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MARCH 2001 Saturday, March 31, 2001 Last night's show went really well. We played with Cloud 9, an awesome band from Ann Arbor, and we sold the place out. Unfortunately, I currently feel like I got beat up. We played for almost two hours, which can be pretty exhausting, and I'm feeling it right now. I'm achy, and I can't think so good. I hope to get my interior monologue back real soon. When I woke up, Mike and I went for breakfast at a diner that specializes in six-egg omelettes. Who eats that many eggs in one sitting? Probably the same person who orders the 48 oz. ribeye at steakhouses. @
Friday, March 30, 2001 I'm reaching a stage in my drumming where I think I need to start taping my fingers to keep them from splitting. The thought of my fingers doing that makes me really queasy. I've seen the percussionist in Guster do it, and I was wondering if anyone else had experience with this? Specifically, does it take away from your playing to have tape and gauze on your hands? I've started icing my hands down after shows, and that seems to help with swollen joints the next day, but I think I need to do some precautionary stuff too. See, if my parents would have just let me play drum kit in sixth grade like I wanted to, I wouldn't be having this problem because I'd be using sticks. @
Thursday, March 29, 2001 My gripe for today: You know what I hate? Besides pickled ginger, I really hate it when smokers smell bad. Now, I'm not talking about all smokers, so if you smoke, please don't get offended (well, at least not yet). A lot of my friends smoke, and they all smell pretty okay. The people I'm talking about are usually male, usually over 40, and usually not people who...umm...take care of themselves, if you know what I mean. They usually don't shower enough or wash their clothes enough too, but man, when they walk into a room, you know it, because there's this whoosh of sick, cigarette-dirt stench. Yuck. I wonder if these people know about their...umm...lack of floweriness? While I'm on the subject, it also pisses me off when I see someone with tubes conming out of their nose wheeling their oxygen tank up to the counter to buy cigarettes. There are faster ways to kill yourself. I guarantee it. Look: I'm not a mean person. I don't smoke, but I guess I can understand why other people do. We all need vices. The smell thing...well, okay, I guess if you want to stink, I just won't stand downwind from you. But if you're carting around a life support system because you can't breathe on your own and you still smoke, well, I'm sorry, but that's just stupid. Public Service Announcement: Due to today's unexpected flare of anger, no snippy venting tomorrow. All daffodils and butterflies...or something like that. @
Wednesday, March 28, 2001 My band has a huge show on Friday night. It's our CD release party, and we're hoping to sell out a local club, which means roughly 350 people. I feel a cold coming on, though. It's just starting in the back of my throat. I'm trying to drink orange juice and do all of the usual preventative stuff, but I just know that on Friday at about 8:00 pm, I'll start to feel really sick and have to play the whole show feeling like ass. I really need a Fresh Samantha Desperately Seeking C pint right about now. Fresh Samantha people, won't you please start distributing in the midwest? This east coast kid misses you very much. @
Tuesday, March 27, 2001 Yeah. So...goodnight. @
Monday, March 26, 2001 I just realized this afternoon that my February link was bad. If you happen to be perusing this site (you have a lot of free time, don't you?) and you come across another dead link, please please please let me know. It's probably due to a typo on my part. I'll give you full credit for pointing out my mistakes. If you live close by, I might even come to your house and wash your windows. Might. We'll negotiate. @
Sunday, March 25, 2001 More job hunting today. It sucks, but not as bad as my current job. One more thing: have you heard Radiohead's cover of Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy"? Funny, funny, and funny. I remember hearing the original when I was a kid and thinking it was silly, but hearing Thom Yorke sing it makes the song so much better. Find it on Napster if you still can. @
Saturday, March 24, 2001
Friday, March 23, 2001 So I guess Mir has fallen. A good write up of it on the space.com site, but a rather unimpressive photo. Maybe it was too dangerous to get good snaps? Wow. I forgot how lazy a day off can be. @
Thursday, March 22, 2001 Anyway, it's good to have time to do this again. I was putting in 14-hour days there for a while. A friend of mine has me all...well...geeked to attend this GirlGeeks forum in Chicago on April 2. It might be good networking and all, since I'll soon be out of a job. Happily, I have tomorrow off. I am so sleeping til noon. @
