Thanks for ruining the name of my town

I live in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and was mildly interested when I found out that there was movie coming out titled "Elizabethtown". Then I found out that it takes place in Elizabethtown, Kentucky--which would explain why I never noticed any film crews around here, or any news about a major motion picture being filmed on location.

But now this nice college town where I live, with a chocolate factory and great produce and other attractions that I can't think of at the moment, will forever be associated with "that shitty Cameron Crowe movie". MSN Entertainment gives it one out of five stars. From what I can tell, it's one of the better reviews. Is it just me, or do Crowe's movies just get worse and worse? I could barely watch "Jerry Maguire", so my date/girlfriend would have to be truly amazing for me to sit through this one. I still haven't seen all of "Titanic" either, but that's another director.

Older, not much wiser

The birthday came and went, and I did actually finish cobbling together a demo from various tapes I made over the past years--mostly the past five years. I guess I was sort of surprised that I didn't have more versions of certain songs, because it seemed like I made lots of recordings of all my stuff that I never bothered to mix down, but apparently I didn't record as much as I thought I did. I'm generally very lazy without a deadline, and I'm not very good at setting my own deadlines. So, good or bad, at least I accomplished that.

I was back in Erie this past weekend, below are a couple of pictures taken at Presque Isle state park, which is right along Lake Erie. It was really nice on Saturday, but today, when I took these pics, there was heavy cloud cover.

Lighthouse, looking out from the Peninsula towards Canada

View of Erie from Presque Isle

Steve Jobs: the Bill Gates of the music industry?

A very eye-opening discussion, and warning. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it appears to be a very real possibility that the music industry could become consolidated into the hands of just one man.

Update: From what I've been reading elsewhere, this might not be as ominous as I originally thought. It's more the recording industry being its usual stupid self, not an Apple power grab.

Stuff

It poured down rain most of the weekend here. Recorded a few more things, listened through other unmarked tapes, got too drunk Saturday night, visited my friend and his wife and their new puppy on Sunday.

Anyway, I should have a new collection of very rough demos mixed and compiled by Wednesday, as a birthday gift to myself. Then I'll be forwarding it to someone more talented who can hopefully help me to accomplish my goal--an "album" posted online, which you can download for free.

Entertainment News

Congratulations to Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, your child no longer has the stupidest name in show business.

uh-oh

maybe I should start getting my horoscope from somewhere other than the Onion--

Libra: You won't be hit by a bus this week, exactly. Circumstances will unfold so that you're traveling at almost 100 miles an hour when you strike a stationary bus.

at least it'll be fast.