Two guys named Trent started at quarterback in today's Bills vs. Rams NFL game. That's pretty interesting, eh?

Is there really enough room in the world for two professional-level quarterbacks named Trent to start for opposing teams in the exact same game? There's probably something to this.

Has it seriously come to this? If you're in the business of trying to figure the world out, you might consider a different direction in life. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is off-limits. Nothing is impossible.

Ok, so this isn't a political blog, but it seems like this election is becoming more and more about fear than anything else, including HOPE, CHANGE, P.O.W., ALASKA, AGE, RACE, GENDER. The fear is coming from Conservatives who are too afraid to think they could ever support a Democrat and Liberals who are too afriad to admit that a Republican might not be such a bad guy. The democratic system of government has so many wondeful benefits, it is easy to look past the idea that by narrowing the choices to two, everything becomes too black and white (especially this time around).

The whole thing feels scripted and is painfully predictable. It is easy to predict what opinion you'll hear from almost any source, so why bother? Despite clever bumper stickers on both sides, nobody is a fool to vote for either candidate. What may be most important to you may not be that important to someone else.

Just vote for who you support and if you don't support either, don't vote. Yes, that is taboo to say, but it's your right to not vote just as much as it is your right to vote. Just don't complain with the outcome. Then you'll suck.

So yeah, the post about good music. There's very little that can be said that hasn't been said, written or blabbed before, so there's no reason to belabor it. Good music may be the most perfect form of art because it actually enters the body in a different way than anything. Maybe good food can compare in that way, but few see food as art the same way they do music. There is also the added dynamic of seeing music performed live versus listening to a recording. When simply listening, the music becomes a soundtrack to life (as discussed in an earlier entry), which is a pretty amazing thing. A great painting or sculpture can't as easily follow you around and shape the way you see the world like music pouring directly into your ear canals via Apple's lovely white earbuds. (Sidenote: Why won't Apple make black earbuds to go with the black iPod?) When seeing a great musical performance live, the music isn't a soundtrack to your life, but rather, you are a merely an audience to the music itself. It's a role-reversal, but not any less significant and rewarding.

All the cliches apply here. Great music transcends time and space, we all know. That was the topic of NPR's "All Songs Considered" recently, where the topic of discussion was "Were the 80s Really That Bad?" There are a myriad of reasons why the 80s were somewhat great. Aside from being born, several other great things happened and not just in music. The Raiders won their last Super Bowl, the Mets won the World Series (as an added bonus, this coincided with the Red Sox losing a World Series) and...and...well, Back to the Future came out in theaters. So yeah, that's a decade's worth of great things, right? Birth, Raiders, Mets, Back to the Future.

The panel on the NPR show did a pretty good job pulling music from different veins, but at times it seemed a bit contrived. This came as no surprise. Of course, the start of the show focused heavily on the predominantly abhorrent supply of synth-pop that infected the 80s. Thing is, and as the panel discovered through discussion, some of these songs really weren't that bad. At least the writing of the song wasn't. Sure, some of the new studio tricks and the presumed "in sound" made things go haywire at times, but "Take On Me" can be a great song in any decade. Thankfully, the panel was also careful to include genres of music best represented by Guns N Roses and The Replacements. There is nothing "1980s" about these bands' albums except the year of release. As the panel agreed, this music is just as timeless now as it might or might not have been then.

Since the advent of pop/rock music, every decade has had hits and misses, not to mention hits that should have been misses and misses that should have been hits. This will never change. Something that has changed and will continue to do so is the converging of mainstream and underground music. A quick thought of the best mainstream music of the 2000s yields a depressingly short list, but that doesn't mean incredible music isn't still being made. Almost everything that seems mainstream these days is hip-hop/R&B or some crossbred mutant therein. That's well and good, but illustrates the point that people have other outlets for music these days and that's where the good stuff is. Leave the crap for chicken finger restaurants at lunch, just not Otter's (see previous post).

So, the tour of chicken finger specialty restaurants in the immediate Cool Springs/Franklin area continued today. Today's entrant was Otter's. No clue where the name came from, but thankfully it wasn't the most remarkable thing about the place. Then again, the food wasn't either. It had to be the music playing in the restaurant. For some reason, in a sports bar-themed chicken finger place in suburban Nashville, Band of Horses and Paul Westerberg were heard back-to-back. Definitely odd, but definitely welcomed. It seems like the music played in public lately has only been Nickelback's "Rock Star" song and that one about "making love in this club". That's such a lovely snapshot of mainstream music these days.

