amplified to rock
A Caveat: I understand that not everyone can just go and shake up their lives and quit their jobs and do something real. I understand that people have responsibilities, families, children, car payments, rent, bills. But it kills me to see amazing, talented people busting their asses at thankless, shitty jobs that they absolutely hate. If you're miserable--get out. Somehow. Find a new job. Get a loan and go back to school. I could spout a bunch of corny platitudes like "life's too short to be unhappy," but I'm sure you understand what I mean without them.
Eight hours is one-third of your day. If you spent one-third of, say, a friendship being treated like crap by the other person, you'd walk away, wouldn't you? If your partner made you irritated and miserable one-third of the time, you'd break up, right? It's not worth it.
Independence Day: Six months ago today, I got fired.
Please, no sympathy. Though I went through a rough phase right after it happened (characterized by feelings of uselessness and inadequacy and a desire to just stay in bed all day), it really was the most liberating thing to ever happen to me.
I was a copyeditor. Yeah, it sounds really exciting if you're an English/grammar geek, but it's not. It's crap work, for the most part. Copyediting is not glamorous. I was not lunching with authors, I was not discovering new voices, I was not copyediting any material that I had the least bit of interest in. I copyedited vocational textbooks--mostly stuff about electricity and electrical wiring, with a little bit of small engine repair and construction thrown in for good measure. I wasn't working in a city--I was in a suburb, and a marginally crappy suburb, at that. I worked in an area surrounded by a couple of strip malls and an industrial park.
I worked at this job for almost four and a half years.
For four of those years, I had the same boss, and old Southern gentleman for whom I had the utmost respect. He was harsh, and he sometimes pissed me off beyond belief, but I respected him. When he told me to work, when he set a deadline, I would strive to reach his expectations. He was a perfectionist, just like me, so we got along well. And then he retired.
The person who took his place was a wishy-washy, jargon-spouting workaholic who expected all his employees to work mandatory overtime (and weekends) even if there wasn't any work to be done. He had serious issues with decision-making, he never could figure out what he wanted, and his attempts to boost employee morale and self-esteem were so transparent they were laughable. His attitude was that employees should work because they find some inherent value in their job. My attitude was that I copyedited vocational textbooks because I GOT MONEY FOR IT, not because I loved being there. You want me to find inherent value in my work? Then give me a job where I'm actually impacting someone's life directly. Give me a job where I'm doing something that pleases me. Don't expect me to show up to work at 8 AM five days a week all smiling and chipper and thrilled to be editing ten more poorly-written chapters about how to repair boilers.
Needless to say, we had our differences. And while certain other co-workers became relentless kiss-asses, seeing such things as new carpeting and modular furniture as things that would improve everything and build us up as a team, I got annoyed. I didn't attempt to hide my annoyance. Yes, this new boss bought us cake when we finished a book, and, on occasion, people have been able to earn my favor by feeding me. However, I had to deal with so much crap from this man--the constant faux-considerateness that he affected, the expectation that I was supposed to work my ass off for nothing more than a smile and a thank you--that I started fucking around at work more and more. I spent a lot of time blogging (as the archives will attest), I wrote a lot of personal email, and I did nothing to hide my distaste for the bullshit that I was expected to swallow on a daily basis.
They waited until the end of the day on Friday to do the deed. Looking back, there were numerous signs that it was going to happen--the way one of my co-workers, an incorrigible kiss-ass who thought that sucking up to the boss was going to get him some sort of a promotion within the dinky-ass company, acted towards me at lunch; my boss's cryptic "I'm not afraid to make changes in this department" comment at our monthly meeting (which took place the day before I was fired); the way several of the supervisors seemed to be constantly looking over my shoulder while I worked that day. Of course, I was used to weirdness at my job, so I blew it all off and went on with business as usual, which, that day, was half-assedly copyediting a chapter while corresponding with several friends via email. Even the firing was wishy-washy. Instead of saying "you're fired, pack your stuff and get going," I got this "we think it would be best for you to leave our company" speech. The president of the company even had the gall to tell me some story about how he got laid off. LAID OFF? What the fuck did that have to do with me? I was being FIRED.
After a twenty-five minute meeting where I told such egregious lies as "I really loved my job here," I was instructed to pack my things and go. The first thing I did was call my mother. My mother called my father. My father and my brother came out to help me. The second thing I did was call Matty. He talked to me for a few minutes and calmed me down while I packed my stuff. The third thing I did was call Brian. I believe he reminded me that I hated my job anyhow and that it was all going to be okay. Then my dad showed up. First he hugged me and told me that it would be all right, that everything would be fine. Then he stood around and looked imposing while I continued to pack my things.
