Music of the Month

John Mayer Trio, Try!: It is no secret that I love/worship John Mayer. If you haven’t yet heard the John Mayer Trio, give ‘em a listen. They will blow all of your preconceived notions of typical John Mayer music right out of the water. I just spent the last thirty minutes playing the beginning riff to “Who Did You Think I Was” over and over and faking my way through the rest because let’s be honest, I’m no Mayer. But it’s just so fun. Favorite tracks: Good Love Is On the Way, Vultures

Jamie Cullum, Catching Tales: If you like Norah Jones, Michael Buble, and/or Gavin DeGraw, you’ll probably like Jamie Cullum. He’s a jazz/pop/funk artist from the UK who captured my heart with his last CD, Twentysomething. Jamie’s sophomore release is a little bit familiar and a little bit different, and both are welcome. You can’t help but nod your head in approval the second that you pop in the CD and you hear his first single, “Get Your Way.” The album is very refreshing. Favorite tracks: Get Your Way, London Skies, 21st Century Kid

Martin Sexton, Camp Holiday: Martin Sexton has one of the most unique voices in the industry, and sometimes I wonder why I enjoy it so much. Camp Holiday is his first Christmas album and it’s one of the most relaxing Christmas albums I have ever heard. I think I read a review somewhere (probably on Amazon) that said it is a perfect CD to have playing while sitting next to a fire during the holidays. That sounds just right. Now all I need is a fire. Favorite tracks: I’ll Be Home for Christmas, Blue Christmas, Little Drummer Boy

The Blenders, Most Wonderful Time: The Blenders more or less define my Christmas music experience. I can’t conceive going through the month of December without Nog and When It Snows on repeat. I was completely taken by surprise when I saw that they were releasing another Christmas album. I’ll be honest, I don’t think it’s as solid as the previous two Christmas albums, but that doesn’t mean it sucks. Track 2, “Go Tell It On the Mountain” has quickly become one of my favorite Blenders songs, but as a whole I just think something is lacking. I’ll still listen to it a million times, though, because I love their music. Favorite tracks: Go Tell It On the Mountain, Frosty the Snowman/Here Comes Santa Claus

Pride & Prejudice, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: You’re probably wondering what the heck this album is doing on this list. Hear me out. I saw the movie with my mom during Thanksgiving break and it was awesome. Even Roger Ebert gave it a perfect score. After I saw the movie I decided I need to read the book, which I hope to do over Christmas break. Anyway, every good movie must be accompanied by a solid score and this movie is no exception. I was amazed to see that at the time of this writing, the Pride & Prejudice soundtrack was #42 in sales rank at Amazon.com in the music category, and has a 5-star customer review rating. It’s a very mellow album that is a great companion to relaxing, homework, reading, etc.

Travis Cottrell, Alive Forever: This album is on the list solely because it has the most amazing rendition of In Christ Alone I have ever heard.

The Jake & Tom Podcast: Week 2

Click here to download the latest installment of the Jake & Tom Podcast.

Leave a comment and let us know what you think. We’re not doing this for ourselves. Well, not just for ourselves.

Dying Stars EP

During the month of January 2006 I will actualize a lifelong dream and record a 5-6 song EP (An EP is the name given to CDs which are too long to qualify as singles but too short to qualify as albums: Wikipedia). I am taking a J-term course at Luther College called “Recording Original Music,” so that will be nearly all I do for the entirety of the month. I have contacted a recording/mixing/mastering studio that is going to help master and produce the album. The tentative title for the EP is the “Dying Stars EP.”

In order to produce a final product of which I can be proud and that is satisfying to listeners and fans, there are many fees involved. These fees incude the cost of mastering the album, design of the album art, CD duplication and production, etc. I do not currently have the necessary amount of money required for such a project.

Which is why I would like to ask for your help. Your donation of $10, $15, or $25 will help me reach my goal of releasing a CD. These amounts are only suggestions; any amount from $1 and above is accepted and appreciated. Anyone who donates $10 or more to the project will receieve a free copy upon it’s finalization in mid-2006. I will accept donations via Amazon Honor System (Visa, Mastercard) and personal checks or cash via my mailing address.

