more recent life

Tuesday Allen and I headed up to Franklin, TN, to hang out with our other brother, Chris, and his wife, Sarah for Thanksgiving. We had meant to leave early, but things got delayed as they always do, putting us on the road around 3 for our 6-hour drive to TN. Sarah had a great dinner made for us. It goes without saying, of course, that it far surpassed the culinary ventures Allen and I have made in our bachelor pad. I suppose it's not fair to compare the meal to our cooking. Everything is better than that. This meal was actually better than most meals not prepared by Allen or me. Quite tasty.

On Wednesday I sat in on a songwriting session with Chris and a Nashville songwriter named Clint Lagerberg. They had already written most of the lyrics and Clint, an outstanding guitar player, had already laid down the guitar, bass, and drum tracks. The song has a bluesy, country feel to it and is quite catchy. When I got there they spent the morning finishing the lyrics. After lunch Chris spent the afternoon recording the vocals. If you think it's loads of fun to be a recording artist, try recording 50 different versions of each verse of the song. That recording of the song is just a demo that will be sent in to various artists as a potential song for their albums. Since neither Chris nor Clint are country artists, they're going to try to sell the song to someone who would be interested in adding a country radio hit single or two to their albums. I suppose that it didn't necessarily matter if every note of the demo was perfect, since the song is going to be re-recorded by a different artist, but the more polished a demo sounds the more likely it is that an artist who hears the song will like it and will want to buy it.

After supper we went to see the new Coen brothers' film, No Country for Old Men, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same title. I found the movie to be profound, but apparently I was in a minority, given the number of dissatisfied moviegoers grumbling the whole way out of the theater. I assume their dissatisfaction was rooted in the Coen bros' stubborn refusal to grant resolution to the film (I won't ruin the plot for you). The film grapples with themes of evil, death, and justice, and the apparent randomness of it all, and gives you about as much resolution on those issues as life itself does. It's more philosophical than the other Coen bros' work--The Big Lebowski delves into some philosophical issues but more so for humor's sake--and is much darker than O Brother or The Hudsucker Proxy. Give it a watch if you're interested--I raise both my thumbs to it, but be forewarned that it probably isn't going to give you an emotional boost.

For Thanksgiving we hung out with the family of Mitch, Chris's manager, and then went to a Redwings/Predators game, where Chris sang the national anthem. Around 10 p.m. Allen and I headed back to Greenville. We got back around 5:15 this morning, just in time for Allen to go to work and for me to catch a couple hours of sleep before work.