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.