Why Am I So Pathetic? Don't get it.

I just wanted to write a few things before I go to bed. It's about 1:36am now and I've fallen into this weird habit of going to bed later for no particular reason. It's not like I'm galavanting around town, naked as a jaybird, I'm just sitting here, watching t.v. or reading shit online. Trying to read the huge pile of books in my to read box, not really getting any of it done. I've become quite skilled at wasting a lot of nights. The only problem with this comes when I wake up early in the morning, I just can't not do it. I really like being up in the morning and I want to start waking up earlier but I feel like that would sacrifice sleep, and since I don't drink coffee, nor do I handle being tired very well (as evidenced by the USC tour guide who spotted me yawning emphatically during her speech), I need to find a way to get to bed earlier and wake up earlier. Then everything will be alright.

Wow.

There you have it, I just wasted four minutes of my night right there typing out that nonsense.

I hope I didn't waste your time.

Quick Things: (Seriously this time)

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Blinking Lights and Other Revelations is definitely on my list for desert island records (however that notion has become someone outdated with the invention of the ipod). No other album in the small history of my musical life has the ability to re settle me the way that one does. There's something about his vocals and the story he tells on that album, it's like listening to a voice on the other end of the phone in the middle of the night telling you not to worry beceause bad things happen, good things happen, and the lights are always blinking no matter where you are.

Secondly, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone is some kind of musical miracle. I say that because somehow Explosions in the Sky have managed to out do everything that has come before in their musical cannon (no small feat). That is not to say their earlier stuf is now negated, but they soar to ridiculous heights on this album. The weird thing is, it didn't hit me at first. Sure I loved it and was completely bown away by it, but this album is like meeting a good friend for the first time. You hit it off at first but there's still some hesitancy due to the fact that you don't know each other. Then somewhere along the trail everything clicks and you need to be best friends with this person, right now. That might be a little abstract, but that's the best I could come up with. This is their most complex album, the melodies swirl in and out of each other with such precision and skill that the narrative is much stronger on this album than it has been before. On top of that there is a much more spontaneous shift to this record, as if to suggest these songs are being recorded on the spot. I have no idea how they do it, it has the raw surging power of a live show with the emotional complexity of superb storytelling. It fucking rocks.

Last thing, I promise. Annie Hall is a great great movie. All I have to say about it is that it once again proves that the need for any kind of movie about the ins and outs of relationships has been negated. It was Say Anything, Chasing Amy, All the Real Girls, and now Annie Hall, actually, I would also like to add Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to that list. All of these movies say it all and it pisses me off. Maybe I can find a way to incorporate Ned Beatty into my movie, they wouldn't see that one coming.

Okay that's it, I'm going to bed.

"this is the day
that i give myself up cold

the dust of ages
settles on your days
and so you shake your coat off
and get on your way

bloodshot and trembling
a new day has begun

the dust of ages
settles on your days
and so you blow it all away
and get on your way

the dust of ages
settles on your days
but i'm not fuckin' around anymore
i'm on my way"

It's Natural to Be Afraid...

Well, I hope you all read up and studied each and every manufactured thought that appeared in yesterday's L.A. times concerning the box office success of 300 versus the relative disappointment of Zodiac. Like I said, I hope you didn't break anything in your fit of rage. Then again, it's important to remember these are just half rate idiots writing for a stupid newspaper and they don't really care about telling a good story or even telling the truth. They write whatever will give them the quickest easiest answer to complicated questions, actually most journalists do that too come to think of it.

Anyway getting down to business, this article pissed me off in so many ways, I don't know where to begin.

Let's start with the basic assumption the article makes:

That 300 is a new cultural phenomenon in league with Star Wars, The Matrix, or Lord of the Rings. And like those films it's success is based around the fact that it supposedly celebrates the things that movies do best (visuals, speed, classic story telling) and how it is invincible to any sort of criticism because the very thought of analyzing such a work would rob of the purpose it serves as a movie. It's not a dissertation after all.

