Juno

Along with "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" (which hasn't found wide release just yet), "Juno" was on my list of to-do movies this holiday season, so I went and saw it. My mom made me take my little brother, but I can deal with his presence by treating him like poop. Parking behind the movie theater was a real bitch, and I was cursing up a storm as I circled the parking lot and finding nothing. Then I saw a car backing out of a space, and I thought my search was over, but there was already a minivan on the other side of the space laying claim to it. The driver must've noticed my interest in the space because they turned on their blinker as if to say "I'm going THERE, get it?" I was in a right pissy mood because of the slushy weather and the movie was just about to start, so i was half-leaning to taking the spot right from under the other driver. It was my little brother who pushed me over the edge, oddly enough, by cackling, "Do it! Take it! Ha ha ha!" I kind of did want that space, and I had the better angle to get in, so I took it while the minivan driver leaned on their horn in rage. My and my brother were absolutely thrilled with the evil deed we'd just perpetrated. We were also giddy with fear that we might meet the other driver in the theater or that they would key up our car. Anyways, I don't know if that incident tainted my experience of the film itself or not.

I went into "Juno" wanting to like it - the same way I went into "No Country Old Men." I always want to like the same movies as other people because it makes for interesting conversation. This goes nearly contrary to my philosophy of music appreciation, obviously, and I've suffered for that by having some awkward, dead-end musical conversations. I usually can't help what I like, though. In the case with "Juno", I couldn't help but feel that the movie was essentially disposable. Like "Little Miss Sunshine" or "Eagle vs. Shark" and things of that like, it is so clearly packaged to be a quirky outsider flick to the extent that it's off-putting. Unlike "Little Miss Sunshine", "Juno" doesn't have a compelling ending or particularly endearing moments or characters to redeem it. Michael Cera has disappointingly little to do or say here, and he might even be miscast here. Though his youthful looks and unsexy demeanor are probably meant to give the impression that he is not nearly mature enough for the situation he's dropped into, he never comes across as the soul-mate material for Juno that he needs to be for the film to succeed. Essentially, all we know are that he and her are in a garage band together where they play crappy Moldy Peaches songs and share no chemistry.

The dramatic arc of the film actually has little to do with the pregnancy itself or its preparation, but with Juno's relationships with Paulie (Cera), her parents, and the adoptive parents of her child, and it's introduced late in the movie and dealt with in the most predictable way possible. The arguments and obstacles that present themselves are very foreseeable as well as mild in scale (something the film shares with "Knocked Up"), and I can't really spoil the message of the film because it's in the trailer: "The best you can do is find someone who loves you for exactly who you are" or something to that effect. Really? Find someone who will put up with my shit? I'll write that one down in my notebook after to "Don't eat silica gel."

I left the movie wondering what it is I want from viewing a film, in general. I guess it's a whole lot of retarded fun to quote lines with my friends and share a laugh, but I don't think padding a movie's dialogue with zingers gives it quality. There has to be something there that cannot be conveyed through any other medium but the film itself. The greatness of the film cannot be written about or talked about to any satisfying extent; it can only be experienced and known. I'm probably talking about the art-entertainment distinction as I see it. Great art seems to have a mysterious repellant shield that prevents it from being truly encapsulated or summarized without losing its essence. This is an unfortunate paradox! The more that a piece of music, film, or painting means to you or I, the more impossible it is to communicate that meaning. The more precise and tangible the language we use, the less we say. For instance, if I tell you "I love you," you only kind of know what I mean even though it could be a fact. However, if I use some poetic idiom like "I have butterflies in my stomach when I see you" or "You take my breath away," you better understand what my "love" means. Art, with its vagueries and half-notions, is the only true method of communicating thoughts and feelings.

I guess I got so caught up in this philosophical exercise, I don't know whether I'm being completely lame or not. I think I've just taken a page from some introductory course on art from a state school and tagged it deep thought... welcome to the blogosphere, everyone!

Roundup

-I consciously avoided devoting space in my In Rainbows article to discussion over whether certain songs from the bonus disc could or could not have been a good fit on the main disc. I felt like that was an obvious thing to talk about, and I would've felt boring doing so, but privately I've been fiddling with the tracklist to see whether I could make a better, stronger album out of In Rainbows by swapping in and out songs from the bonus disc while still preserving the original essence of the album. I think the first half of In Rainbows is nearly perfect, so I'm not tinkering with that. Even though I'm not ga-ga over "Nude," I think it's essential to the sensual aesthetic of the album. All I've done so far is replace "Reckoner" with "Down is the New Up" and "Videotape" with "4-Minute Warning." Results so far are pending because I'll have to re-listen to the album after the changes.

This then got me thinking: what if an artist released an album that was not an album, i.e. an album's-worth collection of songs with no order to them. Each individual listener would then decide for themselves what they believed should be the running order and arrange the tracks accordingly. The 'album' would have to be released digitally, of course, preferably from a website where the tracks could be downloaded in a fashion that doesn't showcase them in some particular order (so the listener wouldn't be tempted to try to guess what the band's 'intended' tracklist was). Maybe the band could outline some rules, like if there were 14 tracks total, the listener could pick at least 10 to be in their running order and up to 4 B-sides. Is this whole scheme gimmicky or would it give artistic legitimacy to a past-time that music fans already experiment with? Until Brian Wilson's Smile was released, Beach Boys fans were practically forced to create their own individual Smile mix-tapes out of abandoned demos. I once made a playlist called "Kid Amnesiac" that culled the best of each of those albums into one monster collection. I guess if Radiohead really wanted to blow up the music industry a second time, this could be their next move.

-Yay, I won the Super Bowl in Madden in All-Pro difficulty. I went into an absolute zone during the playoffs (I think I only threw one interception total in those four games), and I even had to go through the Colts. I figured out how to get to Peyton Manning, and it might've been a little unfair, but it's really annoying to wait for him to audible 3-4 times on each snap. I just kept audibling my defense every time Manning audibled, so I was basically switching my coverage scheme every time he recognized it (which I think is cheating on his part!). Eventually, the play clock would run down and Manning would have to snap the ball with whatever coverage I had decided, and it ended up being less than ideal for him. We traded scores through three quarters, until I realized that he loved to throw to Reggie Wayne, so I started overloading coverage on him (usually with an OLB going into a drop-zone on his size of the field). It worked! I got a game-icing interception with my linebacker who was covering Wayne in a drop-zone, and I advanced to the Super Bowl against the Falcons.

The Falcons had Michael Vick (heheh) which Madden made into some six-million dollar man super-god. He threw 3 TD passes of 50 or more yards, which was really frustrating because my defense was really putting up good stands while the Falcons were stuck deep into their own territory. Then - bam! - my secondary would get absolutely burned for no reason. I was down by 14 at one point in the first half, and I went into halftime down by 11. But they forgot about one thing: they forgot about Tom Brady. I tied the game in the second half (including a 2-point conversion) to force overtime. Overtime is not my friend in Madden because I always lose the coin toss and the opposing team returns the opening kickoff to the 30, meaning they only have to drive 40 yards to kick the winning field goal. Well that happened in this game too, but the Falcons... missed the Super Bowl-winning field goal! I gained possession, handed the ball to Laurence Maroney on the first snap, and he immediately ran 60 yards down the sideline to win the championship game in overtime with a touchdown. Wheeee!

The offseason is actually my favorite part of Madden. I think it's because you can manipulate the makeup of your team by measuring player attributes like it's an RPG. Training camp actually allows you to increase those attribute points with fun drills. Pulling off a good trade is really satisfying too. I was able to re-sign all my key players from the previous season this time, so I had virtually no holes in my roster to fill, so I had the luxury of trying to go for that superstar player in the draft. I traded away Corey Dillon (who I was going to cut anyways because he was too expensive and worse than Laurence Maroney) and my 2nd round draft pick for a higher 2nd round draft pick. I then traded that high 2nd round pick and my 1st round pick for a higher 1st round pick. I then traded that higher 1st round pick and my 3rd round pick for the 4th overall pick in the draft! I used it to sign a superstar WR who is a perfect kick returner (99 points). The only downside is that now I don't have much use for Wes Welker, who I love in real life and traded for in the game. He was a very integral part of my Super Bowl run with his kick returns, but he's just not as good as this new hot-shot rookie I have. I think I'll keep him out of loyalty, but his morale points might drop from being usurped.

-Some dipshit entered the elevator on the 3rd floor and exited on the 4th while talking on his bluetooth headset. I gave the back of his head the stink-eye, and when he left, the maintenance worker who was in the elevator with me seemed to agree. "Guess he was in a hurry," he mused in a New England accent. Unless you are disabled or have a heavy load, you do not take the elevator up one floor, you hear? The only thing worse is taking the elevator down one floor. I've never witnessed it before, but it's so ridiculous in concept that you could make it the basis for a Candid Camera episode.

