So Christmas is coming, and you know what that means -- the opportunity to buy yourself awesome stuff and say that it was a Christmas present! It's guilt free, it helps feed the great American consumer cycle, and you get really awesome stuff out of it. My problem with Christmas is, now that I'm an adult who works a job, I can basically buy myself whatever I want. The only stuff I don't have, then, is stuff that's tantalizingly outside of my price range. That's the stuff I waste time thinking about.

Now, as family members will attest, I sorta like collecting and playing musical instruments. Within arms reach from my desk I have two ukuleles and a harmonica. So the ever popular 'new instrument' gift is great. What do I have my eye on?


This puppy's pretty cool. It's a MIM (made in Mexico) Fender Stratocaster with Tex-Mex pick-ups. I'm not 100% sold on the pickups, so I might switch them out depending on how they sound. This is perfect, because it's just the right price to make me not feel terrible about buying myself a gift to celebrate Jesus. Oh, and it's yellow, which makes it awesome.

In the event that I inexplicably fall into some amount of money, I think I'd buy one of these guys.


It's also a Strat, but it's a MIA (made in America) Strat, which means the materials will be higher quality and of better construction. Also, it's gotta be in the rosewood neck, because come on, rosewood is the best wood. I'll hear no arguments for maple, people. They're a little pricey for me; I can't justify paying over $1k for a guitar when I'm more of a casual player than anything else. It'd be an awesome gift though, HINT HINT millionaire girlfriend.

But if we're pretending that I have a millionaire girlfriend, the real winner is this beauty: a Rickenbacker 4003 bass.


It's got that awesome Rickenbacker sound; unfortunately, it's painfully expensive. It's so expensive that most websites won't tell you how much it costs. That's how much. Needless to say, I could buy both of those guys up there for the cost of one of these bad boys.

Of course, there are other possibilities. My long-serving bedroom TV, on which I watch all of my evening television, is on the way out. The picture's started getting funky sometimes, which is to be expected, since A) it's like 12 years old and B) I accidentally dropped it from six feet up a few months ago. The TV's still a champ, I think the drop just made it realize it's age. So I could buy myself a swanky new TV.

Oh the holiday season. My credit card will cry this year.

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Some people collect movies, or CDs. Some people collect old stamps. Some people fly around the globe, never leaving the airport, to accumulate frequent flier miles. This is a brief documentary about those people.

Frequent Flyer from Gabriel Leigh on Vimeo.

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In light of Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo's recent accident, I thought I'd sit down and type something up that I've been thinking about for the last couple of weeks. Namely, Weezer.

Weezer, for the tragically unhip (or would it be for the ultrahip?) is a California alternative rock band formed in 1992. They had a breakout success with their first album, 1994's self titled (dubbed The Blue Album), before going on to create what many fans consider to be their best work, Pinkerton. From there... well, that's anybody's ballgame.

The case against Weezer is something like this: following the release of Pinkerton, bassist Matt Sharp left the band (for reasons which will probably never be clear). Rivers Cuomo attempted to replace him, but the efforts didn't go so well. Unable to write songs quite the way he and Matt used to, Rivers got depressed, the band went on a hiatus, and after a while they came back with The Green Album, which wasn't that great, and they've sucked ever since.

Some of these things are beyond dispute. The band did go on a long hiatus, there was a pretty nasty falling out between Sharp and Cuomo, and the band has yet to recapture exactly what was on The Blue Album. General consensus even agrees with this, as the Metacritic data for the last few albums goes progressively down with each new release. Does this mean that Weezer sucks? Not necessarily.

I think the easiest explanation for this is, Weezer is the kind of band you would have if you got famous. No, not you, metal freak kid with the scary tee-shirt. But you, the dorky kid who fiddles around with instruments. Weezer is your band.

