Category: Uncategorized

i haven’t posted a new song in months and months, mostly because i’ve realized i’m no longer that ‘with it’ when it comes to music. my tastes have become so refined — in that they’re specific, not so much that they’re high-brow or pretentious — that i know what i like to within a 95% margin of error, and new bands have little chance of cracking my shell of selectivity. at this point, i discover one or two new bands a year that have any chance of sticking with me, and those often through some stroke of luck rather than effort.

for those interested, this year’s was frightened rabbit, and their cd is one of the few i’ve listened to repeatedly. you should buy it, it’s wonderful.

what i do know is what i already like, and that is the mountain goats. one of the only other musicians that has impressed me this year was their opening act a few weeks ago, kaki king (did you see the video a few posts ago? so f’ing cool).

together, the two made a six-song EP of nice new songs. unfortunately, you could only hear these songs a) at the live show, which was great, or b) by buying the vinyl-only album at the live show. i had cash aplenty at said show, but no record player at home, being of a modern digital-age temperament and born just past the point where i might own one out of nostalgia. this was frustrating to me, because as a loyal fan i wanted badly to pay these nice people for their lovely music. as evidence, i had recently purchased his digital download EP, satanic messiah, and gladly payed the requested amount for the privilege of hearing those songs. i was going crazy over the fact i had no such option in the case of the vinyl.

my solution is makeshift but hopefully suffices. a very nice friend of mine (who shall go unnamed) was kind enough to digitize his copy of the album and share with his fellow super-fan. i, not wanting to steal from one of my favorite musicians, decided to go back to the purchase/donation page for the other digital EP, and pay for that a second time. it’s less than the cost of the album at the show, but i’m not getting nice screen-printed cover art or covering the cost of manufacturing. i hope my karma is in balance.

especially because track one off of the vinyl release is a beautiful song, which would have been criminal to miss out on were it not for my fine friend. it’s not like anything he’s put out before, focused on kaki king’s sweet feminine voice instead of john darnielle’s distinct intensity, and you really have to hear it. i’m doing this as a short-term favor to friends, not an attempt to leak anything on a massive scale or drive traffic here (gave that up ages ago), so enjoy while you can.

another week poorly blogged. not only was it the most exciting night of the political year, but i’ve been super busy at work.

tuesday night was great, we had a solid dozen or so friends over, and spirits were high. as with everyone else, i am happy and hopeful that america made a good choice. pretty sad about proposition 8 going down, though i’m confident that justice will be served on that one in the coming months as well.

got to go to denver for just over 24 hours for work, and see almost none of it. the research facility was nice, and our hotel was decent (the decor in the lobby was memorable, at least). other than that, i was unable to form any opinion of the place other than it doesn’t feel very much like a big city. i think because the streets are wide and uncongested. and they have a crazy-ass airport.

it’s almost the end of college football season already. and my family is starting to exchange christmas gift ideas. the year will be over before we know it, and with it, the george bush era. i’m not normally a fan of time whizzing by so quickly, but in this case i think it’s probably for the best.

oh you poor, collapsing thing, i’ve been a jerk to you lately.

too busy with election news at every possible moment of computer time. seriously, i’m somewhat concerned that even if the heavens shine down on us come next week, i will still have a personal battle to fight against election news withdrawl. i check media outlets and other blogs several times a day. i watch countdown and the daily show religiously. what happens next week? i guess we can go back to laughing at what a miserable fuckup george bush is for a few more months, with the added comfort that it’ll all be over soon.

saw some excellent concerts last weekend; if you’ve ever wondered if girl talk live was a good idea, i’m here to tell you not to. as i captioned my twitter photo, you’ll never see so many white people jumping up and down with that much enthusiasm. dance party central. if you missed it (ie if you’re ALL of our friends who wimped out, bunch of babies), shame on you.

mountain goats show sunday, equally great. for once in a great long time, the opening act was supremely talented and enjoyable and convinced me to buy her cd. if you’ve never heard of kaki king, you should watch this video and at the very least revel in her skillful hands.

super talented and super cute. and if i were the type who went fishing for blog traffic, i would be mourning the fact that i didn’t whip out my iphone and take a photo or two when she took her shirt off for the last song (as promised earlier in the set but not believed, by me at least). i think the audience all respected her too much — or all the lonely single indie nerds were too in love with her — to take advantage of the situation. too bad they probably didn’t know any better at the time.

