Juke! Box! Hero!

Ladies and gents, this is what a real jukebox looks like.

Repairing the happy flow of my morning routine.

Don't ask why but I find it therapeutic to wash dishes. I shouldn't, really. When I was bar tending at a sushi restaurant many years ago I was in charge of cleaning all the glassware and the constant thrusting of my hands in and out of water and then exposing them to the dry Chicago winter air would cause them to crack. They wouldn't heal for months. It was sheer agony. So you would've thought that would drive me away from the sink in later years, but no, it didn't.

In the last few years I've become an early riser. I was never a sleep until noon kind of guy, even when I worked jobs that would allow that schedule, but now I am up ridiculously early on a regular basis. And this quiet time is when I get some work done, start charging through the day's podcasts and settle in front of the sink to clean up the dishes from the night before. I go into a zone and I like it. It helps center me for the day to come.

Until a few months ago.

It was probably December when I noticed the water pressure in our kitchen sink was decreasing. All of the other faucets in the house still operated at full blast, but day after day our kitchen sink would grow weaker and weaker until it fell to little more than a trickle a month ago. I would still gamely try and do the dishes in our main sink since I was NOT reverting to doing them in the tub since that was just too reminiscent of college years when that would be the only receptacle capable of handling weeks worth of unwashed plates, bowls, cutlery and various cooking implements. But what was once a soothing affair began to turn dark, and my mood would worsen as the water's stream grew weaker and doing the dishes became a chore that no longer allowed me to escape to my happy place.

I kept hoping the problem would reverse itself since getting work done on any rental property can be a pain of scheduling and waiting but eventually I could suffer no more. We called our landlord and she told us to call her handyman. We love our handyman but he isn't always the easiest to get a hold of so it took another few weeks before he finally showed up at our door late last night with a brand new faucet. Ten minutes later bliss returned to our household in the form of a full, strong, streaming jet of water shooting out of the faucet of our kitchen sink.

I woke up at 3:30 a.m. today unable to sleep any longer. I just assumed it was because I had some creative stuff in my head from the 9-to-5 that just wouldn't rest until I got it all out. But now, I wonder, was it just because I was eager to finally do a sink full of dirty dishes and have it be a joyful affair instead of one fraught with darkness and despair?

Maybe.

Don't feed me the Swedish Fish!

Seriously.

KEEP AWAY!

See what I did there? With the whole "keep" thing? Witty, eh?

What a lovely holiday weekend.

This weekend had just the right amount of busy with a dash of adventure and plenty of downtime. I hope yours was just as good!

'90s jamz! Free beer! Get there early!

I'm DJing '90s Night at Beauty Bar tonight, and I am on SUPER EARLY! Like 9 p.m. early. However Old Style is supplying free beer from 9-10 p.m. for all that RSVP ahead of time. So RSVP! Right now! And I'll see you at 9 p.m.!

Psssst ... I've got something for you to do tomorrow.

This. JAAAAAAMZ!

"Call Me Maybe," now with more Fun.

Ever since I stumbled across Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" while looking for a Friday Afternoon Diversion a few months ago I've been hooked. It is so far my numero uno contender for Jam of the Summer (a.k.a. the Summer Jam). Hands down. And everyone is covering it, which doesn't bother me at all, especially when that everyone includes Fun.!

The simple life moments.

I, by no means, lead a simple life. Even tonight is complicated for me. Even the period of time after a long day at work, which is also filled with not uncomplicated endeavors, is filled with obstacles and things to navigate and schedule and solve.

So sometimes it's wholly fulfilling to throw a leftover barbecued sausage in the microwave, slap it into a bun and sink into the couch for a couple minutes of mindless TV. I don't feel guilty about doing that right now. Not one whit!

Snoozin'.

My day today was the exact opposite of this, but I'm a really good way.

EARLY WARNING: Tankboy is getting old.

So, unbeknownst to me, GalPal, Keep and Rudy have been setting this up for me. And I just found out about it. AND AM INCREDIBLY EXCITED! (And incredibly touched!)

Also, the "special guests" will be these guys.

The Fresh Prince still has it.

Truly.

I am exhausted.

So I mean it quite literally when I saw TGIF!

I wanna Djay too!

Last week, riding the train into work, I noticed this dude working a little app with turntables on his iPhone. I kept craning my neck to see what it was since it looked so cool. I could hear the results of his manipulations leaking out of his headphones and I wanted to make those sounds too!

I wasn't the only one entranced by this, since another dude walked up to the iPhone Dj and asked him what he was using. I couldn't hear the reply, but next thing you know one was giving the other a quick demonstration of how the app worked.

This went back and forth for a while until the inquisitive dude left the train. As I moved towards the door for my stop coming up next I couldn't help myself and also asked the iPhone DJ what the tool of his trade was. "It's Djay," he answered, "but it's spelled j-a-y. And it's so cool. You can just play with it for hours." And he was totally right.

