I buy lots of new albums and download lots of new songs, because I am very interested in new music. Those guys in their late 30's who still constantly listen only to the records they bought when they were 17 make me sad. I never wanted to be those guys. So I buy lots of albums and songs by new bands, but I have to admit that I'm enjoying what I'm hearing from these new groups less and less.

And, I'm finding that the new albums that I really, really enjoy lately are being made by old guys. The latest example of this is the second album by The Jelly Jam, a trio made up of Dixie Dregs drummer Rod Morgenstein, Dream Theater bassist John Myung, and King's X guitarist Ty Tabor. The album is imaginatively titled 2, and it's really, really good. Bj�rk's new album is really great, too, and maybe calling her "an old guy" is sort of mean, but she's no spring chicken. And then I really like the new Ministry album. But Ministry is also comprised of, you guessed it, old guys.

Come on, kids. What's wrong with you? I won't let you turn me into a curmudgeon before my time. Get off your asses and do something cool. I'm waiting, and listening.

And the weather in Seattle today was the kind of breathtakingly beautiful day that makes you excited to be alive and outside. There's a hint of autumn in the air (I guess there should be, with yon equinox hitting tomorrow), and it's been cool and bright and breezy. I walked to a sammitch shop for lunch today, and en route I picked up a Seattle PI, which had this article in it. Which I have to admit, put a slight damper on my day.

I don't think my building is within 1/3 of a mile of Pike Place Market, so in the event something like the events described in that piece were to occur, I guess I'd be spared the vaporization fate. However, we are right near the "tippy top" of Pioneer Square, so... man, I need to not be at work that day. Somebody let the terrorists know.

I bid adieu to my old assignment at Ye Olde Monopolist Software Shoppe on Friday, and started up my new assignment yesterday. The new assignment's offices are right smack dab in the middle of all the Seattle hubbub, on 2nd Ave and Cherry Street. I have never had a job downtown before. I worked in Seattle for five years when I first moved here, but that was in Lake City, up near the northernmost border of the city limits. There aren't any skyscrapers up there, nor are there art museums, gorgeous new public libraries, symphony halls, Pioneer Square, and five kazillion little restaurants that aren't fast food.

Yeah, I'm going to like working downtown. I get to do it from now until the end of next April.

Of course, it will be better when I get to do what I was actually hired to do at the new job - yesterday I had been at the new office for about ten minutes when I found out my first task was going to be working on a Windows application. They hired me to be a web/SQL guy, because that's what I know, that's what I'm good at. But right now, they need somebody to help on this Windows app. Yes, I do have a little experience (underline that "little") with Windows Forms, but it's going on two years now since I looked at one.

Oh well, I love a challenge. I guess. Help me with my mantra: Resume builder. Getting into the rhythm of it? Good, maybe I don't need to worry then.

Also, my other mantra: Label budget. Yeah.

One of things I tried not to do in the house this weekend, was allow myself to turn into a hypochondriac. Last week I went back to the doctor's office for a follow-up visit, now that I've blazed through the anti-biotics that were prescribed for this latest 'bout with pneumonia. They said that I'm all better, no more medicines are required. I'd believe them more easily if I only felt better. The lady doc said that it might take me six months to feel 100% after a lung infection. What the hell is THAT?!? In the "I'm All Better Column," I can definately put in that there's no more pressure in my lungs, I can breathe deeply again (though I feel a tickle when I REALLY inhale), I don't cough up crud anymore, and the fevers are gone (though I woke up last night after a nightmare - where I was in an earthquake and a hillside of buildings liquified and came hurtling at the house I was in - covered in sweat; the kind of sweat that usually accompanies a fever break). I spend a decent portion of each day lately noticing that I'm very not 100%, but that what remaining symptoms I do have do seem to indicate recovery more than relapse. Cripes, I'm tired of dealing with it. I never used to worry about stuff like this - I've been very cavalier for huge stretches of time about having no health insurance. Six months?

One of my little side journeys was a drive into Seattle to hit the Varsity theater where they are showing what cineastes all unanimously call a classic, Fellini's La Dolce Vita. I'd never seen it, and I'd been somewhat bewildered by the one other Fellini film I've seen (Amarcord), but you know me - if I get a chance to see a "classic" projected on the big screen, I carpe the freakin' diem. So: things I didn't know about the movie - it's black and white, it's 44 years old(!), it's three hours long. Now having seen it, I have to say that it's in my list of movies that I admire, but don't love. Most critics go into paroxysms of zealous praise when they write about the movie - it's one of those movies, like Citizen Kane that really changed things. It's surprisingly modern for a movie that's so old - I'll bet when the movie first came out it was seen as "shocking" or "daring" or whatever. There isn't a straight-ahead plot, or at least one that modern audiences who have the "three act" screenplay formula beaten into us would recognize. There were moments when I was gloriously engaged, and moments when I got frustrated with scenes that didn't seem to have a point. Actually, the more I reflect on the movie, the more reasons I find to admire it - there's a lot of memorable and haunting stuff that keeps coming back - the weird "sighting of the Madonna" sequence, the devastating second visit to Steiner's apartment, the way the paparazzo surround Steiner's wife when the cops intercept her to break the horrible news, Anita Ekberg in the fountain, that nutty opening sequence with the helicopters flying the Jesus statue. Huh. The movie is a jumble of sometimes seemingly arbitrary sequences that shouldn't hang together, but they do. The only modern movie I can compare it to structurally is Short Cuts. Apparently both Short Cuts and La Dolce Vita are about to be released in super-deluxe DVD editions.

