ryan jenkins.

this is kind of weird because it's my best friend, but not really because his music is wonderful. ryan is a wonderful songwriter and i love giving him a hard time to write and play more songs. ryan and i became friends freshman year of college, he was one of the first kids i met as a misplaced southerner in "the north". it's good though, he's from mass and i'm pretty sure i love everyone from massachusetts. (ok, yeah, mitt romney blows)

he also shares the same name as a recently famous VH1 reality tv star gone psycho. i can't say that. i think the only other allison guidrys live in south louisiana...
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actually, i just spent 10 minutes searching people named allison guidry and freaking out a little each time i saw a picture of one. ehh it's pretty weird. my kid's names will be dinosaur and magpie to avoid confusion. that is assuming i ever have children, which i would gladly volunteer to never do.
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so ryan sings songs about drinkin, putting your back to bullshit, havin good friends and fallin in love. all of which i support 100%, and all of which are important factors in our wonderful friendship. the picture on the left there is from a trip we took back to new orleans at my friend russell's house. i know i go on alot about having great friends, but really kids like this are hard to come by.

you can download his "album" (live set from gz at rpi) here or at his myspace.

the weakerthans. sounds familiar.

the words in this song are absolutely beautiful. john played it solo at the weakerthans show i was lucky enough to see at the bowery ballroom. here are some photos + setlist from that show.


forgive my blatant copying from a lyrics website.

We emerged from youth all wide-eyed like the rest. Shedding skin faster than skin can grow, and armed with hammers, feathers, blunt knives: words, to meet and to define and to... but you must know the same games that we played in dirt, in dusty school yards has found a higher pitch and broader scale than we feared possible, and someone must be picked last, and one must bruise and one must fail. And that still twitching bird was so deceived by a window, so we eulogized fondly, we dug deep and threw its elegant plumage and frantic black eyes in a hole, and rushed out to kill something new, so we could bury that too.

The first chapters of lives almost made us give up altogether. Pushed towards tired forms of self immolation that seemed so original. I must, we must never stop watching the sky with our hands in our pockets, stop peering in windows when we know doors are shut. Stop yelling small stories and bad jokes and sorrows, and my voice will scratch to yell many more, but before I spill the things I mean to hide away, or gouge my eyes with platitudes of sentiment, I'll drown the urge for permanence and certainty; crouch down and scrawl my name with yours in wet cement.

jeffrey crystal palitsch

i love this xkcd more than anything:

but not more than this one that jeff made for me:


having friends is the best part of life.

pretty sure "after the curtain" by Beirut is my most favorite song in the whole world. if I had to pick one. I think it is absolutely beautiful, and would be the last song in my movie. I hope I get to have a movie.

show me the way to go home

i'm tired and i wanna go to bed
had a little drink about an hour ago
and it's gone right to my head
wherever i may rome
on land on sea or foam
you will always hear me singin this song
show me the way to go home

scott h biram - still crazy, still blue

here's a country song i can't stop listening to, sent by a friend from CT. there's something about the blues that makes me feel comforted and a little nostalgic for nothing in particular. but i can't listen to it too much without wishin i was still back home in south louisiana with my family on the back patio with the grill going and the blues on the speakers. being homesick is just about the only trouble in my life right now that really gets me where it hurts.

blog.

you know, i just started using tumblr. and then i realized just now that i have this blogspot thing that i used for wrpi, and thought about using in 2007. i think i'll stick with this one so i can put handy links on the side without having to learn html again..

i don't even know if i like blogs. i like twitter because i can have less of a personality on it.