Summer Mixtape Blogring

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 A break from your regularly scheduled programming today. Erin from The Post-Modern Talko has organized a Summer Mixtape blogring, and you can find mine over at the lovely Risha’s Read Me Anything. I’m hosting Martin from In Pursuit of Expression, so I’ll let him take it from here!

Hi, I’m MARTIN from IN PURSUIT OF EXPRESSION. I tried my best to create an

entertaining and varied selection of the music that I have been rocking this summer. I

know that not everyone will enjoy everything on the list but I hope that there is at least

something that you will enjoy or relate to.

My summer was incredibly music orientated, filled with various local gigs and bookended

by two fantastic music festivals. I listened to a hell of a lot of music and it was fun (and

super difficult) attempting to summarise that into this playlist! So, here it is…

#1 Frank Turner – Four Simple Words. Ever since the release of Frank Turner’s fifth

studio album, Tape Deck Heart, in April, I literally don’t think a single week has gone by

that I haven’t listened to it. Four Simple Words is one of my favourites from the album;

an upbeat folky punk song that I cannot help but dance to whenever I hear it. If I am

in a public place when it comes on my MP3 player I literally have to skip it for fear of

embarrassing myself with impromptu dancing.

#2 Gogol Bordello – Start Wearing Purple. I saw Gogol Bordello for the first time this

June at Download Festival and they were AMAZING. It turns out that gypsy punk is the

best kind of music to dance to! Start Wearing Purple is probably the bands most famous/

catchy song. The week leading up to the festival I listened this song several times a day

and seeing it live did not disappoint.

#3 Ducking Punches – Burnt Matches. Ducking Punches is Dan Allen’s DIY folk band

band from Norfolk, England. This is my favourite song from their 2012 EP ‘I Am Arturo

Bandini’. You just can’t beat a punk rock love story! Check out more of their music at

bandcamp.com/duckingpunches

#4 Iron Maiden – Run To The Hills. I also saw Iron Maiden for the first time at Download

Festival and man, do they put on one hell of a show! For 60 year old dudes they have

more energy now than I had at 16. Run To The Hills was my favourite from their set.

#5 Limp Bizkit – Break Stuff. Another band that I saw for the first time at Download Fest.

The crowd was packed full of 20 somethings reliving their teenage years (so much sweat

and nostalgia). They closed their set with Break Stuff and as someone who was in the

thick of the moshpit, I can attest to the fact that “stuff” was most certainly “broken”. Namely

my body. XD

#6 Louise Distras – The Hand You Hold. Angry political acoustic punk rock from

Wakefield, England. I have been a fan of Lousie ever since I first heard this song about a

year and a half ago. She is self-releasing her debut album at the end of September so this

song has been a regular fixture over the summer in preparation. I CAN’T FREAKIN’ WAIT.

Show her some love: louisedistras.co.uk

#7 Adam and Cuth – Considered… Adam and Cuth are a rapper/producer duo from

Brighton, England. This song is from their 2012 release ‘The Letters EP’, it is about Adam’s

decision to use his real name instead of a stage name like most rappers. Honest, down

to earth and funny to boot. I don’t listen to half as much hip hop as I did 10 years ago but

when I come across a rapper like Adam I remember why I first fell in love with hip hop

music.

#8 Nova Rockafella – Call Me (Batman). Nova is a part Canadian, part Jamaican rapper.

She is the opposite of Adam in that she has more pseudonyms than there are songs on

this playlist. This song ALWAYS gets stuck in my head but I don’t care because I love it.

The video is pretty awesome, too. Check it out: youtube.com/watch?v=e7uJqlhrRNQ

#9 Frank Turner – Photosynthesis (Truck Sessions). The second of three Frank Turner

songs on this playlist. (I’m a big fan, can you tell?!?) This is a live session recording of

my favourite song from his second album Love, Ire & Song. My best friend is also a huge

Frank Turner fan and many an evening this summer has been spent sitting in her back

yard, drinking around a bonfire, listening to Frank. You can always tell how many ciders

I have had by how loudly I sing along to the chorus of this song. “I WON’T SIT DOWN, I

WON’T SHUUUUT UP AND MOST OF ALL, I WILL NOT GROW UUUUUP!”

