hello! yoshi

Ok, so I mentioned this in a comment to Colin, and so I thought I’m going to do it. In the past, I made a post about what if my life had it’s own soundtrack. The first volume (because there has to be many right?) was posted on 10/29/02. Oh you want to see it? You can find it on hello! Blogger, since that’s picked up a lot of my old archives. It doesn’t matter because I will be recapping here and then adding commentary to my original commentary. Behold! (note: in the future, I’ll be more prepared for this and allow you download or listen to the song just in case you never heard of it.)

01: Running to Stand Still - U2
(2002) I’ve always liked this song. It’s a song I love to play on the guitar. Reminds me of the days I lived in Chicago.

(2008) Yeah, I still love this song. But I don’t play it on the guitar since I haven’t picked it up in ages. Meesh bought me one for christmas. I really need to play it.

02: Frozen - Madonna
(2002) When I first heard this song, I thought, Wow, she really gets it. This song alone summarizes a lot.

(2008) I still love this song. I’m sure back when in 2002, I really got it. But now, I just like it cuz it sounds good. I think though I might have moved on from this song.

03: Don’t Speak - No Doubt
(2002) Don’t ever fall in love with your best friend. Of course, in the end it turned out ok for me. We’re not as close as we used to be, but when I have exciting news, I always call her first. :)

(2008) I don’t always call her first, but she’s still one of my best friends.

04: Bed of Roses - Bon Jovi
(2002) Sometimes when you have a long distance love affair, you think it will last forever. But it almost never does. This song reminds me of that.

(2008) Wow, I had to think of what ex-girlfriend this song reminded me most of lol. Yeah, bed of roses indeed. Long distance love affairs do work out. Meesh and I are proof of that.

05: Silent Lucidity - Queensryche
(2002) This song reminds me of Chicago. It’s where I first learned to play this song. I remember playing this song on the guitar while my friend Jared sang. OMG it was great. Those were the days. “…The dream is over…Or has it just begun?”

(2008) I still long for those days and I still love this song. I wonder whatever happend to Jared…

06: Tiny Dancer - Elton John
(2002) To tell the truth, I was not so much into this song until I saw the movie Almost Famous. Any regular visitor will know that Cameron Crowe is one of my favourite directors, and Almost Famous is definitely one of the top films I love by him. I’m just reminded of the scene where the band is travelling in the bus listening to this song and getting their spirits lifted. This song always puts a smile on my face.

(2008) Cameron Crowe is still one of my most favourite director/writers. This song also reminds me of Friends, whene Phoebe sings it as “Hold me closer, Tony Danza!”

07: Linger - The Cranberries
(2002) I don’t even remember the first time I heard this song. I just know that I love this song!

(2008) I still don’t remember the first time I heard this song, but wow, it does bring back some memories. For some reason, concerts, philly, and just hanging out at diners comes to my thoughts, but not sure why. That’s definitely what I think of first when I hear this song.

08: The Child In Us - Enigma
(2002) I remember hearing this song, and looking for it for a long time. I thought that it was Enigma, but I couldn’t figure out the title of the song. Finally after listening to many Enigma CD’s, I found it! I simply love this song because it makes me feel…well it’s hard to explain. Maybe if you heard the song, then you can feel it too.

(2008) Of course, I remember cybr telling me that if he had heard the song, he could have told me exactly what it was. But hey, I already found the song, so that’s cool. I love this song because it makes me feel mystical. That’s probably the best way I can say it.

09: Purple Rain - Prince and the Revolution
(2002) I still love this song. Even after all these years, this song will bring back memories of my childhoood, long lost loves, and friends of old. This song makes me reflect.

(2008) Holy crap, who cannot love this song? This song still rocks! It came out in 1984! How crazy!

10: What’s this life for - Creed
(2002) Creed always makes me think of the days I spent in Japan, for some odd reason or another. I remember wasting the days and nights hanging out with my buddies there. Many nights of “So, what are we going to do now?” Gotta love those days spending a lot of time doing nothing and complaining about it. Then realizing that those were the best days we had.

(2008) This is totally a navy buddy song. It reminds me of sitting in barracks and doing exactly that. “So, what are we gonna do now?” We’d sit around and bullshit, talk about stupid things, and most of all, just bond and have fun. This song totally makes me think of that.

11: Rain - Madonna
(2002) Rain always makes me reminisce. I love to do that. It’s not that I’m disappointed now, or I think I used to have more or less fun back then. I just like to remember all the good times and the bad times. I don’t ever want to forget all the friends I’ve made or all the experiences I had, good or bad, with them.

