Don't you just love tv?

Ever since I found out that The Avett Brothers are performing at The Grammys Sunday night, I've been joking with my brother Ben that the only thing that could make the experience more perfect would be if Tim Riggins sat next to me at the show.

So, speaking of TAB and FNL, one of the episodes from season two that I watched last week ended with If It's The Beaches playing while Tyra and Landry kiss. Awww. Two worlds collide, in the best way.

Now, more of things tying together, I think Jasmine and Crosby's pastor/pre-marriage counselor guy from this week's Parenthood episode was Coach Deeks from Whitmore University from FNL. Plus it looks like Crosby and Lyla hook up next week! I'm glad Haddie got the parental ok to date Vince.

Also, I just noticed while watching Coach Taylor get the new Lions up and running -- the Under Armour rep from an early episode in season three of FNL is the guy who is the stay-at-home dad carpenter guy married to the Traffic girl on Parenthood.

OK, this is the last one, and it's kind of lame and I'm probably the only one who noticed, but in the Christmas episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, there was a scene in a mall, and Mac and Charlie walked right by who I'm positive was Chris Raab (Raab Himself) from CKY.



p.s. I'm flying to LA tomorrow morning for my fun-filled, star-studded Grammy weekend! See you next week!

The Avett Brothers at The Grammys!

I just found out that The Avett Brothers are playing at the Grammys! With Bob Dylan and Mumford & Sons! And, just to remind you, I'll be there!

I have to go change, just peed my pants!

Stuck in my head

I've had this line from the song Nightmare on my Street by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince stuck in my head for about 24 hours:

He's burnt up like a weenie and his name is Fred!


No kidding, all day. It was humorous the first dozen or so times, now I just need it to leave my head.

Old Trusty

Jonny wants you to know that before he gave me the fancy and futuristic iCraig alarm clock for Christmas, I had been using the same alarm clock since high school. He says he's doing his part to bring me into the 21st century.


I miss the old alarm clock so much. You get attached to something that you sleep a foot away from for two decades in a row. It was old and old-looking and dusty and certain parts of it (the radio) didn't work anymore, but the alarm clock function worked like a champ. It unfailingly woke me up each and every time I asked it to for the past twenty years. I depended on it for a long time and it never let me down.


I hit that snooze button an estimated 35,000 times over the years.

Sadly, now that I have retired the Realistic Chronomatic 244, it sits on the closet shelf alongside my old doll Timmy. I don't think I've ever quoted Madonna before, but "this used to be my playground" just ran through my head.

Friday Favorite

I love old Prince and Partyup is probably one of my favorite songs by him or by anyone.

This is the last song on Dirty Mind. What a fun, upbeat way to close an album! Thanks Prince!

Friday Favorite

One of my all-time tried-and-true favorite songs is Wonderwall by Oasis covered by Ryan Adams.

I am not an Oasis fan. Their music is blah to me and the egos on those brothers, ugh. I can't really say I'm a Ryan Adams fan either. I like him ok, I just don't love any of his music. A lot of his stuff is really close to something I could fall in love with, but it falls short. But put Oasis and Ryan Adams together and what do you get? This beautiful gem of a song.

Friday Favorite

One of my all-time tried-and-true favorite songs is Dropout by Urge Overkill.

This song is good and droney.

The lyric "hanging out in the parking lot at Dairy Queen" reminds me of Parker Posey as Libby Mae Brown in Waiting for Guffman. She's been working at the DQ for about . . . eight months.

Friday Favorite

One of my all-time tried-and-true favorite songs is Leader of the Pack by the Shangri-Las.

I love the music of girl bands from the 1960's in general and this song in particular is fun to sing along with, especially while driving. It's not required, but if you really scream the line "I met him at the candy store", it enhances your enjoyment of the whole song.

Friday Favorite

One of my all-time tried-and-true favorite songs is Yeah by Usher, featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris.

This is my jam.

No Nirvana, huh?

Genius has done it again! Look at this brilliant mix it made for me based on Nearly Lost You.
(Wouldn't it be awesome if I knew how to do stuff and you could listen to all these songs instead? That won't be happening any time soon because, unlike Rachel, I do not have excellent compuper skills)

Nearly Lost You - Screaming Trees
Seether - Veruca Salt
Miss World - Hole
Drown - Smashing Pumpkins
Pretend We're Dead - L7
Lump - Presidents of the United States
Santa Monica - Everclear
This Is a Call - Foo Fighters
Head On - Jesus and Mary Chain
She Don't Use Jelly - Flaming Lips
Live Forever - Oasis
Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now) - Cracker
Suck You Dry - Mudhoney
Monkey Gone to Heaven - Pixies
Dollar Bill - Screaming Trees
So Alive - Love & Rockets
The One Thing -INXS
I Got You - Split Enz
Outshined - Soundgarden
Rhinoceros - Smashing Pumpkins
Supernova - Liz Phair
Cannonball - Breeders
Big Me - Foo Fighters
Feel The Pain - Dinosaur Jr
Stop - Jane's Addiction

Friday Favorite

One of my all-time tried-and-true favorite songs is Never Going Back Again by Fleetwood Mac.

