two.points.collapsing

the death cab for cutie show last night was . . . outstanding. i have to admit, i’m not that familiar with them or their music (yet…that concert made a lifelong fan out of someone who already had an interest in their music) so this may not be the most informed review, but i will try.

they opened with one of the very mellow songs, i think the first track off their new album, that really showcases the vocal talent of benjamin gibbard. i have to say that it floored me. i thought his recorded voice sounded beautiful, and live it was no less moving. he’s just an incredible singer and songwriter. the live show made the pretty parts more touching because they were right there, and the rocking parts more energetic and loud than the recorded songs sound. in all aspects just a really good show. i can’t wait to see them again someday.

also, the band the prom who are on the same label apparently, with a piano/singer, bass, drum trio played some really great songs too. i liked them and plan to check them out. the middle band though, john vancerslice — well, that set could have been shorter. i hate to say it but i just saw nothing to like about them. i felt bad too, because i was standing pretty close to the stage, and i just could not enjoy their songs. i hoped they didn’t see me standing there, probably showing obvious signs of impatience while hoping they would finish so i could see a much better band. oh well.

the adventure didn’t stop after the last song of the encore though once i left the el rey. oh no. on the bus down wilshire, an old, crazy homeless black dude mumbling to himself fondled the breast of another overweight, five-toothed, weird-looking hispanic homeless woman right in front of me, which started them on a little game of musical chairs while she moved to get him to stop pestering her and he moved closer to her because he wanted to “tell her something”. that was interesting. then i had the pleasure of standing on the corner of wilshier and alvarado for 25 minutes around 12:30 at night waiting to transfer to the bus that runs back down past my apartment. this is not the kind of place you want to raise your children. or hang out alone after midnight when you’re a skinny white kid — not to say i was afraid, because i’ve never had any problems in the city so far just minding my own business. it’s just not something you would do for fun.

when the bus finally did come, i was the only one on it besides the driver. i can’t say that’s ever happened to me on public transportation before; and that was fine, just a little bizarre. so all in all, it was a whole new layer of fun on los angeles’ crappy public transportation system.

oh and for those interested (i.e. other guys, i’m assuming), tony hawk 3 is the most fun video game i’ve played so far. it’s unbelievable. i haven’t even got to grand theft auto yet, because tony hawk is so cool. good game. recommended.

end of loser video game talk. lunch time.

to all loyal collapsing readers:

i appreciate your continued support and interest in my writings, but i am sad to report that both tony hawk 3 and grand theft auto 3 for playstation 2 showed up in my mailbox today. although this isn’t bad news for me, it may be for anyone expecting me to a) write often or b) have anything good to write about. aside from the death cab show tonight (very excited), you can already assume how i’ll be spending the next few days.

see you on monday,

the management.

ps — i’ll at least post about the show sometime later when i get home. and whether or not we beat those UCLA bastards this weekend in the only football game of the year that “matters”.

pps — kidding about the UCLA part. school spirit and college rivalries are so lame.

i had to spend most of the four hours between morning class and afternoon work doing a computer project for my director class, since the lab isn’t open on weekends and i don’t have director at home. so after spending about two and a half hours in front of a computer, i have a nice little finished project that fills all the requirements and is also the lamest simpsons game ever made. you can download it and play it if you want, but i’m telling you, it’s lame. it’s funny, sort of, the first few times at least. and at least it’s sound programming-wise.

i would love to read blogs and write more right now but if i’m going to eat anything before i get off work at 4:30, having eaten nothing yet today, i’m going to have to do it in the next half hour before i go to the microfiche dungeon (i.e. work). time for some powerbar action.

for anyone concerned, i got to watch family guy then go to the redman show without missing any of it. lucky me.

