what the hell is up with the college football bowl series lately? i seem to remember, back when i was a kid, if a football team wanted to be in a bowl, they pretty much had to be undefeated or have lost something like one game or MAYBE two games. now there are teams who have lost almost half their games whose bowls are getting advertised all the fuck over television. i just saw a commercial for a bowl game featuring a team that's 8-4 versus a team that's 7-6. how the hell do these teams get to play in bowl games? are there just more bowl games than there were before? what the hell happened? and how the flying fuck is LSU even playing for the national title after losing 2 games?! when has that ever happened before? i'm pretty sure never. and one of their losses was to Kentucky. the world is collapsing!
in related news, the patriots are still going to lose this season. at some point. the giants could have beaten them if they were at all capable of being consistent. but watching the patriots play for the last three weeks has confirmed my hypothesis (at least in my mind) that their "fantastic" and "perfect" team has done exactly what i expected they would do: simultaneously win every regular season game and completely lose the ability to improvise or think on their feet. if they run into a team who can force them to change their game plan, they're going to lose. and i'm going to laugh. and eat a sandwich. one of those things i'm actually going to do now.
Dec 31, 2007
thoughts on the holidays and space cacti
i decided to split my marathon post up into two posts because otherwise nobody, including me, would be willing to commit to reading the entire thing.
YOU'VE BEEN FOOLED!
now that you feel obligated to finish reading by way of my trickery, i'll continue.
it seems weird to let another holiday season pass by with me having a blog and not taking the time to write down tons of completely unfounded blather about american consumerism and act like my opinions about christmas are empirically provable fact and anyone who disagrees will be badly hurt in a physical manner. so here goes.
this christmas season has passed largely similarly to the last few, except for the susan's gig and all the action leading up to it. i've talked about that enough to last a dog's life, so i'll avoiding further digression. i came in from pullman, spent a few days deflating and finishing grading, then came up to kent, engaged in debauchery, went home, more debauchery, got drunk, missed church, woke up late, got lots of presents that i didn't deserve, felt guilty about being too cheap to really get anyone any good gifts, spent a few days scheming a way to get my instruments up to kent from canton, took care of that, watched a lot of TiVo, plotted filling my stomach with a huge Chipotle burrito so that i can drink for 10 straight hours tonight and not die, and everything else will likely play out according to plan and wind up with a few days of me sitting at my parents' house hurriedly finishing my lesson plans for next week and then the final emotional and physical turmoil of flying back to pullman mere instants before i have to start working again.
i'm definitely glad i got to come back here for break again, but it's also always really strange. on one hand, you have my parents/family, who are, in a lot of ways, used to a much different type of lifestyle than i am, and while i'm glad they don't really seem to think i need to be a lot like them to not suck, i still sort of feel like i stick out like a sore thumb. i suppose that's the weird balancing act that comes with having older family members and especially parents: on one hand, you feel like you're not necessarily good enough to live up to their expectations, but on the other hand, you often feel like the things you do actually think you do well sort of fly by because, well, let's face it, in the 10 years since you spent every living moment in your parents' house, you and they have kind of stopped having lots of things in common.
i just realized i nested the "on the one hand" expression inside of another instance of said expression and didn't finish the original instance of that expression. so here goes:
on the other hand, i have the whole scene in kent with my friends from KSU and the surrounding area, who all definitely get what it's like to be in the position that i'm in existentially, financially, etc. i'm also more certain on what their expectations of me are, at least for the most part. it's a much more stable environment in that sense, but less so in the sense that i don't have my own transportation, or my own food, or really any sort of personal space or schedule-planning ability.
i don't really know what i'm trying to get at; i think i'm just ruminating because i'm really freaking hungry and i don't want to start working on my lesson plans.
being with my family was really great this christmas again, and even though it seems everybody is getting more and more fed up with christmas-as-shoppingasm, it seems like they're actually scaling back the present-buying a little and focusing more on keeping themselves happy first, which is good (at least in my opinion).
the christmas gig we were going to do at the behavioral center didn't work out and neither did going to rochester, but all in all i think it's been a pretty great vacation, considering the amount of living that has to fit into 2 or 3 weeks. there's never enough hours in the day, really. i think regret is a natural consequence of time. which isn't to say there's not a yang to that, because there is. i'm just too hungry to figure out what it is right now.
