oh crap, i'm stranded!

If you haven’t figured it out yet I’ve not posted an “Oh Crap, I’m Stranded!” in a few weeks. Let’s say it’s on a summer hiatus with plans to return sometime in August. So, put “Oh Crap” right under the new box of crayons on your back-to-school supply list.

oh crap, i'm stranded!

Stephen Barnum is one of my oldest friends. Our parents participated in a clergy and spouse support group when we were in elementary school. While that group met Steve and I, along with our brothers, would entertain ourselves with any other PK’s (preacher’s kids) that showed up. I can still recall the first time I played the video game Frogger-it was in Steve’s bedroom in the Mt. Washington UMC parsonage. Now Steve and I work together and I see him nearly every day. He’s a talented man and one of the funniest people I know. Oh, and he’s a Jedi.

Steve’s Pick: Lemonade by G Love

Oh crap I’m stranded…the circumstances surrounding my stranding would be a large factor in what lone album I would want as a soundtrack. When I asked Jennifer what the situation of my proposed marooning would be she answered with “deserted island”. With that I am going to take the liberty and assume there is no “hatch” or “others” on this island. Nor is there a “professor” or a “movie star” or anyone inclined to smack me with a captain’s hat and call me “little buddy”. My musical perspective is from the standpoint that I am on Captain Jack Sparrow’s island…the one Captain Barbosa left him to die on…minus the pistol…but maybe with the secret rum stash.

Weighing all these options I have come to this conclusion. The soundtrack for my sandy isolation would have to be an album as fresh as the tropical breeze and as relaxing as afternoon soaks in the tidal pool. I need a collection of tunes that accentuate a fresh shell of coconut milk at the breakfast rock and compliment a delicious dinner of bananas and sushi under a moonlight sky. This album needs a hint of funkiness too. I will need some music that puts bounce in my step on the event that I try to weave rope out of my back hair or want to chuck sand dollars at the monkeys. There is but one recording that can accomplish all these feats. The fresh, the funky, the moving, the mellow (nod your head type mellow) the all encompassing Lemonade by G Love!

Now before you diss me and fill the comments section with a slew of hatetasitcal rants, hear me out. I realize many critics may scoff at such a selection due to its sheer infancy alone. The album was only released in August of 2006 but as some albums needs time to become fully appreciated (see Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys) others are instant classics. Lemonade, my friends, is an instant classic.

First there is not a bad song on the album. How many recordings do you own with two or three decent to hit type songs and the rest of the tracks are just filler? Filler tracks are the musical equivalent of what is in cheap hotdogs and bologna. Lemonade is filler free. Every track on the album is a good listen and that is hard to come by these days. “Hot Cookin”, “Can’t Go Back to Jersey”, “Banger” ,”Let the Music Play”, “Free”, “Beautiful”, “Thanks and Praise” and “Rainbow” need your audible attention for sure but I seriously recommend the album in it’s entirety.

Second, as previously stated it crosses the spectrum from kicking it with a cold beverage to body moving dance grooves. You can never accuse G Love of being one dimensional with his music. When you blend Jazz, Hip Hop, Blues and Acoustic you are anything but.

Stephen Barnum can be found on the web at www.myspace.com/stephenbarnum where you can access his blog Big Mac and Chili Milkshake…Incredibletastic. Currently his blog has no posts because he is a cyber d-bag.

Would you like to participate in Oh Crap, I'm Stranded!? Submissions may be emailed here. You can read more about Oh Crap! here.

oh crap, i'm stranded!

Oh Crap, I’m Stranded! returns this week with a selection by Jeff, of my favorite Indy Racing blog, My Name Is IRL. I had the opportunity to meet Jeff at the Indy 500 during the mid-race rain delay. It was a brief visit-but it was great to meet him in person. I often find myself going to his blog for my IndyCar news. He reads the articles for me and cuts out the filler. Such as introductions like, “the Argent-Red Bull-Joost-Panasonic-7-Eleven-Bryant-Mernards-Kraft-Rock & Republic-Ethanol powered Dallara Honda Firestone car of the Indianapolis 500 champion and number three points leader, who is the teammate of the former championship winner who left CART (now the Champ Car World Series) but who may be considering a move to Formula-1…”, and just gives me the meat of the story. All while providing entertaining commentary.

Jeff’s Pick

The Patsy Cline Story by Patsy Cline

This is a tricky question. I don’t know where I’m stranded, who I’m stranded with or what the conditions of being stranded are (plane crash, car failure, amnesia), so instead of digressing into a David Lynch movie I will forego the follow-up questions and just assume “Oh Crap” means I’m pretty well bummed out. While “Bummed Out” music for me can run the gamut from Sinatra’s “In the Wee Small Hours” to Nine Inch Nails’ “Broken”, I’m gonna go with Mrs Patsy Cline.

I’m not generally a fan of country music and I would delete that annoying “Tra-la-la Triangle” song out of the iPod, but otherwise “The Patsy Cline Story” serves as the Mother of All Sympathies for things gone south. Just about every song may as well be called “Oh, you think YOU got it bad?”, and Patsy’s epic voice is always a comfort without being so sappy that a guy can’t enjoy it.

Something about rainy days makes me gravitate to this album, and no, it’s not her storm-related death in a plane crash. At least, I don’t think it is.

