Limited Existence

Now that we have food carts...

2010-08-30T18:43:00.000-07:00

...its a bad thing apparently. I think this is partially because we are chasing trends rather than ever being a part of them. I dont have a problem with chasing trends, as long as its done well.

More on DC Food

2010-08-23T08:43:00.001-07:00

Here

Georgetown Cupcake vs. Bens Chili Bowl

2010-08-18T20:38:00.000-07:00

The line out the door is a phenomenon found in food cities across the country. The trick is too make your space so small that very few people can wait inside and produce the food quick enough as to not need a server to entertain patrons. Im too lazy to research it, but im pretty sure the Kogi Korean BBQ Taco Truck in LA was at the forefront of this movement. The basic formula reads: line = then and only then a food city.
Ok, so Ben's does not have a line down the block, but it has the buzz and the continuous crowds. In the other corner we have the new kid on the block.... Georgetown Cupcake. I have to give GC credit for a couple of things. One, they make $4 cupcakes that I would say are well worth the cash. Two, they have brought some much needed buzz to the city's dining scene. Three, in addition to buzz, they have brought hope. Hope, that the city can evolve from a formula of independently owned pseudo-corporations; those restaurants that look and act like chains, with their safe designs and two dimensional menus (Clydes, et. al).
So now that I have given the credit, its time to point out the downside of a place like Georgetown Cupcake. GC is probably the most sought out place to find food in all of DC. In LA you have the Korean BBQ Tacos, in SF you have either French Soul Food or a one table coffehouse/ straight from farm to table rotating menu, and in DC we have cupcakes. These places tend to represent a history or diversity of a city. Its only ability to succeed has to connect the residents and tell a story about the area. Bens Chili Bowl fits the mold, Georgetown Cupcake represents a coming schism of the city. For the last 40 years, there has been a deep divide between blacks and whites. Fortunately the gap has been shrinking. There has been some great development in areas, such as U st, Columbia Heights and Petworth, that have developed economically and held onto the rich history of the respective neighborhoods. BCB has become a representation of the past, present and future of the city. A past of hate, a present of hope and a future of acceptance and understanding. Georgetown Cupcake will hopefully develop into a wildly successful, compartmentalized vision of the far west side of the city. In the end, I think we are at the start of a culinary enlightenment and I can only imagine that the success will be in part derived thanks to an inclusion of a regional perspective.

One of the coauthors of this blog just unfriended another coauthor

2010-08-01T07:57:00.001-07:00

I am so thankful that my friend invited me to be a contributor to his blog.

I wanted to use this space to explain that I have unfriended the head of this blog on facebook.

How do you handle such a delicate thing is always such a topic of debate. At certain phases when I was in a mood of being upset at the way my life was going socially, I wanted to do it in a grand proclamation, writing some poetic goodbye on his wall and possibly his girlfriend's wall.

But in short:
Unfriending the author of this blog was nothing personal. I just felt like it gave me negative feelings of self-esteem to continue being friends with the author of this blog, because it didn't reflect reality, and that it would be a boost to my sense of self if I formally cut off my friendship with the person. The person had no use for me and that's fine, so he wouldn't care either way.

Our friendship deteriorated because the author of this blog found a girlfriend and the girlfriend didn't like me and wanted to not be around me, so the author of this blog naturally chose the girlfriend.

It upsets me heavily when people form an opinion of me without getting to know me. For some reason, it only upset me a little in the case of the author's girlfriend. It upset me to such a small degree, I found myself being able to just live with it. Maybe, I was guilty of forming a quick opinion of the girlfriend too, that she wasn't my kind of person either.

It was a blow that it cost me my friend. I never expected this person to become such a close friend. I originally met him as an interview subject from when I worked for the student newspaper and you're not really supposed to be friends with you're interview subjects, so I kept a distance. At some point towards the end of college we both found ourselves hanging out with mutual friends and after college, he lived in the same area as me.

I liked that he was easy-going and open about himself. Likewise, he's probably too easy-going for some mushy sedimental exchange to occur after this post is posted but that's what i liked about him anyways, so it's all good.

The author attended my two most depressing birthday celebrations in history (not depressing because the author attended them) and maybe it's some solace to know that the last celebration I had for myself, there was a better turnout (of approximately 6-8).

The Metro Is Never Boring After 2 AM

2010-07-31T07:21:00.000-07:00

"I like to roam"

-anon

Somebody said that last night (friday)... but it could have just as easily come from me. I ended up visiting 4 bars last night and I realized that my ideal night involves either relaxing at 1 or hopping from as many as possible. You might be thinking, well maybe the bars arent that great and that is why you keep switching bars. Nope, wrong. Think of it like the progression of DJing. At some point (probably thanks to digital music) DJ's went from playing entire songs to playing the first part of songs. Its not because the songs are worse, we just have developed a stronger sense of instant gratification. Even more than just changing bars, I even had to change groups.

The night was fun, but it wasnt as crazy as the week before, so I will skip the details. Some of the highlights include... Entering and winning my first dance off and visiting Rumors!

Now, to deal with the title. I have never been on the metro after 2 am and not been entertained. When we first got down to the platform, I got a firsthand look of what war might look like. There were a good 100 people waiting for the train, half were seated and the other half were standing, while both halves looked completely spent. I am not sure how I never noticed this before, but I really wish I had my camera on me at the time to capture this real life 28 Days Later. Another event involved this group in suits talking loudly about Republican issues and voting for John McCain. This is only funny because this is probably the most liberal (in a voting sense at least) city in the world. You could see everybody else on the metro slowly becoming more and more infuriated until they finally got off. Finally, I saw this guy who was cracking me up on another late night metro ride with his Forman Mills commercial impressions. Actually one more thing... there was a guy who got on completely blacked out and his friends were carrying a plastic bag for him in the case he got sick. I guess his friends were not paying attention at one point and as a result some good samaritans had to let the friends know to "Get him the bag!", saving some late night cleaning staff and the rest of the train in the process. The best part of all is that this was just a slow night on the metro. Until next weekend!

random picture 726

2010-07-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

Pocket Ninjas Trailer

2010-07-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

The 4th Dimension

2010-07-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

At some point in the past few years, 3D became the next Will Smith (I call the rights to Men in 3D). From now until 4D, the studios are going to be pumping out more and more movies of less and less quality, all with the aim of producing a slightly larger margin. Dont get me wrong, things started well with the a Best Picture nod. Its just with any new technology, whether it be sound or color, you are going to get your degradation of ingenuity until you end up with your Pocket Ninjas or Who's Your Caddy. So enjoy the quality while it lasts, but you cant say I didnt warn you Madea of the 4th Dimension was just around the corner.

The Friend Cycle

2010-07-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

Is it me, or is it once you get into your mid 20s, you always have just one small set of friends*? Just a few years back, it was miller and myself + a rotating cast of ~5, traveling from party to party in search of the elusive one night girlfriend. We would feign interest in the one night stand, secretly hoping to find a girlfriend in the most unlikeliest of places.

Shift forward a few years and I have replaced the rotating cast with a consistent few. I sometimes stop and wonder what happened to the old crew? Not the rotating cast, but the guys who were around when we made our forays into the city from way out in the county. They are all still here. We hang out once or twice a year, but it feels like starting over.

I can only guess that the cast shrinks until its down to 2.

*Happy with my current set of friends

The End of The Innoncence

2009-09-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

There's a quote from Winston Churchill that roughly paraphrased goes something as follows "If a young man is not a liberal then he has no heart; if an old man is not conservative then he has no brain". This touches on the rather idealistic stance of those who lack in pragmatic evidence to the contrary. One can look at almost anything in life and see that if all things were optimal they would be different; in effect life's not always fair.

Being able to deal with the inequalities of life is something that comes with time. Instead of whining about the various problems of the world it's far more effective to find the most optimal way of dealing with sub-optimal situations. At times life serves you a shit sandwich and the best way to deal is to eat.

In the aftermath of any unfortunate circumstance there are exactly two ways of dealing with it (a) as best as possible (b) anything else. Getting down, being depressed, turning to drugs, drinking obscene amounts of alcohol, doing nothing, and slowly self imploding are all examples of option b. There comes a time where you simply can stop feeling sorry for yourself and deal.

The best analogy I have for it is a prize fighter. Regardless of how many times you get hit, how fast the punches come you keep moving. You dance around it, you stay on your feet, you do not let the final blow come down. You tire it out slowly, methodically, you literally bend life until it's worn thin and gives in. And then you knock it out.

It's a violent comparison, but life does not occur without action. I could be drinking my ass off and not really running or being otherwise destructive. I could give up. I could say woe is me and blame everything else for my failure to succeed. Extraordinary people are measured not in how they perform when things are optimal, but how they fare when the chips are down. As hard as life may be at times one can simply never, ever give in. This seems to work quite well with the concept of the marathon due to the hardship one must suffer for an extended period of time before relief; delayed gratification has a way of building character in Americas I-Want-It-And-I-Want-It-Now mess of a society. Quitters never win.

All of this brow beating is hardly a diatribe of how I've excelled and risen above and all that. It's more just a lifelong progression of climbing the mountain that was destined for me to climb; the maturation process and aging and growing up and all that crap that we hate but need. One things for sure, I'm not bowing out now or throwing in the towel. I intend to make some good come from this all.

------
Did 3 * 2 miles in the park this morning with 2 miles of jogging in between. 11:03, 10:46, 10:34. Went well, felt good.

yes

2009-06-22T16:21:00.001-07:00

http://pitchfork.com/news/35687-video-clipse-featuring-kanye-west-kinda-like-a-big-deal/

Marvin Gaye

2009-03-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

Whats Going On is one of my all-time favorite albums. Even before I knew the back story, I was blown away by the composition and production. But to gain even more respect, one must know the situation the album was born out of. This was a time when albums were created to soothe, not arouse. Songs had to be created for easy accessibility and widespread radio acceptance. Whats Going On was created to make people think and question things, not necessarily radio friendly ideas. To understand the significance a little better, try and imagine if Beyonce after 8 successful albums, decided to put out an album exploring the consequences of Iraq/Afghanistan, the economy, and the environment. Picture her trying to convince the exec's at Sony to release this album and picture her trying convince them to let her have complete control of production. Now picture the ablum being released and being a commercial success. That in a nutshell is what happend with Marvin Gaye Whats Going On? And that is why it stands out to me as one of the best albums of all time.

Chill Hip Hop

2009-03-25T22:21:00.000-07:00

Mix

Hopefully more to follow. 25 minutes and the last two songs mixed in sprang up organically.

Bored 324

2009-03-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

The world is an interesting place at the moment. Actually the world is always a fascinating place, but it is currently in a very precarious state. Any country that has the ability to "stimulate demand" is stimulating, and every other country is approaching whichever group or country with the cash with hat in hand. The last year has rocketed past, and left quite a bit of carnage in its wake. It doesnt seem that long ago when Bear Stearns disappeared and we still had giant investment banks. I bet you completely forgot about the $600/1200 checks from last spring. As I type this, I am listening to music through $100 Grado Labs headphones from my check!
Furthermore, America's typical enemies are in various states of peak belliegerence; partially because of the Bush Doctrine. Fortunately, a number of these enemies are just feeling the effects of plunging oil prices and are now being forced to put forth weaker attempts to harrass western nations. Think about when the last time you heard anything about Vladimir Putin, outside of his lambasting of Michael Dell at the Davos Confrence. I think the next couple of years will be interesting for Obama. No way in hell will he hit his projected budget deficit, but I think he is in a good position to usher in a new era of global cooperation thanks in part due to the recession. Iran is going be contained by the unexpected of triumvirate of the U.S., China, and Russia; that is of course if the administration can give into the other two just enough to encourage cooperation. Unfortunately, Afghanistan is continuing to be a quagmire. It took time for a solution to quell the violence in Iraq, and utimately one will come in Afghanistan, but it doesnt look like it is around the corner. More troubling, is the safe haven of Pakistan. Its extremely difficult to deal with the Taliban without ground troops. Especially if they are surrounded by civilians. Airstrikes tend to take out civilians at a higher rate than ground attacks, and as a result, it will be difficult to root out the Taliban with the locals becoming disilluioned with the NATO effort.
The next few years will be interesting to say the least. Its possible we could see a major war in the middle east. Africa will unfortunately take a step back, Russia will be a mystery, and China will roar.

Passion Pit - Sleepyhead

2009-03-24T21:19:00.001-07:00

Just got the album this song is from. If you like this song, I recommend that you get Chunk of Change. It has this weird cross genre vibe, but not in the sense of really mixing two genres. I would consider this a slower dance album with sub genre undertones that create a nice a background harmony. I think the most notable sub genre is hip-hop. Better yet, 80s might be an unoriginal thing to recreate, but hidden in the margins it adds a wonderful touch.
Another thing that stands out, is the dynamic nature of the record. I have nothing against an album that flows smoothly from start to finish (explosions in the sky is one of my favorite bands), but those that experiment with more volatility and manage to connect the songs together tend to stand out from the pack.

Passion Pit - Sleepyhead

2009-03-17T07:47:00.001-07:00

Thanks NPR all songs considered for turning me onto this song

368

2008-12-15T10:51:00.000-08:00

There hasnt been a new post in almost 5 months but there has a 368% increase in the number of visits somehow.

"You couln't get it done without me" -Shaq

2008-07-31T09:24:00.000-07:00

Oops, my apologies, Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World got posted in the wrong place.

Does anyone realize how little sense Shaq's rap was about Kobe not being able to get it done without him because he fell in the finals. Kobe in fact did get done what Shaq couldn't do with less help. Kobe beat the Spurs, Shaq had two darkhorse MVP contenders in Steve Nash and Amare on his team and lost to the Spurs. Kobe beat the Spurs, how does Shaq have a right to talk?

I've also heard about Paul Pierce hating on Kobe, as if he has a right to do that. Rediculous. Without looking too much in the stats of it all, Paul didn't beat Kobe, his team beat Kobe's team, and Paul's team had Ray Allen and KG on it.

I'm sick of this notion of us measuring our stars by whether they can bring home a championship. Teams bring championships, stars don't. The truth is that while we don't like the image of a selfish ballplayer, and we like a guy who does all he can to help, a star can't realistically bring home a championship on his own. We have to stop holding a measuring stick up to our basketball stars based on whether they win, win, win, and win again (4 series gets you a championship). Kobe won, won, won (against the defending champ Spurs), and then lost. I'd call that pretty freaking impressive. I'm tired of the notion of whether this guy or that will be the true franchise savior and bring his team a championship because that guy doesn't exist. No one has ever singlehandedly brought his team a championship, and that's the beautiful thing about this game: It takes a team. So let's celebrate the great individuals and celebrate the great teams, and let's not confuse one for the other. The best players we've had have managed to take teams to the finals by themselves, AI, LeBron James, and now Kobe. That's pretty hard to get any farther than that.

Winning a championship is something that also plain just can't happen no matter how good you are, because it's usually a crowded field.

I'm uncomfortable with the idea of throwing two guys into a cage in a fight to the death and rewriting the history books on a yearly basis, to lavish the winner and condone the loser. This is why every coach of the year in the last few years, Byron Scott, Rick Carlisle, Mike D'Antoni, Avery Johnson, Larry Brown, etc. has been fired or run out of town in one way or another, because they can't ever live up to their expectations. If people really had some sense of perpsective, they'd realize it's not wise to fire your coach just because of a single losing streak.

Here are examples of coaches who shouldn't have gotten fired:
-Rick Carlisle, 2006-2007, Indiana Pacers-The front office made a trade: Stephen Jackson, Saraventus Jukavics and Al Harrington for Ike Diogu, Mike Dunleavy and Troy Murphy and they didn't make the playoffs. Not his fault, it takes time for teams to gel after a trade. By that same logic....

-Avery Johnson, 2007-2008, Dallas-Same deal. The GM, Mark Cuban, made a move that by his own admission would either sink the team or elevate them to a championship, it was a risky front office move, and it's not Avery Johnson's fault. You can't get a team to gel that quickly

-Byron Scott, 2003-2004, New Jersey Nets-He had a losing streak in the middle of the season. Big deal: He had made the finals the last 2 years and the season isn't over until it's over. New Jersey made the playoffs for 6 straights years and in some cases, they didn't make the playoffs until the final game of the season. Granted Frank Williams turned out to be good, Byron Scott turned New Orleans into a championship contender this year, which is a similar situation to.....

-Scott Skiles, who got his team to the conference semis and an impressive sweep of the Miami Heat in the playoffs the previous year. They fired him in December of the season because the team wasn't playing well. Well, they weren't playing any better.
Here's what John Paxson, Bulls GM had to say:"I don't have a long-term solution as of today. I'm disappointed in the way we're playing, the way we're competing, the energy or lack thereof that we're playing with on the floor. I know expectations coming into the year were really, really high and we're not even close to those. I honestly believe we're a better team than we've played this year."
So basically, the guy didn't have a long-term solution, or in other words he has no clue if what he's doing is a good idea. He just admits to being momentarily unhappy and discusses being plagued by his own expectations. Like Cleveland, the act of firing Flip Saunders ensured the season's fate as officially lost. Chicago wasn't remotely in contention for a playoff spot in a weak year in which newcomers Atlanta and Philadelphia made the playoffs.

-Flip Saunders, 2004-2005, Minnesota Timberwolves-Kevin McHale fired Flip and coached the team himself. The end result wasn't that much better, as the Timberwolves had one of the greatest loss differentials from season-to-season in NBA history.

-Paul Silas, 2004-2005, Had a 12-game losing streak somewhere over the course of the middle of the season and got fired for that. He still had his team above the 500 mark at the time but the reasoning was that earlier they were fighting for the division title and now they were in danger of missing the playoffs. Well, firing Silas didn't help any, they still missed the playoffs anyway and the replacement coach had a worse record

-Brian Hill, 2006-2007 Orlando Magic, He got the Orlando Magic into the playoffs for the first time since 2003, but still got fired because they lost the first round in a sweep. Did we mention every other team from the South got sweeped that year in the playoffs?

-Rick Carlisle, 2002-2003 Indiana Pacers, Got his team to the conference finals twice in a row and won the division outright. Got upset by New Jersey in the conference finals. So basically, this is a team that didn't live up to seeding. It's like if a #1 seed in the tournament got upset by a #2 seed in the elite eight. Big deal. To be fair, most people felt Carlisle's firing was unfair.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

2008-07-30T17:07:00.001-07:00

From 1963, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World takes place over the course of a particularly eventful day along the highways of Southern California, where a group of strangers comes across a man's dying confession that a large sum of money is hidden in Santa Rosita, California. The group of four or five different cars and about a dozen people can't agree as to how they're going to split this money so it becomes every man for himself.

The film is also the loose inspiration for the 2001 film Rat Race except it was a far more solid film that doesn't compromise its audience with overly crude or pandering humor. It's based around a timeless concept: the humor of the chase, and that has been used by every great comic Buster Keaton's The General, to Harold Lloyd's vertical version of the chase in Safety Last. And it never gets old.

The film is also directed by Stanley Kramer who primarily made message movies (i.e. Inherit the Wind, Ship of Fools, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) and while it's tempting to think that Kramer was just taking a break from heavier themes and just having fun, the movie isn't entirely morally devoid of any theme. There is a certain undertone amid all the comedy of how money corrupts absolutely. Watching the film a second or third time with that theme in mind might make for a different viewing experience.

