matthewgruman.com

Spring, Vancouver. It’s SPRING.

If you’ve never tried Matzo Brah, now is the perfect time (impress your Jewish friends for Passover!) It’s delicious and ridiculously easy to make:

1. Crack your matzo into small pieces and soak in hot water for ~1 minute, depending on how soggy/crisp you want it.
2. Drain the water through a strainer.
3. Add eggs, use a 2:3 matzo:egg ratio and adjust for next time if it’s too eggy, by beating them into the wet matzo.
4. Pan fry (I use butter) at about a half inch thickness until it starts to brown, then flip and do the same for the other side. Either make them in person-sized portions, or fry it all up and cut up later.
5. Add salt and enjoy!

As with most Jewish cooking, the more butter/salt/oil the better. Also like most Jewish cooking, you can add raisins and cinnamon to sweeten it up. I’ve known people who eat it with jam or maple syrup, too.

“The very idea that I’ve just put some songs onto your site and I can now listen to them easily anywhere in the world is just blowing me away. Actually useful websites are a rare and wonderful thing.”
-Matthew Gruman, Canadian Pop Singer

When did this happen? Anywhere.fm is a very cool web app: it works like an online iTunes. I can’t figure out which title I prefer.

My favourite thing about this website is knowing when friends Google themselves and end up here.

My other favourite thing is the “I’m Listening To” sidebar. I got a new iMac at work, so my old one was handed down to a co-worker. I was using an old version of the AudioScrobbler plugin and I can’t figure out how to get rid of it, so now I (and you) know what’s being listened to in the office when I’m not around.

• Josh: my brother who works as an engineer for an oil company.
• Matthew: me.

Josh: [...] so the problem is that everything was coked up…
Me: What? Coked up?
Josh: Yeah; do you know what coke is?
Me: Well yes, but that can’t possibly be what you meant…
Josh: No no, not drugs or pop. It’s pressurized oil before it reaches a coal-like stage. There wasn’t enough circulation, so it all condensed to coke.
Me: OH!!!!
Josh: There you go; now you have three definitions for “coked up”.

The chances of me actually making the final, published dictionary are pretty low, but this is still one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me.

Fashion and style are not interchangeable. You can be the most fashionable person in the world and still have absolutely no sense of style. Conversely, the most stylish people in the world rarely, if ever, follow fashion.

Style is static. If you had a real sense of style in 1954, you probably still look stylish today. Fashion, on the other hand, is what creates things like mullets, scrunchies, neon colours, and other awful things that make you embarrassed years later.

Fashion can only be stylish by coincidence.

“They’re after a sense of purpose, work-life balance, fun, variety, respect, and the opportunity to do ‘real’ work that makes a difference. Arguably everyone wants these things from a job but the difference with Generation Y is they’ll talk with their feet when their needs are not fulfilled.”

Cast

• Me – played by me; sardined into a bus seat with a guitar
• GoB – Guy on Bus who sardined me into a bus seat

Conversation

Heading to band practice, some guy sat down next to me and started talking about guitar, eventually asking if I play spiritual music and seemed very disturbed by my “it depends” answer.

GoB: So you’re coming from work?

Me: Yup

GoB: Oh out at UBC? What do you do?

Me: [explains what I do]… what about you? What do you do?

GoB: Oh I’m doing some classes at UBC… and, you know, I preach the word [shows me a copy of the New Testament]

Me: Which classes are you taking? [trying to steer the conversation away from God]

GoB: [something intelligible]. Do you know God?

Me: Do I know God?!

GoB: Yeah, do you know God?

Me: Well no, of course not. Who knows God?

GoB: What?! Lots of people know God!

Me: Not on a face to face basis or anything. I’ve never met God. You can’t take a spiritual being and try to fit them in a corporal word.

GoB: But God can take any form!

Me: Well yeah, but that’s not really God, is it? I mean, anyone can pretend to be something else, but it doesn’t mean you actually know them.

GoB: You have to be very powerful to meet God, though.

Me: Well I’d hope so! There are a lot of people; if God wasted his time on the ones who weren’t powerful, nothing would ever get done.

GoB: Haha, you’re right!

Me: Wait; where are we? Did we pass Burrard? I think I missed my stop…

GoB: HAHA! I don’t know where we are!

Me: Oh man… I think I missed it. I’m going to blame you.

GoB: And God will blame you!