FYI

It's one of those Friday nights . . .

I love mobile blogging. The random posts that have no titles and consist of about a text message worth of discussion are all mobile posts (please notice the post time of some of them . . .). Ideally, they're meant to be place holders; the plan is that I'm going to go back and write whole posts on those topics, but I'm beginning to wonder whether that will ever happen. Hence this post explaining the random Chinese food fortune posts or "discuss" posts. I'm getting there. In the mean time, please discuss amongst yourselves.

Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island . . .

The Nate Mott Band

Now playing: The Nate Mott Band - Would You Stop Falling

Add to the short list of regrets in my life the fact that in the two years that I've know Evan, I've never previously gotten into his band. Evan interned for me in the summer of 2007, after his first year of law school and again in the spring of 2009, to complete his community service requirement for graduation. He's the best intern I personally have had in the few years that I've been an attorney, and I know that he will be a fabulous lawyer (good luck on your bar exams this summer, Evan!).

That's not the point of this post. Evan plays bass for The Nate Mott band. I recently came across their website and MySpace page and discovered that they have a couple of albums available on iTunes. They're fabulous. They're sort of Sublime-ish, I guess - mellow, but funky. Lyrically, they remind me a little of Jason Mraz (enough, I know I have an issue, but really . . .) - just in the wit and creativity of the lyrics. They're catchy, and you will love them. Their music makes me want to shake my ass, and that is key to my acknowledgement of a good band. Do yourself a favor and check them out.
Now playing: The Nate Mott Band - Laugh Out Loud

It Might Kill Me

Now playing: Jason Mraz - If It Kills Me (From the Casa Nova Sessions) [Bonus Track]

I have a new favorite song of the week: Jason Mraz (surprise, surprise, it's all I listen to lately), If It Kills Me. Holy crap. Have you ever had the experience where you've heard a song a whole bunch of times, but then this one time when you hear it, you really hear it? We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. has these bonus tracks that are all live and/or acoustic. One of them is If It Kills Me (From the Casa Nova Sessions), and it's so perfect, it hurts. I'm not kidding - the regular studio version of this song is fucking beautiful, but this other version is un-fucking-believable. Here's the lyrics:

Hello.
Tell me you know now.
Yeah, you figured me out.
Something - gave it away
And it would be such a beautiful moment
To see the look on your face
To know that
Know that you know now
And baby that's a case of my wishful thinking
You know nothing
Cause you and I
Why, we go carrying on
For hours on and
And we get along much better
Than you and your boyfriend
Well, all I really want to do is to love you
A kind much closer than friends use
But I still can't say it after all we've been through
And all I really want from you is to feel me
As the feeling inside keeps building
And I will find a way to you if it kills me
If it kills me
Well, how long
Can I go on like this
Wishing to kiss you
Before I rightly explode
And this double life I lead
Isn't healthy for me
In fact it makes me nervous
If I get caught, I could be risking it all
Baby, there's a lot that I'll miss
In case I'm wrong
And all I really want to do is to love you
A kind much closer than friends use
But I still can't say it after all we've been through
And all I really want from you is to feel me
As the feeling inside keeps building
And I will find a way to you if it kills me
If it kills me
If I should be so bold
I'd ask you to hold my heart in your hand
Tell you from the start how I've longed to be your man
But I never said a word
I guess I'm gonna miss my chance again
Well all I really want to do is love you
a kind much closer than friends use
But I still can't say it after all we've been through
and all I really want from you is to feel me
As this feeling inside keeps building
And I will find a way to you if it kills me
If it kills me
If it kills me
I think it might kill me
And all I really want from you is to feel me
As this feeling inside keeps building
And I will find a way to you if it kills me
If it kills me
If it kills me
It might kill me.

Right? This song makes my heart hurt. It never used to, but the other day it was like all of a sudden I could hear the pleading in his voice in the acoustic version, and it hurt. It hurt just like it did the first time. This song completely brings to mind that new, unsure love feeling from high school and college - when you're so into someone, but you're just not sure if they're into you; if you're really just friends or if maybe there's something more there. Remember that feeling? Wasn't it wonderful? That's why I read young adult books, right there. God, that was a beautiful feeling. If It Kills Me portrays that feeling perfectly. Now I can't stop listening to it, and I almost want to cry every time I hear it. Again, the studio version is so, so beautiful, but it's the bonus track acoustic version that really hits me. Wow. Keep it up J; see you July 31.

PS - while we're talking about Jason Mraz - Butterfly is a hot song.

Now playing: Jason Mraz - Butterfly (From the Casa Nova Sessions) [Bonus Track]

Puppy Love

So, this is a little delayed, but we got a dog last week! He's a smooth fox terrier, and his name is Murphy McLovin.

