Adages?

Good things come to those who wait.

Nice guys finish last.

something like that

Love my life.

I love my life and everybody in it. Sorry I was a downer last time.

Mikie

F my life

e-Pray

Dear e-God,

Thanks for all the online information I glean from your invisible waves each day. Thanks for giving me a friends network that I can occasionally depend upon for encouragement. Thanks for all the fast-streaming music at my fingertips, and for the endless knowledge your Wikipedia provides.
I am having serious trouble finding a place to live in LA. Or a job to work at. Or a true livelihood that I feel proud and honourable about. Craigslist is a bunk way of searching because there's too much muck, and none of my friends are really in the same situation as me and therefore don't have any ideas or need a roommate. If thou couldst help me in finding a way that I can move forward with my life happily via your fruitful waves, I would be forever grateful. Whether it be travel abroad, fulfilling work or education that I have not yet thought of, I need some help. Please help me, for I am at a standstill and there is little direction that I can see.
I thank thee greatly.

In the name of Tom,

E-men.

Albums of the Thousands

I thought I'd take a moment out of my eventfulless day to list the albums which I believe are the top 17 (that I've listened to) since the clocks never stopped post-1999...

17 - Sufjan Stevens, Come Feel the Illinoise
There is no last place, but rather this brilliant collection of songs made it final on my list of first places. This artist celebrates a true magic in his music, making melodies and songs that haunt and provide plenty of listening tunes while driving, waking up to grey winter mornings or walking down a blustery fall afternoon.
When to listen to it: while driving up and down the I-5 corridor in November

16 - Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Modest Mouse has a large place in my heart and soul. Too many incredible songs to date. Sometimes I crave a little more consistency in the albums (but never fear, see #15) but I am left in awe and timeless fury when listening to the beastly rompings of these complicated hearts.
When to listen to it: when backing up (not unto police cars) from the parking lot of Macaroni Grill in Folsom, Ca.

15 - Old Crow Medicine Show, O.C.M.S.
Cocaine! A drug I shant try, but an introduction into the hilarious and unlimited world of bluegrass. I now can twiddle my toes on a summer's eve with my pants rolled up and my face brown and wind-beaten, thank you OCMS. You've made me a nasaly, mournful harmonica-loving grassman.
When to listen to it: while driving across the Salt Flats outside SLC, Utahr. wear a flannel shirt.

14 - Ugly Cassanova
No music so properly opened my mind than the clanky acoustic rhythms of this one-time wonder. From the start to finish, you will be lulled and dragged by the true raw chords and bonks that make up the gritty sound project that is Ugly Cassanova.
When to listen to it: Pulling down the dirt roads that connect an abandoned copper mine to the unkempt highways adorning Smith Valley, Nevada.

13 - The Arcade Fire, Funeral
Wake up! woke me up from the moment I heard him sing of lightning bolts. It took listen upon listen to fully grasp the incredulity of his language - nothing made more sense, and no one had said it so eloquently. The music will build up your soul. The album is sporadic and fascinating, and deserves every second you spend trying to sort out which is your favorite song.
When to listen to it: while walking to class between the redwoods and yellow fields of UC Santa Cruz, Ca.

12 - Glassjaw, Worship and Tribute
Nothing sounds so messy, and so damn good. Daryl's voice becomes enchanting, you marvel with googly eyes at the notes and quotes he sweetly violently distributes into your ears through songs ladled with ripping guitars, heavy-hitting bass drumming and heavenly desperation.
When to listen to it: while driving out to Somerset, Ca to go night swimming following by sitting atop a wall while talking, overlook the yellow autumn moon.

11 - Alkaline Trio, Crimson
Admit it, you know every lyric. Why? Because three listens in you've got it memorized. Why? Because that's what catchy music can do to you. And Alkaline Trio has managed to snag your heart and voice while clinging to originality and style. It associates with you. It rocks you out.
When to listen to it: when driving down Cold Springs road in the afternoon to look at White-Water Rafting photographs (Ca).

10 - A, Exit Stage Right (Live)
If you didn't get a chance to hear them, you may never will. A is the music of a generation..and they have sadly dispersed. Unfortunately, that generation remains in England. There are four people in the United States who have ever heard of A, and those four will never be the same again, Thanks to A. A is also the first letter of the alphabet, and therefore you can never successfully find this band on the internet, FOREVER. This album is a Live compilation of the songs that turned out to be my favorites.
When to listen to it: while cleaning the popper in the kitchen of the Movie Theater, daydreaming about snowboarding.

