wish you were here

as you may recall, my good friend aaron is in town this week to enjoy some chicago summertime fun. i thought since he's here and doesn't have anything better to do i'd have him guest-write about our activities thus far. aaron, take it away!

my name is aaron and i got jeremy's secret password, guarded by several laser beam-emitting guard dogs whose breath releases tiny little tracking devises which eventually shoot spikes that drive straight through your heart if you're not him. needless to say, it was a pretty tough, but i was inspired by the most recent film i saw, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." thanks george lucas. i thought there would be aliens involved at some point in my quest, but jeremy remained unpredictable even in his password defense system. he obviously did not consult mr. lucas. this, however, is not the purpose of my entry. it is, rather, to talk about the current state of affairs in chicago since i am here.

yesterday i arrived just in time to watch the usa v. england soccer match. even though the usa looked poorly outmatched, that did not mean that a person could not have fun in this country. we soon made that fun part of our life with an evening of grilling burgers topped with 7 or 8 different condiments. it felt more like the america i was used to. if there had been a burger- stacking competition with us (jeremy, kim, and i) versus some brits (let's say, tony blair, winston churchill, and king john) i'd say we would make them miss revolutionary war-era america.

anyway, lots of fun is set up for the next 2 days. a concert tonight, a spy game this afternoon (look for me reading suspiciously in a café, jeremy playing his guitar ever so slyly on the corner, and kim strategically yakking on her cell phone). tomorrow we have an ushering gig at some highfalutin theatre. maybe jerm will blog about it later.

-aaron

summer music

at some point during this long, cold, bitter winter, i tried to cheer myself up by putting together a playlist to play when it warmed up. well, summer finally came to chicago (it seems it was just waiting for the memorial day weekend), and we've even had a couple days in a row with highs over the 70's. so this morning while doing some cleaning, i broke out the list, which i thought i'd share with you all.

as you may or may not be aware, when a music geek shares a playlist with you, he's got one or more of a few different motivations in mind. he might want some feedback (you'd think only the positive kind, but actually music geeks thrive on lots of criticism and debate--playlists have been known to consume an entire evening's conversation). often he is trying to share some music that he suspects you have not heard, and without which he is convinced your life cannot be complete (to put it bluntly and at the risk of seeming undiplomatic, he wants to "educate" you). or perhaps he wants some suggestions, an outside ear to supply the song or two that he feels is missing from making his mix complete. this particular list needs a bit of the first and a bit of the last--after putting it on today i felt like it needed some work.

i have titled this list "sunny, high in the 60's and 70's", and the criteria for the list is all nicely contained in the title: this is a list of happy, possibly drug-influenced (or, as they said at the time, "psychedelic") songs from the 60's and 70's. this particular list is kind of a party mix, which is to say i just want to put it on random--no sequencing necessary. here goes, in no particular:

"windy", the association
"stoned me", van morrison
"so happy together", the turtles
"summer in the city", lovin spoonful
"i was made to love her", stevie wonder
"uptight (everything is alright)", stevie wonder
"a summer song", chad and jeremy
"i want you back", jackson 5
"she'd rather be with me", turtles
"cherish", the association
"abc", jackson 5
"cool it down" the velvet underground
"in the summertime", mungo jerry
"who loves the sun", the velvet underground
"the village green preservation society", the kinks
"signed, sealed, delivered i'm yours", stevie wonder
"this will be our year", the zombies
"elenore", the turtles

a few notes. first of all, that's two artists with three songs, which i usually try to avoid. also, there's a few pretty melancholy songs, but i have to say i think they're good counterpoints, and most of them have at least a sunny chorus. also, the most glaring omissions are probably the beatles and of course the boys of summer, the beach boys. there were just too many to choose from when i made the list and i ended up leaving them off to decide later, but i forgot all about it and now it's sunny out so obviously i'll need your help with those. right now this playlist clocks in under an hour, and it pretty much can't be too long, so don't be bashful--help me out!!!

summer to-do

since this summer is both the first and last break we'll have as medical students (and therefore the last one ever), "what are you doing this summer?" was probably the most popular conversation starter the last month or so of school. so i thought i'd let you all know a little bit about what i'm going to do with my 102 days of freedom.