About that awful Nickelback song. It was playing at the gym the other day. Of course, it had to be right after "Lost iPod Incident '08", so there was nothing to filter out those sweet lyrics of that Chad guy from Canada. Terrible. Thing is, the "gym" in question is the Cool Springs YMCA. The "C" in there doesn't stand for "Chad from Canada", so it's odd to hear a song about popping pills, cheap drugs, Playmates, bathtubs built for ten and joining the mile-high club coming from the speakers on the wall right next to painted-on Bible verses.

A quick note about the aforementioned "mile high club". If you're into joining this club, you might want to first ask your pilot why he's only flying barely 5000 feet off the ground.

Ok, back to terrible music. So yeah, the Y was playing terrible music. Granted, the Nickelback song is presumably satire, but follow that up with some Buckcherry song about cocaine and all doubt is erased. Those dudes DO cocaine and a lot of it, then sing about it. Of course, none of this actually bothers these desensitized ears, but there is no excuse for such bad music to be propped up in public this way. This...is...how...society...erodes...

Next entry is about good music...

It's easy to let the negative parts of life overwhelm you. The key in fighting this is to keep looking forward, not backward. Life has a funny way of surprising you and even if all your problems aren't solved immediately, a fresh perspective and outlook on the future can go a long way.

In life it's far too easy to assume that everything good happens immediately. It feels like good things can only be good if they arrive precisely when we first think about it. In a world where everything comes fast, be it emails, dvd rentals or breakfast burritos, we seem to expect everything that way. Safe to say, the mega-big stuff in life takes a little while, but we can't forget the small gifts we receive on a daily basis. Again, it's just enough to make a day better or ease a certain degree of frustration.

Current raves:

Music:


The Uglysuit, s/t. Terrible name, good album.
MySpace

Book:


Easily the best 973-page book read lately. During reading, it barely feels 742 pages long. That's quality.

Upcoming Concert:


Definitely worth the mid-week drive from Nashville. Seriously. No doubt. Details.

Listening Obsession:


In particular, the episode of All Songs Considered devoted to 80s music. (see future post in this blog)

Late nights such as last night are a strange beast. You don't know why you're awake, but then you remind yourself there's a lot to do, but then you remember you've pretty much done everything already and you realize you're just making excuses for yourself to be awake. There's usually something that drives this behavior. It's usually something you'd otherwise not consider important enough to stay awake for.

Last night's impetus was episodes of Entourage on HBO OnDemand. Before last night, the show was nothing more than a familiar name with some familiar characters/elements. After last night, it is still those things, but also something else. Overrated. There, it's out there. Keep reading if you can, boiled blood or not.

It's not a bad show necessarily, but just doesn't seem that great. Sure, it's on HBO and there's a pedigree there, but the only true indication of the show being on HBO and not NBC is the degree of profanity and the occasional flash of nudity. Not exactly what would be considered "edgy" in most books. There isn't anything challenging about the show. Maybe that's what it's good for, but HGTV meets the same basic criteria for entertainment.

The show seems to play out like a West Coast/LA version of Seinfeld. It's just a group of people that basically do nothing, but a show revolves around this nothingness. The only thing missing from the Seinfeld comparison is intelligent humor and creativity that slaps the viewer in the face. Sure, parts of it are funny, usually it involves a quick barb by Jeremy Piven, but by that standard, people should be waiting in lines to buy PCU on DVD. The celebrity cameos are also an enjoyable element, but when it's Marky Mark playing golf with Jeremy Piven, something is left to be desired, regardless of the fact that Marky Mark is an executive producer (whatever that means exactly) of the show.

The characters of the show seem utterly forgettable, except Piven, because how can a character be forgotten if they're saying the same thing over and over again to remind you? At this rate, in approximately 2.4 more episodes, all 17 million people in the metropolitan LA area will be told by Ari Gold that "they'll never work in this town again." Surely, Ari will eventually have to tell Jeremy Piven that he's through in Hollywood.

This isn't anything against Jeremy Piven, but he might actually not be that funny. He usually seems funniest when people mistake him for Jon Favreau. Could it be that, outside of PCU of course, his funniest work has been as a sidekick on Ellen? That would, of course, be the 1990s sitcom that is basically the same premise, albeit scripted, as the present-day talk show of the same name.

So yeah, Entourage is funny enough, but certainly doesn't seem to be a show being talked about the next day at work. Is it actually entertaining for the same person to say and do the same thing repeatedly? You tell me, you're the one reading this blog.

What percentage of people refer to Nashville as "Nashvegas"? Whatever happened to "Music City USA"?

What percentage of people refer to Birmingham as "The Ham"? Whatever happened to "The Magic City"?

