Best Song Ever: All My Friends

Sometimes the stars align. There's so many factors that can hit right to make a song "good" or even "great." Rhythm, melody, instrumentation, lyrical meaning, relatability, nostalgia, etc. etc. etc. Each of these factors gives the listener their own personal experience when they listen to a song and they experience can be positive, negative or anywhere in-between. I can understand that for others "All my Friends" may not hit all the right notes. But for me, everything went right.

link first
Full Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDRLW748j68
Music Video(edited): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2V_ZT-nyOs

"You spend the first five years trying to get with the plan, and the next five years trying to be with your friends again"

This is the elevator pitch for us 20-somethings. It's all about transitions right now and the future is uncertain. We want to maintain those friendships we've been kindling our whole lives but we still write "willing to relocate" on our resumes. What's the balance? It's easy to put friendships aside as we flesh out the rest of our lives but I'm not convinced it's necessarily right.

"I wouldn't trade one stupid decision
for another five years of live"

University is a pretty good time to make mistakes and I definitely took advantage of that. The three dumbest things I've ever done linger in my mind with what-ifs surrounding them. But it's nearly a sin to complain about the college experience when it's such a unique and fantastic time in life. I can't say I wouldn't take anything back, but it wouldn't be much.

"We set controls for the heart of the sun"

Now, we're moving at lightning paces. In college, I often joked about becoming a "real person" post graduation. Well here we are living in our real house, paying real bills, going to our real jobs with our real responsibilities. This is about as real as it gets. The difference for us "young professionals" is that in a couple months it could all go out the window. It's something to appreciate, though. This sort of instability will only last so long and we should enjoy it, frightening though it may be. The top of the roller coaster is the best part after all.

"It comes apart, the way it does in bad films"

Things go wrong. Not just day to day problems, but the real shit. Where you want to be, who you want to be with, what you want to do, all that stuff can fall apart at the seams as you watch. It's good to have a plan, but it's also good to know your plan can fail magnificently.

"If I could see all my friends tonight"

I can't even begin to articulate what my friends mean to me (friends=you guys). I'm the busiest I've ever been and each day is critical in it's own way, but there isn't a day I wouldn't drop it all to see all my friends. Hell, even one person would be enough. And I believe my priorities are 100% correct here. Jobs come and go and so do people, but real friends are hard to come by. The Poker Nights and Hamham/Packpack times make up so many of the best moments in my life.


I could write a paragraph about every single lyric in this song but I'll spare you that. I feel the song's flexible enough that each person should be applying it to their own lives in different ways anyways. You can appreciate the actual musicality for yourself too, I can only pretend I know something about that stuff for 127 songs.

Thanks for reading bros

BSE? Endgame

Well, here we are at the end. For some reason I've decided to wait over a month to finish this thing up so sorry about that.

lemme give you the scores up to this point
Caitlin: 7+4+4=15
Ian: 6+4+4=14
Drew: 7+4+0=11
Mike: 5+4+8=17

Each round was worth 8 points total with the value for each individual match doubling each round (ie. R1: 1pt per match, R2: 2pts per match, etc.) So right now we have Mike in first with Caitlin and Ian close behind. Drew didn't predict a finalist so he is out of the running with the lowest score. Caitlin chose Day in the Life as her champion so she is also out at this point.

So now we have Mike with Modern Leper predicted as the winner and Ian who predicted All my Friends as the winner. As such the outcome of this whole thing depends on who wins this final match.

Drumroll please
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The Champion : All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem
Runner up: The Modern Leper

Congrats to Ian! I shall be sending you something soon, is your address still the one in UNC?

Why did Modern Leper deserve to be here?

I'll keep it short and sweet for this one.
Modern Leper is the number one played song in my iTunes. Of course that means less now that number is maxxed out at one on my new mac. But it was also true on my PC clocking in at 200~250 plays. Keep in mind that this song was only released in 2008. So on average I played this song every fifth day.

As you know I'm a champion for lyrics and The Modern Leper hits that nail on the head. It's a song of self-deprecation to the greatest extremes. As you can pick up from the title the singer regards himself as a leper and uses that metaphor throughout the song to great effect.

"That limb that I have lost, it was the only thing holding me up"

The tunes are quite kicking for a song that's so down on itself. When the Hammers saw them at The Blind Pig they had one of the best shows I've seen there. It's hard to make a song like this one danceable but they somehow achieved it.


Why did this song deserve to be here?
Well in some senses it didn't. I believe the true finals occurred when Losing My Religion faced All My Friends a couple rounds back, but thats what you get when you do random seeding. But Modern Leper 100% earned its position here.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu2TPvtOTEw


Be back soon with All My Friends

Where to start?

