carried away

Nickel Creek & My Father, The Genius

Most people won't say "Blue Grass" when you ask them what kind of music they like, but there's something about it that's irresitible. Who didn't like that song from "Brother Where Art Thou"? 2 good documentries today on Sundance. One was based on the young, 20-something, blue grass group Nickel Creek – a trio of brother (guitar), sister (violin - or is that a fiddle?), and a non-sibling (cool-ass looking mandolin). Hearing their rendition of Nirvana's "Lithium" was all I needed to get me hooked... on the band's music that is. A triumphant story of some passionate, clean-cut, music-loving kids.

The other movie was "My Father, The Genius". Its a documentry a father asked his daughter to make about him. The guy, Glen Small, just happens to be one of the architects that founded the renown architecture school SciArc. From the movie's website:

Her father has always called himself a genius; Lucia Small wonders if he isn't just suffering from an overblown ego. My Father, The Genius explores the precarious framework on which a career and family are built. How does a man dedicate his entire life to "saving the world through architecture," yet cause so much damage at home?

Touching movie especially if you tend to sympathize with the mad-artistic-genius type. Apparently Small is bitter and frustrated having never achieved the fame his counterparts in architecture have. All the while he let his relationships with his family go to hell. At one point Small says of the women in his life, "Women are so controlling and yappy", and he tells one of his daughters "I could have been a genius if not for you kids." Uber-cool architecture though.

Man in Black

currently listening to:
Personal Jesus
from the album "American IV - The Man Comes Around"
by Johnny Cash

Ocean Size | Jane's Addiction

wish i was ocean size
they cannot move you
no one tries
no one pulls you
out from your hole
like a tooth aching a jawbone

i was made with a heart of stone
to be broken
with one hard blow
i've seen the ocean
break on the shore
come together with no harm done

it ain't easy living

i want to be
as deep
as the ocean
mother ocean

some people tell me
home is in the sky
in the sky lives a spy
i want to be more like the ocean
no talking
all action

-Jane's Addiction

Article: Alone with the Man in Black

[Link found via Fancy Robot]

I found this post that links to an article about how a meeting with Johnny Cash inspired a woman to quit her job and go after what she really wanted in life.

Alone with the Man in Black

A good article to add to your collection of good articles.

That Close

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss,
and lose and start again at your beginnings
and never breathe a word about your loss...

...Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
and which is more, you'll be a man, my son

— Grandpa Simpson via Rudyard Kipling

blue

For the Rest of You

Apple's iTunes Music Store goes Windows yesterday. Now the rest of you can see how the other 3% lives.

Also, see also; iTMS Link Maker

iMpulse

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Linus and Lucy

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Personal Jesus

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Your Cheatin' Heart

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Where I'm From

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Ocean Size

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Feelin' Alright

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You Wear It Well

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HOWL by Ginsberg

HOWL by Ginsberg

(Also, check out the link at the bottom of the poem.)

A Book for Winter Reading

There is a reoccurring entity in Native American storytelling that can take the shape of a crow or another animal like a spider, but usually the character is a coyote. Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter by Barry H. Lopez is an amalgam of tales based on the coyote that come from a number of different tribes. Part of the (oral) tradition of Native American storytelling was to tell these stories "only after the first killing frost and before the first thundersorm—that is, in wintertime as defined by nature itself." These were not meant to be "life lessons" of any kind, but rather for entertainment during the long, harsh season. The book contains 68 very short (1-3 page) stories about the coyote who is sometimes triumphant in his adventures, and sometimes really stupid. He is at every turn, however, pretty funny.

In books of this ilk the coyote is usually seen as a wise, hero type or if not that he is seen as a trickster. The interesting thing about Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter is that its probably truer to the culture of the Native Americans as they didn't see a need to recognize a distinct difference between "good and evil". These are stories from a people who didn't profess to know so much about their natural surroundings that they felt they had to dominant it in some way. These people simply lived in accordance with their environment.

You'd be surprised by the subject matter of these stories. In one tale the coyote is mad at his mother-in-law so he takes off his penis and throws it at her. In another he stops to talk to some onions who asks the coyote not to eat them. The coyote defiantly eats all of them and then suffers flatulence and diarrhea the rest of the day. In another he finds himself trapped inside a log he has hidden in and the only way he can get out is to take his body apart and stuff himself through a small hole piece by piece. When he puts his body back together he's missing his intestines because the Crow ate it, so now when he eats anything the food keeps falling out his anus. Its wacky like that.