-The cat-who-must-not-be-named now also likes sleeping in my bed, but I think it's only because it likes sleeping next to Banjo. It's nice that the cat likes my bed, but it's also a nuisance since it sheds 10x more than Banjo and doesn't like being disturbed while sleeping. So if I'm sleeping in my own bed and I switch positions and jostle the cat, it will then wake up and run to my bedroom door which I then have to get up and open. With Banjo, I don't have this problem because he's like a rag doll when he's sleepy and unflappably inert. He's the ideal bedtime buddy.

"Waving Flags" - British Sea Power

Article in the Tech

From the December 11, 2007 issue of the Tech (original article here):

Radiohead Brings the Chanukah Cheer
Second ‘In Rainbows’ Disc Is Truly a Bonus

By Andrew Lee
December 11, 2007

Radiohead - In Rainbows (Bonus Disc)
Produced by Nigel Godrich (Self Released)

If our own Arts Editor Sarah Dupuis hadn’t claimed reviewing rights to Radiohead’s In Rainbows before I could, an entirely different story would’ve been told. In short, I would’ve torn Radiohead a new basement door for not living up to its own standards, or what I’d perceived them to be. I owe Dupuis a debt of gratitude for preventing me from making such a mistake. In Rainbows is, I’ll admit now, quite satisfying, and it was my selfish here-I-am-now-entertain-me attitude that kept me from understanding that. The album has an oceanic serenity that could be confused for dullness until you let the majesty of “House of Cards” or “Nude” permeate you. So much of it cannot be scrutinized and enjoyed at the same time before you’ve initially taken a more relaxed perspective.

Radiohead brought as much finality as one could possibly bring to an album-closer with the funeral march of “Videotape,” so what does the new bonus disc to In Rainbows bring to the equation, if anything? Bands have released extra tracks before (B-sides, demos, live versions) to pad up deluxe editions of their albums, but Radiohead’s gone to some length to make this disc more of a “disc two” than a “bonus disc.” For one thing, it begins with an instrumental segue from “Videotape,” as if the listener is about to enter a realm after death through a curtain of liquid piano echo. That track, “Mk 1,” is one of two brief instrumental pieces included, but neither has an under-produced, throwaway quality to them.

The interludes ably complement the six remaining songs, but they’re ultimately disposable. This makes the In Rainbows bonus disc into the album that everyone accused “Amnesiac” of being: a cobbling-together of leftover material from a previous recording session as opposed to a separate entity. The quality of these leftovers, however, just serves to show how fantastic the main meal was.

I was sold after hearing “Down Is the New Up.” It has enough studio effects and overdubs to perk up the ears of studious, detail-oriented fans and it still delivers a truly gripping Radiohead moment when the violas make their crushing entrance while the drums thunder back in reply. Thom Yorke sounds like he’s on an ego trip, taunting some poor soul whose life has taken a wrong turn: “You’re future’s bleak / You’re so last week.” Either Thom’s gone evil on us or it’s a successful bit of character acting.

Or maybe he’s just airing out one of the darker facets of his personality, because later on in “Last Flowers” he turns right back around and inhabits the broken man he was jawing at in “Down Is the New Up.” “Last Flowers” has the most raw arrangement out of any song in either disc of In Rainbows, and it features one of the most pained melodies of Radiohead’s entire catalog. Thom sounds wounded by life and the unthinkable prospect of it going on when he says, “I can’t face the evening straight / and you can’t offer me escape.” The chord progression nearly offers resolution in the song’s chorus, only to snatch it away. “Last Flowers” lingers in your mind well after the final piano notes fade out.

“Go Slowly” further alludes to suicide but to a much weaker effect. Its plodding 4/4 tempo and general predictability make it a surprisingly generic song by Radiohead’s standards, and it even bears a passing resemblance to the Oasis song “Talk Tonight.” (Sacrilege!) It’s still quite listenable, but it’s easily the weakest song here. The remaining songs are still good enough to make this the most consistent set of non-LP material Radiohead’s ever made. It more than makes up for the dreadful experimentations in B-sides for their previous album Hail to the Thief.

With a bruising lead guitar riff, “Bangers and Mash” is a jagged guitar rocker in the same vein as “Bodysnatchers” but with even more menace (“Bit me, bit me, bit me / I’ve got the poison!”). Radiohead’s rhythm section showcases its diversity on “Up on the Ladder” whose percussion is the throb of a drum machine with the faint rattling of both wood and metal deep in the mix. Thom pulls off a Doctor Who reference (“I’m stuck in the Tardis”) surprisingly well with help from a world-weary bass line from Colin Greenwood which helps paint a gloomy scene of a universe whose infinity is not awe-inspiring but eternally repetitive.

Nothing, however, surprises more than the finale, “4-Minute Warning.” Its mood and restraint are perfectly surreal and like nothing else the band has done since “The Bends.” The title refers to the amount of time citizens could expect between the launch of a nuclear missile and its arrival on British soil during the Cold War. The jarring and simultaneously upbeat calmness of the song feels more like a last goodbye before oblivion than any maudlin gloominess could portray. In that respect, “4-Minute Warning” would’ve been a superior closing song to In Rainbows than “Videotape,” and Radiohead could hypothetically end their career with this understated masterpiece. If this disc is any indication, though, they may have just entered their prime.

Madden

I've suffered another heartbreaking loss in Madden. I came back from a three possession deficit in the second half, and then it really got crazy with about 6 TDs between both teams in the final 2 minutes. In overtime, however, I lost the coin flip and watched Kelly Holcomb deliver the game-winning score, which was his third 70+ yard TD pass of the game. What the fuck is that bullshit. Holcomb is not even in the league in real life, but he's firing these absolute bombs in the game - for the Bills. If my family hadn't been asleep, I would've flipped my shit and thrown my cat out the window. Instead I had to bottle up the frustration and stew in my rage. This is how terrorists are made.

As a side note, I played a record 8 Madden games today, which translates to 6 hours of Madden. Bow to me!

The real Tom Brady and the Patriots go for 13-0 tomorrow afternoon. This is really not a good place to be as a Patriots fan. With all the attention on the possibility of the perfect record, no one will be satisfied with 'simply' a Super Bowl win, of which they are all but guaranteed. A guaranteed Super Bowl... what's the fun in that? A loss at this point is about five times more devastating than a win would be satisfying. A win should feel like another rung climbed on a ladder when it instead just feels like relief for another week. Then again, it could just be that the last two close games have put the fear of God into me, and the Patriots will turn back into their running-up-the-score ways. No more close ones, please.

It's the Ambien Walrus Again by Toothpaste for Dinner

Parking in the lines

The upper valley area has been moderately snowed-under for the past week, and it doesn't fill me with much feeling whatsoever. It basically means I can't practice whiffleball and the roads are more slippery, but it also means Banjo doesn't whine to go outside all the goddam fucking time. The idea of frolicking in the white stuff doesn't enter my head. It must be a step towards adulthood when snow doesn't fill you with happiness anymore. Even in college, the sight of a clean cornered rectangle of unbroken blankness covering Briggs field was mind-cleansing.

In a practical sense, snow makes adults into retards. My parents get over-anxious when there's any snow on the roads, and they repeatedly tell me to not take the shortcut back home up Pinneo Hill Rd. because it's gravel. Sometimes they call me to remind me of this. Frozen jagged gravel or slippery mush on pavement... which do you think has more traction, idiots? I always take Pinneo Hill with no trouble ever. My parents are always driving off the road and off our own driveway, while I, whom I consider to be a subpar driver, have driven home with the upper 2/3 of my windshield iced over.

Everyone in the work parking lot has forgotten how to park within the lines. Rather, a couple people probably screwed it up for everyone else, forcing them to shift over. If you can't see the lines because they're covered in snow, make a good guess as to where they are and not a stupid one. Sometimes I find the original dumbass's car, and there's 8 feet of room between his car and the next car over that was the last to be within the lines. As I walked past this, I thought of an idea for a story/movie/scenario that involved a serial killer sniper who only shot people who didn't park correctly. How many victims would it take for the police to catch on to the pattern? Do they investigate the car of a victim at a crime scene? Would the police chief say in his televised press conference afterwards, "Citizens, for your own safety, I implore you to park your vehicles as straight as possible within the designated boundaries!" Then everyone would be terrified while they parked, backing in and out 3-4 times to get it just right. Hilarious.

Halloween

Halloween is ostensibly my favorite holiday, but I'm no longer in college anymore, so there's no Boo's Cruise or Baker party to let loose at and no traditional pumpkin drop, so what does it mean to me now? It means trick-or-treating, but from the other side of the looking glass. I'm currently camped at the edge of my house's wireless network range about 100 yards down the hill next to my driveway beside a glowing plastic pumpkin waiting for greedy tykes to roll through and sift through my basket of fun size offerings while grimacing at the lack of options. I don't know what to say to these kids when they take my candy because I honestly don't remember what adults said to me when I trick-or-treated a decade ago. I think they said "nice costume" or some other weird thing that adults say.

