Happy July 4th, Can the Pirates Make The Playoffs?, "The Lonely Polygamist"

Hello,

This blog is brought to you by the greatest country in the world, the United States. Happy July 4th everyone.



In my church I teach a group of 16 year olds. Before I started the lesson I talked a bit about July 4th and what it meant to them. They came up with family, fireworks and other fun things. I asked them about specific years they thought of when I mentioned July 4th. While they were thinking about it I started writing 177 on the chalkboard. It took them several guesses, and that's exactly what they were, before they came up with 1776. I thought that was just a bit scary. These are smart kids some of them were in AP history classes. So for those who might stumble across this blog, here's some July 4th history.

"Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States. It commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The USA declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, political speeches and ceremonies, in addition to various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the national day of the United States.

Background

During the American Revolution, the legal separation of the Thirteen Colonies from Great Britain occurred on July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia.[4][5] After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, a statement explaining this decision, which had been prepared by a Committee of Five, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress debated and revised the Declaration, finally approving it on July 4." (Thanks to wikipedia.org, I've cleaned this up a bit.)

Thanks to iTunes 10.3.1 and the new feature it has of being able to redownload any song that I've downloaded before. With switching between hard drives and computers, I've lost a lot of the digital music I've bought from iTunes over the years. I often thought that iTunes should have someway of reclaiming music that has been lost. (With amazon.com and iTunes doing a tit for tat, I wonder if they are will be offering a similar feature?) I honestly thought they'd never do that as Apple is corporate America and numbers driven as almost every other large company.



However Apple has indeed offered the ability of reclaiming songs I've previously downloaded but lost over the years. In the last couple of days I've downloaded about 425 songs that had been lost. I estimate once I download all the songs that have been lost, it will probably be about 600 songs total. This is why I call myself themusicaddict. So all songs on my blog today are from songs I've redownloaded over the last couple of days.

Warning this song is very provocative. However no one can deny that this song is indeed one of the catchiest songs ever:



There are many songs that I already have on my iTunes that came from CD's, I'm not going to redownload those. There's no reason to have duplicates. There's also some music I've bought that's so bad that I'm not going to redownload it, even though it's free. Two examples are Michael Penn's "Mr. Hollywood 1947", just not a good CD. Also The Mars Volta "Frances The Mute" CD is terrible. Five very long songs of bad prog rock music. When I bought it I had a review in my head, the review said that this CD was a mix of Soundgarden and Queen. I thought that sounded like an intriguing mix. It's as intriguing of a mix as Michael Bay and an actual story. "Frances The Mute" is just a bunch of very crappy and way too long songs.

Today's music is brought to you by iTunes 10.3.1 and I will feature it some songs throughout this blog. Enjoy!

Camper Van Beethoven's "Pictures of Matchstick Men":



One of the surprise teams in MLB has got to be the Pittsburgh Pirates. Right now they are 43-41. The Pirates started this morning with their first winning record on July 4th since 1999. Pittsburgh beat the Nationals yesterday 10-2, scoring 8 runs in the first 2 innings. Kevin Correia, who may be added to the all-star roster, won the game. He's now 11-6 on the season, including 9 road wins. The 9 road wins leads all of Major League Baseball. Andrew McCutchen had three more hits for the Pirates. He's hitting .294 on the season, with 12 home runs and 45 RBIs. Also Pittsburgh closer Joel Hanrahan was named to the All-Star Game yesterday.



This song was used for great comedic effect in "Ghost":



Pittsburgh is in third place in the NL Central, they are 1.5 games behind the tied for first place Milwaukee and St. Louis. Although the NL Central has 4 teams that are above .500, it's still a fairly mediocre division. Pittsburgh plays the two dregs of the Central Division over their next 6 games. First they welcome the 29-56 Astros, followed by the 35-50 Cubs. All games will be played in Pittsburgh. Playing home games is usually a good thing, but the Pirates actually have a better road record.

I think the acoustic version of "Layla" is a lot better than the original:



Here's another song first brought to my attention thanks to "MTV Unplugged":



themusicaddict bookclub selection is Brady Udall's "The Lonely Polygamist". Full disclosure: The religion referred to in this book is an offshoot of Mormonism. Other than that there's no connection to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Also known as the Mormons or LDS. I'm a proud member of the Mormon Church, which hasn't practiced polygamy in over 100 years.

