CRB

Best of 2011

2012-01-03T11:40:00.002-05:00

2011 was kind of a mediocre year - pretty much everything I was looking forward to music-wise has somehow slipped to 2012. Oh well, that'll just make 2012 that much more exciting! Now let's check out what DID come out in 2011...

Top Albums for 2011:

1. I Am The Avalanche - Avalanche United
2. The Subways - Money And Celebrity
3. Funeral For A Friend - Welcome Home Armageddon!
4. Cave In - White Silence
5. Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See
6. Drive: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (compilation)
7. ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Tao Of The Dead
8. Thursday - No Devolución
9. Glassjaw - Coloring Book (EP)
10. Funeral For A Friend - See You All In Hell (EP)

11. Thrice - Major / Minor
12. Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
13. Bush - The Sea Of Memories
14. Lou Reed & Metallica - Lulu
15. Taking Back Sunday - Taking Back Sunday

The last 5 are separated because I feel there's a big difference in quality between the groups. Those last 5 are ones that either surprised me by their continued relevance but didn't stick with me too much (Bush, Foo Fighters, Lou Reed & Metallica), or were anticipated and ended up disappointing me (Thrice, Taking Back Sunday). In a stronger year, these wouldn't have made the list at all, but I didn't want to stop at just 10 this year.

So, next year.... Looking forward to new music from Every Time I Die, A Wilhelm Scream, The Bronx, Lostprophets, The Mars Volta, Queens of the Stone Age, Murder By Death, and hopefully plenty of pleasant surprises. And no slipping to 2013 goddamnit!

2012-01-03T11:24:00.005-05:00

Best of 2010:

1. The Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis
2. Lostprophets - The Betrayed
3. Funeral For A Friend - The Young and Defenceless (EP)
4. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
5. The Damned Things - Ironiclast
6. !!! - Strange Weather, Isn't It?
7. Murder By Death - Good Morning, Magpie
8. Against Me! - White Crosses
9. Norma Jean - Meridional
10. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (compilation)
11. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks
12. Sundowner - We Chase The Waves
13. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
14. The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang
15. The Flatliners - Cavalcade

Best of 2009:

1. Every Time I Die - New Junk Aesthetic
2. A Wilhelm Scream - A Wilhelm Scream (EP)
3. Brand New - Daisy
4. Arctic Monkeys - Humbug
5. Broadway Calls - Good Views, Bad News
6. Propagandhi - Supporting Caste
7. Sabertooth Zombie - ...And Your Fathers Are Dead In The Ground
8. Doomriders - Darkness Come Alive
9. Cave In - Planets of Old (EP)
10. Converge - Axe To Fall
11. Franz Ferdinand - Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
12. Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures
13. Thrice - Beggars
14. Defeater - Lost Ground (EP)
15. The Von Bondies - Love, Hate, And Then There's You

Best of 2008

2009-02-22T22:00:00.010-05:00

Either because 2008 was a busy year for me and I didn't get much of a chance to really give things the time they deserved, or just because the music of 2008 didn't get me as excited as previous years have, I don't have too much to say here. So we're just gonna do a straight list broken into 3 or 4 tiers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tier 1 - Great

Murder By Death - Red of Tooth and Claw

The Bronx - The Bronx (2008)

The Subways - All Or Nothing

Norma Jean - The Anti Mother

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

Metallica - Death Magnetic

Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy

Tier 2 - Good

Eagles of Death Metal - Heart On

Funeral For A Friend - Memory and Humanity

Tom Gabel - Heart Burns (EP)

The Night Marchers - See You In Magic

The Mars Volta - The Bedlam In Goliath

Thrice - The Alchemy Index Vols. III & IV: Air & Earth

Thursday / Envy - Split EP

Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue

Bloc Party - Intimacy

Tier 3 - Interesting

This Is Hell - Misfortunes

The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound

Weezer - Weezer (Red Album)

These Arms Are Snakes - Tail Swallower and Dove

TV On The Radio - Dear Science

The Faint - Fasciinatiion

The Offspring - Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV

Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

Just disappointing

Fall Out Boy - Folie a Deux

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Hopefully 2009 will be more interesting - the odd years seem to be the active release years for the bands I really like.

So far in 2009:

Franz Ferdinand - Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
The Von Bondies - Love, Hate, And Then There's You
Hellmouth - Destroy Everything. Worship Nothing.
...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead - The Century of Self
Morrissey - Years of Refusal
Thursday - Common Existence

Looking ahead:
A Wilhelm Scream
Every Time I Die
Streetlight Manifesto
Lostprophets
Brand New
Head Automatica
Glassjaw
Alexisonfire
Thrice
and hopefully many more.

Comments always welcome, take care!

2008-06-19T06:41:00.005-05:00

What he's doing is looking adorable. And what he's thinking is "WHOOOOO I get to stay in college!!!"

Yes, my seemingly never-ending battle with the NEU housing department has ended. And I won. Which is good, because I'm not accustomed to losing.

I had a series of nice chats with various employees of the department, ranging in topics from comparisons of fish to turtles from a healthcare perspective, to the inherent imperfection of any system of rules. I firmly believe that it is the role of administrators to interpret rulings in a reasonable manner for the benefit of all those living under them - not hide behind a 30-year-old rule and refuse to even revisit it for fear of opening "Pandora's Box." We never saw eye-to-eye on a lot of things, but I feel the ruling speaks for itself and is victory enough.

Super-belated 2007 Best-Of Extravaganza

2008-03-26T19:04:00.014-05:00

Yeah yeah yeah, March 2008, super late, no excuse, blah blah blah. I'm plenty ashamed, don't worry. Let's get on with it.

update: I provided links to bands' MySpace pages so you can get quick and free (and legal!) listens if you want to give them a try.

Music: Best Of 2007

1. Career Suicide by A Wilhelm Scream
Genre: Punk / Metal
Ever liked a band, but wanted them to pull out the stops, skip the slow songs, and put out a really fast, powerful album? A Wilhelm Scream was one of those bands for me. And holy shit did they deliver, above and beyond what I ever expected possible. This is a barn-burner of an album - 13 songs of pure fury.

I don't want to scare anyone off this - this is not hardcore, or really even metal besides the guitar tone and complexity, and there is no screaming or thrashing or stuff like that. Melodic guitar, harmonized vocals, and the catchiest hooks you ever heard. But this is a mean album. The passion in every song is stunning - every member of this band is at their peak. Saying this in 2007 is pretty much heresy, but I feel no shame in asserting that this is a punk rock masterpiece. From the gasping, fervor-filled lyrics, dripping with wit and sarcasm, to the breakneck dueling guitars, to the relentless, metronome-like drumming, this is an album I'm going to enjoy over and over throughout the years to come. I simply can't recommend it enough.
Standout tracks: The Horse ; Pardon Me, Thanks a Lot ; 5 to 9
Link: http://www.myspace.com/awilhelmscream

2. Somewhere In The Between by Streetlight Manifesto
Genre: Ska / Punk
Ska is a new one for me this year - never thought a Ska Punk band would make my #2. This band is catchiness incarnate. Seriously, listen to this band and be prepared to have it stuck in your head for the next week. Best described as a perfect mix of guitars and horns, Streetlight Manifesto doesn't lay the corniness on too thick like some other similar bands, and offers an album full of diverse songs. Some of the opening tracks are light and fluffy, while the latter half (the two closers especially) is brimming with passion and deeper themes. This is stuff you can put on anytime and just feel happy - and it also has the depth for more serious listens.
Standout tracks: The Receiving End Of It All ; What A Wicked Gang Are We ; We Will Fall Together
Link: http://www.myspace.com/streetlightmanifesto

3. The Big Dirty by Every Time I Die
Genre: Metalcore / Southern Rock
This is a tough album for me to review. ETID's 2005 album, Gutter Phenomenon, was my top choice for the year, and their 2003 Hot Damn! would surely have been as well if I was writing these little columns back then. There's no shame in being behind AWS's Career Suicide as that's a once-a-decade type of album, but them being behind Streetlight Manifesto as well is kind of telling. This album simply wasn't what I was hoping for.

A lot of people were up in arms over Gutter Phenomenon's newfound Southern Rock stylings, but I felt it was a strong direction to go in, even if I didn't like it as much as Hot Damn!'s genre-defining breakneck metalcore. This, however, is a mish-mash of styles without a clear direction. In some ways, it's a step back to their first LP, Last Night In Town, and I really felt they were still finding their sound back then. The Big Dirty dips in and out of metalcore and southern rock, but doesn't always find a suitable middle ground. When the album shines, it shines - "We'rewolf" features one of the best riffs they've ever written, and has an amazing climax that is the very definition of rock 'n' roll. "INRIhab" is a first for vocalist Keith Buckley, showcasing him dropping the (admittedly clever) puns and wordplay, and focusing on more serious, personal issues. Others like "Rendez-voodoo" and "Buffalo Gals" see the band trying some different, interesting melodies out. But others are a lot more cookie-cutter. I'm obviously not too unhappy with the album as it's still my #3, but I have such high expectations for ETID. Now, the long wait until 2009...
Standout tracks: We'rewolf ; INRIhab ; Buffalo Gals
Link: http://www.myspace.com/everytimeidie

4. New Wave by Against Me!
Genre: Punk / Folk
Another new band for me this year, although hardly new themselves. Against Me! have a legion of fans from their early acoustic, extremely low-fi work, and they are none-to-happy about the recent major label deal and all the radio play. I say 'Meh.' This band has unique lyrics, raspy vocals, great guitar tone, and no shortage of catchy hooks. I've had many an Against Me! song stuck in my head this year, especially after diving into their back catalogue as well.
Standout tracks: Piss And Vinegar ; Americans Abroad ; Up The Cuts
Link: http://www.myspace.com/againstme

5. Neon Bible by Arcade Fire
Genre: Rock / Alternative
I'm hesitant to call this "indie rock" as that's not really a genre, but the colloquial usage of that term is probably a good description of Arcade Fire. There was something majestic and beautiful about their debut, Funeral, and a lot of that is missing from Neon Bible. But give this enough time, and you really get a completely different, equally amazing feel. There's a pervasive quiet pensiveness to this album, and some really touching moments that take you out of whatever you're doing and smother you in sound and emotion. Real undeniable charm.
Standout tracks: The Well And The Lighthouse ; (Antichrist Television Blues) ; Black Mirror
Link: http://www.myspace.com/arcadefireofficial

It gets tougher to really order them past this point, so take exact numbers with a grain of salt. They're all undeniable winners, have no doubt.

6. Icky Thump by The White Stripes
Genre: Garage Rock
Have you thought that The White Stripes have gotten really weird in the past few years? Yeah, me too - I pretty much hated their last album, Get Behind Me, Satan. This album was a real revelation, however - going back to their garage rock roots, Jack and Meg (or probably just Jack...) have written some really great tunes here. Most of this album is classic rock and roll greatness. Rag and Bone has one of the best riffs of the year, and the interplay between the two vocalists is hilarious. There are some odd moments, sure, but in general they are a lot more reigned in, and there's very little I don't like about this album.
Standout tracks: Rag and Bone ; Icky Thump ; Catch Hell Blues
Link: http://www.myspace.com/thewhitestripes

7. Ire Works by The Dillinger Escape Plan
Genre: Math / Metal / Pop?
Their last album, Miss Machine, really divided people, what with it's Faith No More-esque detours into creepy pop. Ire Works continues down that trajectory, but it does it in a smart fashion, and still brings the metal when it needs to. The tracklist is a little sparse, considering that a few too many of the tracks are just instrumental interludes, which is a shame. But when your biggest complaint is "Why isn't the album longer?", I'd say that's a good thing.
Standout tracks: Milk Lizard ; Fix Your Face ; Black Bubblegum
Link: http://www.myspace.com/dillingerescapeplan

8. Super Taranta! by Gogol Bordello
Genre: Punk / Gypsy
This is eastern European gypsy punk, with thickly-accented vocals, accordions, and every random string and percussion instrument you can think of. It's loud, it's catchy, and it's weird.
Standout tracks: Wonderlust King ; American Wedding ; Supertheory of Supereverything
Link: http://www.myspace.com/gogolbordello

9. Lifetime by Lifetime
Genre: Punk
There's not much to say about this because it's really no frills - fast, genuine-feeling, catchy punk. Simple lyrics and songs, but it resonates so well and really sticks with you.
Standout tracks: Can't Think About It Now ; Northbound Breakdown ; Records at Nite
Link: http://www.myspace.com/lifetimenj

10. Sky Blue Sky by Wilco
Genre: Rock / Alternative
Like this year's White Stripes album, Wilco's latest is a return to more simple rock after an album of experimentation. Catchy and honest, this is great mellow music with occasional dips into face-melting guitar solos.
Standout tracks: You Are My Face ; What Light ; Shake It Off
Link: http://www.myspace.com/wilco

Other notable albums:

11. Rilo Kiley - Under The Blacklight
So catchy, and Jenny Lewis's voice is so hot.

12. Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
There are 3 or 4 songs here that would put the album in the top 5 if only the rest of the songs on the album were like them. Sadly, they are not. Check out "Turnin' on the Screw," "Sick Sick Sick," and "I'm Designer."

13. Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
Same comment as QotSA's Era Vulgaris right above. "Spitting Venom" is a classic, though.

14. Radiohead - In Rainbows
Some pretty interesting stuff on this album, and of course there's the whole internet distribution gimmick, but it didn't stick with me the way it did with some.

15. !!! - Myth Takes
I don't know if they'll ever top "Me and Giuliani Down By The School Yard." They certainly don't here, but there's some cool dance punk served up on this album.

16. Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero
It's certainly nice to be past With Teeth's almost rap-like nonsense. "Zero Sum" is stunningly beautiful, and "Capital G" is probably Trent's catchiness since TDS's "Closer," but in general the album is as juvenile as most of his recent work.

The Ugly...

Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
The Pretender is a crazy-catchy song, but the rest of the album is meandering bullshit.

From Autumn To Ashes - Holding A Wolf By The Ears
Oh god, please make Francis stop. His whiny voice is just terrible. Without Ben, this band is pretty much shit.

Funeral For A Friend - Tales Don't Tell Themselves
FFAF is still convinced that their early work was childish, and they need to be super serious and deep to be "artists." Enter their first concept album. Hopefully their last. Though I don't know why I even still care - they haven't done anything good since 2003, and they've pretty much disowned all their early work.

Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
I don't even know what is wrong with this band lately. Their debut album was perfect southern rock and roll. Then they got all boring. Not a single song on this album has the slightest bit of spirit.

Thrice - The Alchemy Index vols. I & II: Fire & Water
This is a real disappointment, as I've loved everything Thrice has done up until this point. Normally they're so passionate and technical. This felt droning and dull. Hopefully it was just a slip up, or something they'd been wanting to experiment with.

Oh TV, why have you forsaken me?

2008-01-15T02:09:00.001-05:00

This writer's strike is seriously pissing me off. There hasn't been anything good on TV for like 3 months now. Some of the writer's union's demands are reasonable, but others are the usual union bullshit where they want to control the whole industry, and frankly it's disgusting. Thousands of makeup artists, cameramen, stage hands, and other entertainment workers - the non-famous people who really need the steady paychecks - are out of work because the writers want bullshit like the right to engage in sympathy strikes without penalty, or the right to unionize reality TV writers (HAH! Best oxymoron I've ever heard of). Thanks a lot jerks. Go back to writing Lost and Battlestar Galactica.

I can't stand reality TV. Who gives a shit about Hulk Hogan's family, or who some C-list star picks to be his latest girlfriend. And what is with all the shows about families with large numbers of kids? Last time I checked, getting knocked up wasn't some kind of special skill.

I don't like to watch a ton of TV, but I'm really anxious for Lost to return and make a steady schedule for the remaining 48 episodes, so I'll be happy when the strike is resolved. Classes have started up again, so I'm pretty busy for the most part. I am working on my 2007 music year-end wrap-up, it's just taking longer than I expected. I apparently bought 55 albums that were released in 2007, so it's a lot to organize. But it is coming.

Life Lesson #47: Do NOT fuck with a man's turtle.

2007-12-20T11:29:00.000-05:00

The journeys of my turtles have gotten complicated in the last 6 months. First, Bitey & Franklin decided that they no longer liked each other, and instead wanted to bite each other's limbs off. So they had to be placed into separate tanks (Bitey is currently at Libby's parent's house, as two tanks was a bit much for a small room). Then my Residence Director flip-flopped on her decision to allow my turtles to stay in the dorm, and I had to go over her head. And then over that person's head. I'm pretty sure all the RAs in my building hate me now, but meh. As it stands right now, the university-wide policy on pets is being reviewed based upon my arguments. The lesson here? Don't fuck with a man's turtles.

Today's my last day of the official co-op period here at MIT Lincoln Labs. I'm going to continue working for them part time in the spring, and may return for my 3rd and final co-op. But from tomorrow until December 28th, I will be in Florida, away from this ridiculous snow.

I'm working on the usual big end-of-year music write-up. I don't know when it will go up, but it will.

Happy holidays everybody. Or as I like to say, "If you'd rather die than live in the poor houses, then perhaps you should, and decrease the surplus population!"

Bah-humbug, I'm out.

sadface

2007-10-24T08:15:00.001-05:00

R.I.P. Some Girls (2002 - 2007)

R.I.P. Blood Brothers (1997 - 2007)

Sportsball

2007-10-22T09:39:00.000-05:00

I don't hate baseball. I quite enjoy it on certain occasions. And I certainly don't begrudge those that really get into it. I get excited over lots of things that most people would find boring or insipid, so I have no place to judge what other people find interesting.

With that said...

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK BOSTON?!? IT'S JUST A BASEBALL GAME.

Seriously. I'm glad you're having a great time, but the world doesn't need to start and stop because the team you're vicariously living through wins or loses. Campus-wide warnings and 'safe alternatives to enjoy the game' should not be required. Cops should not have to patrol the area all night. I shouldn't have to be kept awake until 3 in the goddamn morning because assholes are driving up and down Huntington Ave., holding their car horns down, and yelling "WHOOOOO, RED SOX!!!" We shouldn't have to worry that there will be more needless violence like that which occurred during the Patriots riot or the Red Sox riot in 2004 - both of which led to the deaths of college students.

Maybe I should get into the things I like as much as people get into the Red Sox. You know, I'm still really fucking pumped about that A Wilhelm Scream CD. I'm going to hold it over my head and run up and down the street, kicking over trash cans and yelling my brains out, at 2 o'clock in the morning. I feel that is my prerogative. The whole city needs to know just how much I like them.

Random

2007-10-14T23:00:00.000-05:00

I got a call from my dad today, saying that Billy Corgan, the singer for the Smashing Pumpkins, was in his shop today. My dad wasn't there himself, but my grandfather was helming the desk and called to tell him that "William Corgan, who's in some 'something something pumpkins' band" bought a couple thousand dollars worth of furniture. Pretty crazy.

good tunes

2007-10-14T12:10:00.000-05:00

2007 has been a pretty amazing year for music so far. There have been some big disappointments, sure - Smashing Pumpkins, Kings of Leon, From Autumn To Ashes. But there have been some incredible albums, some that have just blown me away.

As of last Monday, I was pretty sure what my top album of the year was going to be. It was kind of boring and predictable to pick the new album by your favorite band, but Every Time I Die's newest, The Big Dirty, is pretty great and is another solid evolution of their sound. Then A Wilhelm Scream's new album, Career Suicide, dropped on Tuesday and I was in love after the first listen through. Holy shit do they fucking tear things up. 13 songs, and not a clunker among them. 35 minutes of barn-burning fury. The lyrics, the vocals, the guitars, the drumming - they have delivered on everything. I've loved their last 2 albums, but this is simply beyond them in every way shape and form.

There are a couple records left to come out this year that I'm really looking forward to - Jimmy Eat World, The Hives, Thrice, and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Thrice's sounds pretty bad, but I'll give it a chance. Dillinger and JEW have a chance of being really great, so I'm waiting with baited breath for those. I think all those records have leaked online already, but I still have plenty of already-released stuff to listen and re-listen to, so I can wait. Hell, I've only listened to the new Radiohead album once - coming out a day after Career Suicide didn't exactly work in its favor, haha.

Oh internet....

2007-09-03T15:36:00.000-05:00

The internet is supposed to be such a great thing because anyone can post whatever they want, and you can communicate with people all over the world. The problem, of course, is that most people are mouth-breathing morons - people you wouldn't trust to take out your garbage, nevermind give insightful information into all of life's little quirks.

But every once in awhile, you stumble upon something really striking. The somethingawful.com forums are normally a cesspool of misinformation and mis-directed anger, but I found a real humorous gem the other day:

"Fuck all the pop song puppy love bullshit. Your heart skipping a beat isn't love, it's cardiac arrhythmia. It's not about shortness of breath, either, or how turned on you get or whether you tell yourself you'd throw yourself in front of a bus for her or whatever. You can convince yourself of a lot about how you feel and what you would do in exchange for regular oral sex.

Love is when she drives you insane sometimes. And I don't mean merely "aggravating" or "annoying," I mean flat-out fucking in. Sane. And in a way nobody else can do it in a million years. She'll drive you to the point where you'd gouge out your own eyeball with a melon baller or smack your scrotum a half-dozen times with a ball peen hammer if it means you can be done with this conversation. She'll make you want to chew your own arm off to get out of talking about this. And I don't care how many fucking times you've had this conversation, each time, you know you'll have it again:

Her: I thought you turned the heat on.
You: I did.
Her: Well, I'm still cold. Are you sure you did it right?
You: Yes, I'm pretty sure I know how to turn on a thermostat.
Her: 'Cause you know you have to flip the switch to "heat" and....
You: Honey! I know! How to turn on! A thermostat! I went to college for it and everything.
Her: Well, I don't feel any heat blowing in here.
You: I know. I think you broke the thermostat again.
Her: I didn't break it.
You: Yes, you did, you put that halogen lamp right next to it again.
Her: That doesn't do anything.
You: Yes, it does.
Her: I thought you fixed it?
You: I did fix it, and you broke it again.
Her: Are you sure you fixed it right?
You: Yes, goddammit, I fixed it right.
Her: How do you know you fixed it?
You: 'Cause it worked when I fixed it!
Her: Well, it's not working now.
You: 'Cause you broke it again!
Her: How'd I break it?
You: You put the goddamn, fucking lamp next to it!
Her: I don't see why a lamp would break a thermostat.
You: OK. I'm going to explain this. One more time. Slowly. Thermostats have a coil inside them that expands and contracts based on the temperature. This is how they know when it is hotter than the setting of the A/C, so it can cool the room off, or colder than the setting of the heating, so it can heat the room up. Halogen lamps generate heat. Halogen lamps generate a lot of heat. That's why you burn your fingers when you touch the bulbs after they've been on for a while. So when you put a halogen lamp next to a thermostat, it causes the coil to keep expanding and expanding and expanding past the point it's intended to expand. This makes the thermostat think it's really, really hot all the time, and it makes the coil less sensitive in the future, and it'll eventually break the coil so I'll have to replace the thermostat.
Her: That doesn't sound right.
You: Trust me. It's right.
Her: How do you know?
You: BECAUSE I TOOK SIXTH GRADE FUCKING PHYSICS, OK?!
Her: Well, I don't think they should make thermostats that can be broken by something little like a lamp.
You: Fine. Don't think that. Write a letter to the manufacturers. Write a letter to universities and tell them to build a better thermostat. I don't fucking care. But that's how they make them. That's why I keep moving the lamp, that's why I keep telling you not to put it back to the right of the bookcase, that's why I've had to fix the thermostat four fucking times now. Stop! Putting! The lamp! Right! Next! To the thermostat!
Her: But on the other side of the bookcase, the front of the hallway is dark, and I can't see inside my gift closet.
You: Well, you can turn on the hall light to go through your gift closet, or you can sit here and be cold! Your choice, honey!
Her:
You:
Her:
You:
Her: I don't think you fixed the thermostat right.
You: GOD-MOTHERFUCKING-DAMMIT, I'M GOING TO FIX THAT MOTHERFUCKING THERMOSTAT TOMORROW, AND I SWEAR TO MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST IF YOU PUT THE LAMP NEAR THE THERMOSTAT AGAIN, I WILL SMASH IT TO A MILLION FUCKING PIECES AND SHOVE THEM DOWN YOUR GODDAMN THROAT!!! MOTHERFUCK ME, JESUS!!!!!!

