three

albeit hone carwash yellow sprite anger ruse plodding posh under the

two

agile fun crack split watch oscar ate involve height over appeal raise

one

driving rain break open head gear after tumbleweed tsunami

Talent

Malcolm Gladwell’s writing makes my brain feel good. This article on talent vs. results is a bit old — heck it focuses on Enron — but still grandly done. As I get into Phase 2 of my own startup here, it’s cool to think about these things as they apply to my army of one. Apparently, I have to avoid coddling the “star” persona in my schziophrenic inner drama, if I hope to have any success.

Die Cutie, Die

I’ve been overdosing on the band Death Cab for Cutie lately, particularly their last album Transatlanticism, and am just now watching their tour film Sleep Well, Drive Carefully. It proves that my faith in their brilliance has not been misplaced.

Lest you doubt this for yourselves, observe: they play the song “Why You’d Want to Live Here*” which is a blastingly accurate depiction of what’s wrong with Los Angeles, at a show in L.A. The front-row audience — I kid you not — is just standing there numb, not even mouthing the words. There’s some sporadic clapping, but not enough to fill the room, and probably just because they rocked out near the end. Then Gibbard says, with great mock sincerity, “I hope you guys didn’t take that personally. It’s just a love song.” Classic.

In the extras is a three-song semi-acoustic set that’s great. My favorite sounds of theirs is the quieter stuff with pianos and harmonies, strange background noises; not that the rockers aren’t great too, but something about his voice over soothing layered noise that does it for me. It’s shot in b&w, but kind of shaky handheld. If it’s fan footage that’s one thing, but if it was the documentary crew, for god’s sake use a tripod.

I was hoping to see “Blacking Out the Friction” and “Passenger Seat”, but sadly no. Ah well. More interviews would have been cool, but I’m weird like that — hell, I even submitted a request to Charile Rose last week to have them on, cuz I’d like to hear anyone with song names like “Prove My Hypothesis” talk about being musicians for an hour.

Still on deck, and this is really great for me, is their latest albumPlans. I’ve heard it just a time or two thus far, but plan to freaking kill it in the studio when I get back from Ireland.

* Bonus: it’s even got the word entropic in it’s lyrics