otherwise… well, i’ve been catching up on tv at home with jessica and working fairly hard. writing has not been a major part of my week lately, and that’s a shame. although i did find time to write a review of a game i DIDN’T want to play, sort of. and i’m working on another good post, just need to find some time to write it.

if you’re hurting for good stuff to read that isn’t election-related, however, might i suggest you geek out on spencer’s four part horror series over at under culture. it’s long, but exhaustive, and dare i say, right on the money. and if you’re anything like me — that is, shamefully behind on your horror education — it will teach you some serious lessons and give you a good half-dozen movies to bump up on your netflix queue.

decent weekend. nick and norah on friday made for a nice date night. saturday, SC beat the other team so bad we essentially stopped watching in favor of beer pong. sunday we went mini-golfing, which i haven’t done in years, for stacey’s birthday, and i won out of our group. who rules? of course, i lost to jessica at both skee-ball and pop-a-shot basketball, but who’s counting. i maintained my manhood ratio with a solid air hockey performance.

also had my first iphone frustration this weekend. saturday night, i stopped by our friend joe’s housewarming party and neglected to write down the apartment number. everyone i tried to call, i connected just long enough to say, ‘hey it’s brian, i forgot…’ and then it disconnected and said, ‘call failed’. same thing the next morning. turned out i just needed to power it off and restart, proving the old IT guy adage right once again. odd glitch, hopefully this is an isolated incident and not the beginning of justifiable regret.

also planning a little election night party at our place on this, the last day of voter registration in california, and a mere two weeks before election eve. can’t wait to celebrate and/or start planning our escape plan together. responding to the email, jen said, “i’ll bring champaigne, to either toast a victory or break over my own head to put me out of my misery.” fun times, indeed.

missing: brian. sorry, friends!

catching up in a few sentences, vacation was great, austin’s a fantastic city, one of the few i’ve been to i could imagine myself living in if given the opportunity. ACL is great fun compared to the ordeal that is coachella, even if there are slightly fewer, less exciting bands. since i’ve been home, i got my wisdom teeth out and they are finally starting to feel good enough where i don’t have to be careful eating. i’ve played a fair bit of rock band 2 and watched a lot of TV.

currently my roomie/girlfriend is on a business trip across town in downtown LA for work, staying in a hotel 25 minutes from our apartment, which is kinda weird for me. there’s good reason, but it’s still funny to me that i miss someone who’s still within cab fare distance.

now that my major vacation for the season is over it’s all about looking forward to holidays i guess; i know about a dozen people with birthdays or other parties this month, we went to knott’s scary farm for haunted houses last weekend, and there’s that election thing in the way, but then we get into christmas trip countdown mode. nice.

Last day of vacation in Austin checking out some cool shops, buying t-
shirts and music — the geek power of waterloo records is high. Check
out their rad 33 1/3 rack (I picked up the let it be volume by colin
meloy). Then over to the Ginger Man with 100 beers on tap and some
darts before we head off for a fancy goodbye dinner. Great week!

Austin City Limits are go!

Sunscreen applied, 24oz Bud Light in souveneir cozy underway… Time
to get our rock on.

Smells like heaven! I love Austin right now…

things done or left to do this week:

— watch the poll numbers reverse course as mccain lies circles around himself, and all the things he’s stood for the last 25 years (massive deregulation, corporate interests) prove to be direct causes for the current economic disaster. congrats, fiscal conservatives, you had your big chance and you blew it big time!
— prepare for vacation, which pretty much involves daydreaming about barbeque for every meal.
— pick up some new cds (i’m thinking okkervil river for sure, probably the ra ra riot album) for the plane ride.
— finish one book so i can write a combo book/movie review of choke and bring a fresh one on the trip.
— revel in the huge USC football victory vs ohio state, be sad there is no game this weekend.
— try to fight the overwhelming urge to buy rock band 2, out now, until at least after vacation. (have you seen the set list? it’s gonna be so sweeeeeet).
— mourn the probable loss of my work computer to a crash taking out all the files i’ve accumulated in the past 6 years, save for the assortment of ones stored on servers or hopefully in coworker’s files. funny, i was just thinking of doing a back-up last week, and should have probably followed up on that intuition.

looks like i’m even deeper into the cult of apple now. no regrets. at least not yet.

not that it’s news or anything, but this is one slick piece of technology. we’ll see in a week or two of field-testing if it’s super handy, just a flashy phone, or causes me to start acting like a douchebag.