I try to be a little scary by wearing my UMASS hoodie and sitting still in my chair so they think I'm a straw dummy or something. Once I tell them I didn't actually go to UMASS they see that I'm a living person who can provide them with sweets. Most of them know the drill: drone out "trick or treat", snatch a treat, then abruptly turn away while mumbling "thanks..." (usually at the prodding of their adult supervision). Some of them brough UNICEF boxes, which I was unprepared for. I hastily took out my wallet and dumped all my change into the slot for the first kid who asked. I didn't think any more were coming, but then three more small girls came by, and all I had left were dollar bills. By the end, I'd even run out of dollar bills and was forced to give away a five. Those orange boxes gobbled up my lunch money...

I only saw one really great costume, which was a robot. This was a great robot; it had traditional cardboard boxes as head stacked on torso which were spray-painted metallic gray. That would've been something on its own, just because it was homemade, but then there were the lights. The lights! On his chest and on the top of his head, they blinked and they flashed and they were the size of genuine buttons. This could could've been an actual robot, no joke.

I think the most awkward moment of the evening was when I was approached by a foursome who halted six feet away from me when I stood from my chair with my basket. They stared at me silently and I stared back. They probably thought I was a creeper, but I was simply waiting for the secret words. I tried to elicit some sort of greeting with a "yeeesss?" and the girl on the end peeped out a little "trick or... treat?" A sense of relief fell about them once I offered my basket in response. I felt like a statue in a Legend of Zelda game that needs to have the right melody played before it to operate. As the group skipped away, the girl who activated me boasted to her parents that she was smart and had passed the test.

I'm just about out of candy. The Skittles went fastest, and I'm not surprised. I'm more of a fruit candy person myself as well. I have to be in the right mood to like chocolate. What did surprise me was just how many kids there are in this neighborhood. These houses were built here in the early nineties, so it appears that all the families that moved here initially to raise children have progressed enough to deploy a substantial fleet of larval, sugar-devouring munchkins.

On another note, Radiohead is good Halloween music. "Kid A" and "In Rainbows" accompanying a holiday with an aura of chilled eeriness? It sounded like a crap shoot to me too. "Motion Picture Soundtrack" has just faded out, so I will too.

Weight issues

The Simpsons high school flashback:
Barney: "You eat so much and never gain weight. How do you do it, Homer?"
Homer: "Must be my metabamolism."

We all know where Homer is now, but I'd always thought myself invincible with regards to staying thin. It turned out that my baccanallean lifestyle finally caught up to me a month ago when I weighed myself and found I'd gained 15 pounds. I'd just thought all my clothes had been shrinking in the wash, but this new weight is as real as the second ticket I have to buy when I take my seat(s) on an airplane. Luckily, I have enough mental fortitude to adapt to the necessary lifestyle change to get back down to my natural weight. These are the immediate steps I've taken so far:

1. Only one bowl of ice cream after dinner, if any.
2. I only eat until I'm stuffed, not beyond stuffed.
3. 25 pushups and 25 situps in the morning and at night. The endorphin rush afterwards alone makes it worth it.
4. No more elevator rides. I walk up 5 flights each morning to work.
5. No more napping. I need to keep burning calories.
6. Only one reuben sandwich per week from the cafeteria at work. I gotta pay tribute to my main man Dr. House, but not at the expense of my health.
7. Using more emphatic arm motions with my Wii remote when playing Madden.

Hey and guess what, none of this stuff has done jack shit. I've gotten used to considering myself a little guy, but who am I fooling anymore. Just look at me. LOOK AT ME.

New voice

This morning, while lifting my cat up to my face for an impromptu nose inspection, I discovered that I have regained my falsetto! After a 10-year absence, it has returned to bless me with the ability to sing along with Beach Boys songs. I spent my shower bleeting out "Emotional Rescue" and "Alive" by the Rolling Stones and Bee Gees, respectively. Every spare - and solitary - moment I get today, I'm going to practice and nurture this gift. They always used to say that one can recover a falsetto after puberty, but I always thought it was empty consolation.

What I'm curious about is how it happened. I choked on my Raisin Bran earlier in the morning and had to cough in an awkward manner. Did I unintentionally clear the cobwebs from my high-register pipes with a well timed bran-flake assault? On a cosmic level, what kind of altruistic act did I perform to deserve this karmic windfall? Maybe I don't regret treating the whole table to dim sum after all. I should go flaunt my money in a social setting again and see if it rains sushi rolls or a baby panda shows up on my doorstep tomorrow.

This caps a pretty good week in which my parents made for dinner whatever I told them to, I scored a killer blazer from H&M, the Sox clinched the AL East division, and I shot a -9 in Wii Golf. That has got to be some kind of record, no joke.

Don't Stop Now #10

The last show ever:

A Salty Salute - Guided By Voices
Dreams Burn Down - Ride
Fog - Radiohead
A Passing Feeling - Elliott Smith
Indian Was an Angel - Guided By Voices
Superconnected - Broken Social Scene
Nobody's Fault But My Own - Beck
I'm Always In Love - Wilco
Straw Dogs - Guided By Voices
Sometimes - My Bloody Valentine
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate - The Flaming Lips
E.M.P.T.Y. - The Clientele
Death of a Party - Blur
Cato as a Pun - Of Montreal
Drinker's Peace - Guided By Voices
Some of Them Were Superstitious - Midlake
Wraith Pinned to the Mist & Other Games - Of Montreal
The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. One - Neutral Milk Hotel
The Great Escape - Patrick Watson
Lucky Ones - Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew
A Good Flying Bird - Guided By Voices
Blindfold Waltz - Sparrow House
Ágætis Byrjun - Sigur Rós
Pure Unevil - Liars
Truly Great Thing - Sebadoh
Wondering Boy Poet - Guided By Voices
Cold Days From the Birdhouse - The Twilight Sad
Saturday - The Clientele
How Loft I Am? - Guided By Voices

The show is named after one of Guided By Voices' more famous songs, "Don't Stop Now," so I felt the need to devote at least one show to them. I gave them 6 songs in the playlist - mostly those of the shorter-than-two-minutes variety - to either act as bumpers between some of the more dramatic songs or as an unexpected trip in a lo-fi time machine. How well did it go? You tell me. My show started late and ran long, so if you want to hear the whole thing, listen to the previous link, and then play the beginning of the next show.

Oh, how I miss Mandarin Restaurant and their low price General Tso's chicken. My number one goal upon arriving in Boston was to find a partner for a delivery order. The Tech office is usually a good place to find the type of person who would go for that sort of thing on a Friday night, and just my luck, Jillian was puttering about the office. But what was she doing with all these balloons? Apparently the Tech office was hosting her 21st birthday party. What, no invite? Oh well, I was well fed, and I had a great time socializing (huh?) with some old friends and new ones. Marie popped in for a little while, and I always love seeing her (please get me a journalism job?). Cokie was there too, and we're surprisingly very compatible conversationally. Just keep those cat questions coming, and we're golden, Cokie. Jillian's friend Caroline is the sports editor of the Tech, so I finally had someone with whom to discuss the Belicheck scandal and Boston sports in general. She's also a big fan of the Hills, and while Jillian tipped back a couple pints at the Muddy Charles, we held an impromptu Hills viewing party. On that poofy couch, with that big screen, I almost felt like cancelling my radio show just to stay there all night going through the entire set of season 1 dvds. It couldn't have happened anyways, because a dizzy Jillian burst in with a hankering for "Space Jam". Great movie, but just short of worthiness to cancel my show for. Happy 21, Jillian.

Home alone

My parents went to Switzerland for something job-related. I didn't really care what they did, but they were gone for a week starting last Saturday which meant I would have the house to myself. The only practically difficult part about it was that I'd have to navigate Boston on my own by car once they dropped themselves off at Logan airport. Trial by fire... I win. Though it took me 20 extra minutes in the rat maze than a veteran driver would've needed to get from MIT to I-93 (Cambridge to Charles MGH to Beacon Hill to Charles/MGH to Cambridge to Charles MGH to Storrow Drive and outta here!), it was worth it to achieve the skill of getting into and out of Boston. It's still scary; getting on and off I-93 at Boston has the feeling of taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier.

Those cats, they want food all the time - except when they're too good for it. They wake me up at 7 am - or rather Banjo does with his bawling - to be fed. And once I get back to sleep, Banjo wakes me up again to say that he's finished eating and wants to be let out. I wish I could set up a Rube Goldberg device that allowed me to feed them and let them out with the press of a few buttons on a console beside my bed.

It was depressing during the first couple days when I just ate leftovers from meals cooked by my parents before they left. It was crap, and it brought me down. Courage (or maybe necessity) drove me to visit the local food store. I'd seen my parents cook pan-fried chicken before, and it looked easy, so I bought a load of chicken thighs for myself. Then I started getting carried away: Oh look, there are pop-tarts, I like those. I haven't had bagels for a while, either, and one can't have bagels without cream cheese. Hmm, I don't feel like cooking every day this week, so I'll also grab some canned soup. I ended up juggling an unexpected armload of boxes and bags, and it was too late to get a basket. I probably looked like a shopping dumbass. It's no matter, because shopping and cooking on my own dollar (minus the hour of stovetop gas I used to heat the chicken) felt empowering, and it eased me closer to the idea of living on my own. Most importantly, I got the chicken just the way I always wanted it: overcooked! I'm not sharing.