Strange aside: I've almost completely stopped watching DVDs. Not really sure why that's happened, but it may be an extension of pretty much removing TV-watching from my life (though I spent a lot of time watching the recent Olympic games). I just like to see movies projected in darkened theaters, I guess. The idea of watching them on TV seems so... inferior.

Of course, I'll be picking up the Star Wars DVDs later this month. Some things go without saying.

And I also fired up the Roland workstation for a good stretch this weekend. I haven't been especially inspired to write music lately, and what I worked on this weekend couldn't be called songs - they're music chunks right now, with no real structure or purpose, but it felt good to be doing some work. I feel the need to get work done (need more music for the new album, don'tcha know), but I haven't been full of insipiring ideas lately. I've found that the good stuff just comes eventually, when it feels like coming along. In the meantime, I feel less like a sham than normal when I'm at least working on sketches like I've been. Just the act of setting up microphones and recording acoustic guitar bits, playing really clumsy basslines on my poor Ibanez bass that has bad intonation and really chewed up frets, just getting the juices flowing at all is better than blank-page avoidance.

Oh, and I inhaled that Da Vinci Code book in about eight hours yesterday. The writing is pretty slipshod (I mean the mechanics, not the plotting), but the subject matter is fascinating and the pages keep turn, turn, turning. I'm probably the last guy in America to actually read the thing. Ron Howard is making it into a movie - he seems to fit the material. So do people show up at the Louvre now and like leave flowers in the upside-down pyramid thing? Reading the book made me really want to spend a week in the Louvre. What's the euro exchange rate right now?

So basically it's a gal pleading with her guy to "think it over" before he runs off and has a good 'ol time with another woman/mistress/whatever. But the gal doing the pleading is treating the whole episode like it's typical or expected behavior - almost like she's saying, "Look, I know I can't stop you from doing this, but I'm at least going to sort of timidly speak up and try to get you to consider the effect your actions are having on me." There's no fire or passion in her plea, it's more... sad acceptance.

Man, that freaks me out a little bit. What a depressing song that is! Ditch that randy bastard, honey! Sheesh!

I've gone through the first round of antibiotics that I was prescribed for this most recent dalliance with illness. I had hoped when I received them that they'd have a "magic bullet" effect, that I'd feel a whole lot better within 24 hours of taking them. That didn't happen. Though I've obviously improved in the last 12 days or so, the effect has been so gradual as to make me doubt the medicine; I've been thinking that I've just been kicking the illness on my own - and again, reading WebMD hasn't been helping me. Reading up on pneumonia over there, I'm finding out that there are causes other than the beasties that can be 86'd by anitbiotics. Grrrrrr.

So tomorrow I'm going back to the walk-in clinic for a follow-up visit, to make sure we've killed these bugs dead. Because now I know that pneumonia can lie "dormant" and sneak back up on you and attack you the moment your immune system lets its guard down. Last winter, I just struggled through it medicine- and doctor-free, and now I'm thinking that was a big mistake. Not that I could have afforded a walk-in doctor visit back then anyway. Having no medical insurance sucks.

Oh, but it's not all worry and doubt in these parts. September is come, and I feel summer beginning to wane. Wane, summer, wane - we are done with ye, and hasten the day that cool weather replaces you. Actually, many trees around here have been changing color already for the last couple of weeks - perhaps this is a function of the Northwest and our northerly coordinates on this blue planet of ours. I like seeing the trees changing. Perks me up. Cloudy days approach. Do you think me mad for being excited by this prospect? Mayhap, my friends, mayhap.

I've suddenly begun typing like I was a resident of M. Night Shamalamadingdong's The Village. I have no idea why this is. I shall not enter the Forbidden Forest.

I'm doing the 15th episode of Poultry Of The Damned right this second. "Pretty Penny" by Stone Temple Pilots is playing. This is a really nice and frankly bizarre tune from them - they actually played it on one of the MTV award shows, sitting in like La-Z-Boy armchairs or something. It wasn't even a single or anything, they just played this tune. Stone Temple Pilots were a lot better than most people gave them credit for, methinks. It was always pretty "hip" to bash the hell out of them, but all they did was leave behind some really good albums. What more can you ask of a band anyway?

Man, I almost killed Poultry Of The Damned before I did this show, too. All week my intention had been to kill it, end it, no more shows I tell you. Update the Web site and thank those that had been listening, but apologize and say that it just took too much of my time and now that I'm hosting it by myself each week, my enthusiasm for doing it has been waning. But when it came time to actually DO that, type up that announcement and cancel the live365 account that hosts the content, I just couldn't pull the trigger. So Poultry Of The Damned survives. I think I'm gonna move to a bi-weekly broadcast schedule for a while, see how that goes. I'm having fun with this week - my fave transition so far is going from Kiss's "Calling Dr. Love" to Coltrane's "Naima." There's something almost - sacrilegious about that, and that of course is the whole point of doing an internet radio program.