9 - The Living End, Roll On
I hadn't really listened to music that I liked until I heard this album for the first time. Before The Living End, there was only mimicry and force. After The Living End, I knew that I had found my niche and therefore found the future of my musical tastes for the rest of my life. The Living End is more than music, it's a voice and I listened to every frikkin word and riff. This album has been branded into my cranium for eternity.. ride a snowboard lift with me, and I'll brand Uncle Harry into your head too.
When to listen to it: at Kirkwood. Period.

8 - Finch, What it is to Burn
Finch had its heyday, and it was this: before there was Emo there was Screamo, and before there was Screamo there was the unclassifiability of a genre of music that could only be defined by the bands name - Finch was one of those bands. They created something brand new and extremely passionate, and few appreciated what came before the Emo crap that swept our pre-hipster society.
When to listen to it: driving through the fog into the forests surrounding Placerville to take Adam Partain home.

7 - Rx Bandits, ...and the Battle Begun
When I first listened to this disc, I felt a little uncertain. As my first listen came to a close, my bag was mixed with all sorts of feelings...mostly by prematurity. I knew that even 1 full listen in, I hadn't even scratched the surface of what this new and wildly more complicated album has to offer. I wasn't sure what was with any of the songs..in fact I didn't remember one of them after turning it off. After the second listen, I started to understand my plight: the music was planting a seed deep inside of me, and it was going to take my nurturing it to grow. Like an archaeological site full of artifacts, and I had to start digging. And dig I did. I listened to the thing on repeat, again and again and again. and like an oak it grew into an aged, magnificent creature, and I uncovered the secrets of ...and the Battle Begun. When I turn on this album on now I sing every lyric to every song, beginning to end. I pound my hands in off-beat unison. and nothing can stop me!
When to listen to it: driving home from your acting internship, wearing that same flannel

6 - Less Than Jake, Borders and Boundaries
Road trips. Snowboarding and road trips. Santa Cruz and road trips. Nothing sets direction to a wandering soul than the sounds of keys jangling and a car starting, followed by the swift guitars leading to melody and words promising the fulfillment of all your escapist desires! Borders and Boundaries, from open to close is an ode and testament to the great American ditch-society, teaching us that you are not alone, that there's a band out there who's counted the broken white stripes on the highway leading to an endless nowhere! Thank you LTJ, without thee I'd have never left Pville.
Where to listen to it: driving to your third year of Folsom Lake Community College while staring at Mt Diablo and the horizons beyond.

5 - Goldfinger, Goldfinger
Spread too thin, Mabel's the Bomb, and my childhood (or girlfriend's) shower most definitely sucks. How many times do you drive into Los Angeles and not find yourself humming the ever-atonal "F*CK LA"? Honestly, this album rules. RULES. I could play King For A Day 100 times and not get sick of it. I played the Mabel song until it skipped, and even convinced myself that I was going to marry a girl named Mabel someday. I love every second of every song, I worshipped this music.
When to listen to it: while you pull onto Mission from Hwy 1 in Santa Cruz, Ca.

4 - The Offspring, Ixnay on the Hombre
I didn't know that much about the Offspring before I purchased this used album in downtown Sacramento after the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Two months later, I had an album of anthems that kept me awake after 8 hours of snowboarding, and a slough of new albums to check out and rock out to. Ixnay is chock full of tracks that will stick like putty, with tribal drumming and beautifully-crafted high-octave vocals. Ixnay will leave you throbbing and waiting for skeletons to drag you onto a dirt bike backflipping. It will shake the snow from the grey clouds and shove you off the cliff towards mountains of powder. It will reinvigorate. It will thirst your tongue for wetness. And it will make you sing, "yeah yeah yeah yeah, Yeah!" in your head for the rest of your Gosh Darned life.
Where to listen to it: pulling away from Starbucks at 7 am before driving two hours into the crisp morning air to hit the slopes

3 - Rx Bandits, Progess
It's almost a disservice, what these guys have done to my psyche. I can't really say I've ever been the same since I first listened to Halfway Between Here and There and stood amazed as their secret track rang out through my car speakers with the perfectly-played tune that will serenade my funeral (you know what song I'm talking about). Then they came out with Progress, and I started listening to the lyrics of songs for the first time. I didn't really think a little black mushroom cloud would ever form over Sacramento, but I did see that our society is changing too quickly, and then I heard the magical words that I quote to this day, "Go! Create!" Screams never meant so much to me. And so I obsessed. I watched their concerts because of this album. I promised loyalty because of this album. And I declared love for everything in my life, thanks to the lessons I learned from Progress.
When to listen to it: You must play Infection when pulling into your first snow-blown day of Kirkwood, Ca

