F is for August Flynn

Hello, and welcome to Blogging A to Z 2017! Thanks for stopping by. Fellow A to Z-ers, please make sure to leave a link to your blog in the comments.

My theme this month is 26 of the Best Characters in Fiction.

August Flynn is a main character in This Savage Song, by Victoria Schwab.

Violent acts create real monsters, and the worst of the violent acts creates a very special monster. August Flynn is one of them.

He’s a monster who can steal someone’s soul through music. He doesn’t want to be a monster; he wants to be a good person. But you can’t choose what you are; you can only choose how you act.

The whole book is wonderful, but it was the monsters created by violence that really grabbed me. Imagine a world where those acts have real, concrete effects. Imagine being what’s created by those violent acts.

Being a teenager is hard enough without knowing that you were created from something awful.

Technically young adult, the story is multilayered and meaningful. But if you decide to read it, be warned: the sequel doesn’t come out until this summer.

 

My Top 10 Holiday Songs

I love this time of year, and I do love Christmas music, though it can be excessive when played from October on.  I grew up singing Christmas carols, but in general, I prefer non-traditional Christmas music.  My favorite carol to sing is Joy to the World.  My favorite carol in general is Carol of the Bells, but I prefer completely instrumental versions of it.  These are my favorites, in no particular order.

1.  Happy Christmas (War is Over)- John Lennon

2.  Father Christmas- The Kinks

3.  Christmas Wrapping- The Waitresses

4.  Same Old Lang Syne- Dan Fogelberg

5.  Christmas Eve/ Sarajevo 12/24- Trans-Siberian Orchestra

6.  Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer- Elmo & Patsy

7.  The Entire Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Album

8.  White Christmas- Bing Crosby

9.  Snoopy’s Christmas- The Royal Guardsmen

10.  Rudolph, The Red Nosed Reindeer – Gene Autry

Honorable mention: I HATE the song The Christmas Shoes by Newsong.  Most.  Depressing.  Song.  Ever.  It always makes me cry.

As a bonus, here’s a Top 100 list with lots of other songs… in case you’re looking for a playlist.  🙂

My 2013 Soundtrack

Photo Credit: RJS Photos

Some of my taste in music is stable, and some of it changes over time.  When I listen to things, I tend to listen to them over and over.  And over.

In 2013, I listened to the radio more, and I learned a few new songs I liked.  I actually like a lot of Katy Perry, and I even like Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball,” much to my embarrassment.

On my 25 Most Played Playlist:

1. Hey, Pixies

2. Greedy Fly, Bush

3. How To Save A Life, The Fray

4. Hate Me, Blue October

5. Under My Thumb, The Rolling Stones

6. Promise, Eve 6

7. Blinded by Rainbows, The Rolling Stones

8. Waiting on the World To Change, John Mayer

9. Without You, Motley Crue

10. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Taylor Swift

11. Clocks, Coldplay

12. Inside Out, Eve 6

13. Hold Me Up, Live

14. Where Is My Mind?, Yoav

15. November Rain, Guns N’ Roses

16. 1979, Smashing Pumpkins

17. 100 Years, Five For Fighting

18. Big Yellow Taxi, Counting Crows

19. Gives You Hell, The All-American Rejects

20. Glycerine, Bush

21. Independent Love Song, Scarlett O’

22. I Walk the Line, Johnny Cash

23. Standing On The Moon, Grateful Dead

24. Hurt, Nine Inch Nails

25. Stay, Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories

My Top 25 List changes somewhat from time to time, but this is actually a good representation.  Lisa Loeb, Nine Inch Nails, and Bush are ones I’ve liked from my college days.  I actually didn’t get into Eve 6 in the 90s; sometimes music gets stuck in my head for no apparent reason, and I have to hear it.  Or else.  I got Inside Out stuck in my head like that one day, and as a result, went out and bought a bunch of Eve 6 CDs.  The TV Guy introduced me to the Grateful Dead.  Of course I’d heard of them, but never really listened to them.

I got into Johnny Cash after watching “Walk the Line.”  I like a lot of his songs, but that one happens to be my favorite.  “Hey” and “Hold Me Up” are from one of my favorite movies: Zach and Miri Make a Porno.  “Where is My Mind?” is from Sucker Punch.  That whole soundtrack is awesome.  If you haven’t heard it, check it out on iTunes.  Or better yet, just watch the movie.  “Independent Love Song” is from “Bed of Roses,” another favorite movie of mine.  The Rolling Stones are just awesomesauce.  So there.  I had actually heard “1979” many times, but it never got into my head until I watched “Clerks II.”  Not one of my all time favorite movies, but the song has stuck with me since then.

The other songs on the list are just ones I’d heard here and there that I ended up putting into different playlists and then probably listening to on repeat until they made the list.

I also have two playlists for writing music (one all instrumental, the other not), “Moody Music,” “Stuff I forget I have,” and one I call “Favorites,” which is actually a list composed from a 25 Most Played Playlist on a different iPod.  If you follow that logic.

