Winners never quit

Punctuated by moments of massive fear

i took the weekend off. from the site, not anything else.

and i can tell right now that anything i write will not be the most coherent writing in the world (example? that sentence). i ask your forgiveness in advance for anything that makes no sense at all.

here goes:

saturday evening was spent doing the following:

live at pop's in sauget, illinois.

honestly, i really didn't want to go to the show. work that day sucked, i was tired, blah blah blah. but i had promised dave that i would take him, so i was roped in to going. i'm glad i went, though, as it was all fairly enjoyable.

pop's, for all my ripping on them for allowing a venue for washed-up bands like firehouse and warrant, is a pretty cool place, with a balcony of sorts and lots and lots of space. good thing, because the moby show is still going to be paaaacked. the corey feldman show (yes, that corey feldman), on the other hand, will not be packed. i say that with certainty.

quick run-through: kidneythieves were much better than i remember them being (i remembered them as one notch below terrible, one above horrible). sixteen volt played what seemed to be the same song twelve times in a row. kmfdm (and pig--raymond watts played with them, making it kmfdm featuring pig or something like that) played no songs that i recognized.

most important, though, is the fact that kmfdm (featuring pig) made my nostrils vibrate. they're the first band to do that.

aside to vasant, if he's reading--i am planning on going to the pedro the lion show, and i apologize for not calling you back.

alissa, who indirectly introduced me to the world of (and i dislike this word) blogging by pointing me to liz's weblog a while back, finally got her own. what does this mean? it means that freelancing isn't filling up her entire day. go visit her, if you haven't already.

i still can't tell if it's that i heard the cover first, but i really think that coalesce's cover of "vehicle" is much better than boysetsfire's original version. while the "god please help me" is screamed quite well, that dude from coalesce's growl seems to work better.

i didn't mention this before, but last week some time i was attempting to prepare couscous (with garlic and olive oil--don't be impressed, it was one of those "pour 'spice sack' into boiling water" kind of things). i proceeded to spill the actual couscous all over the kitchen floor. panicking (the water-with-spice-sack combination was boiling), i realized that we had remnants of a huuuuge bag of rice in the cupboard. i grabbed that, but it wasn't rolled up the way it was before, so i then spilled several cups of uncooked rice on the kitchen floor.

what does all this mean, you may ask? well, first, i'm a klutz--a fact i believe has been firmly established around here. second, i ended up cooking spaghetti in the concoction that was boiling--a problem-free cooking, but a result that required i eat something else in order to get the overwhelming taste of garlic out of my mouth. and third, uncooked couscous is impossible to sweep up in its entirety. as a result, almost a week later i still geslight pains--pains reminiscent of walking on tiny b-b's, which is what couscous essentially is--when i walk in the kitchen without shoes. learn from me, dear readers, and don't do what i do.

one of the most depressing thoughts i've had lately--i have no dreams. that is, i don't have something that i'm shooting for in my life. at this point, i've turned to "what wouldn't i mind doing for the rest of my life," as opposed to the normal, "what would i love to do for the rest of my life" way of doing things. it's not for lack of ideas--i just censor myself too much, throw possible career paths out the window for one reason or another.

i got an e-mail from my dad earlier today. apparently, my best friend from elementary school, and a guy i knew and occasionally hung out with through high school (we drifted apart, but not in a "reunited ten years later on oprah" way), is getting married soon, and i'm invited. i'm not sure whether i'm going to go or not, so i'm going to write out a list of pros and cons for the potential trip:

pro: (reasons to go to ex-best friend's wedding)

allows me to get the hell out of st. louis for a few days, even if it is to somewhere in ohio that i've never been to.

i'd see pete (ex-best friend) for the first time in about six years or so.

i'd undoubtedly see other people i knew from high school, again for the first time in about six years.

my parents would be happy, since they're going as well (they're still good friends with pete's parents), and they like when i actually visit them.

free food, drink, and golfing (i don't golf, so wouldn't golfing be fun for me, even if my chaturbat version of golfing pisses everyone else off?) for three days--they're dragging the stuff out with "welcoming picnics" and "farewell brunches" and shit like that.

i like going to weddings. i'm weird like that.

con: (reasons not to go to ex-best friend's wedding)

weddings during the summer piss me off. hot weather and bill in a suit are two great tastes that taste weird together.

i was only indirectly invited--they told my dad that i could come if i wanted, with no actual invitation sent to me or anything (a very very very minor point, but one that may be used if i need to come up with a good explanation for not going, even if it doesn't constitute a good explanation).

inevitable awkwardness as i speak with ex-best friend for the first time in ages.