He's very sweet and very friendly and very, very hyper. But we love him for it.


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Now playing: Styles of Beyond - Be Your Dog

Chinese food fortune: From now on your kindness will lead you to success.

The Brontes were the original chick lit. discuss.

24 Hours of Le Mans

I'm not into cars. I'm not into auto racing. At all. However, about a month ago, I watched a documentary by NFL Films called Truth in 24, about the 24 Hours of Le Mans race that takes place at Le Mans every June. I was just reminded of this as I was thinking about Audis. The documentary is basically about Audi Motor Sports' teams and cars, and their road leading up to the 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans race. It was fabulous. And I'm absolutely not just saying that because Jason Statham narrates (I swear. We all learned from my earlier post about that God-awful Dungeon Siege movie that there are some thing that even Jason Statham does that I simply can't tolerate.). No, this was really very good. I couldn't shut it off, and I've been recommending it to people, and have begun watching it at least 2 more times. I completely recommend it; it's been on ESPN and Speed Network lately, and you can download the whole thing for FREE on iTunes.

This race is so fascinating to me. It really is the epitome of auto racing. These cars run, at upwards of 200 miles an hour sometimes, for over 24 hours straight. The best of the best of all engines in the world show up to challenge themselves and the rest of the best. The race was this past weekend. It was televised on Speed Network. I used to have Speed Network, but we changed our cable package, and now we don't have it anymore. I was so bummed when I found this out on Saturday morning when I went to turn on race coverage. I mean, it's not like I was going to watch it for 24 hours or something, but I did plan to at least check in now and then, and to watch the beginning and end of the race. So bummed. Anyway, I'm not going to ruin the movie by commenting at all, but I'll just report that Peugeot won this year's race, and finished second. Audi lost two of their three cars to an accident and mechanical troubles fairly early on, and their third car, under Kristensen's lead, finished a long third, 50 miles behind the leading Peugeot.

Good times; exciting stuff. Watch the movie, if you have the chance.

EDIT 6/26/09 - I'm not into cars? Not in a technical sense, I suppose, but really? A nice, high-end sports car is real, real hot. German engineering, what? I'm just saying . . .

Theme Songs

While I finished the first draft of my novel a few weeks ago, the ending was still sort of hanging out there - it was done, but not done-done, if that makes sense. I sort of knew how it was ending, but I couldn't put it into words or make it happen the way that it needed to. Until last week, when it just clicked in my head while listening to Jason Mraz's song You and I Both on my way home from work. I was happily singing along at the top of my lungs with the windows open and the music blaring, as I've been know to do, when the words really sunk in. Since then, I've had trouble shutting that one song off. I literally cannot hear it enough, and it makes me smile ear to ear every time I hear it. That song is Sarah and Brady's theme song. Beginning to end, every word speaks to their relationship. To a T. It's just a Brady kind of song, too - the whole sound of it fits his personality. It floors me to think of what a perfect fit it is. Anyway, so once I realized how perfect that song was, I was able to sit down and bang out the ending - I actually outlined the details and highlights of the last chapter while I was sitting at the bar waiting for friends to get there last week. Cliche, right?

So, then another day last week, also on the way home from work, windows open, music blaring, happily singing along at the top of my lungs, I had my iPod on shuffle and Evanescence's Bring Me to Life came on. And holy crap, if that song isn't a theme song for Sarah and Jason and for the book as a whole, I don't know what is. It's a nice juxtaposition of sounds, I think, between this and the Jason Mraz song, which also fits the relationships in the book. None of this will make any sense without reading the book or at least knowing the story line, I know, but I just wanted to write about my excitement. Clearly, it's chick lit, and there's a bit of a love triangle involved surrounding Sarah and Brady and Jason. Maybe if you listen to the songs, it'll give you a feeling for the book; maybe if you're lucky, you'll be the next one to get an email draft to read for me. Check 'em out below.

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Now playing: Jason Mraz - You and I Both
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Now playing: Evanescence - Bring Me to Life

Conan's new gig

I just came across this livejournal blog about Conan O'Brien's new set for the Tonight Show. In summary, it demonstrates that it looks like Conan's new monologue set (the blue, patterned wall backdrop) is modeled after a level of Super Mario Brothers. It's genius, and there is a rumor that Conan is going to talk about it on tonight's show. This is all you really need to see:

I love Conan more now that I've seen this than I did last night when he and Andy Richter did the updated "In the Year 3000" sketch and Conan said:

"In the year 3000, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook will merge to create one super-giant time wasting website called YouTwitFace."

That, my friends, is comedy gold. I love Conan and I love the new Tonight Show.