(2008) This song, I think I’ve moved on from this song too, just like Frozen. But I still love this song. It does make me reminisce still, and it does make me feel nostalgic. Sometimes you want to just relive some of the old memories and have it like the way it used to be, but those times are gone now, you’ve gotta make new memories and new experiences. But you can combine them with the old, there’s nothing wrong with that.

12: Chances Are - Johnny Mathis

(2002) When I was in Japan, one of my friends, Charlie, called me “Johnny” because I just loved to sing this song. Many a night, when we had duty, which meant we would work all day and night, and I’d put this song on the PA system in the clinic and sing. Of course, this made many people cringe and laugh. But you know, I enjoyed it. I always smile when I think of those precious moments.

(2008) Haha, I loved this song because of a movie and sang it all the time. I don’t remember the movie now, but yeah, this song totally brings me back and makes me think great things of MCAS Iwakuni. It’s another Navy Buddy song.

13: Suteki Da Ne - Rikki
(2002) Ok, you probably won’t recognize this song unless you played Final Fantasy X on Playstation 2. This was the “love song” of the game. The story was incredible (or so I thought), and I thought this song was pretty damn good. Yes it’s in Japanese, but I think they may have translated it in the game. Suteki Da Ne basically means “Isn’t it great?”

(2008) I still love this song. I loved all the Final Fantasy games. If there was anything big in my life, it was Final Fantasy. I love it!

14: Poison (Piano Version) - Sorimachi Takashi
(2002) Yes, it’s another japanese song. This one is only an instrumental though. This song is from the Japanese Drama Great Teacher Onizuka. I loved this drama! It was about this teacher who did his best to be greatest teacher and helped out his students where he could. If you’ve never seen or heard of this drama, I’d recommend checking it out if you can. It’s well worth it. It taught me a few things I thought I already knew, but didn’t; and it reminded me of things I’d already forgotten about.

(2008) GTO is still a great dorama. I still love it after all these years. I think it’s one of those things that all new teacher dorama is compared to. That and Kinpachi sensei. Although Kinpachi sensei is so popular it still has shows.

15: Bittersweet Symphony - The Verve
(2002) Ever since I saw Cruel Intentions, I’ve loved this song. It makes me reflect a bit on myself, and makes me want to improve the things I am not satisifed with. I’ve always thought of this song as a song about me. “…but I’m a million different people from one day to the next…I can change…”

(2008) Because I always associate the ending of a movie as an ending theme, I always thought of this song as a closing song for an album. I think it because it just ends this album well. Wow. I still love this song. It still impacts me.

So tell me, if you had a soundtrack for your life, how would it go?

Because I have such talented friends, I’m thankful. After I called her a show-off and being challenged by me, Danalyn decided to go ahead and show us what she could really do. I don’t think I need to mention that this video is pretty damn awesome. Let’s not forget, not only did she sing and perform this video, she made it all by herself without sleep. I think that deserves something. Please, sit back, press play and enjoy. Lyrics are after the bump.

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If you haven’t heard, Jeff Healey died today from a long battle with cancer. It’s quite too bad. I’m reminded of the movie Roadhouse, and how much I thought he did such a great job in it. I’m also reminded of the song Angel Eyes. I love it. Here’s to thinking about Jeff Healey.

Yoshi and me were just chatting about the eventual death of both the PC and the mobile phone as we know them today when he asked me to test this FFAF-thingy for him. So since that happened, here I am.

So let me ask you the larger viewing audience than I have over at my site: Do you know what Flash Memory is? Do you know what a MicroSD card is? How do you feel about something like that replacing the CD and DVD so that PCs can become smaller? No more need for an optical drive. We’re past that now… it’s just that the industry has yet to really grasp that and catch up. We already get our music digitally. We can now get our HD movies digitally. Mac users have been stealing their software digitally for years. So why do we still have optical disks?

Have you seen the prices on Flash Memory lately? If not, take a look. You should get to know the future.

With the elevation of iTunes as the #2 music retailer of the United States, how long will it be before music CD’s fall under the status “classic” and joins the shelves of vintage vinyl? Many of us might remember going to Sam Goodys, Musicland, or Tower Records and looking for CD’s and tapes. Some of us might even remember being able to go to the store and find nothing but vinyl records and tapes. Those were the days. We would hit the malls and look for music all the time.

