That which is like unto itself is drawn- Music Edition!

Its the Law of Attraction. I'm not sure from whom this law came from or why is it that they should make this a law... all I know is that it is true.

Hey there. Its Mayan. I can see the Law of Attraction within the friends I chose to spend time with, Ryan (obviously) and, strangely enough, books. It never dawned on me that my musical tastes could reflect this same law!

I can't remember what I listened to before Ryan and I started dating, but all I know now is that we can flip on each others iTunes and be certain that whatever we turn on, it will be liked by both of us. Which is cool for, say, 6 hour car rides between LA and San Francisco.

JUST KIDDING! Wow, our lives would be so boring if our iTunes didn't have at least some slight differences! For the most part, our favorites are the same. As weird as it sounds, I listen to Linkin Park when I need to fall asleep. Ryan... not so much. I was really into punk and rock in high school, and although I have phrased most of that out of my library, I still like bands like Paramore and The Offspring. I realize that the musical standard for amazingness isn't often as apparent in these kinds of bands but there is something to be said for a Jimmy Eat World song that can make your day better. But, for the most part, Ryan and I are happy to listen to anything, especially awful songs that come on the radio because then we get to display our musical deterity by critiquing the crap out of Taylor Swift. I mean she's cute, but sheesh. Anyways...

I asked Ryan, the resident music expert of this relationship, to make a 'Top 10' all time albums of his musical taste (M: he doesn't like the Beatles. i know, right?) [R: I DON'T DISLIKE THEM! I JUST DON'T LIKE THEM!] (M: same thing). Its nice to have him write about something he is so passionate and knowledgeable about.


Here is Ryan's Top 10.
R: I had 20 albums... but I couldn't narrow it down past 14. I'm not sorry.



14. Eagle Eye Cherry - Present and Future
This was his second studio album; this one is probably one where most of the general population has never heard a single song on it. E.E.C's first album had two huge hits in the late 90's "Save tonight" and "Falling in Love again" neither of which were on this album... but listen to this album especially these songs ("feels so right", "burning up", "lonely days", and "promises made" and you will realize there is way more here than a 1 (or 2) hit wonder.
13. Matt Nathanson - Beneath These Fireworks
As matt nathanson would say himself "...This is the start of something beautiful". The album where his balls finally dropped into his voice... (M; HAHA. i love Matty.)
12. Ingrid Michaelson - Everybody
My favorite album that has come out in a long time, people can relate to Ingrid's style of music whether it is about a horrible break up or about living in a fairytale land, when you listen to her you feel like a kid again, and that’s something a lot of people desire. (M: Favorite alert)
11. Glen Phillips - Winter Pays For Summer
Great Singer/Songwriter here, lead man from the band "Toad The Wet Sprocket," another one of my favorite bands. Glen was the heart and soul of that band and it even comes out more in his solo stuff. Listen to all 13 songs, and try and think of one song you even thought about disliking... you won’t have one.
10. Dave Matthews Band - Crash
In my opinion the most talented band out there, the chemistry between these guys is unheard of... not to mention that they all are some of the best at their individual musical strengths. To be honest thought I could have put any of their albums up here. But to get a real DMB feel, you have to see them live.
9. Marc Broussard - Carencro
If I could steal anyone’s voice, it would be Marc Broussard... born and raised in New Orleans, he naturally has a very bluesy feel to his music, but in this album demonstrates just how versatile he really is as a musician, and this album is for all different types of music lovers.
8. Nickel Creek - (Self Titled)
The mandolin is my favorite instrument to listen too, if I could do it all over again I would have taught myself how to play it, instead of the guitar... and there is no one better than Chris Thile. Each song is just as strong as the next one whether it is an instrumental or a beautiful folk song mixed with blue grass and pop (a deadly combination). (M: I LOVE Nickel Creek. Love.)
7. Damien Rice - O
I could listen to every song on this album over and over and over again... Damien’s first full studio album, there is no better girl/guy duo whose voices blend perfectly together other than Damien and Lisa Hannigan. (M: I would die to see him in concert. Ryan is lucky!)
6. Gin Blossoms - New Miserable Experience
Nothing Miserable about this album, in fact I am a huge fan of the early 90's music and this is this album is the exact definition of what the 90's is all about amazingness (ha-ha). (M: Ryan likes 90s bands. Therefore, Ryan is gay. Therefore, this makes Ryan that much more desirable. I love my life.)
5. The Wallflowers - Bringing Down The Horse
The first CD I ever bought with my own money... oh wait, I’m sorry, it was actually not a CD but a cassette tape! Old School. Jakob Dylan is as good of a lyricist as his father, but a better singer making him that much more enjoyable to listen too.
4. Tom Petty - Full Moon Forever
The only two groups I can ever remember from my early childhood were Tom Petty, blasted by my dad, The Beach Boys, who had my whole family singing along. Out of all the Petty albums this one seemed to be my favorite, but really it was hard for me to chose from just one... maybe a greatest hits album would fit this better.
3. The Beach Boys - Endless Summer
Smiles all around, listening to them makes me a better person, ha-ha, okay, maybe not that far, but it does make me happier and enjoy life more. My mom was crazy over these boys, meaning my whole young childhood was spent singing these songs with her on our long drives where ever we were going.
2. Goo Goo Dolls - Dizzy Up The Girl
There is really nothing much to say about this, everyone knows how good this is, and if you have never heard it... well I suggest you do so before Mayan comes into your house at night and hits you repeatedly in the face with a pillow case filled with bars of soap... the end! (M: I will do it! How do you not love the Goo Goo Dolls! Ryan makes me laugh.)
1. Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds - Live At Luther College
This is the only live album on the list and in my personal opinion this is the best album ever created, once you listen to this you won’t want to this to anything else ever again... there is way too much I could say about this album so ill just request an immediate test run for yourself. (M: Enough said.)

