I've been doing such a good job of not drinking caffeine in the evenings. Tonight, I planned to go to bed nice and early to finish off this nasty sickness. Then, right around 7:30, Kim had suddenly had enough for the night and needed to lay down, so I decided I'd finish dinner and put Robbie to bed and all of that. Well, I had already fallen asleep once on accident this evening, so I knew there was only one way to make it thorough the evening.
Hello, Diet Dr. P.
I feel kinda like Bastien using his second-to-last-wish to bring Atreyu back to life. I know it's not a great idea, but I really don't know that I had any other options.
Anyway, while I'm up, I might as well give you people what you want.
#1: Personal Judgment Day by Big Tent Revival
"Don't have to listen to a word I say,
Don't have to bow your head and pray,
But you're only one step away
From your personal Judgment Day..."
For some reason, "Judgment Day" still makes me think Terminator 2. Which is remarkable given that I've never seen any of the Terminator movies.
I know, I know. People are generally aghast when I say that. And then they say something like, "We are TOTALLY going to watch those together!" This has been going on for the last six years, and I'm pretty sure it's not accurate.
By the way, I highly recommend HowItShouldHaveEnded.com's latest Terminator video. "You mean, not only do I invent time travel, but in the future machines are going to use my technology to go back in history and kill just one man???"
This was a short song.
#2: Town Meeting Song by Danny Elfman (from Nightmare Before Christmas)
"And the best, I must confess, I have saved for the last,
For the ruler of the Christmas Land
Is a fearsome king with a deep mighty voice,
Least, that's what I've come to understand..."
This song is kind of an eerie choice, given the line I wrote just before starting the shuffle.
I don't know if I've mentioned this on Shuffle before, but I wasn't really that big a fan of TNBC when it first came out. I thought it was weird. (It was. I apparently was not weird enough. Yet.) It wasn't until I played through Kingdom Hearts for the first time that I started to get into it. There's a Halloweentown world, for those who don't know, in the KH franchise, and the music in the background is the This is Halloween theme looping endlessly. It's pretty delightful, and I had Sherri lend me her copy of the soundtrack. The music is what got me hooked, and so I rented it and watched it with Kim. Basically, I've been at least a passing fan ever since.
You should look up "Haunted Mansion Nightmare Before Christmas" on Youtube sometime. I'd link to it, but I'm on a time limit here. They completely redo the inside of the Haunted Mansion ride every year from Halloween to Christmas. It's pretty rad.
#3: Worship Song by Pete Stewart
"You lift me up so high till my voice fills the sky,
High above the heavens.
You fill my soul with peace and deliver me,
And I will call upon your name."
I was really excited when Pete Stewart announced he was going to do some solo stuff after Grammatrain broke up. His solo album was pretty good, though not outstanding, and he didn't record again after that. He did play Police Chief Devlin on the !Hero: The Rock Opera cast recording, but he unfortunately didn't tour with the show. (Which was too bad. The guy who did it on the tour wasn't nearly as creepy/good)
By the way, I absolutely love the !Hero: The Rock Opera cast recording.
It seemed like there was a point in time in the late 1990's when all of the best Christian rock bands were splitting. The reason? There was a rash of marriages, generally among the lead guitarists or bass players. For some reason, having a wife makes you want to be a grown-up and not just drive around playing rock and roll shows all the time. I guess I can see how that would happen. Kory and John Cooper of Skillet just load their two kids in the tour bus and home-school them. Er, bus-school them. I seem to remember Kory played on tour well into her third trimester with their second child. Think these children have any choice but to be rocker kids? Yeah, doubt it.
#4: Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra
"Mr. Blue, you did it right, but soon comes Mr. Night,
Creeping over, now his hand is on your shoulder.
Never mind, I'll remember you this, I'll remember you this way."
YEAH!!!
Not going to lie, this is one of my three favorite "Get up in the morning" songs. (It's sometimes hard for me to believe exactly how melancholy I used to be. Also, the other two are "The Sun Also Rises" by Brave Saint Saturn and "Brand New Day" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog) Seriously, it doesn't get much happier than this song. You almost can't play it without bobbing your head from side to side. It's a song that's literally all about the sun coming out and everybody being happy! I mean how much does that rock??
If I ever get my little garage rock band together, we're totally covering this song. No arguments. I will fight anybody who wants to dissent.
Incidentally, I have to make sure my little garage rock band consists entirely of people I can beat in a fight.
Other songs I want to cover: something Steve Taylor (a bit updated, of course; I've got an awesome hard-rock rendition of Bouquet in my head), Handbook for the Sellout, Don't Take the Girl (I have an awesome ska-core rendition of this one and I think it'd make people smile), Livin' on a Prayer (come on, EVERYBODY covers Livin' On a Prayer!), That Thing You Do! (best concert-opener ever), and It's The End of the World As We Know It.
My band is going to be awesome.
#5:On Distant Shores by Five Iron Frenzy
"On my knees I cried to you, bleeding myself dry,
But the price of life was more than I could ever buy.
If mercy falls upon the broken and the poor,
Dear Father, I will see You there on distant shores..."
If you've never heard this song, I can't really explain to you how beautiful it is.
I got this CD my third week at The Huron Playhouse in 2003. It was the farthest I'd been from home, the first summer Kim and I spent apart (since we'd been dating for more than a month, anyway), and while I was having a good time, it was really tough. I wasn't fitting in, I wasn't making friends, and I was, on the whole, pretty lonely. Then came this, the last FIF CD (not counting the live-recorded final show in Denver). The timing was perfect.
When I got it, I just had time to digest the whole thing between lunch and company meeting. This is an emotional enough track that it can catch me from time to time seven years later. At that time, at that point in my summer, with everything I was dealing with at the time, by the point in the CD where the last track bursts into an echo of Every New Day (the song that FIF played last at every show from 1997 on), I was pretty close to bawling. It was so cathartic. And I managed to get it all out of my system without anybody noticing, so I lost no face. ;-)
I'll say I felt a lot better after that day. The CD proved a needed link to my home, my past, and my friends. My myriad of quirks started to make sense to those around me, and a few of them decided that I was funny and a good person to have around. Everything got so much easier after that.
Another testament to God's impeccable timing, I suppose.
Here's my heart, let it be forever Yours,
Only You can make every new day seem so new.
#6: Hero by Daily Planet
"I guess I played the game,
I guess that I'm the one to blame.
I put my faith in man, tho he'll turn to dust.
I'll put my faith and all my trust in the One who made me..."
You know how most of the good bands seem to disappear after one album? Yeah. Daily Planet was one of those. They had a fairly distinct sound. I loved the way they put together guitars with strings and a bit of a gruffer style of vocal. They were catchy and upbeat without being pop. Lyrically, they were a bit rough, but who isn't on their first album? I don't really know what happened to these guys, but they disappeared after their debut album, Hero.
Incidentally, this song became one of my unofficial theme songs for The Hero Squad vs. The Princess Snatchers. Just seemed to fit perfectly.
I'm trying to wrack my brain to think of I can find an example of this sort of idol-worship-gone-wrong in my own childhood. Hm...nothing is coming to mind. I will let you know if I think of anything in the next week or so. I am reminded of an episode of Growing Pains where Ben gets to meet his favorite rapper and the guy is a jerk to him, so he comes home and tears down all his posters until Renown Hockey Fan Alan Thicke tells him that it's okay to still like the guy's music.
Another life lesson learned. Thanks yet again, Growing Pains.
