That being said, there was a lot of frustration in dealing with the crowds, the heat, the waiting, and all of the various forms of traveling it took just to get there. At times, it almost seemed like the whole trip could have been a huge mistake.

Yet when the evening headliners took the stage and played their sets, not only did I get my money’s worth, I got something greater than that. You see, all around us were several thousand teenagers and twentysomethings drinking crappy beers and smoking handrolled joints— all trying to mimic me, basking in the sensation in my head known as being naturally high. It was untouchable, my natural high was a sphere of solid metal charged with the electricity of a thunderstorm. It was something I had not felt in some time.

Sharing the natural high (since she was directly in front of me at every show) was the lovely Ms. S.Rod. Without her, the trip would have been incredibly lonely and not even a shred as fun. When asked for a comment about Lolla ’08, she said simply, “It was fricking awesome.”

As for all of the bands and what we saw them perform, there’s simply too much content for me to write about right now. Equally, there are several thousand other fans out there seeing the same shows who wrote reviews hours after everything that happened. Thus, let’s just list it as we saw it (in chronological order with the evening headliners bolded):

The Black Keys
Bloc Party
Radiohead
The Ting Tings
The Gutter Twins
Explosions In The Sky
Broken Social Scene
Wilco
The Octopus Project (partial set)
Wild Sweet Orange (partial set)
White Lies (partial set)
Office (partial set)
Tally Hall (partial set)
Newton Faulkner
Iron & Wine
Love & Rockets
Nine Inch Nails

While seeing seventeen bands over the span of two and a half days (because we played Chicago tourists on Friday AM), figure this: there were another thirteen bands or performers that we wanted to see, but could not because of conflicts. On each day, we tried different tactics of seeing bands, hence three bands on Friday, and nine on Sunday. But you have to accept at music festivals, there is just no way to have it all.

Ultimately, we scheduled our days around getting the spots we wanted for each of the headliners. It worked to our advantage because each of them played phenomenal shows. For NIN and Wilco, it was the best that we’d ever seen them play live.

If everything had worked perfectly this weekend with all of the lows I listed, perhaps we would not have appreciated the musical gifts we were graced with as much. So I will just smile, close my eyes, think of the music, cheering with S.Rod, and enjoying every moment of those natural highs. Cheers.

P.S. Photos and videos coming soon… but we’re very bad photographers, so I won’t promise much.

As the more casual fan of the Somrod duo when it comes to R.E.M., I was not disappointed in the least bit by last night’s show. It was high octane for most of the show, and I only sat down for 2 of the 27 songs (Houston and Let Me In). With such a vast catalog, R.E.M. could have played any of 70 some odd songs in their current cue, so I accepted that they didn’t play a few of my own personal favs (Circus Envy, Walk Unafraid, and Finest Worksong) nor did they engage my blind hope of debuting ‘Sing For The Submarine’ on this tour. But I walked away very satisfied with the experience. The fact that S.Rod was ecstatic made me happier, but I’ll leave her to talk about that.

Overall though, of the three R.E.M. shows I have seen (’03, ’04 and ’08—all @ MSG), this was the best in my opinion. The new material from Accelerate meshed well with the old classics, much better than when they were debuting the Around The Sun songs. I think that’s the thing that show how solid a new album is— not only do the songs sound great live, but they accent the rest of the catalog well. Cheers.

The dynamic duo that is Somrod provided song-by-song tracklist information throughout the 27-song performance. After the show, S.Rod was unable to contain her excitement enough to form complete sentences. The curmudgeonly humanitarian in me grudgingly has to admit every human being on earth deserves to feel that good at least once in their life. I’m hoping I’m even 1/10 as excited at the end of my first R.E.M. show in Atlanta tomorrow night. – Josh Hathaway; Confessions of A Fanboy

** S.Rod **

Last night’s show was incredibly fantastic it totally ROCKED! I’m very pleased at how well the new album translates live. I’m so sad that its over but I’m so happy that I was there to see and experience this show. The crowd was totally into it.

