The thing is, I take pride in the music I have. And I don’t mean that in a snotty, pretentious sort of way. I simply think music taste is a fundamental part of life. Music education should go hand in hand with reading and writing. In some ways, we are judged by what we wear and read. Music is no different. Our personalities, desires, ambitions, and feelings are all reflected by what we listen to. I like to think of listening to music as drinking wine. At first, you’ll drink anything to get drunk, but over time, you begin to appreciate it more and develop tastes for certain types. Some are crafted well, others downright terrible. We like to splurge on the expensive wines, but sitting on a porch with friends and a few bottles of cheap red can be just as fun.

Every few weeks or so, I like to cycle through my music library to find songs to put in my iPod. I find that I can only listen to the same songs over and over so many times before I become bored with them. That’s where music exploration and excavation comes in. By exploring, I peruse through iTunes, looking over what people are buying, what bands are suggested through other bands. I read through friends’ blogs (namely Samir – see Are You Gene Hackman? under links) to see what they’re listening to. Even listening to online radio players like Pandora and Slacker are ways of exploration. It’s a great way to find something new to listen to. But then there’s excavation. If you’re like me, you probably have a modest selection of 6,000+ songs available at your fingertips. According to iTunes, it would take me 16.5 days to listen to every single song back to back. At no point in my life will I ever do something like that. So what do I do? Month after month, I cycle through the songs, rediscovering songs from the past, finding enjoyment in things I had used to hate. Through excavation there can be newfound delight in older music.

So as the “cleansing” of my iTunes begins, I am sure I will find some great stuff. For now, here’s what I’m listening to (via exploration):

• Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs
• Arctic Monkeys – Humbug (new album – VERY good)
• Empire of the Sun – Walking on a Dream
• Coconut Records – Nighttiming
• Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson – Break Up
• Matt & Kim – Grand
• Super Furry Animals – Songbook: The Singles, Vol. 1
• Third Eye Blind – Ursa Major
• Television – Marquee Moon (thanks Nelson!)
• Passion Pit – Manners (GET THIS NOW)

I’ll be sure to post about what I find later on.

When the preview first came out, my friend Justin and I made an agreement. We agreed that we would (try to) avoid all reviews, blogs, tv bits, previews, and suggestions for District 9. We even tossed out our copy of Entertainment Weekly with District 9 on the cover. It paid off. Big time. By going into the cinema knowing little to nothing about the movie, we were able to enjoy it that much more. Listen to me when I say you should do the same. The fact that you’ve read this far is already more than enough. You need to go into this movie without any knowledge about the plot. Trust me when I say you shouldn’t listen to anything anyone says about the film. Don’t read anything about it, or watch the previews. In fact, if you can, drop what you’re doing and go straight to the cinema. Just go. You’ll thank me later.

And if you don’t, you’re missing out.

On Saturday, I slipped and fell in the shower. I had hopped into the shower in an attempt to escape the heat. In Boston, when you have three days over 90 degrees, they consider it to be a heat wave. They being the meteorologists. So yes, I slipped, but this wasn’t just any slip though. I was merely reaching to the end of the tub to grab a bottle of shampoo when my feet came out from underneath me, as if someone had slid into my legs. I fell face first into a tiled ledge at the end of the tub. With the angled tub, I slid back down into the water, blood running down my face and onto my chest. I touched my nose and white hot pain shot into it. I felt nauseated and dizzy. I had to see what I had done. I stood, carefully, and faced the mirror. Blood was covering my nose, lips, and chin. There was a gash between my nose and upper lip. I felt dizzy again and sat down on the floor. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. My hands shaking, I felt as though I might pass out, so I climbed back into the shower and turned the faucet to cold. The relief was immediate. I stayed there for a few minutes contemplating my options. My roommate was not home. My phone was in the other room. Should I call an ambulance? No, there was no need for one. I just had a gash and a busted nose. I got out of the shower, my head still spinning, and made for my phone.

My friend Will was kind enough to drive me to the hospital (and to bring some hydrogen peroxide to clean my face). A nurse brought me into the emergency room where several nurses and doctors looked at my face. Damage had been done, but not as severely as I thought it had. Blood has a way of making things seem much more serious. They cleaned the gash and attempted to numb the area to put stitches in. Unfortunately, the numbing medication, applied with a needle, oozed out of the gash and dribbled into my mouth, making my tongue go numb, but not the area around the gash. The doctor tried several times to no avail. I am not sure what was more painful: the fall in the shower or having stitches put in without proper numbing. Luckily, only three stitches were needed. Next came an x-ray, which showed that my nose was fractured.

So there you have it. I am pretty lucky that I did not knock out any teeth or break my nose in a way that would require surgery. My nose is (mostly) straight and the gash will heal within a week or two. My lips are pretty swollen, but over time, they too, will return to normal.

Yesterday I went out and bought a rubber shower mat.

Thanks to Buzzington McAwesome for the link.

For once in my life, I feel like I understand parental fear. That is, one of the parental fears. The “kidnapping/murder/death/vegetative state of offspring” fear. I may not have children of my own, but I now understand why my mother asked me to call her every time I arrived at some far away destination. I understand why parents call their children just to say hey. They want to know their kids are ALIVE.

I’m not an idiot. I mean, sure I’ve been aware that my parents would check in because they wanted to make sure I was doing okay. That’s just good parenting (there are more factors that add up to good parenting, but frankly, were talking about parental fear here). I guess I’m saying that for the first time in my life, I feel like I’ve caught a glimpse of how I will feel when I have two or three kids running around all over the place. A child is born and CLICK- the fear switch is turned on. It never turns off. That is parenting in a nutshell.