Stanley Kramer made the film with the aim of casting as many comedians in the film as he possibly could, and he succeeds quite well, so the film ends up being a who's who of the '60's. It is interesting to note that a great number of the stars of this film are completely unrecognizable to my generation today. They are unrecognizable to myself and I'd like to think I've seen my fair share of TV and movies from the old days. Here is who I knew and didn't know:
-I had heard of Sid Cesar because he gave Mel Brooks and Woody Allen their starts, Carl Reiner I knew as the director of some films and I've seen him on Whose Line is it Anyway?
-I had heard of Phil Silvers because I knew he was the inspiration for Sargent Bilko, but I had never seen him in person
-I knew Buddy Hackett, Spencer Tracy and Ethel Merman
-The cameos of the Three Stooges and Don Knotts I recognized fairly instantly
-I had heard the name Milton Berle but couldn't recognize him
-I had not ever heard of Edie Adams or Dick Shawn. Dick Shawn, may I say, is quite funny.
-I knew Mickey Rooney but couldn't recognize him on sight
-I've heard references to Jimmy Durante in TV shows like the Golden Girls, Dick Van Dyke Show and I believe I Love Lucy, etc., but still wouldn't recognize him

i dread the weekend

2008-07-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

Oh man, the week just ended. I actually worked pretty hard this week after having had irregular employment, i really worked hard just now, but the weekend is so much more pressure and there's a good chance I could emerge broken-hearted or bitter at the end of it because I will attempt to do something social and it will not work out because my friends and potential people I might want to date will all be too busy and I then wasted time trying to make an effort.

I could also do some group activity, or maybe go out of town, but I will have to expend a lot of metnal energy trying to decide this stuff. So tiring.

I just don't want my weekend to pass me by because that's my opportunity to do stuff, but I also don't like the pressure to do stuff.

I'm sorry, I don't even have the energy to write this particular article very well.

Back to the Grocery Store

2008-07-18T09:50:00.000-07:00

Before I hop into the most recent trip to the grocery store, I need to point out a somewhat local story. Check it out here. Apparently, we have shifted back to the Red 50's and now we can spend as much as we want to stop terrorism at home. Maryland police actually used tax dollars(fortunately not mine) to spy on anti-war and anti-death penalty groups. What threat does a group that is against violence for the sake of revenge really pose to the general populace? Maybe you could say that they might have a deleterious effect on the government, but isnt that what democracy is about? Its kind of disheartening to see the post-9/11 facism that is prevalent throughout the country. It is even worse when you think about how it only took a few misguided fundamentalists to bring down an entire country, where as in the 50's it took an entire country.

Ok, so now for the grocery store adventure. This trip wasnt nearly as eventful as the last, but there were a few minor instances that really caught my attention. The first happened when I was entering and I saw an elementary school aged kid wearing a Pre Lives shirt. If I were at a track meet or at a road race, I wouldnt find this to be a big deal; but this was at my own beloved Safeway in upper NW. I am not sure how much detail I have given to the describe the atmosphere of this Safeway, but I will say that I am a part of a heavy majority. There is at least one security and occasional police officer hanging out just in case of who knows what. Even more telling is that every time I get fish or shrimp, the guy asks if I would like some catfish with that(this has not happened anywhere else I have been, and if it did im sure it would be something other than catfish). So, when I see a kid wearing Pre Lives shirt, I am somewhat taken aback. I can only imagine what drew this kid to a white(no relation) 1970s(no relation) runner(no relation).

After shoppping for awhile, I head over to get some lunch meat and end up waiting in a relatively long-ish line. I am fourth in the line, and as I am next to order, I notice the first guy who was in line when I got there was still waiting. One of the women helping says to him "I am almost done" and he cleverly replies "I have heard that one before". She clearly did not pick up on it, but I quickly picked up on it and had a nice internal laugh.

Outside of those two things, nothing really out of the ordinary occurred.

Free Jazz

2008-07-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

Check out Free Jazz every friday in the sculpture garden. Its free and they have a good selection of food and drinks...at least it looked good. I did not buy any as we byob'd and byof'd.

Rollover Minutes

2008-07-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

I finally picked up on the genius of the concept of rollover minutes. Its been almost two years and in that period of time, I have picked up quite a few unused minutes from AT&T that I will probably never use. Actually scratch probably, I will never use these minutes. I did not sign up for this company because of rollover minutes, but I am sure there are quite a few people who have. Its really hard for the customer to actually benefit with rollover minutes, because you have either myself(never uses minutes) or the person who almost always goes over on their minutes. You can only really get any benefit from rollover minutes if you plan to go over on your minutes, and most likely any benefits will be negligible because if you can over one month you are probably really close or have gone over on another in past months. The only possible way I can think of somebody benefiting from rollover minutes if they moved to a new area and they wanted to keep in touch with old friends or if they went from single to being in a relationship. Both of these cases would not be premeditated and of course would require somebody like myself who was already well below their monthly minutes.

Sad Sad News

2008-07-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

Anheuser-Busch will no longer be selling alcoholic energy drinks. This article points out that due to some pressure from state attorney generals, they can no longer sell these drinks because they were marketed towards minors. Granted Sparks is not an Anheuser-Busch product, you can only imagine that the current unhealthy legal climate will have a potentially deleterious effect on my beloved.
For those who somehow missed this craze in recent years, these drinks have canceled out any need for red bull in those instances where you were feeling a little tired to head out for a night on the town. These products had some serious side effects in addition to their many benefits. For example, long periods of sleep were not an option after a night of consuming Sparks. I personally would wake some Sundays way too early after just a few hours of sleep, heart racing and more jittery than a 1 week clean crack addict. But the few side effects were greatly outweighed by the benefits. I swear, I have never had a hang over after drinking sparks. One night I had 2 40's and somewhere between 2 and 4 Sparks, the next morning I woke up(heart racing of course) with no hangover. I may have been acting insane(dancing like a maniac at a small party), but I felt great all night and the following morning.
So in closing,Sparks has had a monumental effect on my being and I would like to use this post as a potential requiem for one of the greatest creations know to the modern college student and those few and proud who have kept the tradition alive after graduation. Please feel free to share any memories of Sparks that you may have below.

A Response to Orrin

2008-07-04T08:52:00.000-07:00

I will avoid my typical 'I used to work in a restaurant and this is why you should tip'. My question that I ask is would you really want to go into a sit down restaurant where you didnt have to tip? The easy reply is yes, but here is why you should say no:
1)The waiter/waitress would have to be paid a higher rate, say $10/hour up from their $2.13/hour. As a result the restaurant now has to find a way to make the extra $7.87 per hour. So the only viable way to make up for this shortfall is to raise the price of food. Even worse is that a new inequality will be created in that the smaller parties of people will have to pay more and the larger parties will get a better deal on food, that is if my thinking is correct.
2)Your service will be much worse. I think it is pretty easy to figure out where I am going with this one, but I will explain a little what I mean. If a waiter/waitress is getting paid mostly through tips, they will work harder to impress the customer, whereas if they get paid a flat rate, you better get used to waiting longer for your drink and not expect too many refills.

So I think those are two great reason why you should want to pay the 15% tip...but I am open to other rationale as to why you may not want to tip.

should you ask out every girl in sight

2008-07-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

I was waiting outside Clarendon Ballroom, just talking to girls.

Most girls were inside the ballroom and i was just outside on the street, but I had two conversations with two girls that went rather well. One was not particularly attractive but one was like a really good conversation, and in niether case did I ask their phone number. I think if you don't ask them out, you preserve your dignity a little or you seem more secure, if you don't ask them out within 5 minutes of meeting them. But then I'm like, I'll never see them again, what do i have to lose?

a post that will annoy allen

2008-07-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

As allen knows, I'm not a fan of waiters and waitresses and how I have to tip them on top of whatever else I'm paying. Recently, this over-the-counter restaurant which is one of my favors switched from over-the-counter food to employing waiters. To me, that's paying 15% more money for the same meal. It annoys me so.

Here's a letter I wrote to the manager.

Mr. Iskandar,

I am a long time customer of your restaurant and greatly enjoy the food there. I think the food is truly delicious as compared to other Mediterranean restaurants I service. Recently, however, I dislike the fact that unless you are eating your food outside the cafe, you must sit at a table and be waited on a waitress. Before, I considered your food affordable, but now, with a waiter bringing me food that I can easily pick up myself at the counter, I have to pay an extra 15% on top of whatever the price is.

I question why the establishment feels a need to hire waiters, when one can just as easily hire people to man the cash register. I also think that there should be a seating section where you do not have to have a waiter or waitress.

Sincerely,

O. Konheim

Thievery Corporation Live

2008-07-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

Before I start check out this Thievery remix to get a feel for what they are all about.

This past Saturday night, I was treated to the sublime aural experience of seeing Thievery Corporation live in Columbia, MD. We arrived at Merriweather around 7 and joined a number of others with an impromptu tailgate that included a couple of red stripes and some parking lot tennis(yeah, not sure how that came about either).

After a couple of beers, we proceeded to enter the venue and take in the end of the Ladytron's set. Its hard to really judge as we were hanging out way up in the lawn, taking in what was left of the sun while simultaneously enjoying some not-so-overpriced concert beverages.

Next up was TV on the Radio... a band that I am a really big fan of. They are the type of band that you have to really be in the mood for, but when you are they are very rewarding. They have a very unique--take up as much space as possible while using as little sound as possible--style. This translates into an interesting live sound, as some songs were pretty amazing, while others were definitely rough around the edges. Overall, I was really happy with their set. I am sure its pretty tough to recreate their studio recordings live, and they did a great job at trying at least.

Finally, it was time for Thievery Corporation. I had heard from a friend of a friend, that there live show wasnt that great, so I was kind of apprehensive heading into the concert. Fortunately, they were proved wrong, as Thievery Corporation put on an amazing show. Almost every song had a different vocalist, which really helped keep the energy up and made every song feel almost as if they were starting over again. My favorite vocalist was the woman who sang on Lebanese Blonde. It was known that this was on of their biggest tracks(featured on the Garden State soundtrack), and she did a great job of teasing the crowd by downplaying the song at the start and then gradually picking it up as the song progressed.

They did a great job of keeping the crowd moving by switching up the vocalists and throwing a more uptempo track in the mix every now and then. The lights and sound were pretty flawless, except for one minor issue with the first singer that came on who couldnt hear what she was singing and was forced to try her best to make a guess of how it sounded. There are way too many great tracks to try and list here from memory, but the tracks spread from their first album up until they played a song or two from their latest album which has not been released yet. I will say one of my other favorites was definitely The Richest Man in Babylon. They started this song unplugged before launching into the electric crowd sing-a-long type of song that it is.

This was one of those unfortunate concerts that were so good, there was no great way to end it. Its funny how that works out, you are enjoying yourself and having a great time, and then there is sudden comedown where you feel kind of letdown. Occasionally you get to soak in the punch drunk post concert haze, but other times you can only be satisfied by the encore that never really came into fruition.

Movie Recommendation

2008-07-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

Straw Dogs.

I have been watching a number of so called classics recently and somehow managed to slip into a movie coma. Earlier this year I realized that I had fallen into a musical coma after I was brought back to life thanks in part to MIA's Kala. No offense to the movies that I had been previously watching(The Last Detail, Five Easy Pieces), but they didnt have the same awakening effect as Straw Dogs.

This movie fallls nicely into the Psychological Thriller genre thanks its use of wavering tension by transforming seemingly innocent construction workers into eventual murdering menaces. Usually when I am watching movies at home, I usually shift around a million different times trying to find the most comfortable position; in contrast, I was frozen in the same position during the last hour of this movie. The only moving I really did, was in reaction to the increasing tension and that was still minimal. I would go into the plot and other typical aspects of a movie review, but I am too lazy and I think this movie is one that is much more enjoyable if you dont know how things are going to progress throughout. So check it out and let me know what you think.

Should I continue to go out tonight?

2008-06-28T20:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it's on my mind that i'm sleeping by myself, wouldn't it be great to be one of those people who goes to those bars and gets a girl to come home with them, even if it's immoral, to do it just once?

Two of our friends came up here a couple weeks ago and they were both envious of me because i could go up and talk to any girl I wanted and often quite successfully. This is actually an improvement over myself a half a year ago or a year ago. I felt pretty good about myself until one of them ended up going home with a girl. It made me feel like i wasn't that special anymore. I don't know, a lot of this stuff is attitude and I need to work on mine.

Today, I went to the folk life festival. I started talking to one girl on the metro on the way there, struck up conversation in the span of time it took to get from my stop to the smithsonian. I akwardly asked her to a movie since we were talking about movies, she turned me down. Logically, it makes sense to ask out more people, but sometimes it stings. The thing is looking back you regret more the chances you took than the chances you didn't take. Honestly, I don't just ask out eveery girl I see, I could do that, I don't even know why i don't do that more

Whatever, though. On the way back, I talked to a different girl. I kind of targeted her, in the sense that i saw this very pretty girl wearing this dress that was kind of elaborate and she looked like she was about to party or something, yet she was by herself. I was a little curious, why is this hot girl, dressed to go out, boarding the metro by herself at 11 in the direction away from Washington D.C.

So I sit next to her, and just ask "what's your story" and explain my observations. She just giggles and says "not much, going to visit a friend." She turns out to be quite friendly. I kind of looked at her and thought, "she seems kind of snobby, would never engage in conversation with a stranger," and I approached her in a bad mood because I just lost my cell and I don't know, but she was quite disarming and I diidn't feel in a bad mood before. It turns out she went to JMU '07 and we had stuff in common. I asked her if she wanted to hang out sometime, she said sure, but i don't really have a way of reaching her. i don't think it's too hard to get her email since i know where she works and her full name, you never know what will happen, i have to find a way to do it that doesn't make her feel invaded or that i came on too strong, or wahtever.

But the main point is my exchange with this girl made me feel good enough that I really don't feel the need to go out again and try to take some girl home, try to hook up with a girl or even try to get anotehr girl's phone number. i feel relatively entranced by this first girl, and relatively content with the night on the girl front. i think that might be rather pathetic in a way, and it could be a problem because this might not lead to foward progress and i could at a later point feel dissatisfied because i didn't push myself hard enugh tonight.

DC's Different

2008-06-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

The title of this post refers to a quote from Chapelle's Killing Them Softly standup from a few years back. He was referring to the fact that DC is a lot safer now than it was in the late 80's when crack was around. Not to say that crack no longer exists, but the original shock wave that it drove through the city has definitely subsided. Nonetheless, DC is different in other ways today.

I do a vast amount of grocery shopping at the Safeway down the street from my house. Its definitely the first grocery store that I have shopped at where I am in the majority. Every time I go there....something is happening. Either its somebody in front of me who is causing a scene in line because their check is bouncing, an ambulance is outside, or a kid is screaming at the top of their lungs with no parent in sight.

One of the more recent occurrences involved the outdoor ambulance. As I was walking up, I see two EMTs taking their time getting out of the ambulance and preparing for another Safeway pickup. Which makes this even better, was the fact that my roommate was telling me a week prior that his attempts to purchase ice cream was thwarted when an overweight woman had collapsed in front of the doors of the ice cream freezer. After an awkward glance, he decided to pass on ice cream for the time being. In my incident, there was somebody who had went down in front of the Starbucks counter. Everybody there seemed to be ambivalent to the woman as they continued on shopping as if this was a weekly occurrence. The woman seemed to be doing okay, as she was actually sitting up and looked to have control of her body.

Changing my web habits

2008-06-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

I think from now on I'm going to refuse myself wikipedia. It doesn't benefit anyone or deliver web business to any websites, and I'm also going to refuse google, since they're becoming the evil empire too. I'm going to search using www.altavista.com.

I don't think I'll see any difference in quality of searches but who knows?

Another Weekend Down

2008-06-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

The plan for Saturday was to get a beer at Marvin in the U st area and head down to Clarendon to meet up wit a few people that I knew who would be there. Well I found out on the way to Marvin that we would be joined by a few girls there, and that Sarah(girl I am dating) would be in the area meeting up with friends. With those two things, it was unlikely that I would be heading to VA at any point in the night.
It turned out that Marvin(my pick) was pretty amazing all around. The bar had a Belgian theme, and staying true to the theme they only had Belgian beers and mixed drinks. There was an outdoor bar where I spent most of my time, which was extremely well designed. There were some homey mirrors, as well as touches of exposed brick, in addition to the awning for protection from the elements with the white draperies to add to the relaxed milieu.
The music, which was mostly instrumental 60s and 70s soul tracks, was a perfect match for the bar. It was just loud enough to grab your attention, but not so loud as to deter conversation.
I hung out at Marvin with my friend and a few female lawyers that he knew through a childhood friend. It was interesting to hang out with late 20 something lawyers because they only have a touch of seriousness at the moment, and are really more interested in the social side of the city. I talked to one of them more than the rest and she was actually pretty interesting; one of those people watcher types(kind of like myself). We came up with a pretty interesting back story for this guy who was getting rejected by multiple girls...she started by describing him as the archetypal rapist from law and order and I just filled in the blanks from there.
After hanging out there until close to 1, I headed over to another bar with Sarah and tried my best to con her in to admitting that she was more than a jogger. At this bar I got to listen to reminiscing about Michigan from former students and a comparative analysis of which Kentucky Alum had the best NBA career thus far: Antoine Walker or Tayshaun Prince. Have you ever noticed that when people are talking about unfamiliar bars from a different college, you natrually start thinking about similar bars that you are more familiar with. For me, flashes of The Pub, Main Street, and Highlawn(in chronological order) filled my minds eye. Long nights and Longer mornings is all I can think about when I think of those places.
The night was ended with my first visit to Ben's Chili Bowl to meet up with the original crew, which made sure I would not get 8 hours of sleep as I made it back home at 4:30 and had to work at noon.

How Come?

2008-06-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

People talk louder on cell phones?

