I just spent a week in southern Idaho for the Christmas holidays where I got to be supremely lazy--reading, watching movies, hanging out with my mom, youngest sister and her son.  Good times.  It was the perfect warmup for the next four weeks of supreme laziness that I get to have until my final semester (providing I pass my comps) begins, Jan. 25.  Naturally, there are all kinds of home projects that I could be working on during this period of ease and I am unmotivated to begin any of them.  As it it New Year's Eve (yawn), I feel that I should get to spend the day allowing brain rot to set in and have already watched the last three episodes of Battlestar Galactica season 4 (still have 4.5 to see), checked email, FB, exchanged my ticket for Il Trovatore to another night so that I can see Hey Marseilles at the Crocodile on Jan. 30, put on a $.50 album find--Adam Ant, Strip--and made a few "Happy New Year!" phonecalls.  All in all, I'd say it's been a very productive day thus far.  

Sometimes I have been known to write down some memorable moments of the exiting year.  It was kind of a rough one, so I'll skip that but will be happy to make note of several fantastic books that I had the pleasure of reading for my teen lit class.  Required reading that always felt like I was sluffing on my homework even though it was my homework; ain't life grand? 

In no particular order here are some recommended reading for the new year if anyone is reading this blog:

1. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Vol. I, The Pox Party, M.T. Anderson

2. Feed, also by Anderson

3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

4. Tangerine, Edward Bloor

5. American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang

6. Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow

Happy New Year!

Sometimes I like to take study breaks while I eat.  Sometimes I like to watch a 30 minute episode of something while I take a study break and eat.  Lately it's been Sex in the City.  This particular episode, from the first season, Carrie is whining about the sex drought she and  Mr. Big are in (o, the horror, I know) while she and her friend, Samantha take a yoga class.  They are having this conversation using regular volume voices, DURING CLASS.  I realize that this program is full of fantasy and matching ultra expensive handbag and shoe combos, and I can forgive all that.  But the talking during the class (and every other "excercise" class they take throughout the seasons) without anyone noticing or seemingly caring stretches the limit of my suspension of disbelief threshold.    

Synchronicity

It's thunder/and it's lightening/and it's all things/too frightening/I could barely see outside

Just as this We Were Promised Jetpacks song began to play, and those lyrics were sung, outside was thunder, lightening--all things too frightening.  I can barely see outside.  

Ok.  The frightening stuff is my own school angst, but that's nobody's fault but my own. (Someone should write a song with that line, "nobody's fault but my own".  O.  Wait.  Someone did.)  

Talk about Pop Music

The EMP Pop Conference was this weekend--technically, it continues through tomorrow--and I was able to spend the WHOLE day attending various panel discussions, today; wish I could have done so on Friday, too.  But I did get to hear the key note speaker, Nona Hendryx, on Thursday night.  Tomorrow, well, tomorrow I just can't make it.

Last year was the first year I had the pleasure to attend--also for only one day.  As long as I am living in Seattle, and the Pop Conference happens and it's free (yes, it is FREE!!!), I'll be getting my music egg-head fix.  Admittedly, I don't understand a lot of what is being referred to, or the inside jokes among the music scholars, critics and various members of academia who attend.  But I don't care.  I love it.  I jot down names of writers that I will look into, musicians, songs, albums... My head buzzes with new ideas and excitement about music.  I got to speak to Charles Cross for a brief moment to gush about how helpful his book, Cobain Unseen has been as I write a final paper for my Archives Admin. class on Cobain's published journals, If You Read This You Will Judge.  I'd had some questions about dates and truth, etc. while reading the journals (which are really about an nth of what he actually wrote) and Cross' book was incredibly helpful in clearing up a lot of those questions.  So, I thanked him.  He was very nice and confirmed some of the other suspicions that I had surrounding the publishing of this bit of his journals.  I plan on reading his biography on Cobain this summer to round out my Cobain focus.  Which, when I think about it, is kind of funny for me to have.  I mean, I like Nirvana.  I have liked them more as the years have progressed and I've listened more closely; but they are not my end all be all favorite.  And Cobain's sad, frustrating and destructive life (what I know of it, which is as much as anyone who didn't know him does--that is to say, what the media has given us and what Kurt, himself, wanted us to believe about him) is painful to contemplate.  Not because I feel so personally hurt by his decision to end his life, not because I feel sorry for him, but because wasted lives are really, really, really sad.  Sorry.  Can't come up with anything well-crafted for that.  It's just sad.  Ian Curtis.  Sad.  Elliot Smith.  Sad.  And they were all sad, in their own ways, and self-destructive, in their own ways, and supremely talented.  So I, like many, shake my head and think, "what a waste" while at the same time thinking, "how could they be so dumb?"  I know it is not that simple.  But I don't know them.  Didn't know them.  Won't ever.  Not really.