to be honest though, it wasn’t very good. i stand by the fact that he makes fun music videos and i think a lot of his songs are better than a lot of the popular hip hop of the day. but the live show was really not very interesting. for one, it’s even harder to hear what the hell he’s saying and appreciate anything other than the very loud beats. also, there were FAR too many “can i get a hell yeah!…” or some variation of that (over a dozen. not just a few too many. an exorbitant amount). i wasn’t too thrilled with the segment of chanting something to the tune of “if you ain’t smokin’ then get the fuck out!”. i mean, i don’t see anything wrong with some recreational soft drug usage if that’s your thing. i’m not a big fan of the whole cult of marijuana though. i guess maybe i expect too much from old redman.

hey, at least it was free.

now reading and to bed, basically. i just bought a ticket for tomorrow night’s death cab for cutie show because the el rey site said there were only 24 left. i hope they didn’t put that there just to convince me to pay the 2.50 service charge (much better than going through ticket master, at least). either way, looks like i’m going to a rock show tomorrow night for sure now. yum.

“can’t we just build a fucking bomb the size of earth and cut a hole out of the middle in the shape of the united states? drop the motherfucker around us and take care of business once and for all?”

thank you for the link. that was damn hilarious.

rockin’ some old school dj qbert at the moment and i have to leave for class soon.

i’m undecided as how to handle tonight’s situation. see, redman, one of the only current hip hop stars that i think is talented and clever (tell me you you’ve seen his videos and don’t at least find him entertaining and i won’t believe you), is performing for free on campus tonight for “troy week”. but do i really want to go, and suffer through the “pep rally” beforehand (one of the things in this world that will never, ever appeal to me in any way), and then suffer through standing around with what i’m guessing will be a crowd comprised of a lot of nasty-dancing hoochies and dirtbags… eh, very debatable. especially when i could stay home and watch family guy.

looks like we’ll just have to wait and see how the spirit moves me. maybe by 7:30 i’ll be feeling ghetto fabulous and won’t be able to just stay home.

a little quotation from my evening’s readings in d. h. lawrences’s lady chatterly’s lover:

the world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few, in most personal experience. there’s lots of good fish in the sea — maybe! but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you’re not mackerel or herring yourself, you are inclined to find very few good fish in the sea.

i read that and thought: “exactly”. the thing both my ex-girlfriend (still friend) and i have both decided is, sadly, that after such a long, high-quality relationship almost no one else seems to measure up. we both sort of needed something new, at least for now; but are having the devil’s time trying to find anything even somewhat promising. single life is made out to be this fun time of meeting and mating all these beautiful people, but i think that’s just a trick. college isn’t really about having all these escapades. it’s a hoax to get you excited about going and paying all this money for classes you don’t like.

to be honest, sometimes i wish i was a mackerel.

i know i may have written in excess today, but i’m about to write more. please don’t be frustrated with me. i just finally have a lot to talk about.

following a link from kate of quidproquo, i have determined that i am a mere 42% emo. it was the utter lack of sweaters that got me, i think.

i realize, also, that it’s mid-week, and about time for a new song. i’m feeling generous though, so i think it might be more than one this week. mostly to give you easy access to a couple tracks from the new mix cd in addition to the regular song of the week, because i’m so proud of our creation. but i digress.

if i had a few extra dollars lying around right now, i’d put it toward the new aphex twin cd, drukqs. you might not know this, but i love aphex twin. this cd came out recently, and i downloaded a few samples to tide me over until i could pick it up… and wow. it’s probably some of the best stuff he’s done yet (he being richard james, the single man behind aphex twin). since this is the best non-band, non-rock music i listen to, i thought i’d share it since this has already sort of become electronic music week. i’ll get back to sharing my latest indie/pop songs next week (for example — i can’t stop listening to “battlescars” by ozma), but for now the song of the week will be some aphex twin.

with bonus tracks from kenna, mu-ziq, and cut chemist. i just love to spread the love (for a limited time only).

today i had the pleasure of being bludgeoned into submission by another finance midterm. god i hate that class. not because it’s unbearably hard, but because no matter what i can’t make myself work for that guy (the professor). i studied some, but never enough obviously, and even though i feel ashamed of myself for the two hours i’m sitting there staring at the exam, not knowing how to do the problems, 20 minutes afterward i already can’t make myself care anymore. it’s just a peculiar situation.

