Kablammo!

Wikipedia, you know I love you. But do you really need an entry for “heavy metal umlaut“?

I’m going to bed.

Song of the Moment: «Heavy Duty» — Spinal Tap

So this morning I had class at 9am. On a fucking Saturday. The professor had had to miss a few classes in the past couple of weeks, and wanted to make them up. As it turned out, Saturday morning was the only time this week that everybody was available. Great.

At least the class session went pretty well, all things considered. Of course, instead of going to sleep last night and waking up in the morning I decided to stay up, play guitar, eat ice cream, and read about the Khmer Rouge and rationality instead.

I don’t regret anything, though, if for no other reason than that I started listening to a lot of Crass at 4 in the morning and I realized that they are a really fucking good band. I don’t just like them for their savory blend of furor and pacifism or their frankly astonishing adherence to their founding principles, I legitimately enjoy their music. Imagine, if you will, a combination of Neu! and the Violent Femmes playing short and angry songs sung in a nearly incomprehensible British accent by an angry (and possibly short) man. That’s probably as good a description of their music as any.

Song of the Moment: «Contaminational Power» — CrassПравославни икони

It was only in the past month that I realized just how incredible the Stooges were and how much I liked Fun House. Perhaps they’re ancient, and perhaps finding them novel has been out of fashion for quite some time. Perhaps the same is true about Gustav Mahler and his Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor, introduced to me within the past week. Fuck it, I’m listening to both Iggy and Gus with fresh ears, and doing my best to appreciate them for what they are. It is appropriate, then, that my playlist is filled with Detroit’s dirtiest and Austria’s most heroic when I come across the following:

If I were in a perverse mood, I’d say that the “Eroica” is the raw, thuggish thing—a blast of ego and id—whereas a song like Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” is all cool adult irony.

Thank you, The New Yorker. And thank you, Wired, for pointing me to the above. As far as Shuffle goes, however, all the waxing poetic in the world can’t hide the fact that far more random transitions are shitty than are sublime.

Song of the Moment: «Dirt» — The Stooges

Well it looks like Arne’s comment system is retarded so any comments he’ll be getting from me will be in the form of TrackBacks, because I’m far too lazy to type in my email address, and I don’t trust the badlydigital.com administrators enough to let them set cookies on my computer. Them’s the breaks.

In other news, buy this CD. Even Pitchfork says to buy it. For serious. It’s quite good. Hell, just steal it if you want; you won’t regret it.

Song of the Moment: «The Monkey’s Back» — Menomena

At first, I was going to post a happy update today. Something along the lines of ‘Kinder Eggs are Awesome!!’ I was going to include the following picture, and just leave it at that.

Maybe I’d have added a little disclaimer or something too, along the lines of “stay the fuck away from the post office during the week of April 15th”. But that would have been lighthearted and stuff, and nothing would have been wrong.

However, then I went and did very very poorly on my exam today, realized that I’ve been procrastinating a very very unhealthy amount in every class this semester despite promising myself (as always) that I’d get shit done on time this time (for once), and decided to dwell on my stupid angstfaggot problems involving the fairer sex just to round out my complaining.

For some reason I thought that smoking might cheer me up. It didn’t, really. Then for some reason I thought that buying the Kinks’ Ultimate Collection might cheer me up. It didn’t, really. Same with the Thrills’ So Much for the City and Beulah’s Yoko. Ah well.

However, it turns out that leaving suitably unhappy away messages up all day gets people to talk to you, and for that I’m grateful.

Song of the Moment: «Sunny Afternoon» — The Kinks

I can’t believe it’s this simple. The secret to singing louder, it turns out, is to think about your stomach. It took me this long to figure that out? Christ. Tomorrow I begin a regimen of situps as voice training.

Today saw a lot of small things go very well. I went to bed last night intending to wake up early this morning and get some work done before class. Normally, the very notion of me even accomplishing the simple task of getting out of bed before class has begun is completely laughable in its absurdity. And yet, when my alarm went off at 8:30, I was out of bed and awake within an hour. (Yes, that qualifies as a triumph.)

Since I was awake on time, I assumed I would proceed to waste all of the time I had before class by reading or watching useless crap on the internet, stuff like this and this. I was therefore quite amazed to discover that I only wasted half an hour in such a fashion, after which I actually worked on an essay for my class this morning. I didn’t finish it, but I had enough written to be satisfactory for my purposes today. Go figure.

I was sure that my decision to eat a nice leisurely lunch, waste more time on the internet, and play guitar between classes today instead of studying for the exam I had scheduled for this afternoon would come back to haunt me. You can imagine my surprise when I learned that class and the exam had been cancelled, giving me another week to put off studying.

Then, when I went to mail some bills, it turned out I had the exact number of stamps I needed. Score another one for me; no need to go to the post office yet. I rock.

Add in the beautiful weather, and today was a damn nice day.

Song of the Moment: «Mon Amour» — Xploding Plastix [Video]

When I bumped into Corinne at the Port Authority bus terminal, she didn’t seem amused by the fact that I didn’t see the final performance of the Cooper student production on Friday. When I re-bumped into her at the Wescosville bus terminal, she seemed amused by the fact that I was in Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania to see the Muhlenberg student production (more on that later). I hope her foot is doing better.

After a little walking tour of picturesque Allentown, Marika and I lunched at some Chinese place, then headed over to the legendary Giant (more on that later) to pick up circus peanuts and mixers (more on those later), whereupon we returned to her dorm. We chilled for a bit and rented some movies for later, and then it was time for the dutiful little sound board operator to go and do her pre-show preparations and what have you. This left your faithful narrator with an hour to kill before showtime.