And if the seventh time you have that conversation, knowing full well there will be an eighth time, you'd still rather have that conversation again than imagine a world she's not in, you're in love.

Especially if you do fix that thermostat... again... the next day, and not just so she'll shut up about it, but because you really don't want her to be cold anymore."

The Simpsons Movie

2007-08-14T10:03:00.000-05:00

When you've been waiting for a movie for over 10 years, it's hard to really be objective about it. Especially when the series has been in a decline for so many seasons. But I'd say they really did right by The Simpsons when converting it into a big screen adventure, and the results are better than I expected.

A lot of old writers from the glory days of the show returned to work on the movie, and it definitely shows. The first half of the movie is as comical as some of the better episodes. Homer's manner of disposing of a hornet's nest, and his reaction to Bart almost falling off the roof, are classic bits sure to earn laughs. And of course there's Spider-Pig, something I'm particularly fond of. The majority of worthwhile characters from the Simpsons universe make funny, albeit brief, cameos, and the first half hour or so is just spent coasting from one laugh to the next. There are a couple good jokes on the nature of making a movie out of a TV show, and one really good jab that pokes fun at the very studio funding them.

The Simpsons formula has always been pretty familiar - the first act appears totally random and offers many jokes, and then somehow meanders into whatever the main issue is by the second act. Then there's some kind of major dilemma, and finally all is resolved in some unorthodox way in the final act. That's preserved here fairly well, just stretched a bit to fit the new hour and a half format. In some ways, the movie is just like a really long TV episode - but honestly, it's a pretty damn good episode so I don't mind. Not everything can be the South Park movie, and I honestly didn't expect it to be anything like that.

The film slows down a bit towards the end, and you have the usual thematic hokeyness - love conquers all, we're nothing without our friends, blah blah blah, the usual - but it stays consistently entertaining and restores the status quo in a (semi) plausible manner. Overall, I enjoyed my movie-going experience. This isn't a redefining of The Simpsons, but it's another solid chapter in a very long career that was starting to look like it had run out of steam.

The Bourne Ultimatum

2007-08-13T16:53:00.000-05:00

I just saw the last film of the Bourne Trilogy, The Bourne Ultimatum, and I'm definitely of the opinion that this series is one of the better ones to grace the cinema in some time. Each movie is strong in its own right, but as one cohesive story it is really quite outstanding.

Watching the first film, The Bourne Identity, you'd really have no idea where the series was headed. Very much an action movie, Identity is filled with a lot of set pieces and adrenaline-fueled moments. But there's also a lot of exposition that serves to really create a framework for the world you're entering, and there's a lot of character development. By the end of the movie, you really like Jason Bourne, and you really feel he's found love. And you feel he's really found closure, having thrown off the collar of the agency he believed brainwashed him and forced him to become a killer. This happy ending to the first chapter is risky, because it makes the entire ordeal seem extremely easy to resolve, and kills a lot of interest in any subsequent movies. But if you stick it out, the payoff, the betrayal of this ending, is when things really start to get good.

In The Bourne Supremacy, Jason learns he can't simply run away from his past. It catches up to him, kills his love, and places him back in the middle of things. We begin to question who Jason Bourne really is. We're terrified of him when he holds a gun to Julia Stiles' head and screams that he'll kill her if she doesn't tell him what he needs to know. Is he really the killer the government groomed him to be? Initially I didn't like Supremacy. I went into it expecting another action movie, and it's really far from it. There are some fights, yes, but it's all filmed in the shakiest, jerkiest manner I have ever witnessed. I didn't really appreciate it for what it was, only lampooned it for what it wasn't. Watching it again, it's easy to see what a dramatic, emotional movie it is. The scene where he speaks with the daughter of his first two victims is heartbreaking. As is his final confrontation with the leader of the program, where he doesn't kill the old bastard because "she wouldn't want me too."

Ultimatum takes the emotional ambiguity of Supremacy and the action of Identity and runs with them. It is an exhausting movie - over 2 hours of near constant momentum. The camera manages to stay still a couple of seconds longer here and there, and we're able to see some truly impressive fights. The sense of urgency is overwhelming at times. And we learn, at the same time Bourne does, how he became the man he is today. This is a movie about accountability. About responsibility. About how, at the end of the day, we have to come to terms with the things we've done.

"Look at what they make you give." Clive Owen's character says that, as he stares down at his fatal gunshot wounds towards the end of The Bourne Identity. The Bourne series is about what Jason had to give. In The Bourne Ultimatum, we see what he had to do to start to get it back. By the time the haunting 'Extreme Ways' by Moby (the song that ends all three movies) started to play for the third and final time, I felt I had witnessed something remarkable.

2007-05-18T00:05:00.000-05:00

Vanilla Coke is back, bitches!

2007-04-22T00:48:00.000-05:00

Music: Zero-Sum by Nine Inch Nails

This semester has pretty much done everything in its power to destroy me - but I've pulled shit like this off in the past, and I'm sure I'll do it again.

I have two finals left, and then I am finished. The unfortunate part is that both of these finals are on Monday morning, one right after the other, but I've already gotten myself into crunch mode so things will be fine. The hardest part is always getting yourself into that crunch mode - going from being able to watch a movie, lounge in bed, go for a walk, etc., to not having any life outside of your course load. But I'm there, I'm ready. I'm wearing my favorite ETID tshirt and days-old jeans, I've got a fridge full of energy drinks, and I've got playlists full of great music. In less than 40 hours I will be free, and I will shower and sleep and rejoice. Until then however, this is serious adult business, so get your hellin', damnin' ass back in that bitchin' damn room, damn it!

--------------------------

Shame on us,
doomed from the start,
may God have mercy on our dirty little hearts.
Shame on us,
for all we have done,
and all we ever were,
just zeros and ones.

Best of 2006

2007-01-07T21:28:00.001-05:00

Outstanding Albums

1. Boysetsfire - The Misery Index: Notes From The Plague Years
It's really sad that Boysetsfire called it quits this year, but at least they went out on the heels of a staggering triumph. The Misery Index is a monster of an album that holds so much love, rage, disillusionment, and hope that it's sometimes overwhelming. From the beautiful mellow opening of Walk Astray, to the upbeat ska-punk of Deja Coup, to the absolutely devastating final cathartic explosion of anger that is A Far Cry, this album rings with so much passion and emotion that there is no doubt in your mind that singer Nathan Gray believes in absolutely everything that passes from his lips.

2. The Blood Brothers - Young Machetes
This is a hard album to quantify - The Blood Brothers are often described as "post-everything" and it's definitely deserved. 2003's ...Burn, Piano Island, Burn was a screamer of an album, one that pushed the band to its absolute limit in terms of live performances. The 2004 follow-up Crimes scaled back the intensity and focused more on macabre melodies that wrapped in and around the songs. Young Machetes combines everything good about the last two albums, and surpasses them in every way. This is absolutely crushing material, yet it has as many pop hooks as Franz Ferdinand's best. The songs are louder, creepier, and continually creative. The guitar tone, the sudden transitions between winding melodies and all-out audio assaults, and the amazing interplay between the two vocalists makes every song a pleasure.

3. The Bronx - The Bronx
On their 2nd album (also their 2nd self-titled album...), The Bronx show that they definitely mean business. Anyone worried about their transition to a major label apparently had nothing to fear, as they play it as loud and gritty as they ever have. Most of the album is straight up rock, with forays here and there into screamier post-hardcore territory, but it's all excellent. A solid hook backs pretty much every song, and the delivery is simply amazing. And this album definitely wins the "best chorus of the year" award for History's Stranglers ("I've got the hands of history's stranglers"). Sounds fucked (and is), but listen to the song and it is undeniably awesome. And who can't love a song entitled Rape Zombie? Raw, dirty rock n' roll at its best.

4. Norma Jean - Redeemer
I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it many mores times: Norma Jean is not the heaviest band, nor the most technical/talented, nor the most clever - but they are undeniably the angriest. Their brand of southern rock / metalcore is heart-stopping - the starts and stops, the buzzsaw guitars, and that fucking scream of unfathomable anger. Not music for all occasions, but when it fits it fits.

5. Brand New - The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me
This album is the sole calm/melodic release of the year that I really consider exceptional. I normally like to have more balanced lists, but this year was just not a good year for tranquility. The very fact that Brand New is the one tranquil band is surprising since they started life as a pop punk band. That's pretty much all gone, replaced with enveloping soundscapes that are less melodic and more atmospheric. The quiet-loud-quiet formula wears a bit old by the end of the album, but there are some real gems. The quiet desperation of Millstone, the choir background vocals of Degausser, and the stunning guitar of You Won't Know make the album just by themselves.

6. Murder By Death - In Bocca Al Lupo
This is a band poised for greatness - they have the sound, the guitar tone, the vocals, the lyrics, and the humor. Nowhere else can you hear a song about the devil, Mexico, and whiskey, and not only take it seriously, but have it stand up to Johnny Cash classics in terms of grit and passion. Boy Decide is a wonderful up-tempo romp, and Brother is an absolute classic, a song I'd put beside any of Cash's any day of the week. Shiola will near break your heart, and closer The Devil Drives sets a somber tone and then takes off and soars at the end, leaving you with a sense of euphoria.

Worthwhile Albums

As I was saying, 2006 hasn't been a great year for music - 6 albums down and we're already out of exceptional. C'est la vie...

7. The Lawrence Arms - Oh! Calcutta!
I seem to be the only person in Massachusetts that likes this band. They're extremely earnest pop/folk punk, with beautiful melodies and clever / well-delivered vocals. Their songs will never change the world, but they aren't meant to - it's feel good party stuff, and it's exceptional. Here on Oh! Calcutta!, the gritty guitar tone and grittier vocals make for an album of fun, catchy songs. Unicornography by The Falcon, also released this year, is basically the same album as this (members in common, same scene, etc.), so I feel fine lumping the two together as recommendations.

8. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
The Arctic Monkeys debut album is one catchy song after another, from start to finish. The British accents, the Franz Ferdinand-esque pop hooks, and the interesting lyrics all combine to make a pop smash of a record. It's impossible to not like From The Ritz To The Rubble. I dare you to dislike it.

9. The Killers - Sam's Town
During recording, singer Brandon Flowers described the album as the "best album of the last 20 years." That's absolute bullshit. But it is at least a step up from 2004's Hot Fuss. Gone are the overbearing synths layered over absolutely every piece of every song - instead, songs are given room to breathe, and everything feels a lot more earnest and from the heart, instead of just a Las Vegas casino show. The lyrics are still borderline horrible, and some songs should have ended life as B-sides, but there's still some catchy endearing stuff here. When You Were Young, For Reasons Unknown, and Why Do I Keep Counting? will stay stuck in your head for quite awhile, given the chance.

10. The Mars Volta - Amputechture
I want to love The Mars Volta so bad, I really do. Sometimes I think I'm head over heels in love, some songs are just THAT good. Then the next song is 16 minutes of ambient almost-nothing, and I have to quickly re-evaluate my stance. At least the ambience here attempts to be songs, unlike the static / Mexican chit-chat on 2005's Frances The Mute. When the album soars, it soars - Viscera Eyes has an amazing Latin-influenced riff and spectacular vocals, and Day of the Baphomets is another undeniable charmer. Too bad the whole album can't be that good. Instead of writing 80 minutes of music for every goddamn album, perhaps they should focus on 40 minutes of great music.