Sunday, March 18, 2001 I was saying that most people eventually break down and get a full time job. This is usually right after college. In college, you pretty much structure your day as you want, and most of your time is actually your own. Then when you get your first full-time position, the structure is kind of okay. It's like, you're at work for eight hours, and then you have another eight or ten to yourself before you go to sleep at a "reasonable" hour, wake up, and go back to work. Eventually, of course, it does become monotonous. You start thinking like a naturalist because you really begin to believe that you're nothing but a peon cog in a giant, unfair machine. You start to drink more, watch more TV, and generally feel unhappy. Finally, after you've run out of beer, you realize that this is it, that as long as you want to actually live in a solid structure and eat meals on a regular basis, you're more or less stuck in your job, and you figure as long as you have to be there, you might as well make it somewhat enjoyable. Granted, some people take this too far. You know those people who are just so happy to be doing their job and seem to have all this energy for projects? Yeah...they take it too far. Most people are okay to wake up in the morning, go do their job for eight hours, and not feel cranky about it. I went through all these phases, but now I'm back to the cog mentality. Plus, I'm cranky as all hell. So, I have made up my mind that Thursday morning, when our fundraiser is all done, I'm putting in my two week's notice. I'll probably be unemployed for a while, but, to paraphrase a bunch of people who are a lot smarter than I am, it's better to be happy than be rich. Not that I'm getting paid very much now. Nonprofits tend to have small salary lines in their budgets, you know. So...if you'd like to hire me, I am available as of April 6. @
Saturday, March 17, 2001 Oh, and we're playing in Ann Arbor tonight. If you're in the vicinity, swing by the Blind Pig. I'm the one who's dragging. *Yawn.* I'm not even close to Irish but happy St. Pat's regardless. It's 9:45 am. I'm off to work. @
Thursday, March 15, 2001 A somewhat disturbing article in this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine on Claritin and drug marketing. If you take the drug -- and there's a good chance you do, I guess -- you might want to read how most of what you're swallowing is just good PR. Makes me want to get out of the PR business. Yeesh. @
Wednesday, March 14, 2001 Actually, I seem to have this problem a lot. I don't think I'm narcoleptic, but I can fall asleep literally anywhere. Past makeshift beds have included a table at a crowded bar, Psychology 101 lecture, bad movies, good movies, and a wood table (no tablecloth). You know how some people have insomnia and it takes them hours to just fall asleep? Yeah...I'm not one of them. In fact, I can't even relate. The elapsed time between my head hitting the pillow and me falling asleep is probably less than 45 seconds. Part of it's that I'm a morning person. I hate admitting that, because it just seems so cool to be a night person. I'll bet Martin Scorsese is a night person. Could a morning person have made Taxi Driver? I don't think so. What would be his or her frame of reference? Morning people are so organized. So together. So uncool! Like tonight: if I were a night person, an 8:30 poetry reading would have been no problem. Instead, 8:30 is usually when I get into my jammies and get comfy, since bedtime is just a couple of hours away. If I actually do manage to stay up, I'm zonked for work. In grad school, all of my friends were night people. Study groups wouldn't start until 10 at night. Partying would commence at around 11. And I'd be yawning the whole time -- and taking an awful lot of slack for it, too! Now that I have "gainful employment" (ha ha ha), being a morning person is somewhat beneficial in that everyone I work and deal with is a morning person too. I don't like it, but at least I can show up on time and be sufficiently functional. I did some quick checking, and I can't find any "Morning People Unite" type web pages. Perhaps I should start one. Are you a morning person? How do you feel about it? @
Tuesday, March 13, 2001 I'm refraining from saying too much, lest anyone I work with/for reads this. Total paranoia, I know. Rather exciting news, though. We'll see what happens. @
Monday, March 12, 2001 Rent last night was okay. I guess I just don't like musicals. It bothers me that every time there's some point of tension, people start singing about their feelings. I know that's the whole point of the musical format, but it bugs me. It just seems so...I don't know...melodramatic. And in Rent, there was no talking -- every part of the dialogue was a melody. It was good at parts, and if you like musicals, you'll probably go ape-shit over it (like half of the people in the audience), but I just wasn't into it. Oh well. The next big thing I have tickets for is Aretha Franklin with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra. I'm pretty sure that will kick all kinds of ass. @
Sunday, March 11, 2001 Sorority-ish girl with baseball cap: (Obviously annoyed) The people who work here are so fucking incompetent! (A Qdoba employee walks up to sorority-ish girl and holds out a wallet.) Qdoba employee: This wallet was left at the counter. Is it yours? Sorority-ish girl:(Obviously embarrassed) Umm...yeah. Thanks. I just found that amusing. Our show went well last night: over 300 people came out to see us, and I'd say at least 275 of them had a good time. Our playing was kind of sloppy, but the crowd seemed drunk enough not to notice. I'm off to see the traveling production of Rent at Western Michigan University. I hope it's good. They sure charge enough for tickets. @
