So the
Daggers of Throwing show went swimmingly last night. We played a bunch of originals that went over well and some choice covers that got the (slightly...ok severely) tipsy crowd moving around a lot. And, during our "encore," the cops came and broke everything up. Some would say that we got cheated; I like to think that we just rocked so hard that the cops had to come and try to cover it up in the name of
national security. Then again, I still think that the
doozers weren't a cruelly enslaved race.
Here's a picture of the shirt I wore last night.
I wish
some more of that was real blood.
Norlen just pointed out to me that this coming Saturday is November 5th, 2005, which is, according to BTTF, the 50th anniversary of the idea of time travel. This will certainly be a red letter day in the history of science,
Doc.
List of things to do today:
1) Dishes
2) Hang up laundry that has been sitting in washer for 72 hours.
3) IRON MAIDEN
4) Clean room
5) Start on essay about how modernity is overrated
Most everything is done, though number three is often overlooked....
If you are an insomniac (or a fake insomniac like me who just has really terrible sleep patterns), you really learn to appreciate infomercials. You learn to love the overacting, the archetypical characters (the naysayer, the soothsayer, the martial arts instructor audience member), the incredulous smiles and gaping mouths of an audience that simply can't be
lieve that they would give away so much for only $49.95!
Personally, my favorite infomercials are the ones for
Ronco. He has one for his Showtime Rotisserie ("Set it and Forget it!") and another (which is to me the pinnacle of the art form that is the infomercial) advertising his 25-piece knife set. In the latter one, he starts off selling one knife for three easy payments of $13.33, but by the end he's giving twenty-five for the
same price! UNREAL!!
Ron Popeil is a great American.
The reason this comes up, though, is because last night I realized that all these five a.m. mornings have been worth it. Why, you ask? (Just pretend you asked.) Well, last night I saw a Ronco infomercial...IN SPANISH!!! I don't think you quite understand how much I love
Spanish television and Ronco, but needless to say I think I can die now.
Ahhhh...
I want some too!!
Here's my guitar. I Van Halenified it. It'll kick your guitar's ass.
I juiced it up for the
Daggers show this Saturday. It'll look better once I get the clear coat on there and peel off the tape over the neck and the pickups. Check back next week for pictures of this bad boy in action.
I have this headache. It's kinda behind my eyes a little bit, but also in my temples and behind my head at the base of my skull. It hurts to laugh, which is bad because adult swim is on and it's funny. Yea, der.
Lou says it's because I haven't done anything all day - which is patently untrue, since I walked Liz up to the subway stop and got some iced coffee while I was up there. That's, like, an eight block rounf trip. That's some serious shit, man. I also ate some stuff, came on the computer, watched lots of tv, played lots of video games, fucked around with cats...fuck you, Lou.
Liz came down this weekend. It was good to have her back in good ol' Olney. She is quite fun and I like her. We went to see
The Mountain Goats at prestigious Swarthmore College on Saturday and I was given a small glimpse of what my personal hell will probably be like. Surrounded by drunken fratties pressing against me, blowing cheap cigarette smoke past lips smeared with even cheaper beer, slutty girls screaming about anything and everything, it became abundantly clear to me that each and every one of us will have a terrible and frightening place carved out in a horrible place, most likely a way-too-small club at a pretentious college where no one cares about the band on the stage. All things considered, though, it was good to see my buddy Matt, albeit briefly, and the Goat(s?) themselves (himself?) were (was?) quite good. Jelone called Liz and I a "cute indie rock couple." Funny, since neither of us listen to music at all...
Daggers of Throwing will be riding full strength this weekend at
The Emo House near St. Joe's in Overbrook. It's going to a big ol' Halloween party/show, and we're wicked excited to be playing it. We'll be dressing up in costumes and hopefully other people will be, too. Also, maybe the keg won't run out in the middle of our set and I will fall down three or fewer times. But I promise nothing! Also, we will be debuting our new song, which I just titled "This Is What Happens When You Find A Stranger In The Alps."
These are exciting times in which we live.