And how come when the average person attempts to use a credit card to pay for food at the grocery store they look like somebody just told them disarm a bomb?

an anti-wikipedia rant

2008-06-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

This is an article I'm writing that's anti-wikipedia. I was inspired by a book I read some of by Andrew Keen, called "The Cult of the Amutuer: How the Internet is Destroying Society." It's kind of hardcore serious, not like most of this blog, but I needed somewhere to put the article for the moment. I might submit it to a technology journal at some point:

Sometimes it can be frustrating, as one of the many people not in charge of the world, to see society straying down the path of disaster and no one doing anything about it. This is why the next best thing I can hope for is when someone who has more sway than me, in terms of the way the world works, is advocating on my behalf to prevent that chaos. Case in point: I have a weary feeling that the sudden advent of wikipedia could lead to some very negative consequences which is why I’ve been very relieved to have come across the work of Andrew Keen who has published the book “The Cult of the Amateur” in which he discusses the negative consequences of web 2.0.
Andrew Keen recently debated Jimmy Wales, the founder of wikipedia, at Oxford University. Keen said his primary concern was whether knowledge should be given away for free: “We’d all love knowledge to be given away for free just like food or drink or this building to be free, but the realities of this economic system is nothing is free.” His biggest critique of the web 2.0 is, “It’s premised on the idea that there is some virtue of giving away one’s intellectual labor without monetary reward.” In the process, Wikipedia is disintermediating the creative class and forcing the intelligent minds of society to give away their knowledge for free.
Wales responded to this by saying that this is untrue because the creative class is growing and that previous concerns with open source software haven’t held true. On the latter point, the dissemination of scientifically specific data that the average layman can’t understand is much different from giving away things in newspapers. In terms of whether the creative class growing or shrinking, the prevalent example cited by the moderator was how newspapers are cutting their staffs and Wales responds by saying that media is changing but he’s confident it’s just a matter of restructuring along new models. I personally don’t think his “confidence” is enough to put down the red flag just yet. In response to a question by an audience member, Keen said that he didn’t believe the creative industry is growing. Yes, Google is rapidly hiring people to counteract the balance of people being laid off of newspapers, but the new employees of Google are simply selling advertising so the intelligentsia is being cut off.
Despite the fact that a little of general public today have an insistence that the traditional media are inundated with biases, both parties agree that professional journalists do hold great value in our society. In fact, much of wikipedia’s source list is from newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Because it derives its credibility from these sources, wikipedia would be substantially weakened by the loss of these newspapers of which wikipedia is ironically playing a part in its demise.
“The idea of a world with no professional journalists is a pretty alarming one,” naturally responded Wales, but he admitted he didn’t really have an answer for how to fix that. If the creator of a catalyst for destroying the jobs in a very crucial industry that contributes to the betterment of society (professional journalists) didn’t see the loss of those jobs coming and doesn’t have an answer for it, I would call him an irresponsible inventor.
Andrew notes that the most distressing thing about web 2.0 is that people who can promote the disintermediation of the work of society’s scholars are the ones who stand to profit the most. You tube has made a bundle of money by providing a vehicle for copyrighted material to be destroyed. The number of copyright violations that exist on you tube are rampant and you tube does not make much effort to eliminate them. There is no form of punishment for people who violate copyright laws on you tube nor is there an easy procedure for anyone to remove a copyright for anyone who doesn’t own it.
At the same time, for wikipedia to be a non-profit organization does far more harm than good. The word “non-profit” has come to denote a force of good in the world, and it is admirable that wikipedia does not wish to make excessive money, but by refusing to ignore the economic realities of the situation and people affected, he is actively keeping money from people who play the most vital roles in our economy. The biggest and most important industry today has switched from manufacturing and service industries to information industries and these are the people at stake. To have a healthy web 2.0 society in which our scholars, artists, and other creative minds are encouraged to continue producing their products, they have to be financially rewarded and compensated.
When asked why he doesn’t reward his contributors, Wales said that it’s for the same reason craigslist.org doesn’t want to make or distribute money off his site: Because the users of his site don’t want him too. This is not an accurate representation of what all the stakeholders of his site want or of the people being affected. There surely are scholars and experts in fields who would want to be paid for their work but are unable to demand payment because people are willing to do it for free. As it exists in actual economic situations outside the internet, the market is disrupted in this case. There are also sources who get cited in wikipedia who are stakeholders as well, and they deserve to have a say in among other things: Whether people get paid for their content, whether people remain anonymous, how actively and quickly copyright violations are removed. When the moderator asked whether Wales partner up with the New York Times or other media outlets, Wales responded that that would be like the Red Cross partnering up with a for-profit hospital. For that analogy to reflect wikipedia’s relation to the New York Times, The Red Cross would have to be taking supplies from a for-profit hospital, because wikipedia hinders the effectiveness of the New York Times and other print media and the benefits that wikipedia gets from the New York Times are a one-way street.
To fix this, Keen recommends we as the general public have to recognize the value of the media. Keen says, “The truth is that the internet is a mirror…The problem with the internet is that it reflects ourselves, it reflects our impatience, our narcissism, our laziness, and we have to be willing either to pay for the physical newspaper or we have to be willing to put up with going on web sites and putting up with advertising.” “If we think that newspapers have no right to make a profit,” than those are the consequences we face. The media does have public value, and whether we use the media in ways that do or don’t reward them, we are all increasingly dependent on a threatened institution.

Here is what I've learned about how to approach girls at bars

2008-06-08T20:55:00.000-07:00

So lately I've come to realize that although my life has consisted of a lot of failure with the opposite sex, I do have some skills that my peers don't have. In fact, I'm quite proud of this, and was quite proud of this last night when I was able to approach girls that my friends weren't. Then again, one of my friends had gone farther with a girl he met at Adams Morgan than I ever have, so that creates a great sense of confusion in me, but then agian, my friend can't even remember how he got that far with the girl because he was so drunk. Still, it created a lopsided experience.

Perhaps, we just all have different skills, and in terms of the other skills I think I might generally know what I'm doing but my history might simply because of a different set of circumstances. But I've recently come to the proud realization that I do have some skills. On a recent trip to Boston, I met with a friend who had the same way of interacting with people including girls in bars that I do, but he was so unapologetic about it, that it made me realize that my way of doing it, was actually a pretty good way all along.

So basically, here's how to meet/approach girls in bars:
-It's best to look like you're not there just to meet them and that you have something better to do. In fact, it's best to have something better to do to begin with. Go to a bar to watch the game, play darts, if it's a bar that serves good food, bring a book/newspaper/magazine or something and eat a meal while reading a magazine.
-One way is to kind of pick up on some commonality in the environment and enter the conversation with that. If they have a shirt that you can make some comment on, if they're reading a book, if you and them are watching the same game on tv, or the same show, you could even overhear their conversation and enter with that. this is usually best for when you look like you're not there to meet them. After a few lines introduce yourself. That way it's just very natural
-You could also pretend to be a lost tourist and just ask them "is there anything good around here to see, is this a good place to eat"
-You could also ask them a really random question, that will throw them off guard, i'll try to think of a good example, anything that might make them curious like "what's your favorite type of ice cream," "what's your ethnicity," if you're reading a book, try asking them something relevant to whatever it is your reading, like "excuse me, how long did it take you to pick out the outfit your wearing?" "why" "well, i'm reading in this magazine that girls take an hour on average to pick out their outfits" (i'm not saying that's a good example but you get the idea),
make this something that isn't a suggestion for a date, like "do you like rock shows"
-You can also hit on them but do so in a very ironic and self-referential way to show how corny you might know you're being
-If you're going to approach them, do so quickly, don't dawdle around near her working the nerve to talk
-It's always better if you have someone else and appear to ahve a fun time together, because that way people know that at least someone likes your company. Also, if you get shot down or something, you don't have to sit around and brood about it, you can just go to your friend and continue the fun you were having before

Summary of last night

2008-06-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

Tonight, i had the fortune of having one of those eventful and exciting evenings, the kind that you usually only have in college. Jason and Josh visited from out of town, Allen and I jointly invited them and Evan Kays as well but he didn't make it.We met in Adams Morgan and part of the evening revolved around us all getting girls and at the start of the evening, I was really winning.

They were all looking at girls and feeling unable to approach them, and thanks to help from Ed, I was able to talk to pretty much anyone there with some degree of success. Ed's example has really taught me a lot. At the first bar, I met one girl I really liked talking to (at first, on behalf of Jason), but the group quickly wanted to move locations every 10 minutes which increased their beer tabs substantially.

Jason started talking to one girl who I wanted to talk to and I felt discouraged that Jason started tlaking to her first and I felt bummed out and was thinking about leaving and going home. I boarded a bus and went along the bus route fora while, the bus driver noticed I was taking the bus more than 2 ways so she encouraged two girls to start talking to me, i liked talking to them, but allen called me and said they had left the dance place, so i got off the bus. Allen's friend came by but I felt blah about her so I left and decided to get a felafel on my own, when just then Josh came running down the street incredibly drunk.

Drunkedness has an interesting effect on Josh: His IQ seems to go down way more than any other drunk person. Allen was trying to find Josh and I was thinking of returning to the club where Allen was but just then, Josh gets a call from Jason saying he's at the Hampton Inn at S 20th Street, but I'm like damnit, I need a felafel. So we wait in line for the felafel, then I pretend I have some idea where the Hampton Inn is to calm Josh down and we start walking towards S 20th Street.

When we get to 20th street, there's no hampton inn, jason is calling every 5 minutes worried and then I realize, using the kind of navigation skills that noone except myself possesses in terms of knowing arlington's streets, i start to realize something: "South 20th Street"? Not Southeast 20th Street. He tells me the cross-street is Eades and then I realize, he's in Crystal City (over 5 miles away). What the hell? I ask him how he winded up there: he says he doesn't remember.So we start to walk to the metro to save money, but Jason isn't aware of the plan, so he jumps into the can and before we know it, Jason takes a cab all the way to my house.

Then we find Jason who has a pretty interesting story of his own: Mr. "I don't know how to approach girls" makes it all the way to some girl's apartment, he can't really remember how he got there or how he wound up out on the street outside the apartment. Then instead of getting out of the cab and taking the metro, he jumps into the cab, which proceeds to take them to my house but the cab driver is a D.C. cab and his newly installed meter only goes to 20 dollars, so he insists on dumping us a half mile from my house.

So we walk a half mile but this is a little difficult because Josh is drunk as hell. He bangs on street signs and I'm worried he'll alert the neighborhood watch or police but Jason keeps him under contorl and they make it safely to my house. Also, as a little bit of a prank, I tell Jason and Josh I only have one bed for them, so they're sharing a bed right now. I think I kind of feel bad about this and offer them my bed which is slightly wider, but they seem fairly content sharing a single, so whatever. I think i might take a picture and post it on facebook.

Epilogue: I decided not to take a picture, in fact, I decided that this cruel trick had gone on long enough so i was like, do either of you want to move, and they were both very comfortable where they were and didn't feel like moving. What was more interesting was that this cleaning lady who comes by once a month was coming in so she was going to see these 2 guys she didn't know sleeping with each other in this bed and she comes in at 6 am so i'm not waking up that early.

Just Like College

2008-06-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

So last night was eerily reminiscent of my days JMU. I think part of that had to with the fact that I went out with three former students(Orrin has a really good write up, hopefully he will paste it here). In addition to just being out with guys from school, there was the typical consumption of large quantities of alcohol, as well as the melodramatic moment with the girl im dating.
We started off at Asylum around 8:30 after having a couple beers at my house. Asylum was one of those really good ideas, that was actually really bad. They have a happy hour where Miller High Lifes start at 50 cents and then go up 50 cents an hour until they $3 at 11pm. As Reed used to say, on a scale of 1 to 10 I was hammered before 10pm. I was shouting "hammer time" and "MC Hammered" before the time I would normally even leave my place.
After Asylum, we headed over to Millie and Al's where my body started rejecting everything I tried to put in it. I struggled through a slice of pizza and some cheap beer.
Next, we headed to over to Reef. This place is a must because its never too crowded and its got a really good atmosphere for Adams Morgan. There was no magic like last time when two of the guys ended up in Silver Spring with two girls they met there. From the window looking out into the madness of Adams Morgan, we noticed a bunch of girls heading into Grand Central across the street. We made our way over with Daft Punk playing as we entered the place. This was enough to fire me up and buy a round of jagers for the group. From what I can remember, I really liked this place(first time i ever checked out) even though the mystery girl hated it. And so I followed the girl across the street to 18th and red, while one guy disappeared and another was still talking to a girl in Grand Central. While we were waiting in line, I ended up making a bit of a scene because of the way she hugged this guy. Fortunately it was quick and nothing really came of it. I for some reason decided to get a white russian even after my body hadnt accepted a drink in some time. I am not so sure of this last place, the night gets hazy but there are some pictures of me floating around the net where I pretty fucked up. I have no idea of the time at this point, but I end up sharing a cab with the girl and she gets dropped off first and then I take the long expensive ride home. I send a few texts and hit up some club facebook and crash.

The Dating Game: Mistakes

2008-06-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

I made the fatal mistake of talking about the ex last night. I dont think there are too many things worse. But minus the mistake, last night was really good.

Cell Phone History Pt 2. LG VX4400

2008-06-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

...And then there was color(and flipping). The next phone(s) I had was definitely the phone that took the greatest beating of all the phones that I have ever owned. This poor guy was phone jacked, thrown multiple times(not by me), and inadvertently egged(by me).
I first met this phone at a track meet in Richmond. We were brought together by the fact that is was my birthday and I needed a serious upgrade from my previous green screen. This phone led to the development of texting, purchased ringtones, and no more snake.
This phone made it a good 6 month without incident, but then disaster struck on a road trip to ECU. We were heading to this place called Cavern. Before we headed out, we(or at least I) got pretty belligerent and as a result remember very little from inside the club. I remember saying the place wasnt bad later on, but was quickly corrected. Apparently the place was a shit hole and nobody really enjoyed except for myself and one other guy who was equally trashed. We leave the Cavern and as we are heading back to the car I hear "Allen, somebody threw a brick through your window". This was said by somebody who is always making things up, so I didnt believe it until I was standing by my car minus one window. I ended up coming close to tears(alcohol can do that) because my phone was stolen and I had a date the next day, which was ultimately why I didnt bring the phone in with me(drunk dialing was a common occurrence in those days).
Well that ends the first of two lives of this phone(will do another post for the second life), but I think the post must go on for this turned out to be an eventful weekends. I drove back to JMU the next morning, freezing...because the tape on the window was no match for the cold and rain. I cant remember how it happened but we decided to have a party at my place that night. Thank God for Aim because without the phone, the party would have been pretty ugly. I started the night out driving people from different places in town over to the party. As a result, I was very sober and was looking for a way to change that. We didnt have parties all the time, but when we did we would save the left over jungle juice in whatever containers we could find. So we unfortunately had a bit of jungle juice in the fridge, and we(Miller and myself) proceeded to destroy all that was left and ended up destroying ourselves in the process. From this point on, the night gets good. I proceed to make out with Dena's future roommate, head over to another party, vomit all over myself as well as in the cab on the way back home. The next night at dinner, I was posed the question "Do you remember what you did last night?". I replied that I did not know, and after a few retellings and many second hand accounts, I came to believe that I actually made out with Dena. I later found out that this is when she first fell in love with me. Kind of weird considering I made out with her good friend(I dont know if she even knows about this?).
Well that is the first part of a two parter....second half coming shortly

Netflix is going down

2008-05-29T19:07:00.001-07:00

I have been in a serious battle with my netflix queue all year and have been getting my ass kicked pretty severely. I have finally figured out the main reason of my thrashing and have been fighting back and starting to get the upper hand.
My netflix strategy is to hit up rotten tomatoes and check out new rentals with high ratings and add as I go. Well my Freakonomics fanaticism has finally paid off and I am using my knowledge to pump myself up to take my queue down into the single digits. Every week I would find myself adding as many movies as I had watched. The stagnant queue was quite frustrating, but recently my list has been shrinking down. An example from Freakonomics is their connection of a falling crime rate to the legalization of abortion. The idea is obviously controversial, but they point out that the lack of unwanted babies contributed to an unexpected decline after the ruthless 80's. I am making the connection that the reason why I was being battered by netflix was because of the oscars. My thinking goes that the end of year oscar push ended or always end up with a ton of good movies being released on dvd in the first few months of the year and now I am in the January/February theatrical releases, which isnt pretty but its good for me and bad for my queue. I know its not quite Freakonomics but its good to know.

Capitol Hill Sexual Escapades

2008-05-29T19:04:00.001-07:00

This blog is a pretty good read.
http://wonkette.com/archives/the-lost-washingtonienne-wonkette-exclusive-etc-etc-004162.php

Bon Iver-Stacks!

2008-05-27T19:23:00.001-07:00

This is not a real video...but this is the final song I raved about

Music You Should Know: Bon Iver

2008-05-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

Bon Iver has a guitar and a voice and an impromptu backing band of thuds and hand claps. Bon Iver got my attention after I heard Skinny Love on his myspace page, and proceeded to list that as my favorite song that I had heard this year. A couple months later, I have listened to the album quite a few times and am always blown away. If you are a fan of singer/songwriters, this is one not to miss. I guess you could say he is a folk artist with a heavy dose of soul thrown into the mix. His voice is simply amazing, and it is even better with the great layering that is on the record.

The record For Emma, Forever Ago is one that just makes you sit, lose focus of your current task, and just listen. The length is somewhat short, but that is because none of the songs are any longer than they need to be. Each song leads to another adventure, and you are let down gently with the great final track re:Stacks. Time will tell whether or not this is a truly great album in my mind, but for now, it the album of the year.

http://www.myspace.com/boniver

Not good with signs

2008-05-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

Well I hung out with the girl last night and kind of got shot down, but apparently all was not lost. She was talking about how she never goes to the rooftop of her building because she never has anybody to go with her. So I said I would bring the beer and the snacks if she wanted to hang out up there and she replied with a weak ok. I kind of took that as a sign that she just wanted to be friends, which was fine with me because I like having attractive female friends.

Well today I was gchatting it up and at the end of our conversation she says(types):
i should go do my study hours

actually wait

should i take it personally that you still haven't asked me for my number?

im kinda on the blunt side...

I look at that as good and bad. Its good because she is a cool girl but its bad because that type of thing has been the kiss of death in the past. I mean I could do multiple blog series from past incidences. We will see....

A little nervous

2008-05-26T10:31:00.000-07:00

In my last actual post I mentioned something about how I blew an opportunity with this girl when I was at work. Things have changed quickly and now I am meeting her later for a drink. I of course never would have had the guts to actually ask her to hang out, so the fact that she came up with the idea is pretty crazy to me given how attractive she is. I am sure it will be casual, but there is always that little voice saying maybe she is into me.
Depending on how things turn out, I might post a little more about how things have come to fruition the past couple of days.

At somewhat of a standstill

2008-05-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

I've been definitely feeling down-and-out the last few days, by which I mean a sort-of depression, but not neccessarily about much. I finished a semester of grad school and that was very tough and I'm very proud of myself for finishing that with a higher GPA, since then I've just been pretty lazy, and maybe a little depressed or empty but i'm not entirely sure about what, so maybe i can try to figure that out here.

I haven't had much social motivation lately to try to find people to hang out with or dates or hook-up opportunities. It could be described as something like a lower sex-drive but it's kind of across the board.

This weekend, for example, I just dreaded. I think I dread the weekends in the sense that the weekends is a time of pressure. It's a time where your schedule is blank.

During the weekdays, you go about your life and you try and find time for the fun and the social in between what it is you have to do and there's no pressure to have fun, or to write or to pursue your hobbies or to be social. The weekends, you feel pressure to make something out of your day, whether social or whether it is experiencing the world, and you want to feel like you did something come Sunday night.

Obviously, this is just one weekend at a time, but you don't want to look aruond and think my friends are all married, engaged, doing this or that, and i'm hardly ever getting a date, or I'm still living at home without health insurance whereas my friends have solid jobs. There is pressure to pursue some of my larger goals that I have more time to ponder why they're not coming true over the weekend. Obviously, the solution is to disown my current friends and find a set of friends who are losers so i feel good by association. No, I'm just kidding.

I think I don't feel like exerting the energy any more to call my friends and other people over the weekend and be like "what are you doing?" because I'm a little tired of looking desperate. I'm clearly one of those people who needs to reach out to others rather than someone who people naturally seek out in their plans. I'm clearly also an extrovert which means I need a social element in my life as well.

But seriously, I'm definitely slowing down lately on even trying on the weekend. Anyway, thanks for letting me share

satisfaction

2008-05-22T20:56:00.001-07:00

yes

Seven-year-old boy steals grandmother's SUV

2008-05-22T20:52:00.001-07:00

shiiiit

Tired

2008-05-22T20:36:00.001-07:00

I have been tired lately and havent really posted all that much. There have definitely been some post worthy days/nights, but I think I will let them live in the past and hopefully post some more in the future. I already have the next couple weekends planned out, so I am sure more events will unfold in a typical fashion.
I will say today that I had a chance to get a phone number at work and blew it. I fortunately have a backup plan, but am not too worried about it. I am finally more focused towards running, so I dont have to stress too much about lack of a social life with the opposite sex. I will say though that this girl is very very attractive.
As tired as I am, I still made it through Episode 4 of the 4th Season of Nip/Tuck and was really impressed. I was kind of a fan, enough to rent the dvd, but now I am hooked. All the characters are really contrived(the ladies man and the nerdy other half), but the show is scripted extremely well and brings out the best of all the characters.
I was disappointed with the new Radiohead album that I finally picked up. The first listen was a real letdown, but listening a little louder through my new headphones has made up for some of the initial listening.

Being repetitive here, but here's a radical sports concept

2008-05-18T20:48:00.000-07:00

First of all: Way to go Celtics! I like James and the Cleveland Cavs (especially West and Szerbiak) but they've recently made the finals and James is still a baby. He'll probably win it soon. Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett aren't going to be around forever.