M: Thanks, Ry! You're Awesome. And I hope everyone enjoyed getting to know us via music!

In other news, Ryan just started singing "Love me Sexy" and I am ready for bed. So You Think You Can Dance has started up again. This significantly improves my life quality. Also, I'm going up San Francisco this weekend! Keep you eye out for... dun dun! A blog where we write from the same room! Crazy.

Keep rocking in the free world,
Mr. Yan

The 'do-good' blog.

M: Ry, what kind of charity would you support if you had tons of money? What would be your 'cause?'
R: Like The Michael Scott... what was that? Michael Scott's Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run For The Cure? Just kidding.
M: Don't you have a cause, you know? Like music education? Keep music in schools?
R: I don't know... Its hard to pick just one! There are so many things people need, not just here, but all around the world.

Thats it. Thats the problem. There are so many problems that beg attention, and sometimes it can be overwhelming.
Pick a cause. Pick two causes. Pick it because you have an emotional connection with it, or pick it because you don't. Stay with them, support them whole heartedly.
My mom's company works with several non-profits, and I have friends who work for non-profits. I used to feel guilty because there were so many charities that I saw the good in, but was too busy or too poor to support them.
Lets rid this guilt feeling by supporting, with as much or as little as you can, a cause that really needs help. There are literally thousands to choose from.
Hunger, illiteracy, homelessness, children without families, sickness.
What blows my mind, and I guess it hit me harder this year, is that it is here. In the US. In California. Where we live.
Those are just the big concepts! What about the arts? Its proven fact that kids learn better when they play an instrument! School budgets are being cut? We're cutting the resources for the next generation. Somehow that doesn't make sense.
Maybe I will cause-hop, and change it up every year. Who knows.
This year, an amazing non-profit has come into my life, and I tear up just thinking about it. Aspiranet is a revolution in the foster care world. There are 75,000 kids and teens who need loving homes. In California. Not in the US. In CA alone. Aspiranet works with the youths by visiting them twice a week, supporting the foster parents and providing a support community for those involved.

I've been putting together a video for their "Hero" campaign, and, like I said before, when I see this footage of these kids... God, I'm tearing up even now. They don't know where they will sleep... or when they will eat. We all saw The Blindside, these are good kids. They just need love. Thats all. The worst was when we were interviewing these foster parents and when they told the child they were fostering that they wanted to adopt him, he looked up and said "Oh no, You don't want me. I'm unloveable."
They had us all in tears. When my mom was interviewing a young man, in his best shirt that had seen many days, who resides in a transitional housing project talking about how much having a foster parent can change a youth's life, she excused herself and had a breakdown in the hallway. Its so hard to talk about it, and it just gets me for some reason.

I'll get down off my soap box now, and invite Ryan back to the blog.
R: You can't please everybody. A lot of people feel overwhelmed with which cause or non-profit to choose, so they don't do any.
Don't be intimidated. People who work with non-profits are some of the kindest people I've ever met, and are overflowing with gratefulness when you just call for information. We encourage everyone who reads this to look into a cause that moves you. We swear that as much as you put into whatever cause you want, it will give back to you three fold. Sometimes even in the most unexpected ways.

