In which I’m overhung. (Shh. Be vewy quiet. Pweese.)

KR apparently stopped at every microbrewery between Ellensburg, WA and here and bought beer, so he had a tasting party at his house last night! I liked the Rodeo IPA.

I also liked eating J’s fresh salsa. Yum.

After nine, most of us wandered over to the HH, and the JCGB had a lovely public practice.

I bought myself two drinks, but drank many more than that. Some dude who remembers me from the Barnstormer days was buying. I danced with hot girls and sang blues and danced some more. I had a really good time. I got much drunker than I intended to.

Woke up dead this morning, but AmmZon made coffee ’cause she’s cool like that.

I need to rip the JCGB CDs to my iPod so I can learn backup parts to their originals.

In other news, I tried to register the email address goblinbox at gmail.com, but the username was TAKEN!!! (By this person.) Which leads us to your assignment, my babies. I want you to teach to me – or make up, if necessary – words for these conditions:

• Sudden interest in an idea, concept, or word, which blooms simultaneously and in seemingly unrelated areas. (i.e. The sudden, simultaneous popularity of certain words all over a country. The simultaneous invention of the same thing by unrelated persons in different countries. The fact that the username goblinbox has always been available until recently.)
• The act of obsessively reading through all of a blogger’s archives in a single sitting. (Over at UF they call it a ‘productivity virus.’)

I want to talk about these ideas fairly regularly, but find the descriptions awkward. A single word for each idea would make me so happy! Plus I always want to increase my vocabulary.

In which I review an album because I think you should buy it immediately.

While there is a constant (and sometimes regrettable) stream of new voices bombarding we music consumers – American Idol alone, a show I make zero effort to watch, exposes me to more young singers than I ever wanted to hear – there haven’t been any truly remarkable new voices in pop in a long time.

Until now.

A few months ago, Vuboq sent me the two singles off of Mika’s debut Life in Cartoon Motion. I listened to them, absolutely loved them, thought the guy sounded like Freddie (who, in contrast, claimed no classical training at all), noticed the tracks were getting airplay on my local LP station, and then I forgot about ’em.

Last night I listened to the rest of the album, read the wiki entry, went to the website, listened to the podcasts, watched the vids of the singles.

And then I listened to the whole album. About six more times. In a row. And it’s fantastically good.

Of course Mika puts one in mind of Freddie Mercury, but that’s not a bad thing. He’s probably got a five-octave range, although he claims only three and a half. (That’s because in opera, one claims only one’s working range, and the song hasn’t yet been written that requires more than three and a half octaves.) His falsetto is amazing, and he sings perfectly in tune. He says in an interview that he didn’t discover Queen until his teens, but I find it interesting that he’s written his own ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ ode, called ‘Big Girl (You Are Beautiful).’ I couldn’t tell you what it might mean, operatically oriented gay vocalists writing songs about fat girls, just that it appears to have happened twice now.

1. Grace Kelly
2. Lollipop
3. My Interpretation
4. Love Today
5. Relax (Take It Easy)
6. Ring Ring
7. Any Other World
8. Billy Brown
9. Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)
10. Stuck in the Middle
11. Erase
12. Happy Ending

‘Grace Kelly,’ ‘Love Today,’ and ‘Relax (Take It Easy)’ are or are about to be the album’s hits. I don’t think any of the other tracks will get much airplay, but I love ‘Stuck In The Middle’ for its ragtime groove and ‘Happy Ending’ for it’s quasi-orchestral outro.

Most astonishingly wonderful is the bonus track from the Japanese release called ‘Your Sympathy.’ It’s a piano ballad with two vocal tracks. He does a half step interval… twice! Amazing, for a pop album! (While there are in pop music occasional chords with half tone intervals in them, they’re not frequent, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a two-part vocal harmony on a pop album that featured a deliberate half step interval.)

I don’t know how Life in Cartoon Motion will stand the test of time because the songwriting’s a bit trite in places, but this kid has got a fucking voice. He’s an absolute joy to listen to. He absolutely owns his instrument, and he’s not a black chick singing R&B in G – which is literally all we’ve had for a long while, he’s a bona fide pop diva. A diva’s Diva.

Mika is 23, and almost strangely wholesome for a nouveau celebrity. Beautiful, with his big brown eyes and curly hair, but not quite sexy yet. Earnest and eager rather than jaded and oversexed. Endearing. He’s an interesting creature and I really hope he continues to produce because I’d like to hear this voice in ten years.

Overall, quite refreshing. You should get this album.

In which I have joined a band! With my roommate, even!

At the divorce party, Truck and I sat in with the JCGB. And we liked it.

And not long after, Truck said, “We should join the band. For the summer. Like, for free if necessary, because it would be fun to do some gigs and stuff. And they’ve been asking us to join them for years. Plus we really like those guys.”

I said, “Well, hell yeah! Let’s!”

So today Truck called Rockstar and offered our services. Apparently the JCGB accepted. They’re booked for months, and are even opening for Blues Traveler at the Riverside casino next month, which is totally fucking cool.

Additionally, I’ll be recording backup vocals on a second Jonas album next month. After the investors are paid off, I might even get royalty checks from album sales! Which, you gotta admit, would be cool since I’ve never once been paid for recording. Gigs, yes, but not recordings. (Music is not a lucrative hobby when recording’s involved; even when you gig enough to pay for it you usually don’t gig enough to pay yourself for it. Most decent studios cost hundreds of dollars per hour, and while a lot of people make recordings at home all that equipment does have to be purchased.)

I feel like a musician again! Check out my music calendar:

I sent an email to the Band That Never Gigs and quit officially. I doubt they’re surprised. I never go to practice.