My favorite moment of the afternoon (and it practically makes me cry when I think about it, because it's one of the most amazingly supportive things a person has ever done for me) was when my former boss asked my father if we needed any help carrying my belongings to the car. My father looked down at him and said, very calmly, "No thank you. I think you've done enough for one day." It was just so beautifully timed, so beautifully said, and so completely insulting that it about killed me.
My brother drove home with me in the car that November afternoon. It was already getting dark, and my mind was racing. I had no idea what I would do--this job that had always been there was now gone. I had always treated it as a given.
That evening, I spent a lot of time talking and thinking and trying to figure out what my options were. I threw around a lot of ideas in those first few desperate days--I would work at a bookstore, I would rush out and find another job in the city, I would temp, I would find some way to make it until Fall. In the Fall, I could go away to school, I could make some important change in my life.
After I got over the initial apprehension--where would my money come from? What would I do when I looked for a job and I had to explain that I had been fired? How could I have failed?--I realized that I now had freedom. I now had the ability to make whatever changes in my life I had wanted to make. I now had no excuse to say "yeah, I want to go to library school, I figure I can do it in Fall 2003." I could be whatever I wanted to be. I could live my life the way I wanted to live. And I no longer had to spend forty hours a week being completely miserable.
I know so many people who spend every workday actively hating what they're doing. They find their work so irritating that the irritation ends up becoming the focus of their life. They spend hours outside work bitching to anyone and everyone about how miserable they are at their jobs, yet they don't want to take action and do something different. They get complacent, they make excuses--job-hunting is such a pain, the money is good where I work, I wouldn't collect a paycheck this big at any other job, I like my co-workers--and they fail to realize that they're wasting their lives doing something they absolutely hate. I was the same way. And now that I've seen freedom, now that I've felt how liberating it can be to have my entire world shaken up, I will never, ever live my life that way again.
So thanks to the people who fired me six months ago. You assholes made my life much better than I could have ever imagined. Knowing that I will never again subject myself to working for people like you makes me smile.
Thoughts while watching M2 (or, I really should be sleeping instead of killing brain cells): I have not been watching much M2 lately. It's been a phenomenon restricted to occasions like late-night "Sabado Gigante has a commercial, let's put on M2" sneak-peeks while I'm sitting around at Tim's, or "let's see what's on M2, oh that sucks, I'm going back to the Weather Channel" viewings when I'm home sitting in front of the computer.
The videos on M2 could be divided into...hmmm...four categories. Probably more, but we'll start with these. There's the hip-hop videos, which are usually the most visually entertaining. There's the pop-punk videos, which all have the exact same premise: fresh-faced young men with spiky hair and chain wallets and baggy shorts and t-shirts have lost their girlfriends, who they love. They face a series of comic misadventures that often include toilets, car trouble, being seduced by women who look like (and most likely, are) porn stars (the boy-men are always innocent in these videos), pratfalls, and plenty of close-ups on their smooth, young, unscarred, zit-free, innocent pop-punk faces. There's the R&B "diva in training" videos--lots of bare midriff, sexy hair, voices husky or trilling, talent ranging from exceptional to nonexistent. Then there's the rap-metal videos, characterized by misspelled band names and bass players who hold the bass slung down way low so they have to crouch over it to play. It makes them look more bad-ass, man. Admittedly, when I see the beginning of a rap-metal video, I almost always turn off the TV or switch the channel, because bands like Twiztid and Staind and Mudvayne and Limp Bizkit are beyond the bounds of my bad taste. And I tell you, that's saying a lot.
Tonight, in half an hour of viewing, I saw two pop-punk videos (both from bands I haven't heard of, and they seemed completely interchangeable with any other pop-punk band out there), a hip-hop video (Eve with Gwen Stefani--I'm sorry, but Gwen just does not do ghetto convincingly. Yeah, she looks good, but she just seems out of place), and way more rap-metal than I could possibly stand.
Now Nelly's on the screen, loading girls into a truck, relaxing in a hammock, and wearing the most godawful cowboy hat I have ever had the misfortune of seeing. Love the leopard-print seat covers, though. The OJ car chase parody...not cool. Old. Played out.