Thought questions:

1) I've read to page 228 in this novel so far. The protagonist is Golden Richards, he has 4 wives and 28 kids. He's clearly not in charge of his own life though. The head wife Beverly is clearly in charge. At this point in the book she's thinking about getting Golden a 5th wife and hasn't even consulted Golden Richards. That makes me wonder why is Golden Richards barely a participant in his own life?

2) One of the main characters is Rusty, a 11 year old overweight malcontent. He has a very active imagination and loves to steal things. Rusty is the son of Rose, who is wife # 3, and Golden. Why is one of what would seem to be a fairly minor character play such a pivotal role in this book?

3) Besides Beverly, the most talked about wife is Trish. However she lives on her own with her daughter Faye in a duplex. She lives across Virgin Valley from where the rest of Richards family lives. Why is she such a pivotal character. It seems members of the family that play a lesser role are more important characters.

4) This might be the most important question of them all. Why would anyone want to live The Principle (polygamy)? It seems no one is happy in the Richards family. Golden is away from the family building a Brothel. He enjoys those times more than being with his family.

5) This book seems to be full of various parts of Mormonism and fundamental Mormonism. In the book there are references to Brigham Young, Book of Mormon, Christian missionaries, baptisms, church plays, Council of the Twelve (Apostles), the One Mighty and Strong etc. Why does the author have such a religious stew? What is his purpose doing that?



Speaking of good, I'd be remiss in not mentioning the amazing USA Women Soccer players. They are now 2-0 in World Cup action. The USA looked very good in their 3-0 victory over Columbia this past Saturday. The USA plays Sweden in the last match of the group round on Wednesday. That match will determine who the winner of Group C is. The USA has already advanced to the quarterfinals, the knockout round.

In honor of the US Women's World Cup, this is what men should do when they are on TV:



Finally another new episode of the excellent "Falling Skies" was on again last night. After the third hour of the show was a bit of a downer, this episode put "Falling Skies" back into high gear. This show is absolutely amazing now, although I do wonder how good this would be if it had the same budget as "Transformers 3". Even with a much smaller budget "Falling Skies" is considerably better. Sure the special effects are a little cheesy, but they aren't really needed. The story does all the heavy lifting in this series.

The story in "Falling Skies" is so much better than any of the "Transformers" movies. Its' direction of plot and actors is also considerably better. Unlike any of the "Transformers" nonsense, in "Falling Skies" there's actually acting! I apologize to Noah Wyle for doubting his acting ability. He has been a revelation in this series. I also like Moon Bloodgood's Annie, the heart and focus of the civilian population. The actors are great and I care about their characters.

The story is great and naturally moving forward. We are learning more about the skitters. They seem to be taking on a more important role than the mechs. I love the scene when Rick puts his harness back on, the parts that were in his body eagerly wanting the harness attached again. Rick then channels the alien's thoughts. We know the skitters know English, and presumably all other human languages. We are still unclear what the skitters want. What is their motivation? They seem to be in charge of the mechs.

What is going on with the harness and the radio waves? "Falling Skies" is scheduled to be 10 episodes, which mean there are 6 hours left. What is going to happen in those 6 hours? The first four hours have been very good, so I'm expecting great things. If the creative team do it right, I think they could stretch this into two or three seasons. (Just please whatever you do, don't let Veena Sud near this.) This show doesn't have any filler, other than the long commercials. All the tension feels natural and the emotions are genuine.



Other great songs brought to you by iTunes 10.3.1:



I've gone back and forth on whether I like this song or not. It was definitely overplayed when it first came out. Right now I'm quite liking this song:



How about some Big Audio Dynamite? This is "Contact":



Would you like a piece of Cake, unfortunately the band not the food.



Billy Dean's "Somewhere In My Broken Heart":



Barbara Mandrell "Sleeping Single In A Double Bed"



I will close with a couple by the Beastie Boys. "Intergalactic"



"Girls":



themusicaddict