Non-Sequiturs

Sweet baby Jebus. This is what I want my body to look like. Perfect.

Cutie bear.

I wish I had abs like him.

Slightly racier than I normally post, but that chest makes it worth it.

Just perfect.

I'm always a sucker for chest hair.

It's ok Ginger football player. Come get a hug.

I completely despise American Idol, but I might have to watch if Jason "Wolf" Hamlin makes it far.

Drool.

I have something he can fill up.

Love that sneaky grin.

Beautiful stomach.

Handsome hunk.

Why yes, yes I will.

I just want to touch Varitek's ass once. Just once.

Another beautiful furry belly.

Wet and furry.

That's just hot.

Wet and cute.

While I like a well sculpted physique, I tend to really like guys that are muscular, but with a slight belly. Bonus points for the fur.

Such a sexy pic.

More abs I want.

Perfect.

Facial hair, check. Furry chest and stomach, check. Nip piercing, check. Tatts, check. Puddle of drool beneath me, check.

Yes.

Furry and oiled up.

Le sigh.

Sexy strawberry blonde.

What are you going to say there, stud?

Gabe Crisp from metal band Whitechapel. Grrrr. Goes into my list of hot bear bassists.

Yummy. I think this guy was in a pic from Non-Sequiturs two weeks ago.

Why doesn't my body look like this?

The best for last; the most handsome man in the world.

What's better than posting these pictures of beautiful men, is all the stories I get from friends telling me which one's they have fooled around with.

Don't speak to me when I am at the urinal. It is just weird.

It cracks me up when people around my age (40+) complain about current music being too loud/harsh/noisy for them. When did some of my friends become their parents? If the music is too loud, you are toooooo old.

Who knew drone master Tim Hecker is kind of foxy.

So is Berlin-based producer Scuba.

I think donuts are the new cupcakes.

Liam Neeson has become such a badass action star.

I would like some people much better if they were outside the range of my peripheral vision.

Log Cabin Republicans puzzle me. They appear to be the only group I know who wants to be included in a club that hates them.

I was informed by my partner that I'm weird for listening to music while reading my book. Not really sure how that makes me weird. It doesn't take away from either pursuit. It really means I don't pay much attention to lyrics, which is never my main focus anyway.

Well, yeah.

If you are going to have "professional" photographs taken of you, make sure your clothes fit perfectly.

It's always interesting seeing who someone you dated ends up with and they are the complete and utter opposite of you, and then you have to say what the hell were they dating me for?

To correct some mistakes made by a client on some documents, I had to use a typewriter. That was a blast from the past. How we ever got anything done without a word processor, I have no clue.

Should I be told I have to wear contacts or go blind, I will likely go blind. I can't stand putting anything in or near my eye. Even putting eyedrops in is like torture.

Sigh, yes.

Wouldn't it be horrible if penises didn't get larger when they were hard?

I can't lift weights and have my iPod on; it distracts me too much. Although, if I am doing cardio, I have to have my iPod or I get so bored I want to kill myself.

Even Cyclops' have eye trouble.

Lyrics Rattling Through My Brain

"Calling out a wave dear
Calling out a wave will be your grave
This will last your life dear
Ocean is a boy who wastes his day."

Hospitality
"Julie"

Waiting in a car
Waiting for a ride in the dark
The night city grows
Look at the horizon glow

Waiting in a car
Waiting for a ride in the dark
Drinking in the lights
Following the neon signs

Waiting for a word
Looking at the milky skyline
The city is my church
It wraps me in its blinding twilight."

M83
"Midnight City"

"I see you look around
You're staring, staring out to sea
I feel them pulling down
You touch my hand, it all goes away
Don't hear a single sound
But I feel your breath in front of me
With every kiss, I drown,
I feel my body fading to dreams.

