Andrew Bird has to be one of my favorite musicians right now. Eloquent, with whistling and violin, he's got both catchy and dark music that can be mildly subversive at times. I'm a big fan of Amchair Apocrypha and The Mysterious Production of Eggs. Andrew Bird also looks like if Luke Wilson was cast as Tom Joad in a film version of The Grapes of Wrath.
Functioning iPod clickwheel from 2004
I've been thinking a little, off and on, about getting a new iPod. Do I wait until the iPhone is available in Verizon's network, or do I splurge on a new iTouch? I keep telling myself to wait though, because they're probably coming out with something newer, sleeker, smarter in a matter of weeks. And my current 5-year-old iPod still functions properly. The one I've had since freshman year of college. The one without a color screen, even. The battery doesn't need frequent charging, the clickwheel may be a little slow but is still responsive and it still has more than enough gigabytes to store all my music. Drive that baby into the ground, and impress the geniuses at the Apple store that I've managed to keep that baby purring for over 5 years when I go to trade it in.
With a last name like McIntosh, I'd hope I could keep an Apple product running for the next 96 years.
I can remember being 3 or 4, becoming completely obsessed with Yellow Submarine. My dad, ever the musical maverick had a newfangled CD player and a few of these round mirrored thingies that i was NOT allowed to touch. I ditched my Baby Beluga tape soon after, and fell irreversibly in love with John Lennon. I taped pictures of him alongside my Elvis photo on my door (Elvis and I share the same birthday, so I think I thought I was supposed to like him) and behaved like a crazed teenager in 1967 whenever I Wanna Hold Your Hand came on. Maybe my career as a medium started early?
One of my favorite memories telling someone, I think it may have been my preschool supervisor, with total sincerity that John Lennon couldn't have been an organ donor "because he needs his heart." Somehow my mother had explained the potentially a complicated trifecta death, reincarnation and heart transplants all using my personal hero as the example.
I couldn't marry John Lennon because he was dead. It meant his heart stopped beating and his brain stopped thinking and he was buried in the ground. Apparently this was upsetting news to me, which led to the reincarnation conversation: He's not coming back? Nope, but sometimes people can be reborn. Woah, woah, what do you MEAN? My mom was pregnant at the time, and I probably half expected a wee John to come battling out of her womb.
We were watching a movie at the time, probably a Lifetime made for TV movie or some other drivel that daytime programmers filled their timeslots with. Anyway, this girl was on a waiting list for a heart transplant and I was probably all, where do you even GET a human heart? And my mom was all, from someone who died.
Total panic ensues. My mother assured me that John had kept his heart, with all the plans in the world to revisit this mortal coil just like Jesus was going to and stuff. Apparently my relief was enough to go babbling to my teacher the next day, explaining that don't worry, John Lennon will be back.
Girlfriend is still waiting, my friends. Patiently.
