Thomas Irvin.com

Welcome to Thomas Irvin.com. This is a total lifestyle immersion site, where you can learn about how to be more like Thomas Irvin, as well as how to embrace unchecked narcissism. Actually, the purpose of this site is to demonstrate in spectacular fashion just how silly personal web sites are.

If this is your first time here, allow me to direct you to two of my personal favorite features...

The Music section features previews of songs from my forthcoming album. If you like guitar-based pop music with heavy '60s and '80s influences, you might enjoy my songs. If you like Rickenbacker guitars and Vox amplifiers, you might enjoy my songs. Or if you like the Beatles, the Buzzcocks, and Burt Bacharach, you might enjoy my songs.

The Similar-Sounding Songs section grew out of a list I compiled of songs that sound similar. Here I present excerpts from those songs, so you can judge for yourself if you think they're particularly similar or just vaguely similar. You can also judge for yourself if this is a fascinating musicological study or just a minor brain defect of mine.

The other sections are all windows into the world of Thomas Irvin, but the aforementioned sections may be the best places to start.

Thank you for visiting,

Thomas

NEWS

30 January 2008 Are you like me in that you positively hate the online ads that feature dancing people done with Flash animation? Well I started to notice something about these ads—they all come from the same company, LowerMyBills.com, which is a division of Experian. They're one of the "big three" credit agencies in the U.S., and it occurs to me that the public isn't holding them accountable for this asinine animation by their subsidiary. I worked in advertising for years, and I think I know the right way to get the public's attention. And creepy-looking dancing figures isn't it.

So here's my solution: let's all just write some courteous, yet strongly-worded letters to the marketing people at Experian. Demand that this advertising travesty cease immediately! Their Vice-President of Public Affairs (which seems like a good place to start) is one Donald Girard, and his email address is donald.girard@experian.com.

Do it now while you're thinking about it. I thank you, the public thanks you, and the spirit of Leo Burnett thanks you.

21 August 2007 Earlier this summer, I'd walk past this sign every weekday on my way to the bar review classes. Finally today I remembered to take a picture of it. Yes, it's called the U.S. Photo Passport Fingerprint Smoothie Center. It's on the north side of Adams street, somewhere between LaSalle and Dearborn (can't recall where exactly), in the middle of Chicago's Loop. Oh, and I went in, and sure enough, they take passport photos, do fingerprinting, and make smoothies. That's truth in advertising! The proprietor was such a nice guy that I wished I had some need for a passport photo, fingerprints, or a smoothie.

8 July 2007 Well, I graduated and all that a few weeks ago. I said goodbye to my beloved Cleveland (and I mean that quite sincerely) and am now in Chicago (Logan Square area) studying for the bar exam.

I have a terrible feeling that I won't be able to pass the bar on charm alone.

12 April 2007 A few days ago I sent in the official paperwork to take the Illinois bar exam. I'll be moving to Chicago immediately after graduation (May 20). Hire me!

13 February 2007 There's a controversy in my home state of Nebraska about possibly changing the official state song from "Beautiful Nebraska" to a new song called "I Love Nebraska," the extremely cheesy video of which can be seen here. This would be, in my estimation, a terrible idea, so I've created the parody video below. Feel free to share it with your friends and relations.

7 February 2007 Well, since last updating, I've returned from summer in New York City. It was remarkable. My fall semester was good. Now I find myself in my final semester of law school. I anticipate that updates will continue to be spotty until graduation in May.

Anybody want to hire a freshly-minted law school graduate?

9 June 2006 I love a clever turn of a phrase, inversion of a word (upstart/startup, takeout/outtake), anagrams, and what-have-you. So I was delighted to see this brilliant re-use of a wet paint sign in a subway this week.

Things in New York are generally good so far; I'm enjoying work very much and the place where I'm living (International House) is great.

7 May 2006 Today's New York Times Sunday Magazine has an excellent article on how contraception is increasingly under attack by conservatives:

One excerpt:

At a White House press briefing in May of last year, three months before the F.D.A.'s nonruling on Plan B, Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked four times by a WorldNetDaily correspondent, Les Kinsolving, if the president supported contraception. "I think the president's views are very clear when it comes to building a culture of life," McClellan replied. Kinsolving said, "If they were clear, I wouldn't have asked." McClellan replied: "And if you want to ask those questions, that's fine. I'm just not going to dignify them with a response." This exchange caught the attention of bloggers and others. In July, a group of Democrats in Congress, led by Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, sent the first of four letters to the president asking outright: "Mr. President, do you support the right to use contraception?" According to Representative Maloney's office, the White House has still not responded.