The second-best part about being alone was that I could mutter and swear around the house all I wanted. At the cats, at the Red Sox, at the Wii, whatever. The cats, with their plastered-on grins, have no idea what a "fucking bitch" or a "crappy bastard" is when I scream it at them, so I just completely went to town with the yelling, and they continued to love me for my ability to scoop dry cat kibble into a small dish.

The best part was that I could watch The Hills or Real World on the television without being kicked off.

Don't Stop Now #9

For me, the best part about the radio show is when I finalize the playlist:

And I Remember Every Kiss - Jens Lekman
To Go Home - M. Ward
Broom People - The Mountain Goats
Rides the Rails - The Besnard Lakes
California - Low
Harmed - Film School
Am I Wry? No - Mew
Give Me More - Matthew Dear
C'mon - A Sunny Day in Glasgow
Unsolved Mysteries - Animal Collective
Houseclouds - Liars
I'll Believe in Anything - Wolf Parade
Else - Built to Spill
Ambulance - Blur
Lake Michigan - Rogue Wave
Phantom Limb - The Shins
Office of Hearts - Guided By Voices
You Drift Away - The Postmarks
How to Disappear Completely - Radiohead
End of Freedom - Wilderness
Vapour Trail - Ride
Consolation Prizes - Phoenix
Elm Grove Window - The Clientele
Rodeo Town - The Kills
Cabin Fever - The Brain Jonestown Massacre
Teen Love - Peter Bjorn & John
Lover's Spit - Broken Social Scene

This was great music, but it was also the most joyless show I've had since the ones right after school had gotten out. Who knows. I expect too much out of my trips to Boston and then get let down, so I should stop treating them like vacations and more like obligations. That way, if I have a fun time then it's a pleasant surprise, and if it's bland then it's simply par for the course. In any case, I spent 80% of my time in the Tech office watching their big screen and really truly killing time. If I could pin down the lowpoint during my stay, it would probably be when I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to buy an Anna's burrito for dinner. True to its form, it was nasty. Right now, I am promising to myself that I will do nothing less than eat at a sit-down restaurant for every meal during my next trip. I'll wear an "Eat Strong" bracelet from now until then as an ever-present reminder for myself and others that people deserve quality cuisine.

"Apartment Story" - The National

New iPod

According to the New York Times Blog, Apple has announced a new generation of iPod with the capability to download songs from the iTunes music store via wi-fi and with a full-size touch-screen a là the iPhone.

I've been somewhat afraid of something like this happening since I saw initial pictures of the iPhone early this year and really afraid when credible rumors about this iPod start surfacing a week or two ago. Steve Jobs' no-buttons crusade has me convinced that he's living in another reality than the people who actually want to regularly use his products.

I am one of those people who grew up using Macs and couldn't see it being any other way. However, ever since buying a third-generation iPod, I've become less trusting of Apple's design choices. As you see from this picture, the third generation is the only one that puts a row of touch-sensitive regions (not buttons) along the top of the iPod. Just looking at it, you might not understand why this sucks, but I've been using it for over three years now, and it still bugs me. If you're like me, you keep an iPod in your pocket while you're walking around, and - this is important - don't take it out unless you absolutely need to. This is to avoid accidentally dropping it or exposing it to thieves and to maintain some polite iPod modesty. It is also a physical hassle to have to reach into one's pocket repeatedly - especially while sitting.

A touch-sensitive third-generation iPod, unfortunately, demands to be taken out of the pocket nearly any time the buttons need pushing. I'm sorry, I shouldn't even be using the words "buttons" or "pushing" because the components I'm talking about provide neither tactile feedback nor pressure-sensitivity. I have no indication that I've pressed the skip or play/pause buttons other than the sound coming through my headphones, and even that is very unreliable considering the number of songs incorporating silence at some point. Also, I can't count the number of times I've accidentally brushed up against a button and had it activate. It's no wonder that generation was only produced for a year and replaced with a model that reverted to the classic click-wheel design. I wish I could go back in time and delay my iPod purchase for a single week so that I could've reaped the benefits of a fourth-generation model.

So what have we here? Has Apple come to make the same mistake twice? If the new iPod uses the same touch-screen technology as the iPhone, pressure-sensitivity is probably in place, which would allow people to use the iPod in their pockets without having to keep their thumb hovering uncomfortably over the surface. However, the main issue is still the complete absence of tactile feedback. This is where I'm most fervently against Apple's design philosophy, but it's also strangely where I'm the most alone. Is this not as much of a stress-inducing issue for others when they operate any sort of device? The press vastly under-reported this matter when covering the iPhone, but it's going to be harder to ignore the buttonless trend and its ramifications now that this new iPod has been unveiled. For crying out loud, Apple's done away with the iconic and revolutionary click-wheel! That's impossible to ignore.

My overarching point is that I'm fed up with Steve Jobs' ego trip. He's like a 12-year old who watches nothing but Star Trek: The Next Generation and wants to make products out of the props. The iPod is not an invincible brand; it is simply entrenched, and everyone else just sucks worse. Jobs seems to take this huge market share as a sweeping mandate to shape the future of technology to accomodate his personal idiosyncratic tastes.

The worst part is that I'm still going to buy the P.O.S

I'm just kidding, but there is the up-side that all previous iPod designs have been re-labelled "classic" with an accompanying price drop and memory boost. I can finally divorce my current iPod for a trophy click-wheel model. You can bet that the only action the touch-screen iPod is going to get, however, is while I'm browsing at an Apple store.

Don't Stop Now #8

The playlist for Friday night's show:

Intro - Deerhunter
Cryptograms - Deerhunter
Rubies - Destroyer
Act of the Apostle - Belle & Sebastian
I Love You 'Cause (You Look Like Me) - The Ponys
Next Exit - Interpol
You're So Great - Blur
Wake Up - The Arcade Fire
Monkey - Low
So Here We Are - Bloc Party
Marginal Over - Wilderness
The Best of Jill Hives - Guided by Voices
Things Only I Can See - A Sunny Day in Glasgow
Remember Me - British Sea Power
Let Go - The Postmarks
Impossible - The Clientele
Radio Cure - Wilco
Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe - Okkervil River
Love Love Love - The Mountain Goats
Hazel St. - Deerhunter
It's Gonna Take an Airplane - Destroyer
Satellite - Elliott Smith
Hard Days 1.2.3.4 - Loney, Dear
Desert Island - The Magnetic Fields
Daughters of the Soho Riots - The National
Dance Steps - The Natural History

The only time it's annoying to be in Boston for these trips back are when I'm unsure if people are around, willing, and available to hang out, and I'm left to sit with a crossword puzzle waiting for my cellphone to *bzzzt. This time, that wasn't much of a problem, thankfully, as old stalwarts Josh, Chase, and Qi wanted to show me their new digs up near Davis Square. The square itself has culture on the same order as Harvard Square, to my surprise. There's a rib shack called Red Bones that's got food that's so good you can't even taste it because the wait is forever. I will tell you that I smelt the ribs from outside a window, which is like getting to first base with them.

I think I inadvertantly brought up the topic of having/wanting/getting a job on three separate occasions during the night, which is nauseating to think about. There's really nothing else of substance for me to talk about, but it's stupid to be yelling all the time (because I'm in a loud bar) about how I can't! Decide! What's right! For me! I got out of the socializing more or less without incident except for one exchange that stuck in my mind:

   Qi - "An-DEE! Andy, look" (points at a small front yard with plants) "...to-MAY-toes!"
   Me - (Dismissive) "Oh... my family has tons of tomatoes."

It's when I occasionally say things like that that I realize I've still not gone as far towards being a pleasant person to talk to as I'd like to believe. The process of progressing as a decent individual for me is like diverting a river that's had a decade to carve out its course. There's a chain of impulses that subconsciously cascades in my mind when I hear something like the tomato comment:

   - I want this person to like talking to me, so I must say something interesting in response.
   - What do I know about tomatoes?
   - I got some tomatoes at home, so I say..
   - But wait, I don't want to sound idiotic, so I must insulate myself with an aloof and superior attitude.
   - The newly repackaged comment is ready for delivery...

When I sense I'm in a situation where my words and ideas will take added meaning with someone, then I can usually override these bred-in tendencies, but what good does that do me in casual and habitual interactions where I need to make or maintain a generally good impression with someone? What I can hope for at this point is that people who are already comfortable with me can find a polite or jokesy way of calling me out on it, like maybe "Andy, the jerk store called... they're running out of you."

The radio show itself was different than any other I've done this season because I had some company in the studio, Sarah and her bffffff Julian. They expressed interest in being there while I played music, and I agreed to let them stay because I had this idea that we could participate in some relaxed banter in between songs, and it would be much more interesting than whatever I could say on my own. It turned out more or less as I'd hoped, but since I'd been used to preparing stilted straight-face monologues for all these months, I was unprepared to hold my own in fast-pace conversation on air, so half of everything that came out of my mouth was a breathless giggle. That must've been annoying for listeners - beyond the usual annoying character of my voice.

