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finally, a metal detector app will be possible.

[From Magnetometer in next iPhone confirmed? : Boy Genius Report]

I’ve been thirty now for 18 days, so I figured I should do a post about it. In reference to the R.E.M. quote that graces this post’s title, I wasn’t able to see myself at 30 at one time. Or, I had a rather complex notion of what “30″ meant. At one point, it was being an academic, writing books/papers and teaching. Another was that I’d be a documentary film maker. Still another had me right where I am now: a job I love, a wife I love, child on the way and a pretty good house.

I’m glad that I have the last option right now.

I have nothing super profound to say about turning 30, other than the pending arrival of my son is more important. So here’s 30 things I learned in 30 years that I hope to carry with me through the next series of 30.

1. Follow your obsessions – it’s why I do what I do
2. Do not ever underestimate the value of being happy in the morning
3. There is something fundamentally beautiful about an airplane, and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise
4. Parents are the smartest people in the world
5. Music is fundamentally the most basic force upon the human psyche. I can’t understand how some people are just “not into music”
6. Art is something that takes your breath away and leaves you with no doubt in your mind that you are looking at something other-worldly
7. To that point, a true masterpiece is something you’ll stand in front of for hours to see how different shadows play upon its surface
8. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a geek
9. A jet engine is the perfect artistic representation of a machine: no element of form is without function
10. Knowing something about everything ensures you always have something to say
11. There is nothing more irritating than an ignorant person
12. Complexity and reductiveness means there are no simple situations
13. Everyone had a hair metal phase. It’s OK
14. Meeting someone you’ve idolized is always a thrill
15. When those people turn out to be everything you expected, it’s affirming
16. Nothing is more fulfilling than working for people and with people you respect
17. Conversely, nothing is more deadening than working for someone you don’t
18. I’m lucky to be working with people I respect right now (see number 2)
19. No matter how often I do it, stepping on a plane in LA and off one in NYC is like science fiction
20. SCUBA diving at night is closest I’ve gotten to sensory depravation
21. The natural world never fails to reduce your importance, but that is a good thing
22. Whale watching on Valentines day is a fine way to spend that day with your wife, year after year
23. You can never have enough RAM, hard drive space, monitors, computers, consumer electronics or remote controls. Whoever said money can’t buy happiness never was with me in a computer store.
24. A good film is one where you can’t see the lines at the edge of the paint
25. Michael Snow’s “La region centrale” made me throw up, and is still the best film I’ve ever seen
26. Likewise, Stan Brakhage’s “The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes” nearly did the same
27. At these ages: 10,13,15,17,19,22 – repeat this: “It will get better.” It always does.
28. Your sibling’s irritate you for a reason. They are the only people who really know you. Ever.
29. It’s OK to sing.
30. Time goes too quickly. I’m still trying to find ways to slow it down.

It’s been a great 30. The best is yet to come I hope.

LotteWilde: are oyu there?
LotteWilde: well Amy says you can email her
LotteWilde: it might be cool to email her and correspond a little before you meet
LotteWilde: that way you’ll sorta know each other
LotteWilde: (somewhat)
LotteWilde: email her at
LotteWilde: amyhaber@ucla.edu
LotteWilde: how did your meeting go?
LotteWilde: g’night
LotteWilde: xxx
LotteWilde signed off at 2:03:19 AM.

Thank you Kell!

I turn thirty on Friday, which means yesterday, 5 days prior to this anniversary for me, is an anniversary for a band I like a whole lot. 29 years ago, on April 5, 1980, in a church on a street in Athens, GA, R.E.M. took the stage and played.

It was a friend’s birthday party.

All that remains today is a steeple.

The band however has endured.

My office, and indeed many aspects of my life are filled with things related to this band. I’ve been ridiculed for it, been made to defend it, had to make excuses and later embraced it. It’s odd that a band consumed so much of me, but in the end is it anything to be ashamed of?

Maybe it helps to figure out why this happened, since it happened near this time, many years ago, and it directly relates to why I work in the music business.

On April 10, 1988 I turned nine years old. I looked like this. April 5, 1988, R.E.M. turned eight. They looked like this. My uncle Ian, who at the time was 14 was heavily into every piece of music played by Rodney on KROQ. At that time, R.E.M. had a top 10 single with The One I Love. My uncle, who saw it as his familial duty to instill on me the gift of good taste, decided that instead of a Lego set, he’d get me music.

R.E.M. Document was one of the records I got. Later, in November, he got me R.E.M. Green (released November 8, 1988, which was a shitty day for other reasons).

Up to this point, I liked music. I had some tapes that I took from my dad. Mostly they were things he was into in the 1970′s: Fleetwood Mac, Beatles, Elton John. As well I had some LP’s and a record player. I liked the album Help! a lot. My musical currency however was lacking. I was nine years old. In 1988, my exposure to music was what I found around the house and what was played on MTV. What I remembered about R.E.M. was that they had that weird video with the fire in it, and I wanted it to end so the Beastie Boys video would air.

Document is an interesting album. Like Lifes Rich Pageant before it, it opens with bombast. Unlike Pageant, it’s not a guitar riff intro into it, but a full on assault. I put the tape in, pressed play and listened: Finest Worksong, Welcome to the Occupation.. End of the World. Flipped it over: One I Love, King of Birds, Oddfellows. Then again. And again.

