On Friday night, Craig and I got to see Sigur Rós at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater. It’s an outdoor venue and rain was in the forecast. I hoped it would hold off, but I never could have expected what actually happened.

We stayed dry for the entire show and were thankful, and the band came out to do a final song for the encore: Untitled 8 (aka Popplagið). One of their most popular songs, and definitely one of the grandest and most epic songs I’ve ever heard. As the song started to build to its climax, a mist started to form over the crowd, and as the song progressed the rain began to pour harder and harder.

Watch this video that someone got of the song. It’s hard to see the rain in the video, but when the crowd starts to cheer a couple minutes in, that’s when it started to come down.

Craig said I looked happier than I’ve been in a long time in those few minutes. It’s true. I might sound like a complete sap, but it was one of the most worshipful, beautiful moments in my life thus far. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.

I completely blame this on my friends that work at the Mac Superstore. After a lifetime of using Windows, they finally convinced me to get a MacBook Pro.

What it came down to was a combination of curiosity about unknown territory and a realization that if I’m going to explore it, now is probably the best time to do it given that I’m at the age with the highest amount of expendable income. (Also, I have to admit that the musician/writer/web addict/hipster in me would get a little ego boost from all this. Sad, I know.)

I originally intended to wait for the soon-coming announcement of the next line of MacBooks, but Josh and Andy, my friends at the Mac Superstore, told me the other day that they had a couple top-end models of the last line on major sale. So yesterday I went in on my lunch break and picked up the last one they had.

(For the nerds: 17″ hi-def 1920×1200 display, Intel Dual Core 2.6GHz processor, 200GB 7200 rpm hard drive, 4 GB RAM, 256 MB video.)

So far I’m still figuring things out. Though I’ve used Macs before, it’s an adjustment to use one for more than a few minutes because I’m used to being able to zip around in Windows. This is The Great Experiment, after all. I do have to say that it’s a lot easier to figure out from the get-go. I’m not really used to that so it’s a little unsettling for some reason.

I’ve got Firefox running with most of my plugins, I’m running Adium for chat, Twhirl for Twitter. I still need to import all my music and pictures.

Things I love? Multi-touch mouse, the speed improvement, way more screen space, pretty looks and the kind of highly intuitive interface I always aim to create when making websites. I’m also looking forward to using GarageBand.

My two unsolved problems: I can’t get the hot keys working for Spaces and I can’t figure out how to keep the computer from sleeping when I close the lid. Relatively small issues.

Oh, and I miss my Home, End and Delete keys. Fn+Backspace doesn’t quite cut it.

Tim Blair, my former boss’s boss (er… something like that), puts it quite eloquently:

Inexperience in Washington politics is a lot like recruiting a rookie to play on a last place team. They certainly won’t make things worse and might just make things better.

Tonight is the night I see Radiohead. (And Liars!) It’s also the night I get to hang out with Leah and commemorate what would be the birthday of JD Rhea. We’ll both have goosebumps and tears for more reasons than can be counted.

The best part of all this, aside from having the potential to be the most memorable night in recent years, is that there’s a rumor buzzing that video of the show is going to be broadcast online. That means that, by next week, I’ll be able to find a professionally-shot video of the most significant concert I’ve ever attended that I’ll be able to keep forever. Now that’s cool.

If you care to get a play-by-play, you can be watching my Twitter for updates.

This is shaping up to be a wonderful day.

June is here. It’s the busy time of year. Graduations, going-away parties, weddings, vacations. No time for posting on blogs that nobody reads anyway.

May went by in a blur, leaving me just enough time to reminisce about music I used to love (Killswitch Engage, The Used, Eels, Death Cab For Cutie) and wish for half a minute that I had good music taste during the 90s (Pavement, Oasis, The Magnetic Fields). Then I went with Matt down to Irvine last weekend to experience the face melting metal of Iron Maiden and Anthrax live. It’s impressive that old guys are still capable of tearing it up like that.