But I digress, as I am wont to do... By the end of today, I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open, which had something to do with the dim lighting of the space where the last panel was presenting mixed with my usual 6 hours of sleep (that many?) the night before and a healthy dose of an interesting, yet lacking in vocal variety/energy speaker.  It's a good thing the Seattle grey, cool and damp that I know and love was waiting for me outside to wake me up a bit.  

Today was also national record store day.  Did you visit your local shop?  I hopped on over to the nearest Easy Street (not my local store, but it would be if I lived on Queen Anne) purchased Nevermind because my version is scratched and rendering it unlistenable--it wouldn't do to write this paper without my Nirvana catalogue in tip top form--as well as a Smith's single on 45.  Re-issued, I believe, by Rhino.  ("The Headmaster's Ritual" and "Oscilliate Wildly").  

While in New York I participated in the following activities:

1. Visited with many friends but did not have nearly enough time with them: Niamh and her brother John; Matt and Diana (she was also visiting); Michael, Calvin and Vivian; Jenara, Mitch and Alafair; Ali.

2. Enjoyed the Neue Galerie, Japan Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art, three small galleries in Chelsea featuring Ellsworth Kelly pieces (large paintings in two and small drawings in one), the Chelsea Art Museum, a couple of other random galleries in Chelsea showing artists that I don't know but would like to except I didn't make any notes and I can't remember any names.

3. Ate.  A lot.

4. Walked.  A lot.

5. Rode the subway.

6. Saw Moises Kaufmann's new play, 33 Variations.  The best elements were the Eugene O'Neil Theatre (gorgeous and the perfect size) the set, lighting, pianist, Jane Fonda and the company (Ali).  The script was eh.

7.  Did I mention that I ate?  A lot.

8.  Drank many cups of marginal coffee in the form of lattes, americanos and regualr ole' joe. 

9.  Drank a few really good cups of coffee.  

10.  Avoided the St. Patrick's Day Parade but not the drunk crowds which bore a striking resemblance to frat boys and sorority girls.  And some people way too old to be that drunk and that green at 11am on a Tuesday.

11.  Wrote a short literature review for class that required a minimum of 15 cited articles as well as working on another essay for a different class.

12.  Shopped.  A little.

13.  Spent money.  A lot.  

14.  Loved being there.  A lot.

Huge, fat, white flakes are drifting--make that dumping, now.. no, wait, driftinnnnnnnng...--anyway, it's snowing.  Pretty.  But I'm over it now that we're into March.  

Two things:  

1. Adam, you're future jokes are great!  How did you do that?  Teach me.  Please.

2. I saw the most amazing production of Schoenberg's Ewartung on a double bill with Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle at the Seattle Opera, last night.  The soprano who sang The Woman was not only a beautiful, gorgeous, pitch perfect, expressive singer, but she could act, too!  Really.   A-maze-ing production.  Amazing.  This was originally directed by Robert LePage, in 1993, and I can't believe how lucky I was to get to see it.  Expressionistic, Freudian, Magritte-like images.  Dancers crawling out of walls, sideways.  Like watching a stark, frightening and beautiful dream.  Bluebeard's was also wonderful, (minor point: despite the thunderous, yummy voice, Bluebeard was a bit stiff, physically.  Luckily there was so much to take in visually and musically that I could easily let that go.)  The best, most magical staging took place near the end as his three wives rise from a pool of water, as if they were on some kind of hydraulics that lifted them straight up, dripping and red with the trains of their dresses trailing behind them like viscous pools of blood.  (Only the trick is that it's wasn't deep, and they had to swim horizontally until they reached the spot where they could rise.  Which they did with such seamless grace and foreboding.) I wish everyone could have seen it.

Future Jokes

Hey!  It's just after midnight and I should be in bed, but I'm all amped up because I think that I found a topic for the literature review that I have to write for my Indexing and Abstracting class. Indexing music terms--genres, moods, titles, lyrics... sounds good, huh?  O, yeah, baby.  