What do you call your playlists, and what’s on them?

Silence

Jerome, AZ

I may be in the minority, but sometimes, I just love silence.  My commute is an hour one way, and I often use that time to make phone calls (I have a hands’ free device– no worries!) or listen to music.  But other times, I sit in silence for the entire hour.  Sometimes, it’s the first time all day when I haven’t had any demands placed on me, nothing asked or answered.  I don’t even use it as thinking time during that silent time.  I just drive.  In some ways, it’s a lot like meditation, as I’m just in the moment, and there’s nothing else.

I have two volumes at home: quiet and loud.  I listen to music, and lots of it.  But when I don’t want music, I like the quiet.  I often joke that the hotel in the Shining seems like my perfect vacation spot.  There’s lots of space, lots of food, and no other people.  Well, other than the ghosts, but nothing’s perfect, right?

I thought about this because I recently read a blog in which Trina talked about her experiment to be silent for 12 hours, and the insights she gained from it.  At the end of her blog, she asks, “Could you be silent for 12 hours?”  I believe I could.  And I’d probably like it.

What do you think?  Is there anything to be gained by silence?

On The Road With The TV Guy

by The TV Guy

I recently went to Vegas to see Further.  The room had the pungent aromas of sweat, tobacco and various strains of “medicine,” as it is now known in the west. The crowd has not changed much in the past half-century and the music has never been better. The band is a wondrous menagerie of old and new, reinterpreting many of the Grateful Dead standards. Bob Weir and Phil Lesh are the front men as they are the only two original members of The Dead in Furthur. There is one stand out in the band, who brings to life the portions of the songs that were once played by Jerry Garcia. Kadlecik fronted another band called Dark Star Orchestra that played Grateful Dead shows in their entirety, as close to the original as possible. Kadlecik is having the time of his life playing with men who he simply emulated for so many years. I met Kadlecik after a show in 2011 at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas; he just walked out into the casino after the show and talked to fans.

The first of two shows opened 10/1/2013 at the Pearl Theater at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas. The renditions of Truckin and New Minglewood Blues were great, but the showstopper was Kadlecik on guitar in China Cat Sunflower into I Know You Rider. This is likely the best “Rider” I have ever heard live and the flawless artistry on Bertha and Hell in a Bucket were dead on, and dare I say a bit livelier than the band’s front man Jerry Garcia, who died in August of 1995. I would be shot by the faithful for saying such a thing, but he is a master of his craft. Maybe it is the quality of the acoustics and technical expertise at the Palms and Hard Rock Theaters as I agree that a quality sound makes for a better show, but if he was off I think we would really hear it in a venue like these. He is not a replacement, but a masterful artist and technician of music he loves to play. The energy is different; it is not the Grateful Dead but a respectful homage to what was one of the hardest working bands in American music.

First Love Blogfest

Welcome to the First Loves Blogfest.  I get to talk about my first loves in the following categories: music, movie, book, and person.  Some of these are easier than others for me, but they all bring back good memories.

Person

My first great love was Richard.  We must have looked ridiculous together, as he was about 6’4″ and I was 5’0″ (then and now).  He was much more popular than I was, but it seemed to work as we were together for two years, and in high school, that’s like a century.  Different interests, different approaches to life eventually made us drift apart, but I’ve never forgotten him, and I hope that wherever life took him, he’s doing well.  I recently found our old love letters, and though there’s nothing to make me blush in them,  they were still nice to find.

Music

My first great music love was the Beatles.  Before that, I casually liked different music and songs, but nothing grabbed me.  It all started with “Hey Jude.”  I’m sure I heard it on the radio many times before the first time I really heard it.  After that, I started buying tapes and CDs.  I fell in love with Revolver, Rubber Soul, and Sergeant Pepper.  It would be several more years before I’d appreciate Abby Road and the White Album.  To this day, there’s nothing better than a Beatles song for me.

Book

This may be the hardest of the bunch for me, because I’m not sure I could pick just one!    If I were forced to choose, at gunpoint maybe, I’d probably choose Watchers, by Dean Koontz.  It’s my all time favorite book overall, and I think I read it for the first time when I was around 12.  Around the same time, I also read Watership Down, by Richard Adams, so that may have been my first beloved book.  Or, it could have been Jack and Jill by Louisa May Alcott.  Ha!  I talked about more than one book after all.

Movie

The first movie I remember really loving was The Wizard of Oz.  I loved all the songs and wished that I had a friend like The Scarecrow.  I can’t tell you how many times I asked my mom, “So was it a dream or was it real?”  Later, after I read the book by L. Frank Baum, I remember pointing out how different the movie was and being irritated that in the movie, they imply that it could have been a dream by incorporating people into Oz from her real life.  I still liked the movie after watching the book, but it wasn’t the same.

So, that’s all, folks.  These are my four first loves.  If you haven’t participated in the blogfest, I’d still love to hear about your “firsts” in comments.