Saturday, March 10, 2001 Like Lundegaard, it's not that I dislike Tom Hanks. It's just that every holiday season, he's in some too-long drama that most Americans (or at least half) think is the most life-changing movie ever. His movies are always okay, and I never leave thinking I've totally wasted my money, but they're always...I don't know...all surface. But Tom Hanks manages to always be in some sappy-dramatic-bleary-teary picture during the holidays, when people are at their height of emotional gushiness and are willing to see anything "nice" as the best thing to ever happen. You saw The Green Mile, right? That was an okay movie. It was long -- too long, if you ask me -- but it wasn't bad. My suspension of disbelief went out the exit door when that big guy started blowing tumor shrapnel out of his mouth, but sure, it's a movie, blah blah blah, it's not real, yeah yeah yeah. And Forrest Gump? Please. I think the line they've been showing in the trailer for The Mexican sums it up for me: "You have Forrest Gumped your way through this!" I thought Castaway was decent, but again, nothing so good I went out and changed religions or anything. (Lundegaard mentions that the Academy has in the past confused drastic weight gain/loss as good acting. I'd like to point out here that Robert Deniro's role in Raging Bull was very Oscarworthy. Thank you.) Still, even though no other actor has won three Best Actor awards, I'm getting a bad feeling that Tom Hanks will walk away with this one. Like I said, I don't dislike Hanks. I happen to really like him in his earlier stuff. I remember seeing Splash when I was about eight and thinking it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. The Money Pit is also, in my opinion, very very very underrated. ("Ahh...home crap home.") I liked Apollo 13, but never really had any anxiety that they wouldn't make it back okay. I even saw That Thing You Do, the movie he wrote. (The title song of that movie was written by the guy in Fountains of Wayne, a cool band.) I just think things took a turn for the worse when he did Sleepless in Seattle. To me, all those touchy-feely, slightly-comedic, romancy-type movies are trying to capitalize on the success of When Harry Met Sally. In any case, I'm hoping Tom Hanks goes home without one. I'd root for Ed Harris in Pollock, as Lundegaard suggested, but I have yet to see it because it hasn't even opened here. Don't get me started on that. @
Friday, March 9, 2001 If you happen to be in or near Kalamazoo, my band Ubiquitus is playing at Bell's Brewery tomorrow night at around 9:30. Guaranteed to be a good time...or at least an okay time. You like music, don't you? @
Thursday, March 8, 2001 It only snows in Maryland about two or three times a year. Sometimes, like in 1997 (I think), they get an unusually big snowfall. A typical winter, though, is about a foot -- for the whole winter. So that means a few three- or four-inchers. Three inches of snow isn't much, but to see the way people in Maryland act in three inches of snow, you'd think the snow was cocaine mixed with LSD and that people were absorbing it at unnaturally high levels. First of all, people think there's enough snow to warrant closing every inch of public space in the state. Sure, I didn't mind if it got me out of work or if I got out of class, but three inches? Hello? Perhaps the cold weather causes people to confuse inches with feet down there. And second of all, every one in is a big huff to get to the supermarket to get milk, bread, and toilet paper. Why? Because if they don't get there soon, all the milk, bread, and toilet paper will have been taken by all the people who got there first. I swear, it's as if milk, bread, and toilet paper will somehow make the snow go away and raise the temperature by 50 degrees. I'm not the only one who thinks this is a joke, either: the Maryland State Lottery created a scratch-off game called "Chance of Snow." You have to match three dollar amounts by scratching off little pictures of (guess what?) milk, bread, and toilet paper. You just can't make this stuff up. I remember after one snowstorm in Buffalo, my roommate and I tunneled past our front door and went for a walk at around one in the morning. There was about four feet on the ground, the entire city was asked to stay in their homes (we weren't actually supposed to be out), a driving ban was in effect, and the only things moving on the streets were these enormous snow removal machines. It was like some bad industrial version of the future in which all the people are replaced by giant robots. It was also the most snow I've ever seen in my entire life, and the most I ever hope to see. Still, the next day, we were able to walk to the convenience store four blocks away and buy necessities (potato chips, onion dip, Kraft Dinner, and a box of ice cream sandwiches). There was plenty of milk in the store's dairy case, and the bread shelf was full. Buffalo gets a bad rap for its weather, but when it comes to snow, the rest of the country could take a lesson from it. Are you listening, Baltimore? @
Wednesday, March 7, 2001 Have you seen the new Miller High Life commercial? The one with the frumpy woman buying beer, and the voice over that says something about how newlywed women should buy High Life for their husbands? I can't believe that companies are still making commercials that are so degrading to women, and I can't believe that networks will show them (although it's FOX, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised). If you've seen it and it pissed you off too, let them know. @
