A business trip to New York City dominated the weekdays of mid-June on my calendar, with both business and the city highlighted in the images of the week. Let’s take a look at June 10-16.
Tag Archives: New York
#LOTD2013: June Playlist
There’s no doubt: it’s a heck of a lot easier to catch up on the #LOTD2013 playlists on a monthly basis than it is to do so on the weekly Photo-A-Day posts. Without further ado, here are June’s Lyric-of-the-Day Tweets (find the Spotify playlist I’ve created from these lyrics linked at the end of the post or on the clickable image at right), with some brief explanations (in italics) for a number of the lyrics. Remember, if you want to see the lyrics as they pop up daily, just give me a follow on Twitter!
- “Stretched to the limit attention spans/Snap back retract/Collapse into laugh tracks/Noise response applause” #Beck “Hell Yes” #LOTD2013 6/1
- “Laughing on the bus/Playing games with the faces/She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy” #SimonAndGarfunkel “America” #LOTD2013 6/2
- “If there’s something inside that you want to say/Say it out loud it’ll be okay” #TheBetaBand “Dry The Rain” #LOTD2013 6/3
- “She looks me in the eye & says/We’re gonna last forever/And ya know I can’t begin to doubt it” #TomPetty “Here Comes My Girl” #LOTD2013 6/4 (The most special and personal treat of a great Petty show at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood.)
- “Under a big old sky, out in a field of green/There’s gotta be something left for us to believe” #TPATH “Kings Highway” #LOTD2013 6/5 (And the second best personal treat from the night before.)
- “Stand up and deliver/Your wildest fantasy/Do what the fuck you want to/There’s no one to appease” #Muse “Panic Station” #LOTD2013 6/6
- “Our god is a sinner, our king is a con/The room’s about to crumble as I burst into song” #TheHives “Go Right Ahead” #LOTD2013 6/7
- “Sold me out for chump change/Told me they had it all arranged/You handed me down, that’s a fact” #JamesBrown “The Payback”
- “Eight miles high/And when you touch down/You’ll find that it’s/Stranger than known” #TheByrds “Eight Miles High” #LOTD2013 6/9
- “Love don’t play any games with me/Anymore like she did before” #RyanAdams “New York, New York” #LOTD2013 6/10 (A week of NYC-related tunes kicks off with a rocking choice for the arrival in town.)
- “There’s a woman/On the outside/Looking inside/Does she see me?” #SuzanneVega “Tom’s Diner” #LOTD2013 6/11
- “Wearin’ the cross of my calling/On wheels of fire I come rollin’ down here” #BruceSpringsteen “The Rising” #LOTD2013 6/12 (After a business meeting in lower Manhattan, I got a chance to walk down and check the progress of the new World Trade Center building.)
- “Subway steam, like silhouettes in dreams/They stood by me, just like moonbeams” #TheWallflowers “6th Avenue Heartache” #LOTD2013 6/13
- “Tom, get your plane right on time/I know you’ve been eager to fly now” #SimonAndGarfunkel “The Only Living Boy In New York” #LOTD2013 6/14 (Got my plane back to L.A. on time. Unfortunately, American Airlines was into their own delays — as usual — on this long Friday.)
- “It’s the room, the sun and the sky/It’s the room, the sun and the sky” #SilversunPickups “Lazy Eye” #LOTD2013 6/15
- “You’re the reason I sing/You’re the reason why the opera is in me” #U2 “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own” #LOTD2013 6/16 (For my dad.)
- “The first mate he got drunk/Broke in the cap’ns trunk/The constable had to come and take him away” #BeachBoys “Sloop John B” #LOTD2013 6/17
- “I knew it when I met you/I’m not gonna let you runaway/I knew it when I held you I wasn’t letting go” #Killers “Runaways” #LOTD2013 6/18
- “What a gas it was to see him/Walk her every day/Into a shady place/With her lips she said” #ThePixies “Gigantic” #LOTD2013 6/19
- “Before anybody wanted K-West beats/Me and my girl split the buffet at KFC” #KanyeWest “Touch The Sky” #LOTD2013 6/20
- “At the drive-in/In the old man’s Ford/Behind the bushes/Until I’m screamin’ for more” #Poison “Talk Dirty To Me” #LOTD2013 6/21 (Thanks to that post-game jukebox in Wrigleyville.)
