amplified to rock
This afternoon has just flown by. It's kind of disappointing. It will likely be 4 PM before I get out of here, then I'm going to run to Threshold to pick up CDs, then I'll go home and wait for Matt to call me when he gets home from the Cubs game. Then, maybe, I'll go out and do something.
I know I'm working today so I won't have to spoil my plans for next weekend (I'm going down to Decatur to visit Colin) but still...I just had to whine about it. Whine, whine, whine.
And nobody's updating their weblogs today, and nobody's emailing me either. Yawn. Sigh. Whine.
Just so you know, in case you cared, I am still unimpressed with the Sunny Day Real Estate CD. The sound is a little too prog-rock for me. And I know SDRE's lyrics have always tended towards the goofily over-earnest, but some of the lyrics on this album were just "wha?" I'm thinking about the lyrics to "Snibe" in particular. I was listening to it, and I suddenly realized that it's something about the government. Maybe it was inspired by some sort of huge political movement and is making a very serious statement, but lyrics like "we stand in the marketplace/with cold september eyes on all the hungry people" don't really inspire me to get out there and fuck the system and smash the man and incite riots and such.
If you want to write Sunny Day Real Estate lyrics, you must learn the names of the months. And say some stuff that is really abstract and doesn't make much sense, but sounds pretty good. It was okay on Diary when you couldn't understand what Jeremy Enigk was singing anyhow, but on The Rising Tide you can, and it's just distracting. I spent much more time saying "wha?" than paying attention to the CD. And that's never a good thing.
Wow, you could almost call that a CD review.
Matt bought me Navy Blues by Sloan, and I'm wondering why it's taken me so damn long to jump on the Sloan bandwagon. Stef and Jack would be proud of me--I'm going to head over to the local independent music store and pick up as much Sloan as I can once I leave work.
I'm listening to the new Sunny Day Real Estate CD. I bought it when I was in Boston and I haven't listened to it since then. I remember being really unimpressed with the first few songs, then hearing a couple towards the middle/end that I liked.
Last time I heard this CD, I was sitting on the floor of Ray's apartment putting together a cabinet. I miss him even more than usual now that I remember that.
Something is very, very wrong with this picture. It's Saturday, and I'm at work.
So a couple of months ago, I signed up with a bunch of those alumni websites. This was more out of morbid curiosity than desire to meet people I knew in high school. I hated high school. It was four years of the worst kind of torture.
My mom works at the public library in my hometown, so she often comes home with stories about former classmates of mine. Most of them are pretty sordid--a lot of unplanned pregnancies, shitty jobs, and failing marriages--and I must admit, I get a big kick out of finding out that someone who was an asshole to me in high school got theirs a few years later. So I signed up for a few, looked around, was disappointed in the lack of dirt on my former classmates, and never went back.
Today I got a message from one of those sites. And it was from someone I actually could stand, so that's a bonus. He wasn't a close friend, just someone I knew, and I always thought he was cool, he was a goofy skater guy, and I probably had a crush on him at one point or another.
Tonight, Matt and I might go to Brew and View to see High Fidelity. Beer + High Fidelity = some nice scenery. Boy scenery. I'm betting that place will be absolutely rife with cute indie rock boys. I'm still very much in "look but don't touch mode," but it never hurts to look.
A surprise visit from Colin + finding out that Matt isn't out of town for the weekend = fun fun fun for me.
Colin on Ozzy's "Bark at the Moon" video: "See, Ozzy's down with empirical reasoning!"
Nanette's misreading of the day: In
Wisdom's rundown of who's who in the zineblog community, I read his description of pitchfork as "the sweaty behind of indie reviewing" instead of "the sweaty behemoth of indie reviewing."
Those are two very, very different things. Very, very different indeed.
I'm completely busy at work today, and I probably shouldn't even be posting this, but I don't want to *not* update.
The indie rock webzine thread is still hoppin', if you haven't been there yet, you should check it out. If you're not interested in indie rock webzines, I created a whole bunch of new questions. You can see all the forum questions here. If none of the questions interest you, ask your own.
New stuff to talk about:
What are your guilty pleasures?
Are you sensitive to criticism?
Recommend some websites.
What do you consider sexy?
Also...I'm going to be sitting around my house doing nothing for most of the weekend. Pretty much everyone I know is out of town this weekend. If you have AIM and you'd like to chat, I'm nanette e. I'll be bored, entertain me.
For those of you who think clavicles are sexy, I present you
this. Enjoy.
No more posts this afternoon. Must. Work. I'm already stuck coming in to work this weekend, and I'd rather not be here every waking moment. Go yak it up in the forum while I'm gone. You can even start your own thread about my clavicles (or whatever else you want to talk about).
Last night, I got locked in the bathroom.
It was about 10:45 at night. I was getting ready for bed. I tried to open the bathroom door and it was jammed. The knob wouldn't turn at all.
