There’s still a little over a week left to donate to projects on my giving page (I had to go find more because most of my previous projects became funded – awesome!). If you’ve been putting it off, please do it now through this cool widget.

If you’re in San Francisco, mark your calendars for Dec. 17th – there will be a party for all the growers and their supporters.¬† Details will follow soon.¬† It will be an excuse to come out and see a bunch of handsome men and other men with mustaches.

Mustache, Day 5, Morning

For the next month, I endeavour to test my will, my physical prowess, and my endurance.  Forgoing the ease of training for a marathon [hats off to those who have], I am testing my follicular limits on all levels by growing a mustache for charity!

Rather than submit my body to a long, drawn out, and painful experience for joints and bones, I’ve opted for a month of disgusted looks, complete failure with the opposite sex, and awkward conversations where I have to keep reminding people, “my eyes are up here.”

• Over the next 30 days, myself along with every male at TuneUp Media, a client and maker of the best iTunes plugin to clean up your music collection, will be growing a mustache.

• I will be asking you to sponsor our mustache growth through one-time donations.

• Through this blog and www.TuneUpMedia.com/blog, I will be providing you with regular updates on our mustache growth, fun videos, mustache factoids, celebrity interviews and more.

• ALL OF THE MONEY RAISED WILL BUY LOW INCOME CHILDREN MUCH NEEDED BOOKS AND SUPPLIES FOR THEIR CLASSROOMS @ DONORSCHOOSE.ORG

• Click the Donors Choose link [above], pick a cause you like, fill in the amount you’d like to donate, and click give.

It’s the end of the year so get those tax-deductible donations in, and if nothing else, do it for the kids.

Follicularly Yours,
Academik

My life is tonight, it’s right now. It’s my job and my friends.¬† It’s playing pool at the Page for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon.¬† It’s watching Dark City until 1am.¬† It’s waking up at 6:30 in the morning, checking my email, and starting work from bed.¬† It’s the sink in my bathroom that reminds me of the inside of my colon.¬† It’s the awkward moments when the toilet seat cover falls in right when I’m about to sit down.¬† It’s the bus rides filled with familiar strangers.¬† It’s the ‘Good Mornings’ and the ‘Thank Yous’ to people I don’t know.

It’s time to look at all that and decide if it’s what I want for my life.¬† If not, what do I change?

Listening to podcast #70.

Even more bloatware + an even harder sell to buy DRMd content from the iTunes Store.

You’re going to recommend other songs from the iTunes store that I can buy and not play anywhere else.¬† Thanks, but I’ll keep using eMusic and music blogs because I’m sick and tired of all the walls.

I wouldn’t recommend turning on the Genius sidebar unless you live wholly within the iWorld and have tons of cash to blow.¬† If you want to buy music go to Amazon and eMusic for non-DRM content and you can find plenty of recommendations at either of those places at a similar or less expensive price.

All of the trip details will be posted to Academik.org and to Sevenlamps (on the blogroll).¬† I’m spending the next 2 weeks here doing some Christian consulting in Jakarta who are interested in involving God in their businesses… sounds crazy right?¬† That’s what I thought until I did some more investigation from a Christian perspective.¬† 49 out of 51 of Jesus’ miracles in the Bible were in the marketplace.¬† He chose all of his disciples from the marketplace.¬† The words for work and ministry are the same in Hebrew (or is it Aramaic?)… The ideas that we currently have of work and ministry being separate are unfounded biblically.

I’m not saying that work should be a time to thump the bible over someone’s head, but I am saying that the workplace gives us a great place to act out our values.¬† More and more we’re leaving our principles at the door when we live our lives.¬† My boss, Jeremy Toeman, and I just facilitated a discussion on social responsibility at the Web2.0 Conference and a few of the things I took away from the meeting were:

Social Responsibility has different meanings to different people; it’s some variation of all of them, including volunteering, a triple bottom line, and a commitment to the long-term.

We can’t give up on our principles just because they’re not practical.¬† Would you stop recycling if you had to drive to a drop-off? Do you leave lights on in your house because you are too rushed to turn them off?¬† Do you encourage friends to follow principles that are good for the environment?

There are so many ways we can make an impact, but often we feel like we’d be inconveniencing others or embarassing ourselves in doing so.¬† The truth is that when you stand up for what you believe in, you stand out… and no one ever liked you because you were like everyone else.

I noticed in front of me that there was a woman reading passages of scripture from a handout and I instantly felt a connection with her. Here I was reading a book about Christian business ministry for the work I’m to do in May, and here she is reading the Gospels for a class or exam. I said a prayer for her as I do for many people on the bus while I ride quietly reading or listening to music in the morning. I used the departure of the man next to me as an excuse to sit across from the woman. As I sat down we made eye contact and smiled. She was well into her 30’s and this was not a flirtatious smile, but more an exchange of peacefulness.

