Potter, Stars Trek and Wars, Matrix all the same movie

I've felt this way for a while. I think Lord of the Rings can be thrown in there too. Modified version:

Once upon a time, Luke | Kirk | Neo | Harry | Frodo was living a miserable/uneventful life. Feeling disconnected from his friends and family, he dreams about how his life could be different. One day, he is greeted by Obi Wan | Captain Pike | Trinity | Hagrid | Gandalf and told that his life is not what it seems, and that due to some circumstances surrounding his birth | birth | birth | infancy | birth* he was meant for something greater.

* Whether through his family connection to Bilbo or some other unexplained power that allows him to resist the ring.

I'm happy to admit I don't really know what this Twitter thing is all about. For someone who was supposedly once employed in and involved heavily with technology, I'm remarkably behind the times. I remember when Twitter came out. I thought it was the same thing as text messaging, except free. I also thought it was yet another way people can get around having to actually use a phone and call someone to tell them what they're up to. I also thought it was just more data to firehose at people who are likely already getting firehosed with too much data.

At either rate, I'm glad to see this Twitter thing has caught on and found a market niche for itself. Not that I'm using it. Oh, no. I'm much too lazy for that. I only know for sure that it's taken off because I've finally seen it show up in my legal work. One of my clients wants to use Twitter to advertise. And we all know, once a communication medium is considered by businesses as a viable advertising tool, it's officially hit the bigtime.

Congrats, Twitter. Business want to use you to hawk their wares. You've made it.

I also think the political use of Twitter with the Iran election situation is impressive. I'm glad a culture is able to circumvent their oppressive political systems and use technology to communicate with the world. If Twitter has ever had to demonstrate its usefulness to the world and prove its meaning in life, this was it.

What, you've never lived in Oman? Never even been there? Would you want to know what happens when two charismatic and outdoorsy engineers (I know that's kind of an oxymoron) from Texas pull up their roots and move to Oman for six months for work? Of course you do. Go here:

Bree and Brian's Excellent Adventures

Remember my old friend Mr. Pinch Blogger? He blogged on this here blog for quite some time, and did a bang-up job of it too. Well, he's the one who ran off to Oman with his wife. See more of his witty writings at his new, Oman-centric blog.

CK and I are in Aspen for a few days visiting her parents, who come to Aspen every summer for one to two weeks. So far, we've walked around the town and looked at a lot of things and eaten a lot of food, which I've found is extremely taxing and has alerted me to the low oxygen levels at this altitude. CK and I found several cool pubs frequented by what appear to be locals and 20-somethings with nothing better to do than drink.

Today, our plan is to go white water rafting. Depending on how beat we are, CK and I may also rent cruisers and ride around town, or maybe go for a hike with her folks.

Other planned activities include: nothing at all, more cycling, more walking, more eating, and more drinking. It will prove to be a difficult and challenging few days. I'll keep you posted on our progress.

Hey Dallas readers-

If you have a Citibank credit card (or know someone who does), Sonic Youth tickets for tonight's show at House of Blues can be had for $5 plus an assortment of fees, for a total price of around $15 if you pay by credit card and choose to get your ticket by email. If you pay by credit card, you don't need to use the Citibank card to get the discount. You only need the last few numbers of the Citi card to activate the discount. After that, you can pay however you want.

Go here for Sonic Youth tickets.

You can also go here for other Live Nation tickets without paying any service fees, for today (July 15) only. If you want to see Aerosmith this Sunday, for example, you can get lawn seats for $30, with no service fees. I saw Aerosmith in high school and enjoyed the show.

This makes my fourth Sonic Youth show. The sound at this show was probably the best among any of the other shows I've seen. I've somehow managed to never own any Sonic Youth albums, except when I think I might have had the Dirty cd for a while, though it managed to disappear at some point. Whenever I see Sonic Youth, I only vaguely remember any of the songs but I tend to like all or almost all of them.