Nelly is immediately followed by the new Radiohead video, "Pyramid Song." It's jarring, going from the smooth sunlight-infused cool of Nelly's adventures on the road to the claustrophobic computer-generated world of Radiohead, but the Radiohead video sure is compelling, all awash with blues and bubbles. This is followed immediately by a video for a song by some R&B diva-in-training named Nikka Costa. The music's all jumpy and she keeps humping the microphone stand. She also looks more than a little haggard when they zoom in on her face. Those 70s aviator shades do nothing to help. They were ugly in 1977, they're ugly now, let's let the 70s fad die already. I will say something for Ms. Costa: her use of boob glue is second-to-none. She's wearing this filmy scarf top, and it's very flowing everywhere except right on her boobs. There's absolutely no chance of slippage there.
I could go on about this all night, talking about the new Aaliyah video (which I love, both for the style and for the song) and everything that follows, but I think it's time to sleep now.
Here's something you didn't know about me: I love watching birds. It's something I got from my grandmother, who used to chart the return of a flock of
cedar waxwings to her hawthorn trees every spring. I live in a suburban neighborhood with a lot of trees, so there's birds everywhere. This spring, there's been three
finches--two boys and a girl--flying around the neighborhood. They seem to hang around with the male cardinal an awful lot, which seems kind of strange to me. They perch on the back porch and sing in the mornings, especially the female, who is tiny and brown. I watched her this morning while I ate breakfast, singing her little bird heart out. Since it was rainy, they came closer to the windows than usual this morning, so I was able to get a better look at them.
Right now, I can tell that the male cardinal is in the yard somewhere--I hear his little "twit twit" song. Cardinals are the only birds I will forgive for waking me up at five in the morning. I think it's those bright red feathers. They're my favorite birds, and they have been since I was young.
At school yesterday, I saw some baby shitting geese. They're surprisingly cute, probably because they're not enormous honking pooping machines. When I first saw them, I thought "oh, those are adorable," and then I remembered that they would turn into absolutely monstrous creatures that honk at odd hours and poop everywhere, and then they weren't as cute.
Please speak clearly when leaving messages: I applied for a grant from the state of Illinois to cover my library school expenses. Part of the application process is an interview with the training grant committee. The woman in charge of the grant program called today and left a message on my machine. It looks like I won't have to drive all the way down to Springfield for the interview, which is good--but when she left the message, the second digit of her phone number was so muddled and unclear that it could either be a 1, a 5, or a 9.
"Okay," I said. "With the power of the Internet, I will figure out the mystery of Susan from the Illinois State Library's phone number!"
Of course, I don't have her last name, and there are no Susans listed in the staff directory. All of the exchanges are different--apparently, it's not set up so that all of the exchanges in the building are the same. I did find someone with a 557 exchange, so I'm going to try that one first. Hopefully it will be the correct one, because there's nothing more annoying than making long-distance calls to the wrong phone number.
I have also come up with a scheme for emptying my inbox. No, it doesn't involve deleting everything. What I'm going to do is this: every day, I will respond to whatever email comes in that day PLUS the five oldest messages in my inbox. Right now, the oldest messages are from mid-March. Yes, MID-MARCH. That was the last time I went through one of those "too lazy to answer email" phases. So if you emailed me way back when, you'll get a response within the next week or so. I'll be sure to quote your entire email to help you remember what you said. And I will never, ever let this happen again. I don't want to be one of those people who develops a reputation for never answering email and being all rude and snotty. I like it when people email me, I'm just a little lazy with the responses sometimes.
Tales from the Thai Food Shack: So there's this Thai restaurant down the street from Tim's new apartment. We had been hearing about this place since before he moved. When he told one of his friends where he was moving, his friend said "oh, you'll be right across the street from this incredible Thai place! It looks like a dump, and it has weird hours, but it's the best Thai food in the city!"
It took us a couple of weeks to figure out where the infamous Thai place was. Driving back from the Empty Bottle with Amanda on Easter night, I saw it--just this little one-story shack-looking place with a handpainted sign advertising all the dishes served there. It looked like a dump, especially compared to the newly-remodeled storefronts that surrounded it.
It took another couple of weeks for us to figure out the hours of the place. Finally, Tim walked down there and checked the hours that were posted: 10 PM to 6 AM, every day except Thursday. Yep, those were some weird hours.
Soon after that, we had another report of the goodness of the Thai Food Shack's food. Tim and one of his co-workers were sharing a cab home, and the cab driver mentioned the Thai Food Shack as they passed it. "Best Thai food in town," he said.