You know how you have some songs that you can listen to after a bad day at work or after any kind of less than ideal situation and they will calm you right down? This is one of mine.

Not only does it always manage to calm me down and somehow right the world, but it also makes me smile when I think of how my brother Jonny likes to sings one of the lines completely wrong. His explanation is that the lyrics to this song can be sang different ways by different people, but "been down to wonton, been down to Tuscon" will never be right, no matter what. It doesn't even make any sense! How does one go down to wonton?

Friday Favorite

One of my all-time tried-and-true favorite songs is Situation by Yaz.

I loved this song in the eighties, I loved it in the nineties, I loved it in whatever we're calling the last decade (the 2000's?), I love it now.

"The 2000's" sounds horrible to me. Yuck. I don't like "the 2010's" either. I guess for the rest of my life I'm going to avoid calling decades past the nineties (ah, just rolls so easily off the tongue!) anything at all.

The Pickle Song

The summer I turned five my family went to Estes Park, Colorado for vacation. All six of us (my youngest brother Jonny wasn't born yet, and Ben was a baby so he stayed at home with my grandparents) packed into our station wagon for the cross-country trip. During that drive, I made up a song that I enjoyed the sound of so much that I sang it the entire way there. The only lyric was simple yet satisfying: "Pickles, pickles, I like pickles."

My brothers yelled at me to stop singing, they begged my mom to make me stop singing, but I just had to sing! I didn't like pickles when I was little, still don't like them, but that song was just so hypnotically catchy!

That vacation was great. My parents bought us all down coats. My brothers' coats were brown, mine was green.

We all got these little furry animal hides (rabbit?), and I got this Madame Alexander Little Huggums doll that I picked out myself and promptly named Timmy. Timmy and I were tight for a long time; I slept with him until sophomore year in college. It's creepy to have a doll on your bed as an adult, so now he lives on a shelf in my closet.


He's old and threadbare now, but this is what he would have looked like back in 1978:


I might buy a new Timmy on ebay as a Christmas present to myself, not because I would ever want to replace Timmy himself, but because he deserves a new outfit. As a Christmas present to my parents and my older brothers, I'd like to book some studio time so I can officially record my number one hit, Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles.

Friday Favorite

One of my all-time tried-and-true favorite songs is Monkberry Moon Delight by Paul McCartney.

I can't believe I had never even heard this song until earlier this year. Even harder to believe, I was introduced to this song by a thirteen year old (now a sage fourteen year old), my favorite high schooler Spencer Tweedy.

Paul's voice really packs a powerful punch here. I love songs where the lyrics are so passionately loud they're almost screamed. Not yelled like death metal, but more like it sounds like the singer just can't hold back what they're feeling. A good example would be this song, the Beatles' Wild Honey Pie, or any number of Pixies songs.

This doesn't actually have anything to do with Devo

You know how Mark Mothersbaugh is like the coolest and he's responsible for so much cool music? That's right, I said "like the coolest." Do you furthermore know that he owns his particular look, embodied by his glasses? As far as I know he has never made this claim, but I am. No one else is allowed to wear those glasses, only Mark Mothersbaugh. That's just the way it is.

Do you know this guy named Randall Poster who is "music supervisor" for tons of movies with really great music? At first I though he was like the coolest too, but then when I actually saw what he looks like, I totally changed my tune. He's trying to pull off Mark Mothersbaugh glasses! Not ok, Randall Poster, NOT OK. That look belongs to one person and one person only.

Plus I think a music supervisor for a movie just obtains rights for songs that the director wants in the movie, which is a pretty pedestrian task, so he no longer impresses me. There is no denying the fact that he is attached to some impressive film/movie combos, but he killed whatever chance he had with me when he chose those frames. More like Randall Poser.

Friday Favorite

One of my all-time tried-and-true favorite songs is Saint John by Cold War Kids.

The first song I heard from their album Robbers and Cowards was the opening track, We Used to Vacation, which is a little too One Tree Hill theme song for me, so I wasn't sure about these guys. This song, however, totally sold me on Cold War Kids (*). It's so powerful that if you're not careful it will actually rock your socks off.

When I went to see them at The Pageant a couple of winters ago, I got there maybe 30 minutes past the time when doors were supposed to open and was shocked and kind of horrified to realize that I was coming in on the tail end of their set. What show ever starts exactly on time?! It was pretty disappointing, but the three songs that I did get to hear were amazing and happened to be my favorites (Saint John, Hospital Beds, and Hang Me Up to Dry) so it was worth going anyway.