But, here's a revolutionary concept I'd like to introduce to the press/fans: Just because one team wins, that doesn't mean the other team did poorly.

Logically, you could have 4 options: One team plays poorly and one team plays well (2 out of 4 options), both teams play well, or both teams play poorly. I've already seen sports commentators discussing what went wrong with the Cavs or what their weaknesses are. How about the simple explanation: They played well but the other team played better.

I dislike how at the end of games they march out the losing coach in the press conference like he's a middle schooler who just got sent to the principal's office for after-school detention: "So what did you do wrong today??"

The worst case of this was at the Memphis-Kansas NCAA final last March where the commentators for ESPN or CBS or whichever channel the game was being broadcast on thought that Memphis had it in the bag so they were talking about how Memphis had this great season and was the better team all along and started dissecting why Kansas was the wrong team. But as my track coach used to say, "Balls bounce certain ways" (the whole quote was about how running is less open to upsets than most sports because a 5:00 miler would never be able to beat a 4:30 miler, but a basketball team could score an upset because balls bounce certain ways). Anyway, Kansas had a couple very lucky breaks and scored an upset and all of a sudden the same statistics that revealed upon examination by the experts that Kansas was the inferior team were magically reexamined to reveal that in fact, Kansas was the superior team after all.

The stat sheet had changed in one very minor way: Kansas had one more field goal than it had a moment before when Kansas was the losing team.

Of course that's all Kansas needs to win a game, but my point again is that we try to fit square pegs into round holes in sports commentary.

We Are Scientists - After Hours

2008-05-15T21:52:00.001-07:00

Different sound... but I like it... just not as much as the old sound

Cell Phone History Part 1: Green Screen

2008-05-14T18:38:00.000-07:00

Nokia 5110 (757)870-3412
Circa Spring 2002 I was given the control of a Nokia 5110 with no idea of how significant an effect this mobile device and others like it would change my life. The numerous arguments with the first girlfriend, the abundant drunk dials, the similar drunk texts(not available with this particular phone), the receiving of numbers from girls that never worked out, and everything in between.
The picture doesnt really do the phone justice as it turned off in it. When on the phone exudes a pleasant green glow that could be compared to the grass on a clear summer day(grass from Oregon Trail that is). Seeing this phone after so many years takes me to a time of innocence, a time when I had not yet even had a sip of alcohol. It takes me back to argument after argument and a period I would definitely not want to go back to. I will say the phone was around for a few months while I was single during my second year of college, which would also mean that it was around during my first time ever being drunk. I cant remember if I was drunk or just buzzed as I only had 3 beers that night, but I remember leaving a couple of messages on my dorm room phone as I walked back to campus.
After some time with the phone I became a little tired of the boring exterior. As I was walking through the mall back at home, I noticed a stand in the middle that was selling replaceable face plates for my phone. I will say that I avoid those random stands in the middle of the mall like mink in the summertime, but on this particular occasion I ended up picking up a sweet blue/black carbon fiber faceplate that didnt really fit correctly but still made my phone look sincere.
One final awesomeness that must be discussed is the snake game. If you have no idea what came I am referring to then you didnt have a cell phone around this time but fortunately you can check the game out here.
The unfortunate day came when I had to part ways with my beloved green screen. I received a new phone as my 20th birthday present. This phone would not be nearly as unscathed as the Nokia 5110....

Black Kids - I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend (Official)

2008-05-14T18:37:00.001-07:00

Anybody want to see these guys tomorrow night? Thursday that is.

A couple sites

2008-05-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

This site led me to this site.

Site 1 - Worst Email Ever
Site 2 - Men are Better than Women

Potential Future Post: Cell Phone History

2008-05-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

How many people do you know who have only owned a single cell phone during their cell phone owning history? Probably not many given the number of I-lost/broke-my-cell-phone-now-I-need -your-number groups on facebook or the slightly more original I-know-you-hate-those-I-lost/broke-my-cell-phone-groups-but-I-did-and-I-need-your-number.
I was thinking about the phones I had and the stories surrounding those phones, and realized they probably lead to a pretty entertaining blog post. I could just as easily give up as the sheer turnover in the cell phone industry makes it extremely difficult to even find out the style of a phone from just a couple years back. But I will give my best effort to track back to 2001...

Some of highlights that will hopefully be more detailed in a full post:
-7578703412
-The original green screen
-Carbon Fiber faceplate upgrade
-7578713789
-Your Body is a Wonderland ringtone
-Phone Thrown (by Dena)
-Phone ends up in pocket with egg
-Phone ends up in toilet
-A little craigslist
-5402461528

So thats most of all the major occurrences but I hope to expand later with pictures and more details about the aforementioned highlights.

Addition: I was doing some research for pictures and remembered that at some point my parents paid full price for a replacement phone but I couldnt remember what led to that and then it came to there was an incident when a phone was stolen. I may have to break the post up into multiple posts to tell the stories in greater detail.

Saturday Night Live still keeps chugging

2008-05-10T22:21:00.000-07:00

It seems like the theme of the blog is generally centered around weekends. We write about weekends which gets me thinking of Saturday Night Live, the show that has been part of our pop culture for 30+ years at fluctuating levels. If you had to make a list of shows that have influenced pop culture the most or better yet, a tv show that people can name or quote lines of off the top of their head, Saturday Night Live might be near the top, and it's ironically, on the worst night of the week to have a show.

It probably had survived so long because Nielsen Ratings measure a show's performance by your share of the TV audience and there is no one else who feels its of any use to put on a show on a Saturday Night. I used to think that Saturday Night Live's audience is primarily composed of people too young or too old to go out on a Saturday Night but there is a significant portion of people our age who are watching the show too.

I think that what's interesting about Saturday Night Live is that while it's not as popular as it was in the Rock/Farley/Spade/Hartman days (I'm not going to include Adam Sandler in that era because he has taken his talent and squandered with sooo many bad movies since his SNL days), it still manages to poke its head into pop culture when you're ready to call it down and out. I would've actually thought that Saturday Night Live stood a good chance of being killed when youtube started becoming popular since both youtube and saturday night live both cater to the audience who wants their comedy in 5-minute sketches but SNL found a way to jump on board the trend with the digital shorts produced by Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaeffer and Jorma Takome (Andy is the one on camera). "Dick in a Box" and "Lazy Sundae" are two that have gone viral on youtube, but there's also "Iran so Far," Adam Samberg's love song to the President of Iran with Adam Levine providing some of the vocals, and a hillarious one with Tom Hanks singing "Don't Touch my Testicles." The "Iran So Far" is probably the funniest thing Andy Samberg has done in my opinion and it's possibly the best thing Saturday Night Live has done all season.

The other smart thing Saturday Night Live is doing that nothing else on NBC is doing is its not giving away all its content for free on the internet. You can't watch an entire episode of Saturday Night Live online like you can for many shows on hulu or their respective network sites. They usually post about 2 or 3 sketches a week but I recently discovered that the people in charge of posting the sketches online aren't picking the best ones. I think this is smart because SNL isn't like a TV show. It does basically the same stuff as youtube. A lot of the funnier material (the stuff that isn't recycled from past skits) is usually in the show and it's that five-minute stuff that you're dying to see over and over again.

I would have thought that the show would have suffered because about 2 years ago they had some serious budget cuts and had to cut 5 or 6 people, and now their cast is much smaller and less experienced. Then again, an astoundingly high number of the members of the current cast are capable of doing a Christopher Walken impression. Check out this skit where you will see 8 seperate members of the current Saturday Night Live cast impersonate Christopher Walken:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/16389/saturday-night-live-meet-the-family#x-4,cClips,1
After watching this, I can reach two conclusions: 1) It's very easy to impersonate Christopher Walken or 2) The cast is, in fact, a talented group of comedic actors
All I can say is I tried seeing if I could talk like Christopher Walken for a few minutes by playing this skit and trying to mimic the way they talk. It's harder than it looks.

*By the way, the Deer Hunter, mentioned in the skit, is a movie about the Vietnam War that is incredibly disturbing. It's the last thing someone would find "hillarious"

Also, just for the heck of it, because as Allen says, lists are popular, i'll give you a quick rundown of my opinion of the best cast members SNL has ever had. I'm not going to include Adam Sandler even though he's clearly one of the ten most successful and popular characters because I just personally am not a fan of him. I think he was incredibly lucky to do as well as he did. He doesn't just have the boyish charm of a 12-year old, I think he has the IQ of a 12-year old, too. From what I've seen of the very first 10 years, I'm not convinced that John Belushi or Chevy Chase were particularly funny either. I'll say that Dan Akroyd is a pretty good straight man. Ok, anyway:
1. Phil Hartman-So versatile and also incredibly edgey. Did anyone know that the Sinatra family (Frank Sinatra was still alive and in fairly decent health) was up on arms about that Sinatra skit he did? He had so much potential post-SNL too.
2. Mike Meyers-The hyper-active kid was a favorite of mine
3. Chris Farley-I think obviously everyone got to know how talented he was on SNL and after SNL. Tragic story as well.
4. Dana Carvey-Chopping Broccoli is a pretty good skit of his
5. John Lovitz-Pretty underrated in my opinion. Not too good of a fit post-SNL, but at sketch comedy, he was as good as they get and Lorne Michaels thought so too
6. Norm McDonald-I loved his deadpan style
7. Will Ferrell-Well, pretty much everyone knows how talented he is
8. Chris Rock-They say he was underused but I really wouldn't have been able to think up a whole lot of uses for Chris Rock if I was a writer
9. David Spade-He's a little twirp, but, seriously, he's kind of like my hero too. He's the little kid in gym class who gets beaten up by the jock, but at least he gets a witty verbal jab off on the process
10. Amy Poehler-Affirmative action dictates we have to put a female in, but there were a lot of talented ones to chose from. The hard question was who to put first, since by putting her at #10 i'm saying she's the most talented female ever on the show, and i don't know about that
11. Jimmy Fallon-I don't care if he laughed at the camera, he seemed like a cool guy and I loved his music parodies.
12. Tim Meadows-Mainly a straight guy but a very good one at that
13. Jan Hooks-She was on in the late 80s, later did 3rd Rock from the Sun
14. Tracy Morgan-He's probably kind of dumb in real life, but used it to full effect on the show. Brian Fellows, Astronaut Jones, the homeless guy who lived in a sewer
15 Terry Sweeny-The only gay cast member ever in the history of Saturdy Night Live and a fairly funny guy at that
16 Chris Kattan-Not so much for Mango but some of the other stuff he did
17. Mark McKinney-Was on Kids in the Hall before SNL, joined the cast for a year in the mid-90s.
18. Ellen Cleighorne-The token black woman on the cast during the early 90's, interesting fact: according to Jay Mohr's tell-all memoir of his time there, she was a bitch who never talked to anyone
19. Julia Sweeny-She was the sexually ambigous "It's Pat" character, but she was fairly versatile and lasted quite a while during the show's golden age
20. Kristen Wiig-You should have to earn your place on one of these lists by being on the show for a few years, but she's just too good. The Target Lady, Penelope, Nancy Pelosi, she was hillarious in the film Knocked Up as the assistant on the E! network
You know, what I could easily exchange the last 10 for 10 others, I forgot to add Darrell Hammond, Dan Akroyd, Colin Quinn...., so whatever

Surgery

2008-05-07T17:13:00.000-07:00

This is more running related...so you can find out about my surgical experience here

Short Recap

2008-05-05T19:30:00.000-07:00

I guess before I get into the weekend I should link to the new details that Jessica Cutler(from a couple posts ago) was recently connected to Spitzers prostitution ring. I would like to go on the record saying that I am a fan of prostitution. I think sex is a healthy part of our society and shouldnt be repressed. If you need to pay for sex, than I am all for it. I will openly to admit to being open to the possibility later on down the road.

Now for the quick weekend recap..

I went to be early friday to rest up for saturday and byt relaunch party. All my roommates were attending and I was also bringing a guy from my stores running group along for the fun. I headed to my friends place right next to where I work with a couple 6 packs and we had some really good thai food to go along with the beers. I will say Bells porter is out of this world....easily one of my top 3 favorite beers ever. It was porter that tasted more like a chocolate stout.

We rode the metro over to new york ave and arrived into a dark bottom floor room of an unfinished high rise. There were some pictures and paintings here and there and a band on stage. We got there late, so we missed most of the bands, but I was more into checking out the DJ's that were closing out the night. I started to get a little buzz as the first DJ started, and it took a little while for me to get into him but the second guy(Chris Burns) was on fire from the start. He started off with a nice bongo beat mixed with another track that just wouldnt let me stand still. Fortunately everybody else I was with had the same reaction and we were all moving faster and faster as the tempo increased. Not long into the set, I felt a little perspiration which later turned into feeling like I just stepped out of the shower. I always used to see the ads saying you would dance until you were soaking wet, but I didnt believe them until Saturday night.

I guess that was the extent of my weekend really. I have surgery coming up in the middle of week so I will not have any good weekend stories but I am sure I will have some post-op tales.

Saturday in pictures

How will Obama pull his way out?

2008-05-04T13:25:00.000-07:00

I voted for Obama and I think Obama's really smart and I like his plan, but I think Obama might have no way out of this Jeremiah Wright scandal. Of course, I still am hoping he wins, but it's hard for Obama to rationalize to voters how he thinks his pastor is crazy, yet went to him for 20 years. I am still rooting for him, because:

-Hillary Clinton has much less experience than him anyway. She's only been a senator for four years longer than him. Why do people think that's such a big deal? (more on this at this fascinating article: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/19767182/hillarys_flimsy_case)It also just seems like a sneaky way to go around the constitution to have Bill in office again

-John McCain supported the war and still thinks it's a good idea. He's an improvement over Bush but the conservative party really has little legitimacy at this point. Also, John McCain was a prisoner of war: Have you seen the Manchurian Candidate?

I just think it will be interesting to see him find his way out of this mess.

Although, on the flip side, I'll play devil's advocate here: They talk about how Obama has the ability to bring people together, but can't that be given and taken away very easily by a fickle public and isn't it less a matter of a politician's personal quality than how people respond to him? For example, if I wanted to praise American Idol, I could say it has the power to bring people together because it's the #1 television program, but wouldn't it just be easier to talk about what makes American Idol great? My point: Whoever wins, will by definition have brought enough people together by them all voting for him.

The DC Madam case

2008-05-03T12:00:00.001-07:00

I don't know of any feasible reason why there's a need to waste a federal court's time on a prostitution case like that. I felt a certain sense of disgust when I read the articles in the Washington Post this past week about how women were once prostitutes had to be bought before a court to be mulled over by federal prosecutors who needed to know intimate details about their past lives. In one case, it might potentially end the career of a woman who was once a prostitute but is now in the navy. And when I heard about the D.C. madam hanging herself, I thought that was equally awful and sad.

I understand the idea of outlawing prostitution. If you don't outlaw it, people might be forced to do it who don't want to do it because economic conditions necessitate it. But if people want to do it badly enough that they are willing to circumvent the law, than I really don't see any problem with it. I also just think there's just a sexual hypocrisy with which we view prostitution: As if that's any more sinful than any of the legal means by which we go about pursuing sex. I actually feel that prostitution is a more moral way of going about getting a one-night stand than going to a bar and trying to pick up someone there. It's entirely consensual (one person's not drink) and there's no deception or lying about it. I'm not sure if I believe that entirely, but it's just food for thought. Either way, I don't think we should be so quick to label a scarlett letter on public officials who have used this call service or anything like that. I thought the political pressure of the governor of New York to resign was kind of dumb. It made a little more sense to hate him for the fact that he busted prostitution rings and then used a prostitute himself, but it was still dumb to pretend it was anything other than the prostitution (they said it was racketeering charges).

I think Holland has a better way of doing it. That's just me.

Lebron vs. Deshawn vs. Jay-Z vs. Soulja Boy vs. Pro'verb

2008-05-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

So not long ago, one of the lesser known Wizards called Lebron overrated. Lebron replied with something along the lines of "Me paying attention to that is like Jay-Z worrying about something Soulja Boy said. Thursday(a couple days later), Soulja Boy slyly makes an appearance to the game and is focused on during a number of timeouts. Friday night Lebron hosts a party at DC club and Jay Z sends down this song which is a diss on Deshawn Stevenson. Not long after an unknown DC rapper Pro'verb replies to Jay-Z with this cut.
Clearly the reply is much better than Jay-Z's but I think Deshawn was actually just happy to have a song done directed towards him from Jay-Z. Even Gilbert got into the fun and stated that there were three people he would want to write a song about him "Jay-Z, Michael Jackson, and Prince"

DC Legend: Jessica Cutler

2008-05-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

I just recently came across a story from a couple years back. A mail staffer for a Senator who made 25k a year(which is not much in DC) ended up with a number of "boyfriends" from the office and detailed this in a blog which has been archived for future generations here.

Its really entertaining and if you are really curious pictures are here and playboy pictures exist with a little searching. She's not super attractive but I think there needs to be a new categorization in the vein of speed goggles that deals with this phenomenon.

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/more_on_jessica_cutler/

AM

2008-04-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

As I was heading to the grocery store this morning in Chevy Chase, I passed an old guy who was looking into windows of shops that were either not open or not even completed. Something about it just didnt feel right so I moved ahead and moved on with my day.
Well guess who I see in Giant when I am in the checkout line? This time he is looking down the aisles looking out of place once again, but this time when he passes me I hear talking to himself and he says "Where did that girl go". I mean he could have been really looking for somebody he knew, but I actually doubt that is what was going down. I guess I will never know.

I have a ton of links saved, so I will throw up a couple posts over the next couple of days.

DJ FUNK / BLOW UP

2008-04-27T21:21:00.001-07:00

my new hero...poor uffie near the end of the video

Weekend Pt 2: Miller's Back

2008-04-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

Last night turned out to be a reunion with fellow Limited Existence blogger... Miller. We met up at Rhino in Georgetown and was treated to a nice mix of college students and a few young professionals and a few former Dukes. Miller showed up with a girl who knew a bunch of former JMU people there. I am sure he can expand on his own experience but things didnt turn out the way he planned. If he wants to fill in from his point of view, I will let him expound later.

Let just say these girls went off on and started talking to a couple other guys and we were let to stand around like the guys who were a little to old to be in the bar. After standing around not talking about much and taking in the surrounding, a girl came up to me(because I would never go up to one) and said "you guys dont look like you are having a good time". I kind of stood there for a little bit and then it hit me that I probably should say something since she was still standing there and I replied with "Actually, I dont even know this guy. I just happened to be standing beside him". That got a good laugh and it was smooth from there. A little after talking to her, her friend came out of nowhere and immediately started talking to Miller. I was fortunate enough to start talking to a girl who was a social science major, which allowed me not to have to bullshit(always a good thing). The JMU girls returned late in the night and asked if we were ready to go, and we of course decided to stay and talk to these girls.

Last call came and the metro was closed, so I ended up having to drive the girls to a hotel in Crystal City and then dropped Miller off in Arlington. Some good things happened in the car for Miller and I exchanged numbers as the girl will be taking classes at Georgetown this summer and doesnt know many people in the area.

I decided to try and get home the quickest way possible instead of the way I knew, which led to me getting lost as shit. I drove through all four quadrants of the city and ended up a mile from Anacostia(which was a mile too close for comfort). I ended up getting back to the place around 4:30 after most likely picking up a speeding ticket. I was going a little over 30 and saw the flash from a camera and that usually means one thing in DC. I was on a busy road but I am guessing I was in a 15 mph school zone, I guess I will find out shortly for sure.

Until next weekend...

4.26.2008 Miller's Perspective

2008-04-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

I walk into Rhino bar with a friend and it's early. The place looks busted and empty, but would soon fill. The first song I was greeted to was Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean". Nice. It's the first time in 2008 that I'm going out in d.c.

