music – Page 2 – Looking to God

The Sims

Posted on June 13, 2014May 10, 2017 by Jack Flacco

For a few weeks now, I’ve been rediscovering an old game I thought I had put away for good. My youngest is to blame since all I’ve been hearing in the house is The Sims 3 theme song. No, I haven’t been playing The Sims 3, but instead dusted off my copy of The Sims 2 and have lost myself in the pixels somewhere between my mouse and the game environment.

Electronic Arts' The Sims Games — Electronic Arts’ The Sims Games

If you haven’t played any of The Sims games, it’s an experience. As I’d mentioned, it’s been a rediscovery for me, given I have a virtual canvas to create the family, community and town I’ve always dreamed of. It’s a thrill to place myself in the game as a character to see what I’m capable of within the confines of a controlled environment. I say this with a smirk on my face knowing how deceptive a game environment can be. I’ll explain more about that later.

Now, The Sims 2 is an old game according to today’s technology standards. It came out back in the mid-2000s and soon spawned multiple stuff and expansion packs, adding to the game’s potential as life’s little petri dish.

I’ll never forget when I opened the game interface for the very first time. I really didn’t know what to do. I mean, here was this small community with floating green diamonds over the houses, and I had no clue as to what the goal was. First, I’d thought it was another SimCity game complete with animated people to control, but then I didn’t see the people. Second, I’d thought I needed to create houses and create a virtual economy. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. It took several attempts to understand I had to play the game at a more familiar level, the family level. Once I discovered how to enter the homes in the town, life became interesting. All it took was a double-click of my mouse and I unlocked a virtual home complete with appliances, electronics and kids fighting. No different from any other family.

Anyway, that was the first time I’d played the game almost a decade ago. Today, since The Sims 2 is open-ended, my goals have changed. I play a more leisurely game. Contrary to previous years, I haven’t built my own house yet complete with pool, Jacuzzi and big screen TV, but I have explored the various other communities available through the expansion packs with my Sim. My Sim now knows how to swim, paint, play darts and chess, workout and countless of other activities. My Sim puts me to shame for my sitting on my rump in a passive stupor.

As for the controlled environment I’d mentioned earlier, it is rather controlled, yes. You can’t kill your Sim on purpose, but you can certainly try. Nothing prevents a player to throw their Sim into a pool and removing the ladder or tossing them into a room and removing the door, thereby starving them to death. Or it doesn’t even prevent a player from starting a fire in the kitchen and watching the Sim go up in flames in a ball of charred cinder.

Fun stuff for a Freedom Friday, huh?

My favorite part about The Sims 2 is decorating the house with Christmas props, presents and all that jolly yuletide madness, and celebrating Christmas year-round. Better still, how about Halloween all year long? Who wouldn’t want all those spooky decorations plastered all over the walls and furniture? I know I would. Who knows maybe one day, the zombies will come knocking on the door.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION, on sale October 21.

Have you played The Sims 2 or any of the other Sims games? If not, what is your favorite game?

My Playlists

Posted on March 7, 2014May 10, 2017 by Jack Flacco

Over the course of years, I’ve changed music players, I’ve changed computers, but I haven’t changed my playlists. If anything, I’ve created more. Under last count, I have fewer than one hundred playlists. Now, you might wonder what these playlists do. Come into my Freedom Friday parlor said the author to the reader.

For those who haven’t used playlists before, they provide a music enthusiast a means by which to create a song lineup. That’s it. Simple, don’t you think? Playlists are the digital equivalent of old-style mixtape. For those of us who remember mixtapes, much of their content depended on how much music we could fit in a small cassette tape. The typical size of these tapes ranged between sixty to ninety minutes in length. Many of the older vinyl albums the music corporations distributed had a typical running time of forty-five minutes.

A lot of folks back in the early days of portable players would copy their favorite album on tape and then carry around the tape to play in their car or on their Walkman. Yeah, we’re talking ancient history here. Others had more creativity in their bones and wanted to create their own tapes based on their taste in music. They scrounge from one album to the next to cherry-pick the song they always wanted to hear in a certain order. These tapes would then make the rounds among friends and become part of a community of enthusiasts appreciating each other’s work.