Love, and be loved,

Mayan and Ryan in the Niiiightime (okay, thats going to have to change...)

P.S. Here is the Aspiranet video we just made. I just saw it finalized for the first time and I love it! I was eating lunch and starting crying... SO great. What makes this so great is that RYAN wrote and composed the music for it! Yay Ryan!

Aspiranet from Consortium Media on Vimeo.

Ryan, stop playing Roller Coaster Tycoon so we can do our Blog.

Since it is late and Mayan has work the morning, we thought it would be cute (and relaxing) to answer a whole bunch of our favorite things over skype. Mayan picked hers without telling him and then Ryan told Mayan his. Maybe we'll have some similarities... Enjoy!

~ romantic comedy
M: Serendipity R: Are there any sport/romantic comedys? I'll pick Hitch. Or Mr. Deeds. Actually! Coming to America.

~ national park
M: Yosemite, ohmygosh I just love it there. R: Yosemite.

~ type of weather
M: Overcast. Cool, but not cold. R: Cloudy with a chance of turkey meatballs. Or rain. And fog.

~ foreign accent
M: ANYTHING BUT AUSTRALIAN. R: Irish. Come on. There is nothing better then a little leprechaun guy, you know?

~ winter olympic sport
M: Hockey. R: Curling. Just kidding. The only winter olympic sport. Skeet Shooting. (He means Hockey).

~ part of your love interest's body
M: Awks. Smile. R: Her mouse ears.

~ halloween costume that you've worn
M: Once, when I was little my mom didn't have time to take me to get a costume so I took those fake tatoos that had tie-dye and peace signs and put them on some flare jeans and a headband. Instant hippie. R: I was a raver one time. That was pretty fun.

~ breakfast cereal
M: The Charms. Lucky Charms. R: Smart Start. (I think my grandma eats that...)

~ toy from childhood
M: Ricky the Raccoon. R: Ghostbusters backpack.

~ pie
M: My homemade lemon meringue pie. R: Pie as in Math Pi? 3.14. Come on, thats funny. (Not funny.)

~ old article of clothing
M: My riding jacket from when I was seven that now looks like a super hip blazer. R: My old grey sweatshirt.

~ day of the year
M: Anyday I'm with Ry. R: August 15th. (Thats my birthday? God, he is adorable.)

~ genre of music
M Singer-songwriters. R: early 90s bands.

~ sports hero
M: Pre. R: Whistles, I got a lot of those guys. Ozzie Smith. Jamie Baker. Steve Young.

~ flower
M: Orchid. R: I like roses because they smell god. Or birds of paradise. Are those plants or flowers?

~ mixed drink
M: I don't drink? R: I know what yours is going to be. The peach bellini. I don't like mixed drinks. Shirley Temple. (Okay, those peach things are like smoothies.)

~ movie musical
M: Oh man... Gotta go with singing in the rain. Although I love so many. R: (He is singing a song that i can't recognize. Nevermind, it was Sit Down (You're Rocking the Boat) from Guys and Dolls.

~ vegetable
M: ALL! PLEASE. R: All of the above.

~ screen kiss
M: A Notebook kiss? R: Oh, yeah, because I know so many kisses.

~ place to buy clothes
M: anthropologie or urban... and target's men v-necks. R: target.

~ curse word or phrase to say
M: Dammit. R: (Ryan doens't cuss). I don't know? What do I say?

~ schoolyard game from childhood
M: Basketball. Always. R: I just played football. Sometimes tetherball. Sometimes handball. Foursquare.

~ bar
M: Well considering I'm not 21... R: Paddy's Pub.

~ music to get your groove on
M: What? R: Bow Chicka Bow Wow.

~ thing about your family
M: Its ginormous. R: We live in the bay area!

~ candy bar
M: Hmm. Tigers Milk. R: Tigers Milk.

~ restaurant you frequent regularly
M: CHANG 101, hell yes! R: Old NEw York Bagels.

~ local park
M: I live at the beach...R: Mitchell.

~ coffee shop
M: The Bucks. R: Palo Alto Coffee Shop.

~ sport to play
M: I don't know. It depends on who I'm with. R: Hockey.

~ musical instrument
M: Well I can play the flute but I love love love the piano. R: Mandolin.

~ band to see live
M: Matt Nathanson. R: SO many. DMB. Damien Rice.

That was fun. We'll have a cool blog soon! :) Thanks for all your support so far... this was just a little experiment and we are having lots of fun, and hope you all are too!

Love,
Mayan and Ryan in the Niiiightime

Troy and Abed in the morrrrrrning.

