two.points.collapsing

instead of having finals week be monday through friday (you know, a single week), our school likes to take spring semester’s finals “week” and make it tuesday through friday, with the next monday and tuesday tacked on for kicks. isn’t that cool? well, not necessarily, but it does mean for one thing that the tests i have are more spread out and i can be more leisurely in preparing for them, and also that today, monday, no one has any finals and is free to bum around like the springtime afternoon is so fiercely trying to convince us to do. so i had lunch and kicked it with a couple of my favorite non-future-roommate guys just now and it was great. a solid three hours of quality april daytime.

[note: when i say my favorite non-future-roommates, i do not mean to imply that all roommates come first, and all non-roommates come after. without getting into any sort of intricate ranking system which would be utterly stupid, i just mean to say that it so happens that a lot of my favorite guys will be living under the same roof come august, whereas there are still some rad guys who will not, e.g. my company this afternoon.]

so i’m a big fan of lazy sunny afternoons is what i’m saying i guess, and it’s too bad i have to start memorizing the cranium sizes, dental structures, etc. of prehistoric human ancestors sometime soon for a final tomorrow (yes, it’s true, nariokatome boy does have a very modern post-cranial bone structure, which allows him to walk long distances — thanks for asking!)

it’s also too bad that being aware that the only reason you’re indignant or embarrassed is your stupid male ego still doesn’t make it any easier to just shake off the indignity or embarrasment you know is just stupid and male of you to be feeling. of course, girls all think they look fat so i guess that wouldn’t be too fun either.

so. she came home. and she’s better than i remembered, even.

and things feel wonderful.

(i’ll have something else to talk about soon i promise. this is just a very big deal and deserved it’s quite little moment.)

man, things are sure coming together. good week, this week, let me tell you. we got our house. school is almost over and the things i have left to do are very few and non-threatening. i have one job offer which i will gladly take, unless i get another even better offer (still possible at this point). and most importantly, my favorite girl in the world is coming home from a semester abroad in only 20 hours (and counting). it’s the kind of week that makes you feel like life is on your side for once.

so on the bragging-about-how-great-it-is-to-be-me-these-days tip, how about i share a similarly themed song of the week? actually, i don’t think the song is about that at all, but if you take the chorus out of context, you could get that idea. “you can’t be me i’m a rock star,” is absolutely how i’m feeling right now. so mixing it up with a little n.e.r.d. is what we’re gonna do this time for the song of the week. are you down?

i got an email from the shiner mailing list about their upcoming shows (only a few weeks away, in LA), and how they’re playing a show in KC with Centaur. Centaur is a new band fronted by matt talbot (former singer/guitarist of hum, now producing in champaign IL), which being a huge fan of hum i was eager to hear about. so after some minor internet exploring i found out they have an unofficial website where you can download some live tracks, and that they have a debut cd coming out in june on parasol. naturally, these things are both exciting to me. now if only i lived in central illinois, i could go see them play a show.

in other news — well, school is almost over and the only things really between me and summer are three final exams, which i am not excessively worried about. that’s just how i am about these things usually.

today in my business communication class (basically a public speaking course with business slant) we made a big circle, and went around, and when it was your turn, people in the class had to comment on what they thought your strengths were as a speaker, as they had observed in class. the consensus for me was something about me being very intelligent, which was great, because that’s exactly what i was going for.

my professor also made a broader comment about how a few of us (naming a couple names, myself included) have a “shoot from the hip” sort of sarcasm that is very refreshing. i thought that was very flattering, and of course, totally accurate, because i am one refreshing guy, with some qualities not unlike citrus sodas.

is it thursday yet?

this is the lovely home i found for myself and eight of my favorite guys at this university. doesn’t it look cozy? i’m so excited to move in there in august.

today was fine, actually. i got a job offer which i will probably take, unless i hear something better from someone else before friday. i may have to make a few phone calls or emails to see if i can facilitate hearing from someone else though, because i’d like to at least hear what the other offer is before i decide, and before i run out of time to decide more importantly (can’t keep offer number 1 waiting too long or they’ll change their mind).

other than that, i’m just glad class is almost over for the year. oh, and i went to a ‘networking’ function tonight that was pretty stupid and pointless (surprising, i know), other than showing us that if we want to do something, we just have to figure out a way to do it ourselves — we can’t go looking for help or advice from ‘industry professionals’. most of those types don’t have much to say outside of small talk and broad generalizations; at least, not the ones that come to university ‘networking’ barbeques. so it goes.

and if i told you i wasn’t quivering with excitement a good deal of the time, at least on the inside, at how close it is to thursday night (a very special occasion), i would be a big fat liar. i mean, who wouldn’t look forward to being in love again?

chapter one million in the “brian loves amoeba because…” series was written tonight, and i will tell you how.

