Chim-Chimney Chim Chim Cheree Chim Cheroo

I'm just going to ignore the last fifteen months and pretend you already know everything worth knowing from that time, k?

There are birds in my chimney. This is not a new phenomenon; they've been there off and on for the last three years. But for some reason they are more annoying this time than ever before. Kinda makes me want to just start a fire and see what happens (which I would do if I a. could get it started without having birds flying at me and b. had been responsible enough to have the chimney inspected at some point in the last three years). Maybe this will be the last straw that reminds me to get on the roof and put a screen over the top of it. Or maybe I'll be having the same problem in a couple months.

One of my favorite times of year is coming up: TV on DVD season. There are no less than seven seasons of TV that I intend to own eventually that will be released in September. As luck would have it, this also happens to be my birthday month. Thus, the following will be on my gift list:

Season 2 of Community
Season 2 of Modern Family
Season 3 of Parks and Recreation
Season 3 of Fringe
Season 5 of 30 Rock
Season 6 of How I Met Your Mother
Season 7 of The Office

That's it for now. I need to get back into a writer's mindset before I start blowing this thing up.

A Rant: Don't Steal My Money

As you are most likely aware, the piracy of copyrighted material is an increasing problem in the world. Tens of billions of dollars are lost every year because people don't want to pay for their entertainment.

And you know what? That sucks. It sucks that people are so selfish to think they are above the law, above common courtesy, above creative rights. If these people created copyrighted content for a living, I have a feeling they would feel differently about people stealing their work. And let's say they wouldn't care, and would offer up their content for free with some grand plan to live off the generosity of others. Well that's great, but that's how you want to live, not how every content creator wants to live.

The fact is, each time someone takes a song, movie, book, mobile app, etc, they are stealing from me. Granted, I don't have a literal stake in every piece of content out there, but I do have a stake in the success of the entertainment industry as a whole. When someone takes Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" instead of paying for it, they are taking money from her label, Interscope Records, and its parent company, Universal Music Group. When millions of people do this, Universal is then out millions of dollars, money they could have spent on developing new talent and releasing new material, or developing better systems for reporting royalties to their licensees :). They are also taking money from the producer of the track, Nadir Khayat aka RedOne (a man who has worked with everyone from A*Teens to Usher over the last decade). They're also stealing from the songwriters, who in this case happen to be Stefani Germanotta (aka Lady Gaga) and Khayat, and their publisher, Sony/ATV. They're also stealing money from Gaga as an artist. And, in turn, from her business manager, finance manager, lawyer, personal assistant, and the rest of her team. Same goes for all those people on RedOne's team.

As that money trickles down, it flows through the hands of accountants and copyright administrators like myself. So while I have nothing to do with Lady Gaga's copyrights (yet), that person is choosing their dollar over my livelihood.

And you know what ticks me off the most about this? I can tell all of this to a friend, a family member, AND THEY STILL DO IT! What a slap in the face! So you want to watch a movie but don't want to pay $10 to watch it in the theater? Then wait until it comes out on DVD! Don't want to pay the $1 to Redbox it when it does? Then wait until it shows up on TV! Or borrow it from someone who paid for it! Is this really that hard?

I have a friend who's employer has a large server, and his co-workers have created a bit of a piracy co-op, where people who obtain copyrighted material (often illegally) load it onto the server and their co-workers can then download the material for their personal use. And while I can tell him over and over how frustrating something like that is, he still continues to justify his consumption. I say justify because he KNOWS that it's stealing, and yet he ignores that part of his mind because he only cares to see the people at the top of the money chain, and they already have too much money. Because I guess to think about the little guy like me that still gets hurt would hit a little too close to home. Literally.

End of rant.

We Are Nashville

Well a bit has happened here in Nashville since I last posted:

1. It rained. And rained. And rained. And people died.

I've had the unfortunate privilege to spend much of the last two weeks working in the homes of people who have lost most or all of their possessions. It's unfortunate for the obvious reasons, but it has been such an honor to meet all these amazing strangers, see how resilient and thankful they are in the face of such devastation, and help them move on to the next phase.

Now, in all reality, that next phase is several weeks and months down the road for most of them. But I love that I'm in the position to be available during that time, and to hopefully be able to see them through to the other side and maybe even come out of it with some new friends.

2. Apple is closing Lala.com.

Over the last two years, I had come to depend on Lala for getting me through the work day. The ability to listen to almost any song I ever wanted on demand was nothing short of god-like. And yet everyone saw this day coming as soon as Apple purchased the site in December. Now I hang my hope on the chance that Apple is going to shut Lala down in order to open a similar cloud-based music service under the iTunes umbrella shortly thereafter. Two weeks left and counting.

3. I've got people in Australia.

Well, almost. I am in final negotiations with a company out of Australia to collect on behalf of my clients in the Australasian territories. It's a big confidence boost for me, and gives me hope that I can lock down representation (what is referred to as a "subpublisher") in Europe and the Pacific Rim with the same ease.

