So, we saw WALL•E and now every other movie I’ve seen subsequently has paled in comparison. But not really. We’ve seen about 4 other movies in the meantime, and I can’t remember the last time I had this large of a list of movies I want to see, even in the summertime. Since WALL•E, we’ve also seen Full Battle Rattle, The Wackness and Hancock. I still need to see Hellboy 2, Dark Knight, and for some reason, I really want to see Journey to the Center of the Earth, but only if it’s in 3-D!

But where will I get all the time to do these things? We’re headed to Cooperstown to go see Dave Niehaus get inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, then we’ll be in Seattle a couple of weeks later. I’ve been trying to find the time and inclination to finish music projects that I’ve had, and B-Dogg and I have a couple of songs up our sleeve that we want to cover for the end of the year. End of the year, you say? Yeah, it’s already past the half-way point, and before you know it, I’ll be making a call for new songs in October/November for the year end IRCMT2008.

But really, the hard thing here is actually getting anything done in this room because it’s always blazing hot in the summer and you can’t well have the air conditioner AND fan running while you’re doing recording. It’s a dilemma.

I’ve gone ahead and updated the back-end for Wordpress around here, and was thinking about re-designing the front to get motivated to start posting again, but that’s obviously just another distraction to getting writing again. Jonas and I have plans to do just that, but I figured the easiest thing to do is to Just Write. So there you are.

I started keeping track earlier this year with the goal of seeing something around 100 movies. I’m pretty far off pace right now, seeing it’s past the halfway mark of the year and I’m only about a third of the way through. That’ll change soon, since there’s more than a good handful of movies that I haven’t seen yet that are out right now that I do want to see. I could quite possibly have missed a few as well, but I think it’s okay, since there are some very, very suspect films in this list that maybe shouldn’t even count as movies. I’m looking at you, AvP.

Some of my favorites so far? Ironman, Get Smart, Young@Heart are the most recent; from earlier in the year, I still love Philip Seymour Hoffman’s acting in Charlie Wilson (though I think I may have enjoyed Sorkin’s Broadway writing of The Farnsworth Invention more). Be Kind Rewind was nice, but maybe not nice enough to have just mentioned. We’ll see WALL•E tomorrow, which I’m predicting will top the list. I’ll report back. Sorry for the absence. Work’s crazy, y’know?

The Savages
Charlie Wilson’s War
I’m Not There
Juno (again)
Air Bud
The Breakfast Club
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
Network | 2.8.08
Serendipity | 2.9.08
A League of Their Own | 2.9.08
Be Kind Rewind | 2.23.08
There Will Be Blood | 2.23.08
Semi-Pro | 2.29.08
The Bourne Ultimatum | 3.2.08
Air Force One | 3.8.08
Ocean’s 13 | 3.8.08
Paranoid Park | 3.17.08
Hairspray | 3.22.08
The Band’s Visit | 3.28.08
Horton Hears a Who | 4.5.08
Alien vs. Predator: Requiem | 4.13.08
Breathless | 5.3.08
National Treasure | 5.9.08
Son of Rambow | 5.9.08
Young @ Heart | 5.17.08
Raider of the Lost Ark | 5.24.08
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom | 5.24.08
Ironman | 6.09
Transformers | 5.31.08
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan | 6.14.08
Get Smart | 7.08

Because I uploaded it a while ago and it’s a good one to listen to in this stifling humidity. Lots of good music lately; I’ll get it to you soon. Meanwhile enjoy the fat snare tone of tape.

[audio:06 How Long Do I Have To Wait For You.mp3]

I’ve got a boatload of songs cued up for this week and next to make up for my absence — I’m sitting here on a sunny Memorial Day afternoon and have uploaded a lot of songs that I’ve been listening to that maybe some have been missing out on. Enjoy!