1. Jimmy Eat World - “Here It Goes” (Chase This Light)
2. Hammock - “City in the Dust on My Window” (Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow)
3. 16 Horsepower - “Splinters” (Live: March 2001)
4. Eels - “Railroad Man” (Blinking Lights and Other Revelations)
5. Eels - “The Other Shoe” (Blinking Lights and Other Revelations)
6. Killswitch Engage - “Take This Oath” (The End of Heartache)
7. The Used - “Let It Bleed” (In Love and Death)
8. Death Cab For Cutie - “Transatlanticism” (Transatlanticism)
9. Duffy - “Mercy” (Rockferry)
10. Moving Mountains - “Grow On, Grow Up, Grow Out” (Pneuma)
11. The Appleseed Cast - “The Clock and the Storm” (Peregrine)
12. Pavement - “Unfair” (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
13. Oasis - “Champagne Supernova” (What’s The Story, Morning Glory?)
14. The Magnetic Fields - “Busby Berkeley Dreams” (69 Love Songs)
15. Bon Iver - “Skinny Love” (For Emma, Forever Ago)
16. Iron Maiden - “Run to the Hills” (Number of the Beast)
17. Anthrax - “Madhouse” (Spreading the Disease)

I’ve become a bootleg fiend as of late. I got a whole bunch of Coachella recordings, other random shows I was at and a few I wish I was at. Maybe I should start posting a few samples for your enjoyment. I’m at the brink of filling up my laptop’s hard drive. It’s about time for a new computer anyway.

You probably won’t hear much more from me this month (as if that were unusual). I’m road-tripping to Colorado to see the fam for a week, and then I’ll be start cleaning and packing to prepare to move into a new place that I just confirmed late last night. Exciting times. Peace.

May? What happened to April? I guess I’ve been busy or something.

April was a month of playing artists on repeat: Bon Iver; Jimmy Eat World; Foals; Does It Offend You, Yeah?; Portishead; Grizzly Bear. There was also some Coachella reminiscing and a healthy scoop of bitterness towards Western evangelical culture (check out the Chris Thile song), but those are rants for another time.

1. Grizzly Bear - “Alligator (Choir Version)” (Friend EP)
2. Does It Offend You, Yeah? - “Let’s Make Out” (You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into)
3. Jimmy Eat World - “Firefight” (Chase This Light)
4. Grizzly Bear - “Little Brother (Electric)” (Friend EP)
5. Foals - “Two Steps, Twice” (Antidotes)
6. Does It Offend You, Yeah? - “We Are Rockstars” (You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into)
7. Jimmy Eat World - “Kill” (Futures)
8. Bon Iver - “Skinny Love” (For Emma, Forever Ago)
9. Bon Iver - “re: Stacks” (For Emma, Forever Ago)
10. Chris Thile - “The Believer” (Deceiver)
11. mewithoutYou - “The Sun and the Moon” (Brother, Sister)
12. Bon Iver - “The Wolves (Act I and II)” (For Emma, Forever Ago)
13. Vampire Weekend - “Mansard Roof” (Vampire Weekend)
14. Portishead - “Machine Gun” (Third)
15. International Superheroes of Hardcore - “Dirty Mouth” (Tip Of The Iceberg/Takin’ It Ova!)
16. Man Man - “The Ballad of Butter Beans” (Rabbit Habits)
17. Les Savy Fav - “The Sweat Descends” (Inches)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to working 24/7 and getting the life sucked out of me by tactless people that I still try hard to love.

I’m probably going to upset someone with this. That’s not the goal. I only want to explain why I don’t regret one bit that I voluntarily skipped John Piper’s Desiring God conference this last weekend.

Does “You shall have no other gods before me” ring a bell?

I love a lot of musicians. They are very important to me, and I hold many of them in very high esteem. But when I see them live, I do my very best to not treat them as anything more than the human they are. He or she may have created something greater than I can or said something that inspired me more than I can describe, but the minute I say “[insert musician] is amazing” instead of “[insert musician] creates amazing music,” I know I’m in trouble.

