DAT, Iceland, Walter Benjamin, Danny Says, Cowboys & Indians, KKVB2 Update, New Blog Coming Soon

Gotta get back in the blogging mode, here are some life updates.

-Took the DAT in June and did well. Applications are in for Dental School. We just gotta wait now to see what happens, nice to not have to really worry about that stuff for now.

-In September, Natalie and I are heading out on a pretty amazing cruise. The trip goes from Denmark to Ireland to Norway to Scotland to Iceland to Greenland to Halifax to Florida. It will be 18 days long and kind of the trip of a lifetime. I have been talking about going to Iceland for several years now, but there was never really a practical time to go, but I worked this last summer for the last time for Holland America/Princess and put in for a discounted trip and we got it! We weren't sure if everything was going to work out with getting time off from work, but we got lucky and were able to get away. It's kind of cool that this is actually going to be a reality, we are still kind of shocked that it all worked out. I'm pretty excited to do some sightseeing, eating good food, relaxing, and reading for a while and be able to forget about the job for a bit.

-Can't stop reading The Walking Dead right now. I just finished Volume 9. A few friends got into it the same time I did and it's fun to have people to talk with it about. Really is a page turner. I watched the AMC show this last fall, and thought it would spoil some of the series, but weirdly, the characters are the same but the plot is wildly different, so both are pretty enjoyable. And no, I'm not embarrassed that I like comic books.

-Also been reading Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen by Larry McMurtry. I'm about halfway through. The book is a strange roundabout way of him writing an auto-biography by talking about the role of storytelling in the west. He talks about the importance of stories to his ancestors while simultaneously telling their stories, and then he also drops insight from his own career. The guy is a fantastic writer and a very deep thinker. I find myself highlighting bits and pieces of the book, especially when he digs in to the power and reasons that stories are passed on in different places. I'll try to write a bit about his overall thesis when I finish the book.

-That there is the B.C. Spirit Bear. It's a white black bear. Not albino, it's actually a recessive trait. Not a ton of them left in the world though. I subscribed a month or so ago to National Geographic and Scientific American. Money well spent. Out of the two, Nat Geo is more readable has a lot of nostalgia as we used to get the magazine when I was younger. It's kind of weird to realize, "Oh yeah, if I want that magazine, I'm at the point in my life where I need to get it myself". As dumb as that sounds. The articles in the mag are short and to the point and there is a lot of great photography. Scientific American is great, but occasionally goes over my head a bit. Anyway, helps me put new things in my head, which is healthy while I am in the position of sitting at a desk all day taking monotonous phone calls.

-Been recording a bunch of material for KKVB2, should be able to release it on Sept 1st, or at least before I go cruising. I kind of want to do a live show or two for it, we will see what the possibilities of it are. There will be possibly be some great collaborations on it, pretty excited for that, more news in the future maybe.
In the mean time, here is the latest Tom Waits Cover I did and another little song I did for a friends project. The Tom Waits Cover is actually a Ramones Cover. I like how it turned out, despite a few technical problems. The other is a thing I did for fun for a friend's project "The peachfishers". The idea of the whole thing is songs that jerks write and sing to women. So that's the idea with that one. Here is his website. http://soundcloud.com/peachfishers/tracks
danny says by Armorie Record Club
Cowboys and Indians by Peachfishers

-New Music you should listen to? The new Jolie Holland "Pint of Blood" is pretty exciting to me. I really like the Nick Diamonds Solo album "I am an Attic", 13& God's "Own your Ghost", the WuGazi remix thing, and of course, Serengeti's new album Family and Friends is what I've been listening to the most. The album is pretty dark, filled with black humor, but remains pretty poppy. Great thing about the album is it's short, there are no filler songs, and is consistent to it's theme while telling wildly variant stories. Serengeti writes great little battle rhymes and great introspective/steam of consciousness stuff, but his strength is certainly in storytelling and character work, and this album plays to that I think. Almost like a weirder and more serious Slick Rick. Here are two videos for the new album and a few others from recent projects.





-Nat and I will soon be launching another blog. It is not going to be a cutesy, fun, family blog, but you might be interested nonetheless. More details on that soon. It'll have stories and art and music and stuff too, but with a bit more of a odd direction.

That's alot of stuff. I'll try to post more often, I really will.