Farewell James Brown

James Brown, the father of funk, the 1 and 3, the hardest working man in showbusiness, the mentor to Bootsy, the lover of America, the Black and Proud, died on Monday the 25th of December. This photo is of him performing in July 2006...at age 73. Indeed he was "the hardest working man in showbusiness" as he called himself and he sang it loud and proud until the end. James Brown played in my house (on albums, not live. Think of how cool I would have been if I had James Brown play at my 8th birthday party) when I was a youngster and gave me the appreciation for the "beat" that I love today. I followed him up with Bootsy Collins, George Clinton and Maceo Parker. They all influenced me in my tastes and performances.

So let's all walk a little funky, talk a little funky and do 50 splits in a 3 hour period in honor of the funkiest brother to ever walk the earth.

Here is a little interview on NPR that is pretty good. Give a listen.

Update: I just found out that Gentle Gerald Ford, America's sweetest President died today. Let's all watch some football and eat nachos in remembrance.

Brain Enema

This picture is what I needed a couple days ago. I was studying for a test and decided that I had had enough and I wanted to take a break. So I turned on the fire (I miss our log fire but the convenience of gas equals the ambience of logs [almost]) and sat there with the intent to read. I ended up sitting there for about an hour and a half just thinking. Not frivolous daydreamingj, fantasizing, etc; this was serious thinking about life, love, and everything. I felt like I was clear in the head for the first time in a long time. Words cannot tell how cleansing it was to have this hour and a half. It felt like my mind let my worries slip away and get burned up in the warm glow of comfort. Thoughts of music became clear, writing ideas flowed like gatorade, a million thoughts coalesced into coherent ideas.

So with this new found meditation (It has been known throughout the ages that fires are mesmerizing and promote meditating, but I have never had anything quite like this) I decided to exploit it a little. I thought, what do I love to do while sitting? Watching movies! So I grabbed my laptop, threw in Back To The Future got myself some tea and sat down in front of the fire. I tell you this right here and now, I have found Nirvana. Movies in front of the fire.

This doesn't promote the deep meditation of just sitting there, but my goodness it promote relaxation. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend it; with a loved one if you have one would be even more stunning I'm sure.

Mild autism

So my slight autistic tendencies were stroked today as I noticed something that makes me happy for reasons that make me a little uncomfortable. I saw the first "P" license plate, as in 565 PAA. I have always had some sort of savant thing with license plates. In high school I knew just about every kid's license plate number. I would look at the license plate before the head of the driver in search of recognition if I saw a familiar looking car. It is a weird obsession I have, I just notice license plates. Braden: UDN (I mostly only remember the letters, that is a part of my autisim) Sam: 402 HBJ (the letters stuck on that one) Darren: WCL, Pete: NXN, Naysahn: CVN, Jon: DRK, Lauren: JUM, Seth: LBS, Joelle: LXN I could go on and on.
The P license plate struck me more than usual for a noticing of the changing of main letter (I usually get very excited and smile a lot and tell people all about how I saw the new license letter as they give sympaythy "Great"'s ). They skipped "O". They went from the Pete generation of N and went straight to P. They also skipped M, I and I think B. The Dept. of transportation seems to have somethig up their sleeve. That makes four seemingly unrelated letters left out of the license plate rotation. Why skip these letters? The mystery is enough to warrant some research. This troubles me more than you may think (I am severly troubled right now because I can't remember Erica's license plate and I wanted to list it above. This is really frustrating me to an alarming degree. Erica, if you read this, email me your license plate #).
But all said and done, I am just excited to see P driving around.
The photo today is the first picture I took with my new camera, which I am terribly excited about.