Strange Pulse

I’ve been listening to Opeth for 15 minutes, and I look at my cd player and realize I’m only 3 minutes into the second track.

What do you love?

Elijah turned 12 this weekend. It’s a trip, not having any more kids in primary. It seems wrong now that Daniel and I are both in the primary, but none of our kids are! (Elijah’s moved up into the Young Men’s program at church.)

My tradition for Memorial Day when we lived in Seattle was to visit my brother’s, sister’s, and nephew’s graves (all in the same cemetery). My sister’s birthday was May 28, and so it seemed fitting to go to the cemetery Memorial Day weekend. I didn’t even think about her birthday this year, I was so busy with everything going on this weekend.

We have a string of birthdays the end of May in our family. My niece’s is the 24th, Elijah’s and my dad’s is the 26th, my sister Jenny’s was the 28th, and then mine is next week, June 4. Plus, my little brother’s is June 24th.

I’m usually so busy with Elijah’s birthday I don’t even think about mine. But I’m not big on birthdays/holidays particularly. Although this year, I’ve given Daniel a list:

1. A new camera (won’t happen)
2. A mini-tripod (will probably happen–if I buy it myself)
3. A new computer (won’t happen)
4. Patty Griffin - Flaming Red (won’t happen)
5. My own PSP (won’t happen)

One year I got Elijah trick candles for his birthday cake. I don’t remember how old he was. But he lost his patience for trying to put them out very quickly. Can you guess what he did?

He spit on them.

Huuuuchhhhk, pfhoo.

Having a three-and-a-half day weekend is sooo nice. (I typically get half-day Fridays before a three-day weekend.)

Daniel’s parents were here for Elijah’s birthday. We tried to go down to the Newport Beach pier on Saturday, but of course there was no parking anywhere. So we went to Fashion Island mall for lunch and then swung by the Newport Beach temple on our way home so his parents could see it.

We didn’t take much time, so I didn’t really get to take a lot of pictures, but here’s a few quick ones I snapped.

This is the view from the lookout point when you first drive in (you can see Cat and Daniel to the right):

Cat and Daniel on the grounds:

This is where you enter:

There’s Moroni, facing east:

As viewed through the fence:

Eljiah didn’t come with us. But here’s Cat and Nathaniel:

No sleep till Brooklyn, huh? He looks like he’s been sleeping for days.

New Order.

I think this is my favorite New Order song–”Leave Me Alone.” Posted on the radio.blog.

I just noticed my little tagline under the title of my blog says I’m 36. I’m not, I’m 35. I think I updated it when we had our last wedding anniversary and figured I was a year older, too. But I don’t turn 36 for a couple weeks.

For some reason, I can never remember how old I am. Fortunately my birth year is an easy one to do the math on–I was born in 1970. So if it’s 2006, chances are about 50% I’m 36 (since I was born in the middle of the year).

I actually just had to stop and rethink that to make sure I’m correct. I am 35, right?

When I was in my 20’s I always felt like I was in my 30’s–we did basically skip our 20’s, we got married and had kids so young. When I turned 30 it felt good–finally I was the age I felt! Now that I’ve been in my 30’s for awhile I’m not sure how I feel. I think sometimes I feel like I’m still in my 20’s. I don’t feel like I’m in my 40’s, that’s for sure–but most people I know with kids the same ages as mine are.

We had an old friend come visit us last week for a few days. When we first met him, he was 16-18, somewhere in there. We were in our early 20’s. He was just a kid. I couldn’t believe it when he told me he’s 29 now. It’s funny how age gaps mean less the older you get.

Sort of. I think I’ll post more on age gaps later.

I’ve gone off about the billboards along the freeway a lot. But I went into downtown LA a couple times a week or two ago and the advertising on sides of buildings is just off the hook. There are huge advertisements painted on the sides of buildings. Like, at least 10 stories tall. One ad. 10 stories. You can see some of what I’m talking about here:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=hotel+figueroa

You know that scene in Shrek where they’re coming into the city and there’s ads everywhere, and it’s making fun of our consumerism-based, commercial culture? It’s particularly making fun of Los Angeles. That scene always bothered me–because while it was making fun of how commercial we are, it was also promoting certain brands and products.

Did you know that in Hawaii, they don’t allow big signs anywhere? They have a lot of restrictions on what signs businesses can put up–even a “We’re Hiring” banner can get you fined. They limit it because it makes things nicer for tourists. Who wants to go to Hawaii and see a bunch of signs and ads everywhere? Who wants to go to the beach and see this?

Or this?

Yeah, I know, I shouldn’t complain. After all, I work for an advertising company.

Tom has an interesting post up over at Imaginary Brazillian Revolution about how he’s pretty oblivious to lyrics in music. He also mentioned in comments on another post of mine how he doesn’t notice drummers. And it got me wondering what he DOES hear in music. :)

So I thought I’d open that up for everyone. What do you listen for? Is it the melody? Mood? Certain instruments? Lyrics?

I used to be purely a lyrics person. It was really all I could pick out in songs. I focused almost entirely on vocals and lyrics. I got bored listening to instrumentals. I think the turning point for me in beginning to pick out and notice other things was when I discovered stoner rock, and Queens’ of the Stone Age first album, in particular.

Something about how their songs were put together made me notice things I never had before–like all the individual instruments, all at once. I could hear what the guitar was doing, what the bass was doing, and what the drums were doing. It was amazing to me. Maybe it was because of the song stucture in “If Only”–with the opening riff being the closing riff, and the chorus being off balance from the rest of the song–I don’t know. But that’s where it really started for me.

Stoner rock and doom metal is all about the riff, and I think that’s what got me away from concentrating so much on vocals and lyrics. I think Isis was probably the first band that is pretty much instrumentals that I got into. They do have vocals but because they’re yelled/screamed/growled I hear them as just another part of/instrument in the song.

I’ll post a couple QotSA songs from their first album.

Why should I care what they say?

If you read any, who do you like, and why?