2 - Moby, Play
Moby is a significant figure. A sig fig. I give him and this album 2nd place because no other song in history can I fathom that so accurately complements the generation from which I was raised. The backpacking, gypsy, world-traveling, peaceful loving culture that I call my own is defined and represented by Porcelain. And the year that pulled it all together, when so much went down that altered my own personal history, well Moby Play basically has helped me carry my torch since the first listen.
Where to listen to it: while sitting on an exotic beach looking at the stars, hoping you'll get the foreign girl and find some way to be free and see the world before you die

Addendum: I came back, read this a month later and realized I had forgotten something - the tie for first place next to No Use, a little album by a little band called:

1 - Iron and Wine, Shepherd's Dog
This ties with the following (No Use For a Name)...not because its nostalgic but because it's amazing.

1 - No Use For a Name, Hard Rock Bottom
Music passes through generations. Music is a memorial of the time from which it comes. A classic is a song or band that is music you can put back in your stereo every year, turn it up and know that you will be able to listen to that exact-same produced record in the same way for the rest of your life and still like it - even when you're 30, 40, 50, 60, hopefully 90. Hard Rock Bottom is me at 12. It's me at 19. Me at 22. Me at 25, and now in my 27th year it's still me. Not because the lyrics, not because of the melodies, not because of the nostalgia, or the guitars, or that I can sing every word. It's no better than any of these other albums (i can sing every word of Progress or hum every beat of Play). Hard Rock Bottom is the same...except, it's innocent. It rings the most true to me, because it is the most humble. It is the most heartfelt. It wasn't created just to be sold, or for a girl, or for an artist to narcissize over. I don't know why No Use For A Name created the album, or why they create any of their albums, but Hard Rock Bottom does one thing that I never see in most of the industries that America has to offer: It is honest. It is sweet, humble and honest. In addition, it hits your heart with such positivity, such love and sincerity, such freedom and adventure, it is a disc full of anthems for any guy or gal who's lost and needs some kind of direction - because even if you're all alone and totally abandoned, life can still be fun and Hard Rock Bottom sees the awesomeness in that. It still does that for me, every year between the months of October and January. I chose it as my favorite album and that's that.

When to listen to it: whenever you want to remember that everything will be OK in the end and if it's not OK it's not The End.

John Muir says, Mountains are fountains of men

I just have to write!
It's the most beautiful first real day of a season that I have seen in such a long time. The temperature has fallen to chilly, the sky is patchy grey white and low, the air is blowing softly and there's a smell of pine and water in it. I can taste the seasons moving through us, I can feel the energy and electricity that once brimmed up my body with life and vigor. I can taste the nighttime stars so clear in my mouth, like a frozen icicle or blowing powder snow. Stepping through the colours, tossing my short hair afrow, singing to my spirit there truly are Gods living in the wild world, between the breezes and beneath the rocky hills!
Last night I drove home from Heather's house with a fever in my spine for driving..sometihng told me to leave, to turn right at the highway. I imagined a future that changed my path, driving into the deep night and never turning back. I pictured leaving and heading East, the terrible magnificent Eastward journey I have waited too long to pursue..I imagined moving through the night with two flashlights attached to my hood, turning round the mountain bends like a ghost in a tunnel of trees. I imagined driving beyond the California borders and into the wild beyond, fantasizing about my future as a traveler and vagabond with only patched-up car and a head of hair to guide him. I dreamed as I drove, about Utah and Colorado, about New Mexico and the hundreds of thousands of miles I've never seen beyond.
As I approached Echo Summit, the lights of Lake Tahoe twinkled into view. I burrowed down the windy road that takes you down into the valleys. I saw signs for 89, turning South: "Markleeville 29 miles" a black cavernous drive leading away from my Eastward route. I passed the legendary Chevron at the Crossroads, our pit-stopping point between snowboarding days of ancient past.
Eventually I stopped, pulling over in the pitch black star sparkling night. Turning off the engine, I could hear only the wind rushing through canyons, sweeping along rocky peaks. I stepped out and opened my eyes to the sky and noticed with great power the fresh frozen scent of Mountain Air. There is no oxygen like the cold air of the high mountains. Even in summer, when the snow is water and the trees full of green, the air is that same clean and flowing scent of frozen icicles on woody pine. Standing there in that quiet, blowing air I felt a familiar terrifying vastness that I've known since I was young. Standing under the starlit peaks, silhouettes of a monstrous breed black on a blacker horizon, I could hear the distance that never ends, I could feel the creatures in the forest wandering and taste the storms and blizzards, the lonely and lost men of the past, the drifting glaciers and rising peaks carving these mountains and valleys for all the time that had come before then. I can sense it all, and it made me fearful. The only true fear of God, which is the natural world around us that we turn our eyes away from, the world that our bodies are interconnected with, but our minds ignore. This is that world, an empty, wild, merciless and beautiful place. As I run around, the world remains without me.