I go up to the bar and this otherwise ok looking girl with quite obviously huge, fake rack gets me a drink. I stand around as my friend talks to some girl she knows, and I go into my usual routine of staring at the wall and wondering how in the hell people have conversations in such scenarios. The place begins to fill, and I know it may be an ok evening. Got a call from Allen earlier, and it's been months since the two of us stood in the same room drinking booze not really talking. I finish my drink and head to the bar for a beer.

I stand up at the bar for literally 10 minutes and am passed over multiple times until this bartender who looks like I'm wasting his time asks me what he can get me. I ask him sarcastically, Can I get a drink? I finally get the drinks and my chick friend tells me I need to show more cleavage, but I'm thinking that doing so would probably only magnify my problems. Right as I get the drinks Allen comes upstairs, booze in hand. A former Pheasant Run resident who knows us only as "trakboyz" sees us and gets this shocked look that, yes, indeed, we as human beings do exist outside of college shenanigans and running. In the multiple years since leaving Harrisonburg, this girl has every time upon seeing me told me that I'm a trakboy. Whatever.

So time passes, and everyone needs a drink, so I go to the bar, and theres a guy whose been standing there for like 5 minutes being ignored by the bartender. He mentions that the service sucks, and I say "well dude, see we don't make $100,000 annually, hell, neither one of us even has a watch on, at least I have a livestrong bracelet". Turns out I'm served before him.

Now the chicks we were talking to are mingling with what appear to be a few of the tons of guys in the place decked out in expensive clothes and just out of the gym. Disinterest comes and I head to the bar to pay out, and now the place is packed. This cute girl pulls up next to me, and I say to her, hey, I guarantee you're going to get you're drink, before I get my tab. She takes the bet. Oddly, 2 minutes later, the stacked serving chick looks at me, walks over, and helps me first.

Later, as Allen and I stand, bored, a girl comes up and starts talking to him. Out of nowhere one comes up and starts talking to me. Turns out she digs existentialism. Given that I had a 4 year funk of that known as college, I can relate. We talk, the night progresses. So it goes. The place closes down and I need a fuckin' ride back to my car. Allen posts up as the wheel man, and off we go, and into lanes and conversation and conjunction...well...you know...it goes.

Why I say beer is bad (sort of)

2008-04-26T19:22:00.000-07:00

First off, I would love nothing more than to know the thoughts of everyone who read this in reaction to the title of this. When I was a staff writer for my college newspaper and I had to produce mandatory articles to meet my quota, I was entertaining the thought of submitting this article just to rock the boat and I thought if I did, it would probably the most controversial article in the history of the JMU Breeze. I could write an op-ed article suggesting JMU put a ban on all Chinese applicants and that would probably get less angry responses than if I dared to attack the quasi-sacred status of the beer culture at JMU and the majority of large colleges.

All critical thought at college campuses and most young people nowadays stops at beer. If the point of college is to make us more aware and enlightened or to make us question authority more, that’s certainly not evident at JMU on a weekend. There’s absolutely no critical thought or discussion put into the question, “Is beer good for us?” or “Are you sure we should be drinking so much beer.”

Beer is unquestionably good and it’s a gold mine to some fat CEOs out there who run these industries. I didn’t love the beer culture at JMU and the one that exists today in our generation and I think I’ve gradually been coming to terms as to why I don’t like it and have enjoyed being able to articulate it better.

Recently, I was thinking about the 60’s and how into drugs the college students of those times were. Those were really great times in which the youth of America were really taking control of the country and leading it into a new direction, although I’m no historical expert. Those people did drugs to break away from their parents’ values which is a big part of the problem right there. When our parents did drugs they were making a statement: “We refuse to adopt the values of our parents’ generation. We are not only going to actively rebel against the notion that drugs are bad for us but we are going to openly question are parents’ values of racial equality and war.” When we drink beer we’re sending pretty much the opposite message: “The problems our current generation faces is too hard to deal with so I’m going to escape it by forking over large amounts of money to the beer industry.”

What’s worse, beer is our desperate need for an escape mechanism because we pretty much spend all of our time not drinking beer PLAYING BY THE RULES OF OUR OLDER GENERATION. A humongous percentage of us get college educations compared to our last generation, get jobs in some field that isn’t interesting to us but will make us money (hence people getting business degrees or going to law schools). A lot of us don’t pay attention in our classes and brag about how we forgot everything college taught us and are only looking to get the degree. Therefore, it’s uncool to talk about class at parties. It’s also considered inappropriate in the code for picking up girls to discuss politics and that is what nightlife is centered mostly on, so there’s very little discourse in our generation. I’m not incredibly attuned to politics, but I think at Woodstock, where those guys got high and talked about what was wrong with the world and I think that would have been a better place to be.

So to me, I dislike the extreme conformity involved in it. I have little problem with you all having your vices on the weekends but when you all mindlessly chose the same exact vice (alcohol), it gives me little confidence that my generation will ever amount to much. Seriously, there are plenty of other vices that are equally illegal and more dangerous in some cases. Try smoking pot. Try crack. Try sniffing glue. Develop an unhealthy addiction to video games. Hire a hooker. Bet illegally on sports games or just plain become a compulsive gambler. Join a cockfighting ring. How about drag racing? I remember there were some people in high school who reached speeds of 110 on 66 at 3 in the morning. Doesn’t that sound like fun? It doesn’t matter, but I’d have more confidence in your future if you actually did one of those things because you liked doing them and not because everyone else was doing them.

Those guys were counter-culture and the problem is we think we’re being counter-culture as well when we drink beer. This is why we advertise in our facebook pictures: “Look at us, we’re drinking beer. We are being original and rebelling against things we’re not supposed to do.” The main problem with this, other than the fact that you’re not being original when you’re doing something 99% of people at JMU are doing, is that once you reach the age of 21, you’re not rebelling anymore: You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing and more than that, you’re doing exactly what some big corporations out there who run the beer industry want you to do and letting them define what’s cool for you. In other words: Just like any other trend or fad, there are probably some very brilliant marketing teams out there who have succeeded in making beer unquestionably cool. They are probably secretly employing those frat boys who ask you every ten seconds on a Saturday night, “Dude, why don’t you have a beer in your hand.” They have built a culture where we worship frat culture (was there really much of a plot to “Old School”?) and Animal House movie posters go on our walls. Everything in our generation from where we take vacations (i.e. Cancun, Panama City) to how we should go about hooking up with members of the opposite sex or impressing them or whatever, involves the purchase of beer. I don’t see any difference between my generation’s love for beer and 13-year olds splurging on Hannah Montana CDs. The generation above us wasn’t benefiting some major corporation when they did drugs and that’s what truly made them cool.

Wizards game - crazy dancer

2008-04-25T18:37:00.001-07:00

Wizards Game

2008-04-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

I could call it a weekend after last night. I probably wont, but I definitely had enough action in one night to fill an entire weekend. I started out the night with the roommates heading over to RFD to get a beer before the game. After we finished we headed over to the game and witnessed a straight beat down. The first quarter was close, but after that it was just not even fair. I guess it makes up for the Wizards being blown out in Game 2.
The best part was Stevenson's post 3 point celebration...which was much better to see done by him than by Lebron and the over Cavs in game 2. I decided to pass on the $7 millers lites at the game...if it were Sam, I might have imbibed but not that much for miller. My roommates on the other hand were not detered by the obscene price and had a couple each. The biggest mistake came was when I said "We cant just go home after a game like that" as we were leaving the arena. When I said that, I really meant that was a good game but it game out as lets stay out until last call even though all of us have to work tomorrow.
As a result we ended up going back to RFD(amazing beer selection by the way) and after a couple beers for me and couple more for them, I realized they were both intoxicated by this point. At this point it was getting close to midnight and we needed to decide if we were going to catch the metro or cab it back, and I had to figure out a way to talk to this girl sitting behind us. I of course failed but I had a pretty good plan. Her group was talking loudly at times, so I would occasionally listen and wait for the right time to enter the conversation, but unfortunately there was never anything that would allow to me join.
We left this place and headed to my least favorite bar in DC.... Rocket Bar. It wasnt as bad tonight as the first night we went in, but it was still Rocket Bar. I nearly hit up the jukebox but we left as we finished listening to 2 Live Crew which was picked by one of the roommates. I cant remember the song but some of their other singles are: "Hoochie Mama","Throw The Dick", "We Want Some Pussy", "Face Down, Ass Up" ... you cant make that shit up.
So we ended up going from to my least favorite bar to my favorite bar... Wonderland Ballroom. We were only there for about 30 minutes before last call. Around the time one of my roommates kept slapping his fist on the table, we exited the Ballroom. As we were leaving one of the guys I was talking to inside pulled us off to the side and whispered the oh so great "Do you guys want to buy some bud" line. One of my roommates was all about it and I was just kind of whatever about it, but he unfortunately spent a lot more money on alcohol than he remembered so we had to decline.
We started moving North towards home with the intention of picking up a cab as soon as possible. We ended up being rejected by numerous cabs and ended up walking through edgier parts of the city before we ended up in the final bar of the night... The Looking Glass(owned by the same owner of Wonderland). They were done serving and after meeting the bartender who was an old roommate of my current roommate, we headed back out into the night. It took about a mile and half until we finally caught a cab and arrived back at the place.
After bitching all night about needing food, I finally put down some Chips and Hummus plus some waffles and syrup. All in all it was a good night.

Movie

2008-04-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

This is not about a specific movie or movies in general, this is about when you feel like you are in a movie. Yesterday I parked my car and started walking to the store like any other day. Except I am walking and I hear a car horn and this guy slows down as he gets closer to me and then comes to a near stop in the road. I thought maybe he was trying to get the attention of the person walking past me, but it didnt seem like that was the case. I keep walking because I am all about avoiding weird situations... its possible he could have needed help, if that was the case then somebody else would have helped later. Well I am walking and I am a melodramatic individual so I start thinking what if he comes past me again from a side street. It turns out the very next street, this guy is sitting at the top of the hill. I keep looking straight to pretend like I didnt notice he was there and of course he honks again and he also flashes his high beams(I notice this out the corner of my eye). I keep walking forward and fortunately that is the last I see of the guy.
That is one of those things that just do not make any sense. I thought back and wondered if maybe I cut him off, but he would have gestured at me the first time he honked but he just looked at me.

That was pretty much all of my excitement for the day. I got dragged to a happy hour that our running group goes to and somehow we got onto the topic of whether or not I could beat this guys scooter up a nearby hill. The thing was, I was betting that the scooter would win and he was betting that I would win. Bets dont really work out when both sides our betting on themselves to lose. Fortunately I pushed the race to next week. Maybe I will post the outcome on the running blog.

Crazy Jogger in Washington DC

2008-04-24T10:21:00.001-07:00

dave chappelle killing them softly part 1

2008-04-22T21:18:00.001-07:00

Quote of the day from work:

"We were urban pioneers, we lived at 14th and T...before crack"

From a woman who lived in DC in the late 80s

Exodus

2008-04-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

I chose this weekend as the first time in over two months getting out of the Metro D.C. area. I drove home last evening to the foothills outside of charlottesville. Turns out it was exactly what I needed. Lots of people from the NOVA area seem to think that the fast paced and high blood pressure routine is simply normal life. I view it as a necessary evil, but one that is to be avoided when not constrained with work.

I went for a run on a long trail at the base of the blue ridge this morning with overcast sky, and was perfectly happy. Spent the afternoon building a fence in a pasture for a horse that will be moving in. Listened to folk music the whole time I was gone.

Weekend assessment from this contributor: Suburbia blows.

College Basketball Game Rick Roll

2008-04-20T18:46:00.001-07:00

Wet

2008-04-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

I decided to head down to the mall today even after I knew it was supposed to rain up an inch today. The weather was dead on and there were also some thunderstorms. As a result, I was only to see a couple bands play at the Green Apple Festival and I did not get to see The Roots or Thievery Corporation. In addition to not getting to see the two groups I wanted to see, I also was wetter than I have ever been in my life while wearing clothes. I was hoping that after awhile I would get used to it, but that was not the case.

I had the good random college type party on Saturday. Not crazy good but it was laid back and perfect for the mood I was in. The highlight was probably discussing how I didnt really think of anything when I thought of Chicago with some guys who were from that area. I mean you get an image in your head when you think of New York and Los Angeles, but Chicago draws a blank. As a result of my feelings we ended up quizzing people as they passed by about what they though about when they heard Chicago. A few people were on my side(like the guy who mentioned the bulls), but most people mentioned things that the Chicagoans brought up(i.e. Architecture).

So it turns out the weekend was more of boring weekend than most, but it was relaxing not to be out until the wee hours and then suffering the next day at work. Hopefully Orrin will have a better weekend to report on.

Your Favorite TV Show Sucks

2008-04-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

I have come to the conclusion that I am a bit of an elitist when it comes to TV. Its funny to me because I am not very serious about TV, but I am very serious about music and movies and I wouldnt consider myself an elitist when it comes to either of those. For example, I have my times when I am really picky about music but there are other times when I am as far from picku as possible, such as my Miley Cyrus - See You Again obsession. The same thing happens with movies, w here I can watch any shitty movie that you put in front of me and I have only seen one really good movie this decade.

Now back to TV... I have really only been a fan of a few TV shows during my 20's. These shows being The Wire, The Sopranos, Weeds and a few other random shows. I have just never been a big fan of shows that come on the big network stations for some reason. So whenever somebody recommends that I watch some show, I usually say "Ok, ill check that out" but am really thinking "Eh, probably not". The worst is when somebody suggests that I check out The Office... I have seen it and was not impressed...sorry.

In addition to the core shows, I have been into some suspect choices such as Sex In The City and Nip/Tuck. So if you want to hate on my hating...that should be plenty of ammunition.

Peace

No

2008-04-14T20:31:00.001-07:00

Pre-Strip Club

Not So Random

2008-04-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

I kind of blew up the idea of having a great random posts series but I waited to long to do the last post and forgot most of what I was going to write about. I will try my best to create something semi-entertaining and fairly random.

I used to be a serious ass back in the day and I got paid back for it in the long run. I would avoid posting that I was in a relationship on facebook so I would still have the ability to successfully flirt with other girls. I did have excuse because every time I put that I was in a relationship, we broke a week later. So lets say I was ahead of the curve...
CNN covers the concept of a facebook relationship

A fairly attractive girl came into the store last week and nearly earned a ms. something title. She did this by describing how she was really into economics(major plus because I love nerdy girls). I went with my "This is probably pop-econ but..." line and referenced Freakonomics and how they have a blog on the New York Times website. They recently linked to this site that I am sure this girl would be really into. Its kind of like blackjack but with a pseudo-stock market.

There should be a random video either before or after this post. Kind of reminds me of The Postal Service a little bit.

i'm tired of weekends

2008-04-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

You know, here's a new approach that I should stick to more often: I hate weekends. Allen blogs about having one good night a week on the weekends and talks about having that joy on the weekends. Personally, I don't think my joy in life ever comes from the weekends. I felt much more strongly about this at JMU, I have more fun in my daily life than I do on a day where I'm supposed to go out and "have fun." And no, I'm not a dork who loved going to class but I connected to people more at D-Hall, on the ski slopes, at URec, walking on the quad between classes, than on a day when we're all supposed to have fun. I also found it easier to just do pretty much anything I wanted to do in my daily life. Besides, so many things are closed on the weekends, it's frustrating

The weekends are basically an exercise in animalistic mating rituals. I mean, seriously, there's very little difference in watching the flock of ducks by Newman Lake go about their mate-inducing quacking than watching college students in a party in Ashby a quarter of a mile away grinding it out on a dance floor. I'm sure tribes in Africa have come up with less seemingly bizarre and more efficient processes for how to go about expressing your desire to have sex with each other. Was I above this in college? No. I did go to a lot of parties at JMU, same as everyone else, becuase, well, there was little else to do and yeah, I probably felt I'd have to learn to play the game to get the same results. Also, most of my friends went to those parties, so where else could I go.

Was a weekend night at JMU all about sex? No, it was also about getting drunk, but I'd argue it is slightly easier to get drunk on a weekday, in order to make sex (with another person happen) you'd need other drunk people in your vicinity, so sex has a large part to do with why we go out on Friday and Saturday nights. I'd argue that this is no new discovery, and JMU is less hyppocritical about it. I also know there's a lot more to it than that. The idea of going to parties with friends in a group effort to try to score is a really memorable bonding experience. There's also hanging out with friends and there's also birthday parties but as best as I can remember, that would be the same as any other party except only about half of the people at the party knew it was a birthday party, and only about 20% of the people at the party personally knew the birthday boy/girl. The rest are just doing the same thing at every other party.

That's why I didn't go down to alumni weekend this year either. Saturday nights aren't what I miss about JMU. Never mind that I disastrously struck out last year and feel emotionally scarred by people at one party being like "Dude, what are you 25? 30?" But there are things I miss about JMU but they weren't those parties. There was a slight bit of pleasure that I got from those parties on rare occasions (probably too rare to make the experience worthwhile) and sometimes the fun of the chase could be interesting, but you can do that anywhere. In that same spirit, you can have that same amount of fun any day of the week. Not just a Saturday or a Friday night.

50 Favorite Songs on the basis of their Lyrics

2008-04-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

Allen really got me thinking about songs that I like for their lyrics, so I started trying to make a list of my favorite songs for their lyrics. Here are some criteria I used:
1. Because I'm not that well-versed on oldies, I just decided to make it 90's and 00's. I tried to eliminate covers. It's come to my attention long after I listened to a song that the particular song might not be original and the original might have been written earlier, but I'm not that well-versed on music that I know them all. Sadly, it made me half to eliminate Big Yellow Taxi and First Cut is the Deepest.
2. Again, the songs are on the basis of lyrics. I didn't do a song that had one line I liked. An example might be Sheryl Crowe's Soaking Up the Sun ("It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got") or Ben Fold's Five's Barrytown ("Don't think I am taken by the story's I have heard, I just read the daily truth and swear by every word")
3. The songs either are things that resonate with me or tell engaging stories. I like to think that everything I selected were well-written. But in terms of engaging stories, I think "Meet Virginia" paints very interesting portrait of a person I couldn't relate to but I wanted to hear more about, I'm not sure I particularly relate to. Ben Folds tells a ton of interesting and very random stories with his style and I was inclined to put more there if room allowed.
4. In the interest of balance, I tried to limit the Matchbox 20, Dave Matthews Band, Ben Folds and Counting Crows selection. In the case of four groups, there are many selections I could have interchanged with the ones I had and the list wouldn't have been any worse (For Matchbox 20: Shame, Last Beautiful Girl, Black and White People, All I Need, Downfall; for Counting Crows Angels of Silences, Round Here, Colorblind, Rain King; for DMB, Space Between, Lie in Our Graves, Typical Situation, Grace is Gone, Pay for What You Get, Raven, for Ben Folds Annie Waits, Barrytown, Zak and Sara, Still Fighting It, Army, Steven's Last Night in Town, etc.)
5. I go on the criteria of what makes it to my ears. I didn't make a conscious effort over the last 20 years to listen to every song ever created. I also make it mainstream. I htink if there's some independent band who's music I like but they don't get a lot of radio play, then the list isn't fun for you either.
So here's the loose 50:
Dancing Nancies, DMB-"Could I have been anyone other than me?" is the question Dave Matthews asked himself as he was hitchhiking across the African desert. This song also made me afraid to turn 23 because of the line "23 and so tired of life, such a shame to throw it all away/Images grow darker, still/Could I have been anyone other than me" For all the mind-numbing depression that Matthews ruminates about during the verses, he breaks into an uplifting chorus filled with major chords about looking up to the sky and tasting what's the use in hurrying or in worrying. He then sings about dark clouds hanging overhead but him not being bothered about them.