We had a great setlist even though I didn’t get everything I wanted. There was a frenetic energy that carried through each of the first 10 songs which plateaued with Houston. I’m not a big fan of the song Houston but it was good and its surprisingly short. The set kicked back in with Electrolite which was a fan favorite which Stipe dedicated to Modest Mouse. Mike Mills then took center stage for Rockville…OMG the place went nuts. Everyone was singing the chorus… Roooockvillllllllle! Awesome! Driver 8 into Harborcoat and then The One I Love. I did get to hear Until the Day Is Done… which was just beautiful and then right into an acoustic version of Let Me In which was very intimate. I have changed my mind about Horse To Water; it is great live. Pretty Persuasion; so cool. Right into Orange Crush which I was dying to hear. And closing with I’m Gonna DJ, which just rocked.

Encore: Supernatural Superserious, Losing My Religion, Begin The Begin, Fall On Me, closing with Man on The Moon.

Wow, what a concert! I can’t remember being this psyched to see concert in a long time. R.E.M. put on a phenomenal show. For those of our friends seeing them in Atlanta on Saturday: I hope you get every song on your dream setlist. And even if only get one YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.

I discovered the music of NIN as a sophomore in high school in 1991. A girl I was dating gave me a cassette copy of their first album Pretty Hate Machine, and I was immediately hooked. After 1992′s Broken was released, I have followed bandleader and production guru Trent Reznor’s career closely ever since. Sure, there have been a couple speed bumps along the way (i.e. songs like “The Perfect Drug” or “Deep”), but NIN’s hard edged soundscape has always appealed to me.

Outside of the multi-layered textures, pulsing synths, and arrogant guitar power chords that Reznor has woven through his work, I’ve also enjoyed his frequently aggressive and angst ridden lyrics and breathy vocal delivery. So when Reznor released Ghosts I-IV, an album comprised of 36 untitled instrumentals, I was not sure what to make of it at first. I knew I had enjoyed many previous NIN instrumentals like “The Mark Has Been Made” and “La Mer” from The Fragile, or “A Warm Place” from The Downward Spiral— but nearly two hours without a single vocal? It seemed like a recipe for disaster when mixed with an experimental release format via the web only.

Luckily, despite the NIN website crashing on the first day of release, Ghosts I-IV was considered a success by most critics and fans, despite not being as groundbreaking as some of his previous records. My belief on Ghosts is that Reznor didn’t want to chance releasing his “vocal-included” material in the event that this experiment was not as profitable as hoped. However, now that it has been, I expect that in the upcoming months, he will release an EP with vocal tracks. Of course, that is purely speculative from a longtime fan. Forgive my optimism.

More importantly, Reznor had a second experiment in mind for Ghosts outside of the release structure. NIN teamed up with YouTube to host a “film festival” where fans could submit their own visual representations of the music of Ghosts. The films will be reviewed by a team (including Trent) and the “exceptional” ones will be prominently displayed as a YouTube/NIN collaborative “film festival”. As Reznor states, “This isn’t a contest and you don’t win elaborate prizes – it’s meant to be an experiment in collaboration and a chance for us to interact beyond the typical one-way artist-to-fan relationship.” The YouTube page detailing all this can be found here.

Thus, while I am not able to create quality video or anime for the film festival, I did have an opinion that all of the tracks of Ghosts segment into two distinct mixes. Each mix sonically illustrates a character as listed below:

1. Ambicaspian: the musical portrait of a suburban woman who drowned in a lake while swimming alone. Her ghost forever trapped in the lake’s surroundings, she does everything within her powers to keep others from the same fate. No one has drowned there since.