Unfortunately, the best banter occurred between us when our mics were off. There'd frequently be some differing perspectives on what was playing or some interesting factoid relating to it that we'd share with one another. We all noticed the different chemistry at work while the music was playing, so the suggestion was half-jokingly thrown out there to turn the mics on over the music in the style of MST3K. I think we all ended up agreeing (though it took maybe a little too long to do so) that nobody would want to listen to three schmoes muttering over the music. It would've probably been a comparable experience to seeing a movie for the first time with the director's commentary turned on.

The reason why radio conversation often sounds the way it does is the perpetual fear of dead air on the part of both the listener and speaker. Natural conversation is always peppered with considering pauses, but without the visual context of the person who's speaking - like when you're listening to the radio - those pauses become immeasurably more awkward because there's no indication that the person is still okay and engaged. This is not as much of a problem with telephone conversations because people can fill in eachother's gaps, but a radio personality can potentially only have background music or maybe sound effects (Honk-honk! Aaaah-OOOO-gah!) and I don't use either.

After crashing with Hana and Klara about 4-5 times so far, I decided to bother Finn for a change. In our exchanges before Friday night, she'd directed me to ascend the wooden catwalk that climbed up the backside of PiKa. There, there would be a tent set up for me to slip under, but all I found at 2:30 am was a crumpled up tarp with what looked to be a lump of blankets underneath. Thanks a lot, Finn. As I considered giving Finn a poison cake in gratitude the next day, I resigned myself to my situation and started to climb underneath the tarp. I lifted it up and started to get on all fours when - whoa! - I found myself pawing some guy's thigh. He woke up with a very irritated expression, and I was lost for words. I sputtered out a startled apology with a feeble attempt to explain myself and then retreated down the catwalk quite embarrassed. It turns out that Finn had been afraid of rain and left a note on PiKa's back door that I'd missed. It said that I was actually not to stay on the roof deck but to stay inside. She should've left me another note to remind me to check that note.

I awoke in the morning to find a proto-Marxist collective skittering about the building like ants. They were cleaning, organizing, and preparing for PiKa's rush, and I figured I could appear a little less conspicuous if I helped out. I had time to burn before lunch, anyways, and sweeping the floors gave me a feeling of monastic peace. So this is how communists distract themselves from eachother's overpowering body odors. But seriously, they are a bunch of decent people who didn't openly sneer at a guest mindlessly roving around the premises chasing their cat.

Orientation was just wrapping up, so I went over to the Tech office to snag some free food while they entertained freshmen during an open house. About half a dozen of the tykes shuffled in meekly to listen to the chairman describe how the newspaper works in general. The upper management of the Tech staff did an uncharacteristically good job of speaking about the different departments considering how goddam irritating they can be. Oh, I spoke too soon; they got irritating about half an hour into it. I'm counting on Sarah to bring in decent people to write for her. I still hold affection for the paper, and I want to believe the MIT campus deserves intelligent rock music coverage.

I couldn't really gauge how much interest any of the frosh had in writing for the Tech. All I did sense was that they looked trapped, and if they did want to leave and go check out something else on campus, I don't see how they could've without creating a situation. As such, they had to listen to an exuberant windbag go off on a fifteen minute story to nowhere while cheap ice cream melted on the table. That there were only half a dozen prospective noobs should not be a cause for alarm; Sarah said she got a lot of signatures at the activities midway the day before, and the Tech is the kind of club you can join at any time without any trouble. That's how I got into it during my freshman year, actually, so I'm still optimistic. Sarah can always harrass people on facebook to get them to join if she deems it necessary.

As for my radio show, I'm facing a difficult decision about whether to continue it for the fall/winter season. It's looking more and more like I'm going to have to commit to living in Boston for the long-term if I'm to apply for my show again, and commitment is not my strong suit. It's right above parallel parking and right below cutting my own hair among my suits. I'm starting to think that I should be treating these next two shows (maybe only one show) as my last. Unless something changes, or I decide that spending $45 on a round-trip bus ticket to Boston every other weekend is worthwhile for another several months, I see myself letting my contract run out at the end of September, but I could be persuaded otherwise.

Clay Buchholz

Red Sox rookie pitcher Clay Buchholz just threw a no-hitter in his second major league start. Here are some interesting facts:

- Buchholz was initially a hot prospect, but his draft stock fell way down after he was busted stealing a whole bunch of laptops from a middle school. The Red Sox had a talk with him about that incident and were reassured that he was not a liability, so they took him with the 42nd pick in the 1st round - a pick they received for letting Pedro Martinez go in free agency.
- No Sox rookie has ever pitched a no-hitter.
- Though September call-ups allow teams to expand their rosters from 25 to 40 men with players from their minor league squad, Buchholz was not initially scheduled to join the rotation. For tonight's start, he was a spot replacement for an injured Tim Wakefield.
- Buchholz's major league debut was a few weeks ago during a double-header against the Angels. Because roster space was tight, manager Terry Francona jokingly remarked that Buchholz would still have to be sent back down to the minors after the game even if he threw a no-hitter.

I've been pretty disappointed with the Sox this week, so I was relieved when I turned on the game just as Big Papi had cleared the bases with a double to make it 4-0 in the bottom of the 4th inning. The Fenway crowd and the NESN announcers didn't start paying close attention to possibility of a no-hitter until the 6th inning. Louder-than-normal cheers greeted each out, and announcers Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo repeatedly made coy references to possible history in the making.

When weighing the chances of a game ending with a no-hitter, you have to ask yourself, does this guy have the stuff or is he getting lucky against a weak ball-club? Buchholz's curveball was plunging into the strike zone and completely fooling Orioles hitters who would stand there watching. They were swinging, however, at his changeup, which was 10-15 mph slower than his fastball, and Varitek was shrewdly calling for it frequently. Remy noted that it looked "unhittable" when Buchholz kept it down. By leaning on devastating offspeed pitches instead of a fastball, Buchholz was not giving the Orioles hitters a chance to get lucky, so yes, he had the stuff for a no-hitter tonight.

Every no-hitter needs at least one extraordinary defensive play to preserve it, and tonight's came courtesy of Dustin Pedroia who cut off a bouncing groundball in the 7th inning that was going to shoot up the gap into right-center field. He laid out for the ball and got it in his glove, which I fully expected from him since I've come to expect outstanding range from him. What was so impressive was how fast he burst back onto his feet to get his strength behind the throw to first base. With Youkilis stretching from the bag at first, Pedroia's throw barely beat out a head-first dive by Miguel Tejada. Television viewers could lip-read Pedroia shouting, "Fucking A!" after the play. He's a Sox player through and through.

I was giddy during the late innings of this game for the first time since last year when Papi would single-handedly lift the team to thrilling come-from-behind victories. The Red Sox definitely needed something exhilerating to wipe from memory their 4-game losing streak. The no-hitter does more than that, though. It lifts the Sox fans' spirits and keeps the media pressure off the team for the next few days, and on the flipside it shuts up the Yankees fans who have been sneering about making the AL East division a race again. Because Buchholz is a rookie, his potential for the next 5-10 years in the Sox rotation (along with Beckett, Dice-K, and Lester) looms huge with this performance in the minds of everyone in New England along with those of their rivals in NYC. Be afraid.

Oregon Trail, part 5

If weddings could fit in medicine bottles, the foremost warning on the label would be "Adults will be compelled to dance if ingested with alcohol." They should corral anyone over 40 into a little holding pen once the actual dance music starts instead of letting the dance floor turn into some grotesque tableau of Kafka-esque proportions. Seeing your own parents bumping emphatically to "Baby Got Back" generates an instant repressed memory, like when you see the baby crowning in "Knocked Up." Brother Matt wonders aloud if little brother Greg is going to have to be the one to drive us back to the hotel. Luckily, it doesn't happen, and everyone saves face.

On Sunday morning, I wake up at 7 am as I've done every morning this trip. I must've been on west coast time my entire life, because I've never been on such a regular sleep schedule. I'll file that away under the "Pro" column for working in LA next year.

Is rapid river-rafting one of those after-wedding traditions I haven't heard of? I initially didn't want to go because I thought it would be all Cynthia's family, but Matt signed up, so I have nowhere else to be, and luckily it turns out awesome. My parents bought a bunch of hats and sunglasses at Wal-Mart to protect from the sun; they turn out to all be matching yellow Oakland A's hats which makes us look silly but helps us identify eachother when our kayaks get far apart on the river. Basically, the deal is that they give everyone an inflatable kayak (some people get into larger boats as a group), and we are supposed to make our way 2 miles downstream where they will pick up the people and equipment and drive them back. In between here and there? Rapids!

You cannot help but smile as you go down a section of rapids. They don't involve much of a dropoff, but the water throws waves back at you several feet high, and if you don't have your kayak pointed into it, it's not just going to get into your boat but capsize you. Not many people have trouble with this part, though it is an art to guide yourself around rocks using the oar. The pyromaniac kid apparently has a grab-bag of various death wishes; he throws his boat down the river without due process as his irritated dad yells for him to stay behind. At one point, he gets caught in a whirlpool which makes his boat spin around lazily for a minute while he's trapped there. Later on, he inevitably falls out of his kayak and bruises himself in the upper chest on a rock. He'd do it all over again, I'm sure.