#10 Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra – Lost. I freakin’ love Amanda

Palmer.  I was out of town when she played a show in my town recently and I was

GUTTED. This is one of my favourite songs from her album, Theatre Is Evil, which she

self-released last year on a ‘Pay What You Want’ basis. I’ve had the album on a constant

loop pretty much all summer. So much awesome.

#11 Against Me! – True Trans Soul Rebel. This is from a 2 track acoustic EP released a

couple of months ago. Against Me! are one of my favourite bands of ever and this release

has really whetted my appetite for their new album. The album will largely focus on singer

Laura’s recent journey in coming out to the world as transgender. It has been three years

since their last album and I really really really can’t wait for this!

#12 Off With Their Heads – Clear The Air. Another band that that I absolutely adore, this

song is from their 2010 album In Desolation. I saw them live at Leeds Festival in August

and they closed their set with this song. So good, It’s a real punk rock heartbreaker.

#13 Daughter – Youth. I got chills the first time I heard this song. Seriously. I can’t

say that for many songs, but this one had a real physical effect on me. It is hauntingly

beautiful.

#14 Moose Blood – Bukowski. Moose Blood are an indie/emo band from Canterbury,

England. This track is from their 2012 EP ‘Moving Home’. It would have been easy

to include the title track on this playlist, as I recently moved back to my home town

myself, however, I went for the track named after my favourite author. Really I could

have picked any track from the EP, they’re all pretty fantastic. Check them out:

mooseblood.bandcamp.com

#15 Gogol Bordello – Name Your Ship. Gogol Bordello recently released their new

album. I have been rocking the album pretty frequently since it came out and this is my

(current) favourite song from it. I am seeing them when they tour the UK in December and

I am a little bit (a lot) excited!

#16 Frank Turner – We Shall Not Overcome. I am a sucker for symmetry, Frank Turner

opened this playlist and he will close it out. This song was one of the ‘bonus tracks’ on

Tape Deck Heart and is one of my favourites. I think one of the main reasons that I love

Frank Turner so much is that I really relate to his songs. We’d definitely be good buddies if

we knew each other in real life. The chorus to this song sums me up perfectly: “The bands

I like they don’t sell too many records and the girls I like they don’t kiss too many boys. The

books I read will never be best sellers, but come on fellas, at least we made our choice.”

I hope you enjoy the songs and I hope my rambling didn’t bore you too much! XD

In Praise of Teachers

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I always seem to be surrounded by teachers. My mom is a teacher. Some of my best friends are teachers. Many of my other relatives—aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmother—are or were teachers.

I am not a teacher, although there was a time as a kid when I thought I might like to be. You know why I’m not? Because I know I couldn’t handle it. And after talking with the teachers I know as school starts up again this year, I’m even more convinced that I wouldn’t survive a week as a teacher.

So you can imagine how much I hate it when I hear people insult teachers or talk as if their jobs are easy. You want to know what teachers have to deal with on a daily basis? Here’s just a small sample of it:

-I have fond memories of reading books as a class—we read Stone Fox in third grade, The Witch of Blackbird Pond in fifth grade, etc. In a lot of school districts, this is no longer part of the curriculum. Why, you ask? Effing MCAS. That’s Massachusetts’ state testing, but every state has state-wide testing, and since performance on it reflects on the district, everything revolves around it. Creative writing, which was my favorite part of elementary school? Forget it. My friend’s curriculum director actually said to her once, “Why would you teach the students to connect with what they’re reading? That’s not going to be on MCAS.” The same friend’s superintendent greeted all the teachers on their first day of school by yelling at them that they still weren’t at the highest MCAS level. Oh, and in that same school system, they eliminated an entire year of social studies due to, you guessed it, MCAS.