I think knowing the Sonic Youth songs is kind of optional when seeing them live. In fact, I think the shows are more fun not knowing what will come next when they start a song. Their songs are so diverse and dynamic that most of the fun for me comes from watching them navigate their way through the song. On the other hand, one of the last songs of the set was an "old song," and I really like it, and now I have no idea what song it is or where I can find it. I suppose I may cave in and acquaint myself with some of their older albums so I can better track how they progressed from noise-punk outfit to their current schtick of avant-garde borderline experimental indie rock.

My only complaint at this show was the lack of inter-song banter. Kim hardly said a word. Thurston joked around a little, and Lee chimed in, but there was no other audience communication. I don't remember very many Thank Yous, either, which I think is pretty easy to do.

Otherwise, they seemed like they were in good form and it was a fun show. If you get a chance, you should try to catch one of their shows.

PS - if you're curious, the other SY shows were:

8/02/02 – Stubb’s, Austin, TX
8/30/02 – Crystal Ballroom, Portland, OR (happened to be at the right place at the right time)
7/04/08 – Battery Park - New York, NY (happened to be at the right place at the right time)

I recently saw the documentary Hype!. I have a strange fascination with music "scenes" or "movements" that transformed a geographical area, music subculture, or entire music genres, and then disappeared. Hype! gave me the lowdown on everything I didn't already know about the goings-on of the bands that materialized in the Seattle area in the mid 80s to mid 90s. I've always known that "grunge" was a made up word, but now that I've seen Hype!, I have more of the facts of the so-called "grunge" movement.

If you in any way have an interest in learning exactly what happened in the "grunge movement," this documentary will more or less lay it all out for you.

The first big surprise I can tell you is that there really wasn't a movement at all. At least not an organized one. Any "movement" was the product of everyone outside of the "movement" deciding there should be a movement.

As you may or may not know, I maintain a list of every concert or music show I've ever seen (see link on right side of this page). I thought it would be cool to look at one day when I'm old cranky. You know, as opposed to 29 and cranky.

I decided to see who else keeps such lists. I found a few:

Sit. Stay. Good Blog.
Notthatanyonecares.com
Rock-revival.com

I'm thinking I should move my concert list from a Word document linked on the this page to this page itself. Or maybe create a separate page for it.

Yeah, it's a slow Monday morning.

I did some digging through boxes last night and discovered a ton of CDs I forgot I had, including three (not one, as previously thought) Sonic Youth CDs I didn't even know I owned. I'm working my way through Goo right now. It's all good. Every song. I know I'm only about 18 years late, but in classic Particleman fashion, I'm way behind the time curve but still totally hip. But not hipster hip. Just hip. The other Sonic Youth CDs I found were Experimental Jet Set and Dirty.

Other CDs I found were:
Sup Pop 200 (compilation)
Jesus Lizard - Shot
Babes in Toyland - Nemesisters
L7 - Bricks are Heavy
Bad Religion (two of the newish albums, which might suck)
Pulp - This is Hardcore
Mudhoney - My Brother The Cow

Get ready for some CD reviews of old CDs! I bought these CDs at some point in my life and forgot about them. I need to find out why I bought them, and why I forgot about them. And then if I still like them.

Today is the last day of the July Texas bar. Good luck to the bar takers! You're almost done. If you're anything like me, you will have made big plans to go get shit-faced right after the bar, but you'll actually go straight to bed.

The list got longer:

Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto
Fugazi - Repeater + 3 Songs (still looking for Red Medicine and Argument)
Deathray Davies - The Day of the Ray and Midnight At the Black Nailpolish Factory
Elvis Presley - #1s
Letters to Cleo - Aurora Gory Alice
Muse - Showbiz
New Bomb Turks - The Night Before The Day The Earth Stood Still
REM - Green
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Mother's Milk

Our shredder wants to make sure you don't try to stick your hand, or tie, into it. Nice.