Fascinating stuff, huh?

Let’s get back to my playlists. When I first discovered I could create mixtapes on my music player—I mean, playlists—I went nuts. I chose my favorite artists and added them to their own playlists based on the chronological release date of their studio albums. I can’t tell you how much I had wanted to do that since the early days. I enjoy the continuity the playlists have and the vibe. After all, we’re talking about the artists’ discography presented in a way never dreamed of before by the record labels.

I next tackled mixtape playlists. I know what you’re thinking, “I thought you did that with the chronological ones, dude.” Well, I did, but I didn’t. Remember what I said about mixtapes? I picked a generous helping of songs with common themes. For instance, I created inspirational playlists, power playlists, college playlists. Each one reflecting what I felt at a certain time in my life. I’m proud of the college one the most since it contains modern instrumental pieces tailored after a sunrise/sunset vibe.

My absolute favorite playlist, and the one I took a long time to put together, is the oldies playlist. The songs come from a pool of 50’s and 60’s music put together to play at random on a Saturday night. When I first got married, a radio station in Toronto played nothing but oldies on a Saturday night. If I remember correctly, the show went by the name of Saturday Night Oldies. I think it’s still around, but I haven’t checked in a while. Anyway, I wanted to recreate that experience on my music player. Whenever I listen to the lineup on a Saturday night, all those memories flood my brain:

That night when we painted our new apartment before moving in
All the rides home alone after spending time together
Driving her home from the movies

I never tire by what music can do. A simple song can unlock a vast wealth of experiences we thought we’d forgotten. It can make us jump, it can make us cry. One thing’s for certain, it can take us right back to where we were the instant it played for the first time in our lives. That, in itself, is an amazing feat.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, now on sale.

Have you created playlists for your music player? If not, have you ever tried online jukeboxes built on your song preferences?

Freedom Friday, Other Things

The Love for a Child

Posted on February 21, 2014May 10, 2017 by Jack Flacco

There comes a time in people’s lives when they have to decide what they want out of life. For some, they know as soon as they’re born. For others, it takes a lifetime. That’s a lifetime of going through the motions of living, making mistakes, hurting—but learning—learning what makes them tick, what makes them feel, what makes them happy.

No one ever said life is easy. In some respect, it’s not. It’s a matter of perspective. The choices will either encourage change in a person or force them to resist. One thing’s for certain, change will happen, whether someone wants it or not.

When I was a young boy, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I had creativity in my blood. On my mother’s side, music dominated our genes to produce a multitude of musical geniuses including a symphony composer and conductor in South America. On my father’s side, sports lives in the Flacco blood. The Flaccos have always pushed the limits in anything they put their hand to.

Then, there’s me. My story? I drifted. After finishing high school, I went from knowing I wanted to be a writer to working in blue-collar factories for seven years. If that wasn’t enough to learn a lesson, I then went into accounting for another seven years. That’s fourteen years—gone. That’s not including the added distraction of wanting to be a rock star. I mentioned that somewhere, didn’t I? Yes, I studied musical composition in Toronto, following the lead of my mom’s gene pool. Suffice it to say things didn’t work out quite as expected.

Ages later, after many hits and misses, I’m happy to say I’m doing the very thing I should have pursued right from grade school when the inkling of being a writer sprung into my mind.

Now, I’m going to play the part of devil’s advocate here and say a few things folks may not like. Kids know what they want to be. I really believe that. I believe kids not only know what they want to do with their lives, but they express it from an early age. They’re not going to say straight out “I want to be a doctor” or “I want to be an astronaut” or even say anything at all. Sometimes they’ll say it in the most beautiful and powerful language known to us—the language of doing.

A child may draw all day, may dance, sing, read, write, swim, laugh, throw, act, play, jump, crawl, watch butterflies float, dream upon the clouds, help mom bake, help dad put the car back together, mow the lawn and yes, shovel the driveway—the point is they’re telling us what they’re good at.