We finally got the chance to dine there on Saturday night, and all I have to say is this: damn. It is, indeed, the best Thai food I've ever eaten. But even better than the Thai food is the atmosphere. The inside is just as dumpy-looking as the outside, and the owner is a rather gruff middle-aged Thai man who pretty much tells you what to order. There's a sign hanging over the kitchen (which is completely open--you can watch the two cooks, a man and a woman, prepare your food) that states:
This is not BURGER KING
You do not have it your way
In fact, you have it my way
Or you don't get it at all.
There are also numerous signs (around eighteen of them) that feature that statement translated into different languages.
We got there around 1 AM on Saturday night, and the place was hopping. The owner kept bringing out these huge containers of Thai iced coffee to the people who were waiting for their food. These weren't glasses of iced coffee--no way. You know those huge plastic cylindrical take-out containers that you sometimes get at Thai or Chinese restaurants? The one-quart ones? The Thai iced coffee was served in those containers.
When Tim tried to order the Pad Thai, the owner told him he couldn't because it took too much time. He pointed at the queue of orders sitting on the counter--there were probably ten orders ahead of ours--and told Tim that he could pick anything in the section that was marked in black. He ended up with Tom Kha soup (with pork, incidentally, because they ran out of chicken right after preparing my green curry).
We sat for about forty minutes, soaking in the atmosphere. The late-night movie played on the TV sitting on the end of the counter, its antenna extended and capped with a flag made out of aluminum foil. The owner's language was peppered with "fuck"s and "shit"s. (I felt at home with this man, this small business owner who uses more swear words than I do.) I watched the cabbies come in for their tanks of Thai iced coffee, which were refilled immediately if they fell below half-full. People of all different ethnicities--Asian, Middle Eastern, Black, White--stopped by to get food, to talk. I looked at the framed newspaper clippings extolling the goodness of the River Kwai II (which is the Thai Food Shack's real name)--professional food critics love this place!
The food is amazing, and inexpensive, considering what you get. I've now eaten four meals from my $7.50 green curry entree. The atmosphere, however, is beyond compare. It's this little subculture of the night, this place that only exists at night. Tim and I both intend to become regulars like the people we saw there. We'd like to be recognized when we come in, for the owner to ask us about our lives, to smile and joke and take our order. He's great. The restaurant is great. It's my new favorite place.
If you want to go there--and I think you should--it's at 1650 W. Belmont--just west of the Ashland/Lincoln intersection. It's really a treasure.
(Incidentally, the one Chicagoan I thought of while I was at the River Kwai was Krystyn, because I think she could adequately capture the atmosphere of the place in words and pictures. I'm going to have to take her there sometime because I have this strange feeling that she'd absolutely love it.)
Upcoming event: My brother, the world-famous BUN, is going to be part of an experimental video exhibit on June 1 at 7 PM. It's a Friday night, and it's free, and you should go because it's going to be cool. You should also go because you can hang out with me (always fun) and meet my family (you know you want to meet the people who raised me). There will probably be some sort of happening after the exhibit, some sort of eating activity or social hoo-ha.
Here's the specifics:
Technicolor Revelations: an experimental video exhibition
Hokin Auditorium
Columbia College Chicago
623 South Wabash Avenue
My ankle itches. And I need to sleep. If you have any questions about the exhibit, or if you think you're going to go (Quinn, I'm counting on you), or if you'd just like to socialize with me, send me an email. I assure you, I am extremely friendly. Really.
Nanette's Boyfriend Chimes In On the New Weezer Album: I'm off to buy it in another 37 minutes, but here's what Tim had to say about it:
i just thought i'd let you know...
the new weezer album ROCKS!...
it's really good, except for Hash Pipe, which is, in my opinion, the worst song they've ever written...
why the heck would Rivers ever use a voice modifying machine?..
stupid Rivers...you don't need that fancy smancy doodad...
That's none of your E-Business: Amplified to Rock is a
Blog Of Note! Thanks, Ev! And welcome to any new readers who wander in this direction because of that link.
Today is free stuff day here at the University Where I Work. For some reason, there's posters about Earth Day all over the place, and all of the free stuff is emblazoned with the recycling symbol, but Earth Day was April 20, so I don't think this has anything to do with it. I got the following (mostly useless) items:
Computer screen wipey thing (plastic)
Chip clip (in fashionable BRIGHT ORANGE)
Flower seeds (Cosmos, packaged for 2000 but I'm sure they'll still grow)
Unidentifiable container-on-a-string (I don't know what I'd put in it, but hey, it was free)
Bottled water and one of those foam beer cozies
Useful measuring spoon
Oh, and they were giving away free ice cream. The woman in front of me took the last sundae cone. You'd better believe I gave her the stink-eye for that one. I took the last ice cream sandwich, but when the woman behind me mentioned that she wanted an ice cream sandwich, I gave her mine. I wasn't about to be an ass and take the last one if someone else really wanted it enough to say something. The people in charge of the free stuff table replenished the ice cream stock about ten seconds later, and I got an ice cream sandwich anyhow. But I also got the pleasure of giving my ice cream sandwich to someone who really wanted it.