I can't stress this enough: when looking for a place to live, never move next door to old people if you're an insomniac. Never you mind that they go to bed a few hours after you wake up and eat their early bird specials when you're cooking up eggiwegs for breakfast. No, the much greater evil here is how early they wake up. Twice now I have been awake when my elderly neighbors were already accomplishing things outdoors. The first time it was watering the lawn. Two nights ago it was putting out recycling.
I think I might take a nap.
Aghh, I used to be so happy and carefree. I used to care about stuff that mattered and let stuff that didn't slide. I used to laugh a lot and make jokes a lot and not care if I was going someplace where I didn't know anybody. What happened?
Daggers show on the 29th. I think it is going to be a good time. You should go.
Okay, so I do this thing where I open my buddy list, check everyone's away messages, minimize the buddy list, space out for a fraction of a second, then immediately click on the buddy list to begin looking at aways again.
It's getting harder and harder to convince people that I don't do any drugs.
It's a sad state of affairs when I only have two minor tasks - laundry and watch a movie - to do on a Sunday and I can't even muster the effort to even attempt either. Plus my neck hurts from headbanging to Slayer last night. I've had "Reign in Blood" stuck in my head all day, and every time I start humming it, I obviously have to headband a little while playing air guitar, and each time brings about more and more pain. Goddamn you, Slayer, for rocking so hard!
Yesterday was a good day. Mexican food, Clark Park, a movie, and a party that was enjoyable both in actuality and ironically. My knee hurts. I'm pondering a purchase of some
Osteo Bi-Flex. This trouble going up and down the stairs needs to stop. And Regis is going to help me.
I set out to make this post less depressing than the one that I made the other day, but I think it's pretty clear that I failed miserably. I used to be so cheery, too. And yesterday was such a good day...
Midsemester break is coming up this weekend. Four day weekends do not suck. Liz might be coming down. I'm excited. I like her. She doesn't like me too much, but she pretends very well. A commendable performance that I'm sure the Academy will recognize this year.
I love how life just slows down on weekends. Everything just moves...a...little....slower. You get up later, you do far fewer activities, you let your gut stick out after sucking it in all week, you finally get around to doing that homework that you were just too busy to bother with during the week. Fridays always just seem to move in slow motion, but the clock seems to move in double time; I get half as much done in twice the time.
I normally don't like tribute albums, especially tributes to bands I really like. However, I just picked up my copy of
Where Is My Mind?, the Pixies tribute album, and it's actually quite good. The Get Up Kids do a stellar cover of "Alec Eiffel," Reel Big Fish does a superb dance remix of "Gigantic," Braid does an awesome version of "Trompe Le Monde," and, of course, Nada Surf's "Where Is My Mind?" is a classic, too. Also, I highly recommend Blur's "The Best Of." It is a very good album that I have been listening to. Full of Britpop goodness.
Right now I am reading
Barrel Fever by David Sedaris and
Pastoralia by George Saunders, which are both books that are very, very good for people with vicious/satirical streaks in them (like me). Also, anyone out there who wants to pursue writing in the future absolutely must read
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson. Anyone who does not want to pursue writing should also read
Jesus' Son. It is a very good book.
I am going to go watch
What's Up, Tiger Lily? now. I think it will be good. I bought two new shirts and some new socks at Target today and saw my ex-girlfriend there. It was terrifying. Buying socks is always very annoying because they are one of a very small handful of things that I am ridiculously anal about. So help me bog if there's any protrusions on the inside of socks, like an overzealous toe seam or too much lint. Drives me fucking insane. I also bought some Irish Spring Icy Blast soap. It smells very good and is making my whole room smell very good, too.
Man, sleep deprivation is shitty. Luckily, since I never do anything on the weekends I usually get lots of sleep. I am sorry that this post is just a pathetically sleep deprived post and not a hilariously sleep deprived post. Maybe it will be better tomorrow.
Daggers of Throwing is playing at the dirty house at St. Joe's on October 29th for their Halloween show. Needless to say, Daggers and Halloween go together like peanut butter and gasoline, so it should prove to be a delicious and scrumtrelescent good time. Bring an extra t-shirt and we will put a Daggers logo on it!
I have a midterm in my music class on monday. Part of it will be to compose a melody using the following criteria:
"Compose an 8-16 measure melody and incorporate arch shape, diminution, transposition of melodic fragments, inverted upside down arch, and curves."