Mad Season, Matchbox Twenty-Elaborated upon in a previous blog entry

Let’s See How Far We’ve Come, Matchbox Twenty-Rob Thomas and crew write this song about the apocolypse (Said pretty explicitly in "I believe the world is burning to the ground"...."I belive the world is coming to an end"). In an interview they said, "There's no reason we can't make the apocolypse sound sexy." I can't tell you how well I relate to this as I tend to catastrophize things and it's at those times, that you try to take a sort of moral inventory into your own life. "Waking up at the dawn of the end of the world, but it's feeling just like every other morning before. Now I'm wondering what my life is gonna mean if it's gone." Maybe the catastrophe being sung about is that the singer has to face himself and his own problems: "I started crying but I couldn't stop myself, I started running but there was nowhere to run to, I sat down on the street, took a look at myself said where you going you could be headed for hell." This echoes Rob Thomas' theme in "Long Day" with the lyrics: "It's me and I can't get myself to go away."

Over my Head, The Fray-As evidenced by the video, the subject of the song is a kid or possibly a young teenageer and the song feels like it's about an important moment or opportunity that was missed or handled the wrong way, and the pressure one faces in acting the right way in one of those crucial moments. I think this is an underacknowledged sentiment we all have: That saying the right thing at the right time can be hard, nevertheless, I love the song's sense of rhythm in the words and recurring use of certain words, "Let's rearrange, I wish you were a stranger I can disengage, just say that we agree and we'll never change....Let's disreguard as you lose another friend on the discard, as we lose the argument on a cable car." Notice the three "dis"-prefixes there?
The other part of the song that's highly relevant to me is the fickleness of friendship he experiences. In the opening verse, he sings "I never knew that everyone was on a cue, to turn and run......I'd rather turn the other way than wait and see the smoke and who's still standing when it clears." He responds to this in the bridge about how for this one person who's friendship he cares about, he can feel the process of breaking off already happening ("Suddenly I become part of your past, I'm becoming the part that don't list, I'm losing you and it's effortless") and he is determined to "not let this go down until we torch it ourselves." The song's subject describes the process of losing touch with this one friend to be "effortless," or in other words, something that is going to naturally happen unless he makes a concerted effort to stop it, hence, torching it.

South of Nowhere, Gin Blossoms-"Meet me out past the cottonwoods where we ran as kids, straight out past the cemetary where the river turns to ditch." I love the sense of description and the overall fondness the writer expresses for his childhood nostalgia, that he both literally and figuratively wants to escape to. I love the directions to the place as well that serves as the hook in the chorus: "Straight back, far away, a long ways from here, just south of nowhere." I think the question behind the song is: Does this place actually exist?

Bigger than my Body, John Mayer-Is there anything better song lyric to think of when things aren't going your way and you feel like you're not realizing your full potential? "This is a call to the color blind, this is an IOU, stranded behind the horizon line, tired for something true, yes I'm grounded, got my wings clipped, I'm surrounded by all this pavement, yes I'll stumble while I'm waiting for my fuse to dry. Someday I'll fly. Someday I'll soar. Someday I'll be so damn much more. Because I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for." Like his song "Why Georgia," John Mayer's theme is to not just be passive to where life is taking you to and to stop and openly think about where things are heading.

On Love in Sadness, Jason Mraz-Jason Mraz has a humongous sense of creativity and can be very spontaneous with his lyrics. I've seen him in concert, and he can make up several different versions to his songs. Hopefully, you can still download an extended version of "Curbside Prophet" somewhere. A lot of his songs relate to me, and his California laid-back attitude to life that I'd like to ideally adopt, but I went with "On Live in Sadness," because it captures romance and love and all that very well. He sets the bar for himself pretty high, with his first line "Sing about that love, oh, it's a bitter madness, sing about it in all my sadness..." as if noone in the history of writing songs has ever sung about love being bitter and sad before. Nevertheless, he captures the rush and adrenaline of it all, as if someone on coke is trying to explain the process: "So inevitably, well it still exists, ok then fine, i won't dismiss it and if I die well at least, I tried...We just lay awake in lust, and rust in the rain, and pour over everything we say we trust, will it happen again....," and I believe he also throws in a reference to 60's ladies man and James Bond knock-off Derek Flint, with the line "and I'm in Like Flint again."

In Too Deep, Sum 41-This is the only Sum 41 song I like because in the other songs, the lead singer veers too far across the boundary between singing and yelling at the top of your lungs. Anyway, this is less deep than it is succinct, catchy and well-spoken: "Cause I'm in too deep, and I'm trying to keep, all the blood in my head, instead I'm going under." At the end of the song, the line is expanded to "Instead I'm going under with you." Like "On Love in Sadness" there's an adrenaline and rushed tone to this song, where the singer is almost expressing his feelings at the same rate he's discovering them himself.

I’m With You, Avril Lavigne-I think for the tone of the song Sk8ter Boi also deserves a nod for lyrics that match the music, but if I had to chose one Avril Lavigne song, I would chose this one. It's not just the words but it's hard to ignore how the words match up to the music. The tone is very barren with an odd choice of strings filling in the sound as Avril Lavigne reveals a more vulnerable side of herself. There are two things happening within the song. She's in a specific situation where she's standing all alone somewhere, stranded by someone and on a larger scale, she's reflecting on how on this "damn cold night" she's trying to "figure out this life," and in this state she might be either so vulnerable or more likely so lost that she's willing to have anyone take her by the hand to someplace new singing "I don't know who you are but I'm with you." In the end, it's a cry for help or guidance of some sort.

Testing 1,2,3, Barenaked Ladies-Less depressing than the slightly more popular "Pinch Me" but of the same caliber, "Testing 1, 2, 3" continues in the Barenaked Ladies tradition of poking fun at themselves and at the world around them. They are not so much asking existential questions but rather asking if anyone notices them. They ask non-chalantly if they should get a new opinion, break a gold rule or get a little work done and break a sweat. The chorus goes: "Testing 1, 2, 3 can anybody hear me, if I shed the irony, would everybody cheer me, If I acted less like me...." (the last half of the last line changes per verse). I think every artist goes through that feeling. I'm even going through it now. Does anyone even care about my interpretation of these songs? There's also a great rhythm in the words as well: "Kind of like the last time, with a bunch of really fast rhymes, if I can just reverse time, I'd be set"

Green and Grey, Nickel Creek-At their best, songs don't just express feelings but they tell a story. Nickel Creek and Ben Folds are very heavy into this among the bands that I listen to. Nickel Creek's most famous song that tells a story is The Lighthouse Tale, that tells a first-hand account of a suicide from the point of view of a lighthouse ("and off the edge of me he ran"), but another very interesting choice is the visual imagery of "Green and Grey." The first line: "In a room full of people and hanging on one person's breath/ We would all vote him most likely to be loved to death." What an odd award, not just to be loved but loved to death. It's somewhat nonsensical but gets your attention. Anyway, the story tells of a guy who performs and is adored by large crowds of people but is really very lonely on the inside. The chorus: "Green is color that everyone sees all around me, Grey is color I see around her, she's just a blur." You're tempted to think that the subject of the story is pining for this one girl and is unhappy because everyone likes him except for the one girl, but it might be the opposite. Why would he be pining for this one girl if he can't even see her. He said she was jsut a blur. In a latter verse, the story that starts to reveal he's just plain lonely: "We paid and we cheered. Now we're gone and to us that feels right. But for him every one of those evenings turns into a night. With another hotel room where he lays awake to pretend that he's doing fine with his notebook and discman for friends."

100 Years, Five for Fighting-This song is the exact opposite of most other rock songs which are modelled after Van Halen's "Right now...it's everything" theme. John Ondrasik is telling us we don't need to sieze the moment. After all, we have 100 years to live and "there's still time for you."

Ones that I have yet to elaborate on:
Ants Marching, DMB
#41, DMB
Real World, Matchbox Twenty-
How to Save a Life, The Fray-
Game of Love, Michelle Branch feat. Santana
It's All Been Done, Barenaked Ladies
Your Winter, Sister Hazel
Angel, Sarah McLaughlin
Fallen, Sarah McLaughlin
Be Like That, 3 Doors Down
Then the Morning Comes, Smashmouth
Learn to Fly, Foo Fighters
Stars, Switchfoot
When I Look to the Sky, Train
Meet Virginia, Train I’m About to Come Alive, Train
You’re a God, Vertical Horizon
Easy Tonight, Five for Fighting
Here is Gone, Goo Goo Dolls
Broadway is Dark Tonight, Goo Goo Dolls
Wonderful World, James Morrison
Why Georgia, John Mayer
No Such Thing, John Mayer
She Don’t Want Nobody Near, Counting Crows
Mr Jones, Counting Crows
Never Let You Go, 3rd Eye Blind
Selfless Cold and Composed, Ben Folds
Landed, Ben Folds
Speed of Sound, Coldplay
Silent All these Years, Tori Amos
Time, Hootie and the Blowfish
Travelling Soldier, Dixie Chicks
Goodbye is All We Have, Allison Krauss and Union Station
Walking on the Sun, Smashmouth
Stuck in a Moment, U2
When the Stars Go Blue, U2 feat. Coors
Dance Dance, Fall Out Boy
Dani California, Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Wake Me Up When September Ends, Greenday
Your Armor, Charlitte Martin

The Most Random Damn Blog Post Ever Period

2008-04-09T11:55:00.000-07:00

...a new series in the work. Check back Friday evening for the actual thing.

The Weekend: Metro Girl

2008-04-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

I went into this weekend planning for it to be pretty laid back. Of course, it was not laid back even though I went to a museum Friday night.

The weekend really begins Thursday night when I am asleep. Occasionally I have these incidents where I am half asleep and I think some type of animal is in the bed with me(kind of like in the Godfather), and needless to say it scares the shit out of me every time. I usually end up hopping out of bed and pulling the covers off to see that nothing is there. Well the same thing happened but it was a little more extended this time. I hop out of bed with covers in hand because I think I see a rodent beside me. As I am calming down and realize that nothing is in the bed, I feel something against me and eventually the realize the rodent is still there. I jump again, its gone, and then I feel something against me and realize it is still there. At some point I realize that the rodent is really my hand which is sticking to my body because my arm is asleep from being slept on. Since I was half asleep, im not sure how loud I was or if I was talking or possibly yelling at 4 in the morning. All I know is that my roommates probably think I am crazy.

The next night begins when I get off of work and head down to the Hirshorn Museum for this after hours even that they have there every so often. I am riding on the metro when this semi-attractive girl sits beside me and I of course just look forward even though she looks over a couple of times. When I get off, I try and tell myself the next time that happens I will actually say something. Somewhere around 7 hours later, this same girl ends up behind me in line at this Falafel Shop in Adams Morgan. I know DC is a small city but seriously? I start talking to her about how she sat beside me on the metro and she somehow doesnt remember, nor does I think she believes me. Her friend is all about it, but I think she just sees as some creepy guy trying to pick her up. So at least I was right earlier, I would at least talk to her if I had a second chance.

In between these two instances, I managed to travel from the museum to the upper regions of the city. At the museum, I bought 6 beer tickets imaging that would get me a solid buzz given that I did not have anything for dinner. I was correct but at some point they ran out of beer and I had to substitute two wines later on in the night. The wine really did the trick. We scooted up to the Black Cat in the U st area. The Black Cat takes the place of the The Guards on my top 5 bars list. We went to a second bar that had an entry fee and I felt it was justified. They relied on the 80s like The Guards but instead of Journey they got by on The Cure and The Clash among too many good groups to name. I really got after it on the dance floor with my 3-D glasses on from the museum. I did not dance with any girls, but I still had a great time by myself.

A typical Saturday night with me: Going solo

2008-04-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

I thought I might write about my Saturday night to note the contrast between one of my Saturday nights and one of Allen's Saturday nights, in a "How the other half lives" essay. I wouldn't say, I'm entirely different than Allen in terms of he's living it up and I'm not. I do tend to have less people to go out with and usually just go out by myself. There could be a number of things explaining this: I could be a loser, I could not be good at planning things, it could just be luck of the draw, I could have bad and unreliable friends. Although, I'm not closed off to the possibility that I'm a loser, I'm going to blame my living situation (still with my parents) and that Allen is readily in conctact with more people. I notice, he sometimes writes about going over to his neighbors house or partying with his roommate. I too socialize with my neighbors across the street, but it's a family of four whose kids are just hitting puberty at the moment (i.e. the son is starting his own rock band in the garage).

This weekend, I had the goal of arranging with some friends to watch the Final Four games. Why? Well, I just need a certain amount of social contact just like everyone else and I basically called every friend on my cell phone list and no one was available. I spent maybe 2 or 2 1/2 hours trying to arrange this and think of all the friends I had around here who might want to go watch the games with me so it was frustrating. It used to be a lot worse around here. When I took a year off from college, this felt like an empty town and last year, I had a lot of Saturday nights where I couldn't find someone to hang out with when I wanted to. I used to be so frustrated about that: I was pretty popular in high school and each of the two colleges I went to so why would I have so few people on my speed dial? Lately, I don't feel like my social life is that bad. I've reconnected to a number of more people from my past this year and going to grad school part time has given me a little more of social life this year. Since I tend to complain about this a little at home, my family says I should try joining more groups and stuff, but I think I'm doing ok, socially. I just don't have any friends on this particular evening to hang out with.

But whatever, screw my friends, I can just go out by myself and just meet people at the bar. I think after college, I need to set goals for myself more and control those things myself. I generally have categories for these goals: assignments in grad school, miscellaneous, writing, jobs, social, physical/exercise. The social one can be problematic because it depends on other people, and I can't control what they do.

So my plan is to just go to a few bars because I'll probably bump into someone I know. I also bring a few school books because I figure if I don't meet up with anyone and i just stick to myself watching the game, i'll just do some school work. Honestly, I always bring around school work because I never know when I'll feel in the mood to do it. Bringing school work to a bar works on so many levels too, because it usually sparks people's curiosity and becomes a decent conversation starter.

There's a group of three people at the sports bar with an open chair and I'm pretty much engrossed in the game, so I just ask to use the chair. At some point, there's two guys and a girl, and at some point they ask me what I'm doing since I'm going through a book at a bar, which sparks their curiosity, they seem pretty interesting and then they leave. Then two guys are sitting at my table and a little later, two girls ask them, do you mind if we take these seats? Obviously the answer is "do we mind? we're thrilled!" but yeah, they play it off, like we ordinarily don't like girls who show cleavage around, but we'll be charitable tonight. Then the two girls sort of introduce themselves to me but more towards the two guys and they immediately start hitting it off.

So the mathematics of the night are working against me and I'm reminded once again of the consequences of not bringing a wingman along when you go out. I even just pretty boldly ask, do you guys want me to leave, do you need the seat, and they were like no, why would we want you to leave but one of the girls, Erin, says no it's all good, but when we get to the game, we won't be very talkative. None of the girls are particularly attractive anyway and they're all in their early 30s, I think. But yeah, it's nice to talk to girls. I ask Erin, one of the girls, what team she's rooting for, and she says UNC. I tell her I'm leaning towards Kansas but I like all the teams this year. There was some heated discussion about who would win and all. You know, I'm not sure how agreeable you're supposed to be with people to make a good impression. Cause I know you turn off people pretty easily when you dislike things they like but you sound kind of like a zombie if you're like "yeah, that's neat," "great." I'm not really trying to pick up girls, per se. I went on a couple dates with a girl recently and that ended my "Girls don't find me attractive" insecurities.

There is a girl in the bar wearing a Kansas t-shirt who's incredibly hot, however. She's standing up and there are limited seats so I decided to go up to her while I was out of my seat and ask if she was looking for a seat and she and her friend (oh shoot, there are two people, the mathematics work against loners like me once again) were like "yeah, we totally need seats." That's good that I have something they might want. I was eager to kick out the current people sitting at my table if I could but I told them that in a little bit people at my table were clearing out. I asked her if she liked Kansas and told her I picked Kansas to win my pool but I thought UCLA might win it. I think if you sound too agreeable to people it looks like you're just trying to say anything to please them, I don't know. We had some talk about where she's from, I went back to my seat, trying to look out for an opening for those girls.

Anyway, fastfoward to the second game, where Kansas and UNC are playing and Kansas is dismantling UNC and I'm starting to get thrilled at this because wow, Kansas is doing so well. I go over and talk to that Kansas girl once more and say, "yeah, Kansas is winning. They're going to win" and she has two or three male friends from work hanging around her now. One of them is like "What makes you say Kansas is going to win?" I think he wants to see if I am just talking out of my ass just to make conversation with the girl (maybe he wants to get with her too or feels overprotective and doesn't want me around) or maybe he wants some actual sports insight. He seems irritating to me. I think we all just say dumb things at bars and parties all the time to make conversation. When I say "how about that? Kansas is winning, i think they're going to win the game," no I'm not providing expert sports' commentary and analysis, I just want to reenter the coversation, duh. He's an Asian guy that smiles a lot, and I'm going to make a generalization here (as in it surely doesn't apply to everyone) about people from East Asia (Taiwan, Japan, China, and the Korean Peninsula): Asian people are very positive around everybody and extremely affable although slightly less individualistic: There's a lot of historic background and cultural context I can use to explain this but it would take a whole other blog entry to explain. Unfortunately, I'm not like that though and this Asian guy will better be able to maintain at least a friendship with this girl than I will. Anyway, with the pressure of competing with this smiling Asian, I really can't think of anythinig else I can say to this girl in conversation other than "I like Kansas' basketball team," so I go back to my seat a little while longer.

The game's going on for a while, and I don't say too much to the girls as the game's going on. Some more of the girls' friends have arrived. One's a teacher who's kind of interesting to talk to since i was a substitute teacher in her school system. The other guy at our table seems pretty cool too (it was originally 2 guys but one left). They're texting a lot and I ask them if they're texting Roy Williams, the UNC coach, as a tease to the fact that Williams is losing badly. The girls get pissed off. Becuase I badmouthed UNC a little earlier, I try to say that I like both teams. Then they get pissed off a little more down the road when I jump into their conversation, and the girl gets mean and says "Remember, I told you don't talk to us during the game. We're in game mode. I'll get mean" I was trying to say, ok, that's fine, and then I said, I like that you're self-aware of the fact that you're mean during game time. But in response to that line, she got angrier and struck back and was like "DON'T TALK DURING THE GAME." Then she starts talking to her friend, the teacher, and the other guy and said "I didn't want to be mean to him but I told him not to talk to me during the game", blah, blah, blah. I don't think that it was mean for her to explode at me, and I appreciated that she apologized and explained the context in which I was being mean, but what actually was mean was when she talked about me in the third person to her friend and her newfound friend (the other random guy) and how much I annoyed her and how she didn't want to be mean. Then again, maybe I was annoying and/or lack social skills. The problem is, once again, how disadvantaged you are looking for a good social experience when you don't know anybody when you get to the bar. I felt kind of crappy about the whole thing and in an awkward situation. Yeah, I should have just left, wrote it off as a loss and moved on, I wasn't even attracted to the girl anyways who was 8 years older than me, anyways. I really was too lazy to move though, so it was awkward.

