and your bird can sing

This is a crazy busy week, and it's two days shorter for me, so I'm freaking out a little bit as I attempt to get shit done. In an effort to calm myself down, and escape from the creativity-crushing pressure, a ten minute ramble:

It's the 40th anniversary of Pet Sounds, which is in my top five albums of all-time. A special edition has been released which includes a DVD that's pretty cool. It's neat to listen to the record, read the liner notes, and hear things that I've never heard before, just because I wasn't aware of them.

I've often heard Pet Sounds compared to The Beatles' Revolver, which for some reason I didn't own until yesterday.

Holy. Shit. What an amazing album. I've never liked the song Yellow Submarine, but in the context of this album, it totally works. I am going to hop onto the Intertubes and learn everything I can about this album, so I can fully appreciate it.

There are two sounds that will forever link me to my childhood: The Beatles and Vin Scully.

I wrote a beginner's strategy post at CardSquad for playing a short stack in a multi-table tournament. I'm not sure if it's all that useful, because I'm not a particularly good teacher, and tend to leave out things that I intrinsically know that others may not. I'm interested in feedback (over there would be most useful) from poker players about what I did well and what sucked.

Star Trek turns 40 this week. I was snubbed by the Official Star Trek thingy in Vegas, so I'm working on some of my own ways to celebrate this week. I have some cool ideas that I hope end up being as cool on paper as they are in my head.

The kids started school today. Instead of the usual "thank god they're back in school" relief, I feel a little sad that they're not around all day, every day, and not just because I don't have a good excuse for not getting as much written each day as I want or need to write.

Ryan and I saw Pulse on Sunday night. Wow, what a pile. A good concept, but dreadful direction, over-editing, and horrendous acting did nothing to help a script that never should have gotten past the first pitch meeting. You know you're in trouble when the teenagers in the theater (also known as your target audience) are cracking up during all of the scenes of, uh, character development, because the dialogue is just so lame. I hear the Japanese original is quite good, though, so maybe I'll Netflix that.

Okay, ten minutes are up, so I'm back to work. I'm not especially calmed down, but at least I enjoyed myself for a few minutes.

Thanks for stopping by today; I hope to have some good stuff up here this week.