If you care about individual liberty, ask your elected officials (and particularly candidates) where they stand on this.

3 May 2006 As expected, law school has reconsumed my life. I'm in the middle of second semester finals right now. Following finals, I'm delighted to say I'll be spending my summer in NYC, working for BMI. If you'll be in the city and want to get together, drop me a line.

19 November 2005 It might be an over-used word, but I can only describe tonight as surreal. If you had told me back in, oh, 1988 that in 17 years I would see Bauhaus play a show (in of itself unthinkable back then) and that it would finish at 10:00, and that I would then hear an easy-listening version of Echo & the Bunnymen's "Lips Like Sugar" in a pizza joint afterwards––and be home by 11:00––I would have never believed you. Yet that's what happened tonight.

13 November 2005 I've been thinking about online identities. I have several, and none are pseudonyms. I'd feel funny if I did employ pseudonyms, I think. If you're the type that enjoys online stalking, check me out at Friendster or MySpace or The Facebook or even Amazon.com. Oh, and then there's the LiveJournal identity I made so I could comment on others' blogs, and now it seems I'll need to make one for Blogger accounts, too. It never ends.

8 November 2005 After reading a number of blogs in which people complain about having colds, I feel I must chime in on the subject. There's no reason to suffer! We may not have the proverbial "cure" for the common cold yet, but we've got treatments that will lay the cold germ on its ass. I haven't had a serious cold in years. Here are my secrets...

First off, keep your hands away from your nose. That's the most important thing. Cold germs set up shop in noses, and they generally get there when we inadvertently touch our noses. So don't touch your nostril area, ever, unless you've just washed your hands. And that's item number two: wash hands often. Certainly every time you find yourself in the restroom.

Okay, so maybe you're already doing the first two. And you get that sore throat feeling that says you're getting a cold. There's still hope! Some people swear by echinacea and other home remedies, but there is only one thing that has been clinically proven to reduce the duration and severity of colds, and that's zinc. More specifically, zinc in lozenge form from Cold-Eeze or in nasal form from Zicam. Both products can turn your five-day cold that keeps you from work for three days into a three-day cold that is so mild you'll hardly notice it. Seriously that stuff works. The key is you gotta start takin' the stuff at the first sign of a cold. And as I said, zinc is the only thing that has been CLINICALLY PROVEN. This is not some sort of hippie bullshit, this is people in white coats and pocket protectors who say this stuff works. Plus I say it works. So does my mother.

Having said all that, you've probably already had people tell you that smoking isn't good for a cold. So don't smoke. Plus, it's not nearly as sexy as you've been led to believe.

You too can overcome the cold germ.

3 September 2005 Bush-bashing has been on the increase lately and particularly so in the wake (no pun intended) of Hurricane Katrina. So I'm wondering––what took America so long to figure out the man who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue ain't the sharpest tool in the shed?

I have a theory. During the Clinton presidency, the wingnuts on the right said Clinton was a murderer who would stop at nothing to achieve his socialist ideology. Folks on the liberal side couldn't figure out why the right hated the President so much. I think what we failed to understand was that a huge group of people on the right felt he was a fundamentally immoral person. And in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, it turns out they were right to some extent. (And for the record, I supported the impeachment proceedings. I say if you lie under oath, that's grounds for impeachment.)

Now a very similar situation is playing out for the world to see. For years the wingnuts on the left have been saying Bush is a murderer who would stop at nothing to achieve his fascist ideology. Again, many people can't imagine why there would be such fervent hatred of the President. What I think they don't understand is that a huge group of people on the left feel Bush is a fundamentally stupid person. And now that America has seen him in action for five years, people are waking up to this.

Me? I think Bush is good-intentioned and loyal. I also used to have an Irish Setter who was good-intentioned and loyal but would eat an entire stick of butter if given the chance. You don't put someone like that in the White House.

Thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine the transient world of the internet now has some degree of permanence. And so with full knowledge that someone may dig up this quotation twenty years from now to use against me, I'd like to state for the record that George W. Bush isn't very smart. He's a dumb guy. Not quite an idiot, and fully socialized to know how to use the correct silverware at a state dinner, but a simpleton nevertheless.

Wake up, America. We've got an Irish Setter in the White House.

27 August 2005 My second year of law school begins on Monday, and if previous semesters are any indication, I won't have much time to keep the web site updated. With that in mind, I've added seven––coun't em––seven new song pairs to the Similar-Sounding Songs page today.

1 August 2005 I've been reading a lot of environmental law cases for my summer job as a research assistant. It's rather dry stuff, but I did find something that amuses me to no end. The U.S. Government is unsurpassed (even by punk bands) in its ability to create acronyms, and one of the best is for a "Finding Of No Significant Impact," which is known as a FONSI. Apparently it's pronounced "Fonzie," as in Arthur Fonzarelli. I find that endlessly entertaining.

2 July 2005 Bow ties are in the news. Ash sent me this recent NY Times article about bow tie wearers. The best part about it is it perpetuates the myth that a bow tie is "notoriously difficult to tie." That's not true, but let's not tell the rest of the world, okay? It'll be our little secret.

Then there's also the ad you see at left for Tucker Carlson's new show on MSNBC. The NYT article mentions that you can't talk about Tucker Carlson without mentioning the bow tie. That may be true in the public perception, but what about the fact that you apparently can't talk about the bow tie today without mentioning Mr. Carlson? Is he to be the only representative of the bow tie? In much the same way the right wing has co-opted morality in the public perception, I fear that Mr. Carlson may have co-opted the bow tie as the exclusive province of the right wing. Don't let it happen, my free-thinking brethren! Take back the bow tie!

In other news, check out the Now Playing, Gentlemen's Apparel Links, and FAQs pages for some recent updates. Updates to the Similar-Sounding Songs page will be coming shortly; of late I've received a great many excellent suggestions of song pairs from listeners around the globe.

7 May 2005 It would appear that I haven't updated the site in four months. I've got a boatload of updates to make; look for them in the month of May.

This summer I'll be here in Cleveland, working as a research assistant for a professor. I'm really looking forward to it. Phone, email, et cetera remain the same. Drop me a line; I hope to catch up with folks again now that school is out. Although I'll be working full time, that should allow me more free time than I had during the semester.

3 January 2005 I don't do movie reviews, but I feel compelled to warn the public about Alexander Payne's new critically-lauded picture Sideways. It's terrible. Not terrible in terms of acting, direction, or anything like that. It's just the kind of movie I hate because I absolutely abhor the main characters. They're the worst kind of people. Here's a capsule review: two lying sacks-o'shit (one steals hundreds of dollars from his mother, the other plans to cheat on his bride-to-be) go on a trip to the wine country of California for a few days of fun. They smoke pot & drive drunk, royally piss off two women with whom they're romantically involved, and then go back home and pretend it never happened. And they get away with it. Fact is, their behavior is pretty much rewarded as far as I can tell. It was rather like Meet the Parents, in which a character whom nobody could possibly like does terrible things that he knows he shouldn't do, and manages to get away with it, despite ruining lives in the process. Why does the public continue to buy this crap? It's not like we're talking about people like Agamemnon whose actions eventually wind up costing him dearly. I really don't get it.

Maybe this is what life is going to be like in the post-OJ trial world--pretend it never happened or it wasn't your fault and you can walk away from it without consequences.

3 November 2004 I feel like I've been clubbed by Ralph Reed and Karl Rove.

29 September 2004 I've figured out how to answer the question, "What's law school like?"

Remember when you were a kid and you started hearing about sex? Lots of stories and a whole new vocabulary, but you weren't really sure how it all fit together or why anyone would even do some of the things you heard about? Well that's what law school is like.

27 September 2004 I decided to do something useful with my website, so I've created a new section for law school notes that might be helpful to others. It's not accessed via the links at left, so for now you'll have to just go to http://www.thomasirvin.com/law.html. The first item I've posted is a chart showing the culpability requirements from the Model Penal Code.