Ambicaspian track listing:
02 Ghosts I
05 Ghosts I
30 Ghosts IV
28 Ghosts IV
25 Ghosts III
34 Ghosts IV
21 Ghosts III
36 Ghosts IV
18 Ghosts II
01 Ghosts I
17 Ghosts II
22 Ghosts III
13 Ghosts II
11 Ghosts II
09 Ghosts I
15 Ghosts II
06 Ghosts I

2. Geistfearian: the musical portrait of an urban man who was double-crossed and poisoned by his best friend and his wife, who were having an affair. His ghost forever trapped in the city, he roams the street, toppling scaffolding and breaking pipes in the ground. His pain is so severe that he can never rest.

Geistfearian track listing:
03 Ghosts I
24 Ghosts III
16 Ghosts II
26 Ghosts III
14 Ghosts II
29 Ghosts IV
07 Ghosts I
32 Ghosts IV
23 Ghosts III
27 Ghosts III
31 Ghosts IV
12 Ghosts II
20 Ghosts III
08 Ghosts I
33 Ghosts IV
19 Ghosts III
35 Ghosts IV
04 Ghosts I
10 Ghosts II

In closing, I can only hope that Nine Inch Nails continues to experiment with music and media, a trait not often found in an artist who has already spanned a generation. Cheers.

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If you think you can get away from advertising in this day and age, then you’d better sew your eyes shut and plug your ears with molten lead. Not even a man living in a mountain shack in Montana can escape it. Because there has to be something he consumes or owns with a logo, icon, or slogan stuck on it.

The forces of advertising have become so strong that we now have a week designated to praise it. Advertising Week celebrates its first anniversary from September 26-30. As the website describes, AW is: “an annual gathering of the industry’s best and brightest. In its first year (2004), the event attracted more than 40,000 participants from over 30 countries. By all accounts, it… will be an outstanding opportunity to learn and share best practices, hobnob with clients, get inspired, remember why you’re in the business and generally have a great time.”

As part of the festivities, people are able to vote online for their all-time favorite icon and slogan for 2005. The top five winners in both categories are then removed from next year’s contest and put into an Advertising Hall of Fame of sorts.

2004′s Icon Winners were:
1. M & M Characters, 2. AFLAC Duck, 3. Mr. Peanut, 4. Pillsbury Doughboy, and 5. Tony the Tiger

2004′s Slogan Winners were:
1. Melts in your mouth, not in your hands. (M&M’s)
2. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. (Almond Joy/Mounds)
3. Where’s the beef? (Wendy’s)
4. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. (United Negro College Fund)
5. Can you hear me now? (Verizon)

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As I viewed the Advertising Week website, I realized just how indoctrinated I have become over the years. In some ways, it’s personally repulsive to know that I’d get 100% on a test matching any slogan with its icon from the 80′s and 90′s, or vice versa. Being an artist, I could probably even draw most of them from memory too. If pop culture advertising were a virus, it would make anthrax look like a cure for cancer.

On the flip side though, try to separate advertising icons and slogans from the products that they endorse. If you are able to, then you might be able to appreciate the sheer creative genius which has been illustrated in our American advertising explosion over the past forty years.

In terms of art forms, advertising is where many writers and artists have gone to flourish. Why bother writing a novel when you could write ads that net you an six figure salary? Why bother trying to be a sculptor or painter, when creating the new Coke can becomes the highlight of your portfolio? It makes perfect sense to me, even if I haven’t been able to capitalize on this theory myself.

Additionally, the icons and slogans of ads all have an aesthetic value that has persevered over generations. While we may not know the person who created the Jolly Green Giant, or wrote the Cingular slogan, the creators themselves know— and amongst creative people, such infamy is golden. To know your creation is everywhere, yet you will never suffer the backlashes of fame for it— priceless.

So, my conclusion is that while I do my best to not let advertising influence me when purchasing products, I still can appreciate the creative people that live behind these legendary icons and slogans. That is what, in my opinion, makes Advertising Week necessary.

P.S. I voted for the Kool Aid Man and “Time To Make The Donuts”.