Needless to say, I have no idea what any of these things mean. And so, for the first time in my academic career, I turn to the textbook for guidance. However, in the chapter that explains key signatures and transposition, I find the following passage:
"Notice at the bottom of the circle [of 5ths, a tool for transposing key signatures], three keys overlap. The overlapping keys - B and C flat, F# and G flat, and C# and D flat - are enharmonic versions of each other. While each pair is played on exactly the same keys on the piano, they are notated completely differently on the staff."
I think that it's a tremendously good sign when even my music book is telling me, in so many words, to give up. "There's too many notes, Drew," it says to me. "Just tell your teacher that you have no idea what's going on, walk out of class, and continue petting your cat. It's been a good run, but the dream is over." Also, I don't know how to play the piano.
What happened to us, music class? You're the one who gave me the assignment to learn to draw the treble clef as homework not a month ago! You used to be different, man. I feel like I don't even know you anymore. Remember that time that my assignment was to familiarize myself with the keyboard and form a personal relationship with it by giving the keys names? Can't we go back to the old days?
On a related note,
Steve was just crawling around on my desk and totally fell off my printer. She's so graceful!
I just tried to print out a picture of Liz and I so that I could hang it up next to my computer, but my printer is shitty and/or out of ink. So, Liz, if you're reading this and I forgot to mention it, remind me to have you print out this picture for me.
Well then.
Hi everyone! It's been a long time. The longest drought on record here at Plastic Coffee Cups, in fact. Let's take a look around the world and see what has happened since I last updated, shall we?
I briefly considered joining Facebook, but again stopped myself because I hate people, especially people who
go to my school.
Joe Estevez is still an underrated actor. As always.
Vin Diesel continues to get work. Millions of people everywhere weep; one guy somewhere in Oklahoma cheers.
The White Stripes continue to impress me.
Jack White continues to convince me that he is not, in any way, shape or form, a stable man.
Lou is still allergic to peanuts, and Liz still cannot fathom how he is still alive.
Gwar still fucking rules. And yes, my notebook still has "GWAR" written in big letters across the front. And yes, I slightly regret doing that. But only slightly!
I am still utterly astounded by
Animal Crossing. Shit's brilliant, man.
Insomnia is still making my brain press against my cranial walls. Kinda makes me feel like, oh, I don't know,
consuming human flesh or something.
I am sick/getting sick/getting better from being sick. I have been very sleep-deprived for very long and I think my body is finally telling me that it's sick of my shit. But I'll show it - even less sleep, asshole! That's what you get for complaining. Fucking asshole.
I'm sure that no one actually read my last post. Hell, I didn't even read it. My apologies to
Adam, whose fragile little mind can't comprehend the rambling of the
Uber Street kids and our hyper-self-aware blogs. We're just too postmodern for the Midwest, man. Your mind has gotten soft out there in the heartland.
I'm going to Liz tomorrow! Woot woot! As usual, she has feigned interest in my visit, balked several times at the suggestion, blew me off three times, and twice just laughed at the thought of it, but eventually my feminine wiles won her over. (...que?) Also, I get to see Dan's sketch comedy group perform at some tiny theater in NYC somewhere. Go go gadget doing something on a weekend for once!
I skipped my first class today. So begins the slow descent in the spiralling vortex that is senior year and my quest to mathematically eliminate myself from grad school...
