The Beatles | Potato Chip Math

Day 13 – A song you like from the 70’s

This is another category that I could spend days and days deciding on which one to pick. Rush formed in the 70’s. Pink Floyd. Led Zeppelin. John Lennon. Jimi Hendrix. Neil Young. The list goes on and on. In the end, “there can be only one”, and I’m going to have to go with a band that scored the soundtrack from the movie I pulled that quote from. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen (who did the soundtrack for the movie Highlander, for those following along at home). I’m linking to the best cover of this song I’ve ever heard – and it was done by ONE GUY!

Day 14 – A song you’d love to be played at your wedding

Since I am already married this category makes little sense, so I should go with a song that was actually played at my wedding. I’m not going to, though. Instead, I’m going to go with a song that *could* have been played at my wedding had the organist not done such a masterful job butchering it when she played a few bars for us after we booked her.

Day 15 – A song you like that’s a cover by another artist

Back in high school, I was really into the guitar. Not playing it, mind you, but listening to it. I loved listening to Clapton, Beck, Satriani, Vai, and pretty much anyone that could work magic with a six-string and an amp. There’s one song in particular that I just love listening to and that’s Eric Johnson’s Cliffs of Dover. It’s an instrumental and it is pure genius. I happen to think it’s a really fun song. One day I was just wandering around YouTube listening to covers and I came across these high school kids playing a version of the song for a talent show. I was immediately blown away. Have a watch. These are KIDS for cryin’ in the sink.

Day 16 – A song that’s a classic favourite

I don’t know a single person who doesn’t like this song. The sweet dig against Neil Young is kind of fun too.

Day 17 – A song you’d sing a duet with someone on karaoke

I’ve actually sung this as a duet with someone NOT on karaoke! Jann and Jackson’s version is pretty good too.

Day 18 – A song from the year you were born

The #1 song list from my birth year is fantastic. Since I was a wee baby I think this song is appropriate. I just read the lyrics. Maybe not so appropriate. Anyway, this song ended 1974 at #23 in Canada and is written and performed by Canadian singer Andy Kim (Canada’s answer to Neil Diamond.)

Day 19 – A song that makes you think about life

Sadly, the lyrics for this song are just as relevant today as they were when they were written back in 1987. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a time in modern history where the lyrics didn’t apply. This song makes me think about how I can be better.

Day 21 – A song you like with a person’s name in the title

I was going to pick Angie by the Rolling Stones because I like that song and back at Sparrow Lake Camp we had a staffer by the name of Andy and people would go around singing “An-dy. Aaaaaaainnnn-dy” instead of Angie. Then I remembered that The Killers have a song Andy You’re a Star and I thought that was cool. But THEN, I remembered that the Magnetic Fields have this song, and while it’s only happened three times that I can remember, it has still happened.

Day 22 – A song that moves you forward

I heard this song for the first time in almost twenty years on my way to the gym one day. It was amazingly motivating.

Day 23 – A song you think everybody should listen to

I came across this song because someone posted a link to another Miley Cyrus song on Facebook (I think it was her covering Crowded House). Miley accompanies Laura from Against Me! and it gave me a new perspective on a few things.

Day 24 – A song by a band you still wish were together

I remember when Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit unseated The Smiths atop The Edge’s (102.1 CFNY out of Toronto) most influential alternative music songs of all time list never to return to the penultimate spot. I’ve since warmed up to the idea that Nirvana was at least as influential as The Smiths with respect to their impact on society (even if Cobain, Grohl, et al. did have considerable assistance in shaping a generation from the likes of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and myriad other “grunge” bands). I’m left wondering what the legacy of both these bands would have been had Johnny Marr not quit and Kurt Cobain had not died.

Day 25 – A song you like by an artist no longer living

Ugh. Way too many choices from this category. I was having a hard time picking and then I listened to Ed Sheeran and Anne-Marie do a cover of The Pogues Fairytale of New York and in the suggested videos collage at the end of the song was this one. It too is a cover. A cover as sung by someone who died this year of a song written by a guy who died last year.

Day 26 – A song that makes you want to fall in love

How about a song that made me fall in love? This is off an album that my girlfriend (now wife) and I would play on the CD player before bed back when we were in university. We just saw the Skydiggers play an intimate show not too long ago and they didn’t play this one, so here it is now.

