Lists

Some things never change.
Other things change for awhile,
And then change right back.

When I was smaller--and had more hair on my head and less hair in other places--my dad would take me to work with him from time to time, so he could prepare the company newsletter. It was night-time, and no one was in the building but us. Sometimes the rest of my family would come along too. It was fun, because we got to eat fast food, and explore the dark hallways. Having already seen my fair share of slasher films, I usually never went too far.

Eventually we would get bored playing with my dad's art supplies and running around, and we'd settle down in a meeting room with long white tables and rows of flourescent lights and watch a little T.V. on a cart that my dad had pushed in from his boss's office.

I was in little league, and one of the things that I invariably ended up doing was creating the backside of my baseball card after years of turbulent service in the major leagues. I always liked it to be turbulent. I was about eight, and I would imagine (as I filled out all of my stats) that I had been traded somewhere mid-career after I had suffered some kind of career destroying injury, or drug dependance. My batting average would go down, and I would end up on a team I didn't really care about in real life, like the Expos. In the end, I would recover, and end up on the Cincinnati Reds again, or the San Francisco Giants.

I went through a big phase where I was always making lists. I track it back to this point, at my dad's office, after hours. From the backside of my baseball card to favorite movies, superheroes, books, and tracklists for mix tapes and CDs I would compile.

I stopped making so many lists once I started dating, although there were a few girls I did make mix CDs and tapes for (mostly my wife).

There is something fun about lists. Listing your most influential this and that. Reality can be difficult to control and define. So much is up in the air, and who's giving direction? There is so much we can never know.

We can know what we like.

new mix CD:

1. November, Dave Douglas
2. All This Ugly, Crash Test Dummies
3. Like Humans Do, David Byrne
4. To America We Go, Ashley Mac Isaac
5. Glosoli, Sigur Ros
6. So What, Miles Davis
7. Frog and Toad, The Bad Plus
8. We Will Still Need a Song, Hawksley Workman
9. Angels Come to Comfort You, Black Francis
10.Breathless, Nick Cave
11.Hellzapoppin', Louis Armstrong
12.Cool Water, Laura Veirs
13.Dead Man's Rope, Sting
14.Let the Devil In, TV on the Radio
15.Hey Jane, Low Millions
16.Don't Wait To Long, Madeleine Peyroux