...and so Liz told me to make this a post consisting of loosely connected words, something that may or may not have anything to do with anything, a stream of nouns and adjectives and adverbs that may serve a larger purpose, a motivation beyond my control or within my grasp, a transgressional digression along the lines of previous sleep-deprived and semi-delirious posts that I have made which have consequently made my roommate, a future English teacher, squirm with anguish and anger at the clear abuse of the language of a run-on sentence that, really, he only has a problem with because of its length, since the grammatical structure and integrity are still intact and complete, and also angry at the inspiration for the post, a story titled "Sentence" by Donald Barthelme, a piece which consists of a single sentence that starts in mid-stream and is still not completed by the end of the eight pages it consumes, and also angry because he was drunk and couldn't read the words that seemed to run into each other haphazardly, a hideous amalgam of letters and half-hearted puncuation that served little purpose swimming on a luminescent screen and rubbing against each other in a most inappropriate fashion that would make even the sternest high school administrator begin to question his or her motivation in taking a job that turned into little more than a babysitting gig for students younger or older than his or her own children but never the same age for some strange reason, trying to stop the adolescents from grinding and bumping and letting hormones flow freely during the school dance because parents were waiting outside, staring in the foggy windows and patiently tapping their feet along with the thumping bass rattling the foggy windows, the lights flashing and pulsating and searing the air that is thick with sweat and lust and alcohol sneaked from the liquor cabinets of unsuspecting parents who are too busy with their lives and lost loves and lovers living in constant memories of them, themselves, stuck in that high school dance with the lust and sweat and alcohol with their parents waiting outside in their cars bought with the money they earned from jobs that kept them away from their kids except when the kids were punished, our parents still waiting and swearing that they would never turn into their parents and then they did without ever knowing it, speaking like Mom and Dad gradually and in turns becoming more of them than of themselves, incorporating traits and personality into an already clouded consciousness...
Methinks that sleeping might be good at this point.
Fuckin' Catholic schools....
So I received news of the most triumphant persuasion tonight. My friend Justin finally found the link to the emulator for greatest game of all time:
JOURNEY ESCAPE!!! The object of the game, as is clearly stated in the
instruction manual (Justin notes that this version is, unfortunately, minus the excellent photographs, no doubt pertaining to Steve Perry and his
suit of rock and roll armor) is to get Journey past all the groupies and other people trying to steal their money and into the "Scarab Escape Vehicle". Much obliged, Justin. As if senior year didn't have enough distractions.
I played frisbee tonight, for the second week in a row going three on three. Considering that's the only exercise I get all week, running with that number of people is pretty brutal. We need young kids out there because they actually run.
We finally got cable today, ending a four day standoff with Comcast. They, with their vast arsenal of predatory vans just cruising along to pick you up, and we, on Uber Street, with nothing but our boredom and need for more than one channel. They installed it today, but we don't get some very important channels, like VH1 (Wayne's World 2 was on), History Channel (where something about WWII was on, no doubt), and Spike, where Road House was on...twice! They may take our episodes of "Michael Ian Black Pretends To Remember Decades," but they can't take our Swayze...
"Even suburbs would be o.k. With you between my sheets And the breeze in the window 'Cause we will go there and ignore all our neighbors I think I'll bring you breakfast and play Johnny Cash on the stereo I'll sit in the lazy chair all day remembering the things you do So when you come home I'll jump up to kiss you and it will knock you back You'll fall over our TV set I'll pick you up and dust you off."
-"Do You Know What I Love The Most" by Saves the Day
I'm such a fucking wuss.
Lou and
Drew are my roommates. They're good guys and they have blogs, too. They put up with my laziness and selfishness and general sloppiness. I'm sure that anyone who would read this has already been to theirs, but I like to think that I attract a large audience. (Not true.)
[
Ed. note: This piece was found scrawled on the back of a "Missing Cat" poster in the living room of a residence on Uber St in Phildelphia. It has been reproduced here without omission, unless you count that coffee stain at the bottom, which was simply not translating to the electronic medium.]
Insomnia gives me this strange, heightened sensation feeling, where everything I touch is rough like sandpaper or smooth like a river stone or hot like the sun or cold like hypothermia, pins and needles fingers, frozen nose, white knuckles and ears so cold they might break off. I move my toes and I get distracted from reading because I think a foreign object has invaded my airspace. I can't concentrate - everything that moves (cats, clocks, toes) needs my utmost attention for a whole moment so that I can observe the movement, process it, and move on to the next thing.
I've been told that this is what life is like when you're stoned. I don't know, as I have no basis for comparison. But I do know that it just took me a whole minute to swallow a gulp of water because I was busy whishing it in and out of my front teeth, holding it in pursed lips and pushing out my mustache and soul patch and running fingernails through the coarse hair and pushing the water against this mysterious cut on my gums that has been plaguing me for days.
Eyelids heavier, will to start new novel waning, cats seem to lead very good lives. Maybe I will sleep on the couch. That seems like a good idea for some reason.