11. Senses Fail - Still Searching
This band is a real guilty pleasure. On the surface, they're another cookie-cutter sing/scream post-hardcore/punk band, a dime a dozen. But something about them is just so catchy, and just so earnest, that it's tough for me to not like them. Still Searching and The Priest And The Matador are two great examples.

12. These Arms Are Snakes - Easter
This is a weird guitar-driven post-hardcore album, filled with odd melodies, odder vocals, and almost no pop-hooks. At times, it reminds me of The Blood Brothers, minus most of the pop. I can't possible sell this to anyone who isn't already a fan of this type of music, so I won't even try.

13. TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain
Beautiful, challenging music that creates a rich atmosphere of sounds and offers some amazing harmonized vocals. The cute electro-pop I Was A Lover, the rocking Wolf Like Me, the a cappella A Method, and the mellow, dirty, appropriately titled Dirtywhirl are the standouts for me, but the album is full of catchy, soulful songs.

Albums that could use a bit more work

Underoath - Define The Great Line
Too much anger, not enough writing talent.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead - So Divided
Over-orchestrated and under-written. Some tracks barely qualify as songs.

Sparta - Threes
Do you want to be U2? Because that's all I hear.

AFI - Decemberunderground
What happens when punk goes synth-pop and gay at the same time (yes, there's a distinction...).

Alexisonfire - Crisis
Dallas Green, you already have a solo acoustic project - stop singing and fucking up all the songs, and let George scream again!

Lostprophets - Liberation Transmission
This one really hurts, considering their last release, 2004’s Start Something, was one of my favorites for that year. To this day I can still pop it in and really enjoy it for the ~40 minutes that it lasts – they found just the right mix of pop, post-hardcore, and cheesy metal, and created something that was catchy while still having some balls. Sadly, Liberation Transmission does away with most of that formula, and what’s left isn’t always pretty. While recording, the Lostprophets posted updates on their Myspace (ugh) informing their fans that their new material was all kinds of aggressive, and promised that “it will blade you,” which caused many people (including myself) to believe that the album would be more technical and filled with attitude. Apparently the band was alluding more towards sad emo girls “blading” their wrists when their boyfriends are, like, total jerks to them. Liberation Transmission offers up some of the blandest material the LPs have ever put out - songs with the lyrical depth of Good Charlotte and the musical inclinations of Dashboard Confessional. Not every song is abysmal, mind you: there’s the token riff-heavy metal number, a few catchy pop tracks, and even one song that features the band dabbling with ska-esque horns (albeit extremely low in the mix). But that’s really the extent of the enjoyment. The rest ranges from sickeningly-sweet pop overdoses, to nausea-inducing ballads that attempt to be deep and introspective but come off as merely indulgent and uninspired (not to mention boring). Stick to what you know boys – poppy post-hardcore.

EPs

There were only two EP releases in 2006 that really stand out to me, and they're both by the same band - Voxtrot. Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives and Your Biggest Fan are both indie pop masterpieces, songs that pretty much anyone can appreciate. Check out Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives or Trouble and try to disagree.

2007?

2007 looks to be a much better year for music. Here's a tentative list of what I consider noteworthy:

!!! - Myth Takes (March 4th)
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible (March 6th)
Arctic Monkeys
Bloc Party - A Weekend In The City (February 6th)
Bravery - The Sun and the Moon (Early)
CKY
Clutch - From Beale Street to Oblivion (March 4th)
Comeback Kid - Broadcasting... (February 20th)
Dillinger Escape Plan
Every Time I Die
Fall Out Boy - Infinity On High (February 6th)
From Autumn To Ashes - Holding A Wolf By The Ears
Funeral For A Friend
Glassjaw
Guns 'N Roses - Chinese Democracy (March 6th)
Head Automatica - EP
Hell Is For Heroes
I Am The Avalanche (Summer)
Interpol
Jimmy Eat World
Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
Life In Your Way - Waking Giants (February)
Lostprophets (Fall)
Mars Volta
Metallica (Spring)
Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank (March)
Nine Inch Nails (April)
Postal Service - Clint Pogue EP
Queens of the Stone Age (February 18th)
Radiohead
The Subways
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - Living With The Living (March 20th)
Thrice - 4 EPs
The Von Bondies - Love, Hate, And Then There's You (Spring)
A Wilhelm Scream
Your Enemies Friends

That's all folks!

2006-08-13T22:21:00.000-05:00

Tax holidays, a piece of "generosity" by the state. Ha! A bunch of people save $200 on a TV or bed or something, whoopdi do. We lose 25% of our paycheck or more (I'm in the lowest income bracket and I lose 25%, and it only goes up from there I'm sure). We pay sales tax on everything. We pay yearly taxes on our homes and cars and whatever else. You pay taxes for what you make working, pay taxes on what you buy with the money you earned working, then pay taxes every goddamn year on continuing to own those things you purchased.

Taxes are obviously necessary - we need things like public schools and roadways and government institutions. Yet our public schools are always in financial trouble, road repair work takes goddamn years and is an inconvenience no matter where the hell you drive and fucks up your car. And I'd rather castrate myself with rusty scissors than deal with any government organization. Where the fuck is all the tax money going? Damned if I know!

So hooray for tax holidays! I'm gonna go save $2 on a DVD!

2006-08-04T08:41:00.000-05:00

Ugh, another band bites the dust. Goodbye Death From Above 1979.

Sigh.....

2006-08-02T12:51:00.000-05:00

Music is an expensive addiction to have. I’m sure it’s cheaper than cocaine or beaver tranquilizers or something, but it’s still less than ideal on the monetary front. I’m extremely loyal to bands that have treated me well in the past and will almost always buy any new cd by them (LP, EP, single, whatever) sound-unheard (like sight-unseen, get it?). And whenever there’s a lack of impending sure-things, I’m downloading music by the gig to try and find the next band to get all excited over. If I don’t like it, it gets a one-way ticket to the Recycle Bin and the hunt immediately begins anew – if I enjoy it, the CD either gets immediately added to my Amazon cart or gets put on my “to buy” list (depending on my current funds, or lack thereof), and then I get to work on exploring the rest of the band’s catalogue. It’s a vicious cycle.

One of the latest acquisitions is Rocket From The Crypt. They actually started early 90’s and had at least one fairly big radio hit, On A Rope, but somehow I’d never heard of them – apparently they were quite influential on a number of bands I listen to today, so I decided to check them out. Most of it’s pretty easy listening but goddamn is it catchy. They have a huge back catalogue too, so I have a feeling I’ll be sinking some decent money into these guys over the next couple months. Another new interest is The Bronx, a raw rock n’ roll punk band from CA. I dare anyone to find me a better 2006 chorus line than “I’ve got the hands of history’s stranglers.”

Through it all, I’m building up a pretty nice collection. It’s gonna keep growing with me, and I have a feeling it’ll be really great later in life to be able to go through the collection and revisit different emotions and different times from my life. It’s sad when a band I really like breaks up, like Boysetsfire did yesterday, but I’ll always have their music. Hopefully I’ll also always be able to enjoy it.

2006-07-31T22:39:00.000-05:00

R.I.P. Boysetsfire
(1994 - 2006)

2006-07-24T22:23:00.001-05:00

Music: Eye On You by Rocket From The Crypt

Commercials are pretty ridiculous these days. Nonsensical beer and car commercials are par for the course, but the ones that actually annoy me are the ones that pretend to talk to me honestly. Take Bob's Furniture - Bob goes on and on about how his furniture is cheaper than all the competitors and how he "squeezes the factories" to get better prices for his "valued customers." Aka, Bob stocks up on the cheap shit that better furniture stores like Jordan's - fuck, even like Bernie & Phil's - won't touch with a 500 foot pole. He buys in bulk from whoever offers it the cheapest, then unloads thousands and thousands of the identical set - he's proud of this fact, he advertises it in every commercial he makes. So if you want the same exact set that thousands of no-taste thrift-conscious WalMart patrons have, get your ass over to Bob's and purchase yourself a nice Bobopedic or whatever the factory had leftover of this week.

One commercial dude that makes me laugh is the guy behind those semi-infomercials for a menagerie of cleaning products - you know, the one that looks like Al, the co-host of Home Improvement, and is always yelling. "You need KABLAM!! Get Extreme with OXYCLEAN!!" He has no volume below 'orgasm yell.' He gets off on this cleaning shit, and he wants you all to do the same. Can you imagine this guy in normal conversation? Or trying to be romantic?

--------------------------

Believe To Understand

2006-07-04T17:10:00.000-05:00

I finished the last of The X-Files this morning. 9 seasons and the movie, all digested in the period between January 28th, 2006 and today. The series had some problems - some pretty uninspired episodes sprinkled throughout, some major doses of corniness and camp, and a strong disposition towards leaving plot points unresolved. But when the series hit its stride, it made for some extremely goddamn captivating storytelling. The highs more than made up for any shortcoming you could attribute to the show.

Man, what am I going to do with all my free time now?

Well I start co-op tomorrow morning so I'm going to get to bed fairly early.

--------------------------------------

The Truth Is Out There

2006-03-25T22:10:00.000-05:00

I was just watching the news and there was a story about a mother in Blackstone shackling her 13 year old daughter so she couldn't attempt to run away again. No names were given however - stupid anonymity for protection of minors rules, ruining my gossip. Anyone from Bstone know what's up with this?

2006-02-02T22:42:00.000-05:00

School this semester is a little crazy. I have about 10 hours of Circuits homework every week, a few hours + lab work and report for Digital Logic Design, and some trivial stuff for Discrete Math. Oh yeah, and Probability & Statistics sucks. It's the exact opposite of intuitive. Not that I question it, it's laws of probability, not something some jerk came up with or anything, it's just extremely unintuitive. Wednesday I have all those classes plus IEEE, an Honors Adjunct, and Intro to Co-op, and I literally have class nonstop from 8 am to 5:40 pm; I hate Wednesday.

When I properly ration my time and get stuff done, life is ok. This school year is starting to draw to a close and there will hopefully be some better living conditions on the horizon. Some concerts coming up, Spring Break coming up, etc. - should be some fun and relaxation somewhere in there.

I'm normally not a big Facebook person but I recently went through the BMR kids and added a bunch of people as friends. Some people look really different than I remembered them. Some look like college is treating them well. Others look like they're doing coke and ODing on mascara. This isn't about anyone in particular, it's just weird looking back at that stuff. It still doesn't feel like high school was a long time ago, but it's starting to really be that way. The reunion is going to be a laugh riot.

Speaking of blasts from the past - The X-Files. I haven't thought about that show in years, but suddenly I'm wicked into it again. All the seasons were released on DVD a long time ago, but they were $100+ a season, which was ridiculous. Admitedly, they came out before there was a big TV-On-DVD market so they didn't know what to charge or whether people would buy it. But all that has changed and they're in the process of doing a re-release. I just bought Season 1 for $30 new and couldn't be happier. When I was a kid I was gay for this show. In like 5th grade, I wanted to BE Fox Mulder. For Halloween, my costume was a full suit, a fake FBI badge, and a handgun-shaped squirtgun that I spray-painted black. I brought this black handgun-shaped squirtgun to SCHOOL and no one blinked. Ah, more innocent times...

Best of 2005

2006-01-17T23:07:00.000-05:00

1) Every Time I Die - Gutter Phenomenon
2) A Wilhelm Scream - Ruiner
3) Emanuel - Soundtrack to a Headrush
4) Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze
5) I Am The Avalanche - I Am The Avalanche
6) Hell Is For Heroes - Transmit Disrupt
7) Kings of Leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak
8) Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary
9) Thrice - Vheissu
10) The Bravery - The Bravery
11) Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better
12) Fall Out Boy - From Under The Cork Tree
13) Norma Jean - O' God, The Aftermath
14) The Mars Volta - Frances The Mute
15) Clutch - Robot Hive / Exodus

The order has changed about 20 times since I first started thinking about this list. The top 2 are absolutes, while the rest can be shuffled in any given order depending on my mood. This list is actually only a small segment of the albums I've purchased this year. There's been a lot of good, along with a few disappointments, but these are the 15 that really stood out to me. Basically, these are 15 outstanding albums.

