Jesse says...

So, there is a little meme going around with my friends about the songs that have most infiltrated their brain over the past year. I thought I would play along too. These are that tracks that, for one reason or another, managed to find themselves on ‘Repeat 1′ on my iPod over the past 12 months… and they probably give you some insight into where my brain has been dwelling. Enjoy!

Outro Lado – Zuco 103
Oxygen – New Found Glory
Being Your Walls – Armor For Sleep
Chi City – Common
F-cking Boyfriend – The Bird And The Bee
Hi – Psapp
Gett Off – Prince
Rosetta Stoned – Tool
Calé Barí – Ojos De Brujo
We’ve Got Everything – Modest Mouse
All Falls Down – Kanye West
Zero-Sum – Nine Inch Nails
I’ve Been Thinking – Handsome Boy Modeling School
I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me – Fall Out Boy
Carolina – Seu Jorge
Hat In The Wind – themselves
Amortiguador – Andrea Echeverri
Lado Este – Sara Valenzuela
Pour Me Another – Atmosphere
Círculos – NXZero
Frontin’ (BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge Version) – Jamie Cullum

I might add, there were a few full albums that definitely made the rotation more than a few times: 10,000 Days by Tool, NXZero’s self-titled album, Coming Home by New Found Glory, Lado Este by Sara Valenzuela, From Under The Cork Tree by Fall Out Boy. I could have put the entirety of each of those albums on this list, but that would have just been excessive.

From my new Brazilian friend Sunny:

This is to remember and think about how we’re treating elderly people today. People forget that they know a lot and they’ve been through a lot.
It’s a British band with 40 people with more than 90y/o, singing “My Generation” from The Who.
The documentary maker Tim Samuels brought together the 40 old people, including pensioners tired of life in old age homes and those suffering from social isolation in their own communities

The Zimmers, performing “My Generation”. Absolutely amazing

Will you stay
if I promise you
eggs
and glue
and guns
and birds
and bread?

Will you stay
if I promise you
wings
and things
and yes
and yes
and yes?

Hat In The Wind, themselves

I have no idea what Doseone was thinking when he wrote this, but it might just be genius if you analyze what each of those items might represent in the context of a relationship: eggs as children, glue as sex, guns as protection, birds as entertainment, bread as food, wings as future. Again, I have no idea… but it might just be genius.

eMusic is great. Really, really great. You should subscribe with them. First of all, they have DRM-free music that you can play anywhere: any MP3 player (including iPods), any operating system (including Linux and the BSDs). Secondly, they actually have really great music. This weekend, I picked up some great tracks from the likes of Atmosphere, Eagles of Death Metal, Har Mar Superstar, Haley Bonar and Jeff Hanson. I cannot recommend this site enough — tracks end up being around 25¢ a piece (40 tracks per month for $9.99 a month), and they’re all high-quality MP3s, with full ID3 tag info. If you ask me, all in all, it’s a much better place to get music from than the iTunes Store.

If you sign up using this URL, you even get 50 free tracks. How sweet a deal is that?

Oh, and for the cynics, they didn’t pay me nor bribe me. This is a company that actually “gets it”, and I want to give them props because of that.

What’s new since last we chatted?

…Been doing a lot of freelance… I guess that’s not really new. Oh, but I am working on two sites in Rails right now, and I love it. It’s freaking amazing how productive I am with it, mostly because the environment is so well thought out (Ruby is a damn fine language, too). One site is for a personal project, and the other site is for a buddy of mine, Peter. I can’t talk too much about either right now, but I think Peter’s should still launch some time this year… mine may be quite a bit later than that.

…Saw X-Men 3 — and I was entertained. Obviously operates in a totally different universe than the canonical timeline, but it was still really enjoyable. Not as good as either 1 or 2, but still a good summer action flick with some characters I really dig.

…Weather’s been really hot up here. Almost Florida-like, actually. God I hate summer.

…I’m in a really bad mood at the moment — trying to prevent that from corrupting all the good things that have been going on lately.

…Saw Imogen Heap the Tuesday before last. Super, super fun show. I highly recommend her, as well as the Varsity Theater now. It’s a really nice venue I hadn’t been to before — very atmostpheric (if not a tad too non-air-conditioned), and decent sound. Also, it’s right next to the Loring Pasta Bar, which is the ultimate first date restaurant.

…Got my student reviews/evaluations back the other day. They had some very nice things to say, and, all in all, it was very positive. They want me to give them a bit more (or a lot more) detailed information in grading their projects. I promise I’ll work on that… wait… what is that smell? Do I sense another Rails app in the works? (Yeah, like I need another project…

…Taught Cristina and Juan Antonio some HTML and CSS goodness — they are super, super awesome people, by the way…

…Why are there no good, small, inexpensive, color, touch screen LCDs? Is that so much to ask for? (Apparently yes)

…I also promise to put some more art up too… but for now, you can watch my adventures into creating artificial fire (ah, the magic of Photoshop and a Wacom tablet).

So fold my heart up small
Or break it into pieces
Find somewhere
And keep it there
Take it
When
You
Go

When You Go, Jonathan Coulton

Jonathan Coulton is an amazing songwriter — hilarious, poignant, sometimes raunchy, sometimes quite inspiring. He has a podcast running right now called Thing a Week, in which he records a new song every week and posts it on Friday. Take a look, and if you enjoy, send the man some cash.

December 13th.

Be there and make your voice heard in support of free culture and the creative commons by downloading a copy of American Edit.

Death Cab for Cutie rocks my panties off. Well, not quite, but they definitely know how to rock. I just got home from First Ave. and, man, were they good. Ben is my new personal hero: the man can play fricken every instrument on the stage. They played a nice long set, mixed up the rocking songs and the quiet songs, had me both bobbing my head and in tears, and, all in all, left me feeling good coming out of the show. The crowd was interesting… there was the shy girl who obviously came by herself and is obviously in love with Ben, dressed in all black, with a black backpack and black hoodie and gigantic black boots. She was probably a cutter and used to write bad poetry. Then, there was the overly-confident, baseball hat-wearing, polo shirt a bit too tight (to show off his massive pecs), California transplant wannabe jock with his blonder-than-blonde, booze bottle in one hand, glittery top a bit too tight (to show off her massive boobs), Fox-watching, California transplant wannabe girlfriend (who he’s probably cheated on at least once). Then, there were all those other guys who are probably in their own emo bands, who aren’t quite so pretty, and had their heart broken and stepped on by the one girl they gave their soul too. They all sung along pretending they were up on stage. And then there were all the other girls who wore scarves (even though it was a zillion degrees in there), and long skirts, and strange fuzzy sweaters, and clung to their other girl friends so as to avoid having to talk to the emo-boys. All those girls want to take Ben in and love him and cherish him, but you know that they probably are _exactly the same type of girl_ who broke Ben’s heart in the first place.

Oh, yeah, Ben is the lead singer of DCFC, if you didn’t gather that already. And, obviously, I’m making broad generalizations and buying into unfounded stereotypes. And, just so you know, I was in the emo-boy crowd (except I don’t have a band, which significantly decreases my chances at rockstardom).

Maybe one day I’ll teach myself how to play the guitar or something and then I can write songs and make the kids sing along. God knows I’ve got the material for at least an album’s worth of emo lyrics.

I feel like a kid in a candy store…

Music for Maniacs