The 2009 MTV Movie Awards

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Now playing: Eminem - We Made You

This show was fantastic. In a way that no MTV awards show has been fantastic in a very long time. For real, the MTV Awards shows have sucked it up the past few years, both the music awards and the movie awards. But this Movie awards show was fabulous. Some highlights (spoilers if you haven't seen it yet - DVR and all that):

ANDY SAMBERG, Andy Samberg, and Andy Samberg. Holy cow, he is hi-LAR-ious! I was a fan before, but he was just such a fun and refreshing host, I have become an even bigger fan in the past 2 hours. Love him. From the intro movie montage sequence right through the very ending, he rocked. I guess it should be mentioned here that the montage of SNL digital shorts was fabulous. And all of the making fun of Twilight was great too. I understand that he was not the sole vision behind writing this show, but only a part of it, however - the whole production was great, and had a distinctly SNL feel to it, and I have to think that he had a lot to do with it. Anyway, I think Andy Samberg alone is the reason this show was better than the last few years worth of Movie and Music awards, and I applaud him for that. Go Andy!

(And while I'm on that topic - SNL is great again. There have been only two periods of SNL that have ever interested me enough to watch before, and I wasn't even really around for the first one. You know, the John Belushi/Steve Martin era? I was born in '79 folks, I missed that the first time around - but syndication is a beautiful thing, and I celebrate that period of SNL wholeheartedly. The other was the Adam Sandler/Chris Farley era in the late 90's and early 00's. You know you loved it. And again now - Andy Samberg, Seth Meyers, and company have brought SNL back to life, IMO. Give it a try, if you haven't already)

Anyway, SACHA BARON COHEN and EMINEM?!?!?! I think it was all staged - Borat was meant to fall on Em from the second he strapped into that harness, but Em knew nothing about it as far as I could see. He was downright pissed and it was great. I can only hope that Eminem will have an epiphany (One-Minute Writing prompt word from last week - it has showed up in my day-to-day conversation for days!) along the lines of Kanye after the gay fish thing on South Park. We can only hope.

But Eminem's performance was awesome. I haven't really been into him lately, which is maybe evidenced by my reference to him needing a Kanye-style intervention, but I love this new song. I bought the album tonight as I was watching the show. Reviews to follow in a later post.

BEN STILLER!!!! I'm such a Ben Stiller fan, going back God-only-knows how long, and the whole montage of his work was an awesome reminder of how wonderful he truly is. He didn't look great, and the intro to his big award (Zac Efron and Keifer Sutherland) was obnoxious, but DAMN are his movies funny. I adored the montage of his work and watched it more than once.

KINGS OF LEON were fabulous, as they always are. I think I'm going to go see them this summer. I wanted to before, just because I like them, but I've never seen a "live" performance on TV (does that make sense, "live" on TV? I think the quotes make it work), and I thought they were even better live (which potentially says a lot in the age of Auto-Tune. Or do they use Auto-Tune on awards shows too?). Their performance was similar to hearing their CD, honestly, but I don't know - their sound is just so, so interesting; complex and layered, and they reproduce that sound so completely and excellently on stage, it's fabulous. I love them. And the golfing commercial? Great.

LASER CATS! Okay, they weren't laser cats, they was more like Mr. Bigglesworth, but it SHOULD have been a Laser Cats skit. That was one thing missing from this show - Will Ferrell in a Laser Cats skit would have been perfect. Keyboard cat was not even a close second.

THE ONE EPIC FAIL of the night, however, was the "Congrats to this year's best villain, Heath Ledger" afterthought. Are you serious? I mean it's one thing that he died before the film even came out, but you're going to put so much of this awards show into effing Twilight and then barely acknowledge how brilliant Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker was? That, my friends, was a travesty. I almost missed it when I went to ffwd the DVR. I hope that everyone I know has seen The Dark Knight. It was fantastic, and Heath Ledger stole the effing show.

At the end: I'm a fan of Denzel Washington, I really am. He's a class act and an excellent actor.

Don't get me wrong - most of the actual awards were all wrong, it's the production and the show that I truly enjoyed. As much as I'm a Twilight fan, it should NOT have won all of the awards that it did. I voted for the awards this year (GREAT procrastination material, FYI), and I'm not sure I voted for Twilight for a single one. I'm a fan, but I fully acknowledge that the film was JUST NOT THAT GOOD. I don't think it was nominated for a single Oscar, and there's a very good reason for that. Guess what it is. Ugh, even I was sick and tired of Twilight after an hour. But that aside, I thought the show was great, and I encourage MTV to stick with this fabulous formula on a going forward basis. Or at least hire Andy Samberg as lead writer for all awards shows in the future.