(most important reason) beth orton is playing in st. louis on the same day as the wedding (and remember the wedding is in ohio, making doing both physically impossible).

so i'm not sure what to do. rsvp date is the 25th, so i have some time to figure it out. thoughts will be met with blank stares, followed by appreciation on my part.

i know that there were other things, but that's all i can remember.

i love how i end one in three posts with those words.

Effect on plants

sorry about the lack of posting, but the flurry of comments re: huey lewis and the news (and ultimately re: peter cetera) consistently distracted me with its...i don't know what. but it distracted me, and anyway, i didn't have anything to write about.

and until about three hours ago, i still didn't have anything to write about(*). but then i got home from work, and i got on the ol' instant messenger. i then chatted with sarah about panache vs. zing and other important world events. oh, and send her good karma in finding a place to live, will ya?

but anyway, i also chatted with maggie (m., ex-girlfriend, current jasminlive friend, and all-around raconteur). in addition to discussing "date vs. not a date" re: current situations for her, she pointed me toward an interesting web site.

now i'm not going to link to this site, mostly because it's not something that most people would give a crap about. but it's actually an online journal by my younger brother. not only that, but she has one, as do a whole mess of people that i remember from high school--most of them friends of my younger brother.

now, after all this rambling that in retrospect is probably too much background, i will give you the reason why i found all this so interesting.

i think what's most striking is that i always remember my brother and his friends as being this vaguely idiotic, fun-loving guys who seemed intent on finding stupider ways to fill time in centerville, ohio, than me and my friends did. obviously, this isn't an accurate look, but that's what i had in my head.

more than anything, it's just odd to read this journal that you know was written by your younger brother, but it doesn't sound like him. it sounds like you, five years ago. and the stuff that his friends write about...well, same situation there.

i think that the ultimate point of all this is that i've never felt as old as i do right now. not old, really. not even grown-up (although that certainly is part of it).

actually, i think it's just that i feel kind of bad that he feels down sometimes for the same reasons that i felt down a few years ago.

It's still beatingggggg

ever since i woke up today, i have had "the heart of rock and roll", by huey lewis and the news, running through my head. i'm still not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

and a lack of posts of late is caused by the fact that i have been spending most of my time outside of work sitting in my jasminelive room, trying not to wake up dave's relatives as they sleep.

and i indirectly found this a little bit ago. hey, where were all of these people before? i don't even know who any of them are...

i'm sorry.

for the love of god, will someone please take a sledgehammer to the televisions (yes, plural--have i talked about that before?) in my living room? oh, and format my hard drive?

i'd really like to get something useful done around here. instead, i bask in the glow of assorted ambient radiation.

in other news, dave has pretty much cleaned the apartment in preparation for his mom and grandparents' visit. much applause is due to him for that, because he gallantly entered our "sun room," and actually cleaned out the damn thing. you see, much like the dining room is not in actuality a dining room (instead being called "living room ii" or some such nonsense), the "sun room" is instead our Room of Random Crap (and i never capitalize on here, so you know how serious those capital letters are).

yes, yes, so at one point it was dave's bedroom. at one point, for a short time, it was my bedroom. for a few months it was even the bedroom for john and that asian girl whose name i could never remember. it sucked as a bedroom, actually, because it has a glass-paned door, meaning that it had about as much privacy as sleeping behind a curtain slung over a clothesline.

anyway, the point is that it's now our Room of Random Crap. i have books in there that i haven't read since i was twelve. my growing fan graveyard is in there. i have a fishtank and assorted fish-keeping materials in there, which one wouldn't find odd until they find out that i have not owned a fish since i was eight, and this isn't even the same junk i used with that fish.

there is no point to all this. i just wanted to shine a virtual spotlight on that ever-useful, ever-cluttered room that i so often take for granted. good night.

Tempation like a blanket

(caution: you may want to read this post in chunks, or at least make sure you have a lot of spare time. i rambled. a lot. just so you know)

(i also have this funny feeling that no one will comment on this post, just because there's so much here. no, this isn't a thinly-veiled request for comments. really)

all right. i woke up this morning much earlier than expected--the toilet had been running all night (not overflowing, just attempting to fill despite the thingamajig not closing--a constant problem with our toilet), and since that toilet, when running, makes a noise in my room that is easily likened to a very small jet engine...well, it eventually woke me. so, after getting about five hours of sleep, with no good reason for waking up, here i am.