The first part of this I would like to debunk is that 300 is some kind of cultural phenomenon. That simply is not true, you need a little bit more time than a week to prove that. You also need a better response than the movie has gotten thus far. If you apply this logic to every movie than in this year alone, Norbit, Wild Hogs, and Ghost Rider would be considered cultural phenomenons. Not to mention scores of other movies most people only remember as something they dug out of their ears. I would even argue that Lord of the Rings is not quite yet a cultural phenomenon, it was at one point but I think the true test is to see how long it stays in the public sphere of conscious after its initial release. Star Wars has passed that test (the original trilogy anyway, but I won't get into that now), and I think the original matrix will any day now. The point being, 300 is a movie that made a shit load of money on its opening weekend and it surprised some people. are we really going to remember this, ten years later, as a watershed day for cinema? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.

The article then goes onto to discuss the drubbing the movie received by the critics. Which is also inaccurate, for according to metacriic the movie received a score 53 which it describes as mixed to average reviews. Compare that to the score of 27 received by both Norbit and Wild Hogs. Point being, while it didn't get great reviews, a couple of big critics like entertainment weekly and rolling stone liked it. And even the people who didn't like it didn't hate, the sampling the L.A times takes are from critics who really hated it, of which there a few. Not to suggest that this means the movie is great, but the article essentially claims that the critics who hated the movie some how took away from it political or social commentary that wasn't there and therefore only existed so critics could rag on it. First of all, most of the negative review of the movie I've read and even the two they quote in the article (and you can see these reviews at www.metacritic.com) hated the movie because it is poorly made, not because they didn't agree with its politics (as dunderheaded as they may be). They hated it because the writing is lousy, the acting is a lot of screaming and little else, and the fact that the entire movie strives to be a feature length gorgeously rendered video game. Any mention of the nationalistic, drumbeating, pro war homophobia that supposedly exists in the movie, goes by as more of an afterthought. More like, yes the movie sucks and p.s. here is some weird shit in it. The article, however, quotes director Zack Snyder as laughing off the reviews, saying they came across as "so neo-con" and "so homophobic" (yes his actual words) and that "they couldn't just go see the movie without trying to over-intellectualize it." This is idiotic in so many ways, first of all he uses the words neo-con and homophobic as if he doesn't know what they mean. And I think it's very interesting that he equates intellectualizing something with being neo-con and homophobic. Does one make you the other? I guess I never thought about it that way. He also doesn't seem to understand that when someone accuses you, based on your film, of subscribing to a certain set of ideas, that doesn't mean they are always right. However it doesn't mean that pointing those ideas makes them fervent followers of them. I actually don't even know what he's trying to say, it doesn't make any sense and he sounds really stupid saying it. The critics pointed out how homoerotic the movie is to deflate the toxic machismo that seems to permeate every frame of the damn thing. They said it to make fun of you mr. snyder, not gay people. The article acts as if no movie in the history of cinema had ever grossed a lot of money while receiving mostly negative reviews. It kinda happens all the time, and it's one of the great mysteries of life, hopefully this writer will sleep better knowing he has contributed much by way of public knowledge about the subject. What it seems to me, with all of this, is that Snyder made an irresponsible movie (and that's okay by the way). He made a politically irresponsible movie and he won't cop to it, I think he put a lot of shit in there without realizing it and refuses to admit it because he will come off as a buffoon. Well, tough shit, own up to it at least, I think that's what the Spartans would have wanted. That's the man's way of dealing with it.

The final part of this article that actually enraged me (the other stuff just kind of got on my nerves, whereas this part sent me off the fucking cliff). The writer attempts to make some half assed connection between why 300 succeeded and why Zodiac failed to attract any of that attention.

Oh no he didn't.