We continued reading and I felt like I wanted to reach out and tell her something. Tell her I had prayed for her, and that I wished her a wonderful day. I wanted to share some joy with her to help her coast through her morning meetings. I wanted to be her Starbuck’s and her Happy Donut – that little treat we allow ourselves that helps us get going in the morning. Montgomery passed and I descended at 1st street – a mistake that has now serendipitously led to visits from two friends on their way to work – got off the bus and turned to look at the woman from outside.

I was safe from rebuke now, with a pane of glass between us and the final moments of our safe passage together now ticking down I unzipped my sweatshirt and proudly outed my chest like pigeon in a mating dance. “I {John Cusack holding a boombox over his head} YOU”

She smiled, laughed, and pointed at the one of a kind T-shirt a friend had recently given me. What a great way to start both of our mornings : )

We are never satisfied with the present because it seemingly doesn’t hold the mystery and hope of the future nor is it as good as the knowns of the past. It simply is itself, and so too often we waste it. This present.

This season of gifting reminds me once again about this gift that we’ve all been given.

I will admit that the first time I listened to the album I was nonplussed. The beats could have used a little work: the melodies needed more depth and layering. I had heard his flow and running commentary on pop culture, D.C. hype, and self-promotion all before. But I had jumped to conclusions.

After listening to this mixtape, in its entirety cranked up in my headphones, I got hooked. All the things that I wasn’t smitten with suddenly became idiosyncrasies that worked perfectly for the song. The extra time to let the songs marinate in my head really helped me appreciate it. This isn’t some pop album that you’ll fall in love with for a minute and then leave behind Рlike a good woman it grows on you, you can’t help but love her even more after the 15^th listen. That says something.

Wale is the next best thing in hip-hop, no exaggeration. You give this guy access to the same resources as Kanye and Jay-z and he will turn out some amazing tracks. He‚Äôs a simmered down intensified version of a lot of the artists in the pop hop world, but he‚Äôs got the reality check of most backpack rappers like Common and Kweli. He admits that his cars are pieces of junk, but he rocks fly sneakers. He has wit to spare, flipping off jokes like Ludacris, “My climate is way higher than Lindsey Lohan‚Äôs nostrils on powder‚Äù, Wale raps on WALEDANCE. He knowingly pokes fun at the lame aspects of hip-hop. It‚Äôs a nice change.

He ridicules the stupid excessive trends that have come on, but at the same time salvages the original core of some trends that were worthwhile. For example he rips on the frequent use of lil’ and young in artists names, as well as the excessive breathing that rappers throw on the breaks in tracks. The hyperventilating that is supposed to convince us that talking fast is the hardest thing they have ever done. Isn’t that their day job? He lacks pretension and really, Wale’s just having fun – and that’s what makes him so easy to love (he’s not a businessman or a business, man). Something that seems lost since the early days of hip-hop (De La, Tribe, Pharcyde…).

The mixtape samples current hits and turns their beats into simple infectious background for Wale‚Äôs flows – twisting them just enough to make you wonder why the original artists didn‚Äôt think of it first. A few examples: Lily Allen‚Äôs ‚ÄúSmile‚Äù, Justice’s DANCE, The Gorillaz‚Äô ‚ÄúDirty Harry‚Äù, and Amy Winehouse‚Äôs ubiquitous ‚ÄúRehab‚Äù. The Gorillaz is one of my favorite tracks – intro‚Äôd by an unassuming simple commentary on the eternal conquest for a Grammy and local representation for DC. Out of nowhere the beat hits and your hips assume a life of their own. DC Gorillaz (produced by Best Kept Secret) moves then from a straightforward sample of the original beat, to a chopped and screwed version.

Smile is slimly affected in comparison, but it fulfills a completely different purpose. Wale turns Smile into a conversation between Lily Allen and himself about her schadenfreude, cheating antics, and his desire for a lil Lily lovin’. He makes this sugary pop lollipop lighthearted and listenable. His two-person dialogue gives the story a more theatrical quality. Meanwhile most of his peers don’t seem like they have even listened to what the song is about when adding to a pop track, i.e. T.I. on “My Love”. Wale is paying attention to the subtleties of the pop realm, not putting down the genre.

You can feel this admiration for his reworking of pop hits because every website that recommends 100 Miles and Running provides a different sample song. No one agrees on just one hit from the album because too many of the songs stand out. Some of my favorites are tracks DC Gorillaz(2), ,Breakdown(3), Ice Cream Girl(4), WALEDANCE(12),Good Girls(13), Work(14), Smile(16), and Rehab(19).

Conclusion: If you are driving a car this summer, or going to a party, or working out, or just working, or trying to wake up, or trying not to go to sleep then you should have this mixtape – it’s free! It will liven up your life, make your friends appreciate you more, give you better luck with the opposite sex, and create envy for your vibe. Get this album before your friends do. Get on the front of this wave; it’s going to be huge. It’ll Wale on the nation.
- Quinn