nice dream

i've just finished season 3 of how i met your mother. the season ender, miracles, is notable for the mushy stuff: lily, marshall, robin and barney all running to the hospital; ted getting engaged; barney's loves flashing in front of his eyes.

however, there's also the little matter of the soundtrack to ted's accident.

nice dream. by radiohead. from my favouritest album ever.

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incidentally, i'm on the bends lss mode. particularly, sulk.

my baby's got the bends, we don't have any real friends

- radiohead, the bends

two of my regular morning companions are anjanette and vito. they're not from the office, nor are they my pet dogs (and i'm not looking for any in the near future, thank you). they're only the voice of non-reason in my head, especially when my earphones are plugged in and my mp3 player is in radio mode. welcome to my daily habit, the one i don't want to quit.

in the four years or so that the morning brew has been on air, i'd probably been listening for almost the same length of time. except for the time that they changed the station format and got eric to come on board temporarily... i guess it just proves that the jocks were the essence of the show. i'm rambling, i know. i've said all of this before, here. so anyway, vito came back and anjanette took over the news reporting duties. soon they got the show back on track, especially with the return of a much-loved segment, the morning brew playlist. and after almost two years, they brought back another popular segment, the morning brew cd archive. a segment i had been on twice in mylinda's time. and just this week, i renewed my acquaintance with vito when i came on board for the third time.

it's pretty obvious, i like my 15 minutes of fame. if i can stretch it to half an hour, so much better. talking about one of my favorite things -- music -- is definitely a bonus. another plus is the chance to finally put on board one of my top 5 albums of all time, from one of my top 5 bands of all time: the sophomore-jinx jinxer, radiohead's the bends.

like i said on air that day, radiohead is more than just that rocker knockoff creep (a song i hated, by the way). and they're not just this way cool band that is so introspective it gets weird, like they are in ok computer and the three albums since (or what i've heard so far from them... i got bored too soon). critics have heaped praises and the brits all but stood them up next to the beatles, but i also wonder: what's the big deal? maybe this album is about the most i can handle from them. but this is where people started treating them seriously, instead of as "just another rock band". there is beauty in transition.

the great thing about this outing was, i think i did make an impact. i remember this regular texter who thought the band is overrated, with all that hoopla about karma police and the other stuff. after he heard the first song (i picked just, one of the less recognizable singles), he might have been tempted to give the band another chance. most of the other messages were about wanting to hear my iron lung, but i thought that the album deserved to be exposed beyond the hit singles. besides, i was not passing up the chance to let people hear my favorite radiohead song, black star. oh, and this dude actually thought the album was cool, and so was i. haha! i mean, come on, the whole point is of this exercise is to delude myself that i am cool. i the man!

what you see is what you buy

i had only one thing in mind coming out of the office that afternoon: get those damn radiohead cds. and i did.

so, finally i have a radiohead collection! i actually bought all three cds last friday. heheheh. and the weird thing is, i haven't even listened to all of them... i didn't even finish ok computer... gaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!

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i love gadgets. i've owned my fair share, from mobile phones to discman to palm pda to laptop. even if i can't afford to buy everything i wanted, i still keep pretty updated. it helps to be friends with i.t. people and when your seatmate at work has a cellphone business.

the problem with losing your mobile phone is that it forces you to choose among all the different kinds available in the market today. ultimately i really wanted a blackberry, ever since i noticed its steady improvement from mere organizer to mobile email device, though it's running behind on the aesthetic aspect. however, wanting a blackberry might point you in the direction of the smartphones, with the pda plus camera plus music player. and these phones don't come cheap. i'm thinking p990, but it hasn't come out yet. w950i would also be great, but it doesn't seem to be worth spending that much money on it and get no camera. i mean, if you're thinking of spending a whole lot, better get all that stuff in.

on the other hand, i'm thinking of getting a simpler phone as a stop-gap. the whole point is having a mobile phone with little clutter, just the basic call and text (and maybe gprs for when you get bored) in color display. without the color, i would have just gone back to my trusty 6-yr-old nokia 3210, except that it's like having a brick in your bag. i almost bought the motorola l6 when my cellphone-dealing officemate took me with her to her supplier, and she got the pink one for herself. it was so cute! and so light! and it has cool games!

but the thing is, if i had gotten that stop-gap phone i would still have wanted the pda phone thing, and it would have been an additional expense with little use. i still have that company-issued mobile for the basic functions (i was soooo lucky i had it because i would have been incommunicado for the last 2 weeks). so what's stopping me from getting the pda thing? well, aside from the usual budget restrictions (my money is planned down to the last centavo until september next year), there's the confusion on what model to get. as i said, p990 is the frontrunner but i'm trying to look for other suitable contenders. besides, it appears that the p990 radio will not function with a bluetooth headset and it's so important for security reasons. though why i keep harping on the music functions when i'm planning to get an ipod video anyway (with matching ituner)... i'm just really mixed up i guess.

here's where you come in. i really need your thoughts on this. should i get the stop-gap phone, and which model? the blackberry, though it doesn't have a radio and it looks too formal? the p990 or some other pda phone, like the motorola q? should i go for a phone with video call functionality? should i disregard the radio because of the ipod i'm planning to get? or should i discard the ipod in favor of the sony walkman functionality? so many choices, so little money. and to think they'll all be obsolete in three years' time.

song of the week: marty casey, everlong (from rock star: inxs)

i blame it on the black star (i heart radiohead!)

48 hours away from my laptop + hundreds of mp3 blog links = radiohead bliss

i get home from work...

i seem to have a really weird hangover. i have less than 8 hours sleep in the last two days, and i must be crazy if i'm still up at one a.m. surfing instead of sleeping. it's not that i can't get enough of the internet, it's just that there are some things that rank higher in my list of priorities. namely, love. pair that with one of the greatest rock bands in history. it's a no-brainer.

i think it was last week or so that my best guy bud and ultimate mp3 resource (the boy's name is mike by the way) sent me a link to a blog that featured a thousand covers of leonard cohen's hallelujah. here i thought jeff buckley was the genius behind the song. and man was i overwhelmed. not only does my old kentucky blog have gazillions of other bands featured (like, the ones you never hear about) as well as an opinionated commentary on rockstar:supernova, it also lists an impressive number of mp3 blogs. i'm telling you, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

it started with me downloading patrice pike's performance of my iron lung (pretty neat), and then one click led to another... and i'm drowning in links to various radiohead live mp3s. it was like having my birthday three months early. if i'd been on dsl i would have downloaded them all according to show, but since i don't i had to pick and choose and leave the rest for another day. listening to the live performance of black star in copenhagen gave me a rush much like staring at my phone wallpaper of lee dong wook. 10 minutes after my last listen, my heart has not stopped pounding.

disclaimer: i'm not really a big, big fan of radiohead. i'm yet to buy the rest of their albums because at the time they came out i was just a poor college student. or a poor entry level actuarial student. only last monday tower gave me a big surprise when they put out 3 cds on the shelf: kid a, ok computer and hail to the thief. i don't think it's ever happened before. so when i've stopped being a poor actuarial analyst (hopefully by next week ) i *might* get ok computer, arguably their best album. so that my copy of the bends will have a companion, finally.

here are some of the other blogs that quenched my thirst for the boys from oxford:

http://musicisart.blogspot.com the kroq performance is here
http://gillmoreboy.blogspot.com linked to musicisart
http://neileslife.blogspot.com copenhagen and other stuff
http://www.bestweekever.tv/category/mp3/ start here

another btw: thom yorke just came out with his solo effort, the eraser. nope, the band is not breaking up.

song of the week: trapt, lost realist