What does 2006 hold? New Head Automatica, Death From Above 1979, Dillinger Escape Plan, Alexisonfire, Arcade Fire, Lostprophets, Murder By Death, Sparta, and who knows what else.

2005-12-18T15:12:00.000-05:00

Music: Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt by We Are Scientists

I had my last final on Wednesday, so the semester is officially over. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch but I think I may have pulled off another A semester - we'll see. I'm glad the semester is over, it's really good to get a break, I just wish I could have stayed in the city. I put my life off for about 2 weeks during the finals madness, and now that I finally have time to pick up the slack and catch up on things, I'm back in Blackstone, away from all the stuff I put on hold. Well I'm doing what I can and trying to enjoy the peace.

This isn't one of those blogs where there are daily news updates on what's happening in the industry or anything (I'm not John C. Dvorak, thank god), but sometimes shit is just too ridiculous not to mention. In their neverending quest to fight for justice, the music industry has turned on - lyrics sites. Yeah, the sites where you can find the lyrics to songs. They apparently rob artists of the ability to earn a living. The music industry just keeps taking over, bit by bit - a 1984 reference would probably be fitting here, and I'd make one if I had ever read that book. The music industry doesn't even offer a competing pay-for-lyrics service, so I really fail to see how this robs anyone of money - reading the lyrics is not a substitution for hearing the song. And if the industry is implying you have to purchase the CD to get the lyrics then we've just reached a whole new level of crazy - not to mention the fact that less than 50% of CD booklets even have the damn lyrics these days (believe me, I wish all CDs came with the lyrics). And what about legal downloads? Those sure as hell don't come with lyrics. Lyrics sites have enabled me to identify songs I've heard on the radio or wherever else, leading me to later purchase the CD. The music industry is really shooting itself in the foot if it's successful in this endeavor - not only are they killing a great source of free advertising, they are drumming up some serious bad will, something they already have plenty of.

This on the tail of the recent copy-protection fiasco is certainly not a smart move. Recent CDs from Sony-BMG have had a copy protection that installs device drivers on your computer that make any Sony-BMG CD using this copy protection scheme skip horribly, making them all but useless when used with your computer - the goal of this is to prevent ripping the CD into MP3's which could theoretically be distributed on the internet. This is nothing new (unfortunately), but the twist here is that this new scheme uses a rootkit - a piece of software that hides files on your computer and makes them completely undetectable by all normal means until the rootkit is disabled; in this particular case, all files beginning with the dollar sign, '$', were hidden. So now not only can you not remove this piece of software if you don't want it, but your computer is wide open to viruses written to take advantage of this new way to hide files. Sony issued an uninstaller on their site, but the software digs in so deep into the operating system that removing it can cause system instability. Lawsuits were filed and the whole deal, and all CDs using this protection scheme were recalled. But I'm sure they'll be back with something new in no time. The whole idea of copy-protecting CDs is ridiculous. They're only punishing the people who actually buy CDs. These schemes do nothing to stop piracy - there is always someone out there who will crack the protection and get it out on the internet. And once it's out there, it's out there, and there's no way to stop it. Not that I encourage piracy, but hurting the loyal customers who buy CDs and just want to put them on their damn iPod is not the answer.

All this ill-will because of their controlling bullshit, and still they harp over reduced sales. They're all over iTunes to get them to raise prices - prices are already high enough, Steve Jobs and Apple want to lower prices, but the music industry will never go for that. The execs of the record labels look at the number of iPod sales and think music download sales should be directly proportional to that. But how many people do you know who fill up their whole iPod with legally downloaded music? People either have small amounts of legal music, pirated music, or music ripped from CDs (or whatever combination). The labels are expecting people to rebuy everything like they did during the transition between cassettes and CDs. But this time we have the power to convert. I can take a CD and in ~10 minutes rip it into a high-quality mp3, higher quality than I could get from iTunes or Napster or wherever. There is no way in hell I'm going to rebuy everything from iTunes, and there's no reason I should have to. I purchased the CD legally. And here's where it connects to anti-piracy copy protection - it's legal to make copies of media you've purchased, but illegal to circumvent copy protection. Oh what a wonderful slippery slope we're on! The morality of what is going on should be clear-cut, but no one has the money or lawyers to fight these guys, and they already have their claws into the government. It's wonderful.

Well I think that's enough ranting for now. I had just seen the Mission:Impossible:3 trailer and was considering doing a second part of the rant where I discuss how there has to be a scene where Tom Cruise runs like a gazelle in every movie he's ever been in, but I think I'm done for now. If you really need your fix of Tom Cruise hating, check out the South Park episode where they attack Scientology. Tom Cruise physically locks himself into a closet, prompting a running-gag where character after character basically says "C'mon Tom, this is ridiculous, just come out of the closet, you aren't fooling anybody." The end of the episode has Scientologists doing what they do best - threatening to sue. "We'll sue you kid! We'll sue your ass... and your balls!" "I'll sue you in England!"

I'm working on the Best of 2005 list/dissertation, it may be up soon. Or maybe not.

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2005-11-27T15:27:00.000-05:00

16 hours outside in the rain.
60 dollars worth of books lost to rain damage.
400 dollar sticker price.
1 XBox 360.

Never again.

I mean, I'm enjoying the thing. But never again.

2005-11-16T23:59:00.000-05:00

So yeah, I'm 20. Hot shit. Had a good birthday - cake, couple presents, got to be lazy, etc. Got to make my mother cry because she thinks she is oooooooooooolllllllddddd. Heard from a million BMR people I haven't talked to in awhile (thanks guys). Also found out I apparently share a birthday with Shigeru Miyamoto, for what that's worth. Didn't even have to use proper grammar (subject noun's will return tomorrow, promise).

And just to piss Rhiannon off.

QUOTE OF THE YEAR:
"Yeah well, life is a rich tapestry."

Good Music for Bad People

2005-10-11T13:31:00.000-05:00

Every Time I Die fucking killed. They just fucking put down the rock. I was right at the edge of the stage for most of the show and was like inches away from them. When Keith Buckley was in the crowd, Nikki grabbed a big chunk of ass, and was quite proud of this all night. Somehow Skate & Surf Fest got brought up, where ETID's set was cut short for some unknown reason, and Keith says: "You know what... FUCK SKATING. I'm talking ice skating, I'm talking skate boarding, rollerblading, surfing, ..... surfing the internet.... anything where you're fucking cruising around on something." It was a long night and my voice is gone and my body is sore... but it was awesome. I adore this band, in an unhealthy way.

It was fucking weird seeing all the 14-year-old scene girls at the show though. I wasn't going to shows before FATA and Funeral For A Friend and all them were scene, but I definitely went to some ETID and metalcore shows before it was popular. Besides other people really into heavy music, no one had heard of them. Now they're as popular as FATA and the rest were a few years ago. It doesn't bother me or anything, I still fucking love the band, it's just weird seeing all these young kids and especially the young girls who stand around and look so out of place (and most don't look like they really even enjoy it). It happens to the randomest bands. I remember back in high school Lisa Custody was singing the praises of some band called Fall Out Boy. I was like "el oh el, they named it after a Simpsons character? What?" She wanted them to remain underground, and it looked like she'd get her wish - no one knew what the fuck. Now everyone and their grandma knows about them and they sell out arenas.

2005-10-06T16:03:00.001-05:00

Music: Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts by Wolf Parade

It's always hard to admit the one's you love have serious problems but I can't watch Matt Kankash throw his life away any longer. He is an angry little man and needs some love. Or a beating. Or something. He randomly shoulder-checks me, or pretends to flying-ninja-kick me, or pretends to punch me in the face, all in public. He yells things halfway across campus at me. I think he was neglected as a child or dropped on his head. Either way, he needs our help. We should set up an intervention. And film it and send it to Fox as a reality show.

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2005-08-26T11:55:00.000-05:00

Music: Apocalypse Now And Then by Every Time I Die

Today's my last day of work, yay. I'll be very glad to not have to get up at 6 in the morning - it is time to catch up on some major sleep. Well, after move-in at least. I'm packing tonight, then moving in tomorrow. Next week is totally free, then classes start the following week.

The new Every Time I Die cd rocks. It leaked about two weeks ago and me and Ari gave it one quick listen and were both kind of skeptical. I decided to wait for the release to listen to it again, but she continued to listen to it and gave me a very bad impression of it and I started to become worried. Well it came out Tuesday and when I first put it in my car and cranked the volume up I was pleasantly surprised. It is different from Hot Damn!, but it's still good. I'm not one to defend bands if I don't actually like the new stuff - Funeral For A Friend, From Autumn To Ashes, etc. pussified themselves and the new 'directions' suck - but this is quality shit. It's less metalcore and more flatout rock. I do miss Keith's old vocals but he was tearing his throat up doing it so his new style was necessary - at least he can still scream and make it sound good, I can get over the fact that it sounds different.

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His Dark Materials

2005-08-17T19:06:00.002-05:00

Music: Killing It by A Wilhelm Scream

I can't see how anyone could ever understand the plot to the original Mission: Impossible. A real CIA agent couldn't even figure it out. No matter how hard I try to pay attention and hear every line (as characters betray each other back and forth multiple times within a single scene), I somehow always get bored and distracted and miss something "important." I forgot this when I purchased the DVD and am only now remembering...

Just today I finished reading The Amber Spyglass, the last in the His Dark Materials trilogy (Golden Compass, Subtle Knife, etc.). I haven't been reading every day, but the characters and their plights have been stewing in my mind for over a month now and it got to the point where I really gave a shit about them. The ending is crazy and kinda depressing. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all day.

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To lose my words in this smoke filled room.
If there's a way out I will find out 'cuz it burns my black eyes red

Repress this.
My only regret: this memory.
So we can convince them that this is all we are (that this is all we are).

Watch the martrys when they face the ghosts.
Shake hands as the waste surrounds you.

Killing it, killing it (will only make it stronger).
Killing it, killing it (will only help it box you in).
Killing it, killing it (will only make you lose your way).

Shot down the last witness.
Committed to finish, this is the beginning I can't miss.
The fucking looks those people gave us. No fucking bullets can erase this.

2005-06-17T11:00:00.001-05:00

Music: In Your Honor by Foo Fighters

I've been looking for a good book to read so I decided to try out the 'sci-fi classic' The War Of The Worlds after being intrigued by the blurb on the back of the book. The progenitor of the classic alien invasion story, it's kind of an odd read. Capsules are shot from Mars and unleash multi-tentacled abominations that proceed to build massive machinery and burn the countryside to ashes with a heat-ray; the things heat-ray three of the narrator's colleagues/best-friends within 5 minutes of their first appearance. Yet no one gives a shit. They react to it like we reacted to the Janet Jackson Superbowl scandal. Monocles a'poppin', exclamations of "Why I never!" and all that, but that's the extent of the surprise. It's a "hot topic around the town", discussed over dinner, and people anxiously await new info from the local newspaper. Meanwhile, the Martians are less than a mile away burning things to the ground. Not sure what to make of it.

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Can you hear me
Hear me screamin'
Breaking in the muted sky
This thunder heart
Like bombs beating
Echoing a thousand miles

2005-06-14T17:30:00.000-05:00

Music: Roses For The Dead by Funeral For A Friend

I got kicked out of the College of Engineering.

The Cornell College of Engineering, the one I withdrew from last summer before classes started, the one I haven't paid a single cent to, the one I haven't communicated with in any way besides to tell them that I don't go to that school so stop sending me mail. Good god. They don't call it "The Big Red Tape" for nothing. Funny stuff. I'll give them a call tomorrow, not that it really matters, but I don't want that on any kind of record or anything.