I've been harboring this ever since I became aware of the 70 million opening for 300. Dammit, that was Zodiac's money and it fucking earned it. Why a movie like 300, that is chest thumping, simple, comic book gore gets the audience, whereas a devastating, thoughtful, and supremely executed detective story like Zodiac gets none. Why can't they both get it? I imagine there are more than enough people in this country to make up for Zodiac's deficit, right? Why Zodiac didn't do well is for another blog, I want to dicuss why 300 did so well instead. The article supposes that is because David Fincher made the movie for himself and for no one else. That he wasn't thinking about the audience or the critics, only about himself. Well, moron, filmmaking is an extremely personal artform and in case you forgot, David Fincher's (along with several other thousand) name will be attached to this movie forever as not just the director, but as the guiding vision. If he doesn't make it for himself, than why make it in the first place? I hope this guy knows that his name and only his name will be attached to this shitty article forever, so he is not allowed to blame anybody else for this debacle. Second of all, the claim that Zodiac is somehow inaccesible is complete and utter bullshit. I have not been more enthralled by a movie like that for a long time, how is that not accessible. And obviously not every audience member shares the same tastes as me. But it doesn't really matter whether people like it or not but there is something in this movie for everyone to at least check out. To least buy a goddamn ticket. Also, God forbid, a director tells a story without the usual cinematic pay offs. God forbid he makes a murder mystery not about the violent porn of most serial killer movies (and stupid T.V. shows by the way) but about the cereberal and haunting life of its own that a case can take on when it infects the mind of ordinary human beings. God forbid a director attempt to show the transformation of a city and its media from mild indifference to the kind of paranoid delusions we still suffer from today. God forbid a director try to make a movie not about death, but about how life rebounds or doesn't from that death. Again, these are not radical concepts, merely interesting ideas explored with precision and depth by the makers of Zodiac. It is not like some kind of thought exercise that will only appeal to intellectuals (christ, I liked this movie) but rather a movie that poses a lot of interesting questions and theories but allows its audience to come to its own conclusion. Dammit, that's what filmmaking is all about and it pisses me off that because Fincher doesn't revel in bloodletting, he somehow has receeded into the dark corncers of artistic pretension, and that nobody should see his movie. That is complete and utter bullshit, to the highest degree. I loved Zodiac, I was into every single minute of it, and I watched it feeling as though I was in the hands of one of the most capable story tellers working today. Other than that, it was a weird and deeply confusing artistic experiment that left me feeling cold and indifferent because Fincher didn't include an ending where Jake Gyllenhall cuts off the Zodiac killer's head in slow motion with a battle axe while sreaming something about the glory of the San Francisco Chronicle. Oh yeah, everybody.

Okay, I've chewed everybody eyes and ears for about long enough now. I hope this rambling tale of magic and heroism made a little bit of sense. Again I should have prefaced this by saying I haven't seen 300 yet and maybe all of this is moot. However, I plan to and when I do, you will be the first to hear about it.

Go see Zodiac.

"i said johnny and i, we got lost tonight, but we doubled our chances we've got somewhere to go, we've got devils chasing us to hunt us down, and we know we can't go like this from now, i've got a feeling of you, and we danced for so long, i want your arms around me, said never gonna let you down, never gonna let you down, but i will always let you down "

Go ahead, Cornelius, you can cry.

I'm not going to post anything of my own today.

I would instead like you all to read this article from the L.A. Times about 300.

Try not to smash something...

300': It's just a movie -- or is it?
Call it a grand, vivid spectacle -- nothing more, nothing less.
PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
March 20, 2007

DON'T tell the critics, but "300" is a new kind of action movie, a clever synthesis of the stylized epic storytelling practiced by Peter Jackson in "Lord of the Rings" and the stop 'n' start fast-motion cutting of the Wachowski brothers' "Matrix" series. Let's call it Hyper Cinema. "300's" entire visual environment — its billowy wheat fields, its stormy gray skies, even blood that miraculously evaporates before it hits the ground — is a fabricated universe, created by 1,300 effects shots generated in a computer after the actors have gone home.

It's a gamer's view of the world that film critics don't relate to because they seem to have forgotten the kick they got from reading comics as kids. When I went to see "300" last week, the theater was full of scruffy guys who looked like they spent a lot more hours playing Final Fantasy X11 or God of War II than working out at the gym. In an era when it's increasingly difficult to reach young males, "300" offered a vivid spectacle of glistening pecs — as one admirer put it, "Ray Harryhausen crossed with Leni Riefenstahl" — that couldn't be replicated at home.

"We took a singular idea and went all the way with it, which I think resonates with audiences," director Zack Snyder, whose only other feature was a remake of "Dawn of the Dead," said on the phone from London. "It gives you that feeling that made you go to movies in the first place, as in 'Holy [smoke], that was awesome!' "

Populated with unknown actors, the retelling of the gory battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC was airily dismissed as hokum by America's leading critics.

Where the fanboys saw an easily identifiable theme — "me and my buddies are gonna band together and kick some butt" — critics spied pandering trash. The Boston Globe's Wesley Morris called "300" "action porn." The New York Times' A.O. Scott said " '300' is about as violent as ' Apocalypto' and twice as stupid." And the Washington Post's Stephen Hunter, dripping with disdain, exclaimed, "Go tell the Spartans that their sacrifice was not in vain; their long day's fight under the cooling shade of a million falling arrows safeguarded the West and guaranteed, all these years later, the right of idiots to make rotten movies about them."