-Teachers all need to get their master’s degree. If they get it before they start teaching, districts have to pay them more, which makes them less hirable. However, if they get it while they’re working, they have to work full time while also taking classes. And once teachers have their teaching licenses and master’s degrees, they’re not anywhere near done taking classes. They have to take all kinds of classes to keep their licenses up-to-date, some of questionable value. One certain relative of mine spent months whining about a class she was taking on brain-based education (quoth another certain relative: “As opposed to what? Ass-based?”). And these aren’t quick, two-hour seminars—they’re multi-week, 30+ hour classes that teachers take while working full-time.

-Another thing teachers have to deal with now that wasn’t as much of an issue when I was a kid is an increasing number of students with special needs. Full inclusion wasn’t as big of a movement when I was a kid, but there’s a big push for it now. I’m not going to get into the pros and cons of inclusion, but I will say that teachers now have to deal with more students with autism, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, ADHD, mental health issues, the works. Even with help from special education teachers, it can create a lot of challenges. My friend had to evacuate her classroom multiple times when a kid with severe behavioral problems started throwing chairs. If a student is on an individualized education plan, the teacher has to meet with parents and special education teachers many times to discuss the student’s progress—and has to do this for every single student on an ed plan.

-And then there are the parents. The helicopter parents who won’t leave the teacher alone, wanting to know every single thing going on in class and why their kid only got a B+. The parents who yell at the teacher after their kid blatantly lies to them. The parents who can’t believe their little angel is an asshole in school. One of my friends had a parent yell at her because she wouldn’t let her son have his cell phone with him during MCAS (which is a state rule). At the other end of the spectrum, there are also, sadly, some parents who are abusive or neglectful, whom teachers are legally obligated to report to the authorities.

-If you’re one of those people who bitches about how “teachers only work until three” or “teachers get the whole summer off,” do me a favor and punch yourself in the face. Want to know how wrong you are? Let’s start with hours. A new teacher is often encouraged to be an advisor or a coach, which means lots of after-school time. Teachers do most, if not all, of their lesson planning and grading after school, and it usually adds up to way more than a typical 9-5 job. And many teachers don’t get the summer off—because they make so little money to begin with, they take summer jobs. Some even have second jobs during the school year. And not only do teachers not make much money, because districts are cash-strapped, they have often have to buy supplies for their classrooms with their own money.

-And speaking of cash-strapped districts, job security as a teacher? For the first three years, it’s non-existent. The odds are good that a teacher will be laid off after that first year—maybe being re-hired after receiving the pink slip, but maybe not. One friend was laid off and re-hired her first year teaching, then laid off for real after two full years of putting a boatload of time and energy into a difficult inner-city teaching job. Another was laid off, rehired, and almost laid off again after her first year teaching—although by that time, understandably, she’d opted to find another job in a different district. After three years, a teacher is granted tenure and becomes immune to layoffs, but if that teacher ever wants or needs to leave the school district, he or she will have to start over with zero job security somewhere new. That is, if anyone will hire him/her—teachers with more experience are less hirable due to the district having to pay them more.

-There are lots of other things teachers have to deal with as well. Like being paid as a part-time rather than full-time teacher because you’re teaching five high school classes instead of six. (Happened to a friend of mine.) Or having to take over another teacher’s classes because he was fired for sending inappropriate text messages (ditto). Or spending months or years trying to negotiate a new teachers’ contract just to raise your salaries to the average for the area in which you live (happened to a relative). Or dealing with education policy laws that are created by people who’ve never taught before. Or barely having ten minutes to scarf down lunch every day. And zillions of other things that I can’t think of off the top of my head.

Are there bad teachers out there? Absolutely. There are people in every profession who aren’t good at what they do—bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad waiters, bad salespeople. And while in Massachusetts teachers can be fired with cause after they have tenure, that’s not the case in a lot of other places, which I think is a mistake.

The dialogue about what’s wrong with schools today often focuses, I think wrongly, on bad teachers. There’s talk of paying teachers more for getting better results—and results, of course, are measured by standardized tests, with no regard for the specific populations a teacher serves or how well the teachers at a school work together as a team or progress made in a classroom that can’t be tangibly quantified.