Our party of 25 or so has the river all to ourselves because everyone else got spooked by the thin cloud cover and morning temperature over 80°. Everyone claims that the clouds will "burn off" later in the day, and it takes me a few minutes to figure out what this phrase means. I say that I've never heard anyone use those words to describe clouds disappearing and someone mocking asks me, "where did you grow up?" Not in this hick state, for sure. Um, New Hampshire...

After kayaking, I feel like I should have some newfound extreme upper-body strength, but disappointingly, I'm not sore at all. David treats us all to soft-serve at the boathouse, and before we go, we all congratulate him on his marriage. Cynthia is there, but without her makeup during the rafting, she looks 5-10 years older. She must be in her mid- to late thirties. I try to be a little fun with my goodbye to cousin Rachel by saying, "See you in another 10 years!" She is laughing, but then I say with a straight face, "Yeah... maybe by then you won't be so weird." I rarely get to see someone's smile droop faster than that; I guess my charm is lost on the Minnesotans because cousin Kira also refuses to hug me. Her mom Becky has to force us into a tri-person hug. What gives with your family, Becky?

Matt had all these prognostications of doom about our travel itinerary that began at 6 pm and ended at 9 am. What, me worry? That just means the flight will go by faster because we'll be sleeping the whole time! I'm glad I was stupid enough to believe that over the weekend because otherwise I would've been in as sour a mood as Matt was. The reality is hell on earth - hell 30,000 feet above earth, rather. I spend the final leg of the journey in that nervous limbo where you don't know if you are going to throw up. Triumphantly stumbling into Logan, I realize I still have to drive to the Manchester airport that morning to pick up my mom where she landed. I get a single hour of sleep on the couch in Matt's apartment, and that chases away the dizzying headache from exhaustion. Because I don't know how to get out of Boston in a car, my brother drives in front of me to guide me to I-93 North, and he doesn't seem happy about it. Why can't people just get used to the fact that I'm a retarded driver?

When I get home, the cats are wailing out of hunger because they hadn't been fed in five days. Ha, just kidding; the neighborhood kids came by each day to scoop out their cat kibble. Because I'm now on Zurich time I say goodnight at 1 pm and decide that I probably only have enough stamina for one trip like this per year.

Sudoku success

My daily calender in years past has been The Onion or Red Sox-related, but this year it's suduko puzzles - one per day. They start the easiest on Monday (1 out of 5 stars) and get progressively more difficult until Sunday it's the hardest (5 out of 5 stars). I give an honest effort to solve the puzzle each day, and I can solve anything lower than 4 stars guaranteed. A 4-star puzzle is right at my preferred difficulty, and it usually requires overcoming a single tricky logical snag and then everything else falls into place. I can beat those puzzles about 75% of the time, but I've only completed about three 5-star puzzles total. They are a tough slog almost all the way through.

It's been my goal to complete an entire week's suduko puzzles (Monday to Sunday), and I hadn't been able to do it yet this year until last week. Hooray for me. I'll be very pleased when I can complete any sudoku puzzle like it's nothing, but until then, I must train...

Wedding music

Deciding what to a play at a wedding seems like tricky business to me. If you want everyone to enjoy themselves, it's essentially a no-win situation because of the demographics at play. There are songs that you can easily avoid, however, like Pachelbel's Canon and Enya's "Sail Away" (which were both played at David and Cynthia's wedding) because there must be no one left on earth who doesn't cringe at them. I kept myself sane throughout that whole ordeal by trying to imagine what I'd want played at my own wedding. A few songs popped into my head immediately because they are amazingly well-suited to the marriage atmosphere and they cannot be disliked:

Perfect Lovesong - The Divine Comedy
Look Up - Stars
Paris 2004 - Peter Bjorn & John
1 2 3 4 - Feist

I had the Divine Comedy song stuck in my head all weekend, and if my bride's family only gave me one song to put into the reception playlist, that would be it. Later, I further idealized my fantasy marriage by only admitting those under 40, who I figure will be only 5-10 years older than me at the time. This would allow me to play some more music for people who would be receptive to music of my generation:

The Shining - Badly Drawn Boy
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel
The Golden Age - Beck
Swimmers - Broken Social Scene
I Hope I Know You - The Clientele
Watercolours into the Ocean - Destroyer
Marry Me - St. Vincent
Winter Spring Summer Fall - The Postmarks
Something Changed - Pulp
Streets of Fire - The New Pornographers
Eyes - Rogue Wave
Cherry Blossom Girl - Air
Phantom Limb - The Shins

As the night continues, eventually people will start dancing for real...

The Magic Position - Patrick Wolf
I Love You - The Pipettes
Perfect - The Smashing Pumpkins
Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
Black and White Town - Doves
This Modern Love - Bloc Party
Buddy Holly - Weezer
Sister Jack - Spoon
To Go Home - M. Ward
The Sound of Settling - Death Cab for Cutie
Float On - Modest Mouse
You're All That I Have - Snow Patrol
Hard to Explain - The Strokes
LDN - Lily Allen
Number 1 - Goldfrapp
In This Home on Ice - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Finally, I'd be playing "All the Wine" by the National just for myself in my head.

Oregon Trail, part 4

What on earth does someone do on the day of their wedding? I would probably sit in the woods all morning drinking water and spitting it back out, afraid to ingest anything lest I throw it back up. I see cousin David on Saturday morning and he seems chipper, which means he's probably crazy. He's been wearing earings every time I've seen him, which still confuses me. Don't criticize, don't criticize...

Most of the able-bodied members on our side of the family go on a hike for a few hours about a hundred feet above the river. Nathaniel almost died on this trail, supposedly, when he was about five years old, but I think this story's been trumped up because it sounds like he just slipped near the side of a cliff. It actually is a moderately tricky trail with steep dropoffs that a child could zoom off easily if he or she weren't paying attention. Seven year-old cousin Caroline is unfazed, and for the entire three hour trek, she leads the way and even tailgates some old people into letting us all pass. Her dad, uncle Stephen, uses his GPS to locate geocaches, which are containers filled with logbooks and random trinkets placed by other people with coordinates and instructions on how to find them listed on the internet. He always carries a bunch of smalls around with him in case he finds a geocache because one of the traditions is to switch out the object found inside with one of your own.

That aftenoon was the wedding. David has a Chinese Catholic mother and Jewish father, and Cnythia is Italian but, for some reason, not Catholic, so it was someone's great idea to make the ceremony a confusing amalgam of all their traditions. I don't think you should be allowed to do that. You have to go one way or the other with the traditions and stick with it or the whole exercise seems trite. One thing I didn't know going into the ceremony was that the glass-breaking at the end is not just a Jewish tradition but also an Italian one, and the number of pieces the glass shatters into signifies the number of happy years of marriage to follow. When David steps on the glass at the end I hear a single plink as it snaps in two. I was never really that optimistic.

The reception is more awkward than I thought it would be. Even though Matt has a law degree and I am a college graduate, we get sat at the kids table with the most sullen cousins of the bunch. This puts me in the position of being the most social person at the table which is not my preferred niche. I feel like crawling in a hole and dying for some reason, but having free wine seemed like the next best thing. Over the next hour or so, I must've been making funny faces or something because my aunt kept taking pictures of me and laughing, and a kid from the other family kept running by and sniping photos as well. I don't think I was that drunk...

While much of our family's youth is emotionally distant, the sister of the bride, cousin Nicole, is outgoing and cheerful and gets me onto the dancefloor for a song. When I get back, Matt thanks me for keeping Nicole from asking him. What a party pooper thing to say. I've never seen him dance before. If he'd only had half as much wine as I had, maybe he'd leave himself for once. He needs to take a cue from little cousins Caroline and Kira, who have been holding hands, spinning, and twirling eachother for about two days straight (even when there's no music). Who spiked their juiceboxes?

The most bizarre moment of the weekend, bar none, was when Aunt Rosie stood up to give a toast to her newly-married son. It was rambling and surreal. She didn't mention anything remotely relevant to the moment at hand but instead gave a speech about her family's proud values, which are Freedom, Decency, and Inventiveness according to her. As tumbleweeds rolled by, she then rambled about how these virtues manifest themselves in each of her siblings. Uncle Arthur travels the world and cleans the environment, Aunt Bobbi prosecutes exclusively murderers and child rapists (...), and my mom is on the Dartmouth admissions committee and contributes regularly to NPR. Not only are these things on the complete other side of the planet from relevance, but they are also so warped as to be completely untrue. Aunt Renée was in stitches by our table while Matt and I kept looking at eachother thinking, "Is this really happening?" Mercifully, David snatched the microphone away from his mom before she could get to Becky or Renée, but the damage was done in my mind. Aunt Rosie is a lunatic the likes of which scholars will pore over for generations.