The fact of the matter is, Weezer has grown to increasingly embrace the rock star lifestyle or, more precisely, what Rivers thinks the rock star lifestyle is. Most of the major missteps in the band's life (ridiculous guest performers on tracks, generic 'radio ready' tracks) are all signs of rockers getting older. Like an overgrown kid, they gleefully add whoever is currently popular on to their album because, heck, we can get Lil' Wayne to sing on our CD! Time itself backs me up on this, as Rivers turned 39 this year and will soon be looking at the big 4-0. If you view the band's most recent release, Raditude, as a professional mid-life crisis from an aging power pop alt. rocker, several of the previously inexplicable decisions make a lot more sense.

Besides, from the time they got big, Weezer has been about playing with the concept of being a stereotypical 'big rock band'. They have their band symbol illuminated behind them in flashing lights at concerts, dangit! It's sorta like Van Halen!

The critics of Weezer have every right to be upset. If you look at a band as a consistent set of output, you'll be very disappointed over time. Some bands get successful releasing the same two albums and four songs over and over, some record a great album and then disappear, and some spend a lot of time playing with what kind of music they want to make. To dismiss the band as awful is wrong; they're simply making music that you don't like.

If Weezer awoke collectively tomorrow and said, It is time to record The Blue Album 2, it would be awesome. It would also tank commercially. The Blue Album still sounds great because it was a product of it's time -- it wasn't overproduced, and it felt like a genuine effort. The same thing wouldn't be as well received today, in a musical landscape where everything is auto-tuned and pitch corrected. The album would come out sounding more like, well, Raditude.

Don't tell Weezer they suck. For every album they release, no matter how bad you think it is, there are always memorable tracks. Maybe one day they'll release the Great American Album or something, but then again, maybe they won't. But the point is, it doesn't make sense to dismiss an artist for a series of weak releases. If that was the case, we'd be saying David Bowie sucked because of his somewhat weaker output in the late 80's and 90's. Just appreciate the albums you like and forget about the ones you don't.

And if you see Matt Sharp, try and convince him to rejoin the band.

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My television viewing habits are well documented on certain parts of the internet. One of my favorite moments of the day is getting in bed at night and firing up whatever TV show I'm currently watching. I average an episode or two a night, and I usually end up knocking out entire series (although there are some that I cannot finish).

My latest TV addition took the form of 'Six Feet Under', the critically acclaimed HBO series about a family of mortuary owners and their lives. The series on the whole was very good; it was joyful, and happy, and bitterly sad all at the same time. That's a difficult road to walk, but somehow they managed to make it happen.


While gathering my own thoughts about the series, I did a quick Google search to see what other people thought and their reactions to the last episode (which was amazing). It was there that I realized something I probably should have figured out somewhere along the way: we were supposed to have a main character, and he was supposed to be Nate.

Let's talk about Nate Fisher the character. Played by Peter Krause, Nate rejoins the family funeral home at the beginning of the series after a long stint as the 'assistant manager at the largest food co-op in Seattle'. Herein lies my problem -- we're supposed to like Nate. Consensus across the internet is that Nate is a likable guy. Peter Krause receives top billing on the show, and most summaries of the show invoke Nate in their first lines.

But Nate's a dick. I don't like him.

'Six Feet Under' is, first and foremost, an ensemble show. All of the Fisher family is given equal weight in terms of story-telling, and are often dedicated their own episodes. From this, though, it's made clear that we're supposed to care about Nate especially.

The irony to me is, despite that we're supposed to like Nate, he doesn't really do anything particularly admirable. Time and again, Nate engages in risky, hurtful or simply selfish behaviors.

Note: The rest of this write-up features heavy spoilers; highlight to read.

In the very first episode, we meet Nate getting off an airplane. He's come home for Christmas, and he's pissed about it. Look, I can understand if you don't like your family, or if you left on bad terms. But the instant he's off the plane, he's complaining about how much he hates his family and how messed up they all are. Obviously, over the course of the series, we see how much he loves them. But still, here's your first impression of Nate! He follows this up with anonymous, unprotected sex with a stranger as soon as he finds out his dad died. Good job, Nate, making the smart decisions. But this can be written off as his moment of grief, so let's give him a pass for that one.

