FREE CD

I'm gonna give my friend and former co-worker Josh Bayne a push from my site. For the past week, he's been giving away copies of his EP Grace changes Everything for free. No catch. For serious, it's great. I've been singing All My Love nonstop since I bought it a month or two ago. His promotion ends at midnight on Sunday (May 25) and all you have to do is visit his website and/or send him an e-mail with the subject line FREE CD to bayne.josh@gmail.com. At the risk of sounding like a late-night 80's compilation cd infomercial, if you're into solid Christian music, this is the must have cd of the week. So go forth, and receive free cds.

Really?

Dear Wendy's,

Stop. Please stop your advertising campaign right now. It is not original and for some reason, it infuriates me. I enjoy your dollar menu. I enjoy a lot of the food you choose to make. But please stop trying to tell me that what you offer is not fast food. If my food takes less time to prepare than it does to actually eat, than I consider that fast. If you have a drive-thru, odds are you are pretty quick at service. Try another angle and don't keep telling me "it's better than fast food, it's Wendy's." Why not, "Wendy's, sure it's garbage, but it's quicker than all the other garbage." That is a story I can get behind. Don't pretend to be something that you're not. The same goes for you too, Ruby Tuesday's. You used to be cool. Stop being pretentious and give me an actual ketchup bottle on the table. I should open my own restaurant.

Sincerely,
Trey

Utility and greed

I am not sociologist.

Nor am I a psychologist. I am not qualified to talk about anything. ever. I took a sociology 101 class at Emory my first year of college and the only thing I remember is one discussion where my professor claimed it was stealing to refill a drink at a fast food restaurant and walk out. His claim was that you paid to enjoy the drink inside the store and to refill it and leave would be stealing from the restaurant. You could refill as many times as you wanted inside the restaurant (assuming there were free refills) but he equated refilling and leaving with larceny. He was either A) playing devil's advocate or B) an idiot. Either way, I digress.

As I was saying, I'm not qualified to talk about anything. But when has that stopped anyone before? That's my God-given right as an American to comment on things that I have no clue about. I blame ESPN for this, as it can make anyone who knows nothing about sports (i.e. me) feel like they are qualified to talk about them.

I am house sitting on Dauphin Island this week. It is, by all accounts, the best thing I could have done this week. It's relaxing. No one else is around. John came and visited monday and we fished. Betsy came and visited yesterday and we had a wonderful day. Even though she had a run-in with the law, it was still perfect to be able to spend time with her. I've been able to write music. I've sat outside. It's great. But it also has given me an opportunity to watch more tv than even I normally do. And one thing that I have caught at least three times this week has been deal or no deal. It's brilliant

Now I've been familiar with the show. I've watched it a couple of times. What strikes me as most intriguing about the show (other than how ridiculous Howie Mandel's beard/ear rings combo looks) is the fact that it is a microcosm of how America operates. It's the American dream in an hour segment. You start with nothing, you feel like you're entitled to everything, you strive for more, more, more, you forget basic common sense, and when the tide turns, you're left cutting a deal for whatever you can. After the first six cases are open, you are called by "the banker" who seems like a Scrooge McDuck sort of miser (yea, I just referenced Ducktales). The banker makes you a very reasonable offer, and inevitably, the player is almost insulted by how little it is because, "the million is still in play." Case in point, I was watching the other day where the contestant was a red-headed guy who was a fourth grade teacher. The first offer he got was $71,000. I'll repeat that, because it bears repeating. $71,000. He casually mentioned that $71,000 was nearly three times (!) his normal salary as a teacher, and said no deal, howie. Are you kidding me? For real? If someone walked up to you while you were walking down the street, and offered you your salary for the next three years in exchange for a case you have in your hand, would you turn it down? You've just made $71,000 for about three minutes worth of work. And I use the term work loosely. So the guy goes for several more rounds and sure enough, knocks just about every high number out except for like two hundred grand. I believe his offers went up to around 197,000 dollars. Which is just as ridiculous. Anyways, the guy eventually gets another offer from the banker which, after three or four rounds, has found it's way down to around 70,000 dollars. Now with the understanding that he no longer has an opportunity to get a million dollars, he is left to barter his position and has come to the conclusion that indeed, $70,000 is worth his time now.

Then it gets interesting.