YOU'VE BEEN FOOLED!
now that you feel obligated to finish reading by way of my trickery, i'll continue.
it seems weird to let another holiday season pass by with me having a blog and not taking the time to write down tons of completely unfounded blather about american consumerism and act like my opinions about christmas are empirically provable fact and anyone who disagrees will be badly hurt in a physical manner. so here goes.
this christmas season has passed largely similarly to the last few, except for the susan's gig and all the action leading up to it. i've talked about that enough to last a dog's life, so i'll avoiding further digression. i came in from pullman, spent a few days deflating and finishing grading, then came up to kent, engaged in debauchery, went home, more debauchery, got drunk, missed church, woke up late, got lots of presents that i didn't deserve, felt guilty about being too cheap to really get anyone any good gifts, spent a few days scheming a way to get my instruments up to kent from canton, took care of that, watched a lot of TiVo, plotted filling my stomach with a huge Chipotle burrito so that i can drink for 10 straight hours tonight and not die, and everything else will likely play out according to plan and wind up with a few days of me sitting at my parents' house hurriedly finishing my lesson plans for next week and then the final emotional and physical turmoil of flying back to pullman mere instants before i have to start working again.
i'm definitely glad i got to come back here for break again, but it's also always really strange. on one hand, you have my parents/family, who are, in a lot of ways, used to a much different type of lifestyle than i am, and while i'm glad they don't really seem to think i need to be a lot like them to not suck, i still sort of feel like i stick out like a sore thumb. i suppose that's the weird balancing act that comes with having older family members and especially parents: on one hand, you feel like you're not necessarily good enough to live up to their expectations, but on the other hand, you often feel like the things you do actually think you do well sort of fly by because, well, let's face it, in the 10 years since you spent every living moment in your parents' house, you and they have kind of stopped having lots of things in common.
i just realized i nested the "on the one hand" expression inside of another instance of said expression and didn't finish the original instance of that expression. so here goes:
on the other hand, i have the whole scene in kent with my friends from KSU and the surrounding area, who all definitely get what it's like to be in the position that i'm in existentially, financially, etc. i'm also more certain on what their expectations of me are, at least for the most part. it's a much more stable environment in that sense, but less so in the sense that i don't have my own transportation, or my own food, or really any sort of personal space or schedule-planning ability.
i don't really know what i'm trying to get at; i think i'm just ruminating because i'm really freaking hungry and i don't want to start working on my lesson plans.
being with my family was really great this christmas again, and even though it seems everybody is getting more and more fed up with christmas-as-shoppingasm, it seems like they're actually scaling back the present-buying a little and focusing more on keeping themselves happy first, which is good (at least in my opinion).
the christmas gig we were going to do at the behavioral center didn't work out and neither did going to rochester, but all in all i think it's been a pretty great vacation, considering the amount of living that has to fit into 2 or 3 weeks. there's never enough hours in the day, really. i think regret is a natural consequence of time. which isn't to say there's not a yang to that, because there is. i'm just too hungry to figure out what it is right now.
'bout to pop a cap in an ass
yet again, insomnia is having its brutal, evil way with me this morning. i actually went to bed (though not technically bed, since i'm sleeping on a couch) last night around 2:30am, which is early compared to when i've been going to bed lately. figured i'd earned it after staying up till 7am working on this new recording the night before. unfortunately, i woke up around 7am this morning for some godforsaken reason and wasn't able to get back to sleep. now it's 9:30 and the day is officially in full swing; i had had hopes of eventually collapsing back into pleasant unconsciousness, but it's starting to seem less and less likely. i finished separating the show from the other night into tracks, but i think i'm going to hold off on the actual mixing until i can listen on a better set of speakers. the sound is really good; i'm told that this is because we accidentally did a partial soundboard recording instead of a full-on audience recording. i'm pretty sure that's the first time i've ever screwed something up and had the result be actually better than it would have been had i did things correctly. though to be fair, mike was the one who hooked the things up in the first place, so props to him for the "mistake".
i went back and listened to the tape again this morning, or at least parts of it. we sound a lot better than we should considering nobody but me knew any of these songs until a week ago and we practiced a combined 8 or so hours. i'm happy with it. now i'm just trying to figure out how to do a show by myself that i can shop around pullman and moscow. first things first; guess i should get my car patched up and figure out what the hell i'm doing about my classes.
there were a few pictures taken at the show and the previous day's rehearsal at the church, but they weren't on my camera, so i'm working on getting those. i've pretty much let hair and beard hygiene go completely since break started, so perhaps i shouldn't be so excited about posting pictures of myself.
regardless, we may or may not be recording some stuff at the church tomorrow, i'm going to be working on lesson plans all morning, then sending 2007 back to where it came from by drinking until i can't see and talk in entirely consonants. probably more progress on the recordings next week, after tuesday.
