Off The Record: Volume 9

Boy are YOU in for a doozy. It's late, I'm "waking up" in 3 hours, and I'm tired. You've been warned.

To begin, I will again apologize for the pansy that hacked my account and posted Macy's $500 Gift Card promos on your screen. I don't swear, yet even if by some chance I did, I assure you that I would spell properly— sorry folks, but ebonics just isn't cool outside of 8 Mile. I intend to delete it from each of your pages if you haven't already.

For my birthday, I saw the Arcade Fire live a few weeks ago. If you asked me what one album any living person should get their hands on in 2007, I would say Neon Bible. A rock band that could effectively combine drums, bass, and guitar with a pipe organ at full volume, an accordion, two violins, a baritone sax, xylophone, and a French horn at the same time (while actually sounding brilliantly amazing and profound) will get my vote for being worth it. I'm not a fan of indie music either, as most of it is atrociously half-baked. Yet the album is gorgeous if you give it a few listens... more on that theme in another day or two.

I've mentioned how much I love being married, right? Elise is amazing. Maybe it's the "husband/father" figure in me that is causing me to spend a lot of time now looking for my career after school. I know some great married folk who graduate from college without the slightest clue what they'll do next. I think that's cool—but not for me. I have always enjoyed having a really good plan and filling in the cracks with spontaneity. I like that since I was 15 I had a plan in mind: Eagle Scout, go to university for a year out of state to grow up, serve a mission for the LDS church in beautiful Santiago, come back to school and graduate. Somewhere along the way I ended up in a great Business School and, more importantly, married to the love of my life. I'm cool with that. I liked the road trips and randomizations included therein—too many to really remember. My memory is so bad that when people approach me and say they remember me doing something, I nearly always nod just to support them, caz I have no recollection of it happening.

Anyways, now the plan I've had is close to its final curtain. I'm looking at a few good jobs in the Bay area, the northwest, a few miles out of Chicago… I would be more specific, yet don't want MySpace stalkers to get me. I want to know my next step by Christmas.

On the "school" note, I'll be at some other university for my Master's in a few years. Think I'm a nerd for planning on school well into my 30's? Haha. Laugh now. Cry when I fire you.

I'm the only person I know who has not seen the new Harry Potter movie. Sorry if I won't pay $9 for a mediocre adaptation of good literature. I haven't watched a single one of them for more than $1, and don't plan to start anytime soon.

The Office? We've butchered it. You. Me. Everyone. Watch an episode from the first or second season and compare it with one of the last 4. The colors back then were blander, the characters less polished, the humor more abrasive…. more original. Michael Scott has stopped being uncomfortable and is just an annoying kid. I thought Jim was cool until I saw "The Holiday" and "License to Wed" and realized that it isn't as much that they're all the same character as it is John Krazinski can only play one role. Why don't we take a lesson from the Brits? Rotting teeth and pomp aside, they don't let a quality show frequently go more than three seasons because they know it will begin to stink. I'm just not convinced this season… or the nth… will be up to standards. Us Arrested Development fans need to accept the fact the show would have been bland if it continued. And while I still like Scrubs, the past two seasons have lost the spontaneity as well. My apologies for raining on your parade. Lynch me if you must, yet someone had to say it.

I like our apartment complex in Provo. We're the only college students here. Across the way from us is a family with three little kids around 7- to 12-years old. They're cool. They knock on our door and ask Elise if I could come out and play. When was the last time one of the little neighborhood kids knocked on your door to ask YOU to come out and play tag with them? Boo-yah!

I'm going to run the 26-mile Salt Lake Marathon in April. The race is two days after I graduate. Still not sure how I'm going to prepare for that, yet I appreciate your concern.

Why do I still have the same picture on my Driver's License that I had when I first received it nine years ago? Is that against the law?

OH! Almost forgot! Another music tidbit. Sigur Rós is glorious. The reason I like bands like them and Radiohead (again, more on that in a day or two) is because they understand that to make the best music, you need to be willing to make some junk. You cannot make an earth-shattering creation without failure along the way. Nobody ever got anywhere by playing it safe. How many bands nowadays will put out a risk on the same scale as Sgt. Pepper or Magical Mystery Tour? One of those was a hit, the other was weak sauce. Sigur Ros has made up their own dialect in which they sing their lyrics so that you as a listener can apply the message that most impacts you. I admit that 40% of their stuff is mediocre at best, yet admire the mediocrity because they're trying something totally different that I've never heard before. The other 60% is divinely transcendent beyond any band I can think of. I saw a Facebook group that is called "And on the seventh day, God listened to Sigur Rós." That basically sums it up. What they do with "Njosnavelin" is ecstacy.

And if you've made it this far:

Q: Lowell, why don't you have songs on your MySpace page anymore?

A: Because every time I visit yours, the very first thing I do is turn your song off. If I am relaxed late at night listening to classical, the last thing I want is to have a Country twang, Kanye West beat, or Weezer riff hit my ears. You ever have somebody's song on their page disrupt the music you're enjoying? I admire you and your artist, yet the experience of immediately rushing to turn somebody's song off before the song begins so I could enjoy their page is a major downside to MySpace. If I'm on here I'm probably in my own little "onda"** and am not looking to have that disturbed. All I'm asking for is a little Golden Rule here, folks!


Regards,

Lowell


**" Though there's no literal [Spanish-English] translation that really works, it loosely translates into trip, way of thinking, gig, thing, etc."