26 September 2004 Updates have been rather sparse of late due to being comfortably deep in law school. But I love it. How much do I love it? Well a friend of mine recently asked me how it was going and this was my reply:

The only way I can explain is to take you back to a little over two years ago, Thanksgiving. I was over at Steve & Sarah's and I saw Justin Firestone for the first time since he left for school. You may recall we both hatched this law school idea at the same time, and I was a little jealous that he was able to dive right in and I had to waste time finishing up my undergrad degree. Anyway, when I saw him I asked him for his thoughts on law school. All he said was, "you're gonna love it." He couldn't be more specific at the time, and now that I'm here I can say he couldn't have been more right.

The other way I can explain it is with an example from the biography of Christina Aguilera that I saw on TV once. When young Christina was growing up, the only thing she wanted to do was perform on stage, and so she entered every school talent show, local variety show, casting call, et cetera she could––so much so that the other kids would complain that Christina always got the parts, always won the contests, et cetera and they hated her for it. Her mother would get calls from other mothers asking her to stop entering Christina in these events so other kids could have a shot, but her mother would protest that it was all Christina wanted to do. Cut to a few years later, Christina gets a gig on the New Mickey Mouse show and moves to Florida to work on it, and calls home to her mother saying, "Mom, there are kids like me here."

Now granted, throughout my life I've tried to surround myself with the selfsame sort of people whom I've met here but it's still a revelation that I'm living in this community of people who love passionate conversation (coupled, of course, with drinking) as much as I do.

30 August 2004 Quote of the day: "The president is now describing his Iraq policy as a catastrophic success. I, like most Americans, have no idea what that means." ––John Edwards

16 August 2004 A woman from Scotland has linked to my site (thank you very much, as always) from her blog (June 5 entry) and has written one of the funniest (and most accurate, albeit in a historically aspirational sense) descriptions of me, based on the photo on the Similar-Sounding Songs page: "Thomas Irvin - who, in that leather, looks as if he should be playing bass in a post-punk Liverpudlian band lead by a egomaniacal ex-art student." Maybe she noticed (as did Julianne Regan, natch) the "God Save the Queen" button on my jacket's lapel.

11 August 2004 My last few days have been rather hectic. Saturday morning I sold my car to Jason Cornelius for ten dollars. Then Ashley and I began the long process of putting all my crap into boxes for the move. Around 3:00, Carter and Dan joined in the effort, but both left around dinnertime. Ashley and I finished loading at 3:00 a.m., so the next day (Sunday) I didn't get the early start I wanted so I didn't make it to Chicago by nightfall, so staying with Colby & Jonathan was out. I elected to Stay Smart(tm) at a Holiday Inn Express just over the Iowa/Illinois border. Monday I drove about ten hours to Cleveland and began unloading the truck, finishing with some help from my wonderful new landlady and Terry, her friend from Korea. Then I was invited over to her place for drinks, which turned into dinner. The icing on the cake is that I'm close enough to campus to pick up the wireless internet signal from my living room.

I love this place already.

12 July 2004 Technical difficulties are over. MP3s are working fine again.

5 July 2004 Yesterday's Independence Day celebrations got me thinking about flag etiquette so I've taken the opportunity to address a very old question on my FAQ page. Technical difficulties with MP3 files on this site continue, by the way. I'll get it fixed just as soon as tech support re-opens tomorrow.

21 June 2004 In 1919, H.L. Mencken, faced with the onset of Prohibition, sold his motorcar and invested the proceeds in alcohol. Now THAT is a gentleman.

I'm thinking about this because I'm about to sell my motorcar, and I anticipate that I will receive considerably less than Mr. Mencken did 85 years ago. I wonder how much beer I can get for a 1977 Caprice Classic Wagon with herringbone fabric seats?

Today I officially notified my second-choice law school that I will not be attending, which means I will be attending (drum roll...) Case Western Reserve in Cleveland. So what does this have to do with selling my vehicle? Oh, not much, other than I'm going to try to live without a motorcar for three years. As I dislike motorcars generally, I'm looking forward to it. As Nick says in Metropolitan, "Oh, I get it––you're one of those public transportation snobs!"

20 June 2004 Ever hear a word and think to yourself, "Ah! I'm so glad that word exists––and it's long overdue. Lately, that word for me has been jakamahaka. What is jakamahaka? It's the state of being like 95% of those around you, or having predictable behavior 95% of the time in a given situation. To learn more about this important word, visit jakamahaka.com.