Click the button on the right or this link to donate via Amazon. It’s fast, easy, and secure.

If you would like to donate by mailing to me or if you have any questions, please send me an email (jakebouma [at] gmail [dot] com) for my mailing address.

All of this information is on its own page, which can be found on the navigation bar at the top of this website. I would request that if you are directing people to donate, direct them to that page, not this post or jakebouma.com.

Thank you in advance for your support.

Christmastime w/Jake & Tom

Tom and I may have just done the funniest/stupidest thing we’ve done to date. The other day as I was leaving Wal-Mart, I noticed that the portrait center had a fantastic deal - and just in time for the holidays. I picked up a flyer and when I got back to the dorm I showed Tom. He, too, thought it was a good idea, so we decided that we’d do it before we left for Thanksgiving break.

The above pictures are all part of the seven picture set that was taken. We were laughing hysterically the whole time, nearly peeing our pants on several occasions. The name of the set is inspired by Tom’s post on the “word” Christmastime. My personal favorites are the sleigh, the pointy hats, and Frosty.

Look for a full breakdown and analysis of the portrait session in the next podcast.

How Much Is My Blog Worth?

The monetary value is calculated using stats from when AOL bought Weblogs, Inc. Basically, AOL paid a boatload of money (between $25 and $40 million) for a bunch of weblogs, including one of my personal favorites: Engadget. This site calculates how much my blog would have “received.” I could find a few uses five grand. Example.

The weird thing is that I did this two nights ago and it was only $4,800. Anyone interested in buying jakebouma.com? I’ll sell it to you for the low, low price of $4,000.

Oh yeah, I could also get this baby if I had five grand. In fact, I could get two. But, as they say, ’tis better to give than receieve, and so I would rather keep giving the readers of jakebouma.com a healthy flow of mindless crap than have a check for $5,000 in my name. Just kidding.

Podcast FAQ

The Jake & Tom Podcast is a hit. Feedburner tells me that there are 16 subscriptions already. The last two days have both been record setting in terms of visitors to this website (over 200 unique visitors). People have been asking me lots of questions about the podcast, so I’d like to take some time to answer them below.

Q: When is the next one?
A: Our goal is for the podcast to be a weekly production. However, we have already run into our first roadblock: Thanksgiving break. It won’t necessarily be every Saturday per se, but we’re aiming for one a week.

Q: Will they all be the same length?
A: Our aim is for each show to be 10-20 minutes.

Q: Where did you do this?
A: Jake’s dorm room.

Q: Was that really Jake’s mom and brother, and did they know you were calling?
A: Yes and no.

Q: Can I post a link to the podcast on my blog or website?
A: Yes, please do. Look, we even have it copyrighted.

First JakeBouma.com Podcast

Click here to listen to the first ever JakeBouma.com podcast.

“But, what is a ‘podcast’?” you say. It turns out that the Oxford English dictionary has a definition:

podcast
• noun; a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar programme, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player.

What makes podcasts so popular is that you can subscribe to them and have the daily/weekly/whatever audio file automatically downloaded to your computer as soon as it is published.

Here’s how to subscribe to the Jake & Tom Podcast with the latest version of iTunes. Open the iTunes program. At the top of the window, choose the option that says “Advanced” and in the dropdown menu choose “Subscribe to Podcast”. Copy the following link and paste it into the box that asks for the URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jakebouma. If you have done it correctly, the latest podcast should automatically begin downloading, and every future podcast will be downloaded as long as iTunes is open.

New Song: Dying Stars

I’d like to share a new song that I have been working on for a while. It’s called “Dying Stars” and I made a recording of it late last night (c. 4:00am) so that I wouldn’t forget any of it when I woke up. Unfortunately I’ve made that mistake in the past.

