Chapter 12: Music Again

I am in a really good mood right now. I was in a pretty good mood all day, actually, so this should be a pretty upbeat entry. The other day I was having this conversation with my friend Whitney about how I wonder if I have ever suffered from depression, in the clinical sense. I know that I have suffered from depression, because I have been very depressed in the past and I suffered from it, but I wonder if I actually suffered from it in the clinical sense. I wouldn't be surprised. There have been some very dark periods in my life and I have done some very messed up things trying to escape them... but I haven't seen a doctor in about 10 years, so I'll probably never know for sure. I suppose it doesn't really matter, either way, but it is something that makes me curious. I used to wonder if I wasn't mentally handicapped in some way and didn't realize it. Do the mentally handicapped realize it, or do they look at the world like everything is perfectly fine? The world may never know. That is something that has always made me curious, as well.

That is an odd way to start off this blog, and not really the focus of it, but it is certainly food for thought. On the topic of food, Thanksgiving is coming and I couldn't be more excited for it! Thanksgiving is far from my favorite holiday, but I am very excited for it this year because it is a four day weekend for me. Also, I plan on doing some of the cooking, so I think that will be fun. It may be a little odd this year because my Mom's invited her boyfriend and he is going to be staying for the entirety of my four day weekend, as well. That's not necessarily a bad thing, per se, but it is always a little awkward because I don't really have a lot in common with him or a lot of ways to relate to him. Plus, every time he stays at our house he brings in a bunch of weird stuff that they buy from yard sales or decides to rearrange the house or something else that annoys me. It is my Mom's house and she is free to do what she wants, but I do pay half the rent and as such I do feel like I should be consulted before changes are made in the household. It's nothing that's a big deal, but it irks me. Either way, though, I am excited for Thanksgiving and my four day weekend. I am especially excited for two of my best friends, orange juice and Verdi to come together for the holiday and give me a nice little buzz for the day. That is certainly something to be grateful for!

For now, though, I suppose I should talk about today. I actually woke up when my alarm went off at 7:30am. It seems like that hasn't been happening much recently, and I was glad to get back to that little bit of normalcy. I found that sometime while I was sleeping something magical happened... Adam Lambert tweeted that his album was streaming on myspace, which I immediately knew meant the leak had arrived. It only took a small amount of digging to find it after that, and although at this point it is only in a not-that-great quality webrip form, I am very excited to hear it! Unfortunately, finding this first thing in the morning was lame because I downloaded it but didn't have time to listen to it in full before work. So, of course, I spent all day at work thinking, "I can't wait to get home and listen to the Adam Lambert album!" That sucked. The work day was kinda oddly slow, though. It felt like a long day. I spent much of the day interrupting my co-worker who was reading "Twilight," and asking things like, "Did you get to the part where Edward whips out his huge, sparkly cock and scares Bella away cos' she's a big dyke?!" or "Oh, don't you love the part where Edward and his family gang rape Bella?!" It's a fun way to pass the time. Aside from making "Twilight" horribly obscene, I basically spent the day doing a whole lot of nothing. I mean, there was the whole work bit I did while I was there, but that isn't interesting to anyone, now is it?

When I got home, as much as I had been waiting all day to listen to Adam Lambert, I still didn't. I thought I had seen, while online on my cell phone at lunch today, that the retail version had leaked so I went hunting for that. I figured the first time I listened to it, in full, may as well be in full, high quality, retail form. Unfortunately, I had been mistaken. What I had seen was actually an album called "Take One," also by Adam Lambert. It is, essentially, an unauthorized record of recordings he did during studio sessions for some small-time label back in his pre-idol days. This small-time label, whose name escapes me at the moment, decided to cash in on his success by releasing a collection of those recordings and, just to be extra shady about it, released this record one week before his official debut comes out. Part of me says, "Yay! I get two Adam Lambert records today!!!" and the other says, "Wow, shady label, way to confuse the consumer." I am all for cashing in where you can, but not when you are cashing in on somebody elses work...