I didn’t know about the band. I thought they might be British. I made my dad take me to Music Plus, but I didn’t have enough money to buy the three cassette pack of Murmur, Reckoning and Fables. They did however have a copy of the December Rolling Stone proclaiming R.E.M. “America’s Hippest Rock and Roll Band.” I read the article. I found others and read those.

In November of 1988 I bought Green. March of 1991 I bought Out of Time. October 1992 I preordered the limited edition of Automatic for the People. In September of 1992 I stayed up all night in Hawaii to watch the debut of the Drive video. My room had collections of VHS tapes of appearances and videos I had taped. Saturday Night Live, every video, interviews on 120 Minutes and more.

In 1992 I also got Internet access and found lyrics, guitar tabs and communities around R.E.M. In 1993 I was on AOL and found the REM Fanclub. I’m still friends with people from there to this day. In 1993 they opened up Usenet on AOL and I was on rec.music.rem

In 1994 I bought Monster at midnight. In 1995 I saw R.E.M. live. In 1996 I started a website. In 1996 I finally met Michael Stipe.

Fanaticism gets a bad reputation. Or fandom if you want to call it that. It’s derided, ridiculed, blamed for things — with reason — and relegated to the fringe of behavior as something “others” do, but you’d never sink to. The act of being a fan is willing yourself to admit that something that you don’t control makes you happy and fulfills something for you. The act of being a fanatic is letting something you don’t control make you happy, whether you like it to or not. There’s a fine line there.

I’m a fan. But in the past twenty-one years I’ve become something more. I have a hard time figuring out what that is. In fact I’ve spent a long time struggling with this and trying to reconcile it. As much as I’ve been motivated and driven in my professional and personal life, I’ve carried with me a love for a band, and applied the same level of motivation and effort toward that. In some places this intersected (how I got my job at Warner Bros. Records). And in some it didn’t. I created a website not to seek anything but a sense of community with those that might think like me. I made the site an online community in 1998 for the same reason.

In the years since, I came to know the band not because I wanted anything from them, but because it seemed like the natural thing to do. I didn’t try, these are things that just happened.

Twenty-one years ago, I got a cassette tape as a gift. Today I find myself, weekly, having to explain why every inch of my walls and boxes in my office contain R.E.M. memorabilia. It’s easier now, I use the “I worked with R.E.M. for a long time” and since I now work at their label. It used to be more difficult. Today, they are friends of mine. But its further than that too. How did I meet my wife? We were introduced by someone I met through the band. How did I get my job? Craigslist…. and their manager gave me a recommendation.

For a long time, I’ve been apologetic for my love of this band. But should I be?

I view it this way: I grew up loving a band, who I ended up becoming friends with, and who are the nicest guys I know. Celebrity or not, rock star or not, artist or not. Just nice people. They’re nice to my wife, nice to me, have been nice to my family. Not because they owed me anything, but because that’s just how they are.

I grew up listening to their music, watching videos, going to concerts and buying albums wondering what enables people to make amazing things that others can enjoy. I wondered what I would say when I met these four guys, who somehow, got together on a spring night in a southern town to pound out some songs.

The first time, I stammered “Thanks”

In the end, I didn’t have to say a word.

I think people underestimate the importance art plays in life. We too often value things that matter only to remove concern for us to enjoy art unencumbered. Money, success, material things help us raise the bar for the default of comfort, but what truly elevates us above default are two things: love and passion.

We find love in all things: people, art, animals, nature, the world at large. We find passion in the things we’re allowed to love without filter, tension or reason.

I love a lot of things. I love my wife, my animals, my family, the thing kicking inside my wife and my life in general. I’m passionate about many things as well. But no matter what I loose myself in, no matter what I love unequivocally, without reason, something always, without fail puts a smile on my face:

We are R.E.M., and this is what we do.

To Mike, Michael, Peter and Bill and Bertis: Thank you for doing what you do.

You guys are the reason I continue doing what I do.

15 years ago I first bought Horses and Dream of Life. Last night I finally, after meeting Patti may times, got a photo with her, courtesy of friend Thomas (and I didn’t have to be just out of a shower!)

Patti is an inspiration. It’s humbling to just be in the room with her.

Life seems to prepare you for certain things just in the practice of living. Included of course are events happy, sad and most often somewhere in between, the bittersweet. Life does not prepare you for tragedy however. I don’t think anything does.

Last week our family was effected by something tragic. Something that shouldn’t have happened, but something that did. Its now left for our family to pull together and figure out how to process it, deal with it and hopefully find the strength with each other and within us as a group to move on.

We often exaggerate small concerns into big issues. Hyperbole applied to work, social structures, economic issues, politics, gossip and the small issues of life in general. Some things push our reset button and make us reevaluate what is of consequence.

Life in the end is how we deal with all aspects that define it. Birth, growing up, moving on and ultimately leaving.

This week geeks converge on Austin to talk about how special everything we do is. I’m among them.

Before we do this though, I hope everyone appreciates what they have, even in the absence of it maybe being exactly what they expected. Nothing resets your perspective faster than things not going as they should.

But in the end we’re only as strong as our will to keep living forward.

Please see the job posting

We have a lot of projects coming up (A LOT) and are needed to flesh out our development team a bit more both in our Burbank and San Francisco offices.

If you like Drupal, PHP, MySQL, hacking shit, learning new things, fast paced environments, music and a very non-bureaucratic environment, you’d like WBR. We keep things operating like a startup: lean, fast and innovative. We are not tied to any IT department.

Read the job description and submit a resume!