Tonight: The Great American Songbook

OOO! A guest judge…ummm…Jamie Foxx?! Interesting. He’s actually a pretty funny dude…OK, but onto my take on the show:

Oh wait–but first–just as a not-at-all-sponsored-reminder, all of these songs are on iTunes and you can downloadthemblahblahblah…yes WE KNOW. YOU SAY IT EVERY WEEK, Ryan. Shut it about iTunes. I know I can download the songs…

Kris Allen:
Who knew this guy would make it into the competition at all? Much less to the Top 5. Seriously, when he sang “Man in the Mirror” during the verrrrry first week, no one thought he was making it through. We had never even seen him up to that point!!! And especially during those initial “Top 32″-type shows, people vote mostly based on some sort of connection to the story of the person + the voice. We didn’t know anything about Kris because he never had any air time…so I thought he was a goner from day 1. But apparently not.
Apparently he’s pretty freaking awesome, even at the ole standards…

Side note: If I hear the phrase, “Dark Horse” anymore on Idol, I’ll be throwing my laptop in your face, Kara DioGuardi. It’s not your fault though, you’re only the most recent person to say it…

Allison Iraheta:
There really is a stark disconnect between this girl’s age and her voice. It’s creepy. And I can’t say that I love her voice–I appreciate it a lot–and it’s certainly distinctive…if I heard her on the radio, I’d know who it was immediately–but I’m not a huge fan.
That said: she did really well tonight.
Also, I’m glad the judges are going in order again with Simon being the last to speak. That was always the order of things, and it should always be that way…the new stupid producers have been waaaaaaay too unpredictable with all of their random changes. Let’s not screw with the WHOLE show here people…get a clue. SIMON GOES LAST. He is the Judge of Judges, and the one we want to hear from most…to have him go 2nd or 1st or not at all is just lame. Blarp.

P.S. I stop fast-fowarding my DVR for Mac commercials and Jack-in-the-Box commercials…both are hilARious…my favorite is Jack’s non-smiley face:

The marketing folks at JITB are truly genius…

Matt Giraud:
The luckiest guy in American Idol…and definitely the least consistent performer. Some weeks he’s good, some weeks he’s surprisingly bad. This week? Hm…not great.
Ooo. Emotional connection–some say it was missing, some say they felt it. ***This is why Daniel has never tried out for this show***
I stink at that aspect of peforming/singing, etc…dang. I mean, I’m usually freaking out so much about remembering the words to a song that I’m not even emotionally attached…is that just stupid-backwards, or what? Ugh. My greatest weakness (besides my love for jackets) would be this thing. I guess I can’t throw stones…
but Matt is not my favorite.

Danny Gokey:
Trombone solo!
Wow. Danny and Kris win so far for classiest look. This guy’s voice is reallllly great…
OH SNAP.
DANNY WINS!!! THAT WAS FREAKIN AWESOME!

I’m rewinding…

Wow…I hope he wins…

Side note: has anyone else noticed that Paula has been saying some coherent things this season? Christy’s theory: she has a script writer that sits through the dress rehearsal, takes notes, and she memorizes little quips about each performance. I know, it sounds crazy–but there’s no way to account for the limericks she’s been coming up with weekly…they’re completley out of character for her. All previous seasons she has been a consistent babbler, but with the arrival of the pretty-darn-smart-and-articulate Kara, she’s feeling threatened. Hey. I say–all the more power to ya. Whatever works.

Adam Lambert:
I usually can’t stand Adam. He is one of those people that you either love or hate.
I hate.

Here’s why–HE’S TOO MUCH.

Adam, if you just saved the high notes for every once and a while, then I might think they were cool. But when you over-induldge in your high 80s-rock-stick-your-tongue-out scream/sing, I want to barf.  It’s like eating a dinner plate full of ice cream. I would like something else, please.  Save the ice cream for dessert, not for the whole song…blaaaaaah.

The judges love him. Ugh.

I don’t want Adam to win.

Please America, vote for Danny Gokey, not Adam.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

I am the King of the Castle.

I am the Music Pastor at Midway Baptist Church.

I am self-employed.

Not too often do people tell me what to do.  I make a lot of my own decisions, and when I work with a team, I’m usually the leader.
This is good and bad.

It’s good because it suits me just fine. I enjoy being my own boss, and when I’m working for someone else, I generally have enough structure to experience great freedom within that environment.

However, this is also bad because it means, for the most part, I get whatever I want…when I want it.
Now I can’t say this is true 100% of the time, but it is true to a reasonable extent. And you know what?

IT’S NOT HEALTHY.