Fortunately, people were home and actually paying attention, so fifteen minutes later, I was freed from the bathroom. Yay for that.
It wasn't traumatic or anything, just annoying, because by the time I got out of the bathroom I wasn't tired any more. I sat around and read for a while, then made an attempt at sleep that was thwarted by my darling neighbor, who had decided that 11:30 at night was the perfect time to try and haul some rotting wood from his backyard to his garage. All I could hear was the swearing and the yelling and the sound of wood banging against wood.
This, of course, is the same neighbor who decided that 3 AM was the appropriate time to dig up a bush that was growing between our two houses. After hearing fifteen minutes of leaves rustling punctuated by grunts, I became convinced that someone was trying to break into my house.
So now, the bathroom door has no knob. Just a big hole where the knob should be. My brother is going to the hardware store to buy a new doorknob, so it should be fixed when I get home. Hopefully. I like my privacy.
Hey! I was at
this GBV show! And so were
Nick and
Jared! Of course, I wasn't aware of their existence at that point, so it didn't really matter.
I'm making plans to go to Phoenix for a long Labor Day weekend (that's the first weekend in September for any non-Americans out there). Amanda lives there, and I haven't been out to visit since I helped her move back in April of 1999. It should be a good visit.
I managed to find a flight that only costs $219, which is extremely cheap considering that I was expecting to pay about $400. I can't do the Priceline thing for this trip, the thought of being on a 6 AM flight really makes me itch. I like being able to choose my times. I'm headed out on Friday night, September 1 and I'll be back either Tuesday the 5th or Wednesday the 6th, depending on when I can get a ride home from the airport.
It seems that the first weekend of the month is my Official Vacation Time--this month, I was in Boston, next month, I'll be in Decatur, and the month after, Phoenix! (Okay, I know, Decatur isn't a "vacation" really, I guess I should call it Official Out-of-Town Time instead of Vacation Time. Heh.) As much as I love Chicago, it's good to get out of town. It gives me something to look forward to.
I redesigned the
journal last night. No new content, though. Take a look if you're really bored.
Interesting stuff over at
"http://www.gfusedesign.com/usagainstthem/">us|against|them this morning. Mark poses some questions about the quality of online indie music zines. I'm really interested in seeing the response to this--as a matter of fact, I'll start a
forum topic so we can all yak about it publicly.
It all boils down to this: why do people feel compelled to start online music zines? The answer is simple: free shit. The idea is that if your zine gets big enough, you'll start getting tons of CDs and concert tickets in the mail from record companies. CDs and concert tickets that you probably wouldn't be able to afford otherwise. This explains why every indie music geek with a copy of Microsoft FrontPage 2000 and marginal design and writing skills feels compelled to slap their opinions about music up on the web for everyone to read.
Publishing an online indie music zine is fairly effortless. Though you could potentially put hours into its design, you don't have to. You just get yourself some web space (which can easily be had for free), create some crappy graphics, write a few things, and upload them. You promote yourself by writing emails to zine editors/webloggers/record labels/bands you like, you get linked a few places, Indieshite slags you and your hits skyrocket, and *poof*! you are an instant music journalist.
Part of the problem with the proliferation of indie rock online zines is the stale, tired format. How many columns can a person read before they start banging their head against the monitor? Is there an unwritten law of the indie rock online zine that columns *must* be included? In the same vein, how many rambling, self-indulgent record reviews are necessary to have your own indie rock online zine? Must all record reviews go on for 500 words? Can't the same thing be said in 100 words? (Well, all the florid prose would have to be removed, but at least the reviewer would be forced to get to the point rather than telling the readers stories about their lives.)
The truth is, there are a limited number of people with talent. Every monkey banging on his/her typewriter isn't going to come up with a masterpiece, and every indie rocker banging on his/her keyboard isn't going to come up with The Greatest Online Indie Rock Zine Ever. I'd love to take the two or three people with actual talent from each of the online indie rock zines out there and start something good with them. But you know what? It wouldn't work. All the egos would get in the way. People who are great at design would be loath to admit that their writing sucks. People who write awful reviews would still want to write them because they don't want to give up the free CDs. And people who can't do anything would piss and moan about elitism and exclusiveness because it's just too damn hard for them to admit that they just aren't talented.
One thing I've noticed in my few months of paying attention to indie rock online zines is that you can't criticize anyone--even if your point is valid--without them pitching a shit fit or whining like babies. The few times I have criticized zines in this weblog, I've received "why do you hate us? really, we're very good" emails, which are more annoying than amusing. Are people so delusional that they think that *everyone* is going to like what they're doing?
I could talk for days about this kind of stuff. Let's talk for days in the forum, shall we?
One of the servers here at work belched yet again, eliminating two days' worth of work. Fortunately, I didn't do much work on the computer yesterday, so I didn't lose a whole lot. Everything I did on Friday was pretty easy to fix as well. Some of my co-workers were not so lucky, and they're running around like crazy trying to figure out what to do.