I had an idea for trying to make lemons out of lemonade of the situation: I literally wrote Erin a letter. I pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and started writing in cursive too: "Dearest Erin, I am sorry for the inexcusable act of trying to make conversation with you during the game. I hope you'll find it in your heart to forgive me. I was only trying to make conversation but perhaps I'm not very good at it. I must bid farewell, but by for doing so I must confess that I am a Kansas fan and it looks like we're walking away with the game." I thought it was kind of fun and unconventional and made me feel like less of a loser and imagined it might be fairly memorable. One of Erin's friends, Chrissy, noticed I was writing a letter and she was like, "what are you doing?" When I told her what I was doing she said "that's a little wierd," winning her 1st prize in least favorite person I met the entire night. She didn't think I was interesting enough to talk to the whole night before that, so she wasn't clearly interested in me then, she only was on the watch against suspiciously wierd activity (which, to her credit, I guess is something you have to do more at bars than other places, where the vast majority of people there are ultimately trying to find someone to have sex with). I think the point of going out is to try different things on different people and see how they work, hence you gotta do unconventional things or you'll get the same result every time. Besides, why spend your life trying to fit other people's definitions of normal. All I know is writing the letter made me happy and probably made the reader happy, who cares about anything more than that?

It was around that time that I finally bumped into a friend of mine from grad school who's always trying to get poeple in the class to organize and have a good time, so I wasn't a complete loser I had someone to hang out with. I walked away with Shawn, and didn't even stay for the girls' reaction to the letter, which i probably would've wanted to do the most. There was one girl that was moderately attractive at the table, and maybe that would have really impressed them in some way down the road, who knows. Shawn said he was going to D.C. so he was already with his group of friends and I decided not to go but I got his number, which is a major acheivement because Shawn is usually always out and will make future situations like these much more preventable and he's a lot of fun.

I stopped by Mexicali Blues where there's this pretty cool bartender (a cool bartender makes a difference), and I bumped into this girl from high school who i once sort of kind of dated (as we were transitioning from friends to more than friends I started telling my friends and everyone else the news that i was dating her and that kind of echoed back to her and that put things to a halt and then I did something that was kind of a jerk thing to do, but she was pretty cool, she invited me to her graduation party which was a good time) and she was always really cool. I caught up with her but she was on a date with someone else, it was kind of awkward, I was like I should go and she was like "no, I'm not going to kick you out" or something. but why would they keep me around?

She said she was on facebook, so i'll look her up. I couldn't leave the bar because the game was becoming so suspenseful and engrossing though, so I watched for a few minutes, then went across the street to the Clarendon Woodward Grill, I saw an open seat next to a pretty hot girl, so I sat in it, pretty good opening, i asked who she was rooting for, she asked who i was rooting for, that had a couple minutes of really good conversation, her boyfriend came out of the bathroom and picked her up, and she wished me good luck.

At this point, I wasn't trying to order alcohol but just watch the rest of the game because it was so exciting and I felt like sitting at a bar the guy might want me to order something, so I left the bar, went across the street to the Tapas bar, and there was some girl blocking the screen. Also, good news, Kansas went up 7 points in the length it took me to cross the street. The game was so close to the end, that I just tried to look around her.

I thought I might try to go back to the sports bar I started at. Maybe, those girls were there and would be like "haha, we loved your letter, you're a cool guy after all" or i could just rub it in that kansas won.

After the game the place had turned into a dance club and I'm not that comfortable on the dance floor. I think another problem with the club scene for me, at least, is you will get rejected in ways big and small multiple times throughout the night along the way to possibly getting accepted in ways big and small by other girls, and that can hurt if you don't like rejection. I sometimes wish for the old-fashioned days of school dances where you ask the girl to dance and she says yes or no, rather than sidling up to them and reading body language, cause it's good to know if you're grinding on them is being welcomed or going to land you in prison. I spotted the girl on the Kansas t-shirt again, but she was with her group. I could have at least tried to talk to her once more, but didn't know what to say, and I was getting tired. I was thinking that their might be some small reward if I go through the whole process of going to the dance floor and akwardly trying to make my way though it, but it didn't seem worth the effort. I looked at my watch, 11:15 and saw that maybe I could catch that Amy Adams rerun of Saturday Night Live if i went home now. So I brought myself to accept giving up on the night, and took a cab home. The good news, it wasn't an Amy Adams rerun it was a new episode with Chris Walken as the host, and if anyone's seen Chris Walken on Saturday Night Live, that's something not to miss.

Alcohol: Top 5 Bars

2008-04-02T18:00:00.000-07:00

There have been two posts about alcohol on here that been by the other contributors and now I would like to voice a minority opinion. I will say alcohol is not cheap, but neither is gambling, prostitution or blow (and no not dollar tables, hand jobs, or crack). We work hard during the week, and the weekend if you are in retail like myself. I think if you have the money to spend, you might as well spend it on something you enjoy. Alcohol is ok on its own, people are cool, but when you mix the two you get a magical outcome. There are so many possibilities... I am referring more to bars now as some horrible segue into my top 5 favorite bars in the area. l

1) Wonderland Ballroom - I have only been here once, so it might be a bit early to declare it as the favorite, but the one time I was there(sober, nonetheless) I had a great time. Everything about it was great; the people, the atmosphere, the music. There are two distinct floors, the first being what I will label the independent floor and the second will be labeled the dance floor. Not very creative, but they really convey what each floor is about. The first floor is a more of a traditional bar with an interesting crowd. It is fairly laid back, with not too many places to sit away from the bar. That kind of creates a little more openness and makes for easier socializing with unknown individuals.
On the second floor, there was dancing. The crowd was the most diverse of any bar I have been to in my entire life and the music was almost as equally diverse. It was one of those rare moments when I felt at home in a bar. Actually it might have been the only moment that I felt at home in a bar. I am hoping to get back there soon, but it is tough to find the right people who would have a good time there.

2) Eighteenth Street Lounge - Here is the review from the post"

This ultra-hip club has no sign and a strict door policy. If you get in to ESL -- voted "Best Lounge" in washingtonpost.com's Best Bets 2006 Readers' Choice contest -- you'll find beautiful people, couches and some of the city's best DJs

I have only been here once as well and it just happened to be a couple days after I moved to the area. I just hopped in a car and followed people around until we ended up here. The atmosphere was amazing, the music was amazing (Dust Galaxy downstairs and DJ upstairs), and the drinks were amazingly expensive. I had my your not in Harrisonburg moment when I heard the bartender say $7 for an amstel light.
I also would like to head back to this place, but I always have a fear that I will not get in this time around.

3) Ultrabar - I ended up here randomly one night and only intended to stay for a short time. That never works out, and I stayed there all night and had a great time in the second half of the night. This is now bar number 3 in the list that had two floors. The first floor which I spend very little time on played more popular music and at one point when I was up there they played Daft Punk(always a plus). Downstairs had more of an electronic theme and really didnt fit in with the vibe upstairs, but I could see myself having a good time on either level. I think the reason this bar made it so high up on the list is because it reminded me the most of my weekend in NYC.

4) The Gaurds - I protest this fucking place whenever it is mentioned that a group I am with should go there, but every time I end up having a great time. I hate everything about this place, absolutely everything, but I have to add it to this list because I never have a bad night when I end up here. I would like to mention this is the first place on my list that I have actually been heavily intoixcated at.

5) Dr. Dremos (R.I.P.) - Interestingly enough, this was the first stop on my first night out in the area. So that makes two of my favorite bars that were part of my first Thursday out, and that means I had a damn good time that night. This bar oozes the 80s, but not in the way that The Gaurds survives off of the same 80s playlist every night. You get the feeling that this place hadnt had any modifications to it since it was built in the 80s. I never had an amazing time there, but thats not the type of place it is. Its a great spot get ready for the rest of the night or if you want a laid back night. Unfortunately the place is being torn down to build more condos..but there is the possibility that it could be relocated.

I would like to add that I have not been to any bars in the U st area, but will be there one day soon.

Is alcohol a luxury or a neccessity?

2008-04-01T18:13:00.000-07:00

There is so much I have to say about alcohol and not the typical "I love alcohol so much" that you get from a recent college graduate.

In fact, sometimes I felt a little jarred by how much life revolved around alcohol when I got to JMU. I understand alcohol is fun but literally every decision made by a JMU student could be made for alcohol. Q: Why are so many people moving off campus so early at this campus? A: Because they want to be able to drink more easily in their own rooms without an RA getting in the way Q: Where are most people going for Spring break and why? A: They're going to Panama City of Mexico or other places where drinking underage is either legal or available in such enormous quantities that you can't do it anywhere else. Q: Why are so many events like concerts and plays taking place on weekday evenings rather than weekends? A: On weekends the performers and audience will most likely be off partying or performing, etc. I even felt like there was a shallowness at JMU, to some extent, even though I have an overall positive experience and relationship with the school, because people wanted to get drunk and hook up with each other more than they wanted to do things like go on dates, go out in groups, etc.

And the one that personally got asked to me a lot and the one I found most annoying: "Why don't you have a fucking beer in your hand, dude?" asked by some inebriated guy with breath that is making me sick. One thing about drunkedness is that some people are much cooler when they're drunk but some people are much more annoying and 10 times more unpleasant when they're drunk. At parties, girls are more willing to hook up with you, granted, and you might have some interesting bonding experiences with other people (girls and guys) but you could also get into serious trouble into people when you're drunk. About a month into my stay at JMU, a fire alarm went off at a party in Southview and some panicked drunk people responded by beating me up because I happened to be near the fire alarm. At a school where drinking is a lot lighter like my first college, Mary Washington, someone getting beat up is practically unheard.

I do drink, don't get me wrong. I just don't do it every night or at every possible opportunity. There are periods of 10-15 minutes at a time when *gasp* a beer might not be in my hand.
My spring semester of my senior year, I thought I'd try to go the whole semester without drinking, just for the heck of it. I figured, I don't drink that much anyway, and it made me a more interesting person to talk to at parties, but I digress....I just don't drink that much and I'm ok with you drinking a lot, but don't make me feel excluded because I don't feel like drinking on this particular occasion was all I was saying.....but that was some commentary on life at JMU....let's talk about the present:

I notice that I go to a bar and have one drink maximum because they're expensive. I often have coke because I don't feel like drinking. Why am I in a bar, you ask? I just like being in the bar atmosphere. You're in closer proximity to girls or just cool people to meet, if there's a sports' game, it makes for a rowsing atmosphere, etc. etc. Is there anything wrong with that? (Usually there is for the bartenders, however). Anyway, I'm also not doing that well monetarily since ending my paid internship three weeks ago, so there's even less reason to buy beer when I go out. It's just not sensible. Unfortunately for the grouchy bartenders who want big bills and big tips, it's bad news for them because I have more free time on my hands since I'm not working and a greater need for companionship (people to talk to, it helps cure the depression of not working, by companionship, i'm not implying I'm trying to find a wife at the bar).

I was at the bar the other night with some friends and I noticed those guys were not thinking much about their bills. They just decided, let's get some beers and their bills ended up being fairly big. At some point, sensible economic spending went out the window with these guys, which is why I imagine bars are such a goldmine. I do have to wonder though, how many of the people going out to the bar and ordering beers are people in the same economic situation as me where they don't have a job, because I know a lot of people who were unemployed for a while after college and I wonder if their beer consumption dropped or did they just go on spending large amounts of money on beer as their bank accounts emptied.

Girls Girls Girls

2008-03-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

I am going to start a new series of blog posts that further addresses my inability to deal with girls. This will include mostly girls that I had to help on the job and will be an ongoing series. I will also include a handy scale(1-10) that measures how close I actually came to asking each girl out.

Back when I was working at Georgetown, there were a lot more girls that I found interesting and around my age as compared to my current Chevy Chase location. Fortunately, every so often I get to work at Georgetown and that brings me to my first girl:

Ms. Hearing Impaired - I am not sure if this one had to do with the fact that she was slightly handicapped, but I am not ashamed to say I was definitely attracted to this girl. I will even go as far as to say that she was the closest that I came to actually asking a girl out on the job. This story starts with a busy Sunday, all hands on deck, when this girl comes in and starts looking at the shoe wall. I was nearing the end of working with a customer and was fearing somebody would jump into help before I could get a word in. Fortunately, time was on my side. I told her I would help her in a minute as soon as I finished up with the other customer. As I got to helping her, I asked the normal "what shoe have you past?" When she answered, she said one of the words kind of weird, but nothing to raise any flags. Early on she would ask me what I said, but that happens all the time with the way I talk, so no flags yet. I went downstairs to get the shoe she had been running in and when I came back she says "I have to tell you something..." Those are never great words to hear. She ends up telling she was slightly deaf and all the earlier interactions made a lot more sense then. We ended up making running store talk and learning little things about each others past and present. She went to Colorado and is currently a law student at Georgetown. I work at a running store... I will point out that line goes over a lot better at a running store than it does at a club in New York. I think the thing that really puts an interaction over the top is when the girl asks what your name is. Realistically I know that is just the girl being nice, but hey I can dream.

7...I was close to planning a way to write down my email.

Next up....Ms. Vutton

What do you do for a living?

2008-03-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

I went to a job interview and waited in a room with some other candidates as they were talking to each other about what they did before the job and I notice that people fall into two categories when you ask them what do they do: one is self-loathing and the other is people in non-stop interview mode.

The first is the self-loathing 20-something who doesn’t think much of what they do. They might say, “I just work for a non-profit,” even though that doesn’t explain too much. Defining your life by your company’s designation in the U.S. 401K tax code seems to be trendy and I’m not sure why. These people are depressing to listen to and they are probably depressing themselves whenever they speak about their job. When you ask them how life is after college, they often say “nothing much, I just work,” as if they’re in serving time in prison. Most of their advice centers around enjoying college life while you can because it all goes downhill from there. Those people never really made me look foward to graduating much. I think a lot of these people are unhappy because they're on the bottom of the totem poll, but the way i see it, there's no guarantee that your job will be any more exciting or fulfilling when you get higher up anyway, so you might as well enjoy where you are.

I bumped into my old college suitemate on the metro, who said that he just worked for a textbook company doing research. He seemed to suggest he was “unskilled labor” and it wasn't really much of a job because anyone can do it. What?! he's writing textbooks that kids use in school, he gets to learn about things like history, geography, anatomy all day and translate it into what goes into a textbook? What could be more exciting than that? So you do something interesting with your day but you feel it’s devalued because other people can do your job? Whatever happened to trying to make the best of a bad situation? At one point in this time since college, I was working in a movie theater 14 months after graduation for $6.50 an hour and working with mostly teenagers. I was even in grad school at the time, and I found things i liked about the job to get me through the day, so I'm sure most of you can too. I'm not saying i was perfect at this method, but i'd say I maintined my sanity about the first 5 months out of the combined 8 months i was working at the movie theater (4 in 2006, 4 in 2007).

The second category is people who treat their life like a never-ending job interview and try to impress you by also throwing vague words around about what they do like “I consult,” “I manage,” “I assemble,” etc. How are there so many consultants in this town anyway? When I think of a consultant, I think of someone writing a “Dear Abby” column or a wizened old soul spreading his wisdom, not someone two months out of college who probably can’t remember what they studied in their major anyways. Based on how many of my friends tell me they’re “consultants,” I feel I can pretty safely conclude that the reason there is so much stifling bureaucracy in this town is because too many people are consulting and no one’s doing anything. At least a mailman or a garbageman do things.

To me, I feel better that they're around than I do that society is employing any more "consultants."Unless you're a rocket scientist, everyone should be able to say what your organization does in a couple sentences and what you do in a couple sentences in your organization. Working at Booz Allen Hamilton can't really be that complicated and beyond my comprehension to understand.

Starting From Scratch

2008-03-22T07:30:00.001-07:00

I had an interesting weekend...nothing too crazy, but still interesting. I had no intentions of going out this weekend but I just cant say no. Both nights, I was asked if I wanted to go out and I of course had to go out both nights.

I guess the weekend starts with Thursday night unexpectedly. I got a few drunk calls from my neighbor who was trying to get a ride because as I later found out she was throwing up in the bathroom of a bar after just 4 drinks. I didnt have my car, so one of her coworkers cabbed her back and I was put in charge of making sure she didnt die. It was an entertaining evening that started with her asking if I wanted to see her shake her vomit which involved her gyrating and shaking a bag of vomit that was given to her at the bar. We of course ended up talking about ex's and she said something like " he was a really nice and we got along really well, but he just wasnt my life partner" and that actually freaked me out to hear a quote that could have easily come from my ex. Dont worry, I am over Dena, it was just kind of weird to hear her say what she said.

Friday night deals with the title. I really hit rock bottom that night in terms of confidence. I usually have problems being social with girls I dont know, but I took it to another level that night. I think I went into the night thinking it would be a normal night out with the guys, even though I had never been out with this group before. Unfortunately for me, a couple of the guys were fearless. Seeing guys actually go up to girls over and over really brought my confidence down early on. I think I hit the bottom at the point in the night when this fairly attractive girl smiled at me and then came over and attempted to dance with me but I cowered and somehow rejected her. Its one thing to not go after girls, but to blow it when one falls in your lap means it time to start from scratch. Fortunately outside of being socially awkward I ended up having a good time that night. One of the guys I went out with, had an extensive knowledge of Katt Williams which led to multiple impersonations of this bit.

The rest of the weekend was good. I had a day off and actually stayed in town for once. The day culminated with some grilling out back on a fairly chilly day with my neighbor and two of the roommates.

Commencement Ceremony

2008-03-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

College ended a few years ago. Every day that time seems more distant and in a wave of ambivilance I feel both regret and relief, animosity and apathy. In college I hung out with the greatest group of guys in the world, I don't exaggerate. We got drunk, we caroused through the nights boozed up searching for the next party to go to where someone knew someone. We danced with girls who we didn't even care to find out their names and who now we wish knew ours. Like a pack of absurd wolves, we went wild for years on end and it was wonderful.

I began to feel it more the next morning. I always felt it some, but there came a point where the drag, the pull, the headache hurt more. I became incapacitated for longer by shelling my body with ethanol. To couple with this we always said that we wanted to make the running dream happen, really fucking happen, to do what we had spent years at this point trying to perfect. For awhile we could train like monsters constantly hungover and tired and beat up and fucked up and beyond hope just training and drinking and drifting and flirting for nights and months and years on end. Then employment happened.

You wake up, it's early, and you can't blow this off. You can't skip on this, otherwise you're out on your ass back in your parents house like a loser wallowing in your impotence at social conduct. So you go to work, and you're tired, and you get off work and you're tired, and you run 10 miles easy, and you're fucking worn out and you get a text message 'boozes?' and you do it. And the next day hurts, and you drag through work wondering if death is better, and then you run an easy 10 and you're so fucked and fucking tired of being fucked but mostly tired.

You wake up one morning, slightly hungover from 1/4 of what it would take to put a dent in you 4 years ago, and you think about why you're doing this, why you're working this job, and it all comes back to why you went to that college, why you hung out with those guys, why you have done everything you've done for the past decade: this running thing. You realize you can half ass it and have fun, and get half ass results, and know that when it's all said and done it's a half ass job that maybe something full ass could have gone down had you put down the booze and got more sleep. You're tired of the headache, and the backache, and you say enough, this shit has got to stop. If you're going to do this, you're going to do it the way it needs to be done. You watch yourself socially isolate to do this, because you know that there is a piece of you that will always be in the back of your mind if you don't give it an honest chance.

So you stop going out. You're friends think you're a buzzkill, aloof, nuts. But you just have to give this one fair shot, with no distactions, no fucking, no booze, no bullshit. You feel bad, because all those guys you had the best times with, you're now seemingly disregarding to go pursue the hermit athletic thing, and they have moved on. Maybe you're too stupid to let it go, but like how things are for everyone they are what they are. And so you slip into an existence where you are suddenly no longer in college anymore, and you've grown up, and you realize that responsibility and all that bullshit are the things they should have taught in school, and that was the only thing that failed to grace your curricular menu. You find yourself going to bed before midnight on a Friday to wake up and run before work and go to bed and run and go to bed and...

- To all the guys I shared the wildest, craziest nights with back in college, best of luck with all of it. I feel like the asshole who left the party before the strippers show up, but then again, I think we all knew that was how things would end up with me anyway. Enjoy yourselves, have a drink for me, hell, have 12.