Nowadays, kids don’t have to go anywhere to buy music. They just jump onto iTunes and download music via their iTunes gift card. And they have the option to only download songs they want to. No need to download the entire album, just get the songs you want.

It seems wrong for someone like me who had to buy the entire tape, album or CD, and had to live with the bad songs, and end up making a mix tape with all the songs I like. I guess the kids nowadays are spoiled in that regard. They don’t have to make a mix tape anymore. They just download all the songs they like to their mp3 player.

So how long until the music CD format dies out? Next year? Five years? What do you think?

It was a pretty busy weekend of doing nothing. Actually Saturday involved an all day BBQ for a friend’s birthday celebration at a local park. That was quite a bit of fun. it also involved a lot of frisbee throwing and discussing some Disc Golf. But who knew there could be so much fun to be had playing with frisbee’s. The rest of the weekend was spend just resting from everything. Since Meesh had just come home from a 2 week fire duty, she really needed the rest and sleep. Who knew that working 14 days in a row could stress you out so much.

This week, because I heard this song somewhere this week, I chose Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fariy. If you know you’ve heard this before and not sure where, it’s from The Nutcracker. Yes, I realize this is normally associated with music, but I heard it recently, and it just stuck in my head. Besides, I really like it.

It just seems like lately I’ve been on a super kick about Northern Exposure. I think it started with me seeing Season One of the show on DVD for 9.99. Then I got Season 2 and 3. I’ve been watching them, and man, I miss that show. I’ll have to get the rest of the seasons one of these days.

Of course it doesn’t help that I also went to Roslyn, WA this past weekend, and took some pictures of the town, and the cemetery. Before it was known as the place where Northern Exposure was shot, it was also famous as a coal mining town, and it’s cemetery. The cemetery is broken up into many ethnic and fraternal groups and is quite fascinating. I know it may sound weird and crazy, but I do have a fascination with cemeteries. I’m not fanatic or anything, but honestly, I just love reading some of the old tombstones, especially when they can date back to pre-1900’s. I just have a sense of calmness when I visit cemeteries, don’t ask me why. It’s certainly not because I can see dead people, since I can’t!

Anyways, with all this Northern Exposure fanaticism (yes I’m a fanatic when it comes to Northern Exposure), I thought this weeks Tuesday Tune would be a song from the soundtrack, it’s When I Grow Too Old To Dream by the Nat King Cole Trio. Enjoy!

Ok, the idea was stolen from Colin and the name was stolen from Luka. I actually had this post already done, but because EE doesn’t have a auto save feature (which I wish they would make already), I’ve lost it all. Hopefully that will be implemented in a future version.

This week’s song is ELO’s Twilight, which was the intro song for the Japanese dorama, Densha Otoko (Train Man). The opening scene to every show was an anime that was custom made for the show, and not part of any other anime that I know of. It had a feel like Galaxy Express 999, which is still one of my all time favourite anime.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t want to click on the wikipedia link I gave for the show, it’s basically about an Otaku who happens to win the love of a beautiful girl with the help of his friends on 2ch (Japanese), a very popular BBS in Japan. It’s supposedly based on a true story, but who really knows nowadays how much was real and how much was made up.

Because of this, it seems like every time I hear this song, I get warm fuzzies, and I feel better. I’m a sucker for any cheesy movie, I blame the romantic inside of me that doesn’t seem to get out as much as it would like. Not to mention, this is a good song.

[UPDATED] Ok, so I found the intro for the Densha Otoko show and thought I’d place it in here. Click on the “show me more” to view it!

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Ok, I’ve posted about this before I think. but since then the song got shuffled around. So here it is again. I know a few things about this song:

1. I’m pretty sure it’s a song by David Foster. Yes, he’s the guy that came up with all those themes and songs in the 80’s like, St. Elmos Fire.

2. I’m pretty sure it’s from a movie. And most likely a movie from the 80’s.

Ok, that’s all I got. Please help me out and let me gain back my sanity! What is the name of this song!?

[UPDATE] Ok, I’ve listened to a lot of David Foster stuff, and I’m beginning to think it’s not his stuff. Almost makes me wish I knew him so I could call him and ask him “Is this your song? If it is, please tell me what it’s called.” but no. Anyways, I know it’s gotta be from a movie, because I’m a super big fan of Soundtracks. But it might not be David Foster.

Well, I’m kinda bored today, since Meesh has left on Fire Dispatch duty for the state for 2 weeks this morning.

So, I came up with something using Acid. (No, not the drug I don’t do drugs! and that was a long time ago!)

Check out the song below!