For those of us fortunate enough to be devoid of fame, we can try any and everything we want within the creative hemispheres, and suffer all the same. How gratifying! Nevertheless, the creative area that I have no formal training or experience is music. I love hearing music, and am constantly surrounded by it no matter what I am doing. But when it comes to actually composing or playing the music, I have mostly avoided it for lack of natural talent and coordination. My encounters with playing are limited to three months of saxophone lessons in fourth grade, and a brief stint of singing terribly in a tenth grade rock band, to which I got kicked out of at the end of the summer. Of course, I know wholeheartedly that I did not apply myself in either case. But redemption was always waiting for me.

By admitting that I am a writer and artist first, that puts a big scarlet C for crossover on my chest when it comes to me producing a podcast of semi-melodic tracks. But brand me all you want— producing compositions of words and sounds was as fun as new Christmas toys. For all of the tweaking and timing issues and triple takes that it took to make it happen, I highly recommend it to any creative soul looking for something fun and challenging to do.

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Magic Junk Radio 1 is a creative fusion of spoken word, samples, sounds, and beats. I didn’t play any instruments, but you’re welcome to pretend I did. MJR 1 has no aspirations other than amusement and an occasional foot tap. At 17 and a half minutes, it’s a fast food podcast. But I’m perfectly content with that. Clog your arteries and enjoy.

INSTRUCTIONS: Right-click this link to download the full podcast in MP3 format, which will play in any iPod or MP3 music player. Left click and the MP3 will begin playing in a new web browser window (unless you haven’t updated in a while.)

To download the tracks individually, click any of the links below.
Content of Tables
Intro Music – 0:51
Welcome – 1:18
Identifying the Train People – 4:53
Interlude 1 – 1:12
Serico’s Wake Up Call (from The Art of Getting Bent) – 2:02
Not Going Gently – 1:51
Interlude 2 – 1:14
Magically Delicious – 1:40
Mushroom Cloud – 1:52
Farewell – 0:37

Magic Junk Radio RSS

The giggling cartoon devil is standing on my monitor, and he gets that signal too. His feet are secured with Velcro so he does not fall over if he laughs too hard. Every time that I put my head in my hands to try and forget my momentary frustration, I rest my elbows on the slab of pulped pseudo-wood that passes for a cubicle desk. Those elbows vibrate the slab, shockwaves rock the boogie, and the devil gets down with a disco dancing head jiggle. Are you getting the fever of the flavor?

That devil, he’s working the giggle just for me… just for this pop culture influenced pipe dream I invested my college tuition in. You know the one— where I believed that I could make a difference, that I could add to American society, that even if I didn’t learn physics or algebra very well in school I might just run along something groundbreaking to help save a dying friend or relative from catastrophe. Just like in the movies! All this noise that I call life keeps reminding me that I must certainly not be insignificant amongst the masses. And yet, the devil continues to giggle. He must know something.

That giggle, it’s therapeutic somedays, so much so that I rest my elbows on purpose just to watch. While the devil never tells me anything amongst his snickers, today he decided to toss me some questions.

He asked, “Do you enjoy standing at the face of a dead end? If you don’t, what obstacle will you have to run through to avoid going backwards to escape? A haunted forest? Someone’s new TLC funded dream backyard? A cliff on the side of a mountain? Tell me young man, are you prepared to fall to your death for what you believe in?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, since I didn’t believe in anything, certainly not him or his equal and opposite reaction on the cosmic scale. Well, maybe I believed once, when I didn’t know any better. But those days are a cancelled Saturday morning cartoon, nothing but colorful memories to sprout roots to. I know that the dead end keeps moving in front of me, no matter which way I turn.

So, I lifted my elbows from the slab, and grabbed the devil’s head by the horns and bent it back. It was then that I saw a finely tuned metal spring underneath his head. There never had been a giggle. It was all a pop culture lie, a juicy cherry pie to dip my metaphoric phallus of hope into. It was truth, if there is such a thing.