Great News Story

2008-03-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

Trader sues over 'lap dance injury'

I may need to check this place out. Im not sure how you could get in the eye with a heel, but it sounds like a damn good lap dance.

Dont Talk And Drive

2008-03-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

Ive noticed a trend when I am driving and when I am riding with other people of saying "I knew that person was on a cell phone". I think it is agreed upon that talking on a cell phone really inhibits your ability to drive. I know from personal experience, not that I have been in accident or anything, but I just feel like I am paying much less attention than I should be paying.

Ive always had this thought about cell phones taking away from your ability to drive safely, but today I got conclusive evidence of this. No, it was not somebody driving and causing an accident. This incident actually took place inside of Panera this morning. There was a girl on a cell phone standing in the most central location possible in the restaurant. She was apparently pretty deep in conversation because she actually picked a wedgie out of her ass like she was in the comfort of her own. Maybe she does this all the time in public, but I highly doubt it. I know that I make damn sure no one is around when that happens to me. If this isnt proof that talking on a cell phone while driving is a bad idea, then I dont know what is.

AC

Greatest Bands Ever

2008-03-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

Lists are fun, so I am going to start doing some lists in this blog. Feel free to contribute your own lists. Rather than start with some obscure list, I am going to go for one of the most controversial lists of all: The Greatest Bands Ever.

As with all lists, this is completely subjective. This list does not deal with the influence on anybody outside of myself, and that is why The Beatles will not be included in this list. I think they are a great band and have influenced many a band, but they are not a band that will get a lot of plays on my computer.

I will include musicians that I have listened to for a long period of time, and those that I expect to listen to for a long period of time. I will try my best to exclude flavors of the month(but may include those in a different list).

I am going to list the greatest now, and maybe Ill defend the selection or maybe I wont.

1)Radiohead
There was a time when I decided that no matter what was happening with my musical taste, I would always keep my Radiohead as my second favorite band. This was so long ago, I cant even remember when this happened. But it turns out that they have stood the test of time and have evolved into a musical juggernaut from their early basic rock days. I am not implying that their earlier records were bad, but I am saying that their more recent records have showed a major shift towards experimentation without going over the deep end. Some might believe that Kid A did go a little too far, but that is actually my favorite of all their albums.

2)Nirvana
This was the band that actually got me seriously into music. It was over 13 years ago when I can say that my foray into music began. This was the first band that I remember trying to buy all of their albums. I never got Bleach, but I think had pretty much all of them after that.

3)Explosions In The Sky
This is more of a current band. I have only listened to them for a couple years, but they have been the new leader in what I have come to expect from music. I like to label this band as classical rock because their typical album will be 5 songs and will last an hour. They require patience, but it is very rewarding when you are in the mood.

4)Bob Dylan
I remember disliking Bob Dylan because I didnt like his voice. Its funny how things have changed.

5)The Mars Volta
This is kind of a weird choice because I am basing this off of two of their albums. I listened to part of one their later albums and decided I wasnt interested. Frances the Mute and Deloused in the Comatorium are so good to me that I had to include this band on my list. If I could write an album, I would write one of these two. They have so much energy and just straight up rock. In addition they have that experimentation edge that I like about Radiohead.

If only I was higher up in the world

2008-03-16T22:35:00.001-07:00

One of the guys I worked for who was a senior associate at the company I just finished this 4-month internship with kind of pissed me off recently. Unfortunately, there's nothing to be gained from expressing how pissed off I am so I'll just swallow my pride.

The last day of my internship, I was cleaning up my office and I had a humongous amount of stuff to take home. I was taking public transportation home that day and I can't tell you the strain on my back from carrying everything in my bag. In addition, I was carrying an extra pair of shoes and winter snow boots in my hands. I asked a coworker of mine who's a senior associate (ranks somewhere between executive and normal person) if he wouldn't mind taking a book to the library for me since he lives in Arlington as well. He initially said no, but I said that I was carrying a lot of stuff home so he said ok.

Well, anyway, he agreed to do it but here's the controversial thing about the book: It was a series of interviews by Playboy Magazine of movie directors. There were absolutely no nude pictures or anything remotely inappropriate. As hard is it is for people to believe, I don't even read playboy. I only became familiar with Playboy's in-depth interviews from Lexus Nexus searches of interviews back when I took film courses. The book I brought to work one day and left it there mostly as something to read in the bathroom (again, not as dirty as it sounds).

So this guy responds by sending a mass email to the other coworkers with the title Wow on Orrin: "WOW…all I have to say is, WOW.
The fucker came in my office just now and said, “Rob, you live in Arlington, Can you return my book to the library for me?”
After an exchange of many words, and reminding him that he too lives in Arlington, I agreed to return the book for him…the title of the book you may ask:
The Playboy Interviews: The Directors.
I shit you not…
WTF…I am afraid to touch it."

I barely remembered I still had access to my company email account which is lucky I caught this.

As you can see, my problem is that this guy (let's call him R) is not a stringent by-the-book follower who has a stuffy aura of formality about him. He's actually a pretty cool guy. He got more drunk than anyone at the company party. He's been pretty cool to me most of the time I worked there. Which might just be the worst possible combination here because he dissaproves when the lowly intern does something wrong but he doesn't follow the formal channels of reprimand, like filing some report where I might be able to defend myself. Instead he just sends a mass email a la Steve Carell in The Office of: "Funny news of the day: The intern gave me this."

So I emailed him back and was like "Rob, did you send this to everyone in the office? I'm a little concerned now" and reinstated that it was merely a book of movie directors (not Pornographic movie directors) as anyone could see by looking on the back cover....

Anywy I write him and he says, blah blah blah:
"Orrin;

It is fine…you don’t have anything to worry about. Regardless of the content of the book, it was a playboy publication; that was my only point…I don’t support that. Regardless, like I said, you don’t need to worry…you aren’t going to get fired; and no, I didn’t send it to the company. I just hope it was a good read.

I will offer you a suggestion for your next career move though; it is not in your best interest to bring that type of material to an office (and you know this). Orrin, if you didn’t know it was inappropriate for the office, you would not have written your last line in the email you sent me. Please be mindful of your actions in the future at the next place you work…not everyone is as laid back and accepting as the _________ team. I would hate for you to be in a bad situation in the future due to similar actions.

Best to you.
~Unnamed employee"

Well, that was helpful and as I said he is a cool guy, he's not like a jerk, but I still disagree with him because I wasn't taking a Playboy Magazine. Anyone could have seen what it was by looking on the back cover and if he had a problem with it, and if he really had my best interests at heart, would he have mass emailed the company about it? But that's the slightly annoying thing: there's no reason to voice this and alienate someone higher up than me. That's the game we play. The boss is always right.

What I think is kind of funny about this situation is that I checked at the library and it said I had a late fine because that book hadn't been returned. I asked him where it was: "Orrin-it is in my new office to be unpacked. I would not worry about your thoughts of what other W+A staff think...you had the book at the office and most people know you had the book at work and saw it. Also, I really do not think you should continue to use this email address...it is a W+A email address."
So, he is reprimanding me for having that unholy book in the office when the book has been lingering around in his office for over a week now? Also, by "unpacking" he means that the company renovated offices recently and everyone was supposed to pack their stuff to be moved into another room for a day while a crew paints their office and then they bring it back unpack it two days later.

So he was consciously cleaning out his office and didn't think "this monstrosity must be removed from my office and brought to the library at once!" but packed it into a box instead of items marked with his name for the two female administrative assistants to move to other room and back. Oh, plus I'm not allowed to use the company email to ask these questions? How was he using the company email appropriately.

Oh yeah, and I'm still accumulating fines on it.

I Do It To Myself

2008-03-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

Im sure the title makes it seem like I am beating myself up over a girl or something but its about me killing myself with back to back long nights. Im not sure what happened, but when I was younger I could get away with. These days I get one good night a weekend and then Im toast.

Lets start with the first night. The plan was to hang out at my neighbors until 11 something and at the latest be in bed around midnight, wake up at 9 and head to Ted's place in Norfolk to meet up with some old teammates. Imagine a movie or tv show where they put the scene in rewind and show what really happens. I start at the neighbors with a 6 pack of semi-expensive beer, which probably wasnt a good idea to begin with. I drink the first beer and then offer my roommate one(this would cut down on my chance of drinking too much, given how strong this beer is). I open the fridge to find one left, not good. I ponder what to do next and eventually decide its probably for the best, I will just get home sooner. A little later I get a text that eventually lands me in Foggy Bottom at McFaddens around the time I was hoping to be in bed. I get to the bar and before I even meet up with my friend, I put down shots of my favorite(soco and lime). I find my friend who is entertaining her best friend and they have a serious head start on me. At some point I lose my momentum and only get one more drink. McFaddens starts to die so I suggest The Gaurds(yeah I did it) and of course we stay there until last call dancing to shitty 80s music. I hate on The Gaurds but I always have a good time when I go there. So we head west from Georgetown when I live to the east and up. Im not sure how but one of the girls gets going on the number of holes available for straight men vs. gay men vs. the gay women(you had to be there). So we arrive to the city county hours after I was hoping to be in bed and arrive to bottles and bottles of liquor. I proceed to drink a few rum and cokes, a buttery nipple, warm jack, and probably another shot or two in a short period of time. At this point I realize I am not making it home as the drinks are hitting me quickly.
So I end up waking up at 9 like I had planned but I proceed to the bathroom fairly certain I am going to throw up. Some how I manage to keep everything in and proceed to crash on The Couch until noon(the time I planned to arrive in Norfolk).

I end up leaving out of Takoma feeling like shit around 1. I came damn close to falling asleep mutliple times but manage to make it Norfolk alive. I was dead at Teds, but Teds fridge fortunately contained around 20 Red Bulls with Vodka in the freezer. This allowed to me finally wake up some time after midnight and helped me to create a few hot tracks with Evan, Bolton and B Rodgers(If anybody has one of these songs on their voicemail...I would really like to hear one). This night ended up being fairly chill outside of the late night Saves The Day sing-a-longs with Ted.

Im not sure when my next day off is, but I am going to attempt to stay in town and let myself recover.

Mt Pleasant

2008-03-13T22:06:00.001-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/13/AR2008031300788.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Songs with good lyrics

2008-03-11T20:29:00.000-07:00

Allen recently commented on how I don't listen to particularly good lyricists when it comes to music, so I thought I'd write about that and defend myself.

My music list consists more or less of: Dave Matthews Band, Goo Goo Dolls, Gin Blossoms, Santana, Matchbox 20, Train, The Killers, Maroon 5, Sheryl Crowe, Michelle Branch, Jason Mraz, Fighting Gravity, Third Eye Blind, a little bit of bluegrass that includes Allison Krauss and Union Station and Nickel Creek, and piano players like Bruce Hornsby and Ben Folds.

I don't write much about music because I think music is a lot more subjective and difficult to judge and I find that the way to write about music and be accepted is to look obscure band names that aren't in the mainstream. The more mainstream something is that you listen to, the more made fun of you are which I find odd because the point of every band is to reach the largest audience anyway. This phenomena exists in the world of film to a very small degree where a certain echelon of film snobs denounce Spielberg as the anti-Christ and love to rave on about films by Asian and obscure French directors that the average person has never heard of, but it's more common in music.

I think I'm going to take just one of these bands (maybe I'll do another one at some point) and discuss their excellence in lyric-writing: Matchbox 20 which is a band whose songs I have personally connected to.

The song that's been most influential to me I would say is "Mad Season" from their second album. The lyrics go "I feel stupid but it's something that comes and goes/ and I've been changing I think it's funny how no one knows/ We don't talk about the little things that we do without/ When that whole mad season comes around....I need you now/ do you think you can cope/ You've figured me out/ I'm lost (in the second rendition of the chorus, he replaces "lost" with "a child") and I'm hopeless/ I'm bleeding and broken/ Though I've never spoken/ I come undone/ This mad season"

This is one of two sings I played over and over during my freshman year of college to get me through (the other one was "Your Winter" by Sister Hazel and had to do with a girl problem more). I was supposed to be having the best time in my life, but I didn't love college my first year. I felt disoriented being away from home and the same social circle for 18 years; I quickly became over my head, academically; and in high school I defined myself as a runner but didn't make the team. The song spoke to me about being surrounded by a sea of seemingly happy people experiencing the greatness of college for the first time and enjoying their everyday lives and how you don't seem in step with them. When I transferred colleges to JMU, three years later after taking a year off and being in the real world, I had another "Mad Season" of significantly greater proportions. I was transferring to a school I had not planned on ever attending (it was my safety school, while I looked for a school out-of-state) and was living in a dorm at the age of 21 where most people moved off campus at the age of 19 (noone had told me that). JMU has an inordinately high amount of school pride (not that some of it isn't deserved, but still, I might call it an unhealthy lack of willingness to challenge the status quo), so I was in a worst-case scenario situation, and surrounded by people who not only loved everything about their lives but didn't even comprehend someone who didn't feel equally happy about their lives at JMU. When he says "I need you now, do you think you can cope," it made me feel like I wasn't alone in the whole thing, how I wanted to admit, "Yeah, I look like I'm doing ok as a "college student but I'm not", and how more than anything else, I wanted to reach out among the sea of people too distracted by how fun the drunk bus could be and how busy their studies could be, and tell them how hopeless, lost, bleeding and broken I felt.

Another one of his songs relates to this, "All I Need":

"Everywhere, someone's getting over, everybody's lied to someone, people still use other people with a crooked smile/ and all around the world, there's a sinking feeling, out there right now now, someone's feeling down on themselves and don't know why/ and that's all I need/ someone else to cling to/ someone I can lean on until I don't need to/ just stay on through/ the night and then the moment let me do cause that's all that I need right now (he later replaces "right now" with "write it down")

In this song, it talks about how, again you're being surrounded with a sea of superficial people and how you personally just need someone to connect to. I also relate to the line "the moment let me down," because when I was younger I used to blame myself heavily for simple decisions I made and felt that if my life was sucking, it was because of a single moment letting me down. The his single, "Unwell" also is asking the listener to understand that sometimes he might not be at his best at that moment.

He presents this theme about understanding and being open about people's weaknesses and confronts racism in the song "Black and White People":
"One boy head strong/ thinks he's just having one of those days/ he's been pushed down so long you can hear him start to think/ and it's one last round full of petty conversation/ you hold on boy 'till it's more than you can take/ cause you won't go down like this....if it's just that you're weak/ can we talk about it/ it's getting so damn creepy just nursing this ghost of a chance/ the fiction, the romance, and the technicolor dreams of black and white people"

Other songs he's made that I can relate to:
"Real World"-The singer wonders what it would be like to be a CEO or a superhero and wishes in the end the real world would just stop hassling him. I related to that track as a teenager a lot, and even now
"Shame"-Just has interesting lyrics, about lost love and guilt
"Last Beautiful Girl"-The feeling that you're so tired of dealing with the opposite sex and that last girl who got away was your only hope at salvation from it
"Bright Lights" or "Hand Me Down"-Both deal with how a girl you like or were with is being presented with another option and you feel that you're better than that other option
"Let's See How Far We've Come"-His latest single talks about the Apocalypse happening and his attempts to take a personal inventory on "how far he's come" as the world comes to an end. I tend to catastrophize a lot and feel that a lot of things are the end of the world so I relate to it pretty well.

A few good friends

2008-03-11T15:11:00.003-07:00

I was invited by Allen to comment on this blog because I write a lot of my own stuff, but I haven't figured out exactly how to contribute things that go along with this blog's themes.

Nevertheless, I'd like to say a quick word about the author, Allen: He is a good friend. I'm not a big fan of getting older but I've decided to soften the blow of age by going onto facebook and inviting many of the people I'd like to see, to a birthday party. I don't know if that's lame or anything, people are usually celebrating each other's birthdays and going out for the occasion.

The last two times I've attempted this, the only person who showed up was Allen. Another friend in each case met me on my actual birthday, but still. I'd like to thank him but also just take a moment to think abotu how bad all my other friends are. They had such pathetic excuses too: A pair of my friends who live together treated the evening like a normal Saturday night and said, "We're not sure where we're going, we'll give you a call back when we figure it out." In other words, they had no pressing commitment. About three or four of my friends were this way. I had another friend, who said "Sorry, I can't come, I'm watching the UNC basketball game," which was odd because I was at a sports bar where the entire UNC fan contingent of Northern Virginia was probably at this bar. The whole affair just made me feel rather depressed, and to have a birthday was already depressing enough. All I know, is that the people who I invited are all people that I would go out of my way to attend their birthday parties if it made a difference to them. Honestly, I've never ever succeeded at getting all my friends together at one place.

Many people profess to be big fans of me because I have a certain style about the way I go about things in life. Some might even say I'm a popular person or have been a popular person at many points in my life. In fact, I learned in a gened class once on developmental psychology that there are four types of social categories: Rejected, Accepted, Controversial and Neglected, and realized that at various points in my life, I've been all 4. Growing up, i was rejected, than around high school i became popular, but after a while I started doing things that made me controversial, and when I first transferred into James Madison, I became neglected. So in response to people who tell me that I'm popular or well-liked, I've always brushed most of those comments aside. I once made a video on the popular website J-Maddy that was a big hit and sometimes people would recognize me from that video but that didn't matter to me, because popularity is short-lived.

What's good is to have friends. Reliable friends who if you're throwing a party would be eager to show up. People who aren't just someone who's your friend on facebook but someone who's your friend in person. So my message is to make an effort to be a better friend to your friends, because in the long run that matters more towards your character than compliments you pay or being a nice person. I also wish to shout-out to some mutual friends of Allen's and mine: Evan, Nick, Jason, and Josh, you have also been sincere friends of mine at one point or another and I thank you for that as well.

Youtube's Competition

2008-03-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

Youtube has become a dominant force in todays digital world. Its almost up there in the class with computers and cellphones...that what-would-my-life-be-without-these-things class. I was reading the news today and came across a potential challenger for youtube, and a potential savior for the networks. hulu was created by Fox and NBC as a way to avoid the a similar fate to that of the music industry. The idea is you can get full tv shows online, rather than the scattered clips on youtube. This service is not free, but its still I think people without tivo are going to cough up the money to watch the new episode of the office while writing in the blog or checking up on facebook; this multi-tasking is possible with its transparent interface.
hulu will be competitive with youtube because in addition to the pay-per-view service, it will also let users upload their own videos. So if you want to see and old episode of grey's, but not until you watch a chipmunk be really dramatic, this can be easily accomplished.

Bobcats, et al

2008-03-06T20:16:00.001-08:00

So this evening in the store I'm working with two lovely women of a slightly older varietal. I'm helping them find some shoes. In typical fashion, I'm outgoing through this process to essentially exude whatever a sneaker pimp is supposed to exude. At the end of the transaction I give them my business card. They go to a bar, and leave their shoes in the store and will come back to get them before closing.

Ten minutes before closing the phone rings. They ask for Dave. They ask if I would like to meet them at a nearby bar and have them buy me a drink for my service. Something like this hasn't happened to me personally yet, but I'm all for it. So I close up, grab their shoes, and start walking to the Italian restaurant whose name rhymes with El Nino.

Once inside the ladies come over and give me a hug. Apparently one of them has done some drinking in the previous few hours, but it's cool. The more composed, extremely watchful one of the group and I strike up conversation about, well, you know, cougars (her words, which I had no problem using as well). It was at this point that I made conversation with them which resulted in them asking me to be their personal trainer on a cruise on June 28th to the carribean. They complained a bit about their husbands, called me a baby due to my age, said that I was hillarious, and prodded my abs. All in all, it was entertaining.

The evening ended with them going home to their respective husbands and me just laughing.