Those idiots grossed $129.2 million in just 10 days. And Snyder says he wasn't perturbed by the nasty reviews. "Nah, I love 'em, they were funny," he says. "The reviews were so neo-con, so homophobic. They couldn't just go see the movie without trying to over-intellectualize it."

The critics were disturbed by a host of issues, not the least being the film's macho belligerence, cartoonish lack of interest in history and racial stereotyping of Xerxes' Persian hordes as dark-skinned, decadent club queens. But a key reason critics reacted so harshly is because they have been trained to value realism over fantasy, whether it is the stoic drama of Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" or the cool psychological precision of David Fincher's "Zodiac," which has flopped at the box office, despite critical raves.

"Zodiac" had everything a critic could love. It was smart, full of context and armed with a compelling narrative about an obsessive search for an enigmatic killer. Unfortunately, Fincher is a filmmaker who has little interest in what audiences — or studio executives — think about his movies. He makes them for himself.

In contrast, Snyder's "300," with its Xbox ethos, is a movie made for a generation of visual sensation seekers. Critics are largely shaped by the aesthetic of the cinematic past, which is why you often get the feeling they've been dragged, kicking and screaming, into a new world they describe as coarser, more superficial and less intellectually stimulating than the golden age of their moviegoing youth.

The complaints are almost always the same. "It's an epic without a dream," said one critic. "The loudness, the smash-and-grab editing, and the relentless pacing drive every idea from your head, and even if you've been entertained, you may feel cheated of some dimension — a sense of wonder, perhaps." Those words were written 30 years ago by Pauline Kael, reviewing "Star Wars."

If anyone knows how late critics come to the party, it is Fincher, whose breakthrough 1995 thriller "Se7en" was roundly dismissed by many of the same top critics who were "Zodiac's" biggest admirers. The Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern called it "ponderous," Time's Richard Schickel dubbed it "twaddle" and Newsweek's David Ansen described its style as being a cross between "a Nike commercial and a bad Polish art film."

Now that his work is more familiar, Fincher is considered an old master, at least compared with a nervy upstart like Snyder. As it turns out, the two men's backgrounds are surprisingly similar. Fincher, who is only four years older than the 40-year-old Snyder, began his career at ILM doing optical effects on George Lucas films before directing a series of commercials and music videos for everyone from Aerosmith to Paula Abdul. Snyder had a similar career path.

"I'm part of the 'Star Wars' generation — it's what made me want to become a director," Snyder says. "Blade Runner," "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Excalibur" — films he saw in his mid-teens — are the ones he cites as big influences.

It's obvious that Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" series has served as an influence as well. "300's" deformed hunchback, Ephialtes, who betrays the Spartans, is uncannily reminiscent, both in physical form and in moral ambiguity, to "LOTR's" Gollum.

Snyder has learned that film is a subliminal art, in the sense that he uses his visuals to supply the film's emotional underpinning. In "300," the sky is always dark and unsettled, as if to signal the bitter bloodshed to come. "We tried to make the sky reflect the emotion in the movie, which you can't do in a regular movie," he says. "That's what is great about this kind of green-screen filmmaking. It's not just the actors who matter. Every element in the frame supports the emotion of the moment."

Sadly, our critics, who seemed content with hooting at "300," have lost touch with what makes movies different from other art forms. Hollywood's mass-audience films are not a literary or an intellectual genre. Never have been, never will be. They are built around visuals and emotion, the two elements that "300" used to capture the public imagination.

No one understands this better than 13-year-old Tristan Rodman, who saw "300" (with his dad, since the film is R-rated). "I guess the critics have not liked the movie for the same reason that the majority of people in America did like it," he told me. "Most people just went to see it. Not for the acting or the story, which was just OK, but for the spectacle."

Tristan got a great thrill from seeing "300." And whether you're a critic or just a fanboy, isn't that what people have always gone to the movies for?



I will write more on this tomorrow, stay tuned...

Would You Erase Me?

Okay, another blog entry I've owed for a long time. I think it's pretty good though that the last entry I made was a little more than a week ago, the window is getting smaller. And I'me excited about that, maybe I can close it between a week next time.