So my Freedom Friday question is this: Why on earth would anyone want to discourage them from being anything other than what they’re good at?

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, now on sale.

Do you have kids? Do you know what they’re good at?

Freedom Friday

Browsing

Posted on November 29, 2013December 2, 2013 by Jack Flacco

I have a ritual I perform every weekend during this time of year. I’m not sure if anyone else does the same thing, but it satisfies my hunger for something different. What do I do? Early in the morning on a Saturday or Sunday, I’m talking 7:00am, or late in the evening, 11:00pm, I hop into my car and head to Wal-Mart.

Paying for a good find (Photo Credit: Unknown)

Then, I stroll.

Yup. I amble through the aisles with one intention—to study the shelves. Why? I ask a lot of questions, don’t I? Well, how else would you enjoy Freedom Friday without my questions?

Getting back to my story, as I wander adjacent the neatly stacked shelves of the all-you-can-eat consumer buffet, I take note of the prices of items, how many sit on the shelves and the need of such items for our family. Things like picture frames seem always to make an appearance in my journeys since I’m rarely without my camera taking a shot of something interesting out in the wild. So when a nice picture frame comes on the market, I take notice of its quality and price.

Another item I look at is the TVs, then notice how my antiquated Sony Wega 32-inch CRT is so 1999. Every time I head to the electronics section, I lose myself perusing the digital displays hanging along the wall. Oh, to have one of those 80-inch TVs invade our home. But then I’d wonder where would we put it? There’s the whole problem of getting it into the house. Okay, that wouldn’t present too much of a problem since we have a double-door entryway, but where would we hang the thing? Seriously? We’re talking about finding a wall or an area filled with—virtually nothing. Hard to do in our house, considering we have stuff hanging everywhere.

Nice to dream.

Next stop, the book section. I love looking through the new releases, the older picks and the discounted items. I love the smell of the paper when I flip the pages, the look of the lettering when glancing at the covers, and the feel of the whole package in my hand. I get a high off of the gloss or matte finish the publishers use.

I need to buy more books.

Then I come upon the music section. Oh, how music inspires me. There isn’t a moment I don’t have the headphones on with some music playing in the background as I perform my daily routine. In this instance, I browse their CDs to check out the newest artists, albums, songs, and maybe even listen to a few samples.

Is there a point to this post? I suppose there is.

Every now and again, I enjoy browsing simply for the sake of browsing to see what stores have available. I also find it relaxing since I do not feel the pressure to buy anything. When I do come across an item that I deem as a good deal, I snap it up without a second thought.

I think browsing is a lost art form that presents unlimited possibilities on the budget.

And who knows, maybe one day I might just replace that old Sony Wega 32-inch CRT with one of those fancy widescreen monsters everyone raves about. It would certainly make for a wonderful surprise for the folks at home.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, now on sale.

Do you browse the store shelves? Have you found any treasures in your travels?

Freedom Friday

My Room

Posted on August 30, 2013August 22, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Growing up I spent a lot of time in my room. Not because my parents punished me or anything. I just liked the time alone to do stuff I enjoyed doing without interference from the outside world. In some ways, I still do that whenever I withdraw from everyone to write my zombie tales of madness and survival. Let me give you a quick peek into my formative years for Freedom Friday, this way you’ll know where I’m coming from whenever I insert a reference of some obscure book, movie or music into my insane writings.

I value my time alone. How’s that for an attention-getting statement? Life moves fast. If I don’t slow down, I’ll end up wishing I had spent more time smelling the roses. I know it’s a cliché, but it works in this case—the smelling of the roses bit, that is.

As a boy, growing up in an active Italian family, I didn’t have time to think about the future. I was having too much fun enjoying the present running around with all my cousins. Not a weekend went by that we weren’t doing something with my relatives, whether it was cooking a BBQ, eating a gigantic meal or stuffing ourselves with oversized sandwiches.

