Just go see it!

There are no words to express how amazing this show is, so I can just say this:

IT'S BRILLIANT!
IT'S SPOT ON!
And forget laugh-out-loud funny...
IT'S INCESSENTLY SIDE-SPLITTINGLY UPROARIOUSLY HILARIOUS!
JUST GO SEE IT!

Seriously, Seattle was blessed enough to host the world premiere and we loved it. When it comes to your town, just go see it. If it doesn't, then you're just going to have to do yourself a favor and make the trip to Broadway. It's more than worth it!

Tripping Daisy - I am an Elastic Firecracker

Damn, this album! We were all huge Daisy fans in school, and this album is by far my favorite regardless of what iteration of the band was producing the music (they morphed into the now Polyphonic Spree). They were so much fun to see live! They played all over Texas, even in our little college town, to the friendliest mosh pits you ever did see! When I think of seeing them live, I think of their earlier album, Bill. If you could pair joyfulness and laughter and smiling with rockin' out and turn it into a tangible thing, that thing is Tripping Daisy, and more specifically, the album Bill.

Firecracker reminds me most of the early summer '96. School had just let out and my three girlfriends and I turned to the open road for freedom. We were dying to get away from work and the boys and be one with nature for a while. We drove all the way to essentially 12 miles outside of Roswell, New Mexico and camped at the extraordinarily remote Bottomless Lakes State Park. I hope this park is still around and that it's remained as unspoiled as it was back then, because I would love to go back someday.

We had picnics at our campsite with the soundtrack playing out on my ubiquitous portable CD player, watched some of the most gorgeous sunsets, collectively feared the veritable wind storms in our tent at night, toured Carlsbad Caverns, bonded with bats, swam in waterfalls, and laughed until our sides hurt. We basically had the time of our lives being out there with each other, and away from our grueling realities. Track 9: Step Behind is the song that triggered all this today.

GO ME! I FINALLY DID IT!

On August 14, it was exactly one year ago that I quit smoking! I smoked for roughly 15 years. Of course I tried to quit many times before now, so many times in fact that I lost count ages ago. My most successful previous attempt lasted about 10 months. It's incredible how easy it is to justify going back to it. I finally realized that there are always going to be life crises, it is always going to be something, but it would just have to happen while I abused some other vice.

I can't remember a time I wasn't attracted to it. I remember living in Germany when I was 14. Smoking is utterly ubiquitous in Europe, and after a while it started to seep into my youthful impressionability. I will never forget this particular occasion where we were staying at a quaint little hotel somewhere. Being the not-so-morning person I was, my parents were ready for breakfast before me, so I was to go downstairs to join them when I was ready. I left the room and walked to the elevator where there was a cigarette innocuously sitting lit in a standing metal smoking urn. Its owner appeared to have taken one drag and left it in the ashtray to catch the elevator. No one else was around, and the air surounding the cigarette was so still that the trail of smoke it let off rose in a steady stream above it as it burned. I must have stared at it for the longest time, contemplating whether or not to take a drag. It was extremely tempting, but ultimately I didn't do it.

I wasn't as strong the next time. When I was 15, I had a friend who would smoke out of her bedroom window at home. When I spent the night with her once, I tried it too. We'd stand in front of the mirror with our Capris watching ourselves take drags. I didn't know what the hell I was doing at that point, I wasn't inhaling, and we were smoking Capris for God's sake! But it's just the idea what I was beginning to fall victim to its intrigue.

But the other side of my fascination was repulsion. I would always join the crusade against all bodily toxins during the drug awareness weeks every year in elementary school. And by the time Becky and I were friends in high school, even though it was years after I had first tried a cigarette, I was still disgusted when I found out she smoked. Eventually though, I was dabbling with it more and more.

I didn't enhale for a while. I don't think I realized I wasn't doing it right. I used to take a drag and shoot it straight through my nose like a dragon and everyone would crack up and ask me how I did it, not realizing themselves that I wasn't inhaling. But by the time Bec and I were roommates our freshman year in college, I was a full-blown smoker.

Over the years, I probably entertained all (reasonable, non-surgical) quit-assist methods available. In the end, I managed to go cold turkey. The difference this time was that I didn’t plan it out and self-sabotage as I had in the past. I didn’t choose a day to quit and smoke like a fiend every second up to that point. There was less thinking about it. I was just doing it.

On a run-of-the-mill Monday night, I smoked my last cigarette. Where normally this would incite anxiety and panic, this time as never before, I had the simple, somewhat zenny thought, “Well, maybe I just don’t buy another pack tomorrow,” and that was that.

Because it’s so easy to fall back off the wagon, even after you think you’re in the clear, I wouldn’t congratulate myself. I kept track of my progress quietly, especially until I had surpassed the previously notable 10 month mark. But it wasn’t until I made it through the whole year that I felt I had finally won and could now pat myself on the back. And in the end, there was much more rejoicing than there was coughing and that's the whole point after all!

Mom used to say that when we would go out shopping and got separated by our own interests, she could find me by my cough. I remember thinking that I wished she could find me by my laugh. So now, I have a full-blown boisterously obnoxious body-cackle where there used to be hacking.

Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend

It was after my first year of college, and I was home for the summer, out in the backyard swimming in the pool, lying in the sun. We had the stereo connected to a speaker system so anything we chose to play could be heard thoughout the entire house or just in certain areas. I routinely played whatever I wanted and isolated the sound in the back yard (because of course my parents didn't want to hear it, whatever it was). I find that some music tends to be seasonal, and that has everything to do with how I remember living this album: at home in Denton during the summer, when I was 19, lying in the sun. The track Girlfriend, especially, is my musical equivalent of sunshine. It lifts my spirits to this very day and beyond!