i'm wondering about this insomnia thing. it could of course just have something to do with changing my sleeping arrangements every few days, i guess. normally when i have trouble sleeping it's because i'm worrying about something. i mean, i've got a lot of stuff on my mind, but i haven't really "worrying" about any of it, per se.
there's the matter of planning my classes, which actually shouldn't be too difficult because i still have a week of doing pretty much nothing else to get it done in, and most of the work has already been done in the previous five semesters. i don't have to print any new essays, reading packets, or anything like that. i just have to show up tuesday and go at it.
i'm a little worried about my car, considering i'm still in significantly more dire financial straits than i had projected i would be in june (to the tune of, say, four figures more dire) and most definitely need a working vehicle sometime in the next five months, since i will no longer have a job after that, and will probably need to drive around to find a new one. this also raises the concern that i might not be able to get to my much-anticipated back-to-back ryan adams shows at the end of january; which would be a little depressing, considering it's pretty much the only extraneous expense i'm allowing myself this entire semester. okay, so THAT'S something i'm actually "worried" about.
there's the matter of what to do about this whole music thing also. i'd like to keep playing shows, but the fact is that i was really only able to manage pulling this show off even with the help of lots and lots of other people (including musicians) and someone else's PA. i'm not sure how often places are capable of providing their own PA, but i'm imagining that one of those fuckers is pretty expensive, and i'm certainly not going to be rolling in dough anytime soon. there's also the matter of working at a job which routinely had me in my office or related location 12 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week last semester, which doesn't leave a lot of time for schedule extracurricular activities. on the other hand, playing that show was really fun, now i know the songs and am comfortable enough to keep playing them, and it seems like a great way to build experience and also keep me sort of forcibly engaged with the music end of things, so that i don't do what i usually do and just sort of work a little on playing and writing whenever i feel like it and then sort of let things slide for a month, etc., etc. i think it would be good for me to be accountable to something other than myself alone when it comes to music, at least to keep me on a reasonable work schedule as far as practicing and writing goes. i guess it'll depend on how many places in the pullman/moscow area have a PA. sigh. no wonder everybody talks about being a performing musician but nobody actually does it.
aside from all those fun things, there's the matter of getting ready to leave ohio and the seventy million people i know here, stop taking 10 hours a day to do whatever i want, and get used to living alone and working all week again, which doesn't sound like much fun, but of course needs to be done because that's generally how people stay alive. by working, i mean.
i'm in the midst of confirming that all my grad applications have been received. still not sure that i'm going to get in anywhere. still not sure if i'll go even if i do. still have no idea how i'm even going to make that decision if/when i have to. fortunately, at least three of the five schools have all my materials. so that's something. my shitty, shitty materials.
also of course having the usual feelings-for-girls-related problems too. everybody knows my feelings about blogging about those types of things, but being around my friends here and also it being the holiday season both seem to exacerbate said feelings, so it's not a good combination in that regard.
good thing i'm not worrying about any of this stuff. otherwise i'd be worried :)
i went back and listened to the tape again this morning, or at least parts of it. we sound a lot better than we should considering nobody but me knew any of these songs until a week ago and we practiced a combined 8 or so hours. i'm happy with it. now i'm just trying to figure out how to do a show by myself that i can shop around pullman and moscow. first things first; guess i should get my car patched up and figure out what the hell i'm doing about my classes.
there were a few pictures taken at the show and the previous day's rehearsal at the church, but they weren't on my camera, so i'm working on getting those. i've pretty much let hair and beard hygiene go completely since break started, so perhaps i shouldn't be so excited about posting pictures of myself.
regardless, we may or may not be recording some stuff at the church tomorrow, i'm going to be working on lesson plans all morning, then sending 2007 back to where it came from by drinking until i can't see and talk in entirely consonants. probably more progress on the recordings next week, after tuesday.
i'm wondering about this insomnia thing. it could of course just have something to do with changing my sleeping arrangements every few days, i guess. normally when i have trouble sleeping it's because i'm worrying about something. i mean, i've got a lot of stuff on my mind, but i haven't really "worrying" about any of it, per se.
there's the matter of planning my classes, which actually shouldn't be too difficult because i still have a week of doing pretty much nothing else to get it done in, and most of the work has already been done in the previous five semesters. i don't have to print any new essays, reading packets, or anything like that. i just have to show up tuesday and go at it.