Here are some better questions: what makes good teachers leave? How can we attract intelligent, competent, caring people to teaching jobs? What do teachers themselvesfeel could help them do their job more effectively? What do we want the goal of teaching to be—high test scores, or students who love the knowledge and understanding they’ve gained and will go on to do great things in the world?

We all, hopefully, had great teachers through the years whom we remember and admire. I’d love to think that if I ever have kids, they’ll have teachers like that, too, and that those teachers will love their jobs and going to school every day. Most of the teachers I know say that they love the teaching part of teaching and love their students—it’s the rest of the crap they have to deal with that they hate, and sometimes good teachers leave the profession because that crap gets so overwhelming.

So as one small step toward improving education in this country—can we at least give some appreciation to the people who devote their lives to educating kids? There are all kinds of things that teachers deserve that they aren’t getting, but since it may be awhile before there’s fair pay, job security, money for school supplies, support when things get tough, or measuring progress without teaching to a test, for now, we can show teachers the respect they so richly deserve.

Katie Recommends: Orphan Black

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You all know how obsessed I am with award shows. So when, among the Emmy talk, I heard in many places that an actress named Tatiana Maslany had been robbed of a nomination for her work on a sci-fi show called Orphan Black, I decided to check it out. This past weekend, I watched all ten episodes of Season 1 on On Demand.


And I discovered that those people were wrong. Tatiana Maslany does not deserve an Emmy nomination. She deserves at least six Emmy nominations. You see, she doesn’t just play one character- she plays several clones, and she does so extraordinarily well.


Let’s start from the beginning. In the pilot, Sarah Manning, a British-Canadian small-time crook who grew up in foster care, sees a woman in a train station who looks just like her. Seconds later, the woman has committed suicide by jumping in front of a train. Sarah wastes no time in snatching the woman’s purse. She discovers that the woman, Beth Childs, was a cop with $75,000 in the bank. Seeing an opportunity to start over with the young daughter from whom she’s been estranged, Sarah decides to impersonate Beth to get the money.

But things quickly get complicated when Sarah realizes that Beth isn’t the her only lookalike. There’s a German woman who’s shot to death soon after Sarah meets her. There’s an uptight soccer mom named Allison and a dreadlocked science geek named Cosima. There are others who have also turned up dead- and there’s one who might be a killer.

All of these women, of course, are clones. They’re unwilling participants in a science experiment, and now someone is killing them off. And I can’t say much more without giving too much away!

Tatiana Maslany. Seriously, I can’t say enough good things about her on this show. The clones are all distinguished by hairdos and clothes, but she gives them all distinct mannerisms and speech patterns that make them impossible to confuse. She also makes layered characters out of people who could easily just be “types.” I found myself forgetting that the same actress plays so many characters. There are even some points when the clones impersonate each other and you find yourself thinking, “Who’d ever buy that Allison is Sarah?…Oh, wait, they’re actually played by the same person.”

Sarah is the clone we get to know first, and there turns out to be a lot more to her than initially meets the eye. We first see her stealing Beth’s purse seconds after Beth’s gruesome suicide, but she becomes more and more interesting as we learn about her childhood as an orphan in foster care, her love for and struggle to reconnect with the daughter who’s being raised by the same foster mother Sarah grew up with, and her past with an abusive ex-boyfriend. But the clones aren’t the only characters to watch. My favorite non-clone is Sarah’s snarky but loyal foster brother Felix, who serves as her confidant and often lends a hand when she needs help with a crazy situation she’s found herself in.

It’s a drama, obviously- did I mention someone is trying to kill them?- but it can also be very funny. Allison, the kind of suburban mother who hosts weekly neighborhood potlucks and has a whole room for her crafts, can be hilarious when her prim facade starts to crack. And one kind of interesting thing is that people never need much time to adjust to the news about the clones- which, while it might not be the most realistic reaction, means that not a lot of time is wasted on exposition.