As I bent the spring out of shape and the devil’s head swung around his body like a lost tetherball, I knew the questions could only have come from myself. And if that was the case, then know that I’m as close as I’ve ever been to making the jump into the deep blue sea.

DISCLAIMER: There are no hidden messages in this dark comedy/satire. No humans, toys, or religious stereotypes were harmed in the making of this blog.

The braincrawling took place on July 4, 2005 and took approximately two hours and nine minutes. The subject, Paul Genigeti, received a small incision at the base of his skull for the cranial access. Genigeti received ten stitches afterwards and was cognizant within an hour. No apparent side effects were detected.

Google had been previously unsuccessful acquiring any results from crawling the brains of laboratory rats or monkeys, as all of the results were a series of ‘screech’ sounding gibberish. While Google executives were prepared to scrap the project, further studies suggested that the gibberish all followed distinct patterns. Paul, a lab intern from local Cal Tech University, then volunteered to be the first human subject.

Results from Paul’s braincrawl included detailed descriptions of his winning a blueberry pie eating contest, getting pummeled by grade school bullies, and catching his college girlfriend ‘entertaining‘ two fraternity brothers.

The results also included a snapshot of Paul’s subconscious, which ranged from a fetish for fruity mixed drinks and women’s feet, to having one-third of a mystery novel composed, to still being confused how Michael Jackson was able to avoid jail time.

Google plans to market their braincrawling technology to the general public by Fall 2006. The braincrawl plan will be priced around $5,000.00, and include all of your memories on a single DVD, or formatted into text and displayed on their blog service for public consumption. Patents pending.

These are the words I might speak tonight to the last cable box in my apartment when it gets disconnected and returned to Cablevision. No, this is not a pitch that I am not switching to satellite instead. I am getting rid of the multitude of choices on cable altogether. To be more specific, I asked my fiancé that we eliminate the Family package of our cable service (aka 400 channels of never-ending channel surfing), and have only the Basic version (all of the channel a normal TV used to pick up, but with clear reception).

For my area in New York, here are the costs:
- Family Cable $45.00
- Broadcast Basic $9.00
In the grand scheme of things, saving $36 a month (or $432 a year) is nice on the budget, but honestly that’s not why I wanted to get rid of the Family package.

The main reason is that when I’m older and I look back on the portfolio of my life, I don’t want to say that a healthy percentage was spent watching programs which benefit me only in the short term. Be honest with yourself—other than momentary entertainment, what greater good has television done for you? Could you not have been doing something more productive?

Basically, up to this point, I have concluded two things:
(A) My girl and I only watch two shows each week (24 and Alias), both on basic.
(B) Every other time we turn on the TV is just for pure vegetative state. We turn it on, and because there are 900 options to choose from, we’re bound to find something moderately interesting to waste our lives to. It took me some time to convince her of this, but eventually she decided the logic was true.

This decision was not without debate. Cable has always been such a vast tool of endless entertainment… movies, sitcoms, self-help shows, news, sports, cartoons, and on and on. When I was younger, I didn’t get Cable until I was in high school, so I remember how great it was to visit my buddy’s house and watch MTV and HBO and Cinemax. Of course, then I was naive, and believed in the system to be pure and concurrent with the ways of American life.

While I still recognize that Cable TV, and its’ evil clone Satellite TV, have become a vital artery of American culture, I have chosen to resist it. Does that make me less patriotic to not be a daily vegetable? I hope not. But then, I know I am in a tiny minority with this choice. Most people could not give up cable if they tried.

But I hope more people do resist cable… there’s way too much in life that our scattered years could not even begin to explore. You sure won’t get there by watching reruns of I Love The 80′s every week.