Allow me to explain where this is all stemming from.

I watched Taken this evening. Yes, Taken. With Liam Neeson. The one where his daughter is kidnapped and Liam tells her kidnapper (over the phone) that he will find him and kill him for such an atrocity. If you haven’t seen it yet, I won’t spoil it for you, but let me just point out that the daughter is traveling with a friend in Paris when her Albanian abductors come a-knockin’. The daughter, played by Maggie Grace (from LOST), is only seventeen years old. A minor by our country’s standards. A minor in Paris. No adult supervision. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Liam Neeson then goes about finding and killing the aforementioned Albanians. Enough said.

It took a simple movie like this to flip my parental fear switch to on. And while I may not (yet) be worrying whether or not my kids are eating enough, sleeping enough, doing their homework, not doing drugs, wearing proper clothing, practicing safe sex*, etc., I’m already 100% worried about my kids being sold into prostitution in a foreign country. My kids are NEVER going anywhere without me, my wife, our security guard, or the expressed written consent of the NFL.

Perhaps I’m going a little over the top. Of course I want my kids to go out and see the world! I want them to experience different cultures and to learn to appreciate art, music, and literature. I want them to go abroad in college and drink Spanish wine and take pictures under the Eiffel Tower. Hell, I’ll even go with them if they’ll let me.

It’s just that I think all dads have a sixth sense. Not a dead people, spider-manish sixth sense, but rather a protective sixth sense. This sense certainly encompasses sons, but is usually more prevalent with daughters. Particularly with daughters and their boyfriends. You see, I already know that when my daughter tells me she is going to go on a date, I will be thinking, “who is this sexually charged adolescent taking my little girl to the movies? If he touches her in any way that displeases me, I shall crush his nuts into a paste and feed it to him.” I’ll certainly do my best not to threaten the young lad, but so help me, I won’t think twice about taking him down if he tries to put the moves on my daughter.

Sorry, I got carried away again. But do you see what I mean? It’s a movie like Taken that brings out this fear in me. I don’t even want to think about one of my children being alone in Europe without proper guidance, nor do I want to impose that on any of you. I’m sorry if I just did.

I suppose when my daughter asks why she can’t go to London with her friend, I’ll tell her to go watch Taken and to put herself in my shoes. Maybe she’ll understand, maybe she’ll hate me for it, but I’ll sleep better knowing Albanians aren’t selling her to sex maniacs.

For the record: Taken was an okay movie. I’m glad I didn’t see it in theaters.

*Do we still use the term “practicing safe sex”? Has anyone ever been sitting on a couch with friends and been like, “sorry, I can’t stay for the movie. I’m late for practice.”

I suppose I ought to begin by saying that I am not a diehard fan of the cartoon, but I did watch it and I did have the action figures. My expectations for the film were slim, as I believe that taking any toy/cartoon series from the 80′s and reshaping it for the big screen is a difficult task. Just look at Transformers. Michael Bay may have “Michael Bayed” that franchise, but did we still enjoy it? I certainly did. To get through a film like G.I. Joe, perhaps you should stick to these guidelines: The first thing you should do, upon entering the cinema, is leave your hopes that things will be exactly the same at the door. Books turned into movies are never the same, so why should a cartoon franchise be any different? What you are about to see is the rebirth of a franchise. Characters may not be spot on with their cartoon counterparts, but hey, casting directors do the best they can (mostly). The other thing you need to understand before you watch G.I. Joe is that when a film like The Dark Knight gets snubbed for an Oscar nomination, what chances does a film like this have at earning one? None. The premise of the plot is just too ridiculous. And while most directors will want actors who can hold a scene, I think G.I. Joe doesn’t really require it. You see, this is a simple tale of good vs evil. The great soldiers of the world against the dark and sinister. Channing Tatum, who plays the main hero, Duke, has a pretty face, but the dramatic reach of a doormat. This, believe it or not, is okay because tickets will still be sold. The franchise is too popular to go unwatched.

I’ll agree whole-heartedly that this film did get a bit silly. Between cheesy flashbacks and the use of (almost) obscure foreign languages as firing mechanisms in a futuristic jet, this film certainly left me rolling my eyes. After all, a Wayans brother is one of the stars of the film. But at no point will I ever ask for a refund. The movie, set ten years in the future, wastes no time jumping into the action, with gun fights, explosions, biological terrorism, and probably the most elaborately constructed (mostly CGI) bases in movie history (I think…Stars Wars may have a slight edge). I think we are supposed to have a bit of a tongue-in-cheek perception of this film because, frankly, it is over the top. It’s supposed to be over the top. I think the casting directors picked Jospeh Gordon-Levitt to play Cobra Commander because no one would ever expect him to become the Cobra Commander, especially after an extremely likable performance in (500) Days of Summer.

The Rise of Cobra, I think, was meant to be viewed as a prequel. They certainly left the ending of the movie open for future evil plans from Destro and Cobra, so I would be very surprised to see this franchise fall apart. After all, it made about $100,000,000 worldwide in it’s opening weekend. So let’s leave it at this: G.I. Joe is neither a film to be praised, nor disparaged, but simply enjoyed because it has all the components of a summertime action flick.

And for good measure, imagine if Rise of Cobra had been more like this: The Ballad of G.I. Joe.

So with that, I present this shiny new piece of internet reading material. I’ll try my best to make it something worthwhile.

All the best,

T. R. Worthington

P.S. Stay tuned for Sunday FUNdamentals.