As Ryan and I converse over Skype about job listings on Craiglist, I remind him that we still need to figure out our 'sign-off,' or how we are going to end our blog posts.

Ryan is for the 'Troy and Abed in the morrrrning' Good Morning America parody by our favorite on screen duo in one of our favorite new TV series, Community.

As funny as I think that is, I'll leave the comedic power to Troy and Abed. It might be Ryan's strength, but I am seriously lacking in matters of hilarity.

M "Lets get serious."
R "Are you talking to me? What are we doing? What is serious?
M "Our sign-off!"
R "Oh, I didn't know you were talking to me!"
M "I'm ONLY talking to you!"
R "You were just saying words and stuff, I didn't know you were talking to me!"



Through a smile, I sigh as Ryan puts a hanger in mouth and shakes it around. Everything is a little bit more difficult over Skype, but Ryan can still make me belly-laugh.

"I should apply to this place, right? That would be pretty cool to work for the company that cures cancer. It makes me feel smart. What if I ended up... curing cancer?" He laughs.

I laugh. We've sat for the past three minutes without saying anything, just hearing the hum of our computers and listening to each other's typing. Its nice to just be; to feel each others presence though we're hundreds of miles apart.

I could have stayed in that silence for hours, but Ryan broke it before I had to.

R "Okay, I sent my resume so you can look it over."
M "Okay. So whats our sign-off going to be?"
R "Mr. Yan"
M "What?"
R "m r y a n. Our names, combined. Mr. Yan. Or we can record a song and put it at the bottom."
M "No."
R "Wow. Okay good idea, Ryan, oh thanks, Ryan, good idea. Doesn't Shrek open tonight?"

These our our sticky moments, the glue factor. Our conversation is never about one thing. It starts with one thing and by the end (or pseudo end-its always still continuing) we've talked about 50 things we didn't even know we would talk about.

So we may have not figured out our sign-off tonight. So what? It'll come up in conversation in 4 days, anyways.

Until then,

Mayan and Ryan

P.S. From Community-

We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails.

Well.
This Saturday Ryan graduated from college. Congratulations, bub!
I am so proud of him. Its kind of the norm now for middle class families to send their kids to college; so much so that I sometimes feel that being a college graduate (with three majors, no less!) is not recognized as the big accomplishment that it is. Hats off to him, and all our friends who have graduated.

We are both a little unstable with emotions right now... This will mark the first time we have really ever had to spend time away without knowing when the next time we will share a room will be. Its eerily scary.

Living in dorms or apartments away from parents is like an incubator with a large, glowing, red light-bulb for young love. For most, it makes everything grow at an awkward fat-pace, like chicks that have had extra hormones pumped into them and hatch with like three legs or something. And... I don't know where that sentence was going so anyways...

Somehow, Ryan and I have lasted; three legs and all. And somehow, we're happy. And somehow, we'll end up fine!

Ryan is moving home to the Bay area and I'll stay here in LA. We'll see each other a few times- I love the drive up the coast to San Francisco. This fall, I have a huge adventure that I'll talk about in another post. It involves... Europe?

When Ryan and I aren't working at preschool and a marketing firm, respectively, we will be texting. And skype-ing. I'm not worried about us being apart (Ryan says: Nope, why? are you?) because I know there is really no one who could make me happier (Ryan says: No one could make me happier, that's why I am marrying you).

RIght now, we are in the first stage of separation: The 'I miss you' stage. That's why we just stare at each other on Skype. Occasionally we cry (Ryan says: you cry.) [point of information: I saw him crying earlier].

So far, in our four hours apart Ryan is bored, and I am daunted by the sheer amount laundry laying at the foot of my bed. Yikes!

We may not be able to direct this change in the wind, but we'll let our love direct the sails.

Sincerely,
Mayan & Ryan

This is our story.

We often discuss how we are the glue that holds our family together. Ryan is the second youngest of four, and I am an only child. Ryan's amazingly dramatic sister, self-seeking brother, other sensitive brother who is a young father, and two hardworking parents make for a full house. Everyone has recognized how his role has helped their family stay together.

I'm the only one, and when I didn't have my nose buried in a book, I was reprimanding my parents for raising their voice at each other. Luckily they had sense to listen to that voracious four year old, and our family has at least gotten this far.

Our calm, comforting demeanors provide a source of authority and understanding for our families.

Luckily, we found each other and, with all this glue, our love is pretty sticky.

This blog is our story, as we are just starting out together. We have been dating about 2 years and we are both ready to leave a trail of gluey footprints behind us as we take steps into our new life.