While this in itself was a great little discovery what hit me most about the experience afterward is that three dudes who never met, and would never meet each other again, shared a unique moment on a train ad I suspect all of us benefited from it. I guess not all is dire and awful on the CTA.

Skrillex Watts

Going to see this guy tonight. Read GalPal's piece on him! And enjoy the video below...

Reggie Watts is Skrillex - watch more funny videos

Late night work session.

Working on stuff for both the 9-to-5 and other more entertainment-minded endeavors. I've been trying to spend more time reading--taking in topics both light and heady, current and historical--and it's having a positive effect on me. I tend to forget that the brain needs stimulus outside its own machinations in order to really be working optimally. I've been mildly obsessed with sounds from the past, primarily The Pixies and David Bowie. I find it reassuring. Even so , at the same time I've been sucking in ridiculous quantities of new music again. The upside is that much of it is good. The downside is that I haven't had time to properly process it yet so even a simple question like, "What are you listening to?" can trip me up and send me into a spiral where I grasp at artist names and my hands are met by smoke escaping through my fingers.

There are worse afflictions to suffer, I am well aware.

Ugh.

Awake again. The only thing worse than getting to bed too late, is faling asleep too early and then waking up in the middle of the night! Boo! So, uh, if you're up, what's up? I think Twitter and my friends on the West Coast's Instagram usage was tailor made for these times. That and thre chance to catch up on RSS feeds and save some time in the morning before I head to the gym. So when you're up in the middle of the night how do you pass the time?

TAL = HAHA

No time to post, so check out what happens when Mike Birbiglia and Terry Gross have coffee and more!

Out Uffie-ing Uffie.

Remember when I fell in love with Uffie, even though I never got a chance to see her on her first tour because she ran so late? Well, I have the same feeling about Kitty Pryde (although, jeebis, way to confuse shit by adopting the name of one of the most popular X-Men, right?). And her first video just came out around the song that has suddenly thrust her into the zeitgeist, and I love it most ly for the actual song, but also partially because she's wearing a Yeastie Girlz t-shirt. I wonder if she actually knows who they are or has heard their music? I hope so. I actually remember being in college back in the day when most albums from indie labels had to be bought through mailorder and I can still remember the day I got a big package from Lookout! records filled with loot I probably spent two weeks of paychecks on, and being really excited that one of the LPs within was the Yeastie Girlz LP.

Ah, a walk down memory lane. Anyway, enjoy Kitty Pryde's video below and if you dig the song, feel free to grab the MP3 posted below that!*


MP3: Kitty Pryde "Okay Cupid"

*I love the fact that even though she's blowing up and ran out of free downloads on her Soundcloud page, instead of just letting that play out until she could release a proper single she just posts her own Mediafire link to the tune.

My one word non-spoilerish review of The Avengers.

Shawarma.

Obscured view.

Yeah, I'm trying to remember where I took this! Maybe Gold Star? Anyway, I was just scrolling through my phone, saw this shot and thought it looked kind of cool. Sort of like standing behind a waterfall of words in a language I don't quite understand.

Not a eulogy, but a celebration.

Did you know The beastie Boys were supposed to be on the third season of The Chapelle Show? Neither did I.

[via]

This tour needs to happen NOW!

Cee Lo + Daryl Hall = pure magic.

They do a wicked cover of "Crazy" too, so check that out.

Hi there, nice to be with you, happy you could stick around. Like to introduce Tankboy, drums...

Keep posted a bunch of America's #1 Sweetheart demos, o if you ever wanted to hear what my drumming sounds like (and likely be somewhat amazed at the fact that Keep writes really catchy little tunes) dive right in!

#43,870 in a series of open letters to Google as they continue to screw up their products.

Look, I'm not the only one annoyed with your tinkering. What you did to Reader was inexcusable. And your Gmail "improvements" are anything but. Your continued ham-fisted efforts to force everyone into Google+ are pathetic. And your recent "update" to Blogger has made it useless if I ever want to do anything from a mobile device outside using your rudimentary Blogger App.

And you know what? It's inexcusable. And anyone that argues differently, especially under the "you can't complain about free tools" is a fucking idiot. I pay for all these services with all the personal information I offer to Google which they then use to make beaucoup dollars in selling their ads. I pay for all of this. And it's a deal I entered willingly, when the services worked well enough to warrant me opting in and helping up Google's profit margin. But lately they seem to have forgotten who butters their bread.

Google, your motto used to be "Don't be evil," but nowadays I'd settle for your motto being "Don't suck."

Queen of all she surveys.

This is a usual vantage place for Pickle the Kitten, partially due to the fact she's a little big boned. And the other day I caught her perched on a windowsill, a feat usually reserved for the much slimmer Sasha the Cat. The lesson here? Don't let preconceptions of what you're capable of keep you from accomplishing what you set your mind to!

#Wobble.

If you follow me and / or Keep on Twitter you've probably seen us tossing #wobble back and forth with each other. Now you can see what we were talking about.