Ipod Shuffle Check

Good Morning You - Daniel Johnston - The Late, Great Daniel Johnston
Daniel Johnston is a more talented Wesley Willis. It feels weird to compare a bipolar musician with an extreme religious preoccupation to a schizophrenic musician with stream of consciousness lyrics. It's weird but it's an easy call - musically. Wesley and his looped casio track fall short of johnston's painfully direct lyrics and his ability to actually play an instrument.

It's hit or miss. Beck does an awesome cover of "True Love will Find you in the End"

Saeglopur - Sigur Ros - Takk
Lately, I've been running to either Sigur Ros' music or "Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone." It's nice running to such music because it feels so cinematic.

The air is brisk and the setting is nice around Prospect Park. The music is languid and the music loosens the muscles for an easy pace.

Cinematic was the best way to describe it. I felt a little depressed because cinematic seemed like a cheap adjective to me.

Before movies, how would kafka describe a late afternoon jog in a beautiful setting listening to classical music? Or any sort of rich A/V combination? Of course, the music would be coming from a concealed philharmonic because in the time before movies there were also no mp3 players. I guess, in a way, there was no experience in the far past akin to my jogs in prospect park.

But then I felt better after I looked up more information on Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone. It's a cd of film scores written by morricone.

Come On & My Way of Life (mashup) - Notorious BIG & Frank Sinatra
This partnership doesn't work as well as the mashup I heard of Nas and Portishead or Bob Marley and Mobb Deep.

Memories of karaoke last night of a guy trying to rap biggie. He was drunk had Willie Nelson's timing (two beats slow) which is not conducive to hip-hop's structure. Over-emphasis of "wrong" and "strong" in the chorus "The weak or the strong. Who got it going on? you're dead wrong." I liked him though. Had the proper attitude. He was smoking a cig in the bar area and was pacing around slowly as if chanting while performing bagua.

What You Know - T.I. - King
I haven't paid much attention to the words of this song. The music behind the lyrics is too . . . cinematic.

The World Has Turned and Left Me Here - Weezer - Weezer
Weezer is pretty fun to sing along to in a car, driving alone, in California. I like to sing to Undone -Sweater Song, Surf Wax USA, and Island in the Sun.


Imma try to go to King's Sauna sometime this weekend. Possibly check out the Mueck exhibit at Brooklyn Museum, watch Stomp the Yard or The Queen, and drink some O.E. mimosas.

Say what?

I took this test for tonedeafness. It's a test to measure your sense of pitch and musical memory.

I scored 79% which put me in the excellent musician category and 11 percentage points shy of world class musician category. Then again, I didn't really try (grin).

Pretty good score but doesn't seem to explain why I can't sing. So I can hear when others are off, but I can't hear where I'm off. Maybe my musical notes are obscured by passion, perchance?

It's a fact that everyone hears their voices differently than the way others perceive their voice. This is because we hear our own voices from within. Vibrations within our skull, soundwaves bouncing off our tonsils, etc. Record yourself into a tape recorder and unless you're James Earl Jones you probably cringe. So if I can't hear how my voice truly sounds when I sing, and if I could I could tell if my pitch was wrong, how does Whitney Houston do it? What does she hear?

On the Radio

I like this song.

A little tipsy on the F line last night, this song came on and I thought that Regina Spektor singing a song about another song was very inventive. I sat there and couldn't think of another song about or that references another song. And the fact that she references Guns n Roses' November Rain with sparse piano accompaniment is so cool.

Oh, and what excellent use of a chorus. It gives me goosebumps. She could have littered the whole thing with chorii (sp?) but she shows restraint and class by using it simply at 2:34.


Regina Spektor - On the Radio

Life is Beautiful

So it’s about time for a life philosophy calibration. Every few years or at marked moments, I go through this process. It’s never a dramatic change but rather an adjustment or an opportunity to try something new. Like the time in high school when I ate French fries and potato chips with chopsticks. Like I was saying, it’s a process rather than some sort of samurai code etched into my skin with acupuncture needles. The core remains similar but the manifestation of the life philosophy takes different forms like transformers. Yes, it’s equally as cool and fun to figure out.

For a while, I’m going to eliminate free radicals and boost antioxidants. It seems like a health plan, which it is, but I can extend this into the metaphysical. It’s proven that stress increases free radicals so I’ve been eliminating my stress triggers. I got out of a relationship. Emails from an ex-ex girlfriend are routed to spam now. I’ve switched to basic cable with eradication of TV in the near future. Also, I’ve been grocery shopping at Fairway and Chinatown (value and quality). Everything else I buy online (no crowds and value). Oh, and never taking anything for granted. Taking ownership of my happiness through positivity and only laughing occasionally at the less fortunate. Plus, I’m getting rid of refined sugars. This means no soda, bitter coffee, no nestle crunch bars, no twix, lots of water, and the same amount of scotch.

Almost forgot the big one - no grits (cigrits). It’s been a while now. I’m not into counting days (three) because I feel that choosing not to smoke is one of those rare black and white instances in life. You’re either a smoker or a non-smoker unless you’re a pot smoker. Fook! I guess a really pale grey. Anyway, I find myself telling myself in a slow and deliberate manner that

• It’s not that addictive. Heroin is worse. You don’t have the shakes or wake up immediately craving it.
• You’re taste buds are growing back. That sensation in the mouth is not desire but rather healing.
• Nothing quite hits the back of your throat like the satisfying inhalation of good pull of a grit. That’s just the truth.
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the monk from Shunryu Suzuki’s biography have great quitting grits stories.
• Don’t be in a situation where you say to yourself that you wish you had given up one cigarette sooner for one more day or one more special moment with __________ (insert daughter, granddaughter, mom, or other loved one). I know. The dramatic is motivating.

On a related note, I've been craving synthesized music lately.