Here I am in Grand Rapids, living in the real world. Well, sort of anyways. It's kind of like a job, except I don't get paid. We've worked out a plan for my compensation, all my rent and some of my food is paid for courtesy of Momentum (the company providing FoodCircles with its seed money) and in 8 weeks, if I'm still here, I'm looking at about 5-8% ownership of the company. In this first week I've been incredibly busy. Most of the week has been consumed by introductory events and meetings along with a couple informative ones about topics such as intellectual property.

I spent today attending the Tedx event. If you're unfamiliar with Ted and Tedtalks, it's just a series of presentations where everyone just talks about something cool. What I didn't know about Ted is that it's a networking hotbed. There are 3 breaks and each one is over an hour long and during this time everyone just goes into the lobby and gives each other business cards. Each person had "I innovate _____" on their name-tag and having "I innovate Android apps" as my name-tag opened a lot of doors for me. I have 5 people who I need to follow up with, 2 of which told me about jobs they'd have for me. Where were you guys 3 months ago?

Some people thrive academically at the college after a poor performance at high school. The more open environment works for them and they come into their own. I'm starting to feel like college didn't work for me but 9 to 5 does. I don't think it's because I'm not setting my own schedule or anything like that, I feel it's because the things I'm doing actually matter and others are depending on me. University always felt like it doesn't matter how I do as long as I learned the important stuff and got a passing grade. But here, I want to achieve big things.

Our house has no furniture. No couches, no tables, no TVs, no dressers, no rugs, no microwave. We didn't even have a shower curtain up until yesterday. My room holds a fold-out bed that's about as soft as the floor and only slightly cleaner. I have a bedside table that houses my keys, wallet, etc. I keep my pants and shirts hung up in the closet and my socks and underwear in a suitcase on the floor. Much of this arrangement is temporary but since I won't be in Ann Arbor for at least a couple of weeks it's going to be a long temporary. To top it off, we don't have internet and we won't have it until the end of the week. To keep myself busy I bought several movies on the cheap at meijer. Tonight's feature was "The Legend of Bagger Vance." Tomorrow I've got "The Warriors" lined up.

This isn't how I pictured my post education world. I never had a large desire to attempt entrepreneurism. Now that I'm here, I'm not sure what I would take given the choice between this and a job in corporate America. In any case, there will be time for job security and paychecks later in my life. For now I can focus on learning, networking, and making something cool.

P.S. The BSE? will be done soon, I know the winner and I've written part of the entry. It shouldn't be more than a week. (assuming I get internet soon…)

Odd future

I guess I'm a poor interviewer or something. That doesn't surprise me, I've always been low key in my tone and a 'man of few words.' Neither of those attributes fill the ideal candidate role very well. As a result, each interview I do is a battle against my own nature. This tends to result in everything just feeling slightly off.

I have, however, found something to do after graduation and it came from a most unlikely source. In my mobile phone programming class I've been working with a small start-up to develop an android app for their idea. It's been going real well and they just got funding to continue their work. So I'm going to stay on the team after class is over. I'm not sure where I'll end up but it seems I could live pretty much anywhere in MI as there will only be weekly meetings. So maybe I'll stay in AA but more likely for now I think I'm going back to SJ. While there I'm going to keep applying to jobs and hopefully land something more stable after the summer ends.

So it may not be ideal money wise (My only paycheck might come in the form of equity) but I'll be doing what I like to do. Mobile apps have really been a source of enjoyment for me and I'm glad I get to make a job out of it, even if it's temporary. I also plan on developing my own apps as well (One with Mike and Drew too) so it should be a fun summer, even if I don't make a dime.

In poor taste?

If Hitler had a cat he would name it Mein Führry Friend.

BSE? Semifinals

Much like the real March Madness mine also extends well into April and I too am in my final four. While we’re talking about NCAA I would like to extend a “suck it” to Drew and Ian for getting whomped by me this year in our HamMadness tourney. UCONN! UCONN! UCONN! I can feel my pride bars rapidly leveling up as we speak.

Semifinals Match 1

Victor: The Modern Leper – Frightened Rabbit

Defeated: No Woman, No Cry – Bob Marley

Why did this song deserve to be here?

I’ve been misunderstanding the lyrics of this song for years now. This isn’t too strange of an occurrence but the difference here is I usually like my own version of the song better. Maybe that’s just because I’m used to it that way, maybe not. Some examples are the lyrics in Beta Band’s Dry the Rain (“I will be your light” vs. “I will be alright”) and Twilight Sad’s Cold Days From the Birdhouse (“Where are your manners?” vs “Where are your medals?”)

