One's a Knight, another's a Jabber, and the last one has died and come back to life

I was listening to my mp3 player (I'm old school) when the Pet Shop Boys came on. I was really digging the song and it got me to thinking. Neil Tennant has such a nasally voice, why on earth do I like it so much? This isn't something that has developed recently either. I remember riding around in my brother's '80 VW Rabbit (The one we had was sky blue) being 9 years old and listening to the awesome 80's music of the time. One song that always stuck with me was "Opportunities" by PSB. Sure, I remember liking Information Society, Erasure, Bananarama, Human League, Duran Duran, and OMD as well, but I just loved the voice of the guy who sang "Opportunities". Now, at 25 years of age I'm listening to "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" on the walk to the bus and still digging it. I don't get it. Why this deep seated affection for the voice of Neil Tennant? So, as I walked, and then rode the bus home I racked my brain trying to decide who my favorite male singers were. I was able to come up with 3 that rose head and shoulders above the rest. In reverse order they are:

#3 - Bono Vox aka Paul Hewson

Group - U2

Songs Where He Especially Shines - One, One Tree Hill, and Please

What to say about Bono that his many fans haven't already said? I for one feel that his voice peaked around '90-'91 during the recording and touring of Achtung Baby. He was still able to his those insanely clear high notes, but his voice had some balls when needed as well. Feel what you want to about his extra-rock god activities, but this man packs more emotion and feeling into his voice than just about anyone. It's nice when a performer can make you feel what they are feeling.

#2 - Neil Tennant

Group - Pet Shop Boys

Songs Where He Especially Shines - You Only Love Me When You're Drunk, Being Boring, and Can You Forgive Her (Check out the "Product" section of their website for audio clips)

Much has been mentioned about Mr. Tennant above. I'll just make this quick observation about his voice. It really has become much better with age. The nasal whininess has become much smoother and less abrasive he has advanced through life. Not that it has mattered to me, I was digging on his voice at the age of 9.

#1 - Dav(e)(id) Gahan

Group - Depeche Mode and Solo Project

Songs Where Especially He Shines - John the Revelator, Shine, and In Your Room

By far my favorite singing voice on earth. To me, he is the only one in this triad that can take a mediocre song and make it listenable/enjoyable. He has always (Well...let's call it from 1984, or when he finally made it through vocal puberty) had an excellent aggressive/suggestive singing voice. His voice is just cool. He can channel such wonderful darkness and emotion through those windpipes of his. But what has put him over the top is, after he got of the heroin sauce he took some serious vocal lessons and added another dimension to his vocal performance. Now on top of the funk he grinds, he increased his range and can now sing tenderly, as well as aggressively. (For a good example, check out Precious) For me, it just doesn't get any better than Dave Gahan.
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On a complete side note. An apartment building that I walk by on the way to work every day had it's fire alarm going off so I had the opportunity to see all of ghetto folks. Let me tell you, I was NOT prepared for the visual feast I was about to encounter. I just wish I was better at taking clandestine pictures so I could have snapped a picture of his huge beer gut hanging over his bitchin' black sweats as well.

What a wonderful...weekend?

So its been a long time since Gawain and I have had a really really really fun weekend. This is mostly due to the stupid weather that seems to spring up every weekend and also Gawain having terrible allergies since it is spring. Lucky for us, Gawain got tickets to the baseball game for Satruday. And they were GREAT tickets. We were sitting 40 rows behind homeplate on the lower deck. It was AWESOME!!!

Also great was the fact that we got a parking pass with the tickets so we got to park our beater 89 honda accord inbetween a canary yellow mercedes and a silver audi A6. The game was really fun. It was the Texas Rangers VS. the Seattle Mariners. Although I am a terribly uncoordinated person and have never played and excelled at sports, I do enjoy being a spectator. Theres just something about being in the midst of lots of people all excited about one thing. I suppose I just feed off the energy. So, a great reason I like to go to games is because you are allowed to eat all the disgusting things you would normally never allow yourself to eat and its ok. For instance, Gawain and I each had a BBQ pork sandwhich, a bag of potatochips, large lemonade, he had a cotton candy, I had a fruit kabob dipped in chocolate and nuts, and then I also had a bag of cracker jacks. mmmmmmmm......Anyway so the final score ended up being Mariners:8 and Rangers:3.

