Whose line is it anyway?

I recently picked up my guitar and have been playing it a lot more. I am doing some combination of music from my favorite artists and worship songs. Through painful fingertips, strumming patterns and word cadence, I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. Where I'm finding myself struggling the most, however, is with lyrics.

Through my bourgeoning acting career, I've been reminded over and over that I am terrible at remembering lines. I fancy myself more of a concepts guy, so I know what the meaning of something is, but I struggle with the exact words. This is painfully obvious when I butcher a movie quote and am corrected by one of my cousins who know the script better than the writer (and my line was still HILARIOUS!!).

As I am now re-exploring my rock star giftings, I am trying to memorize the songs instead of being a slave to the page. Brutal. I have already discussed my ineptness in memorizing. The second realization is that with some songs, I had no idea what the lyrics actually are. I attribute most of that to the fact that some of my favorite bands sing with the "marbles in my mouth" technique (I'm looking at you Radiohead). This is apparent while singing your heart out in your car only to be foiled by the mumble part of the song. While this is passable in a car as the lead singer can do his job and you can move on to ooohs and ahhhs, you fall flat on your face when the job of lead singer rests entirely on your shoulders. A little bit at a time I keep telling myself.

In the meantime, don't correct me. I know that I have issues and I might cry.

Big gulps huh? Well, catcha later… or something.

P.S. To show that I'm not blind to my own hypocrisy, I will admit the need to be vigilant in correcting someone else when they misquote a movie.

Apgar Lookout and the sore feet

For those of you that follow my writings, you have heard about my crazy toe shoes made by Vibram called "FiveFingers". I've run a few times in them and really like them. Most surfaces are great, whether it be asphalt, grass, dirt, etc, but one surface makes me angry... gravel.

Two things you find out when you start wearing these shoes. Your feet are weak and wussy. I'm getting past the weak part, but my feet are still wussy. I'm trying to figure out if I'm willing to get past the wussy part, cuz there is a lot of pain* involved in that one. I found this out in full force yesterday.

We were going to go on a 5.5 mile hike up to Apgar Lookout. Problem is, they closed the road about a mile before the trailhead. Sooo we had a mile to get in to the trailhead on my favorite surface... gravel. Let's just say that by the time I got back to the car, 7.5 miles and much pain later, I was stoked to be done. The bottom of my feet are still sore today. Do I have what it takes?

McDonald Creek going into the Muddy Middle Fork

*The pain associated with these shoes is primarily associated with having your foot strike a rock on a hard packed gravel road... all other surfaces are fine. ;-)

Going "UP!"

Met up with some friends the other night to watch the new Pixar movie, "UP!".  Pixar hit another home run with the movie.  Tugs at the ol' heart strings, has something to say without being preachy, funny... so good.

Anyway, it was my first 3D movie.  We got to wear the sweet nerdy glasses.  We decided (okay, I did) to take a pic of all of us sporting our new spectacles and it was spectacular!  The 3D was really cool when things weren't moving very quickly across the screen, but when things were moving quickly it seemed a bit jerky, but I dug it.

I do see a bunch of movie shops deciding to have a 3D movie from a poor script and despite the novelty of 3D, it'll still be a crappy movie.  "UP!" was just a good movie... the 3D just made it a cooler experience.

Adventure anyone?

My Memorial Day weekend was tons o' fun.  I could let you in on the whole thing, but I'll stick to just the biking portion on Memorial Day. (thanks Jamie for the pic!)

Chatted with Brandon on Saturday night where he mentioned maybe a ride in Glacier National Park was in order.  I told him to give me a call, which he did.  Monday came and Brandon, Katie and I loaded up the bikes and headed up there on a perfect day.

Meeting up with a few other friends at Lake McDonald Lodge, we had our peloton and we were ready to ride.

The ride was beautiful in the cool shade with McDonald Creek roaring, other streams trickling, birds chirping, the smells... oh so nice.  Seriously, does anyone do it better than God?  We passed the epicly huge avalanche that went in January and smelled like Christmas and then took the group photo at the Loop with Heaven's peak in the background.

We stopped at Big Bend to get some lunch and head back down.... that's when adventure struck.  Just past the Weeping Wall, a rock decided that it wanted to rub shoulders with the sidewall of my tire which gave me a flat.  Got that all repaired up and kept going down.  We stopped at the car and decided that we should go a bit more.  That's when the clock started ticking for the approaching rain clouds.

I didn't have it in me to beat them (the rain clouds), so I joined them and ended up wicked soaked.  I was bringing up the rear and since we were heading all the way back to the West Glacier entrance, but people had to run shuttle, I decided that I had had enough riding in the deluge with hail as bonus and camped out under the ranger station checkpoint until I could be picked up... soaked to my skin.  The strange part is, that I liked the adversity.  Makes for a cool adventure. ;-)

3 hours on the bike, 47.5 miles

Jake Unplugged

I get strange ideas all the time. My problem is that I act on them. This time, I had an idea of a sort of goofy ballad about the impending arrival of my new roommate. This sounded great in my head and I started writing the song "Josh in June".

When it came to actually recording it, I had a great time setting everything up and recording it. The problem arose during playback. Do I really sound that awful? So after struggling with it for a bit, I decided to get to bed and try again the next day.

I figured out a few things and changed the way I brought the audio and video in my computer. I also sang better and despite a dorkup in the middle of the song, I decided it was good enough. Enjoy.

Oh and Josh, welcome to my home. God help us all. ;-)

I'll get around to it...

For those of you that know anything about my life, you know that I've been a bit busy.  I've been filming a movie, making short clips of dorky characters, playing bass at church, leading a Bible study, meeting with friends, attending a financial class, generally having fun... oh and working a full time job to boot.  Funny thing was that during all of this, the snow melted and my lawn woke up from the winter.

Now a bunch of my loving and observant friends let me know that my lawn needed mowing.  Of course, I didn't realize this fact myself and appreciated the "help".  I didn't see anyone volunteering which was strange, but I digress.  Had I followed my father's advice, I would have not let this get into the herculean effort that it became.  Approximately 4 hours spread over two days and 15 bags later, I finished mow #1 of the season.  I found that I could make it about 100 feet and I'd have to empty out my bag (note the grass being over 10" for a majority of the lawn in the pic).  The other frustrating part was that I didn't have enough gas to fill up my mowers tank, so I had to put it off until Sunday.  Thankfully we got both weekend days full of sun.

I wished that I was just mulching.  This next Thursday, I'm sure I'll be out there doing it again to avoid anything as silly as this escapade...

"Ask Jack" Episode 02

After receiving many questions from the introductory episode, Jack is back to answer.  Please comment below and continue asking more questions.

This was shot using my new helmet cam which I'm insanely stoked about as it shoots great, has manual settings and shoots in HD... in a helmet cam!  (once the video is done going through YouTube's meat grinder, you should be able to select HQ for HD)