and as i'm sure you can gather from the fact that that last paragraph included only three sentences (two, and a fragment, and one of the sentences is probably a run-on, but i was never very good at avoiding run-ons), i'm a bit scatterbrained. as a result, this post will be in the ever-popular list format. here goes:

my friends jon and renee were in town this weekend from minneapolis. you may know jon from his comments (*) on the now-defunct (and soon-to-be-deleted) lovelettertypewriter. anyway, it was good to see them--they're pretty much the only people from the old days of college (i.e. freshman year), along with dave and rahul, that i stay in contact with. so whenever i see them, it's endless remembering and talking about playstation hockey at 5 am, fire extinguishers in hallways, etc. but yeah, good people, jon and renee.

this news was actually further down the list, but i bumped it up, because it's cool. this, i'm sure, is old news, but i just found out about it. the latest plea for peace tour is starting up in september (tour dates here). first off, the tour is going to benefit the national hopeline network, a suicide hotline. i believe last year's tour had the same goal, but it's still a cool thing. and second, the band lineup is actually pretty damn good (and will draw laaaargge crowds):

jimmy eat world

promise ring

bouncing souls

cursive

cave in

(international) noise conspiracy

poison the well

anti-flag

thursday

common rider

lawrence arms

now, i'm not great fans of a good chunk of the bands. but overall, the show will be fun, and the line-up is pretty top-notch (and a far cry from a few years ago, when it was just a bunch of asian man folks on tour together).

if you've never been, and you have this itching to see some weird-ass people, head on down to your local greyhound station. i can safely say that it's the only place that you may see an amish guy sitting near a guy in a cradle of filth t-shirt. sometimes i want to go down there just to sit around and watch people, but i'm afraid that might classify me as "creepy."

you know whose job i want? will lyman's. and you may say, "who?" well, if you've ever watched frontline more than once, or any of a multitude of pbs specials (like the one i watched last night on northern ireland, which kept me so engrossed i forgot about martha stewart), will lyman is the narrator. i want his job. sure, my voice isn't as cool as his, but i still want that job.

i actually watched 120 minutes on sunday. actually, i didn't even realize that it was on, but they showed the dj shadow video for "6 days" (which missy pointed out was directed by wong kar-wai), followed soon after by the beth orton video for "concrete sky," and i realized that either mtv2 had become cool again, or i was watching 120 minutes. and sure enough, i was. some comments:

vasant was right: beth orton is very tall, and very very skinny. "concrete sky" is a beautiful video, even if i don't agree with the dress she's wearing.

the video for "6 days" is very nice as well. and it's good to see that the first video was not "you can't go home again," because that song is boring in comparison (although i do like the concept of a new wave dj shadow song).

the get up kids are dull as fuck now. the video's pretty good, though.

i actually dig the promise ring song, "stop playing guitar" (i think that's what it's called). the video is cheesy, but nice. and it's nice to see the guys from camden blending in with the band now.

will somebody please stop the garage rock trend? pretty please? now we have the vines, who are snotty yet boring--a combination i never thought i'd see.

saves the day almost made me tolerate their presence with their newest video (you know, the one with the puppets. no, not the new weezer video. saves the day). but then they had to actually have the lead singer in the video, and i despised them yet again.

the video for the new doves single is freaky.

the (international) noise conspiracy video is funny.

is any other long-standing fan of the state confused by the appearances of the different members showing up in "real" movies and television shows? i know i am. i mean, i could get around michael ian black on ed, because it's a role made for someone from the state. but what about these?

michael ian black guest starring on nypd blue.

kerri kenney on the ellen show.

thomas lennon in memento

joe lotruglio and michael showalter guest starring (in separate episodes) on law and order.

ken marino's the biggest one. recurring roles on leap of faith and dawson's creek. appearing in gattaca. guest starring on will and grace, veronica's closet, spin city, nash bridges, and the practice.

don't get me wrong here. they all deserve to make millions and millions of dollars, and to get top billing in any movie they're ever involved with from here on out. it's just odd to see "the italian" (from the jew, the italian, and the redhead gay sketch) playing a professor on dawson's creek. that's all.

low is going on tour in a few months (october dates with mark eitzel--tour dates here; news came from pitchfork). now this i don't understand. low is playing in oberlin ohio, ferndale michigan, and bloomington indiana...but they're not playing st. louis. i really need to move.

i made a t-shirt at work last week some time, and i wore it this weekend. i was actually thinking about making more and having an official amusiac.net t-shirt, but then i realized that would paint me as loser-ish and egocentric. so i don't think i'll be doing that. but it's a nice shirt, if i do say so myself.

i love the fact that i don't post much for a few days, and then suddenly i create the longest, most meaningless post ever.