**update…. holy crap, josh was on TV! what a travel nerd!**

…….

damn, yesterday was such a monday. i’m not usually a whiner about getting up and going to work because i love my job. but sometimes you get there and realize your brain is just not fully with you on this adventure, you know? i like thinking. contributing. being productive. but sometimes the circuits just don’t cooperate, as if they have their own agenda.

that’s why it was extra crappy that yesterday we worked a 14-hour day in preparation for one of those Very Important Meetings that happen every now and then, and i felt so bad. not because i didn’t want to be here, but more because i was guilty that i was so out of it and probably much less helpful and cheerfully positive than the brian my friends and associates have come to expect. it was a damn shame.

then to top it off in another ‘i’m not mad but this just sucks’ moment, my roommate kept me from crashing out to an episode of six feet under because he was watching a movie with our buddy josh when i got home. that could have been perfect — come home at 11, halfway through a decent flick, half-pay attention until you get sleepy, then nighty night. but it was war of the worlds. eeww.

i was forced to read my recent bane, the self-assigned, masochistically-900-page classic don quixote instead, ending up on page 226 after my fifth or sixth week in the undertaking. why do i have this odd compulsion to endure classics that i won’t really enjoy just so i can have them on my bookshelf without the fear of having to answer to the dreaded question, ‘did you read this?’ and having no intelligent response to its follow-up, ‘what did you think?’. my academic pride is so annoying sometimes.

luckily today it is beautifully sunny, i am prepared for as many hours as may be required of me (it always helps when you know it’s coming too, so you can be mentally ready not to go home during single-digit hours if necessary), plans have already surfaced to fill the upcoming holiday three-day-weekend, and i am wearing a purple shirt. i say, bring it on.

i’m in a great mood today because i’m working on some really fun and interesting stuff this week (challenge is good, i tell myself), and it’s a sunny friday afternoon. also, by not thinking about how jessica is having fun in vegas without me, or how i don’t get to see her most of the weekend. the best answer to absence making the heart grow fonder is to stay busy doing your own stuff so when the absent party returns, it’s like a nice surprise.

here are some good cd’s i’ve been listening to lately:

portastatic – bright ideas – 3 stars

i’ve always liked mac’s voice, and the man knows his way around indie/power-pop tunes. every time i listen to this cd, i enjoy it quite a bit. my only complaint is its somewhat short list of really punchy hooky moments. that means when i’m not listening to it, i don’t particularly wish i was. don’t get me wrong, ‘i wanna know girls’ is fantastic, and i bought the cd based solely on the strength of that one song. BUT, that one song i’ve had for free from the internet for a long time, so the rest of the album could have been a bit more full. one of those ‘really good cd i wouldn’t rush to recommend’ kind of situations, you know? like i’m sure in 6 month’s time, once it’s outgrown the stack of shiny new music that sits right next to my disc drive, i’ll put this on the shelf and quite possibly never pull it out again. then again, if i only ever bought timeless classics my collection would be pathetic, now wouldn’t it, so i can’t blame the album for my own limited attentions.

parts & labor – stay afraid – 5 stars

now THIS is what i’m talking about. just when i’m afraid i’m listening to a bit too much soulful writerly stuff — i think i OD’ed on jens lekman in april — this comes along to save the day and keep me awake. generally speaking, bands that stray into the category known as ‘noise’ i tend to roll my eyes at, but that’s because they have a tendency to stop making songs that i want to listen to in favor of sounds they want me to hear. or in some cases i would use the phrase ‘subject me to’.

this album is great, so so great, because it’s maybe a half-hour of noisy noisy songs instead of plain old noise. it reminds me slightly of trail of dead’s source tags & codes in its volume of sound, if with much less musical articulation. the vocals are blurry and yelled through a haze of drums and feedback, but who needs to sing along when you can just ROCK. the first track, ‘a great divide’, was what really sold me on them and you can get that from their downloads page. to be super nice and encourage you further to check them out if you like loudness, i’m going to slap up the cheerfully titled track death as well for a new pay day song.

i was pretty disappointed they had to go and have the worst booking agent ever, who placed them on stage at the echo the friday night before coachella. nice work in ensuring anyone with a few hundred dollars and inclination for good music had NO chance to see them play, buddy! i still faithfully look forward to their next less inconveniently planned outing. besides, with all the upcoming shows coming down the pipe — futureheads!… streets w/lady sov!!!… flaming lips at the bowl!!!… THE MOUNTAIN GOATS AT THE TROUBADOUR!!!!! — i think i will survive.

i want to blog more, i really do. my mind has been full of work-stuff at work and my time has been filled with fun-stuff at home, so i haven’t really been able to steal many minutes for the web lately. who cares!

or, i was just depressed that jessica and i only made it through one round in last weekend’s beer pong tournament of champions. for some reason i always feel being the host will give me some sort of super-special accuracy at tossing ping-pong balls into red party cups, but this had held painfully untrue. the only obvious answer: PRACTICE! and this is lucky because gino’s lady friend sarah requested the presence of my beer pong table at her birthday party this coming weekend, so i should have ample time for working on my arc.

new music stuff tomorrow probably; right now i think i want to go home and hang up some new art i finally got frames for.