No one–and I MEAN NO ONE–should live without a balance of power in their lives. The person that gets their way all the time usually ends up a spoiled brat–selfish, ungrateful, self-centered, prideful, and shallow…and most of all–UNHEALTHY.

Two weeks ago I decided that I really needed to give up desserts. I really felt like I needed to set a boundary for myself, so that I’d have a reason to have some self-discipline and not just gorge myself on whatever food I wanted, whenever I wanted, to whatever unhealthy result.
Ugh.
Living on decisions made at the spur of the moment, or brought on by the power of suggestion is BAD.  Instead of following a pre-determined plan of healthy eating, I would eat whatever I was craving at the moment.  Most of the time it would be whatever was easiest to eat, what was most handy, or what was right before me. So I ate chips, snacky-things, cookies, cakes, ice-cream, or whatever I could lay my hands on.
Double Ugh!
But for the last 15 days I’ve been much more careful about what I’ve consumed, eating more fruits, veggies, salads, proteins, whole grains, and NO DESSERTS.

That’s right.

No candy, cookies, ice cream, etc…

AT ALL.

And for me, it has been a BIG sacrifice.

But it’s also been SOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo good for me. For it has taught me the value of discipline. I’ve lost a few pounds over the last couple of weeks, and I have a feeling if I keep up this no-dessert thing, it will be a few more. But that’s not all–I’ve learned about balance, about self-control, about boundaries, and about the value of saying NO because you decided a long time ago that NO was the answer it would always be…and it isn’t left up to the spur of the moment decision.

This has been really healthy for me.

I highly recommend you try it sometime…

EDIT ADD:

My apologies to those of you that read this blog before now…I was falling asleep at roughly 10PM when I wrote it (I know, it was early. I must be getting old) and I found incomplete sentence after incomplete sentence…the entry was a mess. A hot mess. But now..it should be mostly fixed. 

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I haven’t had a dessert in two weeks.

No candy, cookies, cakes…you name it…I haven’t had it. This is been a difficult two weeks, but I REALLY can see a difference. My blood sugar doesn’t shoot up and down like the Dow Jones anymore…I feel better, and more energized for longer periods of time.

I’m thinking about extending the time and doing it for longer. Why not? EH?

In other news:
It has really helped me that my BFF asked me to orchestrate part of his newest record. He happens to be pretty tootin’ famous, so when people from Nashville find out that I worked for him on this project, I get some MAJOR street cred right away.

Thanks, BFF.
You’re the best.

Here’s the story:
So in 2002, after failing miserably at teaching K-12 band and choir at a small, private school, Christy and I decided that I should pursue arranging and orchestration in the Christian/church market, down in the Nashville scene. I had done enough arranging by that time during college, and sang enough of the songs published in this market, I was fairly confident I could do work as good as (or equal to) any of their top arrangers. I took 10 demos down to Musicalifornia that spring and met with all of the heads of the publishers from Nashville. It didn’t go well.
Needless to say, it was a disappointing time and I was just too naive to know better; the business doesn’t work that way. I mean, you can’t just walk in and say, “Hey, I’m great! Hire me!”

Oh well. It all builds character…
I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gonnit, people like me…

7 years go by…I figured that the door was shut for me in that arena…then Travis’ project came on the scene.  Not only was writing for his record just AWESOME (which is titled “Jesus Saves LIVE” and you HAVE to get, btw. It comes out on June 2nd, and is totally blessed by the Lord…look for it!) but my orchestrations will be published by Brentwood-Benson to be used by churches worldwide! Now because of this opportunity, I’m getting to know the head people for a couple of the publishers out yonder, and it’s very promising that I could do some writing for one or both of them in the future.

Wahoo!

Also–we’re hatching a scheme to get Travis out to Midway in the summer of 2010.
That is, if the aliens don’t get us before then.

Let’s just pretend that I never heard The Patriot soundtrack

OR Saving Private Ryan.

New music here (ha) for the TV show about Williamsburg, VA

This is pretty much all I’ll be doing for the next week or so. Wahoo!

NO!

There’s no WAY this can be true! Can it??

The last two weeks of my life have truly been amazing…

UH

MA

ZING

I’ll tell you about it…promise…but right now I’ve got to pay attention to my family for a few minutes…

I am not a materialistic person–well, at least not compared to a lot of Americans. I’m sure if you put me up next to someone living in the slums of India then YES, I’m materialistic, but I try to keep my desire for things in check (although sometimes I fail) and not to get hung up on any one thing. Because really? Things are JUST things.