Nevertheless, since it’s not healthy to be serious 24-7, I wanted to offer all of you hard-core political aficionados out there the following light hearted image for your amusement:

As the summit winds down each year, the representatives of the participating countries (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Russia) sneak away from the media, security and their translators to an underground room. It is there that they try to transcend the serious overtone that always overshadows their endeavors.

It is there that the 8 leaders dress up as pop culture icons and celebrate their collective wealth and power. Previous years’ themes have included dressing up as rainforest animals, ozone molecules, or the Village People. This year, the theme is vegetables. And what better representative of 8 vegetables than that wacky American beverage known as V-8?

So, like the similarly styled costumes of the Fruit of the Loom guys, the 8 world leaders don the costumes of the tomato, beet, celery, carrot, lettuce, parsley, watercress, and spinach. Then they join hands, dance in a circle for a little bit, toast a chilled shot of vodka, exchange high-fives, and depart for their home countries.

If things like this actually happened, the world may just be a better place than I think.

I’m sure the Apple spin doctors are hard pressing to point out that the kid probably would have met such a fate had he been carrying an iPod or a Nomad Jukebox, but I digress. Does the media really have nothing better to blame? Was the murderous motivation purely derived on that little white box that holds thousands of songs? Would he have lived had he handed it over?

The obvious trend is getting mugged for your iPod— a premise I’ve mentioned before. But you might recall the story of a kid fumbling with his iPod before he skated into a moving car. Although the original newslink went dead, it’s still an example of blaming the iPod when it was the kid’s absent minded behavior that got him killed.

Seeing how far people will go for electronic gadgets is surreal, and something the media loves to cash in on. Things like this recent murder or a story from a couple years ago where a girl dropped her cell phone into the NYC Subway tracks and had the genius-thought to jump in and get it with a train coming— they just defy all logic.

So, in light of all this, I have taken a few moments to compose some hypothetical future scenarios that we might endure involving the media’s obsession with personifying the iPod as a cause for calamity. While these scenarios don’t Nostrodamisize the day when all of the iPods rebel against their masters via the touch wheel transforming into a sawblade to slice off any fingers trying to find that old Pearl Jam b-side— it does invoke some realm of possibility.

Scenario #1: A man cashes in on his AppleCare policy so many times that holding his new iPod causes him to spontaneously combust.

Scenario #2: A baby boomer’s iPod is playing Kenny G’s greatest hits on a merry stroll down the boulevard. However, the annoying frequencies that escape the headphones drive a passing herd of wild dogs insane with bloodlust and the person becomes a chew toy.

Scenario #3: A tourist accidentally drops her iPod off of the observation deck at the Empire State Building. Upon impact, it crushes a man selling double-decker bus tours below.

Scenario #4: After growing a thick black beard during the winter time, a man takes a trip to Miami to catch some rays. However, he forgets to remove his iPod from his pocket liner, and is promptly mistaken by a first week inspector as a terrorist with a bomb and tazered to death.

Scenario #5: A woman listening to her iPod is waiting on a curb to cross a city street. She does not hear the screams of people around her, and the mirror of a speeding bus extending over the sidewalk takes her head off.

Scenario #6: A teen downloads a song to his iPod that illegally samples the Smurfs theme and hundreds of little blue men come out from under his desk and eat the teen alive.

Scenario #7: A man listens to Stairway to Heaven twice in a row on his iPod, and the earth below parts and swallows him.

Scenario #8: Microsoft buys Apple, and all iPods begin running a Windows OS. The iPod then surgically attaches itself to all users. Resistance is futile.

Scenario #9: A grad student learns the actual cost of what it takes Apple to produce an iPod and chokes on his dinner of lukewarm Ramen Noodles.

DISCLAIMER: This is satire. I do hope society learns from the real people who died in some of the news stories at the beginning of this post, but I don’t in any way mock their deaths. The mantra we all should remember is: Love thy iPod. But not to death.