officially, the big thing this summer off from classes is...more classes. as some of you may have heard, in addition to working toward a medical degree, i plan to also get a masters in public health, and classes for that degree begin this summer. explaining what exactly public health is should probably be its own post, but briefly, i'm taking these classes to hopefully be a smarter doctor, one who thinks not only about what his patient is sick with, but also what about his patient's life is making him sick--where he lives, his behaviors, etc. in some ways it's like focusing on the leaky pipe instead of cleaning up the puddle on the floor, if that makes sense.

but of course that's not all i'm doing this summer--far from it! there's going to be lots of voluntary reading of non-textbook books (with an emphasis, though, on books about medicine and...uh, saving the world), and going to concerts (starting with m83 with aaron next week, and also including a couple free days at the pitchfork festival), and buying a condo (we've almost decided--very soon there'll be an extra bedroom for you the next time you come to chicago!), and watching soccer (the champions league final was yesterday, and the european championships start june 6), and maybe traveling (we're waiting to see if any smoking deals show up for last-minute flights), grilling food and then eating it, and riding my bike all over the place, and just a whole bunch of fun things. i'm pretty excited, and i guess now you know a little of what will be populating the old blog the next several weeks--so there's something to look forward to!

what about you guys? got any good, exciting plans for the summer? the comments section isn't going to write itself!

update of utmost import

when my blog was on hiatus these last several months, people would always ask me "hey jeremy, why haven't you written on your blog lately?" or "dude, what's the deal? did you break your hands?" or "have you joined some kind of anti-internet cult?". what they didn't ask me, but what i always knew they were curious about, was "so jeremy, how's your male pattern baldness coming along?" well, now that i have time to blog again, i can give you, readership, the kind of information you've been really longing for and missing these last long months. i give you the current status of the top of my head, as of thursday, may 15:



as you can see, this last year has seen a mass emigration of hair and hair follicles. as someone who's been told since he was about 5 years old that he'd one day be as bald as his dad, i've had plenty of time to notice various balding styles (and also to amass a list of bald heroes, including george bluth, winston churchill, michael jordan, (zidane, until that incident in 2006), and of course larry david, who even beat churchill for the position of honorary president of the club). i have to say, it's not time to abandon ship (shave head completely) yet, but i do see cause for alarm. note, for example, that worrying tuft of hair in the middle of the loss zone (that's what i call it). in all my days of observation of baldness, i've never seen anyone make the donut look good. i have to say, though, that i'm very glad to be losing my hair from the middle out, as opposed to from the front. i always worried how having my forehead slowly taking over my hairline like a territorial dispute would effect the overall look of my face. fortunately, i'll never have to know.

taking this picture (which, by the way, i did about 7 times trying to get the perfect angle for hair-loss assessment) made me wish i'd done this more consistently over the last 5 or so years so that i could have more closely monitored the development up there. i wonder if you can pinpoint the exact day you start to look like you're going bald if you're watching closely. probably not--you know what they say about watched pots boiling and all. wow, i think i may have just stumbled across the perfect hair loss prevention technique*--just keep watching it...really closely. it's cheaper than rogaine, folks. GENIUS!

*in all seriousness, though, you know how in the x-men movies they try to find a "cure" for the mutants, to make them normal again? and how all the mutants are like "we don't want a cure--we're AWESOME and we like it"? that's exactly how i feel about these products. not only that it's incredibly insulting to assume that we (the bald community) would WANT to look like the rest of you, but also because of the superpowers we bald men possess (and which of course we never talk about to the haired of the world).

best summer ever

ok, sorry about that absence there. i counted, and this year i filled out 28 of those bad boys up there this year. if it makes you feel any better, all you really missed by me not blogging is "i studied today" posted about 100 times. not that much to read.

but today life got a lot better: i finished my first year of med school. a classmate informed me we have 102 days until next year starts. 102 glorious days!

anyway, while this post is full of numerical data, i realize it's a little low on funny. but fret not--consider yourself warned that the blog is back, and i'm going to make all kinds of stuff happen around here. you'll see.