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2005-05-21T14:50:00.001-05:00

Music: The Hand That Feeds by Nine Inch Nails

The Murder By Death show was really pretty great. There was a huge crowd, about the biggest I've ever seen at The Living Room, but I think most everyone was there for the headliners, Against Me!, who I know nothing by. Murder By Death was amazing live, beautiful beautiful music. The chello player made love to her instrument, it was borderline sexual. The singer was really weird inbetween songs. The songs themselves are not weird at all, but his descriptions of them certainly were. He went to great lengths to describe how the songs were about the devil and whiskey and "sweet ass" ghosts. Everything was "sweet ass" in fact. One song was seemingly about kids at a school being eaten by "sweet ass zombies." It was funny shit, it was just so absurd. They played two new songs and I loved them, which is saying something as it usually takes a few listens for songs to really grow on me. I will definitely try to see these guys again when their new album comes out.

edit: Random funny: Christian Movie Review Site Apparently this site reviews movies in regards to Christian principles and gives the G or PG or R rating they believe the movie deserves. The list of violent acts in movies like Sin City can stretch for pages, and they detail each and every one. The section that really gets me is the religious section, where they state how movies go against the teachings of god. The review for The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy really cracks me up when they say that the fact the movie says humans aren't the smartest creatures in the universe is an "offense to God." Another bullet point under "offenses to God" is simply 'Darwinism.' The ridiculous reviews on this site just go beyond any kind of reasonable thought. It's sexually immoral for a man and woman to be in the same bed, even fully clothed, even if they're married. Or so the website would have you believe. When asked about this, the guy writing the site said it's because the actors aren't married in real life. WHAT?!? Urination by a child is listed as "impudence and hate" in the review for the Amityville Horror, as is an adolescent drinking out of a milk bottle while the mother isn't present. In The Matrix, they list Morpheus's coaching of Neo to escape the Agents in the beginning of the movie as impudence and hate because it's "coaching to avoid fair justice." Am I retarded or were the Agents in The Matrix NOT fair or just? Another personal favorite complaint is that there's "Christmas without Jesus" in the Harry Potter movies. Oh good god, I could go on and on with the hilarious examples. If you have a few minutes just go read a few reviews and laugh your ass off. LOL internet, LOL.

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Will you bite the hand that feeds you?
Will you stay down on your knees?

twO

2005-03-18T20:01:00.000-05:00

Music: You Cannot Rape The Willing by Emanuel

The Ring was a great movie, I have a lot of good times associated with that movie. I was creeped out by it the first time I saw it. Lindsay went with me to see it twice; the first time she didn't pay any attention because kids were throwing candy at her, the second time she was properly freaked out. James was absolutely petrified by it and made Lindsay keep the headlights on the house until he was in the door. He later would become obsessed by it and go frame-by-frame through the DVD and send me image after image of the horrific water-ruined corpses, along with video compilations of all the disturbing parts edited together and sound files of Rachael's bone-chilling scream. And just this week Erin watched it for the first time and I called her cell immediately after it was over and rasped "Seven daaaays" and she nearly had a heart attack.

The movie was great, plain and simple. It set up simple rules, had a defined set of imagery and symbols, and stuck to it. It came up with increasingly creative ways to creep you out as the movie progressed, and everything had a cohesive feel to it. There were dozens of connections you could make without the movie having to explicitly explain it. It was a rich, full universe and you could easily suspend your belief and enjoy it. And the ending, god the ending was amazing. Crappy, false ending, and then everything was turned upside down in a matter of seconds and it was an all-out rush to the end.

The Ring 2 (or tw0, whatever it is really called, there was no title sequence) was a huge disappointment. Total crap. The opening scene was very promising, a creative twist on the way the first one ended, and a logical progression as well. Then it just went totally downhill. What follows was a bastardization of all the rules of the first film. Random shit for cheap thrills, bad-quality CGI, and a general mess of scenes. A few moments here and there were interesting, but it followed no logic at all and there was no way to predict how things would end up because there was no rhyme or reason to any of it. No cool connections, no satisfying ending, no nothing. Oh well. At least the sappy, unrealistic ending didn't leave much room for a Ring 3, but then again logic didn't stop them from many of the twists in this movie...

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The Arcade Fire (again)

2005-02-05T23:43:00.001-05:00

Music: In the backseat by The Arcade Fire

So I'm in the movie theater seeing the 12 pm showing of A Clockword Orange when James pulls a full beer out of his pocket and opens it, fizz spilling all over the floor. I look to Cooper and rhetorically ask "He probably shouldn't be doing that, right?" Cooper just calmly looks at me and says "You know, I tell him not to do things and he doesn't listen and it just stresses me out, so... whatever." The movie goes on. Fucked up movie; I've seen it before, but it's still weird every time I see it. There's a part where the main character is forced to undergo a radical treatment as part of his debt to society which involves a group of scientists making him deathly sick with a drug while forcing him to watch scenes of violence in hopes of making his body associate the sickness with violence and prevent him from being able to be violent without becoming deathly ill. On the trip back to the dorms, James is littering all over the place and Cooper threatens him with the prospect of making him sick while forcing him to watch videos of people littering. Then I pushed Ora down a dark alley. Good times.

So yeah, Arcade Fire concert Thursday at the Roxy. It was amazing. The first opening band, One AM Radio, was like mixing Incubus with Dispatch and cranking the "boring" to 1000. Final Fantasy was a one-man show where he started off with a simple violin melody then recorded it and looped it and started on a more complex melody to build atop the other one, and so forth. It was cool in that he controlled it all with his feet and would just build the song up without any breaks and then stop it all at once at the end. Not the most enthralling performance ever, but certainly interesting. The Arcade Fire was simply awesome. They are such a good live band. Besides the drummer, they all stand equal length from the end of the stage so it's just a line of performers. They all seem to sing and scream throughout the songs, no matter what they are doing. The random percussion guy (who looks like Napoleon Dynamite) was great, finding different things around the stage to bang on the whole time. The violinist and the Final Fantasy guy (who was a guest backup-violinist apparently) chased each other around and seemed to have a thing going. Regine, who switched between keyboard, drums, accordion, and just singing, has a haunting beauty about her, and does the "happy hands" thing or whatever it's called from Napoleon Dynamite when she sings. They did every song on their album, plus a cover, a new song, and a few from their old EP (which I picked up at the show and therefore didn't have to buy on eBay at exorbant prices). It's always great seeing a band you really like live, you get an impression of them you just can't get from a CD. I was surprised at how friendly and outgoing they were. Not that that's bad, but it was hard not to get a larger-than-life impression of them. Similar bands are usually a little over-the-top, like Interpol who barely say a word to the audience, just do their songs and get off the stage, and always dress up in semi-creepy suits; one member constantly wears a gun holster for christ's sake. Not them though, they were joking around and having a jolly time. Win was joking about living in a mansion and Regine, his wife, just rolled her eyes.

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Alice died
in the night
I've been learning to drive
my whole life
I've been learning

2005-02-02T02:12:00.001-05:00

Music: Neighborhood #2 (Laika) by The Arcade Fire

I just saw The Arcade Fire on the Conan O'Brien show and oh... my... god... They are the real deal. I'm so excited, I'm seeing them Thursday, just two days away!

Yes, you'll have to put up with three masturbatory Arcade Fire posts in a row, get over it, haha.

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The Arcade Fire

2005-01-31T01:58:00.000-05:00

Music: Neighborhood #2 (Laika) by The Arcade Fire

Every once in awhile there comes a band that is really easy to get behind. You love the music, you love the image, you love the passion. I mean a lot of good bands come and go, but it's rare to find one that feels so true and real, one you can really believe in. Right now I feel like that about The Arcade Fire.

Their album finally came out this year after years of being together as a band and numerous family turmoils. 4 band members had members of their family die during the recording of this album, hence the title "Funeral." Every one of the songs feels like such care and emotion was put into every bar of it. Win Butler's voice is amazing. He has this waver when he sings, and it almost sounds like he's talking. I can't imagine how he does it, but the words somehow stumble out of his mouth and it just sounds so genuine.

The band is 6 or 7 members large and they all get into the live show. Every review of their live show I've read has been beyond glowing. They're being praised left and right. In between every song is a massive switching of instruments. All the members sing and scream during parts of the song, whether they have mikes or not. The jack-of-all-instruments in the band plays the drums on the actual drummer's set, on all parts of the venue's stage, and on his own helmeted head, in between his various other instrumental duties. Even being indie rock, some of their songs rock as hard as anything. The last song is practically a funeral procession, as the band travels through the crowd to the back of the venue and out the door. It's supposed to be magical. I absolutely cannot wait to see them on the 3rd. From the descriptions I've read, they're musical geniuses. It's so weird, this group of people from some freezing cold region of Canada who came out of absolutely nowhere and blew everyone away. I worry about them becoming too popular, or losing their inspiration, or just burning out, but this is the exact point where things are most exciting and I just really can't wait to see them.

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Best of 2004

2004-12-30T14:18:00.000-05:00

Interpol - Antics
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Miss Machine
Lostprophets - Start Something
Head Automatica - Decadence
The Arcade Fire - Funeral
Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm A Machine
The Blood Brothers - Crimes
Green Day - American Idiot
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat
The Von Bondies - Pawn Shoppe Heart
TV On The Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
The Killers - Hot Fuss
Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Sparta - Porcelain
The Rise - Reclamation Process
Rise Against - Siren Song Of The Counter Culture
Converge - You Fail Me
Senses Fail - Let It Enfold You
!!! - Louden Up Now
Alexisonfire - "Watch Out!"
Underoath - (They're Only Chasing Safety)
Chevelle - This Type Of Thinking (Could Do Us In)
Your Enemies Friends - You Are Being Videotaped
William Shatner - Has Been
Jimmy Eat World - Futures
Eighteen Visions - Obsession
Taking Back Sunday - Where You Want To Be

I originally had it in a Top 20 thing, but I found a few new CDs since I posted this and couldn't fit them in numbers and blahdy blahdy blah, so I just have it as a listing of the best CDs of 2004 without exact rankings. Towards the top is generally better than towards the bottom and the listing at this point isn't bad, but it's not set in stone.

The list seems a bit weird since there's a lot of stuff I've gotten into this year that came out in 2003, 2002, or earlier, and therefore couldn't be listed, but there's still some good stuff up there.

Most Craptacular:
Orgy - Punk Statik Paranoia
A Perfect Circle - eMOTIVe
The Used - In Love And Death
U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb

And that's not even to speak of albums I haven't digested fully yet (Q And Not U, Morrissey, The Walkmen) and ones that've come highly recommended and I haven't even gotten my hands on yet (Sonic Youth's new one, 65daysofstatic, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, etc.)

2005 should be good. Confirmed new Mars Volta, CKY, Hell Is For Heroes, Nine Inch Nails, Queens of the Stone Age, Funeral For A Friend, Electric Six, Trail of Dead, Foo Fighters, Snake River Conspiracy, Franz Ferdinand, Comeback Kid, and Every Time I Die. Also, a good chance of new Thrice, Weezer, Muse, Brand New, From Autumn To Ashes, and probably others I've forgotten, plus some surprise new bands no one expected. Hell, maybe even Guns N' Roses...

I hope to eventually get to typing up at least mini-blurbs on each of the top 20 and then the honorable mention and fuck categories, but who knows if I will. I just wanted to get this up before I forget.

Last Summer

2004-09-01T22:51:00.000-05:00

Music: Last Summer by Lostprophets

The last few days have been surreal. No surprise really, it always feels like that to me whenever something is about to end, but it's still as weird every time. I had my last day of work on Monday and was pretty happy about that, hung out with Nikki B. for a good while, and fulfilled all outstanding obligations I still had. Basically, I've spent yesterday and today trying to wrap things up. Not just last-minute panic forms for neu (not that there aren't plenty of those), but also this whole part of my life. I did a few things I should have, felt like I got a little closure, and I think that's the best I could have asked for.