22 May 2004 Whew. I haven't updated the site in ages, due to an unexpectedly difficult semester. However I'm happy to say that school is now over, and English degree in tow I'll be starting law school in the fall. I wish I could say definitively where I will be studying but that's still a little up in the air. More updates on that and a backlog of weird stuff that I am compelled to share with the world in the weeks to come. In the meantime, check out the updates to the Similar-Sounding Songs page and check back in the coming weeks for a host of other updates.

2 March 2004 The other day I saw a poster that said something about "coalition for peace" but I thought it said "cotillion for peace" at first glance. I thought, "now there's a good idea, a bunch of young people foxtrotting for peace." You can imagine my disappointment to discover it was only a coalition.

1 January 2004 Happy New Year. In the past couple of weeks I've been working to update most of the pages on the site, so if you haven't looked around in a while, please do so. My sincere thanks to the many who have contributed suggestions for the site in the past few months. Also a belated tip of my hat to the photographers who took the pictures you see in the navigation area; they're now thanked on the Contact page.

26 December 2003 Happy Boxing Day. I've been trying to figure out why so many people think the past tense of the word "drag" is "drug." I hear this in conversation at least twice a month, but why would people use it instead of "dragged"? Frequently, mistakes are based on following the forms of other words that rhyme with the word in question, but I can't think of any past tenses for rhymes of "drag" that change to a u-sound. For instance, nobody says, "The dog wug his tail." Perhaps it comes from "dug" being the past tense of "dig"; my dictionary says that "digged" used to be an acceptable past-tense form of "dig." What I need is the Oxford English Dictionary, but the university library is closed for winter break.

Speaking of the OED, the other day I saw a terrific lecture on C-SPAN's Book TV from a guy called Simon Winchester who was delightfully charming and very learned; he is the author of a new book called The Meaning of Everything, which is a history of the development of the OED. The lecture itself was fascinating, you can view it on C-SPAN's Book TV site.

27 October 2003 Tonight I'm working on a project for class, but I decided to take a break to add an update to the Similar-Sounding Songs page. It's a Weezer song that has an intro that sounds like it was inspired by XTC's "Making Plans For Nigel."

18 October 2003 Today I saw an interview on VH1 with "M"––you know, the guy who wrote the song "Pop Music" back in 1979. He uttered a quote that was so spine-tinglingly St.Hubbinsesque that I felt it must be enshrined on my web page. He said (and I quote)..."I say, better to have been there than not to have been there at all."

It is certainly beyond my meager powers to argue with that.

22 September 2003 Ashley sent me an excerpt from a news story about storm chasers during the recent Hurricane Isabel. It seems one of these storm chasers was able to get a hot sausage biscuit at a restaurant on a pier, right in the middle of the hurricane. His quote: "This is the most gentlemanly chase of all times."

3 August 2003 Friday night I had a conversation with an ex-girlfriend, and she said that she had recently become a vegetarian. Something about this bothered me but I couldn't figure out why; I have plenty of friends who are vegetarians. So then I saw her again at an auction on Sunday morning and I had to ask her for confirmation that I didn't just dream this. She assured me it was true, and I tried to figure out why it was bothering me so. A few hours later, it hit me: this is the third time this has happened. This is the third time that a girl has broken up with me and then become a vegetarian.

This prompts some obvious questions, namely, what is it about me that makes women swear off eating meat after they break up with me? (It also prompts some obvious jokes, but I am a gentleman and will not indulge in that sort of thing.)

11 June 2003 The full site went live today. I must thank Ron Patrick for fixing the HTML code so everything works the way it is supposed to. When you have a moment, visit his web site, wouldstalk.com. He took the picture you see on the "Contact" link and he's one of my favorite people in the whole wide world, although he probably doesn't believe me.

2 June 2003 Something funny happened today: within one hour, I received two separate calls asking me how much I charged to play my bagpipes for an event. One was for a golf association and another was for a funeral, so I'm pretty sure they are unrelated.

Sadly, however, I don't play the bagpipes. I do, however, own a kilt.

This is further evidence that the public's view of a person's image (or as we say in the business, a person's brand) is very important. (And when I say "the business" I mean, of course, the industry.)