Caring Is Creepy

Ahhhh, welcome to another day in the life of...well...me. Exciting, no?

Anyway, I'm kind of in the middle of a project you might like to hear about: I'm trying to watch all of the movies I have not seen but should have seen by now this summer. TOP OF THE LIST: PRETTY IN PINK, which I checked off last night accompanied by a box of tissues and a bowl of popcorn. I kept shouting up to my mom, "GOOD GOD! Did kids actually dress like that??!?" Yeah, so tonight is Sixteen Candles (I've already covered the Breakfast Club, Weird Science, St. Elmo's Fire, etc.) so we'll see where we go from there. It's clearly a brat-pack weekend because you know by Sunday I'll be begging my mom to get my hair cut and dye it "Ringwald red" but isn't that how everyone is? No? Just me? Okay then.

All of my cousins are in town, which is great, but sometimes I just wish that one of them was my age or older. But no, they're all much much younger. Don't get me wrong, I love them but getting thrown down on the rug and sat on by three of them that are approx. half your age gets old pretty fast. But when I look at the picture from far away, I can't help but feel that I could never imagine family life if I didn't have cousins. I mean, think about all there is at stake! I could go into a nervous breakdown if my knowledge about what's "in" and "out" with kids ranging from two to ten was erased from my head! I'm the one who can tell them that 'Blue's Clues' isn't the same without Steve!! This can't be happening! I have a reputatiooooon!!

I just finished The Gospel According To Larry (which I finished in about an hour, what a great read!) which led me to thinking about how this blog is changing the world and peoples lives. I can't really begin to wrap my mind around changing the world right now but I do think Larry/Josh's anticonsumerism "75-item-ownership" is pretty sweet. I really wish I had the guts to do something like that. But you know what? I saw a really big comparison to Larry and the Lorax (from Dr. Seuss's controversial picture book) in the way that consumerism ran both the Lorax and Larry to their ends, and in each end there are only a few physical traces of each of them being in their respective worlds, consisting of only few words each (the UNLESS stone and the "Where Is Larry?" skywriting) but leaving an impression on their lands worth at least a thousand words each. That's what I thought.

Moving on, let's review what's been covered: movie, ménage (in sorts), materialism...what's left? Ahhh, music!
Some of you have known my feelings about O.A.R. (Of A Revolution), the folky-ska with reggae influences college underground band together since '98. I just realized that they seem to improve every two years, which is funny. With their 2001 release, The Wanderer, they burst on to the scene. The songs were 'eh' but after my sister got into OAR and the car was always soaked in the ukele of the almost nine minute anthem "That Was A Crazy Game of Poker" I was ready to remove each of my fingers with a dull hedge clipper (if you'll excuse the graphics). I truly don't think that the insanity really has too much to do with the music but more the overplaying of it. Checking into the 2003 record (fitingly) titled "Between Now and Then", their style seems to have been cleaned up quite a bit and their songs (mostly) have been cut into shorter lengths. My personal favorite is "Hey Girl" which I have faint memories of hearing around the time of the release. During the time between this record and their next release O.A.R. was said to have resembled everything from "a band busting with reggae groove" to "a bunch of hippies". But my favorite album of O.A.R.'s would have to be the 2005 disk, "Stories of a Stranger" which includes "Heard the World" and "Love and Memories" (the title may put you off the music but from the first few chords you can tell that the whole thing is going to be worth it). The Maryland quintet are now on tour with Jack's Mannequin and could quite possibly be coming to a city near you.


enjoy your saturday, i'm out of here,

kit


p.s. the duck man!
p.p.s. this lorax t-shirt is ironic. the story is about anti-consumerism but of course corporate america jumps on top of any popular trend to squeeze money out of it and, in the words of Larry, "to sell us more crap". i just think that it's strange and wrong but playing devil's advocate here these people have to make money to supply for their families. it's an on-going arguement and i think that "The Gospel According to Larry" exposes it very well.