Guess what? I never got around to uploading and writing about all these songs, and now this song just sat in the draft queue for forever, so I’m just going with what I got. Upon closer inspection, I think this album is better than Let Go. That’s saying something. We listened to bits and pieces of it back and forth from Baltimore and Boston the past two weekends traveling with B-dogg and Owl. I’m overly excited about it, and oddly enough, I’ve had more than one half-hour conversation about the new Death Cab album. It’s like 2003 all over again!

I Like What You Say.mp3

The songs on Lucky are listenable through and through, and the harmonies and doubled vocals are smooth and consistently hummable. When I turned this song on just now, I was surprised because the song came out of my laptop and the stereo speakers in the living room, and I just got this unexpected rush of Nada Surf. It was great. Too bad I can’t get my airtunes to consistently deliver the music without crapping out.

I’d say this absence was about the end of the semester, which, to a certain extent, it is, but that’s just this week and last week, not the whole month. Fact of the matter is, I’ve been working full-time, at two different places (not simultaneously) and generally been very, very busy. But what else is new? I was thinking about doing this feature, which will probably die along with all my other “features” that helps me share, and more importantly, helps everyone else out there I know share with me, what they learned today. I want to call it TILT: Things I Learned Today, and really only think it’s so great because I think it’s a great acronym.

So, TILT (may be boring):

• SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a Belgium-based company that created its own network for secure financial transactions (rather than send on open internet).
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a gov’t regulation established in 2002 established to protect against Enron-type investment disasters.
• Eye-tracking studies (Jakob Neilsen) show that users scan lists and left-side navs, so left-aligning text should be done to facilitate this behavior.

Perhaps someday you may be interested in something I learned. Anyone else?

Since I’ve been gone so long, I figured I’d give everyone a surprise: An original track from the forthcoming Admiral General LP (someday). I don’t know when things will slow down for me and posting will continue, I just gotta get back in the habit (like Sister Act 2).

[audio:Laika (Radio Edit).mp3]

From the original email I sent Rick: i realized that the dog is a girl and that it was four weeks, not two, not until after i was done recording. oh well.

REQUIEM FOR LAIKA
surely space will come in time
you don’t have to rush in blind
two weeks is not so good to design
a ship that keeps passengers alive

sputnik 2 november 3
you knew before that you were on the street

they all knew dogs weren’t made to fly
the russians sent him up there to die.

i hope she’s fine.

B&S in general remind me of jpk a lot of the time, for several reason: When we played our “record release show” (that was 7 fucking years ago!), someone (ahem) asked us to play the cover we used to play all the time, “Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying”, and Josh outright refused. Then he had a song at some point called “She likes horses but we get along okay” or something to that extent.

In any case, this song’s guitar strum reminds me a lot of some of his songs as well. I like everything about this song: The flat recorder, the tinny trumpet, and the line about falling asleep with ants in your pants. Probably one of my favorite B&S songs, ever.

[audio:10 Judy And The Dream Of Horses.mp3]

The best thing about this song isn’t even this song, it’s the song before it, where there’s just spoken word and then bongos and guitar and all of the sudden it just stops and the drums of this song come in. I guess that doesn’t really have to be the best part, but I like it a lot, along with the lyrics of this, because they are pretty funny. In fact, I even like when this song ends and it jumps right into “Boy with the Arab Strap.”

In fact, after you listen to this song, go listen to the whole album, because it’s so great.

[audio:08 Dirty Dream Number Two.mp3]

The first minute of this track I didn’t even recognize for the longest time, but then when Stuart Murdoch comes in with what I feel like is him exasperated at this dilemma of his: If you find yourself caught in love / Say a prayer to the man above / Thank him for every day you pass / You should thank him for saving your sorry ass. It’s such a great little complication, paradox. I really enjoy the detail in the song though, the strings, the tight, compact bass plunks, and all the Sesame Street background vocals that I objected to after “Boy with the Arab Strap.” This album — “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” marked the resurrection of my love for Belle & Sebastian. And this is what we shall listen to this week. What’s your favorite B&S album?

[audio:10%20If%20You%20Find%20Yourself%20Caught%20In%20Love.mp3]