This Guy Falls Down

Arnold!

I will be completely honest and say that I was not exactly thrilled when Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California. And it probably wasn't entirely fair. I was basing it more on the "what is our society coming to" kind of argument more than anything about Arnold's leadership or his politics.
Well, he stepped it up for me tonight, big time. It was fascinating to hear him share about his childhood in Austria, living in fear of Communists. And it was moving to hear him talk about what a beacon of hope and opportunity America was for him.
The speech wasn't without it's fair share of comedy. Arnold started his speech saying that he once did a movie called "True Lies", but that the title would have better suited the Democratic Convention. And later he referred to someone as an "economic girly-man" to much laughter and applause.
So Arnold has stepped it up a notch for me. Maybe I'll celebrate by renting Kindergarten Cop from the Netflix.

Look out all you Republican types

You do not know what is about to hit you. Come this Wednesday night, your face is literally going to melt off as the rock is going to emanate from the stage and permeate every corner of Madison Square Garden.
"What in the world is this guy talking about?" You may be wondering right about now. We are going to perform at the Republican National Convention this Wednesday night at approximately 9:20 EDT. I don't know if it will actually be televised or not, but I figure at the very least they'll show us playing in the background while they interview some political dude. It should be pretty cool.

Move over Elmo

Kids' music is hard. Obviously, you want something that they will like and will listen to. That's a given. But I'll be honest - I could go the rest of my life without hearing "Elmo's World" again and I'd be just fine. Well, I just discovered an album that's coming out called
Mary Had a Little Amp which should please both father and child. It features rockers like R.E.M., Moby, Maroon 5, and Bonnie Raitt doing either their versions of kids' songs or entirely new tunes directed at little ones. It's coming out August 31. And it won't be coming soon enough if you ask this guy.

Globe of Blogs and Thrasher's Blog

I'll be honest. I don't surf the 'Net as much as I used to. As a result, I haven't been stumbling across any exciting websites. Tonight, I surfed for 5 minutes and stumbled across the Globe of Blogs, a launching pad of sorts to find weblogs related to a particular topic. No Third Day blogs, although one could make a case that you're looking at one right now. No arena football blogs. (sighs) If I only had the time - I'd have one of those up and running...
One weblog of note I found was Thrasher's Blog, which features Neil Young and all the music he inspired. Well, Thrasher, sign me up. I'm on board. I think you're on to something.
More weblogs to come as I find them.

When the rain comes...

I lose my mind! Yesterday, my wife and I are loading up the car to drive from Atlanta to Nashville, as we often do, considering that I live in one state and play in a band which is based in another (long story!). Well, just when I step out the door, a cloudburst comes down. The Weather Channel likes to call these "pop-up" storms, and for good reason. In my haste, I drop a bottle of laundry detergent and it spills all over the driveway. Then I proceed to leave my guitar in the rain the whole time I'm loading the car. The guitar is fine, but the case gets soaked, and it makes everything else in the car get wet.
We get a mile down the road when I realize that I have forgotten something. I go back and get that, and we leave again. Then we get two miles down the road and I can't find my cell phone. I go back and look and look, but can't find it. As you can imagine, I'm libel to bust a spring at this point (I'm already off-balance). At that point, I realize my dog also got wet. And when dogs get wet, they smell. So I'm fighting the nausea the whole way home. And I still can't find my cell phone. But hey, what do you do?
The upshot is that the driveway where I spilled the detergent is totally clean now...

My reading habits

I usually try to read about thirty books a year, but I don't really keep up with it. The beauty of having a weblog, complete with sidebar lists of what I've read in the last year, is that I can easily keep tabs of how many books I've been reading. I recently celebrated my one year anniversary, and in that time I've logged twenty books on this site. That's actually a little deceiving for a couple of reasons: one is that I often start or even read most of a book and then realize that I don't want to finish it. Another is that I often have a book or two that I'm rereading sections of as a refresher. And I have a few books that are broken down into daily readings that I will read gradually over a long period of time. I don't do reviews of books that I don't like, because I don't want to waste my or your time.
So taking these factors into account, I think I read about 25 books since last August. Not bad. But I would love to step it up. I always have (literally) about 30-40 books that I am wanting to get around to, and now is no exception.

The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli (rating N/A)

As I believe I mentioned last week, I've been assigned by a group I'm in to read a couple of books. The choice to read the second book was dictated by a chapter in the first. Well, the problem I had was that I haven't gotten the first book from amazon yet, so I'm not sure why I was supposed to read the second. I'm not going to give it a rating, because that just wouldn't be fair (The Carter Family made some important music: just because most can't sit around listening to it wouldn't mean it would deserve a low rating...). In fact, I'm not even going to review it at all. I am completely neutral on it. Just know that I read it, and maybe my life has improved because of it, or maybe not. I'll let you know after I've read The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership. Maybe then I'll "get it".
On a side note, this was my first eBook experience. Kind of ironic, reading a 500 year old text on my PDA, yet oddly appropriate.

Netflix - 4 months later

Not too long ago, I recommended the Netflix service as a great alternative to video stores. Well, how is it now that I've been using it for a few months? I still highly recommend it.
I haven't found myself renting quite as many movies from them as I thought I would, but it still makes total sense. I don't have to rack my brain at the video store to remember what I wanted (I don't even have to GO to the video store), and I'm still all about missing the late fees. And best of all, I'm carrying a few movies around with me at all times just in case the mood strikes. I've been able to watch movies on the bus, on a plane, or at home, and don't have to worry about turning them in on time.
I'm doing the plan where I have five movies out at the time, but you can do three for about $20 a month. Considering that I used to buy one or two movies a month just so I could watch them once or maybe twice, I find myself saving money more often than not.
So give it a shot and let me know what you think.

You Are What You Read

At a recent meeting of a mentoring group I'm a part of, we were shown a cool book called The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership by Steven B. Sample. I haven't gotten my copy yet, but I have it on order from Amazon. It looks fascinating.
There's an entire chapter called "You Are What You Read". I can't agree with this more. It echoes the sentiments of John Cusack's character in High Fidelity: when you meet somebody, a big part of seeing if your personalities are compatible is how your tastes in books, music, etc. line up. So it's not much of a stretch to say that what you read (and watch, and listen to) are an extension of, if not inherent to, your personality. Therefore, we must be careful and very deliberate about what we read. Although I haven't yet read the book, Sample seems to have some innovative views in this area. He breaks literature down into a spectrum based on longevity. Magazines, newspapers, etc. are at the far left, while centuries-old texts such as the Bible and The Odyssey would reside at the far right. Sample recommends spending as much time as possible hanging out towards the right end of the spectrum (he calls these works "supertexts"), as these are the works which have most infuenced history.
My mentoring group is going to start reading some of these works, starting with The Prince by Machiavelli. Whether I stop reading all those music magazines is another story...

Major League Music

Way back in 1996, I went with my fellow Third Day comrades to a Blue Jays game. All of the players had chosen songs to play when they came up to bat. At the time, that was a novelty. Now it seems like every team, major or minor, is in on the action. And there's even a site where you can figure out what song different players use when they step up to the plate.
If you were a big league player, what song would you use? For me, the humor factor would be the key. You pick a funny song and make your opponents laugh. Then, after lulling them into complacency, you impress them with your baseball prowess (of which I, of course, have none). So my pick would be "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". I racked my brain and couldn't come up with anything with a greater laugh factor. What would yours be?
(Thanks to Ben over at Occasionally Wright for pointing out the site.)