Maybe...

So first things last, I need to give you guys an Oscar recap. The most pressing issue of the whole issue is how once again the Oscars took a lot of short cuts and rewarded films that didn't deserve nominations. I should break this down nomination by nomination, don't worry I'm not going to go through them all. And yes I am aware of the fact that they are almost a month old and therefore no longer relevant, so don't bother pointing that out.

Best Picture
The best of this lot was Babel, plain and simple. With The Queen and Letters From Iwo Jima a close second respectively. It seemed though as the announcement loomed that the award was up for grabs between the two least deserving titles, The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine. Don't get me wrong both films I enjoyed, but the Departed fucked up in a lot of vital areas that made it severely not great. And Little Miss Sunshine is just kind of slight, there are moments in that movie I love but others that just seem like they came out of the indie dysfunctional family cookbook. Watch this film and compare it with the much more delicate Squid and the Whale and you will see why the academy sucks so hard. But that makes sense the Oscars were never about making difficult choices, because these awards are for the regular movie going audience. Snide as that sounds it is not intended to be, what I mean is that the Oscars are meant for people who don't see a lot of movies for whatever reason that may be. The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine were the most popular at the box office and they were clearly the most widely seen. However, The Departed simply had the obvious distinction of an iconic american director and a classic genre studio movie. Compared to the upstart "indie" that Little Miss Sunshine claimed to be, the message from Hollywood was clear, tonight, we honor ourselves.

Best Director
I was against all the buzz I was hearing about Scorsese winning. I thought this was another of those Academy covering their own asses and giving an award to a nominee for a career that they so callously ignored in years past, rather than the film at hand. And yes Scorsese should have won it many times for many other films in the 70's and 80's (except when he lost against Redford, if there was some way they could have tied that would have been acceptable, Ordinary People for life). And yes he is a great filmmaker and one of most influential of pure craft of any other american director. However, when it came down to it, he made a film that was more interested in piling up bodies than about whether or not anybody cared about those bodies. I remember reading an article (spoilers ahead, stop reading if you haven't seen the movie) where Scorsese said one of his main stipulations in agreeing to do this movie was that everybody had to die, plain and simple. I think he just had this idea in his head that he was going to do something radical in a mainstream movie and kill off all the big stars so that he could get across his message that our world is rotting from within. I just think the job he did on the departed was more interested in the destination than the journey. Paul Greengrass on the other hand, took an extremely difficult subject matter and handled it with such precision and with nary a mis step that it's breathtaking. He made a better film and he had a lot more at stake between the two of them and when it comes down to a directorial award, that should come into consideration. Anyway, the point of all this is, all was forgiven when I saw Coppola, Spielberg, and Lucas giving the award to their pal. I gave in, it was very nice to see at least for a few seconds and in a completely staged proceeding that some people can remain friends in this business for so many years. I'm glad he won, he just should have pulled a Ving Rhames and given it to Greengrass out of gratitude. That's all I got to say.

Best Screenplay (Original and Adapted)
Once again the Screenplay award fucked up, they really never get this one right. The same I said for best picture applied for these two awards (Won by Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed). As far as adaptations go, I think Children of Men should be studied in classes for many years to come as a model of a pristine film adaptation. The amount of information conveyed in that script without any kind of expository tidal waves and the amount that they pared down to get to the essential meat of the story really makes the movie in my opinion. And it's easy to lose sight of that admist the visual miracles being performed but watch it again and see how subtly and convincingly the writers give us a world with unlimited possibilities and how easily they get right to it, like they've been living there all along. As for original, Pan's Labyrinth connects two stories in a way that seems to just flow rather than grasp for any kind of thematic resonance. The way Del Toro handles his material gives the sense that he has had this material inside of him for a long time and he knew it down to every single beat and pause. Michael Arndt's script, while charming had a lot of snappy zingers in it and uses a lot of easy characterizations to make emotional shortcuts. It's a good script but Del Toro's script feels like a fairy tale, artful and timeless.

Okay that's enough, I've chewed everyone's ear off enough about how I think I have all the answers and the academy just misses the boat year after year. Obviously none of this really matters, the movies are the movies and they will stay that way for all of us to enjoy and argue about for years to come. By no means is this a definitive answer, and really, I don't know what I'm talking about.