my cd shelving had been getting closer and closer to full, and i had thought that instead of buying more storage, perhaps i could just streamline the ranks by exchanging the old crap i’m too embarrassed to even list here for a couple new ones at my favorite place in los angeles (amoeba, that is). i had yet to check out how well they paid for used music, so i thought i’d haul a bag of the expendable stuff down there to see what i could get. i figured for my sack of 25 or so crappy old cd’s i could at least get a couple good new ones.

amoeba, however, proved itself my dearest musical ally once again, and paid me an unexpected 87 dollars store credit (they take your cash value and add 20 percent if you take credit, which i’m all about — give me more amoeba spending power). i was able to get 7 cds with the credit and 10 extra dollars. pretty damn sweet. now i am the proud owner of:

…and you will know us by the trail of dead – source tags and codes (used)

ben kweller – sha sha

deltron 3030 – (s/t)

waking life – soundtrack

amelie – soundtrack

saves the day – stay what you are (used)

ozma – rock and roll part three (used)

what a deal. i’m pretty sure with the stuff i gave up, i definitely got the better end of that exchange. of course, they will sell my cds at 300% markup and they pushed more of their merchandise into my hands, so maybe not . . .

what do i care. i can look up with pride at my rack of recent acquisitions and be glad i have all this great new stuff to listen to, and even a little pride that i’m the kind of person to have n.e.r.d., a french film soundtrack, and a trail of dead cd all living in harmony next to each other, and all being appreciated.

last night was awfully enjoyable for only four bucks in entertainment. kscr had another of their lovely (free) concerts last night on campus, and i went to see jonah’s onelinedrawing open for remy zero. apparently this remy zero band has a radio single or two and so it was a very well-attended and densely packed show, by far the most crowded radio event of the year. i thought jonah was great as i usually do, and the first guy mellowdrone was alright as well. i gave remy zero a chance but wasn’t interested enough to stay — they were okay i guess. then i came home and read, then went to see ocean’s 11 at midnight. still cool upon second viewing, several months later. i just like clever heist movies.

this morning i finished a farewell to arms, which i have to say wasn’t as great as i expected. not bad though. some passages really struck me in their touching simplicity, somehow, and i can’t really explain it. for example:

“outside along the street were the refuse cans from the houses waiting for the collector. a dog was nosing at one of the cans.

‘what do you want?’ i asked and looked in the can to see if there was anything i could pull out for him; there was nothing on top but coffee-grounds, dust and some dead flowers.

‘there isn’t anything, dog,’ i said. the dog crossed the street. i went up the stairs in the hospital….”

this little snippet toward the end has little to do with anything, and isn’t especially well-written, descriptive or anything else special; but it totally caught my attention for some reason. there are a few pages like that throughout the book that make me appreciate it but in total i wouldn’t be so quick to recommend it to anyone.

and now i move on to (much) bigger and (hopefully) better things . . .

not a great week for collapsing fans, i realize. but now the busiest week of the year is over and done and i feel much better. i won’t bother you with all the details, but so there is some sort of idea of where i’ve been all week, i’ll sum it up.

i had an interview saturday that went great. i think it will definitely result in an offer. i had another interview with a different place monday, which lead to a second interview yesterday afternoon, which will definitely lead to an offer as soon as they figure out how much they can afford to pay me. i also had a phone interview tuesday morning which went well, and will probably turn into an offer which i will probably not accept because it’s for an unpaid internship only 2 or 3 days a week, and you can’t buy food with school credit. so the job hunt is going pretty well all of the sudden and it’s good to feel in demand. on the way from the round 2 interview yesterday i stopped in at tower records and bought the mulholland drive dvd, and am looking forward to watching that soon. i also picked up the neptune’s in search of… cd because the song “rock star” has been kicking around my brain a lot lately. next song of the week maybe? the cd overall is pretty dope too, actually.

note: i frequently misspell brain as “brian”, because that’s my name and i’m used to typing it that way. i don’t think it’s a coincidence either that my name is so similar to the word brain. i mean, it is my favorite food.

what else? school projects out the wazzoo. i gave a 15 minute presentation tuesday (which i spent all of sunday and most of monday night preparing for) on why machiavelli’s the prince is a valuable read for business students. it was fun and educational, of course. i think people might have questioned my own moral standing for choosing that as a topic though (the assignment was basically a book report on any business communication-related text). i also gave an impromptu speech on “is the golden age of america in the past or future”; to which my response was that the idea of a golden age is offensive to me because neither do i believe we are ever progressing toward that golden plateau of perfection, nor should we be so arrogant as to think we had already achieved it. how depressing would it be to say we were already as good as we could get — individually or as a nation — or even worse, that we had achieved that in the past and were on a downhill now? i claimed the more existentialist, “life is always the same, and your life is what you make of it.” not that there aren’t ups and downs on a grander scale, like wars and economic booms; just that things average out over time. like a sine wave. trigonometry proves useful.

also, my final advertising group project (pitch a campaign for the coffee bean, a regional coffee house chain) was last night and it was a lot of work, but we did well. that’s why i’ve been so busy this week, it was very elaborate and demanding. but we performed wonderfully.