Would you like to participate in Oh Crap, I'm Stranded!? Submissions may be emailed here. You can read more about Oh Crap! here.

oh crap, i'm stranded!

This week's Oh Crap, I’m Stranded! submission is by my friend and fellow knitter, SaraH. I met SaraH through Katie when, along with LYLASarah, we formed a formed a knitting group, “The Knitters”. This four-some would get together about once a month before I messed up the flow by moving to Kentucky. We are getting back on track and being more intentional about getting together for Knit Nights. SaraH is insanely crafty and talented-knitting, sewing, crocheting, embroidery, and dog mothering, just to name a few. She has a cute pup named, Dodger, who really seems to enjoy being in the presence of knitting. Check out SaraH’s blog, Lookee Here! to see some of my brilliant projects and photos of Dodger.

SaraH's pick:

The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

I'm a psychedelia-lovin' child of the sixties, and Sgt. Pepper's is my stranded album.

If it wasn't so hard to pick just one album to listen to for all time, I would have written you sooner, Jennifer. But if I am honest with myself, I know I would pick Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles pretty darn quickly. This album has been with me for a long time--I remember knowing all the words to all the songs as a second grader, due to my parents' habit of listening to the same tape in the family van for months and months at a time (years later I had to put my foot down about Paul Simon's Graceland, which is great, but we had listened to it for far too long).

I like this album for the breadth of music, from pop-y and peppy ("Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "When I'm Sixty-four," "Lovely Rita," "Good Morning Good Morning") to whimsical ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Fixing a Hole," "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!") to introspective and eerie ("She's Leaving Home," "Within You Without You," and "A Day in the Life"). I love earlier albums, particularly Revolver and Rubber Soul, but the Beatles got so experimental with this album and enlarged what a pop band could record. We've got incredible orchestrations, crowd noises, backwards looped tape, sitars, and the song subjects are often unusual. Plus, I have so much knowledge of the Beatles, I could sit around in my stranded state, thinking about the group and its members and their history and music.

I like any melodic album with playful, unexpected lyrics, and Sgt. Pepper's comes through, every mood-creating song.

Would you like to participate in Oh Crap, I'm Stranded!? Submissions may be emailed here. You can read more about Oh Crap! here.

oh crap, oh crap.

I guess I took a break from "Oh Crap, I'm Stranded" this week, what with all the excitement yesterday.
Check back next Monday for a new selection.
If you've made an "Oh Crap!" submission you just might find yours here next week!

oh crap, i'm stranded!

Today’s Oh Crap I’m Stranded! pick is from my friend and co-worker, Andy Smith.
Andy is perhaps one of the funniest people I know. He has a straight guy, slightly dry Bob Newhart-esque sense of humor. Andy loves baseball and his three daughters more than just about anything else I can think of.

He is also a writer and you can find some of his work on his website.

Andy's Pick
The Essential Mormon Tabernacle Choir

If I’m stranded with only an iPod, then I would want the CD that I have with only the one selection of Ave Maria by some female singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir …. Because I have no idea how iPods work and it would take a miracle from the blessed Mother to help me through that scenario.

Would you like to participate in Oh Crap, I'm Stranded!? Submissions may be emailed here. You can read more about Oh Crap! here.

oh crap, i'm stranded!

I put out the call for new “Oh Crap, I’m Stranded!” submissions and I was pleased to receive several Mondays’ worth. Thank you to everyone who emailed me their selections. I truly appreciate your participation. Please check back here on Mondays, you just might find your pick!

Today I asked a friend to pick a number between one and ten. He chose six, which happened to be the submission by my best friend, BeLinda. Honestly, my eyes welled a little bit. Cee Cee, BeLinda’s daughter, had surgery on her eye this morning. You can imagine where my thoughts have been today.

It feels a little indulgent to write a paragraph or more about BFF when I write about her all the time as it is. But I don’t believe I have shared how Be and I came to be friends. We had known each other in passing through camp, church conference activities, and Emmaus/Chrysalis. Then, in the summer of 1991, BeLinda and I were on staff at Camp Loucon and by the end of that summer we were somewhat attached at the hip. That fall I started my senior year of high school and BeLinda returned to WKU and we continued to spend time together whenever we could. The next semester Be transferred to Campbellsville University in her hometown. We began to write to one another nearly everyday, and that’s when, I’d say, we really became bonded. Other than that summer at Loucon and that semester in Bowling Green we have never lived in the same town.

BeLinda’s Pick:
Keith Green - The Ministry Years, Vol. 1

The one album I could never be without would be Keith Green’s greatest hits from earlier in his career. He was an amazing person that lived with incredible passion and his music has been with me over the years through lots of stuff. Dear John Letter (To the Devil) is clever and fun and the piano is WOW. He could play. I Only Want to See You There, Stained Glass, Easter Song…every song I love deeply for different reasons. I must, however, stray from the rules a moment and also mention the BBC box-set of non-musical C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia, because ALL of it is on my iPod and the whole family listens to it on a regular basis. It is some beautiful story telling. It would be hard to be stranded without it. It is worth having. If I could only have one song it would, without a doubt, have to be the Pata Pata [a dance we do at Loucon] because all the Christian songs I could sing in my head. But the Pata Pata is a lot of fun to dance to.

Would you like to participate in Oh Crap, I'm Stranded!? Submissions may be emailed here. You can read more about Oh Crap! here.