Given my parents had four siblings apiece, it’s debatable since I don’t have my mom’s full history, our get-togethers were massive feasts of food and fun. My dad had recorded some of those events on one of those Super 8 cameras he had purchased. Back then, video did not come from a phone you concealed in your pocket, but from a clunky, old brick you held in your hand. Every so often I’d watch them wondering whatever happened to everybody.

When I reached the age of self-awareness, a teenager (a.k.a. the age of reason), I’d spent a good chunk of my time in my room. I don’t know why. I mean, I had friends and all, and my parents had friends, but I felt as though I needed time to understand who I was.

I learned I enjoyed playing chess. I remember having bought a portable electronic chess game that would play me on different levels, including grandmaster. I can’t say how many hours I’d dedicated to the game, by now most of that is lost in my memory. Yet, because of the time I’d poured into it, my team in grade school went on to win second place in the Ontario Regional Chess Tournament for that year.

About a year later, my interests had changed and my mind had focused more on music than anything else. I learned how to play the guitar. I guess I was pretty good ‘cause I played gigs with a few bands and had my own band by the end of high school.

How can I ever forget those summer nights when I knew my neighbors had gone to some party, and I’d be in my room, cranking out the tunes on my Gibson imitation. My poor parents. They put up so much with me, it’s a wonder they hadn’t disowned me by the time I had completed puberty.

In all this, I discovered Shakespeare. My first exposure to the behemoth playwright was in the ninth grade English class where we began studying The Merchant of Venice. At the time, I couldn’t get my head around a man possessed with the thought of collecting a pound of flesh for a debt owed. It became an obsession with me to want to find out what it all meant.

A pound of flesh? From where? The arm? The thigh? The buttocks? And when Shylock gets his pound of flesh, what will he do with it? Will he use it to heat his home? Will it be a mantelpiece for use in conversations? Or…will he reduce himself to zombie status and eat it?

From there I went on to devour Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the intense, once-a-year-read Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet. Oh, how I fell in love with the notion of lovers wanting to sacrifice their lives for each other. It haunted my nights. It made my days nightmares. I had obsessed over the book. I read, reread, and reread the text, going to the library searching for commentaries to hear what the experts had to say. I wondered how a story so simple could make me feel so insignificant. I contemplated on those last moments when Juliet held the dagger in her hand, waiting to thrust it deep within her bowels so she could be with her lover once again, Romeo.

“O happy dagger. This is thy sheath.”

During my formative years, my room became my sanctuary.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale October 22.

Do you have memories of wanting to spend time in your room? What did you do? Did you learn anything?

Freedom Friday

Naked

Posted on March 15, 2013March 12, 2013 by Jack Flacco

The Goo Goo Dolls’ Naked is a song that speaks to the heart. So many people have had so many interpretations for this anthem that no one’s willing to come forward to say it definitely means anything. For my Freedom Friday post I’d like to tell you what I think of this song and of what it means to me.

Recorded in 1995, Naked by The Goo Goo Dolls has raised questions among musical aficionados everywhere. Some have attributed this song to the band’s struggles with stardom within the music scene. Some have said this song is more about loneliness. To whom shall we lend credence?

When I first heard the song, it made me stop and listen. Something about it gripped my imagination and stirred my conscience. I suppose we all have something that moves us. An event. A photograph. This song, however, gave me pause, and I don’t think I would have looked beyond the meaning of the lyrics if it wasn’t for the Stairway to Heaven tribute guitar solo three-quarters the way through.

Now, I know you may be unfamiliar with the song, so I decided to reprint the lyrics here for your reading pleasure.

Naked

Yeah I’m fadin’ and I call out
No one hears me
Never been, never felt, never thought I’d say a word

Weighed down
Safe now

You’re naked inside your fear
You can’t take back all those years
And shots in the dark from empty guns
Are never heard by anyone
Never heard by anyone

Yeah I’m hiding in the fallout
Now I’m wasted
They don’t need me, don’t want me, don’t hear a word I say

Weighed down
Safe now

You’re naked inside your fear
You can’t take back all those years
And shots in the dark from empty guns
Are never heard by anyone
Never heard by anyone

Inside your head
No one’s there
And I don’t think I’ll ever be
And I don’t care

You’re naked inside your fear
You can’t take back all those years
And shots in the dark from empty guns
Are never heard by anyone
Never heard by anyone
By anyone
By anyone

The verse that absolutely shines for me is “you’re naked inside your fear.” I thought about this a lot. I think what it means is in our most vulnerable state—naked—fear is what dictates our behavior. This could mean physical or non-physical nakedness. Fear is a powerful component to our willingness to either live a life befitting of joy or walk around like zombies, never experiencing life’s true happiness.