oh, and about the scientologists and hobos: well, a scientologist lady dressed in all white tried to get me to give it a chance while i was waiting for a bus on the way to monday’s interview. she said it had done wonders for her life, and asked if i had a lot of stress and trouble in my life. when i told her no, i was fine, she said, “well a lot of people are fine, but they don’t realize they could be finer.” my bus came before i could tell her how stupid she sounded.

and as to the hobo — on the way back from the same interview one homeless man was sleeping in the shaded bus shelter on the bench, and a lot of us were standing waiting for the bus. another hobo came along and started yelling at the sleeping hobo to get out of there because “that bench is for paying customers, and it’s n**** ‘s like you that give homeless people a bad name.” i thought that was very funny. then he came over to me and gave me the “am i right?” shrug and nod combo, and held out his fist, which i gladly tapped with my own. those are my kind of hobos — the ones who don’t ask for money, just acknowledgment as real people. i would have given him some money but honestly all i had was bus fare.

i know i wrote too much today already but only one more thing: we got the house.

this is the house we’ve been trying to get for months. the one for next year, the one for nine guys, the one that will make senior year be more fun than any year yet. so between that and the interviews, this has been the best week as well as the busiest. funny how things work out.

how about a new song of the week? would you like that? i bet you would.

so how about a little piebald this time around. i picked up their latest cd we’re the only friends we have at their show a couple weeks ago, and have listened to it very heavily since. i really believe that if so-called “alternative radio” got a hold of this cd, then i would have to look back on that one wonderfully fun piebald show in a half-filled chain reaction — with the band playing their hearts out, the crowd loving every minute of it, and everyone just glad to be there — as a fond memory never to be repeated, with the success they would surely enjoy. maybe i give them to much credit for this album, but it’s just so fun to listen to, especially american hearts, which is the new song of the week.

more in the morning, about interviews and princes and coffee and scientologists and hobos and telephones. sort of.

finally, a day to myself, sort of. after the busiest few days of the year, today is sort of a calm before the storm before the storm. the first storm being a big final presentation in advertising tomorrow night, the storm, of course, being finals week. but since we’re in the eye here, i can finally start recapping what i’ve been up to lately and how cool these days have been, even though i hadn’t had time to write about them until now.

so going way back to last friday, i went over to my friend spencer’s place late at night.

backstory:

i’ve been a big flaming lips fan since high school, and heard even way back then about their album zaireeka, a cool experiment in recording and listening to music, which comes as a set of four different cds meant to be listened to simultaneously. i never bought it because i never thought i’d have four cd players in one room, or even in one house (my parents don’t listen to much music).

some excerpts from an article on their site about zaireeka, written after a listening test with singer/mastermind/eccentric wayne coyne:

“The music surges from alternate directions and we start to turn ourselves round and move side to side – experimenting with this melange that has become this glorious total sound. Gentle guitar, stray noises, voices, voices, and beautiful strings and horns just swooping past and around. At times it’s like there are three clones of the Flaming Lips all playing at once, with slightly different songs that only almost lock in. Then it’s all synched and it’s a total sound again. The process just makes it all the more exciting and powerful. Stuff races around the room and you feel like you’ve been hit in the head. This particular song ends with about a million dogs all barking from all directions i.e. it’s bloody frightening.”

wayne, talking about the cd: “Some of the songs are designed to go in and out of sync – we changed them on purpose. I wanted a record to challenge people. Something that you have to listen to a couple of times before you can decide if you like or not.”

and if those don’t impress you, let me tell you some more weird stuff. in the liner notes for track 6, it contains a warning that the high frequency sounds could induce dizziness or nausea, and should not be played around infants (we theorized that their soft little heads might explode, maybe?). the tracks have little “explanations” in the liner notes as well as to what they’re about, with such greats as “riding to work in 2025 (you’re invisible now)”, which is about a secrent agent who collapses into insanity after realizing he’s the most important man in the world. yeah, it’s pretty weird.

so when my friend spencer told me he had started listening to the flaming lips, and had ordered zaireeka, i was excited. very. it came last week and he said friday night we should do this thing, so we did. i had an interview the next day (which i’ll get into later), so i didn’t even have the benefit of having any drinks beforehand, but i don’t know if that would have made a difference, because frankly, it was so impressive already.

i would describe it as a good flaming lips cd, only blown to pieces. the songs are extremely cool, and the way they play out over four not-quite synced cds is really interesting and fun. there were six of us in the room, and aside from looking at eachother and making “did you hear that?” faces every so often, we did nothing but sit and listen. it was pretty amazing. i think we’re even going to do it again soon.

the high-pitched part on one track did make one guy a little queasy, and some of it was downright creepy, but these are the sort of things that really only make it more of an experience. overall i’d say if you get the chance, you should borrow a couple extra boomboxes and go crazy with zaireeka. it’s definitely worth the effort.