Looking at Electrical Outlet & Fork [Summer Fun]

So, I’ve been silent on the blogging front lately because, well, I’ve not been excited by much lately. Matt’s in NY having a ball and I’ve been doing my film homework every night. I’m almost done with 4 weeks of a super speed summer class about film. Pretty much used all my time to read till my eyes bleed and write till my fingers do the same. Sure has been an awful lot of reading and writing for a class about movies(scratching head).

I had a temporary period where my Creative Zen died on me and I had to hear the world around me minus my personal soundtrack. Never realized how uber-boring and quiet it can be on campus and in my cube at work. I quickly made with the spending of money that I didn’t have and broke my longtime tradition of buying Creative players and got a Microsoft Zune 2.0. I emphasize the V2 because V1 was an absolute EPIC FAIL. Except for the awesomeness of sharing songs which was dubbed squirting .  I have to say aside from some little uber-tech speak problems, the player is quite usable.

I’m in the market for a new cell phone and the new iPhone looks promising but the plans are just wayyyy out of my $$$ range. Plus I’m with T-mobile and currently contract free so if I’m ever booted out the door at my temp job and times get tough I can drop my phone without paying an arm and leg. Phones contract free are freaking expensive and to be quite honest they all just suck. I text and call, maybe use the web once in a blue moon on my phone. I’d like to get a “qwerty” phone because I do 90% texting and 10% calling. I just can’t find one that I like, that I can afford. I think they consulted Barbie when making the latest Blackberry because the keys are so small I can’t even use it. I’ve gotten so frustrated by trying to find a phone that I like that I’ve almost just given up and said fuck’em all together. For now my phone is getting some glue since it’s all sorts of cracked.

I’m listening to music like crazy lately. Found a bunch of new artists and some old ones that dropped new albums. You can see what I’ve been into by checking out my Last.fm account, friend me if you are on it. They are still working on making the Zune work with it (they=hackers). Matt got me into The Office, of which I’ve now seen every episode. I myself revisited Weeds and found that I can’t miss an episode now and nor can Matt. Aside from that, nothing in the glorious world of TV has pulled me in.

As I mentioned long ago, I’m taking 2 summer classes. The film one is almost done and the Digital Photography class is almost useless. The best part is the tax write off for the Canon Rebel I had to buy for the class. I’m still on Flickr and uploading most of my homework alongside regular photos, so if you are interested head on over and check it out. If you want to just track everything I do online you can join me on FriendFeed or just subscribe to my feed. I read a lot of articles and hear a lot of music online and sometimes recommend something to read. FriendFeed is a timeline of all of my online activities, including this blog. I live under the reality that Privacy is Dead so I willingly jack myself into the net and let it know my thoughts.

In the real world, stuff has happened.

There’s been two new additions to the family since I last blogged. Matt’s sister had her baby boy Jacob and his sister-in-law just had her boy Ian. I’m kinda over babies, I mean seriously, I’m now an uncle 12x’s over. Not to mention my friends got into the whole baby thing (Will/Bethany). I’m just excited that I’m baby free, they’re cute, but they are quite the handful. Plus, I’m a smidge ADD and tend to get into something that’s new and then get bored with it. That might be problematic if Matt and I adopted. I mean you can’t in all good sense return a baby. They don’t come with receipts do they?

beauty in audio

radiohead-videotape.jpg

Here’s the video

When I’m at the pearly gates
This’ll be on my videotape
my videotape

When Mephistopheles is just beneath
And he’s reaching up to grab me

This is one for the good days
And I have it all here
In red blue green
Red blue green

You are my center when I spin away
Out of control on videotape
On videotape

This is my way of saying goodbye
Because I can’t do it face to face

No matter what happens now
I won’t be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.

Top 5 2008

The inevitable end of year list is being produced by every news outlet. So, I felt compelled to share mine. Maybe you’ll find something in one of the lists that becomes a new favorite of yours. If so, comment about it below.

Concerts, as you know, per my pasts posts, I’ve been to quite a few shows and seen a lot of bands this year. I promised myself that I’d just do Austin City Limits. Well, that just didn’t happen. Here’s my top 5 concerts.

1. ACL – Ghostland Observatory, Bjork, Regina Spektor, Muse.

2. Rufus Wainwright & Neko Case

3. Rilo Kiley

4. The Black Angels

5. TOOL

This year has to be the year that too many bands released too many good albums. It was hard to choose, but my number one is my number one because it was just that good. The marketing, the websites, the CD it’s self, the go fuck the music industry attitude of the lead singer just made it that much better.

1. Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero

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2. Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

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3. Tori Amos – American Doll Posse

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4. Amy Winehouse – Back to Black

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5. Beirut – The Flying Club Cup

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As I said, there has been a whole lot of really really good music released this year. My favorite new discoveries this year are bands that I found via various podcasts and word of mouth.

1. The Black Angels

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2. Rilo Kiley

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3. Yeasayer

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4. Animal Collective

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5. Band of Horses

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If I’ve kept you here. Then now onto non music top 5′s.

Movies

1. The Bourne Ultimatum

2. Transformers

3. Knocked Up

4. Superbad

5. Hot Fuzz

Mentioned time and time again, I listen to and watch video podcasts like TV shows. I actually spend more of my time listening and watching them then regular radio & tv broadcasts. So here are my top five Podcast & Vidcasts this year.

1. Wait Wait!! Don’t Tell Me – http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/

2. Feast of Fools – http://www.feastoffools.net

3. Dan Savage – Savage cast NSFW

4. SModcast – Kevin Smith’s Podcast – http://quickstopentertainment.com/smodcast/

5. Midwest Teen Sex Show NSFW Videocast

Due to the nature of my job and my school and side jobs, I do a lot of web surfing. I have to thank the all mighty master Google for creating and updating Google Reader to where I can use it. I honestly can surf 10x faster and find stuff that really interest me via RSS feeds, rather than actually reading everything and going to the sites.

Here are my top 5 website discoveries

1. ColourLovers – Lovers of color and mixtures – http://www.colourlovers.com/

2. PSDTuts – Photoshop Tutorials – http://psdtuts.com/

3. Explosm.net / Cyanide and Happiness – http://www.explosm.net/comics/

4. Hypem.com – The Hype Machine <– Firefox + Download Helper = Free Mp3′s

5. Design is Kinky – About all designs, real world and digital.

There could be many many more 5′s in this list. But for now, this will do. Let me know what you think by commenting.

Themed Mornings

The cool winds are blowing and it’s causing me to have a renewed vigor in the mornings. It’s the kinda feeling that says “I don’t really need that coffee today” (but I’m still gonna get it out of habit.)

Coffee for me is either a triple or quad shot of espresso with a half squirt of chocolate syrup. It’s like having a liquefied dark espresso chocolate bars. I <3 my Starbucks for the simple fact that I only have to hold up fingers for how many shots I need. No talking, just fingers and an exchange of money. It works best that way when I’m really not awake. People generally annoy me in the mornings and when I say people, I mean Matt. j/k.

Recently in a rare instance I was awake on a visit to my local drug dealer aka Starbucks and I decided to ask for a quad shot. The barista gave me the look of shock that I would want so much and I said “today, I wanna vibrate”.

I then got into my car and proceeded to queue up and play to an extreme loudness “Ghostland Observatory’s, Vibrate” to kick off my vibration themed morning.


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It’s a Hit

After what was the week from hell for me, this weekend was what I was looking for. The nieces and I headed out to The Palladium Ballroom in Dallas to see Rilo Kiley and company. The doors were supposed to be open at 7:30 so we took that as “lets get there around 7:45 or so to miss the crowd being let in. Well, apparently that wasn’t the best idea. The venue didn’t even bother opening the doors till 8:30! I don’t understand what the delay was all about nor did I care. I wanted to see the bands and have a good time so we just bitched and waited till we finally went in.

I’m glad to say that I didn’t miss the opening band called Grand Ole Party.

They were quite fun and worth seeing. One rarity for me occurred for me, I actually bought a cd from an opening band! The band reminded me a lot of The Gossip with their catchy drum beats and female lead singer. (I included a video of them from another live appearance below).

The second band wasn’t a hit with me. They were called “The Bird and the Bee” and aside from technical difficulties, they just sucked. I mean really really sucked.

Like opening band sucked, like trapped in an elevator listening to bad muzak versions of 90′s grunge music bad.

I can only assume they were put in the middle because the lead singer of Grand Ole Party was used for backing vocals for Rilo Kiley.

Now after being tortured by the sucktastic band that was up last we were privy to what had to be the longest setup ever for a band. I, along with the rest of the crowd surrounding me seriously were tired of the constant checking by the sound guy who btw really needed to re-evaluate the skinny pants. Not that he didn’t fit in them, it was that he just had no ass.

Rilo Kiley Live

See more here

So finally, after all of that.. Rilo Kiley entered the stage to a very very enthusiastic crowd and just ripped right into “It’s a Hit”. Every last person in the crowd knew the lyrics! I felt like such a poser or something. I just got into them about 2 months ago and just sorta knew the songs but didn’t know them. They played from about 10:40 till around 12:15. Thankfully they played all of my favorite songs and for almost every major song the crowd sang along, which could have been annoying but it made the evening more fun.

Grand Ole Party Stuff

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