4. I "wrote" a song.

That's right, I'm in the process of joining ASCAP as a publisher, and in order to do that you have to own a copyright. So I'm also joining as a writer and saying that I "wrote a song" and "posted it to my MySpace", which I have since "deactivated". I know it's lying, but when the GM of the company says to send the documents through him so he can make sure things go through, I feel OK about it.

5. I have my first Top 10.

My first administered single should be Top 10 this week! I'd like to think it has another seven or eight weeks before it peaks... that's the dream anyway.

Due to the lack of Lala, I am going to try to find another site that will let me post songs to my blog. Until then, go to http://www.thekicksrock.com and download their debut album and their new single for free! Great modern rock and roll; Kings of Leon meet the Beatles.

I am crushing it today!

Little Lies - Dave Barnes

The above is off Dave Barnes' new album "What We Want, What We Get" that was released today. He also played this Saturday night at the Music City Unsigned Tin Pan South Showcase, and I've had it in my head ever since.

So I guess I'm setting the bar for crushing it pretty low these days, but I feel like I've really accomplished stuff today (and it's only 2). I woke up this morning and filed my online registration as an LLC with the State of Tennessee. It was actually extremely easy because they have a website that fills in all the forms for you and files them electronically. I did the same thing with the IRS to get a federal Tax ID number. So by the time I got out of bed today I had already done two of the things I had dreaded about getting this thing going. Two down, a couple dozen to go :)

I also finalized my business cards today, and should have 250 coming my way within the week.

I was going to go to the bank today and set up accounts and credit cards and all that, but I decided I have to have something to do tomorrow, right? So instead I bought my favorite lunch in the world (small basket of chicken fingers tossed in Ole Smokey sauce at McDougals) and took it to Centennial Park, where I am currently sitting on the steps of the Parthenon using the park's free wireless. And the weather is GORGEOUS for this too! I'm definitely going to do this more often.

I also talked with my old job today to see when they want me to come in and help them get the quarter closed, and they said they'd keep me posted, but probably beginning of next week. Which, in theory, is great for them because they're trying to save money and all that, but it just means I'll have to cram 200 hours into 2 and a half weeks instead of 3 and a half. They really have no idea how screwed they are at this point.

Last night I went to see "Clash of the Titans" for my friend Ryan's birthday. Not an incredible movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it knew what it was and I appreciated that. An entertaining way to spend the evening, and I had good company too so I can't complain. There are a bunch of movies coming out in the next couple months that I'm excited about too:

April 9 - Date Night
April 16 - Kick Ass
April 23 - The Losers
May 7 - Iron Man 2
May 7 - Babies
May 14 - Robin Hood
May 21 - Shrek Forever After
May 21 - MacGruber (I LOVE Kristen Wiig)
May 28 - Micmacs

Looks an awesome way to spend the next couple months :)

Don't Stop Believin'

I have my first official client! Granted, it's one without activity at this point, but there definitely will be some in the near future, and you have to start somewhere, right?

In related news, apparently my negotiating skills, while still extremely uncomfortable, aren't as bad as I thought. I was able to get the software company to drop the price by a couple thousand dollars, and I signed the purchase agreement on Friday. No turning back now; this stupid software will end up costing me more than twice what I paid for my car. Dang.

I've been getting a fair amount of work from my old company this week, and it looks like I'll be spending most of April over there getting them ready to make client payments at the end of the month. If left to their own devices, they would be royally screwed in a couple weeks. But at least I get paid real money to clean up the mess :)

The weather in Nashville is b-e-a-utiful right now, and it doesn't look like that's gonna change at least in the next week! I can hardly believe it's April already, but since that's the case I guess this weather is about right. I've had a couple of landscaping surprises this spring: none of my plants died over the winter (including the bush I thought had died last summer and the three maples I planted in October) and apparently the purple bush-like things I planted in front of my windows have white flowers in the spring. Who knew? I really like them, and I may actually put a couple more in this spring. Now I just need to remember what they're called...

I get to go to two and hopefully three shows this weekend, all part of Tin Pan South, an annual songwriters festival in town. Friday night is JD Souther (wrote most of the Eagles hits), Jonathan Cain (member of Journey), and Brett James (hottest writer in Country music right now, and a member of my South Africa team). Then Saturday night are the Music City Unsigned showcases, featuring Dave Barnes, Jennifer Knapp, Charlie Peacock, Matthew Perryman Jones, and Katie Herzig, among others. I'm sure I'll have plenty of music to recommend after this weekend, so I'm going to take this chance to recommend Ben Rector from the show last weekend. Infectious piano pop at it's finest, Ben is, ironically, like Ben Folds covering Matt Wertz. Check him out:

The Beat - Ben Rector

I'm no Kevin Spacey

To those of you who are good at negotiating: Congratulations. Me? I suck at this stuff.

