What Melody Is Your Parachute?

I don’t know if we’ve crossed the point of no return, but all the plane tickets are bought. Tickets from Baltimore to LA, LA to Auckland, Auckland to Queenstown, then back again with a Denver stopover.
The more I’m financially invested into this, the more excitement I’m yielding in return. It’s still keeping me up at night, often with a smirkish smile peeking into the darkness—even at hours when I bittersweetly wish I were asleep.
Of late, I’ve been compiling song lists for the pending DVD soundtrack. I’ve divided the 159 so-far songs into two lists: one to accompany our adrenaline minutes, the second to musically interpret the memories in between. My mind wanders into sappy brotherhood most of the time, and some of the latter tunes help me pre-reminisce on potential moments.
I’ve enjoyed the collection process, even researching songs on iTunes Music Store by title topic, sound, etc. Who knew there were more than a dozen different songs out there respectively titled, “Parachute”?
Sometimes, a few words or lines pulled the song into my collection. Many songs will only get 10-20 seconds of airtime, which will help us fit more songs into the 2 hours of multimedia entertainment. But a daunting challenge looms: to weed and sift this DJ-worthy library to a usable list. And we won’t know until we’re there.
Then there’s the coming compromise. Tim and I have different sonic palettes. I’m coming more his way as my XM radio keeps me rooted in what’s new; but the kid doesn’t even know who Hootie and the Blowfish are. “I’m Going Home” or “Home Again” has to make it! I’d take one out of two—probably the latter. He doesn’t want to use songs that imply a boy-girl relationship, even though I think some choruses or verses can be salvaged in confident maleness.
He says we have to find a way to use “Ocean Avenue.” I’m open to suggestions as to how.
I think we’ve both given up on a CD that passes Mom and Dad’s music check. I think we’ve both figured this is our last trip together until he’s an adult and we both get to pick our own music. I’m for going all in with what we want with a modest menu track. Most of the time, the music will be lightly behind conversation or cloaked by the overwhelming visuals–hopefully from helmet-mounted cameras. And even Baptist fundamentalists can’t think panpipes match with base jumping.
I was going to type out an annotated selection sheet (a la iTunes Music Store celebrity play lists), but we’re talking eight to 18 times the number of songs—many thrown into the pot by quick-clicking brainstorm. So, I’ve still got the lists on my iPod, if you want to peruse them.
But, first, I have to say that Kelly Clarkson’s “Moment Like This” is only on there as a spoof reprisal of a joke from our first DVD project (retrospective on our first trip to a Bills game). No amount of words can make up for “had to be there, man.”
It’s a shame nobody’s got a “We’ve Got More Bounce in New Zealand” rockin’ anywhere.