This is not the final version of the song. I am in the process of writing a third and possibly fourth verse and a prechorus. I am quite fond of this particular song, though, so I decided to share it. Perhaps someday this recording will sell on eBay for an absurd price as “one of Jake Bouma’s earliest recordings!!! Done in his dorm room at Luther College!! RARE! MUST HEAR!!!” Perhaps not.

Download “Dying Stars” here and take a look at the (unfinished) lyrics. Comments welcome and appreciated!

Thank You

You might remember about a week and a half ago Shawn and I went to his home church in Onalaska, Wisconsin to lead worship, speak, and play a few of my songs with the middle and high school groups.

Well, yesterday I receieved a very nice “thank you” card in the mail with a $15 Barnes & Noble gift card. I spoke a lot about the importance of reading and how I recently sold my PlayStation2 so that I might spend my time more wisely (i.e. reading). The whole inside and back of the card was filled with kind and genuine comments - it was wonderful. I even pinned it up on my wall underneath my Matt Wertz poster.

To the parents and students of Onalaska high school and middle school SOAR, I say thank you. I know at least one of the high school students has found this website (she left a comment) so maybe one or two other people will see this as well. I had a blast and I would love to come back sometime in the near future.

You might like to know that with the gift card I ordered a new Bible and G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, which has deeply influenced Brian McLaren and is also #6 on Christianity Today’s list of the top 100 Christian Books of the last century.

Friday Linkfest

Back by popular demand… here are this week’s links:

Escapa!: Another time-wasting game. Shawn says, “get to the top left corner and chill, then cut across the middle to the bottom right.” He got 22.352 seconds.

The American Taliban: Fundamentalism = bad. Some of these quotes are borderline unbelievable.

FutureMe: Write an email to your future self and browse emails others have written to their future selves.

Woman Drawing: This is pretty cool. You can watch a sketch go from nothing to a portrait of a woman beginning with the skeletal frame to the end product.

Gizoogle: Ever wondered what a website would look like in “izzle“? Gizoogle can translate whole webpages into izzle. This is what mine would look like. My favorite: “I, along wit T-to-tha-izzom, proposed present’n a to-be-wrizzle papa witin tha topic of Christianity n globalizizzle.” Some of the language may offend. (Thanks, Ryan)

The Problem with Evangelical Theologies: Christianity Today interviews Ben Witherington III, professor of New Testament at Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. An excerpt: “Perhaps in a postmodern culture—where image and story are more important than text and didactic argument—the Bible is more relevant than ever. Exactly. In the 21st century, we’re moving increasingly in a postmodern direction. We have a new opportunity to re-engage the biblical text, which is trying to present word pictures and stories to a world that wants not just answers to its questions, but also its imagination fired up. That’s what this visual dimension of the text does.”

Conference Presentation(?)

I just sent an email to Mark over at Mission:Think regarding the Conference on Christianity in a Consumer Culture in April 2006 in Minneapolis.

I, along with Tom, proposed presenting a to-be-written paper within the topic of Christianity and globalization. Even if we don’t get accepted, it would still be a fantastic conference to attend and it already has some great speakers. I’ll let you know how things turn out.

Intelligent Design

The other day, Peter posted something about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the subject of a satirical parody religion created in 2005 to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow intelligent design to be taught alongside evolution (Wikipedia).

Near the end of his post, he wrote, “For those of you who love the ongoing battle between creationism and evolution, and believe science to not be evil, enjoy…”. Now, I just finished writing a paper entitled “Does Intelligent Design Belong in the Classroom?” for my U.S. Schools class¹, so I couldn’t resist responding to his post. Before I continue, though, I should say that I talked with Peter about this and mentioned that I had thought about posting it, and he encouraged me to do so. Peter: I love you.

My first response was as follows:

I just wrote a paper for my U.S. Schools class on why I think Intelligent Design (not to be confused with biblical Creationism) should be taught alongside evolution. I don’t think science is evil at all. By the way, did you know the creator of the FSM got an $80,000 advance to write a book about it?

Peter responded:

Jake– This is just more evidence that you actually KNOW what you write about in your blog posts and write intelligent things. I just like pictures that make fun of the Sistine Chapel. But in actuality, I do like the idea of Intelligent Design MORE than straight biblical creationism, but it just seems a bit naive to me, almost that we’re defeated by things we don’t understand. Should we be?