A Place To Bury Strangers
"My Weakness"

"There goes my girl
Into the chapel
Now she's walking down the aisle
And her man begins to smile

And I shake shake shake like a leaf
And I'm lyin' lyin' lyin' through my teeth
I'm a bowl of bruised fruit
Inside a chapel of shiny apples

Tear up the photograph!
Cause it's a bright blue sky
Tear up the photograph!
Cause it's a bright blue sky"

We Are Augustines
"Chapel Song"

Appealing Things

Shoes on clearance at DSW
1Q84
Hospitality
Errors
Getting things back on track
Sprite Zero
Cooking salmon perfectly
68 degrees in February
The utter joy and stupid fun of The 2 Bears

Annoying Things

The Stranger's Child
La Roux cancelling Coachella
The grumpy, cigar smelling man at Starbucks every morning
Being charged a $25 fee for having a prescription refilled from my doctor prior to my office visit
Projects ending abruptly
Dealing with the Lowndes County Superior Court's office; they are the pickiest people in the world.

Coachella 2012 Countdown: Porter Robinson - "100% In The Bitch"

While Sunday is looking to be a massive clusterfuck of too many artists playing around the same time, I am hoping Porter Robinson will not be a casualty. I've really been enjoying his EP Spitfire.

Hospitality: Hospitality - Album Review

Hospitality
Hospitality
Rating: Grrrr

As I push further into my 40s, I begin to look back at certain times of my life with fondness, sadness, and sometimes outright embarrassment. My 20s, just out of college, and far wetter behind my ears than I would like to admit, were awkward, exploratory, and full of so many mistakes I have lost count. Would I go back and change any of it? I think we all would like to alter certain things, but honestly, based on who I am today and where I am, I am ok with how things turned out. I certainly wouldn't want to go back and be 20 again, shudder. I am much more centered and at peace with myself now, that to go back would be almost too painful. Which makes me feel very paternal towards the debut album from Brooklyn three piece band Hospitality, which chronicles the day in day out goings on of twenty-somethings in New York, and all their yearnings, fumblings, and musings. You want to wrap these characters up in a blanket, serve them hot cocoa and tell them it will all be ok. The band itself, fronted by singer/guitarist Amber Papini, borrows liberally from a wide range of different bands, Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obscura, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, and The Clientele for example, but what they lack for in originality they make up for it with superb song craft. Tight arrangements and interesting background flourishes mesh well with Papini's fragile voice and her insightful, wry lyrics.

"Friends of Friends" the girl wants to stay in alone and warm from the cold streets of New York, whose crowds and bustle only remind her that the guy she's seeing has a girlfriend coming back in town. The jaunty horns and sprightly beat hide the pain that is just beneath the surface.



"Liberal Arts" could be culled directly from the Stuart Murdoch songbook. The character ruminating about all "the trouble of a B.A. in English literature /instead of law or something more practical" and feeling aimless and adrift without benefit of a "trust fund, daddy, or doctor."



There is a wistfulness to the songs here, the characters thinking they know what they want, but changing their minds minute to minute, always in a hurry to get their life started. The dream pop of "Sleepover" perfectly suits the stars in her eyes narrator, who moves from lover, to pretend marriage, to imploring the mate to "Lock the door before you leave."



"Argonauts," one of the loveliest tracks on the record, feels like a quest to get out of a bad situation, "lock the key and throw the door away/something told me that I should leave right away/don't forget the bad, don't forget the bad."



"Eight Avenue" struts and bobs its head to a peppy beat and interlocking guitars, the song has the characters, older, but seldom wiser, looking back as I have on their 20s, but with a sweetness and fondness for their naivety.



None of these descriptions is meant to imply that the album is dour or far too serious. There are plenty of pure pop tracks. From the too brief guitar stomper "The Right Profession," the horn propelled "All Day Today," and the jangly ode to a former co-worker "Betty Wang" with the gloriously goofy way she sings "if you leave New York/I don't care/ I don't care."



But while the majority of songs on Hospitality keep a limited world and personal point of view, there are hints that the band should not be too easily pigeonholed. Papini shows a deep sense of mood and imagery in her lyrics. In "Julie," the haunting accordion, ukulele, and strummed guitars, builds slowly under Papini's whispered vocals, adding a ghostly wash of ambient synths, subtly underscores the impressionistic tale.