I feel the same should hold true of those that put so much value into prominent Christians, maybe even more so. Certainly it’s nice to see that people have so much respect for a man that clearly has devoted his life to understanding the Gospel. My concern is more with the fact that the “Don’t Waste Your Life” conference was dubbed “the Piper conference” within days of its announcement. (I had to go to his site to look up the official name.)

A rule of thumb I’d like to propose: if the person teaching the conference/writing the book/speaking the sermon/leading the worship is being held in higher regard than the content he or she is presenting, it’s time to question priorities. For as much buzz as I heard about the event, before and after, I still don’t know what it was about beyond what its official name tells me. That to me is a bad sign.

The irony is painful

I heard a lot of talk about how this “could be a once in a lifetime chance” coming from everyone from friends to respected pastors. A once in a lifetime chance for what? To spend your hard-earned money and two days of your time watching a guy speak out of the Bible you read every day, only to find that he puts the recordings on his website less than 48 hours later for free? It hurts me to wonder at the man hours that were spent to put this all together. There is pain in seeing the irony that so many “wasted” their time and money to see someone in person who could have saved thousands of hours and dollars by speaking his message into a microphone and putting it online.

I apologize for being so brash. Being so entrenched in Christian culture has only made me jaded and I don’t think that’s the way it was meant to be. I just can’t help it when the contradictions are so glaring.

I’m not going to hold firmly to my statements, though: show cases of truly changed lives of those that attended the conference or tell me where my thinking has gone wrong. Please. It hurts to tear down my own people so I don’t want to be doing so unnecessarily.

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted a song or drawing for a couple weeks. There is a reason for this. (Side note: I always talk to “you” as though I have an audience. Why do I do that?)

I’ve decided to put those two goals on pause for the time being because, one, they were taking up more time than I had available due to my poor prediction of how long it would take and how much free time I have; two, it only took about a month before it started feeling more like an obligation than something I wanted to do, and these goals are about me getting things done that I want; and three, other things have come into my peripheral that may be taking up more of my time in the near future. Those things will be announced if and when they start happening.

This isn’t giving up. It’s more that I learned that drawing and songwriting are not things I enjoy when I force myself to do them. That said, when the occasion calls, I’ll now look to those two things as more valid forms of expression to get things out of my head than I did before. If training myself to think that way was the intent (it partially was), it has been met. So you may still hear the occasional song from me when I need to say or emote something and you may still see the occasional comic when I have a funny tidbit of conversation from Amy to share or drawing when I see something beautiful in my head.

I didn’t feel like drawing a comic this week, and I’m at least half a week late anyway, so here’s a crappy drawing of my shoe that took maybe half an hour:

(Click for full size, as always.)

It’s been a long time since I sketched something I was looking at. Despite that, I don’t think I did that bad. What do you think?

Also, a hearty CONGRATULATIONS to Amy (yes, the one made “famous” in my dumb comics) who got engaged on Tuesday to the dapper and charming Dan B. The only downside to this moment of awesomeness is that now I have to work my vacation time schedules around their prospective October wedding date, seeing how Amy wants me to be there and stuff. I know, life is rough. Way to not work around my needs with your little wedding, guys. Jeez.

Due to the lateness of getting this done, I did the vocals quickly. And then I realized that I’m using a really cheap vocal microphone, so this isn’t going to get much better, other than me hitting the rhythm better and not missing as many notes, until I get a new mic. But still, it’s painful for me to listen to myself from the moment I open my mouth. But I’m practicing not being a perfectionist, so this is what you get.

I worked really hard on the melody and lyrics for this one, though. I’m actually pretty happy with those, save a line or two.

Josh Mock - Room For Joy

There was some major inspiration from Bright Eyes and Once/Glen Hansard/The Frames, in case that isn’t blatantly obvious. I’ve been listening to both a lot over the past few weeks.

Oh, and if you ever wonder why people drown stuff in reverb like I did there, it’s to cover up the mistakes. That’s the same reason why bad guitarists love distortion. Audio effects are lifesavers and yet far too often a crutch.

As always, the comments are there for you to criticize my work. That’s a big part of why I’m doing this. I can’t get better if I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.