Additionally, true joy, joy without fear, is being naked to the world having love in our hearts and in our minds. It’s not being afraid of injury by anyone while we accomplish the mission to love others as ourselves. Not to sound too preachy but to me, if we love others as ourselves, we’ve done all we could do to live a life worth living.

Have you ever heard of the song Naked? What do you think the underlying message is?

Freedom Friday

My Music

Posted on February 1, 2013February 2, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Music is a big thing in my life. So I thought for Freedom Friday I’d give you a peek into my iPod to show you what I have.

Most of the songs and albums I possess have a story attached to them. You know the ones—my first love (Nadia’s Theme by Roger Williams), my first kiss (Sometimes When We Touch by Dan Hill)—those kinds of stories. Although I don’t remember why on earth I have I Touch Myself by Divinyls, I’m quite proud to show off my AC/DC collection including my prized Girls Got Rhythm. How’s that for going from sappy to randy in two sentences?

Growing up, the big song I had playing on my record player was Gonna Fly Now by Bill Conti. Everyone I knew was into the jogging thing, and there wasn’t a time I didn’t see someone running in the streets looking like Rocky. Pretty weird, if you ask me. Really though, I think I’ve heard the Rocky album well over five hundred times. I had purchased it in vinyl, which I still have, tape, CD and now it rests safely in my iPod as part of a mix of kick-in-the-pants power songs. I told my wife, if I ever fall off a cliff, she could bury me with my Rocky album. I’m sure where I’m going they’ll have record players.

I drifted for a while out of high school and listened to such hits as Juke Box Hero by Foreigner, Hungry Heart by Bruce Springsteen, and Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey. Those songs played on the radio during those cold, frosty nights in January when I’d grab a snack at Tim Horton’s. They reflected my life going from one job to another supporting a dream of one day becoming a rock star. Well we all know how that turned out. I have yet to receive a call to judge American Idol.

After a long absence from school, I enrolled in college. By this time, I was a bit older, a bit wiser and hadn’t lost myself in deviant behavior to warrant counseling by a Catholic priest. I had also purchased a Sony Walkman to keep me entertained between classes during study hall. I had tapes of Led Zeppelin to keep me out of trouble. Songs such as Good Times Bad Times, Whole Lotta Love, Gallows Pole, Over the Hills and Far Away, Kashmir, and Stairway to Heaven went well with my studies on the intricacies of system analysis and design.

Once I got married, I’d mellowed out some. My wife and I enjoyed old movies on a Saturday night, so I went for crooners like Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra, devouring everything they had made. I have Dean Martin’s Best of album I used to play in the car on my way to work. I must have raised a few eyebrows at traffic lights. While teenagers had the Spice Girls blaring in their cars, I was singing at the top of my lungs to the chorus of That’s Amore.

I was so weird.

As time went on, my love for the oldies afforded me to purchase musicals such as South Pacific, which led to my current love of movie scores. The second of which (I already had Rocky) had to be Raiders of the Lost Ark. Had to be, because it was one of the first movies I saw in glorious THX where the sound of punches were like bombs. Who can deny me the Raiders March? Tada rump dum, tada rump…

I now have a list of favorite composers who I listen to during the day. I call these composers power composers because their music has that quality to excite a person to achieve great things. Here they are: Marco Beltrami, Steve Jablonsky, Hans Zimmer, of course, Klaus Badelt, John Powell and John Williams. I tell ya, whenever I hear their music, it makes me feel like a superhero crashing through a brick wall.

What’s on your iPod? Do you remember where you were when a certain song played on the radio in a coffee shop?

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