check out that 'stache

You know when you grow up with someone, and you're best friends with them for your entire life, but maybe you also realize that over the past three years or so you've begun to grow apart, but still see each other, so you kind of remain best friends almost as much out of comfort as you do for any other reason? 

That's Weezer. 

Favorite band? In all honesty, probably not since the Green album came out and supremely disappointed. 

Maybe we were expecting too much. Maybe it was time to consider that the Blue album and Pinkerton were as much products of a band in a particular time and place, and to ask someone to emulate a phase of their life would be asking for too much, and end up being too fake anyways. It was always Weezer's honesty that fans found endearing, and catching lightening in a bottle three times in a row was just not going to happen.

With that admission long ago conceded, I download the leaked eight tracks of the upcoming album, and I must say that although they don't blow me away, I personally feel it's the best they've done since Pinkerton. It feels like they know it too, and they decided to forgo a name almost to underscore the fact that...in spirit, this is essentially the third Weezer album everyone has been waiting for. 

The catch however, is that if you aren't already a Weezer fan, you probably won't find any of these songs particularly special. And even if you used to be, it's entirely possible you've just outgrown the sound by now. Realistically, if you weren't still waiting for this, you probably won't care. This album was, quite apparently, made with fans in mind, and it seems like the band now has the hindsight to enjoy and appreciate the Weezer experience that we had all along.

If you are indeed a huge lover of all things Weez, you're going to be hard pressed to not hit repeat on Heart Songs about a gajillion times. 

Along with most of this album, it almost seems like the band is parodying itself. But Heart Songs lets you into where Rivers is right now, and stirs up feelings about the band's idiosyncratic nerd-rock that you thought died when they recorded "Crab".

Heart Songs is an homage to Weezer by Weezer, and although it's not necessarily going to bring the band back into the type of relationship they had with fans in years past, it's certainly a spectacular reminder of why Weezer once occupied that place in the first place.

pondering

everyone says sports is a great metaphor for life, but couldn't life just be a great metaphor for sports?

On that note, I'm just going to take it one game at a time, focus on the team and try my best to play hard out there.

I'm trying to decide whether a television show based on my life would garner decent ratings.

Personally, I like to think it would, if only for the fact that shows about single guys with quirky jobs who meet strange and often famous people seem to make for comedic situations. Notice that I assumed a show about me would be a comedy. This is because there is no drama in my life outside of running out of black socks to wear to the office.

I have humorous and distinctly different single male buddies, myriad couples to play off, I live in my parents basement and like to undergo hairbrained entrepreneurial schemes and freelancing opportunities.

The only thing missing is a rotating door of love interests, although if you take my dating track record that is a comedy unto itself entirely.

Yes, I think the me show would be quite the prime-time sitcom. I'm also confidant I could write a pretty killer theme song, although perhaps not as killer as Alan Thicke wrote for Growing Pains.

I'm good, but I mean, modesty is the better part of valour.

Upgrades

Yesterday:

Today:

Ryan Reynolds, you did OK for yourself there kid.

The ladder disparity calculations are blowing my mind.

everyone loves a slinky

there's a lot to be cynical about on "extreme home makeover". 

yes, the signs are probably made by the show and handed out to a crowd that most likely is only there because they got free t-shirts and school credits to volunteer for building a house in a week. the corporate sponsors probably decide who gets picked for each episode and afterwards the sustainability of living in a giant mansion full of millions of dollars worth of material wealth ends up gentrifying a neighborhood and perhaps even the family itself in the eyes of the community who (purportedly) supported this television show in the first place.

yes, all of the above is highly probable. 

but the parts where they move the bus and people actually break down into tears? that -- in my mind at least -- is possibly the only real emotional display remaining on prime time television outside of professional sports. everything else might be contrived (to put it mildly), but that one moment? it's real. it's interesting to watch. 

in unrelated news, now that steph has a real estate license, she has officially assumed a role in my personal superhero team that i like to call "the league of useful friends."

so far that league includes three doctors (overlap is inefficient!), an accountant, a chocolate dealer and victor, who really i have no idea what he does but he can get a decent rate on currency exchange, so that's good enough for me.

as for the rest of you -- all engineers, i might add -- stop being so selfish! I suggest you make like steph and find a secondary occupation that benefits your friends more. 

what good is an engineer if they aren't married to you for the purpose of employee benefits?

honestly.