Additionally, I’m not a very stylish person. I didn’t really wear anything half-way stylish until college because I didn’t really know how to shop for clothes until my friend Andy Balch showed me THE GAP…but I digress…and anyways–I already blogged that story.
(God bless Andy Balch.)

SO…that said…

Cue the jacket story:

I like jackets.
I’ve especially noticed that lately a lot of guys with good fashion sensibilities are wearing cool jackets (the sport-coat kind, not rain-coat) over t-shirts and/or button-down shirts. I like this style and I think it fairs well with me. I bought a couple of jackets that I wear sometimes on Sunday mornings when leading worship, and I’ve been flirting with the idea of getting a new jacket for Easter Sunday–you know–the biggest day of the year for churches…

Then there was Danny Gokey.

Tuesday night Danny wore this AWESOME black jacket. I saw it and IMMEDIATELY thought, “That is it! That’s the jacket I need to wear for Easter!”.

And I fell in love with the jacket.

I went on a 48-hour man-hunt for this jacket. I joined every chat-board/forum I could find about Danny Gokey, posting to see if anyone knew anything about the jacket.
They didn’t.

I recruited certain resourceful friends to find it.
They failed.

I looked day and night for this thing…until FINALLY I got smart. On the American Idol website it talked about the stylist, so I googled his name and found his website and clicked on the “contact me” button. JACKPOT. I emailed him…and he got back to me in the morning. EUREKA! The jacket was made by Dutch company G-Star…and there was a location here in L.A.!!!

You can imagine my excitement.

So I went to the location…and I was ready to spend a little bit of money on this thing, since it was totally glorious…
I giddily SKIPPED across the street from my parking place and into the store on Melrose Ave in Hollywood.

I found the jacket.

I saw the price tag.

I looked at it again…just to make sure…

…and a saleswoman caught me. “Would you like to try this on?”

Yes.
Yes.
YES.

“You’ll probably be the XXL size…”

uuuhhhhhhthankyou. Way to make me feel good inside.

And it fit like a dream.

A DREAM.

And I spent the next 30 minutes pacing around the outside of the store wrestling with myself to see if I could somehow beg, borrow, or steal enough money to buy this jacket.
But I couldn’t.

So I sadly walked away. Empty handed…

 

I am pretty young, but I must have just missed some things when I was growing up.
Not that this is a bad thing–I can’t complain about my childhood–I just think I missed some popular things…and I’ve only recently become aware that there are some gaping holes in my life as a musician and artist.

For instance, I’ve only heard less than 5 songs by The Beatles, and if you asked me to name two of them, I couldn’t (I only know “Hey Jude”).
I’ve heard quite a bit about these Beatles people, and I know about the significance and fame of their band, but I don’t know the music AT ALL.  I think I need to discover The Beatles.

What other bands or artists should I know about?

I read an article a couple weeks back about this new Dreamworks movie, Monsters Vs. Aliens in 3-D.

This in and of itself is not that interesting; I read a lot of articles about movies. But this particular article was talking about how Jeffrey Katzenberg (one of the big cheeses at Dreamworks) is trying to bring the movie-going experience to life by pushing for more and more cartoons/movies to be made in 3-D. And not your mama’s 3-D….not the 3-D that you saw in the 60′s…or even the incredibly produced, premichaeljacksonisasicko Disneyland attraction “Captain Eo“–which I saw, btw, in 1988. But 21st Century top-O-the-line-state-of-the-art 3-D.

I was skeptical.

3-D? Really? The only other thing that has been in 3-D lately has been the Jonas Brothers Concert Experience…and c’mon…I’m not a 13 year old girl.

But I was blown away.

BLOWN

AWAY

It was incredible. I can barely describe the experience to you.

The movie was good enough to stand on its own without any 3-D magnifance, but the fact that the 3-D thing was happening was just spectacular. It took a really great thing, and added a layer of icing on the top that made it taste over-the-top awesome. And not just ANY icing…the BEST icing…OOOO OOOO—FONDANT. YUM.

If Jeffrey Katzenberg was trying to revolutionize the movie going experience, he succeeded with this movie.

Monsters Vs. Aliens is a great flick, and the 3-D version is OUTTA THIS WORLD.

Go check it out. It’s totally worth it.*

*there is an extra 3 dollar charge because its 3-D and they give you disposable glasses…

I still haven’t decided on a name for my business, or even if I’m going to make up a business name…geez.

Some composers/orchestrators I know don’t have a business name that I know of…they just operate under their own name…I think. I have to do some more research on this.

That said, if I were picking a name for my business, my two favorites so far are “Semsen Scores” and “Semsen Music Services”.

WHAT DO YOU THINK!?