i'm a little worried about my car, considering i'm still in significantly more dire financial straits than i had projected i would be in june (to the tune of, say, four figures more dire) and most definitely need a working vehicle sometime in the next five months, since i will no longer have a job after that, and will probably need to drive around to find a new one. this also raises the concern that i might not be able to get to my much-anticipated back-to-back ryan adams shows at the end of january; which would be a little depressing, considering it's pretty much the only extraneous expense i'm allowing myself this entire semester. okay, so THAT'S something i'm actually "worried" about.
there's the matter of what to do about this whole music thing also. i'd like to keep playing shows, but the fact is that i was really only able to manage pulling this show off even with the help of lots and lots of other people (including musicians) and someone else's PA. i'm not sure how often places are capable of providing their own PA, but i'm imagining that one of those fuckers is pretty expensive, and i'm certainly not going to be rolling in dough anytime soon. there's also the matter of working at a job which routinely had me in my office or related location 12 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week last semester, which doesn't leave a lot of time for schedule extracurricular activities. on the other hand, playing that show was really fun, now i know the songs and am comfortable enough to keep playing them, and it seems like a great way to build experience and also keep me sort of forcibly engaged with the music end of things, so that i don't do what i usually do and just sort of work a little on playing and writing whenever i feel like it and then sort of let things slide for a month, etc., etc. i think it would be good for me to be accountable to something other than myself alone when it comes to music, at least to keep me on a reasonable work schedule as far as practicing and writing goes. i guess it'll depend on how many places in the pullman/moscow area have a PA. sigh. no wonder everybody talks about being a performing musician but nobody actually does it.
aside from all those fun things, there's the matter of getting ready to leave ohio and the seventy million people i know here, stop taking 10 hours a day to do whatever i want, and get used to living alone and working all week again, which doesn't sound like much fun, but of course needs to be done because that's generally how people stay alive. by working, i mean.
i'm in the midst of confirming that all my grad applications have been received. still not sure that i'm going to get in anywhere. still not sure if i'll go even if i do. still have no idea how i'm even going to make that decision if/when i have to. fortunately, at least three of the five schools have all my materials. so that's something. my shitty, shitty materials.
also of course having the usual feelings-for-girls-related problems too. everybody knows my feelings about blogging about those types of things, but being around my friends here and also it being the holiday season both seem to exacerbate said feelings, so it's not a good combination in that regard.
good thing i'm not worrying about any of this stuff. otherwise i'd be worried :)
Dec 30, 2007
@ Susan's
i've been awake for a very significant portion of the last three days and it's 430am now and a cold leather couch is calling my name, so i'll make this brief, but i wanted to just say quickly that i played at Susan's tonight (finally) with an actual group of people instead of my solo acoustic self. i think we did well considering that we had only 2 or 3 days of practices and i had never played in front of an audience not by myself before. turns out it's a lot harder to play along with other people than it is to just play by yourself. much more fun, yes, but also much more difficult. the result was that there were a lot of little screwups on my part lyrically and musically (i almost never miss chords, but seemed to be missing them like crazy tonight). we had to cut a few songs from the original ideal setlist to clock in at our 2 hour alloted time (we got there a few minutes late and our planned 5 minute break ended up running more like 15 for various reasons). all in all, though, it was a good experience. we practiced all week at mike's church in highland square, and i'm actually trying to get an expedition together to go back over there sometime this week and record a live set because i love the church and the sound in the church so much...but it's going to sort of rest on how free everyone else is and how easy it's going to be to once again move a drum kit from canton to akron. we'll see. for now, here's what we did end up playing tonight:
acoustic set:
angel from montgomery (john prine cover)
autumnsong
hey sue
winding wheel (ryan adams cover)
millie
back to ohio
california stars (wilco/billy bragg cover)
lady gray
i still miss someone (johnny cash cover)
dusty roads
friend of the devil (grateful dead cover)
electric set:
enemy
dreamed i was god
palace
not the one i see
the melody
love song in d
molly
sunshine
sample in a jar (phish cover)
not california
once i go back through and listen to the recording again, i'll mark off where everybody was playing what; justin ended up playing percussion on just about every song but the first 2 or 3, andrea jumped in with vocals and/or violin on a few songs, and mike alternated pretty frequently between playing acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and bass guitar. it was really fun, and practice leading up to it was really fun. the performance itself, quality-wise was, as i said earlier, "not as good as i'd hoped, but better than i feared". for my first time, i'm willing to take that as a win. and i say that reflecting completely on my own performance...having everyone else playing on these songs made them 100 times better-sounding and a 1000 times more fun to play. if i hadn't had to sing, mike and justin probably could have just played by themselves and it would have sounded much better :)
anyway, we made a recording, which was thrown together at the last minute when i realized i forgot the adapter for my mixing board at home. surprisingly, it sounds really good, but we recorded with two mics on two channels. so basically i need to go back through and mix each channel separately and then combine them into one mono track before the recording will be entirely listenable. i'm sure that'll be my project for the next few days, but i'll let you all know when it's done, because i know there were at least a few people who wanted copies.
