Earlier this week, Sam James gave me a heads up that a song he co-wrote was going to be on The Voice. Later this week, I found out that an album that local hip-hop artists Lou Gonz, DJ Manipulator and Atlas Jenkins had contributed to was charting well on Billboard.

I'm going to be honest, and admit I don't put a lot of stock in things like televised singing competitions and Billboard charts ... let's face it, a lot of awful has appeared on those fronts. But I don't dismiss them out of hand, either. I am intensely interested in what interests other people, even if I don't care for those things myself. I always want to understand what people see in things that I'm either indifferent toward, or even actively dislike. I think it's part of wanting to understand people in general.

In these case, I lucked out. The local artists are all fantastically talented, and I couldn't be more happy for their successes. And hey, it makes good copy.

Me? I feel like everything I was doing sort of amped up in the past week. Here's the rundown:

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