We then had to go to this square dancing thing for our church at a different church. OK, first of all I normally do not like to go to extra curricular activites for our church. Nothing personal, Gawain and I would just rather spend time together or with Isabel and the King. The problem is that we are on the Activites Committee for our church so we kind of have to go. Also, this particular activity, the Activities Committee main person was out of town and wanted me to advertise for this activity and get people to bring drinks. On the day I was supposed to advertise I totally blanked and left all of the flyers at home and didn't have anyone bring drinks. I did email everyone in the church, but that didn't seem to help because when Gawain and I show up, we are the only ones from our church there!!! The people from the other church all have a hungry look in their eyes like "new meat" and swarm to greet us and find out more about us, only to be disappointed on two counts that 1: we belong to another church and 2: we are the only ones from our church.....that's right. for the 1st hour we were the only ones there! The ironic (or not) thing is that it ended up being REALLY FUN!! and also everyone from the other church ended up being really really nice....we kind of want to go there now...perhaps we can move or something!

Your Eggs Are Showing

If there is one thing that Vesper and I love about Easter (besides the obvious religious aspects) is the decorating of eggs. Last year, much to our chagrin we didn't get time to decorate eggs and the only photo that was produced from that year was this steamy Doctor Octopus and Captain America shot.

Much to our delight we had the chance to decorate eggs both on Friday and Saturday nights with our friends El Gordo and Ms. Logic. The following are the festivity's blue ribbon winners.

El Gordo! El Gordo!

El Gordo paid us a visit last night.
El Gordo has been a friend of mine since about the age of 8. His family moved and then we commenced to grow up in the same general neighborhood, go to the same school, and go to the same church. Our friendship wasn't manlove at first site. We were generally friendly to each other during the early years. That really didn't change until we both started attending an early morning church class before school each day our freshman year of high school. Forged in the fog of 4 years of 6AM theological study, a real friendship was born. This grew threw typical high school deeds of eggings, toilet paperings, costume parties, dances, conquests of the opposite sex, sunday school, and sports.
As life is wont to do, the fall after we graduated from high school geography got in the way of our friendship. I moved away to go attend college, he decided to be a missionary for 2 years, then a year later I decided to be a missionary for 2 years. So, for the next 3 years we really didn't see each other at all and were limited to exchanging letters whilst out proselyting. So, in aught-three we were finally both back home for awhile and you know what? It was like we had never left. I do believe that at that point we went from really good friends to "willing to do just about anything for each" other friends. Over the next couple of years he was the best man at my wedding and we did something together a couple of times every week. Then, the nomad gene started to kick in for him. He was 23, living in his hometown, and didn't really like school or the job that he had. So, he went of to sound effects/recording school in Phoenix. He was in Arizona for a year then went off to Los Angeles to get into the movie business. Only, there was a problem, it turns out that he hated LA and didn't really like all of the grunt work that comes with working on the sound for movies and TV. (He just liked sound effects) Long story short (believe it or not, this is the SUPER short version of this story) he got his wits about him and decided to move home. He could find better work up here, his family and good friends are up here, there are many more fun things to do here. He arrived in back home a couple of nights ago. (with stops in Vegas and Utah to "see" some old friends on the way back) Vesper and I were pretty excited he was back in town and had him over for a BBQ and egg decorating last night. And the funny thing about real friends is how even though they've been gone for years at a time. It's like they never left. The warmth, the humor and the comfort of being in the same company is still there. Welcome home El Gordo. Welcome home.

Does this skin make me look fat?