alright, well i'm off to sleepyland. tomorrow it's back to grad school applications. i can't believe i was complaining about having to just play music all day :)
acoustic set:
angel from montgomery (john prine cover)
autumnsong
hey sue
winding wheel (ryan adams cover)
millie
back to ohio
california stars (wilco/billy bragg cover)
lady gray
i still miss someone (johnny cash cover)
dusty roads
friend of the devil (grateful dead cover)
electric set:
enemy
dreamed i was god
palace
not the one i see
the melody
love song in d
molly
sunshine
sample in a jar (phish cover)
not california
once i go back through and listen to the recording again, i'll mark off where everybody was playing what; justin ended up playing percussion on just about every song but the first 2 or 3, andrea jumped in with vocals and/or violin on a few songs, and mike alternated pretty frequently between playing acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and bass guitar. it was really fun, and practice leading up to it was really fun. the performance itself, quality-wise was, as i said earlier, "not as good as i'd hoped, but better than i feared". for my first time, i'm willing to take that as a win. and i say that reflecting completely on my own performance...having everyone else playing on these songs made them 100 times better-sounding and a 1000 times more fun to play. if i hadn't had to sing, mike and justin probably could have just played by themselves and it would have sounded much better :)
anyway, we made a recording, which was thrown together at the last minute when i realized i forgot the adapter for my mixing board at home. surprisingly, it sounds really good, but we recorded with two mics on two channels. so basically i need to go back through and mix each channel separately and then combine them into one mono track before the recording will be entirely listenable. i'm sure that'll be my project for the next few days, but i'll let you all know when it's done, because i know there were at least a few people who wanted copies.
alright, well i'm off to sleepyland. tomorrow it's back to grad school applications. i can't believe i was complaining about having to just play music all day :)
Dec 22, 2007
reese's pieces and diet coke...
...is what's for breakfast this morning.
after a long night of drinking the infamous Great Lakes Christmas Ale, precipitated by a fortuitous confluence of myself and various cars full of kent people, i woke up this morning with a terrible headache and a bizarre sense of dislocation...according to urbandictionary.com, this is known as a "hangover".
fortunately, just sitting around on the couch watching crappy cable all day is such a novel experience for me that i'm willing to roll with the head pain just to experience it. i'm supposed to be going to see andrea's gig tonight at susan's, but other than that, there's nothing on the menu.
it's generally been a few nice days in a row of a little practicing, a little sleeping, a little dealing with extraneous loose ends from last semester and preparing for next semester, and a lot of nothing. i have a feeling that after another day or so, i'll probably be a little bored, but fortunately there's that whole jesus's birthday thing coming up, so things should be hopping after that. then there's the gig and new year's, and then...oh yeah, then i go back to work.
anyway, i started this blog entry awhile back because i was going to say something important, but somewhere between then and now a few shitty SciFi channel horror movies and some Fox news intervened and i've completely forgotten. hopefully things will be a bit more worth reading next time...
after a long night of drinking the infamous Great Lakes Christmas Ale, precipitated by a fortuitous confluence of myself and various cars full of kent people, i woke up this morning with a terrible headache and a bizarre sense of dislocation...according to urbandictionary.com, this is known as a "hangover".
fortunately, just sitting around on the couch watching crappy cable all day is such a novel experience for me that i'm willing to roll with the head pain just to experience it. i'm supposed to be going to see andrea's gig tonight at susan's, but other than that, there's nothing on the menu.
it's generally been a few nice days in a row of a little practicing, a little sleeping, a little dealing with extraneous loose ends from last semester and preparing for next semester, and a lot of nothing. i have a feeling that after another day or so, i'll probably be a little bored, but fortunately there's that whole jesus's birthday thing coming up, so things should be hopping after that. then there's the gig and new year's, and then...oh yeah, then i go back to work.
anyway, i started this blog entry awhile back because i was going to say something important, but somewhere between then and now a few shitty SciFi channel horror movies and some Fox news intervened and i've completely forgotten. hopefully things will be a bit more worth reading next time...
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