What percentage of people refer to Atlanta as "The ATL"? Whatever happened to...Ok, Atlanta never had a good nickname. Sure, there was "The City Too Busy To Hate" back in the '60s, but let's face it, that's very lame and presumptious. Just because Atlanta prospered while much of the South floundered doesn't mean it was because Atlanta had the intelligence/civility/compassion market cornered. A lot happened, some of it for a reason and some of it by chance that made Atlanta what it is today, "The City Too Busy For Anyone To Really Want To Live In".

Even though Georgia rightfully is coined "The Peach State", it has also been known as "The Empire State of the South", a nod to the State of New York. That's not particularly inspiring, but maybe more so than Birmingham being "The Pittsburgh of the South" or Nashville inexplicably being "The Athens (Greece) of the South". The whole "peach" association is illegitimately connected with Atlanta specifically, though, not just the State of Georgia. Look no further than the oft-mentioned Peachtree Streets that supposedly cover Atlanta, or the Peach Bowl, played annually in Atlanta, albeit in the Georgia Dome. Thankfully, there has been an effort in recent years to change the branding of the game to the Chick-Fil-A Bowl (Chick-Fil-A being based in Atlanta). This can only be because the closest you'll come to a peach in Atlanta is on the back of a truck driving up from downstate.

The mention of the Georgia Dome seems to illustrate the notion that all of Georgia is somehow intrinsically linked to Atlanta. Everyone from Georgia (with the likely exception of Savannah folks) seems to think of themselves as from Atlanta, but it's pretty easy to see why. Atlanta is the namesake of hardly anything that makes Atlanta most identifiable. There's the aforementioned Georgia Dome, Georgia Tech, The Georgia World Congress Center, Six Flags Over Georgia (home of the Georgia Cyclone) and The Georgia Aquarium. Even the arena football team is the Georgia Force, but nobody watches that anyway.

What defines a wasted day? Not leaving the house? Sleeping too late? No significant interpersonal contact? All of this probably contributes to the idea of a wasted day, but maybe it is possible to be constructive without any constructive to show for it. Then again, sorted laundry and swept floors is something. It just doesn't seem like much when compared to everything that goes into making a full day into a full day. Life has become so schedule-oriented and such a juggling act that the fun and pleasures get completely sucked out.

Some very important people have long maintained Sunday as a day of rest, when the mind can continue to be active, even if the body is not. A day of thought, contemplation and mental exercise can possess a great deal of value as well. Granted, tales of "thinking about a lot of stuff" and "trying to figure out some of life's mysteries" won't impress anyone at work on Monday morning. Then again, when they say they mowed the lawn and carried out the trash, it doesn't explain what they did with the 23 hours of their Sunday.

So yeah, a day is just a day, just like the rest. If something was accomplished, that's good. If nothing was accomplished, that's not all bad, so long as it doesn't become a habit. With the harried pace of typical Mondays and Tuesday looming, that doesn't seem possible at this point. On those days, more effort will be needed to accomplish such things as preparing meals at home and reading the latest offerings in the Lohan/Ronson MySpace blog. Omg.

It's interesting how many potential blog entries start with the words "It's interesting how..."

Even the most ardent city-dweller cannot fathom the depth and range of beauty possessed in a place where buildings are separated by miles and the widest road is two lanes. To merely be designated a National Park, a place has to be amazing, but to be the first and largest National Park, Yellowstone exceeds all expectations. There really isn't a way to describe it in words without relying way too much on superlatives, so it's best left to the pictures.

So, it has come this: Exhibit 1

Yet this is still "the most important election ever" according to some. Obviously it is the most important to Daddy Yankee and Fat Joe. It's an oft-used argument that maybe some people shouldn't vote if their information is coming from the wrong sources, be it agenda-driven media, parents, athletes or rappers. This argument probably has more creedence in this election than ever before, so maybe it is the most important ever.

A quick search for sample lyrics might validate these gentlemen's strong opinions on the election, but seeing as how this entry is originating from a salary-paying place of business, that will be left to the reader. Some suggested search topics might be "Fat Joe's raps on Tippecanoe and Tyler too" and "The effect of Teapot Dome on Daddy Yankee's raggaeton sound".

This isn't a political blog, but hopefully one based on common sense and individual thought. Nothing against Mr. Daddy or Mr. Fat, but this will probably be the last time their names get Google-search power in this forum.

And for those still living on a prayer: Exhibit 2.

In 40 hours, squinting at white clouds in the sky and imagining they are snow-capped peaks will not be necessary.

Life has its sweet rewards sometimes. Just reminders that there is so much more out there left to see, experience and appreciate.