Oregon Trail, part 3

I generally hate travelling, so I'd prefer to stay in my motel room crouched in some corner for an entire trip, but the maid's got to remake the beds and make more shampoo, so me and my brother Matt have to get outside for some period of time on Friday. Our parents have the rental car, so we have to walk around the town of Grant's Pass looking for something to do. The place is a piece of crap, and Matt deems it his own "personal hell." I approve of that assessment. For those who know me from the upper valley, it is like West Lebanon without the shopping: a strip of car dealerships, motels, and realtors (who would buy a house here?). The one time I get excited while baking in the cloudless 90° heat is when I see a Dollar Tree. Matt says no, we can't go in there.

The entire state of Oregon seems too cultured to have any chain stores or anything remotely franchised other than Dutch Bros. Coffee (the western Dunkin' Donuts?), so I'm in unfamiliar territory. Finally, my cousin Nathaniel and his girlfriend call back and we catch lunch at a cheap but decent Thai restaurant. He's one of few reasonable relatives, so it's all good, and I'm able to explain my situation efficiently with "I live at home; I work for my parents." I've used this on my extended family several times already, and it saves me a lot of hemming and hawing. It also cracks people up more than I'd expect, which means I'm finally getting the hang of describing what a loser I am.

Friday evening (the night before the wedding), both families get on a large flat jet boat (operated by Hellgate excursions) and roar down the river. On paper, it seemed like a bizarre activity, but it's kind of wet and fun. It could've been less wet, as the boat driver sadistically threw the boat into 360° spins to drench everybody. On the upside, I see why Oregon might be a place to live as opposed to the place where debtors and fraudsters are sent after they die. There are houses by the river that you'd need to be absolutely loaded to have. I wonder how much they like having boats buzzing by their luxurious homes at fifty miles an hour every 10 minutes in the summer.

My uncle works for Google, and I asked him about the text messaging service they have. Can they report baseball scores? He doesn't know, and I immediately have a fantasy of being accepted into the company based on my ability to develop such a service. Unfortunately, texting "red sox score" to GOOGL actually does work. They really are too smart for me over there. I don't get too down on myself, because by texting Google, I watch the Sox sweep Chicago in four games over the weekend. I can think of fewer more satisfying text messages to receive than Boston 7 - Chicago 1 - Bot 7th.

Oregon Trail, part 2

A couple things you learn from reading SkyMall, the inflight catalogue: lost golfballs are one of mankind's foremost concerns, iPods must be submersed to be fully enjoyed, and shaving your legs is too difficult without a pedestal mounted to the shower wall. Wait, I must have that...

The family took a rent-a-car from the Medford airport to Grant's Pass where we checked into a La Quinta motel. I have few complaints about the place other than the continental breakfast is lame. They have a hundred channels on the tv and free wifi, which made me want to cry with joy. I immediately proceeded to illicitly download tv shows and music.

There wasn't much time to sit around at the motel because we had to attend a cookout for the bride and groom's families. The groom, David, seemed super-pleased and confident and just this side of annoying. Later I'd see why: his bride Cynthia has... a fine figure. The families didn't mingle that well during the cookout, and our family didn't even mingle that well amongst itself. This is the only situation where you'd need that really gregarious relative to break the ice. I tried to do my part by throwing a squeezy ball to and from a 2-year old from the other side, but she sucked at catching it, and I was disappointed. The only other mildly interesting attraction was the pyromaniac 12-year old who kept sticking his hand in the tiki torches. His dad threatened to "whoop his ass in front of everyone" and finally threw his hands in the air and told his kid to just put his hand in the fire and burn himself so he'd learn his lesson. The kid did stick his hand in the fire again, but when he burned himself, he just did it again.

Aunt Rosie, David's mother, is supposedly crazy based on what my mom has been saying for years. I don't know how weird this is, Aunt Rosie had me take a container of food garbage out into her front yard and bury it with a shovel. I thought it was all in the spirit of family cooperation, but she had me do it again and again in the night, and I'm a guest. Yes, I deem it weird.

Oregon Trail, part 1

Far-off cousin David decided to get a wife, so my family went to the west coast to attend the wedding. I dislike travelling because it puts me out of my element, but sometimes you do things just to get them over with. I can tolerate this.

Time to build character: Thursday morning, we get up at 4 am in Boston after spending the night at my brother Matt's. We take a 6 am flight from Logan airport to Pittsburgh, then connect to San Francisco, then end up in Medford, Oregon. The flights themselves weren't as much of a hassle as they could've been. On one flight, I was in the middle seat, and the window seat guy decided to move his knee into my zone. Okay, let's play that game, jerk. While keeping my leg firmly in my own territory, I relaxed my knee so that it rested onto his. Touchy touchy, you likey? After about 10 minutes, he shifted his weight and retreated his leg.

It was about 13 hours of travelling and layovers, and Matt complained frequently about how tired he was. He shouldn't have been reading so much on the plane. It's important to try to pass out while flying and lose sense of time. The noise-cancelling headphones worked wonders and let me listen to music and watch a movie on my laptop. I haven't completely decided what to write about "Me and You and Everyone We Know" yet. Or if I should.

Optic Nerve by Adrian Tomine

During one of my Boston excursions, I stayed over at Student House, so I was able to spend some time wandering Kenmore square on my own. I found a Boca Grande (Anna's rival in the burrito wars) and a place called Uburger (decent gourmet burgers, fries, and frappes) to get my eats. I also decided to visit the neighborhood comic shop, Comicopia, and add an extra superficial dimension to my personality by buying my first comic book. I'm decidedly not into superhero comics like Chase is, but I am perfectly made for the alternatives, like Harvey Pekar and Dan Clowes-type stuff. The only thing in the shop that interested me was Optic Nerve, which I'd describe as the graphic equivalent of a Casiotone for the Painfully Alone album.



The artist, Adrian Tomine, apparently started publishing the books right out of high school over 10 years ago, and he's only made 11 books so far (a book being about 30 pages). To be a fan of this guy and only be able to buy a product once a year must be brutal, but I suppose it's no worse than waiting 2-3 years for your favorite band's album. They only take about 20-30 minutes to read, however.

The content itself is mostly relationship and existential melodrama of the type that teenagers or post-grads could really relate to. One of Tomine's signatures is to end his storylines abruptly and unannounced (like the Soprano's finale). This sometimes comes off as trite and unnecessary (what happens next?!), but occasionally, it perfectly crystallizes a mood or feeling that would otherwise have been marginalized had the story continued. The story "Dylan & Donovan" (the cover of which is shown above), for example, cuts off at a particularly quiet but gut-wrenching moment between an emotionally distant family during a long car ride. Staring at those final panels and feeling them linger almost mournfully in the air helped me understand some of the unique artistic capabilities of the medium.

I've got six issues total, but I've only read five because I didn't realize that one was part of a three-part storyline. I hope to have the complete set of eleven after a couple more trips back to Boston. It all depends on how diligently that comic store stocks their wares, however.

Nite Owl #3

Nite Owl is a WMBR show on Saturdays that has a revolving door of various DJs that sign up for the slot a few weeks in advance. It basically provides a gateway for curious MIT students to get involved with the station and see what it's like to host a show without any commitments. In fact, it's how I was introduced to WMBR, so I can attest to how cool it is that it's there. I filled in this Saturday, and this is what I played:

Two Receivers - Klaxons
Eli - Caribou
Flower Gardens - Chad VanGaalen
Sister Jack - Spoon
Are You on My Side - Rogue Wave
We Shot the World - Ponys
Falling Through Your Clothes - The New Pornographers
Lady Lawyers - Oxford Collapse
Girls of Wild Strawberries - Guided By Voices
Now Now - St. Vincent
Unleashed! The Large Hearted Boy - Guided By Voices
The Zookeeper's Boy - Mew
I Remember - Figurines
The Dance of the Hours - The Clientele
Son - The National
Range Life - Pavement
On the Bubble - The Broken West
Neptune's Net - M. Ward
I Don't Believe You - The Magnetic Fields
Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
The Party's Crashing Me - Of Montreal
Napalm Love - Air
Les Os - The Unicorns
So Long, Lonesome - Explosions in the Sky

I flirted with the idea of going outside my normal range (and maybe play some Beach Boys and Beatles) with the playlist because this is not my normal show. I ended up deciding to use the Nite Owl slot as an opportunity to advertise for Don't Stop Now by playing the kind of music that you'd hear on it. I would've taken requests if any had been made. Usually at an earlier time slot, people are much more likely to call in, but I guess since it's summer, not many people are on campus. I remember one particular time that I did Nite Owl where I got like a dozen legitimate callers. It was kind of annoying actually. This time, however, I was angry at how dead the lines were, and I expressed my hostility at the end of the show only half-jokingly.

Edit: I forgot to post a link to the show. This might be the first time I'm glad the previous show bled over into the file because they closed with "The Humans are Dead" by Flight of the Conchords.

In defense of "No I in Threesome"

I've read three or four reviews of Interpol's most recent album, "Our Love to Admire," as well as scattered internet opinions, and critics have pretty consistently appraised it as mediocre. Their reasons are basically the same: some of the songs are good, some are bad, and the bad outweighs the good. I don't disagree with them; this is an inconsistent album. What I take issue with is how the track "No I in Threesome" has been almost universally maligned while I consider it the album's highlight. After some thought, I've probably found the reason for such across-the-board dislike for the track.