Next, he arrives at the Fisher home, and immediately lets everyone know how pissed off he is that A) he's home for Christmas and B) his dad's dead. He takes a brief moment to announce self-importantly that he's the assistant manager of the second largest food co-op in Seattle, and then returns to complaining. And complaining. And making a rude phone call to Brenda. Then back to complaining.

And this is the main character.

He doesn't get much better over the show. Everyone in 'Six Feet Under' makes mistakes. One of the delicious truths of the show is the portrayal of their characters as living, breathing people. Nate just seems to make more mistakes (of varying severity) than anyone else in the cast. He's cold, callous and/or rude to almost every member of the cast on a regular basis. For a decent portion of the show, he'd rather smoke pot than spend time with his wife. He has extramarital affairs on the drop of a hat, even breaking up committed relationships. He's kind of a jerk.

Look, I get that you want Nate to be conflicted. He doesn't come off as conflicted, though. He comes off as an immature child, drifting through life doing whatever feels good and whatever will inconvenience him the least. Where other characters take the high ground, Nate refuses to take the ground at all. Viewers and the internet seem to love Nate, and seem genuinely sad when he dies at the end of the series. Not me, though, mainly because the last thing he did before dying was cheating on his pregnant wife because he felt an 'emotional connection' to someone else. He then breaks up with her from his hospital bed before dying. This is not a lovable character! If your character breaks up with his pregnant wife on his deathbed because he feels a 'connection' to a one night stand that he is, by law, related to? That's messed up!

On the whole I sided more with David Fisher (played by Michael C. Hall). David is the better example of what the writers were attempting to do with Nate; he's conflicted, he's not always right, but he's a lovable person. For every dark moment he has ('That's My Dog'), he has another amazing moment, like early in the series when David finally tells the Kroehner Death Care representative that he will murder him if he continues to mess with his family. David doesn't come off smelling like roses, and he's far from perfect. But he comes across as human, and genuinely a nice person. Nate... well, I can't be too sure about him.

I guess that's the beauty of good writing. So many people fell in love with the character of Nate, and I just didn't like him. It's unusual watching a television series where you don't like the main character; it can happen to some extent to any well-written show (later seasons of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' do little to make the main character as endearing as she once was).

Again, I guess it's a good reflection on human life. So many people cried for Nate, and celebrated with him. Not me, though. I was more of a David man.

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So terrible. So funny.

Sex Offender Shuffle - watch more funny videos

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There are few things as empowering as a really well-delivered speech with some straight talk. Common sense dictates that if you're not in favor of same-sex civil unions by the end of this, you should probably have your head checked.

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I am like ultra-depressed today, but this is sorta cheering my spirits. Sorta.

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Doug Wright, a friend of mine and one of my favorite professors at Westminster College, has died following a battle with cancer. He was 57.

No ceremony or service will be held for Doug. Instead, Doug asked that any show of support to him following his death be directed to the hungry or homeless.


I was going to write something about how inspirational Doug was, or what a great friend and teacher he was, but I can't. I simply don't have the energy to. Besides, Doug would have probably objected to being gushed over, and instead told me to go sit outside and enjoy the day.

But I can at least say this: Doug was an amazing person, and he changed the lives of everyone he met. Westminster College is less for having let him go before he died, and we're all less for not having him around anymore.

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Talk about Thanksgiving thankfulness disappearing overnight. Woke up this morning to find that something, and I'm not sure what, is messing with my graphics card. I had been looking for the last couple weeks at getting back into online gaming, so when I turned on my monitor this morning and discovered that I had blue screened... well, it was not an optimistic sign.

My computer's back on now, and seems to be going OK. The only problem is, she's acting like a petulant child. There's delay now in systems operations, and things that we normally could have done easily (editing video clips) now results in an occasional rainbow on my monitor and a warning that Windows has encountered a 'serious error'. Good news abounds.

I think I may need to get a new PC. I already have my laptop with the office suite, so I think this one would be more multimedia or gaming than anything else. That way I have my bases covered for pretty much anything I'd be interested in doing. It's also a bonus that money isn't so tight with the economy right no-- oh, right. So long, college fund!

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