I was complimented on my Yo La Tengo shirt today. I was getting my lunch and this guy said "hey, nice shirt." And I smiled and said "thanks." And then about an hour and a half later, he tracked me down here in the writing center and we talked about music for about ten minutes. It was pretty cool. It's odd how I'm finally meeting people with similar interests now that I'm getting ready to leave this place.
"Or maybe I just want to see Cursive cover "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang": Knife of Simpson on the Dismemberment Plan/Cursive/Enon show.
Champaign is go! I signed a lease for an apartment on Friday. It's a nice little place--one bedroom, with a full kitchen, a nice-sized walk-in closet, and air conditioning. Oh, and a dining room table. That's important. Though the dining room table will likely be covered with my crap within two weeks of my moving into the place, it's the thought that counts. If I keep it cleared, I won't have to eat every meal sitting in front of the TV.
I've been collecting posters to hang on the walls of my new place. I've got nine or ten so far. My latest acquisition is a Red House Painters poster that I took off the wall at Metro last night. My favorite (so far) is the Shipping News poster I got at the Empty Bottle. It's on a nice paper stock, and it just looks really cool.
After I did the lease-signing stuff, I went out with Mike Saul to a fancy bar with couches. We were celebrating the end of his college career and his last days in Champaign. I drank two ciders, got a little tipsy, and told him all about my TOP-SECRET WEBLOG CRUSH. He has probably blabbed it all over the place by now, or maybe just forgotten it. I need to stop being such a lightweight. No average-sized grown woman should be DRUNK after drinking two ciders within an hour and a half.
After our little happy hour, we went back to the infamous Cradle to sit around and chit-chat. On the way back, we were pelted with fruit by the fine young people living in Saul's neighborhood. I think they were actually throwing the fruit in the creek, but I got hit on the foot with an apple (I think that's what it was). Damn kids these days.
While Saul was telling me all the secrets of the Cradle, his roommates Colleen and Val came home. Apparently, Mr. Saul had told them that he would let them spike his hair for his last big night of partying in Champaign. Of course, Saul is a slick one, and he was trying to deny that he had given his consent. Mayhem ensued. Apparently, he managed to weasel his way out of it in the end. I am confident that they'll get him someday, maybe in his sleep.
Saul made some fantastic ghetto nails out of cellophane tape. They were the epitome of ghetto fabulous, except they weren't airbrushed and they didn't have rhinestones glued to them.
After an hour or so of Cradle fun-n-frolic, I was finally sober enough to drive back home. I wished Saul an evening similar to a late-night USA Network movie: drunken fun, hooking up with the girl of his dreams, etc. It was, after all, his last night in college.
Congratulations (yet again) to both Mike and Colleen on their graduation. You're done! Yay!
Really, the high point of last night's Jets to Brazil show was when Quinn unknowingly rubbed his butt on my arm. That's all I'm going to say about THAT.
Attention Chicagoans: If you're not doing anything on Thursday, here's
something for you to do. It will be worth your time, I guarantee it. I'd be there, but I have school, unfortunately.
I support him wholeheartedly because he wrote this, which I absolutely love. I am convinced that he interviewed a pile of my ex-boyfriends as research for that piece. Just look at this paragraph:
I am not a postmodernist. I am not punk rock. I am not a slacker little shit. I don't like Thai food, I'm not a vegetarian, no, I don't want a bite of your yummy burrito, and by the way, I fucking hate NPR. I do not justify my personality defects by endlessly bringing up my clinical depression. I am arrogant and egotistical, because I am arrogant and egotistical.
If each of those phrases up there does not describe at least one of my ex-boyfriends, I swear I'll eat my shoe.
Go. It'll be fun. Really.