Howie Mandel does this thing where he wants to see if you made a good deal. Basically, if what you sold your case for was more than what was actually in the case. This guy ends up having $200,000 in his case, and you can tell he's hurt by this fact. But here's the thing:
IT'S ALWAYS A GOOD DEAL

Oh sure, looking back on it, it doesn't seem good. But you didn't have that insight five minutes ago. You sold an unknown case for $70,000 or whatever. It's easy to play the what if game, but it ultimately doesn't matter. You just got $70,000 and travel accommodations for free. That's why this show is ridiculous. It makes people honestly think they deserve something more than the penny that is on the board. You try and get more and more and maximize utility until the tide turns and your forced to find the ultimate lowest possible price that you will leave with. The best strategy for that game is to go in, play two rounds, and take whatever the offer is. After that, chances are almost never in your favor.

But like I said, I'm no expert. I also don't understand the popularity of The Hills.

Call me Ishmael

I caught two freakin' fish today. I am Ahab. I am Ishmael. I am Hemingway. Granted, the two fish were probably about five inches a piece and I had to throw them back, but that doesn't matter.

What matters is that I conquered nature today. I took life. I am a destroyer. I should listen to "One" by Metallica.

Well, at least they tried

Shoddy.

That is the one word I would use to describe this week.

Let's put aside the fact that I have finals. Because those, in and of themselves, are not the best/worst thing to happen to me this week. They were mundane at best and distracting at worst. No, finals were alright. This week, I was hired by a local high school to play guitar for their high school musical (not that high school musical). The musical is entitled, at least I believe it's entitled, "Back to the 80's: a specific case study on every piece of pop culture to come out of America in the span of time from 1980-1989." Ok, I made that sub-title up, but that's what it should be called. It's basically a play that involves a lot of music from the 80's and the plot itself is formulated around those songs. All of the actors names, set designs, context, and even some of the dialogue is wallowing in 80's imagery. It serves it's purpose.

I describe this week as shoddy because of how this play was run. I was hired to play guitar, that was it. I understand this. I wasn't expecting a huge welcome with a fruit basket (although that would have been nice), nor was I expecting to come in as a consultant, but I would at least expect to be acknowledged. I showed up (having been told practice would be over at 5:30) and stayed until around 9. It was awful. But to be fair, the rest of the times they quoted me on were accurate. I had to make suggestions about sound because it was clear to me that they had never been around an electric guitar. All in all, the first two nights of practice were sub par. I sat there and kept my opinions to myself about how things should be done, mostly because A) I'm nowhere near qualified to comment on that stuff and B) no one asked me. Nor did I expect them to. All the sound from the room was coming from the "orchestra pit" (a self-contained box with fabric dividers) and two bose speakers hung way to high above the stage. There were other things, but I'm going to assume that no one else cares about stuff like sound, transitions, and how cables are run. I will, however, commend the people I played with. All high school kids who were pretty decent players, and a pianist who had triplets (!) in the show. She was really nice and made small talk with me about people we commonly knew. And in retrospect, this paragraph sounds like I'm whining, but I don't mean to. I understand the director and choreographer and choral conductor and whoever else were not focused on me, nor should they be. Maybe I just have a problem with thinking that I can run things better than other people who are probably more qualified. My point is that I have been reading Seth Godin's blog lately, and I've been thinking a lot about how you brand/market yourself. If you are not doing it the best you can, why do it? and if you are doing it the best you can and it's still not excellent, maybe you should have an outside opinion.


As for the musical itself, i find it ironic that this play was being performed by high schooler's to a mainly high school audience. It is 2008 at the writing of this blog and I would say that at BEST, the seniors in that school were born in 1989. I'm going to assume most of what they know about the 80's comes from VH1. I was born in 1985 and that's where I get most of my information about the 80's. Why do this if the entire joke of the play is centered around people understanding the context of that era firsthand? As for the acting, I loved it. The kids are trying really hard to emote and it's fantastic. I figured out this week why I don't love watching musicals and plays, unless they are performed by high schools. It's because with serious actors in musicals and theater, they are trying really hard to fit into the part and get everything perfect and for the most part, they succeed. I don't like that. I like watching people struggle to figure out how to convey an emotion or a sentiment. And I also really enjoy watching people forget lines. And I'm not saying any of this to downplay what those kids have done, because I'm sure they've worked hard for months. I just enjoyed the play because it's not perfect, and I'm attracted to that. I don't like perfect, I like interesting. And that it was.

So maybe I should this week could be summed up as interesting.

P.S. The name of the high school in the play is William Ocean High School. I laughed out loud when I saw it. Also, how can you have a play, focused on the 80s, with a main character named Eileen, and NOT include Dexys Midnight Runners seminal hit "Come on, Eileen"? heresy.