The funny thing is that aside from The X-Files, I’m not into sci-fi at all. But this show rocks, and you have plenty of time to get caught up before Season 2 premieres on BBC America in the spring!

My England and Ireland Trip

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I turned twenty-nine on July 20, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Turning a year older when you’re single is never fun, but this year I didn’t care.  I was still on a high from the best vacation of my life—my first, and DEFINITELY not last, trip to Europe.

Rather than take you through the specifics of each day, I’ll share with you the highlights:

-Our hotel in London was right near King’s Cross Station. There was a long line to take pictures at Platform 9 ¾, so I didn’t do it, but I got a picture of some random girl there:

-We went to Harrod’s, a department store so fancy you can only dream of buying anything there. Like, there’s-an-opera-singer-in-the-stairwell kind of fancy.

-I kind of surprised myself with my reaction to Westminster Abbey. Erin, the history major among us, was getting excited over all the kings and queens buried there, and I was like, Oh, monarchs, that’s cool. But then we got toward the end of the tour, and I realized that Geoffrey Chaucer and Georg Frederick Handel are buried there as well. And THAT excited the English major and choral singer in me—I love The Canterbury Tales to the point where I voluntarily took a class on Chaucer in college and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sung Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus—I think I’ve memorized the soprano part.

-We wanted to see the changing of the guard but couldn’t get there in time. Next time, I guess—and there WILL be a next time! But we did swing by Buckingham Palace. We kept wondering through the whole trip if the royal baby would show up while we were there, but little Prince George was waiting for us to leave, I guess.

-The Tower of London was kind of morbidly fascinating. Here’s a picture of where Anne Boleyn was beheaded:

-Julie had suggested having tea at Fortnum and Mason, so we did. I think this was my favorite part of London. The food was so good- scones, little cakes, little sandwiches (ones I didn’t think I would like but really did), and, of course, tea. The waitress asked us if we wanted a slice of cake afterwards, and we were too full!

-File under “you make it too easy, England.” Also under “I’m twelve”

-I was glad we got to take a double-decker bus on this trip! We took it to the train station and then took a train out to Windsor Castle. No pictures from inside because they weren’t allowed, but it was really cool to see. And the queen was there when we were!

-If you waved a wand and turned Boston into a European city, I think it might look something like Dublin.

-At the pub where we had lunch the first day in Dublin, they had a Boston Strong sticker hanging up, which was nice.

-My last name is super easy to spell, but you would not believe how many people think it’s spelled “Haze.” Which is a word, not a name. As it turns out, people even do that in Ireland—you know, the country my ancestors came from.

-My favorite part of the whole vacation was the day tour we took to the Cliffs of Moher. There was a walking tour in Galway first, which was interesting. I think I’d spend more time in Galway if—WHEN—I go back to Ireland. Among the interesting things I learned on this tour was that Jane Eyre may have been named after a real person commemorated in a Galway church—although that Jane Eyre, ironically, is described as an “obedient wife.”

-London and Dublin are great, but it’s easy to imagine that big cities are ANY big city. When we went out to the countryside to see the Cliffs of Moher, that was when I really felt like I was in a place different from anywhere I’d ever been. It was so beautiful—I was just standing at the cliffs thinking, “This view? THIS is why I wanted to go to Ireland.”

-Our third day in Ireland, we went to Christ Church Cathedral and Dublin Castle and did a bit of a literary walking tour. We also found a pub whose name was Erin’s last name, so of course we had to drop everything and get a drink there!

-Also on that last day, we were at a café called Queen of Tarts and the actor Andrew McCarthy, whom I know as Blane from Pretty in Pink (he’s also been in St. Elmo’s Fire, Weekend at Bernie’s, and the TV show Lipstick Jungle), was sitting across from us. I remembered how once at a meeting at work, we did an icebreaker where we went around the room and talked about if we’d ever met someone famous. I thought that if we ever did that again, I could say, “This one time when I was in Dublin, the guy from Pretty in Pink was sitting across from me at a cafe.”

