The Great iTunes Experiment

Wanna waste some time, but in a good way?

I gave myself a challenge at the beginning of 2009, when I didn't have a job, a direction, or a sense of purpose, and that was to look at what I had instead of what I didn't have. People kept telling me to do so and I wasn't that enthused for taking them up on the offer. But I did have a computer and time to waste, so I had enough faith that I could come up with something close to self-reflection.

Then I started to go through my library of music and realized there was a lot of stuff I owned -- literally bought or took the time to copy from the Salt Lake City Public Library -- that I had never listened to. Ever. I most likely copied the CD for one song, thought I'd look lame if people saw I just wanted that one single, and wasn't a true fan of the artist unless I had their entire album.

As it stands, my iTunes library has 4,298 items, which is 16.21 MB of space and eleven and half days of music straight. It was only this past week that I finished the great experiment of listening to each song, in its entirety, alphabetically by artist's name. And guess what? I've got a lot of great music I had no idea was in my possession. So, here are the following albums which, if you own them, listen to them more often and if you do not own them, well, your loss.

This guy is a genius and you will feel so French.







By the time this album came out, I was kind of done with the Strokes. Now, I'm back.







Rubber Factory will remain my favorite, but goddamn if this album doesn't blow the doors off your house.







Thank you Jamie Wilcox. Another great band who I never heard of and now love.



















Common's best work. Period.









It might not be the self-titled, but Mike Ness sure does know how to capture youth on vinyl and kiss your ears with it.








Also check out The Devil And Daniel Johnston.











Sam Cooke will be my favorite singer from the past century and this proves it.











Haunting. Dark. Beautiful. Listen to it at night on an urban highway.










It's the B-Sides to Hail To The Thief and, in my humble opinion, better than the A-Sides.









I still have a handful of his singles which I love to listen to, but for a full album of autumn infused bliss, this is the one.










All right, all right...it's a good album. You got me.














Afraid of Interpol? Now you don't have to be.










Don't believe the hype. Believe the music. And to quote Dave Schmidt, "that shits for real..."











You don't like country, but you will love this woman singing country.









Nas! Yes! Can all of your albums be like this and Illmatic?









There new stuff is...eh, okay. This album is where the treasure is buried.










Maybe not as good of an album as Lupe Fiasco's The Cool, but some of this songs are absolutely mind blowing. Please don't retire after your next album Lupe.













This is Modest Mouse.










What stuff do you have sitting around that deserves a second or even a first time listen?

June Gloom

June used to be such a good month for me and now it reflects the only month of poor weather here in San Diego: gloomy. It's not like it is a bad time to be in Southern California, but it just isn't the same as the rest of year. March used to be like this and sometimes November, but June? It supposed to be cookouts and swimming pools and sunny days with energetic music and everyone coming out of there winter shell.

This June, kind of gloomy.

SEO for SOE

I'm happy to be employed at Sony Online Entertainment now. It was a rough start, I'll admit, because I just didn't know what I was getting into. First day of training, the man who was our teacher, for lack of a better title, told us: "if you are here to just play video games all day, then you should leave." Uh-oh, was my first thought and I almost did leave. Isn't that why I am here? To work a job as a game tester? And then any bugs that come back around, I'll let you know. "Ask questions," was the best advice we got and I'm asking myself, "what am I doing here if not just playing the game?" Well, the job is different from my first perceptions of it. There are a variety of tests and procedures to test the game, one which I am less than thrilled to be playing, but getting used to the world it creates and what you can do in it. After I past my new trainer test (only in five tries, I might add) I started to get more comfortable with what the job required of me. I started asking questions and not being embarrassed about not knowing anything. Now, I know what an NPC, a hot key, and a geo-test are. I'm still not perfect. I was better at SEO content writing for MAP and I miss that. As absolutely fucked up as the Law Offices of MAP were, they were a lot of fun. We joked around and had our weekends off and didn't take our work home. This job...I've got to come in on some Saturdays and Sundays, I've got play the game at home, and work in front of a computer in a dark room for eight hours a day. And I know -- I should stop complaining and be happy that I have a job with a stable company and room for growth in the industry I want to be in. So all those complaints and worries. They'll end. Right now.

It's All In The Family Drama

It was hard enough last month to deal with my aunt berating me for not taking the job at Sony because I had Omaha coming up. She basically called my playwriting ambitions pipe dreams and told me to lie to my parents about getting the Sony job before I actually had it. Then came the e-mail from her about a blog that contained my grandma, her mother. Now, my grandma was a huge figurehead in our family and always will be but she has no business randomly showing up in a blog. I skimmed it and thought, hm, that seems weird. Two days later, my aunt writes that it is actually her blog and she wrote it. I do a second read and yeah, that seems like her. But what is really killer is that my aunt has been saying some things involving my brother and cousin that I do not know how to react to. Whatever situation that took place between them was a year ago and only now are we hearing about it. My parents are cool as cucumbers when it comes to dealing with this type of stuff. Me? I'm a little stressed out by it all. I feel as though I don't know my brother well enough to defend him and saddened by the fact that my aunt, who I used to be so close with, now has a very crazy streak in her that she can't seem to shake. Who are these people? My family, yes. Familiar, hardly.

Never Mixing Friendships And Business

Where do you call on your friends to help you out with your business and where do you draw the line in calling it your business? Hard to say, as me and my friends -- no, business partners -- no, friends involved with an entrepreneurial enterprise had to come to a tough decision about taking our group in a new direction. This past week we have hired a lawyer to make us an official non-profit corporation with 501(c)3 status, gotten t-shirts and a radio interview, and are looking to expand to different mediums, a la This American Life. But the biggest thing? We are looking to expand the storytellers beyond our small group of friends from the writers circle. Some are happy, some are not. But this was the plan all along -- to have different people all the time. These people will always be the founders, the original company members, and if they have a story that cannot be passed up or they really, really want to take to the stage, hell, I'm not going to say no. But if there comes a time where we might have to ask them or even ourselves to step down, I hope we can all say yes.

It hasn't rained, it hasn't stormed, and it hasn't all come crashing down. Like every month -- hell, like every day -- I get a little bit wiser about what I am doing...with a business, with my art and craft (like I'm a first grader again), and with just this grown up version of who I am. It's still weird and takes some getting used to, but maybe I'll have a better handle on it come July.