Day 27 – A song that breaks your heart

It’s impossible to hear this song and not think of the tragedy about which it was written. Shortly after Eric Clapton’s son, Conor, fell off a balcony and died he and Will Jennings penned this song in his honour.

Day 28 – A song by an artist whose voice you love

Every show, Daniel (Danny) Greaves sings one cover song a capella. I’ve heard him do this probably around twenty times over the last twenty-five years and watched countless more renditions on YouTube, his voice hasn’t changed, and it’s fantastic. I did a cover of a cover he’s done on his own as a warm-up to a performance once and I didn’t come remotely close to recreating the experience. I haven’t seen The Watchmen play for a couple of years now but the last time I did I captured Danny covering a Graham Parker song and it was great, as it always is.

Day 29 – A song you remember from your childhood

Tomorrow from the movie Annie – This was the first movie I ever saw in the theatre. My mom took me and I remember it being the most amazing experience.

Day 30 – A song that reminds you of yourself

First of all, I’m a big Rush fan. Plus, they’re Canadian and I’m Canadian, so that’s kind of cool. Also, it seems like my life has been one fateful sequence of events after another, guided only by the hands of fate and helped along by a couple of lucky bounces.

“Why are we here? Because we’re here. Why does it happen? Because it happens.”

~ Andrew

I have suffered from insomnia for about four years now. If anyone out there has even gone a few nights without a good night’s sleep you know how debilitating it can be. I spent the greater part of 18 months without more than a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep each night and I was basically a high functioning zombie.

There was no shortage of people willing to impart their advice on the situation either:

Have you tried this?
Yes, it did not work.

Have you tried that?
Yes, it did not work.

Have you been to a sleep study?
Yes, twice. They prescribed me medication. It sort of worked but I had to take two pills every day.

Hmm…
Yes, hmm indeed.

I sleep really well. Always have. I can sleep anytime anywhere. It’s awesome.
I’m sure it is. I’ve even gone to a six week information/instructional on how to sleep!

Really? They have classes for that?
Yes, and I fell asleep in the last lecture.

Now that’s irony at its finest.
Indeed.

Have you tried…

Well, you get the idea by now I’m sure. At any rate, what does this have to do with anything? I’ll meander y’all to the point in just a second, I promise.

The key to sleep in humans is melatonin. The only word to describe this stuff is “magical”, so naturally one of the things I tried was some melatonin supplements. I tried 0.5mg and later 0.25mg and I might have well been taking sugar pills. My non-expert opinion was that this was because it wasn’t naturally occurring. You see, tryptophan metabolizes into seratonin; and if it’s dark out it’s further metabolized into melatonin, and that’s the stuff that promotes sleep. Just plunking the melatonin in directly didn’t seem to be working.

So, enter in this stuff called ZenBev^®. Sounds like new age hippy juice, right? Well it sort of is. I call it my magic pumpkin powder. It’s basically powdered tryptophan made from pumpkin seed flour. The myth of the tryptophan loaded turkey dinner is partially true, only turkey has about as much of it as any other meat and three times less than dried egg white and about half as much as dried pumpkin seeds (if you care, the winner by a mile is Alaskan sea lion).

Sea Lions Up Close courtesy Liz Noffsinger at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Again, you may be asking, what does this have to do with anything? Fine, I’ll get right to it then. Thanks for sticking with me so far (hopefully still awake, though after first re-read of this post I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve nodded off).

I tried ZenBev^® and I immediately started sleeping better. Not more, but better. Same number of hours of sleep at night but I wasn’t falling asleep at my desk at 3:00 every afternoon. The really awesome part though was that I started dreaming again. I’ve probably had less than a handful of dreams in the last four years and after two weeks on this magic pumpkin powder I’m dreaming five or six nights a week, and let me tell you, after going so long without recognizing that I’d had a dream this current influx has me discombobulated to say the least. It’s not quite Jacob’s Ladder crazy, but I have got to say it’s really something.

After a couple weeks of getting some better sleep I’ve felt the urge to be creative again. November was a bit crazy with NaNoWriMo and a work project is bringing some high stress moments at my day job so the first week of December wasn’t much from a creativity standpoint. A couple weeks of dreaming though and my brain itching for creation again, and that’s a good thing. I’m also starting to figure out what The Beatles were talking about in their song I Am The Walrus.

I am the egg man.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sc0L1UoO1M?rel=0]