I don't want to leave anyone behind, and I don't want to forget about this place, I'm just trying to put things in order. The last time I thought about this kind of thing was at graduation, and it's amazing how much my viewpoint has changed since then. I had gotten the biggest high from graduation day and wanted things to stay like that, but that's obviously foolish. If I can take a few good pieces of that time period with me, that's fucking awesome, but I also have to accept that a lot of things change. I know the things that really were good, namely the real friends, will still be there, so I'm not worried.

My life is actually the most organized it's ever been at this point in time, I finished every goddamn project I ever started. My room is cleaner than it's ever been, ever. My computer finally works perfectly. All my music is organized. I don't have any homework or obligations or bills looming over me. I have my finances pretty under control. Still, that surreal feeling permeates everything. Am I alive or just breathing? How did things end up the way they were? Some things seem so close and I wonder if they would have gone the way I expected with maybe a few different turns of the screw. Not that I'm unhappy with how things are, everything seems to have happened the only way it could have ever happened. Some shit just feels like it's straight out of the twilight zone. Driving around the town for the last time tonight was among the weirder things, especially with Last Summer by Lostprophets playing (which coincidentally was just released as a single...).

I don't even know what I want to do anymore. I mean, I know what fields I'm interested in, but the thought of doing that for the rest of my life seems pretty bleak. The thought of doing anything for the rest of my life seems pretty bleak. I guess I've watched too many movies and tv shows. I'll never be Spike or Neo or whoever it is in whatever stupid shit I'm watching these days. There's no great hero's calling anymore, if there ever was. Yet that's what I'm looking for, or at least that's the silly notion I entertain myself with. I hope I find what I'm looking for in terms of meaning, because I really don't think money is goal enough for me. Well that's hypocritical, I'm sure it's goal enough to make me work hard, but it's not goal enough to make me satisfied with anything I'll ever achieve.

Well I'm leaving for Boston tomorrow. I'm a short train ride away so I'm sure I'll be seeing some of you on a fairly regular basis. I don't know how much I'll be online, but I guess we'll all have to wait and see. This might be the last entry in this for awhile because I've really just gotten bored with it. The whole concept of writing in this has a negative stigma to begin with, and I'm not particularly good at writing when it comes to heartfelt topics, so I don't know how much good me writing this does. I'm great when it comes to snappy comebacks and passionate arguments, but I just can't articulate what's going on with this shit like what's been going on the last few days, so I'm about ready to say fuck it.

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I would stop time to stay with you
I would stop time so we don't move
I would stop time
I would stop time
I would stop time to keep you

Aw Hell Naw

2004-07-30T22:09:00.001-05:00

Music: Motion Without Meaning by Thrice

I worked today, and had a real pisser of a time. I'm gonna wring the neck of the next customer who crosses me. This fucking asshole wouldn't shut the fuck up about Office 2003 tonight. He already ripped the system off once by buying the Student & Teacher Edition, when he definitely wasn't a student or a teacher. But no, that version was "holding him back," so he needed to upgrade to the Pro Edition, the Pro Edition that only differs in its inclusion of Access, a program he had to ask me about to know what it was even for, and Business Contacts Manager, a glorified address book. He wanted the cheaper Upgrade version instead of the Full, but to upgrade you need an upgrade-compatible product, something he did not have in the Student & Teacher Edition. I explained this in extremely simple language and he still didn't grasp it, and wanted me to fucking call Microsoft or another store or something to waste my time on something I was 100% sure on. He then flipped out and did the "I'm going to your competitors" dance and then attempted to insult me by asking if this was the kind of initiative I was supposed to take to help customers. Hey buddy, why don't you just download the pirated warez 7-disc version online that has even more extra programs like OneNote and Frontpage so you can have more wasted space you don't know what to do with, then go fuck yourself, in that order.

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Motion isn't meaning
It’s just another drug
But it's all we've got

108 Kids Go

2004-06-05T23:25:00.001-05:00

Music: Five Kids Go by Hell Is For Heroes

Well it's over, it's all over. 108 kids graduated from BMR on the morning of June 5th, 2004. I was so nervous all morning. I had no idea what I was doing as I started reading my speech. But about a paragraph in, after one or two solid laughs, I realized that it wasn't really so bad. I liked the material I was reading, and the crowd seemed responsive, so I loosened up and let it flow. The audience, the students especially, laughed at all the jokes (except the Andrew Jackson one, haha, but that was only for fellow AP History students), and I really got into it. It was an amazing experience. I received a standing ovation at the end, and I really couldn't believe it.

Here's the speech for those who weren't there:
"Ah, high school. Where to begin about high school…. I was initially considering using an analogy comparing high school to a baseball game, concluding that both were too damn long with a speech that was ironically also too damn long, but luckily, I decided to forego that and am going to try to make this as concise as possible

A lot has changed since we first entered high school. We entered as children and are leaving as legal adults. We’re mobile, employed, franchised, and opinionated, and for once in charge of the direction of our own lives. The next step is entirely up to us. Of course there are ramifications for this newfound autonomy, mainly a switch in our methods of justifying our afflictions, forcing us to blame the world at large instead of our parents. But hey, I am sure they’ll be glad to throw off that burden.

When I said a lot has changed, I wasn’t only referring to ourselves. Look at the world around us. The last four years have seen economic turmoil, terrible destruction both at home and abroad, the greatest nation in the world declaring war on a noun, and the invention of the fruit-filled Ego waffle. Goth has given way to emo, the end of the world has come and gone at least 3 times, and your value as a person is now dependent on how many little flags you have attached to your Hummer. Hell, Yahoo was even superseded by Google, what the heck is wrong with this crazy world (well, besides rap)?

But it’s good to know that our time at BMR has prepared us to face these inherited burdens. When you’re writing up the charter for your new joint-stock business venture, just think: what would Ethan Frome do? When you’re working out the calculations for your marine squad’s drop formation, think back to those geometry proofs that allowed you to show that one did indeed equal one. And who could forget all those guest speakers who were brave enough to fight through the propaganda and inform us all that drugs and alcohol had negative consequences? I mean, I didn’t know, did you guys? And what of The Song of Roland, I can’t think of any career that that WOULDN’T be useful in!

Even in the off-chance that you don’t actively use something you’ve learned from BMR in your career, the knowledge you’ve gained here is a precious gift that will enrich your life. Your experience with iambic pentameter and the causes of the fall of the Qing Empire will stay with you forever. Your knowledge of the problem they had with those people in Russia, or that South American guy, you know, that guy – that guy will enrich your life. I don’t ask myself “What would Jesus do?” I ask myself “What would Andrew Jackson do?” Of course asking that always leads me to the response “Close the national bank” but that’s a problem for a different day.

All jokes aside, I do hope everyone has learned something valuable from this experience. High school is a time of growing up, a time of finding out who you are and what you enjoy, hopefully setting the stage for a life prolific in both challenge and satisfaction. High school isn’t about who so-and-so went out with, or what the in-crowd thinks about your new leg warmers. Nor is it about sacrificing your sanity to turn that 99 into a 100, or getting into the favorites brigade of some megalomaniac. All that matters once you grab that diploma and shake that hand is the growing up and learning you hopefully experienced and how that’s going to help you on the next leg of your journey.

It’s easy to let things in high school get you down. High school is a constant game of appearances. Parents and officials don’t always understand the next generation and its loud music, and certain standards are set that often result in treating students as children. Driving, voting, military service, sure, but you need a special form just to walk the halls!

Other expectations are set for education, or at least perceived education. Curriculum nonsense, buzzwords and acronyms aplenty, seem to be the newest craze. Confusion is created by renaming classes without changing the core foundation, ignoring the fact that 1.0 classes are still 1.0 classes whether labeled as college prep or not. And political correctness is a must of course. Infuse a little comedy and break that cookie-cutter image and bam, there goes your honor, national, social, or otherwise, and your respect.

But what may initially seem important is oft nothing more than a humorous anecdote in the epic novel that is your life. Funny word, “but.” As a conjunction, “but” separates two ideas from each other. It marks the transition from one train of thought to the next. This present graduation is much like that simple but effective word, bridging the gap between our past and our future.

And to the future we look, awaiting successes beyond the halls of this school. Success is defined in a myriad of ways, and you’ll find it one way or another. Always fight for what you believe in and focus on what makes you happy and everything will work out for the best.

So, in conclusion, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum, what might be right for you may not be right for some. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have…. my speech.

Here’s to new beginnings, 2004."

Click here for printable Word document

It went about as good as it could possibly go, and I had a really great time. After the ceremony concluded, I went party hopping. I stopped at Mitch's for a bit, then caught up with Alicia and Heather at Steve's, and eventually we switched over to Matt's. Thanks to all the friends who made today great, thanks for the congratulations or hugs or both, it all really meant a lot to me. I have a bit more to say but I'm wiped from today, so maybe tomorrow.

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All we have left is self-control
All we have to do is pack up and go

I put the "dick" in valedictorian

2004-06-04T21:09:00.000-05:00

Music: Lola's Pictures by Hondo Maclean

Oh boy, this speech stuff is tough. I did some major editing, adding in some more stuff. I've been working on it pretty much all night. I asked for some e-pinions online and basically got told I was an asshole and a douchebag. I sent it to some people I know that wouldn't be able to attend graduation, and they all loved it. So I don't know.

I never want to clap my hands again

2004-06-03T22:13:00.001-05:00

Music: Few Against Many by Hell Is For Heroes

The last two days have been completely surreal.

I went to the senior banquet last night not expecting to feel anything. Eat food, get yearbook, yadda yadda yadda, leave and go home and sleep. I mean, I've understood I was going to miss people from BMR for awhile now, but I guess I never really thought about it. I was so into how glad I was to never be seeing certain people again that I totally forgot about all the good. I know I come off as a negative person a lot of times, but I'm really not. I have a fucked up sense of humor (perfect example: I was flipping through the yearbook and saw that Jamie Ross received the senior superlative for 'Most Likely To Be Late' and I immediately blurted out "Yeah, for her period!" (because she is pregnant, lollerskates)), but I do have a heart. It was during the yearbook signing extravaganza that I really started to think about it. Writing in people's books, I remembered all the great times I've had with them. I think it really hit me when I was reading the amazing entry Nikki B. wrote me after she had already left; it was the most touching thing anyone has ever said to me. I'm really going to fucking miss her, and a ton of other people. As I slowly walked out of the Bocci club alone I felt the most grown up I've ever felt, in that weird way where you feel you're past a great part of your life that you can't relive.

Tonight was Awards Night. I got a few nice science and math awards, and a $2000 scholarship from UniBank, so that was cool. Erin and Alicia made funny faces at me the whole time and I kept laughing. The awards dragged on for awhile (so much goddamn clapping, I must have clapped for 100 people), then we watched our little senior slide show. It was the same 12 people over and over, but I guess it was decent, there were some funny parts. Steve shouted out "rape" every time one of the statutory rapists was in a slide. A pick from the Freshman-Senior dance came up that showed Mrs. Anderson in the 'jail,' and I immediately shouted out "Where she belongs!" I love my quick wit but I'm seriously going to get myself in trouble one of these days, I shouted that without even having to think about it so there was no chance to abort the comment, heh.

I thought this graduation thing would be no big deal, but I was at least partially wrong. I still hate high school bullshit and stupid rules and all the cliques and jerks and senselessness, but there are a few people I'm really, seriously going to miss. Thank you to everyone who ever laughed at one of my stupid jokes or was supportive in any way, and thank you to my friends, including fellow seniors and people on either side of us, who these 4 years would have sucked without. I'm going to do my best to have the best possible time this summer, and keep in touch with everyone I want to for a long time to come.

