The Good Life

"I'm looking in on the good life I might be doomed never to find
Without a trust or flaming fields am I too dumb to refine?"
--New Slang, The Shins

I think I mentioned this song last week (or sometime previous) as one that's atop my guitar-playing list at the moment, and it's on my mp3 player at the gym, so I'm hearing it all the time, and man, are they good. Zach Braff did a remarkable job with that soundtrack, really capturing the tone of the movie ("Garden State," if that wasn't already apparent) with all the music ("The Only Living Boy in New York" being the real awakening song at the end there), which I suppose is the whole idea of a soundtrack, right? I was trying to think of some great soundtracks over the years, where the music either totally defines the movie or even supercedes the film once the disc has been released. Here are a few great ones I came up with (excluding instrumental scores and musicals; those each deserve their own category, both of which I might get to before the blog is done, who knows):
- Pulp Fiction: I remember splitting the cost of this CD with C-Ev right after seeing the movie, and then he copied the soundtrack onto a tape for me. Good times. The movie lines in the soundtrack made it that much better: "Who's Zed?" "Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead."
- Blues Brothers: My favorite was the live Cab Calloway song (Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho), but there was a bunch of good Belushi-Aykroyd stuff on here, the best of which was probably "Rawhide," which was also my favorite part of the movie.
- Top Gun: Anything with Kenny Loggins prominently featured can't be that bad, right? How great is the Top Gun theme, too? "Playin' With the Boys," "Danger Zone," wow.
- Swingers: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, big time. And some other great old school stuff from George Jones, Average White Band and plenty of others. Maybe my favorite soundtrack of all time.
- The Lion King, Tarzan (and pretty much any of those Disney animated movies, for that matter): "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" became the open theme for the 1995 NCAA basketball finals, so it rapidly became my favorite Disney song of all time, and Phil Collins did some amazing stuff on the Tarzan soundtrack--I'm not even afraid to say I liked the N'Sync track on there.
- Good Morning Vietnam: Merits special mention because it's the first soundtrack I ever owned--copied onto a tape by an elementary school buddy, Josh Chaplin. The music doesn't make it as much as the various bites from Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams), on the radio, freestyling between songs. I still do like the music though, all good 60's pop and rock n' roll. "'Nowhere to Run To' by Martha and the Vandellas. Yes!"
- Office Space: Does it get any better than the Geto Boys? "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta" provides one of the great musical scenes in film history, without question. For a movie with a bunch of white guys in an office all the time, there's a lot of gangsta rap on this thing, Ice Cube and plenty more.
- Forrest Gump: Two discs of great classic rock, almost as important as the CGI stuff in Forrest's journey through history.
- Karate Kid: Survivor had a song on there and some other cheesy 80's stuff.
- The Wedding Singer: Great 80's music; so much, in fact, that they had to release it on two discs. And Sandler's "I Wanna Grow Old With You" is tremendous.
The final entry (not one of the best) would be the soundtrack I'm most ashamed to own: Waiting to Exhale, purchased via BMG (I wish I could say it was an accident) freshman year of college. It does have the Shoop Shoop song and a number of other R&B favorites. Sorry.
So I'm assuming a different role at work this week, part of a two-pronged experiment to a) give me some more experience managing people and b) give my former supervisor a stress break. He's a great guy, but he causes himself (and those around him) far too much stress and worry on a daily (and hourly) basis, so a change of scenery will hopefully do him some good. In the meantime, I take a break from actually cutting tapes this week and stick to managing the five guys I used to work with, coordinating the daily segment assignments and meeting with C-Rose and the senior staff a couple of times a day to make sure we're all on the same page. It's not a job I want--at all--but it can't hurt to have managerial experience on the road to being an executive producer someday. The thing I respect the most about the big boss on Fox NFL Sunday (his name is Scott Ackerson, and he's the best EP I've ever seen in action, no question) is his complete awareness of every single detail of the show--who's doing what and how it's all getting done. To have such thorough knowledge of everything, I think, requires some experience at every step along the way. So it can't be a one-lane track to the top, if that makes sense. Some lateral moves are necessary in order to generate complete understanding in the end. It's with that mindset that I attack this week, knowing it's not a job I want to spend much time doing, but also knowing that it's experience that will be quite beneficial in the long run.