Unless you're Levi Johnston. Then it's okay. After all, Sarah Palin didn't really do much work, either. May as well glom onto her unearned notoriety and get a little unearned notoriety for yourself. Plus, he's just scrumptious.

Speaking of Sarah Palin, I think her return to the media with this book she's written is having an adverse effect on Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Elisabeth sometimes has this way of actually being tolerable, even likable, when she is not discussing political issues. She will go a few episodes of The View without flipping out on how some liberal is trying to bring down Jesus or whatever, and you find yourself thinking, "Aw, she's cute." Then she turns around and pulls some shit like she did today. The ladies of the View were discussing some recent study done by some random medical group stating that women should not have mammograms under the age of 50, and discouraging self-examinations, because these things have lead to a large number of false positives for breast cancer. Certainly an outrageous view, and one I don't personally agree with, (at least about self-examination - how would one know what is normal if they don't get familiar with how things feel?) but Elisabeth took it to a whole new level. She started by saying something to the effect of, "If this is where our health care system is going..." when Whoopi interrupted her to say, "This has nothing to do with our health care system." That is not enough for Elisabeth, though. She went as far as to seriously say that this was a GENOCIDE. A gender genocide. Our liberal administration does not want to save the lives of women. They want to convince women not to check themselves and let cancer grow to the point where it can't be helped. They want to commit a genocide, according to her. I just don't even know where to begin. GENOCIDE! Genocide, for chrissakes! That was a new level of crazy, right there. I can understand, as she stated she has a history of breast cancer in her family and her mother's life was saved by self-examinations, but to leap to a term like genocide is more than a little extreme, if you ask me. The woman needs to be stopped from talking sometimes. The View needs to have a separate chair away from the table for Elisabeth to go sit in when it comes time for adult issues to be discussed.

After that my Mom came home and we found that the meat we had taken out for dinner tonight was still frozen, we decided to take the plunge and eat out again tonight. No, not Gyros & Seafood. We decided to have Chinese, instead. It was tasty. I watched "V" while we ate, which is quickly becoming one of my new favorite shows. It's funny because it is very much NOT my type of show, but I just find the whole concept fascinating. I especially find it fascinating that they came up with this concept back in the 70s and it didn't really work, but bringing it back in this day and age it feels so current and relevant to the times. It's like this concept was decades ahead of it's time, and people weren't able to appreciate it then. This is why I am much more interested in remakes when they are remaking something obscure. If something was successful in it's time, I suppose it's okay to remake and hope for success again, but it is always much more interesting when you see a concept that couldn't really find it's audience before suddenly be remade and finally get it's respect. This is why I hope there is a remake of "Private Valentine: Blond & Dangerous" someday.

Okay, that was a joke.

After "V" and the glorious return of Amanda Woodward, aka Heather Locklear, on "Melrose Place" tonight, I sat down and kind of discussed some of my discoveries from the Communication Deprivation Experiment, as well as the general goals of this blog and I realized that, for the first time in a long time, I actually have a sense of direction in my life again. As I've discussed before, I have always known the direction my life was meant to take, but this is the first time in a long time that I have had a fairly solid plan to get to where I need to go. I am extremely proud of myself, and this blog, (even if it doesn't get read much,) because one of it's main goals has already been achieved. The intent of this blog is to document a year in my life and to create a record based off of that year at the end of it. One of the reasons I felt so strongly about this, though, was because it would provide me with a deadline and a sense of urgency to get my act together and get things done. Now, I can't say that I have my act together at this point, but I can definitely say that I am on my way to it... and that is more than I have been able to say for a long time now.