My first idea, watching some NCAA Final Four action, was shot down by the fact that there seemed to be some kind of semiformal event going on in the student union. I wandered around for a while, taking a few pictures of stuff that I thought might photograph well (see below). Then inspiration struck.

<Interlude>

</Interlude>

I still had 45 minutes or so before I needed to be in the theatre, exchanging my ticket for the opportunity to sit in a chair and be entertained. Surely, I thought, it would be possible for me to navigate to Giant and back in that time, despite the fact that I hadn’t really been paying any attention to the directions when I walked there earlier and the fact that it was dark out already so I wouldn’t have recognized anything anyway. One very obvious wrong turn and several more slightly subtler wrong turns later, I found myself buying some Gatorade at an Exxon, losing hope of ever making my way to Giant in time to make my way back in time.

Then the cashier informed me that Giant was basically right around the corner. I wasted no time in trespassing on a few people’s property, cutting through their back yards, and scaling a hill and a guardrail. “Strip mall with Giant franchise,” I announced to nobody in particular the strip mall with a Giant franchise, “I have arrived.” Soon enough, I was making my way out of the Giant floral department with my victory in hand (hey, sound board operators need love too). I went back to Muhlenberg, following a marginally less-circuitous and -inefficient path than I’d taken a few minutes earlier. Then it was time for…

New Voices 2004

• The New Voices Menagerie of Mystery
  Interesting idea, and done very well. The lighting and placards felt perfect, and everybody stayed in character perfectly. Three-shrieking-heads and dog-boy, in particular, deserve kudos for being so perfect.
• The Journal
  I liked the Prelude a lot, and the play functioned nicely as a continuing narrative extending through the various themes of the evening’s performance (and the levity it provided between the comparatively much heavier later pieces was certainly appreciated), but as a play it really didn’t do anything for me. The gay stuff just seemed silly. Though Halley Cianfarini, I must say, played the fortune teller with tremendous aplomb.
• What’s the Story?
  A very fun play to watch. Gary Onomotopoeia is an awesome character, the cartoon-style fight scene was very well done, and the multiple layers of meta-play were amusing and not overbearing.
• Holidaze
  Probably my favorite part of the show. The blurb by the author printed in the program described it as a ‘comedy’; I feel it necessary to register my disagreement with that assessment. Sure there were funny lines, but as a whole it deals with some pretty serious (and mind-numbingly terrifying) issues. It’s a play by, for, and about people in my approximate station in life, and I liked it. Also, Uncle Bob kicked ass and Christopher Shepard played him to the fucking hilt.
• Beyond Our Control
  Certainly thought-provoking. I smelled the gay rape coming pretty early, and — whoops, looks like I spoiled the climax for you. If you plan on seeing this play and want to be surprised by it, I recommend against reading the previous sentence. Sorry. Anyway, it’s a nice character study and the whole people-taking-turns-delivering-lines presentation was effective. The character of Madison seemed underexplored, though.
• Stained
  Another gritty drama. It was certainly well-acted, but the dialogue felt just a little stilted and artificial. That’s only a minor quibble, though.

In other news, the costuming was very spiffy for the whole show, what with each play getting its own distinct colour palette and everything. The use of “We Suck Young Blood” and “High Hopes” as background music made me happy, and to my untrained ear it sounded like all the sound cues went off without a hitch. ;)

Afterwards, the mixers were mixed, a little drunken dialing was had, metal demonstrated its power in forming friendships, and I had a flashback to mid-February.

On the bus ride back to the city, the guy sitting next to me kept leaning his head on my shoulder in his sleep. After a literal shrug availed me of nothing, I shrugged metaphorically and fell asleep myself, with the sound of Menomena in my ears.

tl;dr

If you were too lazy to read the above, here’s a little summary: weather.com is full of lies. I don’t know why I keep going back.

Song of the Moment: «Method Acting» — Bright Eyes

Shit, I forgot April Fool’s Day updates were supposed to be funny.

Here you go:

In other news, happy birthday, Irene.

Song of the Moment: «Jumbo» — Underworld

I was informed today (thank Google) that a kid in my high school graduating class died 2 years ago. He was 18. Rumor has it he died by his own hand. I never gave two shits about him while he was alive (I think I never actually had a conversation with him in my life), so I won’t pretend to be more distraught by this news than I actually am.

To be perfectly frank, I’m a bit less upset by the idea that this particular kid may have taken his own life than I am by the idea that a kid in my graduating class may have taken his own life. Having gone to school with somebody who’s now dead is an unsettling feeling, as is finding out about such years after the fact. Jesus, call me selfish, but I hope I leave more of a legacy than some Final Fantasy VI fan-fiction and a cautionary example of why the senior slump is a bad thing.

On one hand, I can’t envision him hurting a fly, but on the other hand I really wasn’t surprised at all to learn that he was gone. He was certainly smart enough to deserve better, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he thought through whatever he may or may not have done.

In other news, if I had any notions about having any skill as a writer (hint: I certainly did) this fellow has disabused me of them. I’d be jealous, but jealousy would serve absolutely no purpose. We’re obviously not in any sort of contest, but he won anyway, and I begrudge him nothing. After all, he took my half-formed opinions about Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones, fleshed them out, thought them through, and wrote about them in far more detail than I would have in a million trillion years. Well played.

Song of the Moment: «Pinball Wizard» — The Who