A New Entry
I debated a while this morning about what to post. I seriously thought about whining about this, but I've already been pretty nasty to Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.. Besides, responding to that would be far too easy, and really not helpful to anyone.
Instead, I'm going to gripe about accuweather. Weather.com was down, so I went to accuweather, typed in my zip, and the whole page becomes purple. Butt-ugly purple. I could barely see anything. I know its advertising Nexium "the purple pill," but that just ensured that I will try as hard as I can to never buy Nexium and will continue to use weather.com (when running).
Moving on, I'm now going to talk about music. I've bought 2 CD's recently, John Mayer's No Room for Squares, and Norah Jones' Come Away with Me.
I really like Norah Jones' CD. I have no deep musical insight, but the CD has a great "feel" to it (for lack of a better word). Its the perfect CD to have playing in the background while you're sitting on the porch on a slow, hot summer day.
John Mayer's CD was a bit of a disappointment. Its a good CD, and I especially like the song "Why Georgia," but nothing really seems to stand out. There's no real transcendent quality to it that elevates it beyond the malaise of current pop music.
August 27, 2003 09:33 AMForget both accuweather and weather.com. I hate both of them because they are covered with adds. I usually use NOAA, the National Weather Services site. There are no adds and it is a lot closer to real time. (Right now it is 10:30 by my computer's clock and NOAA has rader from 10:27 whereas weather.com has rader from 10:10 and I can't even figure out what time the accuweather radar is from).
Pondered by bhuffine at August 27, 2003 10:33 AMMayer is a much better guitar player than pretty much any other band/person I can think of in pop music.
Pondered by gosey at August 27, 2003 11:04 AMI do like Mayer's CD. I guess I hadn't really paid much attention to his guitar skills (especially since I'm not a good judge). What do you think of the CD, overall?
Pondered by maphet at August 27, 2003 12:47 PMUm, I like it I guess. I don't really listen to it that much, but I enjoy it when I hear anything off of it. JL really likes him a lot, so I end up hearing him quite a bit, really. As I said, I think he's an above-average player, and I think most of his songs have a good feel to them. I'll bet he would've been a really good jazz player.
I like how the youthful arrogance/exuberance expressed in "No Such Thing" is tempered by a realization that he doesn't know what he's doing in "Why Georgia."
Maphet, Mayer doesn't sound transcendent because music isn't transcendent.
But stop being a dick for a second, I know that wasn't really your point, I didn't like Mayer at all when I first heard him, but April dug him, and he does just have this certain good pop music feel to him. Do I think he'll be remembered in general? No. But the one song he did, "Your Body is a Wonderland" is so naively hormonally romantic I can't help but love it, and it's got such a dang, dang catchy opening hook. I love it. In fact, it was on April & I's wedding CD, and although I know I don't have the greatest taste in the world, given the company Mayer was keeping on that CD (Cash, Zeppelin, Springsteen, Badly Drawn Boy, Weezer, Ryan Adams, Damien Jurado, James, The Proclaimers, and Simon & Garfunkle) he can't be all that bad. :)
Pondered by JosiahQ at August 27, 2003 06:57 PMI did like the Mayer CD. My favorite song off the album though, is Neon - just to throw in my two cents.
Pondered by april at August 27, 2003 08:28 PMTranscendent: adj. 1. Surpassing others; preeminent or supreme
My sentence is perfectly valid.
Pondered by maphet at August 27, 2003 09:05 PMthat's right, maphet. don't let tater push you around.
Pondered by gosey at August 28, 2003 09:00 AMJosiah will take issue with my recommendation, but if you like the organic, moody female vocalist genre, check out Over The Rhine See the albums Ohio, Films for Radio, and Good Dog Bad Dog (free mp3s at that link). They're excellent, especially live.
Pondered by John at August 30, 2003 04:39 PMFirst off, Hi Maphet greetings from TN. I started reading your blog today at work because I really have nothing better to do and I enjoyed the first few posts I read (I am working backwards from current month so I obviously have found it very interesting, not to mention that I value your opinions.) With that said I had to comment on this post, old as it is, because Jennifer purchased these two cds at the same time as well. I found that to be ironic that out of the millions of available cds, these two would be purchased together, probably months apart, by two friends who haven't seen or heard from one another for almost two and a half years or more. I don't know, maybe the irony of buying two of this years (or now last years) more popular cds is not there, but it struck me as stange.
Also it sounds like you are doing well and that is uplifting.