i’d like to think it’s just further evidence that i’m more of an idea man than a number man. that’s the excuse i always fall back on to save myself from having to admit that maybe i’m just not as good a student as i used to be.

but really, does being a good student have anything to do with being a good (or interesting) person? not at all, really. so as long as i have a decent “overall gpa” to put on my resume after college that says i at least didn’t spend four years stumbling drunk from one night stand to one night stand, i think it’s more than fine to just plain not care about one class in my whole educational career so far. i have that right, don’t i? the panel of experts says yes, i do. sorry professor finance (real name changed to protect anonymity — a lesson i learned the hard way in my dark past…)

suge knight, the ceo of death row records (you know, dr. dre? snoop dogg? tupac?) is speaking at our school tonight. i thought about going just to say i saw the guy, but then i’d have to wait in a long line, probably, just to spend a long time listening to some “gangster” dude trying to sound smart in front of a packed auditorium. maybe he’s a really sharp guy though and i’m just being judgmental. it’s been known to happen on occasion.

[confidential note to cate at distraction: did you know burning airlines was even thinking about changing their name for a month or so after the big incident? they decided against it though and i support them. it’s so cool sounding, national tragedy or not.]

in other news, i’ve taken a liking to the highly recommended page awkward pirouettes, so voila, there it is. before long, it’s going to take me several hours to click through my list of regularly read blogs. luckily i have little enough to do with myself that i check twice a day and never fall too far behind. otherwise i’d have to just give up on the whole thing.

and i don’t want to do that to all you nice people.

my roommate mike might be going to scotland next semester to study abroad. mike listens primarily to cool electronic music (not crappy club techno. good techno or even cooler experimental stuff), and whenever we go somewhere and he’s driving, he’s blasting his tunes on his nice car stereo. i figured that if he were to leave, i might not hear any of the good stuff he plays for something like six months, so i should make myself a compilation of the best stuff to listen to while he’s gone.

i’ve been hatching this idea for over a month, and last weekend i finally made a list of songs. well, tonight, instead of studying, we finally got down to actually making the cd. it turned out fabulously and i think the selections really are the best stuff we could have picked. a couple aren’t the best songs artistically (like n trance), but are fun, and sure, weezer isn’t electronic, and kenna’s almost a synth-pop sort of song. but, these were included because they’re the musical equivalent of inside jokes, i.e. songs we play loudly and sing along with and maybe do stupid dances to sometimes when we’re a bit goofy.

nonetheless, most of the songs are high quality, and i thought that i’d share the list with weblog land for a nice little change of pace from the indie rock obsession. i personally recommend you check out all these songs at least once. a couple of these bands are so good that thanks to mike, i’m probably going to pick up their music for my own library (especially air — whose cd moon safari is the chillest cd ever, and whose soundtrack to the virgin suicides is the best soundtrack ever — and squarepusher) so here it is, a tribute to my roommate…

my name is stereo mike:

1 — dj qbert – turntable tv (revizion)

2 — bran van 3000 – drinking in LA

3 — mu-ziq – brace yourself (remix)

4 — fatboy slim – pierre henry – psyche rock (remix)

5 — innerzone orchestra – the beginning of the end

6 — funky porcini – reboot

7 — n-trance – set u free

8 — squarepusher – a journey to reedham (7 a.m. mix)

9 — cut chemist – alphabet olympics

10 — kenna – freetime

11 — midfield general – midfielding

12 — prodigy – [from the dirt chamber sessions] (this one doesn’t have track names. it’s track 2 on the cd though…)

13 — fatboy slim – weapon of choice

14 — weezer – island in the sun

15 — air – playground love

16 — groove armada – at the river

so try that on for size. this is some good shit, trust me. i should get back to studying for my midterm though for a while before i give up like i always do in favor of a good night’s sleep and a not necessarily “good” grade on the test.

not much to share today, friends. an uneventful tuesday. i have a midterm tomorrow in the worst class ever. but on the plus side tomorrow is also payday. death cab for cutie show is friday, i’m getting excited about that. but for now, not really a lot to say.

maybe later.