–And then it occurred to me that now I can start stories with, “This one time when I was in Dublin…”

-Did I mention that we did not see a drop of rain in either country the whole time we were there? It was amazing! London was having what it called a heat wave- uh, I’ll take low-to-mid-eighties with no humidity over the actual heat waves we’ve gotten this summer in Boston any day, thanks. And in Ireland, on the day we went to the cliffs, even the tour guide was like, “It’s never this nice out here.” Sometimes, apparently, there’s so much fog you can’t see very well at the Cliffs of Moher, but we had an absolutely gorgeous day.

-Now that I’m back, one kind of weird reaction I’m having is that I want to watch every British movie ever. I’ve already seen Mary Poppins and Notting Hill since returning.

I want to go back so much! I’m already thinking of all the other things I want to do in both England and Ireland. But I also want to see ALL the places, as Allie Brosh would say. If only I had unlimited time and money!

In any case, I have now been to Europe, and it was as much fun as I always dreamed. I was lucky to have two awesome friends to share it with. If I had to have a birthday at the end of the week, I took comfort in thinking that age twenty-nine might be even a fraction as fun as the last week of being twenty-eight was.

Song of the Moment: Chicago

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I’ll get to my post about Europe in a second. I haven’t posted yet due to a busy week after I got back and then this past week, which I spent in Chicago for a business trip.

It was the second time I’d been to Chicago. The first time was also for work, back in 2009. I was thinking about how much has changed since then. I remember distinctly that when I went to Chicago four years ago, my anxiety was at its peak. I was getting panicky and teary over stupid little things, and I remember crying a lot in my hotel room over the things I was worried about.

That all seems so far away now. I’m really happy to say that I no longer have that kind of anxiety—like, at all. It’s kind of crazy how much it’s improved. In the last year, too, I feel like I’ve let go of caring about a lot of the things that used to cause me a lot of worry, and it’s incredibly freeing.

When I visit a city for the first time, I like to listen to a song about that city—like a song from this playlist. Four years ago when I was in Chicago, I was listening to the Sufjan Stevens song “Chicago,” and it couldn’t have been more appropriate. I was worried about mistakes I’d made, or thought I’d made, and there’s a repeated line in that song: “I made a lot of mistakes.” That line in Sufjan Stevens’ soft voice in the state of mind I was in became really comforting to me.

This time in Chicago, when I had some free time, I had some deep-dish pizza and went to the top of the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) and down to Navy Pier to ride the Ferris Wheel and some other rides. I got pictures like this:

Oh, yeah, and I also listened to the same song. I still love it, even when I’m in a calmer place.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_-cUdmdWgU]

Happiness Is…

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Something I do that I know I shouldn’t do: I judge the severity of your problems by whether or not you’re in a happy relationship.

There are some problems that are universally terrible- death, destruction, and serious illness or injury, and of course I sympathize with people suffering from these problems regardless of their relationship status.

But then there are normal generational angst problems. You lost your job, or you hate your job, or you didn’t get into the school you wanted to, or you don’t know what you’re doing with your life. You don’t like where you live, you’re living at home and hating it, or you’re having trouble finding an apartment or buying a house. You had a falling out with a friend, or you miss your friends, or someone else’s wedding is stressing you out, or you’re fighting with a relative.

If you have any of those problems and you’re also single (or even in a bad relationship), I sympathize with you. But if you’re happily in a relationship or engaged or married? I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but I just can’t take your problems seriously. At the end of the day, you have someone to come home to whom you can talk to about it, who will comfort you and make you feel better. My problems might be the same as yours, but I don’t have anyone to come home to. If I ever lost my job, I wouldn’t have a significant other’s income to fall back on. I don’t have anyone with whom to buy a house or split the cost of a one-bedroom apartment. I don’t have someone who’s committed to being with me.

So there’s my ugly confession, and reading over it, it makes me sound really bitter. I’m not, I promise you. Like anyone, I have moments where I’m down, but the majority of the time, I choose to be happy. And happiness is, indeed, a choice and not a destination like some people make it out to be. You can’t spend too much time thinking about the future or, to paraphrase John Lennon, you miss the life that’s happening while you’re busy making other plans.

