Theme Park Experience

The first time I was introduced to Jeff Ryan, one of the many bands he was associated with was Pleasant Grove. I had never seen them live, but I remember favorable notices from my old housemate, Jason. I've kept running into Jeff over the years and have interviewed him a couple of times. Last week, I traded e-mails with him and his bandmate in Pleasant Grove, Marcus. This week, our correspondence came together in an  interview . I couldn't help but chuckle about the pretty different answers at the questions.

I'm four weeks away from turning 35. I don't feel 35, but I certainly don't think like a 15-year-old or a 25-year-old. Friends of mine have done the "letter to your younger self" (most recently this amusing and heavy video clip ) and I think it's appropriate to do one now. Dear Eric (aged 14-going-on-15), The following is all true, but don't start planning on or finding ways to fight these off. You'll find with the assistance of time, none of these are outright bad. As much as you love watching MTV for its music videos, there will come a day when music videos are hard to find on the channel. They will be replaced by movies and less-interesting versions of The Real World and Road Rules . That said, you will still watch music videos elsewhere, and they will continue to introduce you to music that you will love. Don't let that guy in your Spanish class get you down for wearing a Rush shirt. One day you will get to take pictures of the band and...

Once again, a post is quickly put together in a few hours one day and then it arrives online the next day. Over the weekend, the editor sent out a list of possible blog posts, and for some reason, I really felt the urge to chime in about Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing the Super Bowl halftime. I'm very well aware of Nipplegate as I couldn't stop hearing about it for years. I hope nothing of that magnitude happens on February 2nd. So I got some sentences together, put them into paragraphs, and this is the end result.

My first post of 2014 is also my first post of 2014 with the Observer . Yesterday, a press release went out detailing the forthcoming reissue of the Toadies' major label debut, Rubberneck . I sent the release to my editor and he asked me to write something about it for the blog. I called up my friend and fellow writer Darryl Smyers and we chatted for about 15 minutes last night. Quickly typing the transcription and uploading it to our blog system, it arrived today. So a condensed version of our conversation can be found here .