So Gawain and I have been attempting to get pregnant now for the last 5 months. I'm not stressed at all that we haven't been successful in our attempts thus far because 1) this is our first try and 2) i've had like 2 periods in the last 5 months and so apparently my ovaries are "sleepy" as my gyno put it. Today I went to my normal DR and talked with him about all things getting prego. He said, based on my height and weight ratio that I may be having irregular periods and not getting prego b/c my BMI might not be high enough. That actually made me excited b/c i haven't been feeling so skinny lately and the stupid Biggest Loser competition at work has been making me even more stressed about losing 6 lbs. ANYWAY, so I call 24hr fitness up to see if they have any scale or device that calculates such things and they say come on in we'll calculate for you.

Meet Emilio, a soft spoken 20 something that seems to have no real intrest in my pursuit of my BMI and would rather just use his free gym membership to get even buffer than he already is. So he takes all of these measurements, around my neck, chest, waist, hips, arms, legs, and writes down all the numbers. Than he does the pinchy thing and pinches my bicep, tricep, back, and hip. Mind you, when he pinches my hip he can barely get anything to pinch. So he calculates it and at 5'7.5" and 140lbs I have no need to worry about my BMI being atleast 19 like my dr would like b/c according to his calculations it is 30. EXCUSE ME? Hopefully you connected to my link above and even figured you're own BMI out. HOPEFULLY you noticed that 30 and above means that I am obese. hmmm. Thats interesting. considering I look like this:

Now, I am quite silly at a lot of times and sometimes refuse to accept the truth of matters, but seriously, I'm pretty sure that I am NOT obese!!!!!

So Emilio goes on to question what my work out habits are, what my eating habits are, and ultimately would I be interested in some personal training sessions with him to get back down to a healthy BMI of around 24. Considering they are at the cheapest $50 a pop if I buy 30 sessions worth, I say no thank you and I will be quite content to be obese!

Burn baby, BURN!

I don't really know what to say so here it goes.

So i just went to this candle party. First of all, a candle party? who knew such things exsisted? And why are such things called parties? Its not like we're hanging out having a good time. Everyone there may be slightly interested in going for the goods, but mostly they just feel guilty turning down the host or hostess so they go knowing they are going to spend ridiculous amounts of money on not very cool stuff so that they don't feel guilty. The only exception to the rule is a Shade Clothing party because at those you can actually try on the clothes and usually get free shipping (awesome!!!!). Anywho so the sales lady is up there pitching, i don't know, whatever, and she keeps talking about how we should all host our own candle party? lady, its about to be summer, when its light like 20 hours of the day, we don't need to burn candles! Long story short, I ended up spending a silly amount of money to buy lame candles i'm not going to burn till the fall. bleh...

Anyway, enough right now..must watch Lost!

Beginnings - A slight introduction

You may be asking yourself, "How and why does this all begin?" Well, let me give you at least the beginning of an answer. Firstly, Vesper was inspired by Isabel's blog. Secondly, I have dabbled a bit in the past and have been intrigued by blogging myself for quite some time. So, we're excited to start a little blog of our own with our little guy Froggy pitching in from time to time. (He's always talking about how he is ready for the big time)
It'll be interesting to see what kind of journal/venting grounds this place will become. Will we stay interested enough to post on any sort of regular basis? Will we remember the noteworthy things in our life? Will anyone else will read/identify with our blog? Do we care? Should we care?
I'm not sure exactly how Vesper plans to use this spot, but I'm sure that I will mostly talk about music, movies, life, and my response to them. For instance, the Namesake is sometime moving but overall rambling and under delivering film. View in the theater at your own risk, rent at your discretion. I am currently very much into the Greek new wave group Marsheaux and find their musical arrangements charged with electricity, but their singing somewhat disappointing. They are at their best covering or remixing songs, but their own material is still great. Certainly worth a listen if you are into early 80's post disco electro-pop. (Why anyone should care what I think of anything is very good question in and of itself. But since this is partially my blog I think that the answer can and should be that I do and that should be enough.)
I'm fairly sure that you'll enjoy Vesper's posts much more than my own since she is a better person and writer than I am. Hopefully Froggy will treat us and chime in from time to time.