Theme Park Experience

Given my time in radio, it's not far-fetched for me to interview radio personalities for the Observer . I've done a handful of stories before and I have no problem doing more of them. My editor was gracious enough to let me write about "Psycho" Shanon Murphy, a member of the Kidd Kraddick in the Morning show. She currently has a brain tumor on the stem of her brain and surgery is the only option. Prior to yesterday, I had never met or interviewed her. We have mutual friends in the industry, but she was very open and honest with me on the phone yesterday afternoon. We talked for about ten minutes while I was between call reports at my merchandising job, and almost all of those minutes are in the interview that is now on DC9. This was a very tough interview to do. I couldn't help be speechless while she explained to me the timeline of this and the severity of the issue. Extremely heavy stuff, but I was extremely impressed with her bravery and strength to get th

I've listened to many podcasts over the years, and I've secretly hoped to be on one someday. I'm a big fan of the Dig Me Out podcast as Tim and Jason review obscure albums from the '90s that never made it beyond college radio or 120 Minutes . They sound like guys I knew at the college radio station I worked at, something I have fond memories of. A few months ago, I sent a copy of Post to Tim and he really enjoyed it. He had sent me a copy of his book, Power Ballad , and I enjoyed it as well. He asked me to be on the show and to suggest an album to review. I gave them the options of Do You Know Who You Are? , No Division , and Nothing Feels Good . They went with Do You Know Who You Are? and we talked a two Wednesdays ago. If I sound like I'm talking a little slow, it's because I'm being very careful with my words. I love Texas is the Reason and I wanted to make sure I had all of my facts straight. I had spent a few hours reading the Texas chapter in Bria

Yesterday was not the first day I dealt with the loss of a dog. We always had a dog in my family growing up. When one died, we got another one. The breed was always a wire hair fox terrier and always a male. The dog stayed outside in the backyard (save for cold nights and my mother put him in the laundry room), and I usually feared the dog because of a terrier's usual desire to jump up on its hind legs when you walked towards them. J.W. and Rocky were integral dogs of my childhood, and Bailey was a wonderful dog during my high school/college years. But when I first lived on my own, I didn't live with a dog for three years. When I decided to move in with Jason in 2004, I was a little concerned about living with a dog under the same roof. Until then, I thought all dogs that lived indoors chewed up valuable material possessions and always peed on carpet. Yet for the five years I lived with Juliet, a schnauzer/terrier mix, she never chewed anything up and rarely peed on the flo

I have the Internet to thank for solving a longstanding mystery in my family. For decades, we have never known the biological family my grandmother came from. All we knew was that she was adopted, but that was it. My uncle David loves genealogy. The guy gives the gift of a family tree to people as a wedding gift. He loves looking up people's history, but not knowing where his mother came from always made him wonder. He finally got his answer this year. Mainly in part to the Internet and a lot of research, he found out that my grandmother had five siblings she never knew existed. Two of them are still alive, and they don't live too far away from where I live. Since a lot of the family was in town last weekend for a cousin's wedding, a group of us went down there and met as many as we could. With plenty of barbeque and desserts (including a delicious banana pudding), there was no shortage of people to talk with and share pictures. I freely admit that the experience was

This is the life I live these days. Yesterday, after a handful of hours dealing with the various tasks involved with my field marketing job, and ironing out some upcoming traffic fill-in dates, a ton of rain came down and a cold front came in. As I got home, getting into my slippers, I finally read a mass message sent by my editor at the Observer about Radioactivity. Turns out, the bass player from the band is someone I have a friendly rapport with since I interviewed him last year. So, without further ado, here is my interview with Mark Ryan on the new band, the Marked Men, and Mind Spiders.

In the past few weeks, much has been made by people I keep in touch with via social media about an "emo revival." This came from when Stereogum posted a helpful guide called "12 Bands to Know From the Emo Revival" and was widely read and discussed. I didn't take issue with the "revival" tag, but certain writer friends of mine did, and they made their voices heard via Facebook posts and tweets. (Things got to the point where Dan Ozzi wrote this for Noisey called "There's No Emo Revival, You Just Stopped Paying Attention.") It's taken me a long time to understand that there will always be people who think genres disappear and reappear. I accept it and don't begrudge people who think that way. It's like those who said, "Hey, disco is making a comeback" in the '90s, while others were adamant that it never went away. There are plenty of people who seek far and wide for what they want, but more people just want wha

After not writing anything for the Observer for a while, I present you with two links from the past few days. -Russian band Louna was robbed in Dallas while the band ate at a Souper Salad. I had received a press release about it earlier in the evening on Friday. A few hours later, right as I was about to go to bed, I was asked to write something about by 10 the following morning. I figured to strike while the iron was hot and this is what I came up with. -Back before we had to move, I had a nice chat with Evan Weiss, who performs as Into It. Over It and also plays in a number of other great bands. We've talked before and have a friendly rapport. I look forward to seeing him play with a full band at Trees.

Well, it took five hours, five movers, and almost $1,000, but Jenny and I finally moved to our new place a couple of weeks ago. And we're still not completely unpacked. There's a reason why I don't like moving: it's transferring the stability that is your home to a new place that's hopefully as stable as the last one. I moved so many times in college (apartment to dorm, dorm to another dorm, dorm to apartment) and that was enough for me. I'm thankful that I have moved only three times since college. So far, we really enjoy our new place and neighborhood. Turns out, it's a neighborhood that I spent many holidays in as I had relatives who lived just a couple of streets away. It's a quiet neighborhood that thankfully has not had a problem with my sporadic muted drum playing. I consider ourselves lucky, and life these days is a mixture of a lot of work and some leisure time. The motivation to write comes and goes, but when it strikes, I have to remind