The song's lyrics and blog title become appropriate now as I continue to realize how blessed I am, at work, at home (and in the larger sense of "home"--my family), at church, at basketball games, at the gym, with friends, at Padre games (looks like I'm going to be able to attend all three against the Marlins this weekend), and everywhere else for that matter. It's a reminder I require whenever I'm editing youth baseball stories, as was the case during and after "24" last night (no episode-ruining words to follow, don't worry). Now that I've gotten my raise (and I'm actually due another one when our evaluations come up next month), I'm inclined to let that portion of my work slip away into nothingness fairly soon. I do owe Plowhorse and his dad a debt of gratitude for giving me work when I had nothing, so I'm continuing to repay that debt as best I can, but I'm just not sure how much longer I can read things like this:
- "One of the key highlights was the smart thinking of Zoe Demos, who did not take the bait offered by Annie Monroe as she tried to get in a pickle."
This came in a 10-10 game, mind you, and one of the highlights was a girl not getting caught in a pickle? Wow, sorry I missed that one on SportsCenter.
- "The Padres chalked up another win. Hitting was lead by Thomas Phillips double, Austin Ruiz home run, Kevin House and Blake Cornell hitting 2 for 2."
Other than the part about the Padres winning (the real Pads got another one last night), I can't stand the misuse of the word "lead" when they mean "led." A leader can lead, but when it happened in the past, he led. Hitting was lead? So were the bats heavy or something? Also, the sentence fragment nature of this one really gets me: Thomas Phillips double, Austin Ruiz home run? Was there a verb or a possessive or something--anything--missing? Why must I do your work for you, Coach? Why?
- "The play of the season for the Firebats saved the tie and gave us the opportunity for the win!" (that's the whole summary, courtesy of the winning coach)
Were you going to tell us what that play of the season was or just keep us in suspense until next week? I guess I can make something up, perhaps something about avoiding a pickle or something--I hear that's a pretty big-time play--but you've gotta give me something to work with.
- "The post-game "Starfire dogs" courtesy of the Bromley family were a big hit!"
Yes, they wrote about the post-game meal. I don't know what to do with this.
- "There is one thing for sure I can say about the smurfs, They never give up until they have no choice and the blue calls the game. This is one characteristic I wish I could say about all the teams out there. They know in their hearts that the game is not over until the very last out."
There is one thing I can say about this coach, He/She is a master of the obvious (and the rules of grammar). I do like the use of smurfs and blue in the same sentence, though; that's pretty clever (though unfortunately unintended, I'm quite sure). I can't deal with all the personal stuff, things the coach needs to say to his/her team in the little postgame Capri Sun and orange-filled meeting, not in the newspaper.
- "The defense play of the game came when Marissa Dodge caught a ball hit into the upper stratosphere [NORAD scrambled jets when this ball was hit, thinking it was a UFO]. Also playing well on defense was Lucy Fillapone, who stopped a ball hit down third base line at 150 mph."
This was my absolute favorite from this week. Wow. The use of "defense" instead of "defensive" almost doesn't bother me because of these other two gems. I'm impressed, though, that a little girl just turned on a lobbed underhand pitch and cranked it about as fast as an Andy Roddick serve down the third-base line. I'm even more impressed that this Lucy chick went Scott Rolen on it and made the stop, lightning-quick reflexes when she's what, like thirty feet away from the batter or something? It doesn't say whether or not she got to her feet and threw the runner out, but I suppose stopping it was enough--after all, it was going 150 miles per hour. Now, let's see about this other one. I looked up some info about our atmosphere and evidently the stratosphere exists from about 10-30 miles above the ground. That would make the upper stratosphere between 20 and 30 miles straight up. So this girl on the other team took one of those lobbers and knocked it into the air, about as far straight up as it is from Lynngrove Drive to Bel Air Pres (~20 miles, thanks to our friends at Mapquest). Even if it were traveling as fast as the other line drive--and 150 mph is pretty darn fast--it would still take about eight minutes to reach its peak, at which point it would return to earth at what would probably be a much faster rate. Meanwhile, little Marissa is positioning herself, shades flipped down, calling off her left and right fielders, evidently dealing with the distractions of NORAD jets trying to catch the ball, and finally, maybe 12 full minutes after the girl popped it up (and has likely circled the bases a few times, gone to chat with her mom in the crowd, wolfed down some nachos, left for her piano recital and came back, proud of her rendition of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"), Marissa makes the catch, undeterred by the ball burning up on re-entry and hitting her glove at mach three. It's moments like these when I realize why I edit youth softball stories.
Off to a day of supervision. Enjoy yours...