Sharpen Your Bubble

The other day at the beginning of school, I passed a couple of my homeroom students in the hallway. One of them embarrassedly said something like "oh my gosh, Mr. Buck, I didn't mean to say that with you there!"

Not having heard what she said, I told her "I don't know what you said, but if it was that embarrassing you should probably be more aware of your surroundings. What I thought I heard you say was 'sharpen your bubble'."

This caused some giggling, and we soon began to come up with different meanings for the phrase "sharpen your bubble", as in, "come on guys, sharpen your bubbles!", or "we really need to get our act together and sharpen our bubbles". It can be an admonishment, or encouragement. I love it, and have been using it since. We've decided to try to make it become a part of the vernacular, so if you hear it being used anywhere please tag me back. You heard it here first, and if it becomes a commonly used phrase, we want credit given to my 2010-11 home room.

Don't You Forget About Me

Blogging hasn't been a priority for some time. Simply too much going on around here, and any free time is spent on Facebook. (I'm only half-joking there...)

At any rate, my Capstone is starting to seem surmountable, I feel good when I write, and who knows, with the current economy and state of our school budget, having writing skills on which to fall back might not be a bad idea.

In true procrastinator's form, here is an (incomplete) list of things I can't wait to do when my Master's degree is done:

1) Eradicate all evidence that Microsoft Word ever lived on my hard drive. For the purposes of being able to communicate with my professors, and trade papers back and forth, it has been necessary for me to keep using Word to write this paper. It is redundant and inferior, and I can't wait to throw it out the Window. (See what I did there?)

2) Blog. And write. And write, and blog. Maybe I'll write my book.

3) Play my guitar. My calluses are gone, but every now and then I still pick up my guitar and realize how much I enjoy playing. I want to put together a set of classic punk and new wave tunes that I play on an acoustic guitar, and play them for no one in particular.

4) Write some songs. I saw John Prine the other night. I'm always amazed how he says so much with three basic chords. I want to try it.

5) Ride my bike. My belly's too big, and my wedding ring won't come off my finger.

6) Hang out with my family. I have a great family, and they're growing up and changing by the minute.

7) Learn to use my USB microphone/recording studio.

8) Take pictures with my cool waterproof camera.

9) Live beside the ocean/leave the fire behind/swim out past the breakers/and watch the world die.

That's what I have for now.

I Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts

We took the trip to Portland last night to see Guster.  It's been a while, at least a couple of years, and I wasn't really sure how they would age.  As it turns out, Guster is still great.  As a matter of fact, Rach declared them her favorite band going.  They played a nice mix of old, new, and middle.

Everything about the show was a testament to why we loved them from the first time we saw them warming up for Barenaked Ladies, about ten years ago.  Since then we've seen them numerous times--I want to say six or so--and every time it's been like seeing old friends.

But last night the circle closed a little: a band called Jukebox the Ghost opened for them, and because I subscribe to the YepRoc Records mailing list, we were a few of the only people in the audience who'd heard them prior to the show.  It went like this: YepRoc sent out a link for video of Jukebox playing on Letterman.  I clicked, and was instantly hooked: ("Schizophrenia")


So after seeing that, being a netizen in good standing, I YouTubed them and found some of the songs from their older album: ("Hold it In")


I really enjoyed them, and Weather Lad REALLY dug them.  I ended up buying both albums on iTunes, and then found out that Jukebox the Ghost would be opening for Guster when we saw them!  At that point, I became more excited about seeing the opening band than at any time since Soul Asylum opened for the Spin Doctors.  But the coolest part of the night was just before the show, when we were finishing dinner at Mesa Verde.  I looked up and saw a couple of young, geeky guys headed to a table at the back.  It dawned on me that it was two of the members of Jukebox!  I said to the kids: "Those guys are members of Jukebox the Ghost, and they ROCK!"  They asked if we were planning to go to the show, and made a little small talk ("Hey, my name's Ben, too!"...really nice guys!), then went back to their table.  After a little convincing, the kids went and got Ben and Tom's autographs, and on the way out WL asked if they'd play his favorite, called "Lighting Myself on Fire".  They said "well, we hadn't planned on it, but we'll definitely think about it now!"

Lo and behold, about seven or eight songs in, and with us completely blissed out, they pulled out WL's request, which was no small feat since the song goes about six-and-a-half minutes, coupled with "My Heart's the Same".