I'm still hatin' on that stupid bear, but: I know a bunch of you will get all excited about this, and it is my duty to excite you, so here:
Radiohead tickets. I don't know if this is where you go to buy tickets for all of the shows when they go on sale, but if you're in Washington state or Vancouver, this is where you go to buy tickets for those shows. I think you can also go through Ticketbastard, but why on earth would you want to do that when there's another option? Apparently, Houston, Denver, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco are already sold out, and the other shows are not yet on sale. Go
here to keep up with Radiohead madness.
BY THE WAY, to correct the misconceptions that seem to be floating around, Radiohead is NOT playing Soldier Field in Chicago. I've heard this from a bunch of different people--it is not true. They're playing Butler Field, which is in Grant Park. To be more specific, it's the Petrillo Music Shell at Butler Field.
Did you see the drummer's hair? (Also known as Nanette's review of last night's Jets to Brazil show)
Since I'm sure my darling Quinn will review the show for real, I decided to do something different. I am going to discuss the hairstyles of the drummers from all three bands. Why the drummers? Because they were the only people on stage I could see during all three sets. That's the peril of being kinda short and not aggressive enough to push towards the front of the venue. I will have you know that, compared to Quinn, whose grooming is beyond compare, all these drummers look like total slobs. I touched Quinn's hair last night and it felt like a baby chick, all soft and fluffy. You boys should all take some grooming tips from him.
Anyway.
The Honor System's drummer's hair is best described as "spock rock." Making fun of Spock Rock hair is the new thing. It's much, much more clever than making fun of mullets. What possesses men (or boys--these are emo kids I'm talking about here) to cut their hair like first graders, dye it black, and forget to wash it for two weeks? Now, the Honor System's drummer's hair didn't look all that unclean, but I was also standing way in the back of the Metro, so I didn't exactly get all up close and personal with it. But the bangs--the horror! The Goth-black color--wrong! Please make this Spock Rock hair insanity stop! (I would link to The Honor System's web site, but I keep getting a "cannot find server" error. Supposedly, their website is located here.) If you're curious about what they sound like, it's just your basic pop-punk-emo-whatever the kids are calling it these days. I think they all have broken hearts and unrequited crushes or something.
The Love Scene's drummer was rockin' the nouveau-hesher look. His hair looked too clean to be true hesher-hair, but it had that "I haven't cut my hair in eight months because I'm too busy listening to AC/DC, fixing cars, skipping school, daydreaming about motorcycles, and reading Metal Edge magazine" look. This seems to be a new trend among the indie/emo/pop-punk crowd, and it sure beats the hell out of Spock Rock hair and that awful Blink-182 "spiky, highlighted" hair thing that was going around a while back. I can't find a website for The Love Scene either--I apologize. I liked them better than The Honor System, and they played a lovely ballad at the end of their set that I would like to nominate as the theme for the First-Ever Emo Prom.
Now, Jets to Brazil. As you can see in this photo, Jets to Brazil drummer Chris Daly is sporting the "I am going bald, but I'm going to do it gracefully" look. There is nothing wrong with a receeding hairline--I, for one, find them attractive--and if you have a receeding hairline, you shouldn't try to cover it up with a combover or some other such nonsense. (I went out on one date with a boy who had a receeding hairline, and to compensate, he had grown his bangs [which were way high up on his forehead] long and combed them forward. It was almost laughable. Don't do it. The key is to love your flaws and work with them, not against them. Not that a receeding hairline is a flaw, but you know what I'm talking about.) I applaud your hairstyle choice, Mr. Daly. You ignore bad trends in favor of a classic look. More drummers should follow your lead.
The show was good. I'm not a huge Jets to Brazil fan, and I probably wouldn't have gone to the show if the tickets hadn't thrown themselves at me, but I enjoyed myself. I am, however, glad that the glut of good rockshows is now temporarily over. I was getting tired of going out. Really.
Blogger's been down: ...and I'm too busy to update right now. I'm trying to finish my reading assignment for tomorrow's Contemporary Lit class, and I get to leave work in 45 minutes, at which time I will go home, eat a bit of leftover Thai food, and head up into the city for tonight's Jets to Brazil show.
What does this mean to you? No substantial update until late morning tomorrow. Sorry. I'll make sure tomorrow's update is extra-special-huge.
Quick catch-up post with no substance whatsoever: I've got tons of stuff to talk about. Last night's GBV show, Friday's trip down to Champaign, the infamous Thai Food Shack, and much, much more. But it's Mother's Day, and I've got to do stuff with my mom, so it's just going to have to wait.
In a nutshell: GBV rocked, I signed a lease, and I have discovered the greatest Thai food restaurant on earth. Check back tomorrow and I will elaborate on those statements.