On another note, I was just laughing to myself about some jokes I heard last Saturday.  I'd gone to the French Kicks show, solo, as is my wont.  Ran into a friend who was with some of his friends.  Afterwards (gosh this is taking a while to get to the point...) friend that I knew and one of his friends--the one who was visiting from Vancouver, BC,--went to Linda's for a drink where these two funny gentlemen proceeded to introduce me to the world of future jokes.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Future Jokes.  Basically taking the format of any past or present joke--guy walks into a bar, etc.--and peppering it with made up sci-fi sounding words.  I sense that I am not able to convey the hilarity of the situation.  That's alright, you'll just have to take my word for it.  Once they started telling these jokes, I became obsessed--in between cracking up at this new genre of humor--with contributing my own future joke.  But of course, I came up with nada.  I have a hard enough time telling present jokes.  Worse, I haven't stopped thinking about how to compose a really hi-lar-ee-us future joke of my own to slay 'em with next time we should meet.  sigh.  

  

3 in a row

I'm stuck on an Iron and Wine, M. Ward, Andrew Bird, Rocky Votolato, Pela and The National heavy rotation.  This, despite the excitement of my tiny vinyl collection, has been going on for a few months now.  I try to break it up, but I keep going back to the same dozen, or so, albums and eps.  Even as I press play on my ipod, or itunes, or cd player, I think "I must be tired of listening to these guys"; and I kind of am in that I want to want to feel a desire to listen to something else.  But I don't, so I don't.  Must be the weather...

I bought a record player at the end of January.  I'd been wanting one for quite some time and took advantage of the money coming in from my temporarily permanent temp job to purchase this fine, vintage, all-in-one Rheem Califone music listening device.  I'd forgotten what it was like to listen to a record.  It takes a bit more patience--you have to flip it over, after all--a bit more attention.  My speaker is pretty durn good, but it's not the best, and still... IT'S TRUE WHAT ALL THOSE CRAZY AUDIOPHILES SAY ABOUT VINYL!!!!  I love it.  (The Walkmen's You & Me album was my first vinyl purchase.  I bought it at the show.  Very good show, by the way.  One of their best that I've had the pleasure of seeing.)  Mostly I've been buying used records and have only had a couple of "Darn.  That song is scratched," moments.  I figure if I'm paying a few bucks--like $1-3--for an album and there's one scratch, it's o.k.  One of my favorite finds was nos. 2 and 3 of Bach's unaccompanied cello suites.  Released in the late 60's.  (or early 70's?  I'm too lazy to get up and look.)  If you thought that those cello pieces warmly resonated in your bones on a cd, give yourself a treat and listen via the old analog method.  Whoa.  I get it.  I do.  It sounds like someone is playing the cello inside my apartment, inside of me.  Another great find?  (thank you , Shawn, for this treasured discovery) One Voice.  Barry Manilow.  The very first album I ever got that was mine and mine alone.  (Christmas, 1979.)  Ask my mom how much I loved that record.  When I told her of this gem, she inquired if I'd gotten out the vacuum cleaner.  har, har.  She is referring to my childhood microphone.  My vinyl purchases tend towards classical, albums I remember that my parents had, bands that I really, really love--I'm on a mission to find all of the U2 catalog from Joshua Tree on down--and quirky 78s.  I'm in no hurry.  So, if you are out and about and you see something that you think I might like, and it isn't very expensive or scratched, feel free to purchase it for me.  You can come over and we can lay on some pillows while we listen to the textured sounds of the vinyl experience.

a list

it feels kind of strange to be composing an entry.  my sister-in-law asked me when i was going to post something again and i replied, wistfully, probably not until summer.  but then, i'm sitting on the couch version of my futon, half reading an article for my archives administration class and i'm absolutely not paying attention--even though it's interesting--and it pops into my head that i miss my blog.  really.  i do.  i miss a lot of things, right now.  shawn.  video games.  reading that doesn't involve answering questions based on the aforementioned reading.  listening to music while doing nothing else.  practicing the guitar.  waking up after the sun comes up.  going to bed late because want to, not because i'm doing school work.  putzing around the 525 square feet i call home.  a quiet neighbor below me--one not aspiring to be the next zach condon.  (i like the musical stylings of condon.  of condon.)  going for a run on a regular/semi-regular basis.  doing one crossword puzzle after another after another after another.  watching an entire season of a television series in one sitting.  eyes sans dark circles.  eating a pint of ice cream with no repercussions.