Who cares if the last Good Music Monday was more than a year ago?! I sure don’t!
It’s Spring! Birds are twittering and floating on air currents, chipmunks are scurrying to hide from my cat in the front yard, and I’m listening to weird/really good music that sounds just like all of that combined! It just happened. There are a lot of howls and weird noises and references to animals in these songs. But it’s all good, so just listen!
Happy Monday! (Please let me know if you have any weird Spring music that I can listen to!)
2. How much longer is “the news” on TV going to be a thing? The internet is way better/more efficient/effective/faster/way better. Yeah?
3. If your Facebook doesn’t say you’re single, and it doesn’t say you’re in a relationship, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
4. There’s no way anyone can mess up painting with watercolors. Instant artist. Just add water!
5. My grandpa taught me when I was little how to quickly tell how many days were in each month by using my knuckles. I guess I do have a party trick! But life is sort of like my knuckles, too. Up and down and flat. Moving and falling and staying. Over and over. Searching, growing, laying silently in failure on the ground. Yeah!! Thanks, grandpa.
6. That might have been the best thing ever written. You’re welcome, world.
7. OK here’s an important life question that I’ve been thinking about: Why don’t boys/other people in general just somehow magically know that you want to hang out with them without you having to say something to them?! Isn’t this the modern age? Why don’t we have this technology? SPARRRTAAAA. (Also, I’ve never seen 300.)
8. Have you noticed this, because I have: Everyone’s current favorite movies of all time are all from Netflix! Yeah, I saw Ida, too. I get it. But what else? There must be movies you’ve enjoyed before you got your Netflix account, right? I mean listing those is just sort of telling me what everyone else is watching right now. It doesn’t make you or your movies interesting! We need a new source of information. There must be thousands of movies/great short films we’re just completely missing out on because we’re spending all of our time scrolling through huge lists of movie titles on Netflix, all of which we’ve already read the descriptions of and turned down multiple times weeks ago!
9. Here’s a really great video for you if you haven’t seen it yet. Hank Green, guys! He totally gave me a high five once. (AKA he’s a credible source.)
10. Listen to yourself talk with other people. Are you a kind person? Try to be.
1. Ok, here it is, 2015. Usually I’m bummed on NYE, in some kind of sentimental sad way. I don’t know, it just happens! Every year, like SAD. BUT this year, I felt so excited! Happy, even. Wow. You guys. This is either going to be awesome, or really terrible and tragic. Let’s go find out.
2. I have finally entered the “post-college” phase of my life. I mean, it only took a year and a half of actual post-college. I have been so busy (aka gainfully employed and interesting) before now, I had no time to think about (aka sleep in too late) my life now! You know? (Don’t worry mom, I’m working on finding a“real”job!)
3. At some point you have to stop trying to be brave and brash and instead do what is beautiful. What makes you happy instead of terrified. What makes you feel fulfilled instead of simply adventurous. What is “good” instead of “interesting”. Throw pillows and rugs instead of throw-stuff-in-a-suitcase. It’s ok if it feels right, right? More on this later…
4. Sometimes the worst thing for you can be too much of yourself.
5. SHUT UP. STOP TWITTERING ABOUT HOW HEARTBROKEN YOU ARE. IN SOME STRANGE VAGUE WAY. (and yet, at the same time: LISTEN TO ALL OF MY WHINY PROBLEMS!)
6. Selfies are over. Stop. Stop. Or I will be force to break your selfie stick over my knee. Watch me!
7. (Contd from 3, sort of…) When I was younger, (maybe 4 years ago or so) I loved to talk to one of my best friends about how people are so lame, how people get married, and all they want is that house, those annoying kids, and stuff. We loved to think that we were so much better, that we wanted more for our lives than that. We wanted to travel, to meet nice/cool people, to do important things. We never, ever wanted to settle down, to own a house, to be tied to some square chunk of land. Fast forward to now… we’ve done a bunch of cool stuff, we’ve met lots of nice people, we’ve started and are still trying to do important things. And we have more perspective, thanks to all that we’ve done, on the stuff that other people choose to do. Yeah, ok, sure, kids are cute. Yeah, marriage seems, well, it seems to work for you, we guess. Oh no, we still don’t think buying that house is a good life choice… anyway, what I’m saying is, is that we’ve changed our minds. Even if it is just a little. And we hate to think what our past selves would say about it, so we barely admit it to our current selves.