* their next album was a bit of a letdown so I'm not truly 100% sold on these guys in general, but I am definitely 100% sold on this particular song. The One Tree-sounding song aside, the rest of the album is pretty stellar too.

A story about Boardwalk Empire turns into a story about Joel Gion and a t-shirt‏

I've watched five full episodes of HBO's new show Boardwalk Empire and I'm still not sure if I like it/dislike it/have any real interest in it. It's pleasant to gaze at Michael Pitt (so dreamy), and I love that a Brian Jonestown Massacre plays during the opening credits, but other than that I could kind of take it or leave it.

Speaking of BJM, if you think it seems like I'm obsessed with the Avett Brothers at the moment, trust me when I say that when I first saw the movie Dig! my obsession with Anton Newcombe and Joel Gion waaaaaaaay surpassed whatever I'm going through right now. Which is not to belittle my current fixation, not in the least. Just so you know, when I find something new that I love I get excited about it, sometimes rather enthusiastically excited.

When I lived in LA I had the chance to go see Joel's band, The Dilettantes. When I first walked up to the venue (Silverlake Lounge?), Joel was outside by himself smoking a cigarette. I showed him the couple dollar bills and bunch of quarters in my hands and admitted that I was using my laundry money to see him! Twenty seconds later, the girl at the door refused to take the coins so I had to walk straight back outside and explain the situation to Joel who very kindly gave me dollars for all the quarters and told me that now he had laundry money! That was a strange moment, but he was super-nice about it, plus he complimented me on my t-shirt! That was already one of my favorite shirts, but ever since then it's been my lucky shirt too. That whole night was super-fun -- I talked to Joel and Dave Deresinski after the show and ended up hanging out with people I met that night till like six in the morning.

It might be time to retire this shirt. When I wore it earlier this year when BJM were in St. Louis I still got turned away from that super-sold out show. Maybe I've worn all the luck out of it.

Virtue of the Week: Tolerance

The older I get the more I understand that nobody is perfect, least of all me, and it's important to keep an open mind in all situations. This is something I've been particularly mindful of the last couple weeks. When I was five days into my discovery of the Avett Brothers all I wanted to do was quit my job and listen to them all day and go see them as much as I could, and it was at that moment that I realized that I had become very much like people who are into Phish, people I have made fun of for years. Ooops. Lesson learned.

Twice in the past five days I've come across Plato's quote "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." And this week's Virtue of the Week from St. James the Greater's bulletin? Tolerance. Perfect!


The entire rest of the post is copied directly from the St. James bulletin, with no permission whatsoever.

Virtue of the Week: Tolerance

Tolerance helps us to accept differences and frees us from being judgmental. It is recognizing that all people have feelings, needs, hopes and dreams. Tolerance is an appreciation for diversity, whether of culture or temperament. It leads to unity. It is being patient and forgiving when others make mistakes, while calling on discernment to know when to stand up for justice. Tolerance is accepting things that we wish were different with humor and grace. It allows us to embrace the pain as well as the joys of life.

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." -- Carl Jung

The Practice of Tolerance
I appreciate differences.
I free myself from prejudice.
I refrain from judging myself or others.
I forgive mistakes.
I accept what I cannot change.
I balance acceptance with justice.

I am thankful for the gift of Tolerance. It broadens my horizons.

Friday Favorite

One of my (newer) all-time tried-and-true favorite songs is Dimestore Diamond by Gossip.

1. Crazy catchy

2. Perfect for singing along to while playing way too loud in the car, or in any setting

3. Beth Ditto! That girl is all pipes and personality.

4. This is the song that constantly lived in my head during the time when I started this blog and it is definitely the reason I chose the name “Dogtown Diamond” when all my other choices were already taken.

Friday Favorite

One of my all-time tried-and-true favorite songs is So Lonely by The Police.

As I've mentioned previously, I didn't really get into music until my college boyfriend took my musical education into his own hands. We listened to music all the time, we went to see every good band that played the Blue Note in Columbia (and EVERYBODY seemed to play there in the early-mid nineties), plus he made me these amazing mixtapes filled with songs that made me fall in love with him and with music. So Lonely was on one of those mixtapes so listening to it always takes me back to that specific time in my very early twenties that I remember quite fondly.

Years later, when I lived in LA, I came across So Lonely again. Danny Masterson (Hyde from That '70's Show) had a great radio show, Feel My Heat, on Monday nights and he played awesome songs for a couple/few hours then always, always closed with So Lonely. I remember the time I spent living in LA rather fondly too. It was a time in my life when I clung to music in a big way.

I will always love hearing So Lonely no matter where I am in life or in the world.