Tuesday, March 6, 2001 And my reading of books is held up by the little things: we have subscriptions to The New Yorker, which comes once a week, and The New York Times on Sundays, which is enough reading for a week. With my crappy job and band practice (not crappy), I shouldn't be surprised that it takes me so long to get through a book. One of my favorites is All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. That's one I'd definitely re-read if I had time. In addition to being a great story of corrupt Southern politics, it has some of the best writing I've ever read. Dense, but worth it. Another note: The snow looks pretty high in New York now. My parents and brothers probably have the day off again. Lucky. @
Monday, March 5, 2001 Actually, I find this whole on-line journal situation really interesting, and I've been reading a lot of them. It seems that this is taking the place of what psychiatrists used to get paid for. I'm not saying that keeping a website can relieve clinical depression -- that needs treatment above and beyond a little typing -- but for the everyday, I-need-someone-to share-my-problems-with issues, this format is a very viable method of "getting it all out," so to speak. I know that I can work out my own thoughts better on paper (or screen, in this case), as I think many people can. With this method, you're just sharing it with more people. And some illusion of anonymity is still there: you see your shrink but don't know much about his or her personal life, whereas you can come to know a lot about the personal lives of your readers but don't usually see them face to face. By the way, I'm not using Blogger or any other program to do this. I think what these programmers are doing is awesome in that they're giving access to just anyone with a computer to get their thoughts out on-line. I just think that for me personally, typing it all by hand (simple code and all) gets me more familiar with HTML and website layout. @
Sunday, March 4, 2001 An excerpt from the exhibit description: "As technologies changed, office design changed with them. Flexibility became the watchword of contemporary office design; modular wall, floor, and ceiling systems as well as workstations were developed to accommodate the constantly shifting dynamics of organizational structures and technical systems." Yeah, but I'd still like my own office. In a Homer Simpson voice: "Workstations -- I hate them so much!" @
Saturday, March 3, 2001 In case it's not totally apparent, I am in a bad mood today. Went to work for five hours to print out the database for our upcoming fundraiser. My computer kept printing out anywhere from four to ten pages and then quitting because of some postcript error garbage. I have a nasty habit of kicking and throwing things when I'm frustrated. I think this is better than kicking people or yelling at them. So today I kicked loose the bottom panel of my cubicle when I got the postcript error message for the billionth time. My boss won't like that, but then, I don't like her, so the way I see it, we're even. Maybe tomorrow will be better. @
Friday, March 2, 2001 Following up on a comment I made about a week ago regarding greatest hits albums and how they're not ideal in building a collection: an essay on dack.com by Mike Haney that takes it to the next level. Some excellet points; the one I most agree with is groups like Color Me Badd calling a disc of 12 tracks "hits." Doesn't the word "hit" imply that the song was played on the radio and...you know...enjoyed? Late night. Sleep now. More tomorrow. @
Thursday, March 1, 2001 I've been enjoying White Shoe Irregular at work (during lunch, of course). This Bit and Bitter piece had my hysterical. The Microsoft-Hell merger is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. I came home just after dark and there was a small bat on my porch. I didn't see it, and I accidentally stepped on its wing. I don't think it can fly anymore, because it screeched and just kind of hopped down my porch stairs and sat on the driveway. Mike thinks it's the same bat that's been living in our walls and (occasionally) inside our house. I feel bad about hurting any animal, but frankly, if it means that I won't hear it flapping in my bedroom at 4:00 am, I'm glad I broke its wing. The only thing that creeps me out more than bats in the house is ants in the house (a whole colony, not just a random one). I hate it when the outside moves inside! And now for a product endorsement: I usually avoid chain restaurants in favor of less corporate, locally owned places, but I have to tip the proverbial cap to Qdoba. Their slogan should be, "Five bucks fills you up," because that's how much a burrito costs, and when you eat one, you're good for the next eight or nine hours. I think they put crack or something in the tortillas, because I get these crazy cravings for their food on a regular basis. I also like that it reminds me of the WrapWorks in DC on Dupont Circle. I think I'll eat anything wrapped up in a big tortilla. Anything. @ |
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The local Subway/TCBY had this sign by the entrance. I've heard of Equal Opportunity Employers, but this might be taking it a little too far. I wonder how many strawberry shakes applied.