But recently, I took a step back and thought about my life and everything in it. I realized that the one unequivocally great thing in my life right now is my friends, who are amazing and fun and keep me sane.

With the rest of my life, though? There’s not really anything else in my life with which I’m completely satisfied. Nothing is really that bad (I guess things could always be worse as long as I’m not starving to death in an impoverished country), but nothing is at the place I hoped it would be by now. I still don’t have any of the three things I want the most. I’m writing more, but still not nearly as much as I want to. I’ve gained an insane amount of weight in the last year. I have trouble getting enough sleep. And my career goals are still in progress.

Life is short, and it’s time to start working harder to change things. When this year comes to a close, maybe things will be better. For now, I’m choosing to be happy, but I’m also choosing to move forward.

Something Sad

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Despite me not posting until the last day of the month, a lot happened in the month of May. Much of it was good, and I’ll get to that later, but one really terrible thing happened right before Memorial Day. I haven’t written about it yet because I didn’t quite know how, but I don’t want to gloss over it, either.

My Uncle Vinnie, who was my dad’s older brother, died suddenly the Thursday before Memorial Day. He was sixty-six, and it was completely unexpected. He’d been married to my aunt for thirty-two years, and my cousins who just lost their dad are thirty and twenty-seven.

It’s horrible that someone can just be gone so suddenly- someone who had so much life left and so much left to do. It scares me that people from my parents’ generation are dying. He was a really great guy, and it hasn’t quite hit me yet that he’s gone.

We will miss you, Uncle Vinnie.

Playlist of the Moment: The American Cities Mix

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I was surprised when I realized how much traveling I’d done in the last year. Memorial Day weekend 2012 I went to New York. In July I went first to Narragansett for Lindsey’s wedding, then to southern California to visit Christiana Krump. In August I went to Dallas and then to DC. January brought me to San Francisco for Jenna’s wedding. I went on a business trip to St. Louis in March (and got delayed during my layover—five hours in the Milwaukee airport on a Friday not is not my idea of fun). And last month, I first spent a couple of days in the Philly area when my sister graduated from law school and over Memorial Day weekend, just for a day, I went back to New York to see Lucky Guy on Broadway (which deserves its own post).

This is all domestic travel, and there’s some more coming up- another business trip to Chicago and a trip with friends to Florida. And some very exciting news- this trip I wanted to take? It’s happening! We’re going to England and Ireland next month.

Anyway, getting to the point—this playlist is an updated version of one I did for a work CD swap a few years ago. Each song is about or has to do with an American city. (The Counting Crows have a lot of songs about cities, apparently- they’re on here three times.) Enjoy!

The American Cities Mix

  1. Please Come to Boston- Dave Loggins
  2. Streets of Philadelphia- Bruce Springsteen
  3. The Only Living Boy in New York- Simon and Garfunkel
  4. Atlantic City- Bruce Springsteen
  5. Raining in Baltimore- Counting Crows
  6. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight- The Postal Service
  7. Walking in Memphis- Marc Cohn
  8. ATL- Butch Walker
  9. Miami- Counting Crows
  10. City Beneath the  Sea- Harry Connick, Jr.
  11. Holy Toledo- Crystal Bowersox
  12. Chicago- Sufjan Stevens
  13. Omaha- Counting Crows
  14. Santa Fe- from Rent
  15. Vegas- Sara Bareilles
  16. LA Song- Beth Hart
  17. San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)- Scott McKenzie
  18. September in Seattle- Shawn Mullins

Sorry, Rousseau

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You might have missed this in this post, but if you were paying attention, you saw that I have left these sentiments behind and gotten a smartphone, for the first time ever. My apologies to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Here are some thoughts on smartphone ownership after having had one for almost two months:

