High Holy Mass of Contradictions

By somewhat popular request (OK: two people), I’m capturing the Twitter song here in my songwriting blog.

I’ve been trying to do better about keeping the content of this blog related to Honey Bowtie Music, meaning Karsten’s and my writing, our pitching & publishing, and our life at our home office & studio, so I wasn’t planning on doing any kind of post PubCon follow-up here, but hey! this is relevant to songwriting. It’s some of the only writing I did while I was in Las Vegas, so it counts.

The story is: on Wednesday afternoon, I was taking a break in my hotel room, watching the #pubcon search feed in Tweetdeck burn up while everyone chatted about the “5 bloggers and a microphone” session, when I noticed that Kate Morris tweeted:

#pubcon someone needs to write a country song about losing love for twitter!

Fearing that there might not be too many other songwriters in the PubCon crowd, I felt it my duty to respond to the call.

@katemorris Just for you: “A hundred forty letters / And spaces in between / Isn’t near enough room / To say what you really mean” #pubcon

@katemorris 2nd verse: “It’s getting kind of silly / How everyone I meet / Instead of asking if I blog / Now asks me if I tweet” #pubcon

@katemorris I’ll let the rest be crowdsourced. It’s more the Nashville songwriting style to collaborate anyway. #pubcon

Only the rest never ended up crowdsourced, since everyone was caught up in what was going on the session. I mean, how wrong is that? Paying attention to the panelists instead of Twitter?

So if you attended PubCon and you end up here after searching for blog posts about it, here’s your chance: take a swing at writing additional verses in the comments. This is not limited to PubCon attendees either. My Nashville buddies, long-time net-friends, and songwriting colleagues are all encouraged to play along. I’ll update the post with the song’s progression, and it will be ready for performance by March in Austin.

Everyone who comments with additional verses gets songwriting credit. As we say in Nashvegas, “add a word, get a third.”

So who’s up for some cowriting?

Originally published at Sticky, Sweet, & A Little Overdressed. You can comment here or there.

Even the bathroom icon people are pretty sophisticated.

Originally published at Sticky, Sweet, & A Little Overdressed. You can comment here or there.

My neck and throat feel all puffy and swollen today, for some reason, even though they don’t really look any different. Still, I keep making jokes to Karsten about it, like asking while he drives if my neck is blocking his view of the road — stuff like that. He shakes his head and asks if it’s going to be another two months of neck jokes before my surgery. Magic 8 Ball says “you may rely on it.”

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

You know all those articles I’ve been linking about Maghound? Well, in case it wasn’t obvious, it’s an initiative I’m keeping my eye on. Time Inc. is launching this online magazine service in late Q3, and oh by the way, Time Inc. happens to be an investor in an online magazine service called Magazines.com, too, so… I guess that’s a little weird, right?

Anyway, last week at this conference I was speaking at, I got chatting with Dave Ventresca, president of Maghound. We’d met once before and were having a nice enough conversation, and then… someone approached us with a camera.

Quick: what’s the best thing to do when someone wants to take what they think will be a caption-worthy photo?

Why, make it MORE caption-worthy, of course.

Your caption suggestions welcome here.

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

From Macleans, a poem in memory of John Oates’ mustache.

My favorite stanza?

Hall was tall, he was blond
He could sing in falsetto
But John Oates’ soup strainer
Helped fill up his bed-o

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

The Elton John of tigers

Originally uploaded by Kate O’

This is the handiwork of my coworker Heather, who gave my glow-in-the-dark collapsible tiger a suit made of Cherry Cordial Hershey’s Kiss wrappers. I think I speak for us all when I say “awesome.”

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You may comment here or there.

I’m so amused by the numbers of top searches in Google today that have to do with preparing a turkey. People, if you’re just now starting to wonder about how to cook it, it’s probably a good idea just to join me and Karsten at Baja Fresh.

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. Please leave any comments there.

I know they say not to blog about what you ate for lunch, but Karsten and I just shared the soup Jon made and gave me to sample. It was great!

And I had to write about this because I want to tell you, dear reader, about the cute name Jon gave his soup.

“Armagarden.”

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. Please leave any comments there.

Originally published at The Bee Hive. Please leave any comments there.

I think it’s really great how, even though Black Cherry and Barbra don’t have sex anymore, they totally aren’t awkward about it.

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No Doubt - ska + skater punk = Be Your Own Pet

I just had a lovely lunch with two former co-workers. (Sorta. I worked there for such a short period of time that we barely count as co-workers.) And it got me to thinking.

I think maybe Digital Dog is to the Nashville web industry what Kevin Bacon is to Hollywood.

The analogy only goes so far, because I've never heard that Kevin Bacon drives the people that work with him crazy. But just as when you play a "six degrees" game, you can always join movie people through Kevin Bacon, I doubt there's a web professional in Nashville who's more than a few degrees away from Digital Dog.

In fact, I think it should be a drinking game. Who's in?

Karsten: Oh! I guess I thought that was gay.
Neighbor-friend: Like, homosexual gay?

Random ways my brain works,
originally uploaded by Kate O’.

Every time I see this package in the break room at work, I imagine a “Coffee Singles” dating service for people who love java.

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

him: I need to see a movie with lots of explosions and death.
me: Oh, did you call your dad?

Our front porch guy told a story about his 1st-grade daughter getting called an "asshole" on the playground by a little boy in her class. She told the teacher, who brought them together and talked to the boy about his use of language, and he promised not to use the word again.

A little later, they were back out playing, and sure enough, the little boy called the girl an "asshole" again. The girl went back to the teacher, who again gathered the two children up and started to admonish the boy, when the little girl contributed her advice for the boy: "You should really try not to be such a bitch."

Sitening Blog has a code snippet to share. Free for the taking. Any user fallout experienced is almost certainly not their responsibility.

Would you be more inclined to translate "little disaster" as "kleine Katastophe" or "Katastrophchen," since our intent is to use it as an affectionate term (as in "Unsere kleine Katastrophe" oder "Unser Katastrophchen")? Or is there a better translation altogether? I wouldn't want to miss out on getting the best humor value out of it.

I need to find a way to get one of these for Karsten.

I think we should pitch in and get this for Brittney.

I happened across this video clip from some guy's radio talk show in which he was skewering the song "Ticks" by Brad Paisley. Now Brad Paisley isn't my favorite artist or anything, but he's talented and pretty clever, and his fans understand him. So what the host was suggesting in his bit seemed really off to me. I decided to let him know. Here's what I wrote:

Hey, just a random commenter taking a moment to provide feedback on your "Dumbest country song ever" video pertaining to Brad Paisley's song "Ticks." I assume, based on your set of videos and your user name, that you are the host of the show, so I'll direct my comments to you.

I know you were probably just mining for material, but your skewering of Brad Paisley's song "Ticks" couldn't be more off. I think you really missed the mark on this one. I mean, I get that it sounds incredibly stupid when you take it out of context and all that, and I also get that you need to do that kind of thing for comedy every once in a while. But how much of a sense of irony does it take to realize that the "wink wink" intimacy suggested by saying "I'd like to check you for ticks" is completely tongue-in-cheek?

It may be that you need the context of knowing that Brad Paisley is known for this type of offbeat humor in his songs. But still, I don't think it's missed by the average country listener that what Paisley is actually proposing has little to do with ticks and much more to do with closely exploring the naked body of the person being addressed by the lyrics.

So... what does it say about you that your sense of humor is not as sophisticated as that of the average country listener?

Ooh, sorry, that one may have been a little below the belt. Might want to have someone check you for bruises.

- Kate O'Neill
Songwriter & Queen Bee
Honey Bowtie Music, Nashville, TN