercializes the most important lens we have to view the world, but seriously if you want to know how to complete X+Y=Z you need to know that all variables are Jesus, Jesus, Jesus...there's just something about that name, that guy, that king. Now I'm going to go find a way to turn this thing into a self-help seminar so you people can get your act together...