SPACE IS THE PLACE, HOMIE.

The other day, when I was on the way home from work, I was thinking about a new mix. I'm supposed to be working on a mix for Bryan's party, but I'm kinda cheating on those efforts right now. I became transfixed on the idea of doing a "space" mix. Kinda like a mixtape for intergalactic explorations. Fitting that as I just looked at the television screen, Buzz Aldrin is talking about "there's still places to go that are beyond our belief." Of course, you give me a theme, I'm gonna obsess about it. And I did. The song titles flowed forth. It started taking shape even before I began. Sure, it'd be easy to do "Space Oddity" and "Space Cowboy," but I never want just regurgitate expectation. I wanted to go beyond that. I wanted to pull in things that, contextually, made sense. Not just lyrically.

I'm about 40 minutes in right now. In just the first three songs, you got a Beach Boy, Floyd, Parliament and Sun Ra. Last night I remixed the Beasties and threw that in there too. Bryan, this might be your party mix. The Party of a Million Pretentions might have to come later.

I spent some time gathering material for the mix yesterday and found some great Sun Ra material. Dude was truly on another planet. Like, you'll hear about Outkast thinking they're from another planet, but that's just the same thing that George Clinton was always talking about. Sun Ra was from another planet. Dude just wasn't quite earthly. Check out this awesomeness.

I mean, this dude was on some Heaven's Gate tip. It reminded me of the clip from Scratch in which Mix Master Mike and Q-Bert talk about a DJ's ability, through scratching, to communicate with the unknown. It was then that I knew I had to do it. During a walk, my lovely wife asked, "How many songs are really about space?" as to suggest that I wouldn't have enough for a mix. "Oh, tons," I responded. It just starts at "Space Cowboy." Music's obsession with space has been evident for years. You should hear the mountain of funk I sorted through from the early 70s that romanticizes leaving earth and soaring through the universe. Hell, that's what Parliament/Funkadelic's entire catalog dwells on and that's just scratching the surface. And wait until you hear the Shatner cover of "Rocket Man" and the ill "2001" cover I had around here. You're face is about to melt off.

I got a message from a Beatle fan about the Beatlemania mix that was very complimentary. It just got me thinking about how you kinda throw yourself out there to a certain crowd when you do a mix focused like that. I mean, I'm not the world's biggest Beatle fan, but I suppose I'm privy to the millions of Beatle fans out there that I potentially speaking to with a mix like that. Then I'm getting an email from a cat I don't even know about a mix in which I'm clueless how he found it. It's probably a bit of a letdown that I can't share a story about Beatle fandom. I mean, I like Abbey Road and the White Album, but I don't have Beatle salt and pepper shakers. I don't have a signed lithograph from Paul McCartney. I've never met Ringo. In fact, I'll go even further to say that I hate their pre-Rubber Soul material. I'm just not that big of a fan.

No telling what sort of souls I'll catch the ears of with a mix of "space" material. I'll just go ahead and tell everyone who might be reading this that I haven't even seen all of the new Star Wars episodes, I could give a damn about Star Trek and I think Battlestar Galactica is for dweebs. Sorry, Jacko. That being said, this mix comes from the same October Sky, boyish curiosity. It is, though, at the very heart of it, just the flavor of the month. I'll be onto something else three weeks from now. These fixations never last long. I gotta freaking marathon I'm training for.

Speaking of, Koolz and I hit our first three miles together. In fact, we busted out 3.15 miles with the last .15 miles coming in a sprint. It felt fantastic. Now we must replicate that success every time we go out. We do that for a month and then we start stepping it up the distance from there.

Keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars, gangsta.