So earlier I said the circle was closed a little.  What I meant by that is Jukebox the Ghost will be touring with Barenaked Ladies on their upcoming tour.  BNL was our first introduction to Guster.  Guster was our first (live) introduction to Jukebox.  It makes me wonder who we'll discover when Jukebox is a headlining act.  And they will be.

Don't Call Them Twinkies

With my Red Sox out of the playoff picture, and nearly all the other teams left on my short list of most-despised teams (though the Padres and Giants are fine, Texas is okay, and the Reds have suffered some horrible times since their last go-round) the Twins are my team this October.  Incidentally, I can't wait to hear Dane Cook utter those immortal words: "There's only one...Oc-TOE-berrr!" I hope that brilliant campaign hasn't been mothballed, even though I think it's been Dane's only paying gig over the past four years or so.

So it was kind of cool to hear the Baseball Project, a supergroup of alt-rocker/baseball fans (Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, Linda Pitmon, and Steve Wynn), had enlisted Craig Finn of the Hold Steady to write and sing a song with them.  The result is predictably contrived, as will be a band that sings only about baseball, but it is obviously written with love and with Finn's inimitable pop-culture referential style.  Whatever, for what it is, it sure kicks the hell out of "Play Ball",  and "Sweet Caroline".  I'll still put "Tessie" and "Dirty Water" up against it--or maybe along-side it--but I envy the Twins their playoff run and the love of one of their bigget fans, Craig Finn.  Click to hear the new best baseball rock anthem, in Hold Steady style:

Keep On Rockin' in the Free World

As much as my wife complains about the late nights and long drives, my wife is still a rocker at heart. If she weren't, she wouldn't bring things like this and this to my attention. Yeah, two of our favorite bands playing in Portland at the same venue in the same week. And she wouldn't ask me if I was interested, because she knows the answer.


(Fountains of Wayne-"Hackensack"...who knew Katy Perry did a cover? Who cared?)


(Hold Steady-"Party Pit"...they didn't play this when we saw them back in April...I may try to contact them and make a special request...)

Then I found out that the mighty James is playing the Paradise Rock Club in Boston on a Saturday night in September. We'll probably make that road trip as well.


(James-"Sit Down"...the guy singing isn't James. He's Tim. James is the drummer, but the band's not really named after him. Don't know why the photographer has to focus just on Tim, but the song is awesome and it's the one Rach and WB danced to in the recital a couple of years ago so it's even more special.)

So as old as we are, the music hasn't left us behind. I swear I could follow my favorite bands around for a living, even as I enter my golden years.

Ode to Alphonse

July is always reserved for the Tour de France, and with this being Lance Armstrong's last Tour, we've been treated to a great ad campaign from Radio Shack. I don't know whether these ads show up anywhere else except on the Vs. network during the Tour, but I thought I needed to do a post to commemorate my favorite ad campaign in a long time. Enjoy.









You're welcome.

Modern capitalism? Broken.

One of the news services I subscribe to had a story on oil companies destroying Nigeria, and how the gusher in the Gulf pales in comparison to what has happened there. Recently I heard the situation in the Gulf described as "the worst in U.S. history, and wondered how it compared to others around the world. The news is not good.

How do we change this? The divide between the ultra-rich and even the middle class has become so wide that, even though they are greatly outnumbered, the rich control the message and the capital. And they control the message to the extent that, even though he knows they are evil, the little guy still trusts the big companies that drive our economic system and believes what's best for business is best for all. The big companies can stomp on the livelihoods to pump up the portfolios of the stockholders, and thereby their own worth.

How did we get to this point in human culture? The problems are so deep and extensive, I can't even begin to think about solutions. All I can come up with is wanting less, but so many are convinced that our happiness lies in having more material things that I'm not sure those of us who get it can take an economic bite out of big business. We're afraid of promoting local food because it might upset Wal-Mart. And exposing the large corporations for the evil entities they are is likely to be fruitless as well, because they can manipulate the message to make themselves look good.

Disclaimer: Don't read beyond this point if you are uncomfortable with reading something that might be considered "socialistic".

I don't know what to do with this, and I thought it might be a place to start the conversation: how do we make things better? How do we fight the battle against huge corporations that aren't bothered by trampling whatever stands in the way? What are the main factors driving this situation? How do you fight back against a much, much, MUCH more powerful adversary? What tools that can be used against unquestioning acceptance of rampant capitalism, misinformation, and overwhelming amounts of money and capital?