Hospitality is an auspicious debut for this band, showing that they already have the chops and hooks to make more than an indelible impression on listeners. There is plenty of room for their sound and vision to grow, along with what should soon be a sizable fan base.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and peaks one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.

Coachella 2012 Countdown: 71 Days! The Weeknd - "Montreal"

The Weeknd - Montreal (unofficial music video) from High5Collective on Vimeo.

Definitely my must see for the festival. His three mixtapes released last year are completely brilliant. Whether or not they translate well to a live setting remains to be seen as he as only performed live a few times. I love this song off Echoes of Silence, though this video is pretty disturbing, but in a well made way.

Porcelain Raft: Strange Weekend - Album Review

Porcelain Raft
Strange Weekend
Rating: Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It

London by way of Rome singer/songwriter/musician Mauro Remiddi has trafficked in many musical areas; composing music for films, providing backing music for the tap dance show 'Vaudeville 2000', been in two bands (Three Blind Mice and Sunny Day Sets Fire), and now releases his debut album as Porcelain Raft, Strange Weekend. Based on some singles I had heard, and the general buzz I was getting about this release, I was really expecting a more dark take on chillwave or Balearic pop. My first few listens of Strange Weekend sort of struck an odd chord with me. There was a slightly disjointed flow to the record that kept me at arms length for the longest time, and it wasn't until after many listens where the charm of the record took hold. While the biggest touchstones are likely chillwave bands like Washed Out and Toro Y Moi, Porcelain Raft doesn't settle into any one groove throughout the album. In fact, the more closer touchstone would be dream pop bands like Beach House, who create patchworks of gauzy analog synths and hazy guitars. Remiddi's startlingly androgynous voice is another key point to the album, it being somewhat impossible at times to tell whether the voice is male or female, to the point, at first, I thought there were two singers.

The best tracks on the album mine the dream pop aspect, floating on sparkling synths, fuzzy guitars, languid vocals, and primitive sounding drum programming. "Drifting In And Out" sets the scene beautifully in a rush of airy keyboards and Remeddi's strange, lilting voice.



"Put Me To Sleep," rises from a fog of drifting synths and guitars, getting more and more insistent, building into a dense tower of sound. Guitars getting twisted and turned, the drums reaching a martial furor.



"Unless You Speak From Your Heart" could almost be a lost track from Beach House, with its chorus of analog synths and calliope-like rhythm. The song is such a quirky, inventive pop song, its charms are difficult to resist.



The remainder of the album is a mix of half-acoustic numbers like "Shapeless & Gone," "Picture," and "The Way In" that tend to bring the flow of the record to a halt. Not that they are not lovely songs and show a softer side to his work, they lacked the adventurousness and quirkiness of the more upbeat tracks.



Working better are tracks such as "Backwords" which use the acoustic backing as a base, but transcends the limitations into something starkly beautiful and haunting. The subtle electronic haze creates just the right hints of melancholy, bursting forth like a flash of light for the chorus.



"The End of Silence" brings to mind the nostalgic reveries of Youth Lagoon, vocals buried deep in the mix over a heavy mist of gentle synths and fuzzed guitars.



Strange Weekend is a very promising debut that stuck a chord with me, especially when Remuddi allowed his creativity to really shine through, balancing his more eclectic side with the pop side. That tension creates some wonderful tracks on here. But when the balance is off, you get either too quirky, or practically unmemorable, and thus the flow suffers. Given a little more time and patience, he is bound to release a classic album soon.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and peaks one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race

Coachella 2012 Countdown: 72 Days! M83 - "Midnight City"

I will admit that even I am a little tired of this song, but damn it, each time I hear it, I still get goosebumps. Performed live it transforms the crowd into a sea of jubilant smiles.

M.I.A.: "Bad Girls"

Reworked track from M.I.A which originally appeared on her Vicki Leekx mixtape. Produced by Danja, this track is set to appear on M.I.A.'s next album due sometime this summer.