I did a double take. The Apple what? Newton? Was that a fad I missed? Apparently, it was. As it turns out, the Newton was actually one of the first “personal digital assistants” or PDA’s as we’ve come to know the acronym so well. Yet, I knew Apple definitely hadn’t made such a device in at least the last 8 years or so, and this time I was right. Well, 7 is close enough.

As you can read here, the Newton was a heavily hyped launch, produced from 1993 to 1998, although some faulty handwriting recognition features gave it a bad rap, and it met an untimely demise as many pieces of hardware have before it. I guess the thing that surprised me about the Newton was not that Palm and their subsequent release of the Pilot developed a smaller and more user-friendly device, but that the Palm Pilot was not the ultimate groundbreaker I thought it to be.

I think many gadgeteers of today never even realized that Apple had a hand in the PDA game. But this all goes to show that one of the companies that starts the ball rolling is not always the one who ends up getting the credit in the public eye.

For years as a child, I always worried that if I saw the twirling red and yellow spots in the air like Elmer Fudd did, then I had contracted some strange disease and it was time to panic. Luckily, that never happened, but it is amazing what things make impressions on you as a kid.

Thinking of moments like that make me realize the tremendous impact today’s scares of real life anthrax or smallpox could have on a child (if they can understand the news that is). You never realize how fortunate you are when you know that the worse thing to scare you about infectious diseases as a kid was a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But this is a blog for another day.

Nevertheless, my point is that the old concept of “rabbititus” came to mind again when I read this quote this past weekend: “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.” – Russian Proverb

While I’m certain this proverb has been around for a while (since how many people do you know chase rabbits? You’d just use a gun now), it has become valid in a new way. Chasing two rabbits and catching neither is American multitasking defined. It is the New Rabbititus. And I would bet 95% of our population is infected, including myself.

In one way or another, it could be said that the collective American attitude is to want it all. (Note the word ‘collective’ for you humble denialists out there.) For it’s an absolute that no person would turn down the opportunity to be wealthy enough to live comfortably, to have and do anything they want, to help out their friends and family with their riches, and enjoy it all.

The unfortunate reality of this truth is that most of us will never get to that level of wealth. But that doesn’t stop us all from trying, nor should it. It’s the American Dream to get well paid for the work we slave over, to live large like the lavish celebrities we are subjected to watching on television.

Thus, the only way that most of us have any means to make that happen is to multitask our lives into a state of constant juggling, hoping that if somehow we can catch a break somewhere— it will be our ticket to the high life. It seems like we follow the faint hope that the two rabbits will accidentally run into each other and we can catch them both.

So, is it worth it to get “infected” with the New Rabbititus? Well, despite your odds being low at any stellar success, it’s not impossible. Hard work and multitasking are like gambling— someone eventually has to win at it, but there’s no guarantee that it will be you, no matter how you play the game.

I believe the important lesson we should take from the proverb in our multitasking lifestyles is not just to chase one rabbit until we catch it— but after we do, we cannot stop to catch our breath. You must keep running to catch the other one before it gets too far away. Hard work is nothing with the organization to focus it on one definitive goal at a time.

So stop chasing everything in life all at once. Take a deep breath and catch that which is most important first. This will help you immensely… unless of course, you start to see red and yellow spots twirling in the air. Then maybe you might want to think about taking a day off.

While I was able to acknowledge his Nextel usage as necessary for his profession, nevertheless I had to confess my pet peeve— hearing that double beep in a public place makes me cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. It has got to be stopped. I can’t stand it when people use the DC on public transportation, in elevators, or anywhere else I have to be subjected to its annoying shrill. It’s like going camping with a cicada playing its greatest hits next to your sleeping bag.

So my creed is this: If you’re a contractor, messenger, delivery worker, or similar occupation, then it’s okay— you need the DC because it makes your job more efficient.

However, if you’re just talking to your homie on the train about your evening plans, or talking to your wife in the supermarket about which cereal to buy, then do us all a favor— make a phone call instead, okay? That’s why they made it a phone. Thanks.