I think I'm going to call it a evening on that note, next time, a thrilling post on the week that was Bike Week 2007. On that note, keep smiling america.

"where 24 turn 25, i heard you try to take your life, why
you don't realy know.

where 24 turn 25, there so much pression in this times to be
something that you don't.

where 24 turn 25, i try to hold your head up high, why
well i don't realy know.

where 24 turn 25, make this the best time on your life, why
i don't realy know."

And the winds to gravel roads.

Last night's entry came through only as an aborted one. I planned to write a small re-cap of what has happened to me in the past week, but it felt like the words were being rippped untimely from my brain. I gave up and settled on quoting a really good tom waits song instead.

But now I'm here to settle a few scores.

I need to gush for a second, I just saw Josh Ritter at the el rey and I think he is one of the greatest musicians alive today. I know I say that a lot, but his lyrical abilities are astounding, not to mention is excellent guitar plucking skills. He's also damn funny and a great peformer, see what I mean? I'll sum it up this way, the album version of Thin Blue Flame is jaw dropping but hearing him play that with just an acoustic guitar will make your heart swell. He really is a great man, I just can't get enough of him now. Just listen for one of his songs in A Slow Dissolve, used ingeniously by the way, and it's one I can't get out of my head. But that's a good thing, not a bad thing like the Beyonce medley I had in there a while ago.

A post script to that, the submarines are also really good too. For just a guy, a girl, two guitars, a couple random instruments and a laptop they know how to make some shit happen. My appreciation for them was deepened greatly by this performance.

A quick recap of some movies I've seen recently, I think last time we talked, I had just seen Letters from Iwo Jima. Since then I haven't seen much, let me think actually.

The Lives of Others
Definitely deserved the academy award, if only it hadn't been up against Pan's Labyrinth. I hate to make choices like that, but seriously Lives of Others is pretty flawless. It's recreation of the Stasi in the mid-80's of Germany feels monotonously real and the passion of the film is subdued to the very end when it hits you and it feels like a great story has just been told.

The Astronaut Farmer
I have a soft spot for movies like this (see Millions) but rest assured this one is really good (also see millions). First of all, it's beautifully shot with some surreal and beautiful desert farm landscapes that can only really exist in movies or places where you live. It's got a great flippant sense of humor that refuses to rest when the hokier parts of the story threaten to take it over. The Polish Farmers are not just merry pranksters, they mean every word of what they say, and I think it can be as cheesey as it wants to be, cause the shit's real.

Breach
A damn compelling and fine film. Chris Cooper is scary good, real scary good. Billy Ray furthers the promise he showed in Shattered Glass, I could definitely see him becoming a buttoned down Michael Mann. His ability to peer into the minds of working men is un parallleled in hollywood. He just does it to the stiffs who work in an un funny version of the office. What is most interesting about Breach is how it explores the contradiction inherent in the intelligence system. It's designed to deal with some of the most melodramatic and epic shifts in human history. Yet its operators are taught to be detached liars who keep secrets from everyone so that they can operate with as little emotional influence as possible. Ray nails that and it makes breach a fantastic character piece.

That's pretty much it for now, I need a full blog for an oscar re cap. Look at...the craziness

Also everyone needs to play laser tag with Gabe at some point in their lives. Especially if he uses his trademark method he crafted at action zone, to see that in action again is like watching kareem pull off a sky hook. But seriously Gabe, any time you're up for it again, color me tickled pink. I'm really itching to get back into the fog machine filled sweat covered, acne and dirty kids infested Doogan controlled arena that is laser tag. Also we gotta beat to those kids next time, that was really embarassing. I'm waiting.

"Though I'm here in this far off place
My air is not this time and space
I draw you close with every breath
you don't know it's right until it's wrong
You don't know it's yours until it's gone
I didn't know that it was home ‘til you up and left"

San Diego Serenade

I never saw the morning til I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine til you turned out the light
I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody, until I needed a song.

I never saw the white line, til I was leaving you behind
I never knew I needed you til I was caught up in a bind
I never spoke i love you til I cursed you in vain,
I never felt my heartstrings until I nearly went insane.

I never saw the east coast til I move to the west
I never saw the moonlight until it shone off your breast
I never saw your heart til someone tried to steal,
Tried to steal it away
I never saw your tears until they rolled down your face.