Now I have Actual Important Stuff (TM) to do, so I'll leave you with this one fun link: Ask a Klingon. I asked the Klingon "What is Ray doing?" and it told me "something to do with holy wars and gushing blood." I guess things must be going well at The Company That Stole Ray from Nanette (TCTSRFN, for short) because it sounds like he's pretty busy.
Wow.
This is awesome. Michael Daddino of
Cultural Artifacts of the Moment discusses the development of his musical tastes. It's long, but it's worth it.
(Of course, I get a big silly kick out of checking off all the Long Island places he mentions that I have actually *seen*. I'm all "hey, I shopped at that mall!")
Courtesy of
kerplink.pitas.com:
Sensitive Boys. I need to commit this to memory so I can use it when necessary.
I'm in a mood where I feel like doing ANYTHING but working. This is different from my usual mood of not wanting to work but doing it anyhow. And it's not the best mood to be in, considering that I have two huge-ass deadlines coming up. I need to work, damn it!
I had a weird craving for McDonalds today at lunchtime so I drove over there and was informed that they were out of meat. Oh well. And some high school kid yelled "hey girlfriend! What's your name?" at me while I was driving towards the drive-thru.
How does a McDonalds manage to run out of meat? Isn't meat their business?
I ended up getting Burger King instead.
My other big thing that I have done today is look at plane fares to Phoenix for Labor Day weekend. I am determined to go somewhere for Labor Day weekend. I'm sure Amanda won't mind having me around. I also made the big decision to only take one class next semester. It won't throw off my plans to quit life and go back to school full-time in August of 2002, so I might as well not kill myself.
Ray has an
online journal now. And of course he writes about me, although sometimes he rants about me. He's all "Nanette tells me what to write!" Yeah, like he doesn't say "write about ME!" all the time. I have the emails to prove it.
Anyhow, Ray's journal is very different from mine. He writes a lot more about everyday life. But he does it well. I liked his old journal a lot, and I'm glad he's back, though I think he needs to write about me some more. Now that I said that, maybe he'll rant about me again!
I discovered Jessamyn's
librarian.net through the links list at
kerplink.pitas.com. The library was my favorite hangout as a kid, and I still get excited over huge libraries full of old, dusty books. (There's also that idea that someday I may go to library school...that's something I've been tossing around in my head for several months now...) Of course, I was thrilled to discover a library-themed weblog. From librarian.net, I moved on to Jessamyn's
personal site, which is full of good reading. There's a journal, plenty of stories, Scrabble scores, and, best of all, a log of the books she's read since 1997. Shortly (i.e., once I get the time to do it) I will be launching a similar project. I've always thought about keeping a list of the books that I read along with a brief "review" of them, and Jessamyn's list sort of lit a match under my ass to start doing it. I'll post the URL once I get it started.
Last weekend...let's see...I went to see the
Mil Mulliganos at Magoo's Underground Lounge on Friday night. It was most definitely a rock show in the most glorious sense. It had everything--rock moves, rock songs (including--yay--a GBV cover), and a near-fight between the Mil Mulliganos and the shitty opening band.
The first opening act was Torch Marauder, out of Durham, NC--a town that I do NOT have fond memories of. Torch Marauder's performance was bizarre--one guy in blue paint (think Blue Man Group) performing with a videotaped drummer/keyboard player. Watching Torch Marauder interact with the videotape was really funny, the guy's got his act down, and it's cool. Plus, he used just about every synonym for "mullet" that I could think of. Yay. Torch Marauder earned bonus points for making reference to Lord of the Rings. Everyone knows that if you want to write rock lyrics, you must learn about where the hobbits dwell.
The second opening band sucked. Nathan had warned me in advance that they sucked, so I wasn't all that surprised. They have the potential to not suck, but they need to practice a lot more and decide what direction they're headed as a band. (Gawd, that sounds so cheesy...) Their set was completely not memorable, except when they finally stopped. And when the singer said "There's a lot of cute girls in the audience tonight!" It's like this: If you're going to mack on girls from the stage, you can at least be in a good band. If you're in a shitty band, you can at least be attractive. Don't go up on stage looking like one of the Mole People and playing in a shitty band and expect to get laid. Will. Not. Happen.
The Mil Mulliganos were really, really good. This is not just me trying to compliment Nathan, who is a self-proclaimed "regular reader" of this weblog. Even Matt, who is far more critical of these things than I am, said they were very good. They have a good sound, their songs are catchy, they use lots of rock moves (rock moves are a good thing), and they're fun to watch. They've got this goofy/serious thing going--they act really goofy, and you think "oh, they're totally not a serious band," and then they start playing, and you're amazed at how good they are. I should have bought their CD. Next time I see them, I definitely will.
The rest of the weekend, I just sat around at home. I read a couple of books. I talked to Ray on the phone for a while on Sunday afternoon. I slept. It was very quiet and kind of nice.