In other news, I’ve decided that I truly dislike online calendar interfaces and want a better one. Something that isn’t a total kludge. *wanders off to look for a WP calendar plugin*

In which this is what I’ve been doing on the tempooter all evening.

First of all, I’ve been playing with my last.fm account. If you’ve got one, be my friend. Yes, I listen to weird stuff. I’m cool like that.

Second, I installed the latest version of eyeOS here on goblinbox. You may sign up for an account, if you’d like. It’s a web-based operating system, one you can reach from any Internet-connected computer. I use mine to keep files: resumes, images, text files, reference. You can browse with the built-in browser, read RSS feeds, keep an address book, play chess… eventually there will be more apps for it. After you lose your data a few times, the idea of keeping stuff on the web seems prudent.

When I got home from work tonight I made a lovely garlic-tomato bisque, asiago/parmesan croutons, and a nice salad with olives and walnuts and things.

That is all.

In which… I don’t know. Something about work, something about how while I’m really really grateful to have a job at all, I’m bored and underpaid. And then some crap about the band.

I spent some time today reading manuals and trolling the boards at Postini; I’ve volunteered to administer the new spam filter here at work. It’s a bit of a pain because I don’t have access to the DNS or mail servers, but as this is the only technical thing I get to do I cherish it.

The rest of the time I’m a bookkeeper, which isn’t going to keep my interest much longer, and I’m still part-time at an introductory wage. I’m going to go register with a new temp agency later this week and see if I can’t pick up some incidental temp work here and there.

Right now I’m on hold with India. I’m trying to RMA a Netgear 8-port switch. You’d think I was trying to become pope or something; it’s already taken forever and I haven’t even gotten to the part where I have to pack and ship the thing (and hold onto the power supply WITHOUT LOSING IT until the new unit arrives). I’ve now spoken to three agents and the most recent informs me I’ve landed into the wrong queue and is transferring me back to a department I’ve already talked to.

Also, I hate my Polycom IP phone. Either it’s buggy or it’s just too different from the five hundred other phones I’ve used in business settings in the past 20 years for me to be able to intuit it. I’m always hanging up on people, losing calls, and swearing at it when its redial/incoming calls features don’t appear to work. And sometimes, for no apparent reason, touchtones don’t work, so that makes trying to get my voicemail or navigate menus impossible.

It’s overcast here today and I’m grateful, because yesterday it hurt whenever sunlight touched my sunburned forehead.

I have band practice scheduled tonight, but my enthusiasm is pretty low after going last week and learning that the band sounds worse than it did five months ago. The drummer was new then, and there were some mild tempo issues I figured would go away. But last week the tempo issues weren’t gone, they were worse. I’ve learned to trust my sense of rhythm over the years, and even though I’m “just as singer” when I realized the band hadn’t spent even a single chorus in the pocket after five or six songs, I had to say something. I mean, they were all acting like they weren’t noticing, like it was fine, so perhaps they’d rehearsed themselves into it so much they could no longer hear it?

The drummer was defensive, the guitar player was in denial, and the bass player seemed embarrassed but relieved. They didn’t seem to agree with my assessment, didn’t seem to want to talk about solutions, and ended up nodding vaguely and avoiding eye contact. I thought, You can nod all you like, but there’s no way you can go into the studio sounding like this and end up with a product you’d be willing to use as a demo.

As much as I love those folks socially, I don’t think I can be in a band that doesn’t groove – it’s all rock shuffle now, and even that would be okay if it were in the pocket, but it’s not. (Covering ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ is bad enough, but if you’re having tempo issues and the rhythm section can’t groove together, it’s just not worth it no matter how much you drink.) So now I’m feeling tense and nervous, because if I go and it still sucks I either have to say something and be the bitch or I have to not say something which will make me hate them. Gah! If only there was such a thing as an ego-free band, where one person could say, ‘There’s a problem with this,’ and the other would say, ‘Oh, okay. Do you have any suggestions to help me fix it?’

In which I’m at eight thousand feet.

Hi! I’m in Vail. Today I sat in an outdoor jacuzzi for an hour, while the clouds rolled in and it started to snow. Very few things in life are better than sitting in a jacuzzi out in the snow.

Right now I’m sitting in a gorgeous room, using the hand-drummer’s iBook G4 to post an entry.

It’s started snowing heavily in the past minute. I’m looking out the window, watching the snow fall and listening to the river gurgle by below. It’s wonderful and gorgeous here. The air – talk about prana.

I’ve emailed pix from my phone to my Flickr account; they should be up soon.

Off to rehearsal! The gig’s this evening. *smooches*

In which overdoing it is good.

I recently asked my brother Jayrob Jethro Cutlet Clampett Morgan Smith the Third (FEE!), as we were chatting about his new job via Gtalk, if he had any Pat Metheny I could have, as I’d been having a hankerin’ to listen to some Metheny.

He said maybe.
I said he should maybe upload me some tasty stuff to my server.
He wondered if he still had the usr/pwd.
I said they hadn’t changed.
He said okay, he’d upload me some jazz and stuff.
I said way cool, dude, thanks.

Today I logged into goblinbox via FTP and looked into the folder I’d told him to use. He’d uploaded 476.6 MB of music for me! That’s 476.6 MB while still zipped, bitches!

On the subject of DRM – which we weren’t on, but whatever – you know what’s stupid? What’s stupid is that if he, my brother, Jayrob, took his lawfully store-bought CDs and duped them and mailed them to me it would be legal, but giving me the same content in this format? Is probably illegal.

The mind utterly fucking boggles.

Anyway, man I love my brother, that fucker.