- “People talking, people laughing/A man selling ice cream/Singing Italian songs” #Chicago “Saturday In The Park” #LOTD2013 6/22 (As I posted that day, I was eating brunch in Chicago on a Saturday in Wicker Park when this song came on the diner’s loudspeakers. The start of a really good day.)
- “Mercury is rising still/Turn the fan on high/I won’t step on my own shadow/No one wants to cry” #REM “Summer Turns To High” #LOTD2013 6/23
- “And I’ll be workin’/From sun up to midnight” #MichaelJackson “Workin’ Day And Night” #LOTD2013 6/24
- “There been times I thought I couldn’t last for long/But now I think I’m able to carry on” #SamCooke “A Change Is Gonna Come” #LOTD2013 6/25 (After this day’s, um, amazing(?) Voting Rights Act decision by the Supreme Court, I guess the change is going to have to come … again.)
- “But no matter what you do/It always feels as though you tripped and fell” #TheRaconteurs “Steady, As She Goes” #LOTD2013 6/26
- “She’s a Georgia Peach never within reach/He’s a felon from Baton Rouge” #BetterThanEzra “A Southern Thing” #LOTD2013 6/27
- “Door is locked just you and me/Can I take you to a restaurant that’s got glass tables” #EnglishBeat “Mirror In The Bathroom” #LOTD2013 6/28
- “The temperature’s about 88/Hop in the water plug just for old times sake” #DJJazzyJeffAndTheFreshPrince “Summertime” #LOTD2013 6/29 (SoCal’s first summer heat wave of 2013 hit hard on this sunny Saturday.)
- “Maybe you’re the same as me/We see things they’ll never see/You and I, we’re gonna …” “Live Forever” #Oasis #LOTD2013 6/30
Here’s the Spotify playlist if you’d like to listen along: #LOTD2013: June
40 for 40
As I mark the passage of 40 years on this planet, I’ve had plenty of chances to reflect on those four decades — the happy moments and the sad; the wins and the losses; and everything in between. As I rolled these years over in my head it struck me that perhaps I could put together a list — in no particular order — of 40 various people, places and things that have affected or influenced my life, brought me great joy or even provided simple lasting memories.
To my loved ones: you are ALL at the top of any list I would make like this, so realize and recognize that before you note to yourself, while reading, “What about me?” For all my cynicism and dark wit, I just love living and experiencing life so much that I could never touch on everything that’s made a mark on me in this or any space. But I can give you a decent set of examples — one for each year that I’ve lived.
- Sunrise at Haleakala Volcano on Maui
- The Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day
- “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson
- Clear and crisp winter days
- Houseboating on the Mississippi River between Wisconsin and Minnesota in July
- Cannes, France (though Antibes is better … and Monte Carlo is 100% overrated and overdone)
- Night-blooming jasmine in the spring
- Growing up hearing the “boom” of the Disneyland fireworks every summer night at 9:30 and thinking that — just a few minutes away — magic was possible
- Speaking of magic, Magic Johnson … and Larry Bird
- Game 4 of the 1987 NBA Finals
- U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” performed live
- The Cask & Flagon in Boston
- Vin Scully
- Bourbon whiskey (particularly Maker’s Mark and/or Booker’s)
- Gin (particularly Bombay Sapphire and/or Hendrick’s)
- Game 1 of the 1988 World Series
- Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”
- “Ask the Dust” by John Fante
- Chick Hearn
- The beach, anywhere at anytime
- Drinking an Old Fashioned at the Alembic Bar on Haight Street in San Francisco after a visit to City Lights Books
- The Parker Palm Springs
- Driving Sunset Boulevard on a summer afternoon
- The roar of the crowd at any sporting event (preferably the roar is for the team I’m rooting for)
- “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley
- The opening innings on a clear summer night at Dodger Stadium, with a view of the mountains beyond deep center field
- Showing off “My Southern California” to out-of-towners
- That my job has allowed me to see parts of Ireland, England, France, Spain, Morocco, Monaco, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany
- Interviewing someone I’ve never met and knowing by the end of the interview that this is actually the kind of person I want to highlight
- Santa Barbara
- The final line of Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”: “It’s a town full of losers / And I’m pullin’ outta here to win”
- Jack Nicholson
- My dad’s fudge
- The 2005 USC-Notre Dame game
- New York on a cold day just before Christmas
- Taking a break on a hike of the Grand Canyon to simply breathe it all in
- Driving between Ventura and Santa Barbara on 101 on a summer morning
- “The Boys of Summer” by Roger Kahn
- Watching Stanley Cup playoff games in person
- The W Lakeshore Chicago