Getting back into my vehicle, I knew I needed to go no further. So I cranked over the engine, blinked on my flashlights and pulled away to head back West the way I'd come. It wasn't time for me quite yet, to drive indefinitely East. I still have my own life to attend to, and I'm not one to run away from things. So much.

As I walked to the coffee shop through the grey and blowing morning, I realized that I have almost zero complaints about the town that I call home. Everything, to me, makes it a real and desirable place. You have your city and your country, you mountains and fields, tourism and locals, music and art and industry too. There's so much, but yet still not seemingly enough for me. As I perch to leave, I wonder what I'm doing with the rest of my life. I wonder what John Muir was doing, as he left Yosemite, as he left Mt Rainier, Alaska, or any of the National (Natural) Parks that he knew so well. What drove him to leave, and did he ever want to?
I'll leave that question open. What drives you to leave the places you call home?
What's the true reason?

Super Mario Beatty

Here we have Mario, out on a ledge
surrounded by deep blackness, losing
his footing and catching his breath
Here's Mario, trying to laugh with his eyebrows
all crinkled in concentrated fear for
the grey Castle he's just entered
Up ahead looms a monster with fire
for breath and wings on his ribcage
walls wreaking of death
the ceiling is falling so slowly
and coated in spikes, Mario
must waste no time! So he dives
over one wide hole with a leap
landing tough on the concrete and
grounding his feet again- DODGEing in
quickness an arrow of fire, but
not fast enough as a turtle shell
flails towards his legs, he jumps UP
but too late, and is shrunk to a pint-sized
half-hero....so sad so pathetic
but ready to fight Bowser nevertheless (i guess.)
Options looking slimmer
our little Mario follows the path
through the dark dungeon tunnel
avoiding the fireballs, dodging the
ball and chains spinning...above shines a question mark!
floating in awe! Our tiny hero he leaps
the block pings! what's he get?
just one penny, one coin for his pocket
nothing to suit him up stronger against
the monster of scales breathing fire
ahead behind the tunnels of black
Still little red Mario takes his approach
hardly prepared in his mustache and overalls
waves of hot flames licking up to his hat
Here our Mario scrunches his eyebrows in tune
with the chimes of a conquerable but impending doom...

nobody's answering their telephones

A typical night for the Beatty's. No phones are answered, and I know there's a get together somewhere that I was forgotten to be invited to. Phil, you and me shall rue the day!

In other news, The Office is getting se-rious yo.
It's thursday night. I want to be living in LA comfortably. I don't want to worry about other people anymore. According to Trevor its time for me to finally mature into my manhood. Maybe it's not too late. I know it's not. In fact, I'm like a fine cheese, aging and becoming more valuable by the year. Or good wine. Or any other kind of food that we celebrate in its rotting or fermentation.

Honestly, I am starting to feel more manly and like Myself by the day, by the second. There's supposed to be a trip to Los Angeles coming up this weekend, where I will supposedly be renting a place with Dan Beckner and Candice Fox and myself for us to live. I happily have no job, no job prospects, no school, and a soon-to-be loan payment to look forward to. But the nice thing is? I'm free to do whatever I want. Because I love my life. and I'm on a MISSION.

Peace out yo's. I sound like a boy tied to a chair in a straight jacket trying to think his way out of it. Maybe I have a very very powerful mind. If only Justin or Daniel would move with me.. then I wouldn't feel so much like I'm leaving all my lifelines behind

I just decided, I'm gonna play Doom on Dad's computer. Good idea.

Peace

The Sugary Collapse

We hear them all the time. Sitting in a local coffee shop, strolling through Wal-mart, flipping through channels on the radio, in the office building, from tiny stages with shoddy equipment, at free concerts, between hip-hop verses, in operatic esteem at your mother's house, drumming into your brain over and over and over again the monotony of the one-hit, timelessly reproduceable and forever subpar Cover Song.
When bands cover songs, I guess they do them for one of three reasons:
First, and likely most common, the players are still learning the craft of their instruments and need something familiar to rehearse with.
Second, the players have not come up with enough original ideas to deviate from their rehearsal songs,
and
Third, the musician actually believes that his or her rendition of the song is better than the original version.