8. What do you mean, you saw me on OKcupid? No way. I saw you! (BTW your profile pic is really terrible. I mean, it probably is. It might be. Not that I’ve seen it. What are we talking about?)
9. What country this year? Vietnam or South Africa? Do I have to choose?
10. It’s all going to be ok! Especially when you think about global warming and how terrible it is, and how no one even gives a shit that the polar bears are dying, not really. Look, all of your other problems have now practically vanished!
1. How many times is too many times? How much is too much? How vague is too vague?
2. You know your life’s exciting when you find yourself researching how to keep your houseplants watered so they don’t die when you leave them for an extended period of time. My babies!
3. Maybe you’re not bored but boring.
4. So, the World Cup is pretty cool, eh? #American
5. I wonder if I’m annoying my apartment neighbor by playing Sondre Lerche’s Bad Law over and over and over…. oh well.
6. I get it, you have opinions. About everything. And you’re very outspoken. And you hate that other people have opinions. Because they’re always wrong. Or offensive. Or politically incorrect. Maybe you should just get off the internet, because sharing all of these articles and making virtual support groups for offended people is not going to solve anything. Or maybe you’re just bored otherwise?
7. He has brown eyes. Of course he does.
8. People on Instagram totally take some of those photos with like real cameras, right? It’s ok, you can tell me!
9. If you can go outside and look up and see blue sky, and if you can go to the grocery store and buy strawberries at any month of the year, you’re fortunate. Please feel fortunate, for me. The gray-sky, berry-less lady. Thanks.
10. Wake up in the middle of the night and smile to yourself and go back to sleep.
Ok, whatever, these guys are on “the radio”. I don’t listen to the radio, ok? It’s not my fault. Stop blaming me, sheesh! It’s just been awhile since I’ve heard an album that sounds this good when played as an album instead of individual songs. This is art, man! Or just good music. Which surprises all of us these days, right? Especially good music with good beats and good lyrics! And good accents. Do you know who I’m talking about yet? I’ll give you a hint. No, I’ll just tell you. Calm down!
Passenger
First of all, I don’t even mess around with bands if they don’t sing well live. Ain’t nobody got time for… well, you know.
I mean really, the words are so good. Are you listening? So Ed Sheeran/Bob Dylan or some other lovely combo.
One more. Check out their whole album if you haven’t heard it yet or if you don’t listen to “the radio”.
Something that’s sort of interesting about bands that become popular and then stick around for decades is that even though they’re still around, most of the time they’re really only still popular because of their past; because they’ve made some great music in their heyday, and they just happen to still be around and still strumming out tunes. I feel like if Elvis was still around, this would be the case: he’d still be swinging his hips or whatever, and his fans from the 60s would fill up his concerts and buy his new albums even though they might be totally different from “Hound Dog”. The same thing seems to have happened to Bob Dylan. I think his early music is great, and I think most people who are Dylan fans sort of casually ignore/forget that he’s pumping out new songs as well as charmingly reproducing his music from forty years ago. Speaking of reproducing (pun alert), Bob Dylan also made himself a son, who has gone on to make some lovely music of his own. So this Good Music Monday is a shout-out to father and son…
It’s Monday, and it’s summer, and it’s really freaking hot. Which reminds me of last summer, and this really cool band I saw that was the opener for another act in Detroit in a tiny, packed basement show. Usually you want openers to get off the stage as soon as possible, to get to the actual reason you’re in a tiny, sweltering, basement in the first place. But, sometimes, rarely, they’re so good you don’t mind their presence that much. That’s what happened when this crazy/cool/weird group took the stage, called
Youth Lagoon
With their music they put all of us in that basement in a weird and wonderful swaying trance-like state. It was pretty magical. For being in a trance, I guess.
Hey Infinity 