Now I never mistook any of the lyrics in No Woman, No Cry but I certainly got the message wrong. As you can imagine, I thought it was a song about scorning the fairer sex in order to not be hurt. Instead Marley’s meaning is closer to “No Woman, Don’t Cry.” The whole song is about how Marley remembers his life in Trenchtown. There are so many good lyrics in this song and they’re oftern very good at pulling on heart strings.

“Then we would cook corn meal porridge
Of which I'll share with you”

“My feet is my only carriage
So I've got to push on through”

“In this bright future you can't forget your past”

“Ev'rything's gonna be alright”

A lyrics as simple as “Ev'rything's gonna be alright” rarely seems like it’d be something so good. But Marley’s genuine tone makes this repeated line in the bridge the best part of the song.

The style is of course Reggae with heavy organ playing counter melodies with the focus on Marley’s voice. There’s a sweet slow guitar solo in the middle too. Reggae’s not exactly a big genre but this song appeals to absolutely everyone.

Why did it lose?

Mike’s been hitting the Modern Leper hard. If you had asked me if it was going to be in the finals I would’ve said no so I don’t know how he knew. I suppose I’ve tired myself out a bit on No Woman, No Cry as it’s one of the songs I feel like I’ve grown up with. My dad was always a big fan. That said this was incredibly close, as I’m listening to the version linked below I almost feel like switching it up. But as soon as I listen to Modern Leper I know I’ll feel the same way about that. It’s always hard to pick one of these songs, they all deserve their credit.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGqrvn3q1oo (This is a really awesome live version (but not the version on Legend))

Semifinals Match 2

Victor: All My Friends-LCD Soundsystem

Defeated: Changes – 2pac

Why did this Song deserve to be here?

Mike likes to make fun of me for when I rave about people who say “I like all music except for country and rap.” My usual argument is that it doesn’t make sense to “cut yourself off from a whole genre of music.” I repeated that particular line several times and throughout the latter years of college Mike tended to apply it to different situations partially to irk me and partially to agree with the point. For example “How can someone not like beans? It’s like they’re cutting themselves off from a whole genre of legumes!”

All that aside, it really does bother me when someone says they don’t like all of a genre. Periodically in my life I’ve heard people say they don’t like rap. If I’m anywhere near a computer I will make them listen to this song. “Ok, well I liked that song but I still don’t like rap.” Ok, whatever.

I don’t know where to start with this song. 2pac picked the perfect sample to along with his rap. Changes always did feel like a 90’s version of the very 80sish The Way it Is. Those cheesy drum synths are gone and replaced with hip-hop beats. 2pac gets some very talented back-up singers to fill in the gaps as well. It’s all very well produced.

Of course the lyrics are the star of the show. Let’s just look at the first couple lines of the song.

“I see no changes wake up in the morning and I ask myself
is life worth living should I blast myself?
I'm tired of bein' poor & even worse I'm black
my stomach hurts so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch
Cops give a damn about a negro
pull the trigger kill a nigga he's a hero

Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares
one less hungry mouth on the welfare”

What can you even say about something as powerful as that? It doesn’t need any analysis.

Why did it lose?

Gotta go with the gut.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL5sdu3pNrU

MODO

This is a M:tg blog but I promise I'll keep the jargon to a minimum.

So recently I started playing Magic Online. It's another way to sink money into a game that already takes about 50% of my spare cash. It has been extremely enjoyable so far and the more drafts you win the more you can play for free. Of course every draft requires 2 dollars to play in addition to the prizes you can win from a draft. In that sense it's a lot like playing poker at a casino, you can come out ahead but the house always takes a share. If you sell off the "cards" you open you can usually make back the money you spent, so luckily this nonsense isn't too expensive.

As there are prizes on the line people take this shit as SERIOUS BUSINESS. Most people you play online won't say anything or just give a friendly "gl" at the start of the match. Others are not so civil about the whole business. One guy I was about to beat decided he'd rather log off and force me to wait for him to time out than concede.

My favorite time was when I attacked some guy and he prevented all the damage from my worst creature. He then said "Whoops! I clicked the wrong thing, good game." This was weird off the bat because he obviously wasn't dead yet just looking at the state of things. Then I figured out he was deliberately lying to me in order to kill my best creatures without me realizing his plan. I've bluffed in magic before and played like I could do something I couldn't but never have I just lied to my opponent. That's a whole new level of skeez. I promptly killed him after that.

One guy I played had a username of HankYu. Despite Cong's egging on, I managed to resist saying "Hank Yu for a good game."