I just sent an e-mail to the software company I'm going to buy my administration software through. It's not like I was even asking for that much off; I think it would bring it down another 10% or something (which in this case is hundreds, but still). But I still had such a hard time typing that out! I feel like I'm stealing from them or something. Which is why I do this over e-mail, because if I talked to them on the phone they could talk me in to pretty much anything. Be strong!

In other news, I am back from South Africa! The whole team had such a great time over there, such a blessing to be able to work with, minister to, and be ministered to by the people of Red Hill and Living Hope. Living Hope actually came back after we left to finish the clinic, and it looks awesome! Here are pictures of the clinic we were working on, before and after:


































What a change!

Lastly, now that I'm back in the states I can start recommending music on here again! I went to a show Sunday night that featured three up and coming Nashville singer/songwriters: Ben Rector, Steve Moakler, and Andrew Ripp. All three were excellent, and I'm sure I'll be featuring each of their music on here in the coming weeks. But today's music is a new guy out of the UK called Daniel Merriweather, featuring my favorite artist of 2008 (and hopefully 2010 if she gets around to putting out an album), Adele. Glorious:

Water And A Flame - Daniel Mer...

Broken and restored in three days time

All right, I've finally got some time here to lay out what happened over the last three days of construction:

Tuesday: The Day of the Crane

So, as I said on Monday, Tuesday was a critical day. We had this crane, which they were renting by the hour, so we wanted to get its part done as quickly as possible. The crane arrived on time, and they attached the hooks to the containers they were supposed to lift. As this was happening, we were readying the materials to level the footings under each container corner. So far, so good.

Then, the crane operator lifted the containers. Everything held together well, and I was in charge of building the supports so I got busy working in the back corner. As we finished that support, apparently the crane operator decided he needed to shift something, and in the process the back part of the building descended onto the support, simultaneously separating the three containers from each other.

At this point, what we had hoped would be a simple matter of the crane lifting the two attached containers simultaneously while we fixed the supports had now become three completely independent containers we were going to have to lift one by one, fit back together, and level to each other... wow.

And so that's what we did. The team leader spent most of the morning dealing with 3 different people telling him what we should have done. They were:

1. The project manager with Living Hope, a man who is apparently a nice guy but who we always dreaded seeing on site because we knew it would mean several shouts of "Time is money!" and the revelation of materials he had that would have made whatever we spent the last three hours on markedly easier.

2. Arthur, the man from the Cape Town Health Department who was relatively quiet but his presence always put the Living Hope guy on edge.

3. The man who drew the plans for what we were doing, an 83-year-old widower who I called Old Man River.

Eventually this trio left, and we were finally able to get some work done. The crane was on site for about 3 hours longer than anticipated, something we were worried about because they made it sound like this thing cost a fortune, and our frame of reference reinforced that. Imagine how hard we laughed that night when it was revealed the crane and two operators cost $40/hour.

Wednesday: Picking up the pieces
Part of the destruction of Tuesday was the loss of the front door to the clinic, which we replaced before leaving but didn't have the materials to install the handle. As such, I spent the first half of Wednesday digging out the handle portion of said door. Meanwhile everyone else spent the morning getting ready to install the beam for our new roof, and they got it up in time for me to spend the afternoon working on top of the containers, installing supports for the rafters.

We needed to get the rafters up before the end of the day because leaving materials around the job site was not an option: anything left around Red Hill gets used on someone's house in short order. Early in the afternoon I was not feeling good about getting it all done, but our local help stepped up big time and we were back to The Team House just an hour later than planned.

Thursday: Redemption
Our overall goal for Thursday was to get the sheets of tin roof installed on the rafters. We got off to a slow start when the big three stopped by and Old Man River started telling us everything that wasn't right. He would stand over on the side looking disapprovingly and I'd look at Ethan and say "Looks like Old Man River's about to strike," and then he'd call over the Living Hope guy, who would then tell us what should be happening.

Again, we were able to get real work done when they left. I was put in charge of getting the tin installed, and I spent the afternoon crawling around on the rafters and drilling it all down. I may have put myself in some of the more reckless positions I've ever been, but we got it all done, again thanks to the local guys who were helping us. Getting that last piece on was just an awesome feeling.

We followed up the end of our time in Red Hill with a community party, where the kids club sang, the youth choir sang, the audience sang a couple of African hymns and we served 200 frankly awful looking hot dogs.

And now we've spent today (Friday) touring around Cape Town a bit more, visiting the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, the Malay district (where Malaysian slaves used to live and now all the buildings are brightly colored), the District 6 Apartheid museum, and Signal Mountain.

This is all a bit disjointed, and for that I apologize. But I'll close this post with the news that I've discovered the joys of Pineapple Fanta on this trip, and I don't think my life can be the same.