Surely there's more reasons than this, but I'm not here to do an anthropological study of Cover Songs. I'm not here to analyze the limitations that cover songs slather upon their musicians. I don't with to disclose any opinions about the matter either, about how independently reproducing a cover song or sample in order to make one's own sum of money from the original idea is a rook and rob and disrespect to the creator and what they deserve. I don't want to tell you how an industry of entertainment (cover songs/cover films/ cover shows/cover of cover of covers) is spinning itself into a whirlpool of banal, waxless candle wicks. I don't believe it's necessary to point out that 5 Harry Potter films is 4 unnecessary Harry Potter Films, or that an entire hip-hop generation is grounded in samples of songs that existed as classics before many of the creators, were even born, or that Brave New World and 1984 will never be read by future generations because there are too many slightly-more-relevant-but-exactly-the-same storylines littering the shelves of bookstore and movie theaters.
I don't want to do any hating on who I believe to be the true Haters: the copiers. Or better yet, the thieves. These dark robin hoods who have stolen something that once was beautiful and successful and copied and pasted it into a mish-mash, modernized, slapped-together mess.. a sculpture built from cheap ice cream. With new labels but unoriginal ideas, these candy-coated ideas will melt so quickly and everybody involved who only have a taste for sweet will fail early, while the rest of us continue to remember the truths of the past and build longevity and not suffer under the temporary sugars of an evaporating dreams.

But we all copy..don't we? yes. Every day we copy. Since we were babies. But as children we also learn that no two circumstances are exactly the same, no matter what science likes to tell us. No two people will have the same interests, no twins ever match. As children we learn to copy with grace, we steal words and attempt to use them when the circumstances are fit. Often we'll fail and have our hands slapped. As children we steal movements and show our friends..and eventually incorporate them into everyday life or toss them from our repertoires entirely. As children, we learn what others Love or find Beautiful and why, and wonder at what Love and Beauty is or if it even exists. We copy, as children. And the routine begins to get very complex...so that by the time we are young adults every impulse and action, stir of our legs is the culmination of billions of little reflexes of mimicry from times past. Our original intentions are lost in the myst of living, the first time you sipped alcohol, the first time you kissed your lover, the first time you heard a song that made tears come to your eyes and why that is. We lose sight of what we copied, and why it was ever important, and with integrated efficiency all those mimicked movements and subtleties have slopped together into the organic soup of a human soul - and we live through that soul's eyes every day of our lives.
But as children, we stole every one of those impulses from a place of total curiosity. We looked up to our elders as teachers, we looked to society as teachers, we looked to the television and the radio and the movie screens and the actors and the authors and friends and parents all as teachers, and we learned and tried and failed and got hurt, and got back up and tried again until we were tired.

Human entertainment, something I LOVE the idea of so much, is stuck in its tweens. It's copying and pasting ideas permanently, because the creators are so fickle and disorganized. There's little originality to look to for inspiration except the ideas of the generations past. Creators today have dwindled in their abilities to create New things, and instead only rehash old ideas again and again. It's like 35-year-old surfer who still dresses in baggy clothes and tilted hats - so heavily invested in good times of his specific youth that he forgot to look in the mirror and see who he was becoming all these years.

Social entertainment needs to look in the biggestest, brilliantest, most silverist Mirror of all Time. We're not 16 anymore, and we can't keep neglecting our run-down car or it'll finally burst its head gasket.
If there's anything new for us to make, let's look for it.

Stay Don't Go

What happens when you stay and don't go during the summer in Santa Cruz, California.

dare I say

The buzz of whipping cutters hum along
the foreign boys and ladies' language song
In sunny shadow sitting sallow I
reflect upon an earlier summer's sky:
When fairy whispers freckled up with dew
parted my squeezing eyelashes in two,
the wet and frosty morning fret with gold
delivered me to rivers' current bulge.
When high over the hues of purple lay
I humming silently about the day
imagine love affairs with fairy nymphs
while staring down upon the cliffed rims
When walking through thick heated humid breath
the skies alight in frolick Godly mess,
and fearing pleasure, full of food and life
I tore down heated waterfalls at night.

Now sitting waiting to enjoy a stroll
I wonder back beyond, and smile full.

narcissism at the beach!

and the winner is.....




I call this one: Solohomoeroticismic. AKA: Self-gay


the end