Turnover

First let me say that I really loved "Love", the Cirque show that the bride and I went to see last weekend. It was brilliant and my opinion on the whole bizarre european acrobats, while eerily spot on, was nonetheless broadened by their beautiful performance. Some of the performers walked about in the audience pre-show and let's just say I was made a little uneasy by their presence. Not only do they "stay in character", you kind of get the sense that these people are always this way; they are their character. It's like the time that I worked at Halloween Haunt at Knott's Berry Farm and noticed that all of my fellow employees were as scary out of costume as in. I often found myself thinking, "Wow, you really are a vampire!"

Now on to a completely different subject...USC Football. They lost today to Oregon State 33-31 and I really am not as upset as I thought I might be. When they lost in the Rose Bowl in January it was like someone had bagged on my momma, punched me in the gut, fired me from my job, and then stole my cd collection only to burn it in a bonfire rather than to marvel at my excellent taste in music, all in one day. It was terrible. I mourned for weeks. Still to this day it hurts, almost 10 months later. I also still remember watching the Cal loss in '03 (USC's last Pac-10 loss prior to today) in a sports bar in Phoenix, because I was there for a convention, which I ditched to watch that heart-wrenching game.

But today is different.

Now of course today wasn't for the national championship like the Rose Bowl vs. Texas. But if the rankings were to be believed, USC was in the hunt for yet another national championship, having been ranked 3rd in the BCS prior to todays game. But I knew better, and have thought that USC was overrated the whole season.

I just have never felt right about this team. There is just something missing, maybe a few things actually. I really don't like them. It is hard for me to say this, but I don't think they are done losing. Of course I recognize that I was spoiled with the previous USC teams that played for 3 straight national championships, but I really don't miss those teams. Pining for the good ol' days is not my issue.

Ultimately it comes down to the quarterback. Football is a team game, but there is no doubt who is the leader of the team; the QB. I can't stand John David Booty, USC's QB. This came as a slow realization. Little by little the confidence I had in Booty after the opening game against Arkansas dwindled as each week he and his team seemed to escape defeat rather than achieve victory. After the Arizona State game two weeks ago, which USC barely won 28-21, no thanks to John David Booty, who had 2 turnovers resulting in 14 points for ASU, I said to myself, "I just don't like John David Booty." And it is safe to say that today's performance (another fumble and interception) didn't improve my view of him.

So what do you do if there is someone you don't like at all leading your favorite sports team? Well the beauty (and the curse) of the college game is that everyone has to run out of eligibility sometime.

Beatles Song of the Week 5.0 and 6.0

So today you get a two for one, or really last week's song and this week's song together.

This is a special edition of BSOTW, because this weekend my bride and I will be seeing the Cirque Du Soleil performance of Love in Sin City! I have to say that the only way I would ever go to a Cirque show would be if it was themed around Beatles music because, quite frankly, European acrobats scare me. In all honesty I am a little apprehensive about the whole thing because there is just something about circus-type performances that rub me the wrong way. There is a reason that the words "circus" and "freak" seem to go together so well. Who knows, maybe I will have a different opinion after the show. However, the fact that the theater was built specifically with this show in mind and that George Martin, the Beatles producer, was involved on the musical side of things, makes me very excited to see it.

Anyway, with all that in mind, my Beatles songs of the week are Golden Slumbers and Carry That Weight. If you are familiar with Abbey Road then you know that these two songs blend in together and essentially form one beautiful piece of music.

I love the lyric from Golden Slumbers:

Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles await you when you rise
Sleep pretty darling, do not cry
and I will sing a lullaby

These are words of comfort and reassurance. Singing lullaby's reminds me of my grandparents, who would sing to my brother and I when we would stay over at their house.

Golden Slumbers then leads into Carry That Weight, which in turn harkens back to You Never Give Me Your Money, creating a musical inclusio for the last run of songs on Abbey Road. Now here is a big if, but imagine if Lennon was never killed and somehow, someway the Beatles decided to do a reuinion tour, or even just one more live performance. And imagine they played live that run of songs from You Never Give Me Your Money to The End.

Sometimes I think about what it would have been like to see the Beatles live, without European acrobats.

When bands die

It has been too long since I last posted. I still owe you, the faithful reader, a Beatles song for last week and it is coming time to declare one for this week as well. My lack of attention to this blog is not due to apathy but rather just plain ol' busyness. I have a lot of reading for school, which even though it is now 11:43 pm, I should be doing instead of blogging. Man it feels good to be a slacker student again. I will do Carl Jung, who said "Hurry is not of the devil, hurry is the devil", one better by saying "Busy is the devil." I think the two go hand in hand.

Anyway the occasion for my writing is that I have found out that a very good band has broken up. Acceptance, which released an album entitled Phantoms last year, broke up in August, after their lead singer decided to leave the band and get a "real job." Why am I only now finding out about this? Well, because they announced the break up in a blog on their Myspace, and you already know how I feel about that place (if you don't check out the archives!). Myspace has become the source of information distribution for many artists, which I understand because they are "connected" to the fans so easily through their page, but folks like me, who don't have their own Space get left out, because bands are neglecting their standard websites to maintain their Myspace. I'm not kidding. Go to their website. It makes it seem like Phantoms is just now coming out.

So, knowing this, and being tired of wondering when the next Acceptance record was going to come out, I finally checked their Space yesterday and found out the bad news. I wonder what a reasonable mourning process is when a band dies. I really like music, so is it ok for me to be sad about this? I mean truly sad? I really was looking forward to another record from them and now all I have is Phantoms, which will now have this "Man this record is good but I wish I had another Acceptance record" stigma attached to it. I feel the same way with "Till we Have Faces" by Noise Ratchet. There needs to be another Noise Ratchet record after that but no, that's all we get.

Oh well I can always listen to the Beatles. Which reminds me...

Sufjan Stevens at the Wiltern

Monday night my bride and I and two of our friends went to the Wiltern in Los Angeles to see Sufjan Stevens in conert. I literally haven't been the same since. Music really does have the power to change people, and Sufjan's music is very powerful. I'm still deciding if it was the best concert I have ever been to or not, but the fact that I can't decide doesn't mean I think it wasn't as good as it could have been, it just means I have been to a lot of concerts. That makes it hard to choose the best one.

They say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." That phrase is usually quoted to state that there is no objective way to measure beauty. But at the concert on Monday there was this tangible sense of beauty. I mean it was real. You could not only hear it but you could feel it, touch it. And I got the sense that I wasn't the only one beholding it, that everyone in the room was feeling as beautiful as I was. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but does beauty from time to time take on a form that becomes so overwhelming that everyone has no choice but to behold it?

These are the words that come to my mind when I try to describe the Sufjan Stevens concert.

A couple of my favorite performances from the night...
The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us
The Dress Looks Nice on You
He Woke Me Up Again

Beatles Song of The Week 4.0

Two of Us which is on the album Let It Be.

It's a great driving song with the repeated line "We're on our way home, we're going home."

That's all I have to say about that.

Beauty and Commerce

This is the most beautiful commercial I have seen in a long while. It just gives me the chills when I watch it. The song, which is called Half Acre and is by a band called Hem, is so beautiful and haunting. I love that Liberty Mutual chose to send this beautiful message with their advertising money rather than try to sell me something I don't need in the first place.

Watch the video and then go do something kind for someone else.