Two words… Guitar hero II! I love E3.

my coachella reporting falls horribly short this year for a couple of reasons. first being that my camera has been broken for months and i have yet to replace it, so anything visual i have to offer would be that i’ve been fortunate enough to have handed down to me by my friends. second being that halfway through day two, jessica caught some sort of mean stomach flu — presumably from a malicious corn dog that snuck in with the otherwise quality festival food — which resulted in her throwing up for the remainder of the day and me keeping an eye on her, and both of us missing the latter half of the day, i.e. all the big acts like yeah yeah yeahs, go! team, tool, scissor sistors, what have you. bummer, huh? we found out later that stacy got sick too that night, zach and james both were ill on monday, and then i was blessed a full 36 hours later with my own vomitting fits tuesday morning. awesome!

nefarious viral plagues aside though the overall experience was still a great one, and i’m sorry my illness and business this week prevented me from sharing more of the details. if anything, the whole weekend was probably worth it to catch daft punk live, the definite highlight of the weekend (thanks to jen for the videos… huge files but you HAVE to see it). i mean, you really can’t beat some of the arguably best dance music ever made coming from guys in space helmets from atop a mysterious pyramid structure surrounded by LED light effects. other highlights were the magic numbers, bloc party, lady sovereign, white rose movement and for sure kanye west and sigur ros. eagels of death metal were fun but all their songs sound the same to me. phoenix sounded pretty flat live which is a shame cause i think they could have done much better if they tried.

needless to say after a weekend of heat, standing, noise, 50 thousand people, not showering, sleeping in hot tents, etc., this past weekend i was in more of a ‘let’s sit down and watch TV’ mood, so cinco de mayo was an excuse to have people over and play guitar hero, and the rest of the weekend was fairly low key as well. headed out to E3 though this week, so time to ramp up for more overstimulation and entire days spent on my feet!

Thousands of people rallying 2 blocks from my house.

my desk calendar says today is holocaust rememberance day. should i have sent out cards or planned a party?

look at that, i forgot to tell you all about last week at one of my boss’s going away parties where me and my coworker brought the house down (puns!) with our enthusiastic and none-too-clear-headed rendition of ‘jump around’. later i sang ‘livin’ on a prayer’ with a few girls and stood on a chair for part of it. umm, i think i like karaoke more than i should. probably stems from the same part of me that can’t get enough guitar hero, that being the part that is furious at itself for never pursuiing a career in ROCKING OUT.

saturday jess and i advanced through two rounds of a 64 team (i know, it’s crazy) beer-pong tournament at shaun’s big ‘shawapalooza’ concert/barbeque thing. my love for her was renewed several times over in the first round when she sunk five out of the six cups in probably less than 10 throws. i picked up some slack in round two but round three we were totally robbed by some ringer they brought in, which was unsportsmanlike and uncouth to the highest degree. you’ll find no such injustices at MY beer pong tournament, that i can assure you (cough*may13th*cough). plus it’ll probably be an invitational so there should only be maybe 16 teams instead of a vast army of frat-guys whose skills are unfairly developed in the art of all things drinking game. as i said, WE WERE ROBBED.

also: high school friends in the house! good old roomie pat was in town for a wedding and we treated him to some nicely overcast and non-summery beach volleyball and zankou chicken. then i distracted him with a movie to keep him from telling embarrassing stories about my past to my current lady friend in a deft maneuver i call “watching batman begins because it is awesome”.

such a full weekend i forgot to make my routine sunday call home, pretty much completely, until late last night. parents, if you’re reading this, i’m not dead, just kinda hungry. happy holocaust day too, sorry i forgot to send a fruit basket or anything.

not sure if i got lucky or unlucky — having gone to monday night’s cubs game at dodger stadium where they won, where maddux pitched an amazing game resulting in very few hits, but where i was standing in the concession line during the 5th inning when almost all of the cubs hitting and baserunning and scoring happened, not to mention it being the shortest ball game i’ve seen in ages clocking in at only 1:59. i mean, they won 4-1 and nothing much challenged that in the second half of the game. whereas last night’s game was a lot more hard-fought, zambrano was less consistent but made for a much more tense battle, and it went right down to the bottom of the 9th where unfortunately the dodgers pulled it out. would i rather be in the stands for a winning dull game or a losing nailbiter? tough call. i do know that it’s hard to appreciate a great pitching game from the top deck of dodger stadium though; it’s almost like watching from the blimp.

ah well let’s hope they pull out the series tonight so i can go back to gloating over my silly dodger-boosting friends tomorrow.

it’s new music month here, i picked up two albums a couple weeks ago and two more last week, so i’m swimming in good stuff. for now just the two i’ve had more time to digest…

the flaming lips – at war with the mystics – 3 stars
don’t get me wrong, i love the lips. i have maybe three quarters of their catalog and no regrets so far. but i’m afraid this album might be falling into the same trap as yoshimi did, in that there are three or four standout tracks, and i couldn’t remember the rest if you paid me. i wish i could give them a handicap for loving the flaming lips as an idea, which i do — watch wayne coyne in an interview, or their documentary fearless freaks, and i dare you to not to fall in love with him for his general demeanor and attitude toward life — but standing alone as an album i was just hoping for a little more meat to sink my teeth into, especially after what, four or five years since the last one? it’s good but not amazing, that’s all.

jens lekman – oh you’re so silent jens – 4 stars
this came out last year so there’s plenty more that’s already been said elsewhere, but i tend to agree with most of it so far. i’ll just summarize to save you the trouble: lots of swelling sweet pop songs and a beautiful voice that rings a bit of magnetic fields, but a little less writerly and a little more swooning. strings and horns and pianos make the album feel rich even if there are a few songs they probably could have left off, but what else is new? really good for singing along and it’s cute how all his “th” sounds turn into d’s. brother–>brudder; other–>udder; even the–>duh. adorably scandinavian.

don’t believe me? go to his site on secretly canadian and get ‘black cab’, or grab the new pay day song, maple leaves. great stuff.