All bands should wear Illini sweaters...

Wednesday Night Music Club: It dawned on me that I mentioned Sufjan Stevens yesterday and that was probably the one reference in the entire piece that people might not get. I mean, I did include a song on Battling the Current Volume 2 but there are a lot of people reading this now who weren’t around back then. So here is a stripped down, live version of Chicago, which is just on this side of amazing. I’m in awe of any song that has a chorus of “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my time.”

It might be time for a Volume 3 as well. We are nearing the third anniversary of Battling the Current after all. Wow, five nights a week for three years. That’s a lot of words.

And on what I wrote last night, I’m glad that I’ve gotten some positive comments on it. I haven’t written something like that for a while, mainly because I have a hell of a time writing something like that and keeping it from being so sappy that it is suitable for use as a breakfast topping. I think I did a good job, especially given that it really was written in half an hour. For some reason while driving to work in the morning the opening paragraph floated into my mind and I decided to go with it.

(I will say that driving home from Lawrence in a massive storm one night really was the impetus of the piece. It wasn’t really raining, just huge sheets of lightning crisscrossing the sky. Given that the area between Lawrence and KC is simply a bunch of open fields it was a pretty awesome site. It’s nice to be awed by something you’ve experienced a thousand times but never thought about.)

Anyway, it was either that or write about how The Pick Up Artist got a shout out on The Big Bang Theory this week. Not that I’m, you know, writing scripts for that show or anything. Sure, I’ve gotten some calls to help tighten a few up but I’m not technically writing for them. Yet. I do have to say that this episode was absolutely spot on from the innate geek joy of dressing in costumes to the complete incomprehensibility of how to interact at parties to Leonard deciding to think and be nice when Penny is kissing him. I think I’ve had that exact same conversation myself including the “yep, I’m a freaking genius” line. I checked and this show is actually getting better ratings than How I Met Your Mother so it might miraculously survive this first season.

HIMYM still hasn’t seem to have found its rhythm. While it is brilliant that porn can be a topic of a sitcom at 7 in the evening I’m not sure if the story went anywhere. The thing with that show is that there is always an overriding plot. In season one it was Ted trying to get Robin. In season two it was Ted and Robin as a couple and Lilly and Marshall getting married. This season doesn’t seem to be about anything yet and we still haven’t addressed why newlyweds Marshall and Lily still haven’t dealt with the fact that they are sharing an apartment with their bachelor friend from college. I know New York is a tough place to make it on your own but doesn’t that seem a little weird? Or have I just spent too much time in the Midwest?