  • One of the biggest reasons I decided to get one was for the MBTA apps, so that I know when the bus is coming. I don’t have a car, so when I’m not near a T station, I’d like to know how much longer I have to wait in the cold/rain/heat until a bus comes to rescue me. OpenMBTA is pretty great, especially if I decide to take one bus that runs very close to my house. Unfortunately, it’s not a magic app- it can tell me when the bus is coming but doesn’t make it come any faster.
  • Instagram is overrated. I was excited to check it out after hearing so much about it, but I was very underwhelmed. Most of the pictures on it end up on Facebook anyway, and the filters really aren’t that big a deal.
  • Soundhound is better than Shazam. I feel like Shazam is the brand name people go to when they’re talking about using an app to find out what a song is, but Soundhound does everything Shazam does but does it better. It also gets everything I sing into it, even the obscure stuff, while Shazam doesn’t.
  • I love having the whole Internet at my disposal- if I’m out somewhere and want to show a friend Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals, I just pull it up. However, it’s no substitute for a real computer and a bigger screen.
  • It’s great to discover apps for things you wouldn’t even have thought of. I just ordered Domino’s and did it all through the Domino’s app.
  • Talk-to-text makes no sense to me. You might as well just make a phone call. And on that note,
  • I refuse to talk to Siri. She scares the shit out of me.

Odds and Ends

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Life goes on, and this week has been blessedly mundane. Here are five completely unrelated things.

1. THANK YOU to everyone who has donated so far to my run next week! If you haven’t donated yet, you have until Monday at 5:00 PM.

2. While I still don’t like Twitter, I have to say that one of the best feeds out there is Modern Seinfeld. I love Seinfeld and reference it way too much, and Modern Seinfeld cracks me up. The hypothetical plots they come up with are things I can completely see the Seinfeld characters doing. It is kind of strange to think about how much exists now that didn’t in the 90s- the Internet was barely a thing and cell phones were still new when the show ended.

But anyway, the other day they had their best tweet yet:

AMAZING. Even more amazing considering that my post on that subject was titled “Call Me Elaine,” in reference to the episode where Elaine hates The English Patient. I can tell you from experience that people really do act like you killed someone if you say you hate Arrested Development!

3. Line from Seinfeld I keep wanting to quote but can never find the right opportunity for: “You know, we’re living in a SOCIETY!“

Line from Friends I keep wanting to quote but can never find the right opportunity for: “That is brand new information!”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlBh82TFn0Q]

4. On Sundays, I am now DVR-ing two shows, which are at polar opposites of the current spectrum of modern TV: Mad Men and What Would Ryan Lochte Do?.

Mad Men is still, in my humble opinion, the best show on TV. Even now, in Season 6, I’m marveling at how literary it is. I always tell people it’s a show for English majors- there is just so much to analyze and examine, both in individual episodes and across seasons and the whole show.

And then there’s What Would Ryan Lochte Do?.

Ryan Lochte cracks me up. He’s so pretty, and such a talented swimmer, but apparently there’s some chlorine water stuck in his brain because man, is he dumb. Male swimmers are usually huge dorks with great bodies, but most of them are somewhat smart. Not Ryan.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOCzzfy9C3M]

There’s only been one episode, but so far, while he’s definitely quite dim, he also comes off as very sweet, kind of like if Joey Tribbiani was a swimmer. Reality TV is often scripted (shocker!) but I did believe him when he said he just wants a girl to settle down with, and there was a really nice moment where he got teary talking about how his family always supports him.

I have to say, too, that the show is making me think of other shows featuring people who presented themselves as dumb. In 2006, Pink had that song “Stupid Girls” that called out celebrities like Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton for dumbing themselves down. More recently, we had Snooki on Jersey Shore playing up the dumb factor, and one reason among many I was glad when Sarah Palin did not ascend to higher office was because I dreaded how her lack of intelligence, and seeming indifference to her ignorance, would reflect on women everywhere.

It would be awesome if we could live in a world where women didn’t feel like the best way to attract attention is by being pretty and dumb. That would be ideal, but instead we now have this show, where a guy is building his image around being pretty and dumb.

Uh, yea equality?

5. There’s a shortage of platelets available for donation now due to the bombing last week, so consider making an appointment to donate platelets!