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Found my resolve
To stick to my ground
To stand up and shout
But I just can't make a sound

2004-05-30T12:53:00.000-05:00

Music: Death of Seasons by AFI

"In one of the nice examples of synchronicity that occur when I write these columns, today's New York Times (May 21, 2004) has an Op-Ed piece by Nick Hornby on the subject of middle-aged people creating and listening to rock music. "You've heard the argument a million times: most rock music is made by the young, for the young, about being young, and if you're not young and you still listen to it, then you should be ashamed of yourself." Hornby says he "mostly" agrees with that description, though it doesn't take into account "recent, mainly excellent work" by a number of middle-aged rock veterans such as Dylan and Springsteen. But, he continues, he disagrees with the "conclusion" that the middle-aged shouldn't listen to rock music.

"Youth is a quality not unlike health: it's found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it. . .I'm talking about the energy, the wistful yearning, the inexplicable exhilaration, the sporadic sense of invulnerability, the hope that stings like chlorine. When I was younger, rock music articulated those feelings, and now that I'm older, it stimulates them, but either way, rock 'n' roll was and remains necessary because: who doesn't need exhilaration and a sense of invincibility, even if it's only now and again?""

I came across that in my reading and thought it was worth saving.

The End

2004-05-24T22:55:00.000-05:00

Music: A Boy Brushed Red Living In Black And White by Underoath

It's truly the end. At 2:02 pm today, my last day of high school concluded. I still don't think I fully appreciate just how different things are going to be from here on out, because nothing feels different. Tomorrow when I wake up late and am not worried and realize I have nothing to do, it will probably sink in a bit better.

Today was exciting in its own surreal way. I rode in the back of Tanya B.'s pickup truck with Tiff and Mitch and Doug, and did the whole senior parade crap. Ryan yelling "I hate seniors!" was really the only thing interesting in that, the parade thing really is stupid. Well, at least I had some opportunities to make jokes about women drivers, haha, it felt like Tanya was going to kill us all in a fiery ball of death a couple times. ;) We harassed Conrad one last time; I didn't have any original prank or anything, we just completely trashed her room. I played Quake II for about 2 hours. I laughed at Josh because he got the two candy gram-esque 'senior goodbyes' I sent him (one gloating about Craigo getting a better physics test grade than him, the other from a fictional girl saying "Josh, it's your baby, we need to talk"). Unfortunately my one from Josh to Amanda W. in which he professes his true love didn't make it through the censoring process... At least that means Compo did read them and must have read the one in which I wrote "Hurr hurr did you here Mr. Compo is teh gay? LOLz." I still don't know the status of the one to Brian that read "I love it when you cheat on me and treat me like shit" and signed "15-year-old girl." And then there was Brandin's class where we had to present our songs (change lyrics from a real song to reflect the plot of All the Pretty Horses). I changed the lyrics to Baby's First Coffin by The Dillinger Escape Plan and screamed them at the top of my lungs, haha. It came out really horrible because I didn't practice at all, not even the timing of the vocals, and the syllables didn't really match up, but I think it was amusing just because I was actually doing it. I really lost it a few times there. I think Alicia taped the whole thing with her damn camera, haha let's hope that video never surfaces.... And then at around 2:05 I walked out of the building and it was officially over.

So yeah, I'm free. Nothing I have to do tomorrow, which causes some very foreign feelings. Today I went into work for an hour to fix some computers quick (and got paid for two hours because I'm awesome and they know it), and then did some guitar stuff. Craig let me borrow a pedal and showed me how to run the guitar through the computer to kind of simulate an amp, so I'm officially in business. Here's hoping I have some great talent and I just need to learn and practice a lot to bring it out... hahaha. Ok that's extremely unlikely but I'm going to make myself have talent damnit!

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Can you feel your heartbeat racing?

Your Enemies Friends and Cave In @ The Living Room

2004-04-23T23:55:00.000-05:00

Music: Juggernaut by Cave In

Ah, vacation. Well today wasn't very long as I woke up at 3 in the afternoon, haha, but it was a good day. I returned the tux right away so as to not incur late fees or anything, so that was pretty much the official end to my prom-related commitments. I think the white tux thing worked out well. There were a few other people there with white ones, but I was still fairly unique and got quite a few compliments, so all is good. Wicked Italian Mafia, or so I'd like to believe at least, haha. Though nothing can ever top Steve's ducktape tux, that was unbelievable. After I dropped the tux off I drove around a bit, stopped in to see Evan and Alissa at Super Scoops, and then hung around home for awhile. Then at 8 it was off to the concert with Steve, oh boy!

When we got to the Living Room, we thought the show had been cancelled or something because there were only about 10 cars in the parking lot. We went inside and it was just 20 or so people standing around waiting. It was so weird, but ended up being good as we easily got right up front and had unobstructed views of the bands who were only like 2 feet away from us. A dozen or so more people showed up and the show started. Sex Positions was the opening band; they were really cool and had some great guitar parts, and I ended up buying their CD. Your Enemies Friends was next, and they put on an amazing show. Every member of that band has great stage presence. The lead singer is creepy, but in a cool way, and gets so into his singing and gyrates around and everything. The bassist chick has an amazing voice, both singing and screaming. The guitarist is crazy, and was flying around his part of the stage and twisting the guitar around like a madman. The girl who plays the keyboard is pretty in a haunting kind of way, and she looked like she was in a trance the entire set; she kept shifting her feet and her balance around and was seemingly relying on her keyboard to keep from falling. I forgot to pay much attention to the drummer, but everything I heard was good. Their songs have some really complicated parts, and there's so much passion. They did great live too. I saw them live before (that's what got me into them) but I didn't know their material then, so I couldn't fully appreciate it.

Cave In was really badass too. They played a lot of new stuff. Some I'm hoping was still rough because it wasn't that amazing, but the last three new ones they played were fucking awesome. One is called Trepanning and is just an amazing, face-melting (to quote Jack Black), ass-kicking song. Caleb, the bassist / aggression vocalist, is so cool, especially when he's screaming. Stephen Brodsky, the singer / guitarist, was so funny tonight; the crowd was full of drunk jackasses yelling things, and he had a funny response to everything. He was telling us what the name of the next song was, and some guy yelled "Play it!" Brodsky just smiled and said "Ok." Reading it back doesn't sound funny at all, but the look on his face and the inflection in his voice was priceless. After they finished their set, the usual chants of "encore" began, and after a minute or so it didn't seem like they were coming out. This drunk guy with a bottle of beer in his hand is all like "Don't worry guys, I'll talk to them" and starts to head into the band-and-staff-only backroom, haha. He got kicked out, but Cave In did end up coming back. They asked what we wanted to hear and that same drunk guy started yelling at them to play Stone Temple Pilots, haha. I mean, what the fuck, really now. I'm glad they decided to play some of their own material instead, namely the amazing Juggernaut. Just out of control.

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You are what you weep, from your head down to the sleet.

Got Mitcracker?

2004-04-12T22:45:00.001-05:00

Music: Semi-charmed Life by Third Eye Blind

Today was the big day: Mitcracker day. Alicia had all the shirts ready, and she got them to everyone and we all had them on before AP History first period. We all came in with sweatshirts on, and Alicia went "oh man, it's hot in here" and took hers off and Jim saw the "Mitcracker University" shirt and couldn't believe it. "NO WAY, you made a... *sees everyone coming in with Mitcracker shirts* NO WAY!" Just beautiful. McCormick came in and didn't notice for a few minutes, but then caught on and was like "Uh... what's with all the shirts? Mitcracker? Oh, right, that's Belisle, right? Ha, ha." He then called Jim "Mitcracker" for the rest of the class. Jessy's shirt was the best, "I'm with Mitcracker" with an arrow pointing right towards where Jim was sitting. Jim was a good sport about it, I'll give him that.

Click for fullsize pic

Jesus Christ, this's turning into a picture journal.... Anyway, my afternoon was made today when I found out Campo was pissed I was the valedictorian. He asked his class if it was announced yet and Mitch said "No, but we know who it is." Campo said he didn't want names, and Mitch chimed in that it wasn't anyone on NHS, that it was me, and Campo looked angry and said "No names" and changed the subject.

In other good news, it's really starting to feel like spring. I actually have my ceiling fan on in my room, which instantly makes things feel like spring/summer. I can't wait... Well this week should be very good starting very soon. I'm going to rent a badass tux tomorrow after school, and then concerts Weds, Thurs, and Fri. I'm thinking Kill Bill Vol. 2 Sat., and then there's another concert Sun. And sweet April vacation the following week...

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When I'm with you I feel like I could die
And that would be alright

2004-03-24T23:26:00.001-05:00

Music: Castor and Pollux by For.Her.I.Can.Be.A.Hero

Wow... fucking sleep finally caught up with me. Last night I should have gone to bed at a normal time, not played UT2K4 until 2 in the morning. But it was so much fun.... MMmm mmm rocket launcher... Well anyway, I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. I woke up around 7:20 and got cleaned up then lied back on my bed for "just a minute." When I woke up, it was 8:30. And I didn't have senior privilege today. Hahahaha. So yeah, I was late to school. They didn't really give me any shit though so that's cool, and I didn't miss anything in physics.

I'm wicked excited about this little plan me and some other ap history kids have. Well to appreciate it you have to know the backstory. We were talking about the progressive era in ap history and the people who dug up corporations' dirty secrets and exposed them, known as muckrakers. Well McCormick asked what said people's name was and Jim Belisle (loser, creepy weirdo, statutory rapist, etc.) raised his hand and said "mitcracker." It was so fucking funny, and we've been harassing him about it since. The clincher was when McCormick called him a mitcracker, that sealed the deal and turned it into an all-time funny. Well.... we're going to make mitcracker shirts and all wear them at school and reaaaally piss Jim off. Maybe something like "I'm with mitcracker" with arrows pointing, hahaha.

I can't fucking wait for the next round of concerts. Next Tuesday is Every Time I Die which's gonna be fucking awesome. Then April is just insane. In the span of one week there's 4 concerts: Brand New; Sparta with Funeral For A Friend and Coheed & Cambra; My Chemical Romance with Avenged Sevenfold and Alexisonfire; and Thursday. Then A Perfect Circle at the end of April.

Well I have some english to do now... though I think I survived this week as there's nothing really due until Monday and no work until Saturday (and only Sat. morning, thank god) so I'll have some free time. Now just to find stuff to fill it with, haha.

2004-02-28T22:47:00.001-05:00

Music: Rookie by Boysetsfire

Friday was a beautiful day, sun out, nice and warm, I love it. I can't fucking wait for spring, I forgot how nice it was; it's been a long winter. The whole day was good. Giving blood and getting out of a bunch of classes = kickin' rad. I felt absolutely fine afterwards, which was cool. Others unfortunately didn't fair as well, poor Amanda and Tanya, heh. Tanya went sheet-white in chemistry and had to have the nurse take her out; Manda was kinda dizzy all day and not feeling so good, and I drove her home to be safe. I also drove Mitch home cuz.... he's a big vagina. Or something.

At one point, Josh was all "I'm the universal doner, blah blah blah, seborrheic dermatitis," so someone of course asked why he didn't give blood and I, of course, responded that he didn't pass question #14 because he had had sex, at least once, with another man since 1977.

And that was pretty much my school day, which is good because as far as school is concerned, no news is good news. The only thing of relevance was the reading of the poem that was created by a collaboration between me, Steve, and Nikki. About the headless horseman, it read something like this: "As blood rained down like a thousand virgin miscarriages, hapless vagabonds plead for their life like baby orphans crying for their dead mother's milk." Mrs. Brandin said it was "bad," and Nikki retorted with "badass."

No work always makes for a fun day, got a lot of shit around the house done, got tickets to Brand New, and then movie night which was great.

Today.... not quite as good.... work, helping dad move shit, homework, etc. Looks like more of the same for tomorrow.... oooooh weeeeell. I did finally get The Mars Volta lyrics booklet / story-behind-the-album booklet in the mail. I ordered it with my mom's credit card so it was shipped to her, so when she got the mail today she had the booklet, described by her as "some weird black booklet with all kinds of messed up shit in it", and she had no idea what the crap it was and it creepd her out, so she threw it out! I found it in the kitchen trash, but it had a couple food stains on the cover.