The Storm That Wasn’t and Other Stories
January 17th, 2003 • Friends / Introspection / Movies / Music
A big thank you to Courtney for a most excellent late Christmas present — U2’s Best of 1980-1990 (with B-Sides… it’s all about the B-Sides). Less than a month after getting the new best of, I now have both of them. I know some would consider me a heretic for not owning U2 sooner than this point in my life and I would pretty much agree with them. As someone recovering from the listen-only-to-"christan"-music mentality, it’s taken me a while to be able to appreciate good music. But I’m getting better.
It’s kind of ironic that it took me so long to appreciate U2, since they are only one of the most spiritual bands ever. However, the mentality that was drilled into me was one of only accepting music that was, I now realize, often very shallow. I’m not going to get into a big rant about the christan music industry here, but so much of it is shallow, derivative crap. Not that the rest of the music industry is somehow hugely better, but, yeah, anyway… must… not… rant… ok, I’m better now.
As I’ve recovered from my previous mentality, I’ve enjoyed music so much more and found many groups that now hold incredible meaning and enjoyment for me that I would otherwise never have discovered. Like what, Adam? you ask. Well, Sigur Rós, Spiritualized, Daft Punk, and as I’ve been saying, U2.
Anyway, other stuff… there was this big hullabaloo today over the huge snowstorm we were supposed to get… and we got less than an inch. Lousy weather. I enjoy the cold weather much better when there is actually some benefit to the cold weather. I guess all the snow-haters are happy about this one. :-)
My roommate Steve and I are trying to figure out where we’re going to live after the lease on this apartment runs out in April, so we’re going to be doing some looking around. There’s this one house that we’re hopefully going to be looking into soon, don’t really know that much about it, but it might be nice, we’ll see. On the one hand, living right next to work is incredibly convenient, but the rent here is kinda pricey for the small space and it would be nice to have a house where we could be loud whenever we wanted to… like all our… parties… with the… ladies… yeah…
Dave and I are going to be hanging out tomorrow night and watching Moulin Rouge, which I’m looking forward to. It’ll my second viewing of that most excellent movie.
♫ U2 - With Or Without You
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The Martin
January 17th, 2003 at 2:09 pm
You know, you could have given me credit for living with you next year. At least, I thought I was until you posted this webpage update.
Ah well… Whatever comes, I will be able to complain about it later.
adam
January 19th, 2003 at 1:42 am
Hey everybody, Andy is going to be living with me and Steve next year! There, better? :-)
John Collins
January 20th, 2003 at 4:33 pm
What the heck? You're a U2 convert? Silly, silly boy.
You should see if you can borrow some copies of their older stuff. Anything off of "The Joshua Tree", "Rattle & Hum", or the "Boy" albums is really good. Bono's voice is so…. in tune with the lyrics. Anyway.
PHP? Bah. php…tis a silly lingua.
I prefer TCL….or do I?…nah. i guess not. I like php. Better than ASP or any of the other web languages out there. Certainly better than PERL! grep \/v\this!\ er yeh.
so anyway. glad to hear your friend is ok!
ps. mesa no like blog. blog backwards is golb. And that can only be some funky, smelly kind of a cheese.
adam
January 20th, 2003 at 5:51 pm
Good to hear from you, John. I'll IM you sometime (if you're ever going to be online for more than about three seconds, that is :-).
ney
January 24th, 2003 at 10:36 pm
Well, let me just begin by saying that I'll probably forget to include something in here and read it later on and think, "hey, look what I forgot" or "this isn't very eloquent". That said… Personally, I didn't listen to "Christian" music a whole lot growing up, at least not voluntarily. A few years ago I basically stopped listening to whatever I was listening to and listened to only "Christian" music. Beforehand, I seemed to think, "I 'shouldn't' listen to this, so I will". After some (constant) self-evaluation that I'd say is still in progress and probably always will be to some degree, I'm now kind of realizing that there is a lot of crap as well as a lot of good stuff on both sides of the tracks. I like music from the CMI along with "secular" stuff, too. I enjoy Deliriou5? and Belle and Sebastian. Whatever. I think there's a balance to be had there and that it doesn't have to be all of one and none of another. I'm not trying to boil down all the music in the world into 2 types, but you know what I'm saying. Having been exposed to "Christian" and "secular" music I am learning to appreciate elements of each. Now that I've labeled everything: why can't we just listen to what moves us; what we like? So, that's what I have to say on this whole music thing for now. And I agree with that John fellow. Old school U2 is good, especially "The Joshua Tree"… powerful stuff.
adam
January 26th, 2003 at 2:22 am
Thanks for the reflections. I wrote a paper last year on the subject of "Christian" art (referencing Madeline L'Engle's excellent <i>Walking on Water</i> fairly heavily) that you might be interested in reading. Remind me some time and I'll hoook you up.
ney
January 26th, 2003 at 12:25 pm
Holla if you hear me. That sounds like some good reading. I could hook you up with my copy of "The Joshua Tree" if you want some good listening. We could trade… paper for cd, b/c that's the same. =)