After all of that, though, I finally got to what I had been anticipating all day long: Listening to the Adam Lambert album! As I write this blog, I am listening to it, in full, for the second time in a row. Right off the bat, the one thing I need to discuss is the general marketing of this album. It is fascinating to me. There are a few choices I would not necessarily have made myself if I were running this show, (the choice of "For Your Entertainment," as the album title and first single, is one example,) but on the whole I think they are doing a pretty brilliant job with it. Honestly, the album title "For Your Entertainment" is not terrible, and the song is brilliant, but I think that both of these things are not the best representations of the album as a whole. I would have stuck with the whole concept of title track being the first single, but I would have gone with "Music Again" for both. As a title for the album, they could have come up with some cute little line about how so much focus has been placed on his personal life and sexuality, and with the album it was time to get back to focusing on the music, which is the important part. I do love the song "For Your Entertainment," but I think the track "Music Again" would have made a much better choice for first single. I feel like it is the best representation of Adam as an artist and the general vibe of the album, and aside from that it is simply a brilliant song. It is my personal favorite on the record. The song, on a whole, I would describe as joyful. As I talked about before, "Music Again" is essentially a song about finding love after being hurt. It is upbeat, super catchy and just an overall joyful song to experience. It is absolutely the perfect choice to start off the album, and I think would have been a great intro to Adam, as an artist, post-Idol.

As far as the rest of the album, it probably won't be any huge shock to hear from me, but it is simply amazing! One thing I found kind of surprising upon first listen, though, is how the strongest tracks on the album are the more upbeat, poppy songs. I didn't think he was going to go so pop with this record, or so upbeat, but I think it was the perfect choice. I think he is strongest on the pop tracks, and his personality comes through the best on those. As I mentioned before, "Music Again" is probably my favorite track on the album, as of now, but there are some other really brilliant songs that I already have stuck in my head. What is probably my next favorite song on the album, "If I Had You," is another upbeat, dancy, pop number about how all the fame and fortune and excesses one in his position enjoys would pale in comparison to having the person you love. It also has this huge chorus that will be stuck in your head for days. Another favorite is "Fever," which is the Adam song written by Lady GaGa. I have heard GaGa's demo version of the song, and loved it, but I think Adam really took the song to a different level. I also love the fact that he didn't take the Will Young route and change the gender roles. This song is proof that Adam is a gay man with no qualms about saying, "There he goes, my baby walks so slow, sexual..." Another favorite track of mine is "Pick U Up," which has a very classic sound, but still feels very current and relevant. It almost reminds me of some of the lesser known tracks from Queen back in the later days of Freddie Mercury. The slower tracks on the album are amazing, as well, especially "Sleepwalker," "Aftermath," "Time For Miracles," from the movie "2012," and the Linda Perry penned track, "A Loaded Smile." I could really give a full track by track review, but I will refrain as this is already getting a little long. I will simply say that every single song on this album is brilliant in it's own way, and at first I thought that the album as a whole didn't flow the best, but on second listen I feel the flow of the album much more and think it works out really well. I really, at this point, don't have a single negative thing to say about Adam. I really do believe he is going to grow into a full blown icon, and I think he has opened the doors for so many young artists who are openly gay and refuse to be anything but themselves, myself included. I highly recommend this record to anyone who loves big, vocal, dancy rock-infused pop music. Just make sure to pick up "For Your Entertainment," and not get confused by the silly "Take One" record alongside it. That one is nothing but slow, standard sounding songs that are clearly not a good representation of Adam as an artist. If you're a fan, download that one... don't buy it.

All in all, I would have to say it was a good day. I am going to bed tonight with a stronger sense of peace than I woke up with this morning, because suddenly I see again how everything is falling into place exactly how it is meant to. I feel confident that my road to writing my own record has finally found it's footing and the pieces are starting to fall in the place, and will only continue to do so. I am absolutely certain of it, and it is one of the most amazing feelings I have ever felt. I can't wait for the ball to get rolling even further. It is a long road we are on, myself and you reading this blog, but I can't help but KNOW that it is all going to pay off at the end. I can actually feel my dreams coming into fruition, and I cannot wait to share it with you all and so many others. Thank you for reading.