Me and Willie

As I type this post, I am listening to what is clearly the greatest CD of all time. It is beautiful in its simplicity-- imagine Willie, his harmonica, and a crappy karoake synthesizer playing some of the greatest songs ever (I like hyperbole, in case you hadn't noticed that you are currently wading through it). Or maybe it's the nostalgia-- my first memory of music is riding back from the Northern California beach in our big brown van, listening to Willie croon as we brushed the sand off our feet. I must have been 4 or 5 years old. Or it could be because I discovered this CD at a truck stop in Wendover. Or because it reaffirms my goal of becoming a world-class harmonica-ist. Most likely, though, it's gotta be the combination of the beard, the braids, and the bandanna. Oh yeah!

Just so y'all can be jealous, here's a sampling of the playlist: "Georgia On My Mind," "Unchained Melody," "What A Wonderful World," "Bridge Over Troubled Water, " and "Wind Beneath My Wings."

Peace, love, dope. (Dope means baptism in Norwegian. Really.)

"If you build it..."

Today marks the beginning of Baseball Season (well, technically yesterday was the first game, but the Giants weren't playing, so it doesn't count). I'd feel remiss if I didn't commemorate the occasion with a quote from the greatest baseball movie of all time:

"Ray, people will come Ray... And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America is ruled by it like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come."

And with that, I'm off to BYU's Miller Park to watch a couple innings, eat a $1 game dog, and get some reading done. Man, I love baseball.