Again, I replied. I actually replied twice because the first thing I wrote didn’t make any sense, so I deleted it and re-wrote a reply:

It’s not that we’re defeated by things we don’t understand, it’s just saying that perhaps traditional science is limited in its ability to provide understanding. Maybe I am sounding too postmodern.

This is where the conversation ended. But it mustn’t end.² Engaging in conversation is the only way we will get anywhere meaningful in this discussion. We’ll see where this goes. Feel free to leave comments on your particular view.

1. You can download the paper in .pdf format here (Adobe Acrobat, 81k). Comments are always welcome. ↩
2. Yes, mustn’t. ↩

Before and After

For some reason, when I saw this picture (thanks, Katie) I was inspired to make this:

It may be stupid, but these two pictures are almost complete opposites. Besides the obvious bare face vs. beard, there’s summer vs. winter, day vs. night, inside (a car) vs. outside, baseball hat vs. stocking cap, t-shirt vs. coat… I could keep going, but I won’t.

I wish I had a picture from my junior year Valentine’s dance. I remember that I had been trying to grow a goatee and it was horrible. Just horrible.

Riots in Paris, Cont’d

Megan, who I mentioned in my earlier post about the riots in Paris, left an interesting comment about them. Here’s what she had to say:

The riots are a very interesting subject. Although, I am not in the area where the riots are happening…Parisians talk about the riots all the time. Basically, the issue is that the ghettos of Paris are found in the suburbs (whereas in the US the ghettos are usually in the inner city). The racially focused ghettos are getting pushed out of Paris and into the suburbs.

Recently, an important French Minister made a very nasty remark about these “groups” in the suburbs…This fueled with the terrible death of two teenagers being chased by police in the suburbs has caused a massive snowball affect in many suburbs all over France…and even all over Europe.

One huge difference between American thinking and European thinking is that Americans tend to talk more about racial differences. Issues like racial inequalities, college entrance issues with race, diversity in the schools/workplaces are commonly discussed. Now, there are pros and cons to this.

Well, in France NO ONE talks about race. It is like this huge elephant in the room that no one wants to point out. Well, there are exterior pros to this…France appears to be more accepting, not making issue of the race factor. Well, the second a race factor is brought up (like when the Minister made his comment) all h*ll breaks lose. The French racial minorities have all this burning anger inside of them…and they need a venue to vent this.

In the US, it seems that we over-analyze and over-debate the race issue…maybe a good open communication is a positive thing.

Don’t worry, she is okay. She’s living and going to school in the city and not the suburbs. For a while, though, I was a bit worried.

Christmas Music

When is the right time to start listening to Christmas music? I am having a very difficult time with this right now, for several reasons:

I love Christmas music, and over the past few years have collected what I think is a fantastic selection of music for the season.

Luther puts on a Christmas concert every year called Christmas at Luther (creative, huh?).¹ We start rehearsing the repertoire for this concert sometimes as early as late September. Kind of gives me the Christmas music bug.

While not all of my Christmas music is on my iPod, there are a couple of albums that are on there, and when the song selection is on “random”, sometimes a Christmas tune begins playing and it takes a lot of inner strength to press “next”.

So when is the right time? The past few years I have waited until after Thanksgiving. I can remember this because the ride from home to school after Thanksgiving break is always a Christmas music binge. However, I was discussing this dilemma with Shawn today, and he said “if it feels like Christmas, then you can listen to the music.”

Well, the forecast for tomorrow in Decorah is snow - the first of the year - and that means it will definately feel Christmas-y. I just don’t know if I can bring myself to listen yet. Patience is still a virtue, right?

1. Christmas at Luther used to be called Juletide (pronounced yool-tide), up until my freshman year of college. Around that time, Iowa Public Television began taping one of the performances to run nationally in syndication around Christmastime (the actual performances are early December). What good is a beautiful name like Juletide for school publicity? ↩

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