Interpol has always been an incredibly consistent band. "Turn on the Bright Lights" is nearly perfect, while "Antics," though it carries some deadweight, never contained an actual dud. When "Our Love to Admire" was released, the reviews practically wrote themselves as critics could then contrast the band's newly erratic songwriting to that from their previous do-no-wrong era. All such a review needs is a cherry on top - an example of how wildly the needle flails on the quality dial - and the choice is too easy. They're given a track with a name that sounds like a joke (from a band that makes its name on seriousness) with lyrics, it seems, just as embarrassing. So why wasn't I among those eager to make "Threesome" my whipping boy? It might have something to do with the way I was introduced to the song.

I'd been waiting for months for this particular album to be released, and finally it appeared on the shelf in the WMBR studios. The only problem was that I wasn't there. Though I usually have a radio show on Friday nights this summer, I reguarly trade off with my radio partner Megan, and it was she who found the CD there. She was DJing that night, so I called and requested that she please play some new Interpol. Without looking at the track list, she popped in the disc and skipped to #2 because "track 2's are usually good." By the end of the song, we'd decided that this was no exception. If knowing beforehand that it was titled "No I in Threesome" might've poisoned our first impression, we wouldn't have noticed. The music itself made its point loud and clear before any prejudice could've.

The song begins with a few seconds of eery bass and strings and then clicks into a full-band trot accentuated by stately piano steadily chiming above it all. It has the kind of sound you'd find in the coda of an Arcade Fire song but with the guitar understated almost to the point of fatigue. It bursts awake during the chorus, mirroring the last desperate efforts of a man trying to resuscitate a doomed relationship.

Much is made of how erratic and banal Paul Banks' lyrics can supposedly be, but the effect is actually partly intended. Interpol delivers its music with a straight face, but that doesn't imply a lack of self-awareness. The unsettled and awkward manner in which Banks wields his metaphors is how he conveys his frustration at a life that defeats him as he struggles to wrap his head around it. For "Threesome," Banks is throwing whatever emotional leverage he has left behind a threesome overture, because after the "teethmarks of time" have eroded his romance, the only choice he has left is to go all-in. A cheeky line like "alone we may fight, so let us be three tonight" plays on how a couple will only stop bickering long enough to be polite to company and shows that Banks and co. are in on the tragic joke.

Far from being the nadir of the album, "No I in Threesome" is one of the all-around best songs in Interpol's catalogue. You just know it would make a fantastic music video, too.

Ice cream

Since the only ATM in town is a fifteen minute walk away from work, I'm often without enough cash to purchase a full lunch from the cafeteria. I do have enough to visit the vending machines, so yesterday I had a Three Musketeers for lunch and the day before that a bag of Skittles. They're not as filling as I need them to be, so I think about food during the day - foods I want to eat. Since I'm at a computer, I go look for pictures of food. I google some pictures, and they're all right, but not good enough, so I visited places like pizza.com and sandwich.com. Surprisingly, those sites are just placeholders. Nobody has bought the domain rights to pizza.com or sandwich.com! I finally struck gold with icecream.com. I don't know who owns it, but it has news about ice cream, recipes, fun facts, and links to ice cream brand websites. I like Starbucks coffee ice cream the best, so I was able to see that. There's also something called "the Flavor Transporter" at the top of the site next to Scooby Doo for some reason. I'm afraid to click on it because I don't know where it will send me. You can explore the site yourself if you find ice cream as tasty as I do. Yum.

Real World Sydney

I just got around to watching the hour-long premiere of the Real World Sydney, and I'm kind of excited about this season. It promises to be very watchable because a) the girls are all lookers and b) none of the guys seem like jerkoffs. I can watch girls be bitchy or stuck-up, but I can't stand watching guys act like douchebags. It seems like a miscarriage of justice when they still get what they want regardless of how much of a crappy person they are. Don't think that I'm implying that I'm such a great guy who should be the one getting who are what I want. I know perfectly well I get what I deserve, and I want others to as well. I'd like to believe that you can tell you're a good person by how well-liked you are, but... ehh I need to give up rationalizing how bitter I am (Bitterness! It tastes so sweet).

Along those lines, the girls really did get off to a catty start. There are four of them, though some of their names escape me because two are blonde. I felt an immediate kinship with Parisa, the Iranian girl, when she was the first to split from the club on the roommates' first night out because she wasn't having any fun standing in the corner judging everyone else. One of the guy roommates also called her a "Debbie Downer." I was all ready to be in her corner for the rest of the show, but the next day, she starting disparaging another girl, Kelly Anne, behind her back for being too drunk at the club, for Parisa didn't want to have to babysit her. It was the kind of passive-aggressive loud way of talking behind someone's back where you mean for them to hear what you're saying but are not courageous enough to say it to their face. When Kelly Anne confronted Parisa, she weakly justified herself with "how can i talk to you if you don't listen?" Kelly Anne stormed back to her bedroom and exclaimed, "God, what a bitch!" Totally!

I was very happy to see the girls get past their initial animosity. It was looking like the four were going to establish separate blocs of two that would never interact with eachother. This is after the second day! Thankfully, one of the blondes took the laudable step of reaching out to Kelly Anne on the other side and saying that she wanted to be able to talk with her and that there was no need for anyone to whisper behind another's back. Kelly Anne was very amenable, so she then had a productive talk with Parisa about how her feelings, and everyone felt a huge weight lift. It's strange how quickly the girls then decided to be kind to one another, for if blondie hadn't made that peaceful overture to Kelly, they would've been perfectly content to let the silent hostility between them solidify for good. It must be a girl thing - as well as something I might do.

The first episode concerned itself with enough girl drama that the jury's still out for me with the guys, but for now they seem like honorable, upright gentlemen to me. They're being smart and not initially passing judgment on anyone during the first week. Before a week has passed, the sample size of time spent with anyone is too short to make an accurate determination of their character, am I right?

I just remembered the blondes' names: Trisha and Shauvon. They cute.

Blog philosophy

I get bored during the workday, and so notions pile up in my head that need some kind of outlet. Since graduation, I don't have friends to unburden myself onto, so I'm trying this out. Pretty standard reason for a blog - not having friends.

I came up with the title by taking it from an album that has really grown on me. I relate to the phrase "Strange Geometry" in a way that feels like a shared secret between me and the artist, which might make it personal enough for me to steal for my blog. I tried to come up with an original name, but it was just going nowhere. I can't even think of a name for my band that doesn't exist, and I've been trying for 4 years. Does that make me unimaginative? In my defense, the name Radiohead is from a Talking Heads lyric.

I don't know how much it would bother me if no one read this blog. I would certainly like comments and attention from friends and all that jazz, but just making my posts seems to serve my purposes. A blog that no one reads will be a nice companion to my radio show that no one listens to.

If you want to know what music I like and what I'm listening to (even at this very second), you can go to my facebook page. You know where that is, because that's how where you came from to get to this blog.

The last thing I want to mention is that I will try to suppress the urge to be a comedian. It doesn't work for me on the radio, and it doesn't work for me in print, either. The only way I can listen to or read whatever I say is if it's almost devoid of personality, oddly enough, which may make me boring, but it's the only way I can avoid hating the things I do. I feel like I've forced myself into stressful positions when I feel like I need to be clever or insightful at some moment or another. I've decided to have faith that I am naturally interesting without trying. Let the experiment begin!

Don't Stop Now #7

I DJ for the MIT campus radio station WMBR 88.1 FM, and I've been doing it all summer. This most recent friday, my playlist was as follows:

Expecting Brainchild - Guided by Voices
Keep the Car Running - Arcade Fire
Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken - Camera Obscura
Marry Me - St. Vincent
Holy Chord - Dappled Cities
One Night Stand - The Pipettes
Please Please Please - Shout Out Louds
Une Année Sans Lumière - Arcade Fire
Kicked it in the Sun - Built to Spill
Slow Show - The National
2nd Moves to Twin - Guided by Voices
Objects of my Affection - Peter Bjorn & John
The Answer - Bloc Party
Untitled 4 - Sigur Rós
My Own Face Inside the Trees - The Clientele
Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives - Voxtrot
The Weight of the World - Editors
The Land Beyond - British Sea Power
Ones - Islands
The Great Salt Lake - Band of Horses
Major Leagues - Pavement
Know Which Way the Wind Blows - The Postmarks
Hugs & Kisses (Theme from A Sunny Day in Glasgow) - A Sunny Day in Glasgow
Graveyard - Chad VanGaalen
I Don't Mind - The Decemberists
Saltwater - Beach House
Cedric's War - The Besnard Lakes

The show went pretty well, though like always, I got some funny notions in my head that I wanted to articulate on air, but they came out kind of awkwardly. I don't know, maybe some people thought I was funny. If I don't say something, then I might as well just hook up my laptop and take a nap for two hours while music plays.

Edit: The show can be streamed from wmbr.org even though it's already happened. The first 5 minutes of the stream are the final 5 minutes of the previous show, so don't be freaked out by electronic music and australians.

C'est moi.