1/25/09

I can return emails

Eeegads what has been going on the past few days. Hoo boy! Let's see, I worked and that was pretty cool. I've really been staying there pretty late this week and I might need to cut that out. But it's more fun than just coming home, so I don't know. Everything is going good maybe I shouldn't mess with it.

So I dropped off the mixes for my friend today and I should see her tomorrow, but I don't know if she will have heard any of them by then. No big either way, really.

Today was a pretty good day as I got to chill with Ryan for the first time in ever. We watched a thing OnDemand of the Disco Biscuits doing their song Therapy. I had never heard them before today and I've got to say they rock. And they're from Philly! I'm trying to track down what album the song is on because I'd really like to get it. Ryan wants to go see them at the beginning of March and that would be really cool. It would be cool to start the month off in some kind of cool way and then cap it off with SXSW. I finally emailed my friend Scott today after spending like an hour looking at all the bands. I don't even think I have an updated list either. I also emailed my brother because he sent me a kickass email about getting picked to help Rob Huebel with a bit at Largo I think. Very cool. I work a ton this week starting tomorrow, so that should be cool. We'll talk soon!

1/22/09

The First Thom Yorke Book!

From At Ease:
“Thom Yorke: Radiohead & Trading Solo” is the title of the forthcoming biography of Thom Yorke. The book will hit the shelves next month.
There are already many Radiohead books out there, but publisher
Independent Music Press announced this first ever biography of the Radiohead frontman. The press release claims that the 208 page book, written by Trevor Baker, is “a tale of the extraordinary drive, ambition and perfectionism of just one man. Thom Yorke’s story has never been told and this biography goes further and deeper than ever before with the help of in-depth interviews from former classmates, producers, video makers and other key players in his life.”
Thom Yorke: Radiohead & Trading Solo will be out on February 26th. Pre-order the book at
Amazon.

Here We Go


Alright, so it's day 3 of Obama's administration and things seem to be going well. I worked the past two nights and that was alright. Nothing to write home about moneywise, but I had fun and did get to hang with my coworkers after hours which is always fantastic. Last night it was a particularly good crew (although it lacked my favorite person) and we had all this cleaning to do, which we knocked out in about a half hour.
I came home and tried to listen to this week's Best Show, but wasn't able to finish it. So I'm listening now. I don't know if I'll have time to finish it in this sitting either. It is good to have on though as I have like 50 emails to send out to people. I've got to email my friend Scott in Austin because he sent me a link to a site that keeps track of the ever growing SXSW roster. Looks to be a mindblowing couple days and I can't wait to go down. A friend at work was saying that her friend goes to Texas A&M and was raving about Southby last year. I'll write more later.

Susan Van Tassel once again.

Oh yeah quick sidebar: I'm getting a lot of hits from people searching for Bruce McCulloch's Shame-Based Man album. I had it up for a while and once it hit a certain number of downloads, I figured that was enough and deleted the link. So that's what happened with that. It's kind of a jip that nobody who downloaded it seems to want to reup it anywhere, but that's the way things go. Recently I found things online that I'd been looking for for almost ten years so be patient. Or go here and purchase the album. It's $2.16!!!!

1/20/09

Sunday and Monday

I don't think I did anything Saturday. Sunday I was late to work, but it was no big deal. All anyone cared about was nem Eagles, who sadly will not play Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl. Anyway, we had a pretty good night, me and the girls and Adam. We had buses bringing people to the hotel who were in town for the inauguration and we thought we were going to get slammed but it never happened. I think I stopped taking tables around 8:30 and hung out til close. Then I went to Coakley's and hung out with my friend Ryan from open mic. That was cool. When I got home he pulled up behind me and was like "I got Genny Cream Ales at the house!" He only lives a block away so that was cool. I got home at like 5:30 this morning, but for some reason was up at like 11 this morning.

My mom has total inauguration fever! She's way too into it for my liking. I'm trying to get into it, I mean I voted for Obama, but I don't know, I just can't get into the spirit. I try not to rain on her parade though.

Oh, so I finished making the mix CDs for my homegirl AG. I ended up making two, one that I took way too seriously and then one that's just for kicks to kind of say "Yo, sorry it took so long." I also gave her Bee Thousand by Guided By Voices and Radiohead's I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings because I could fit both on one disc. Yippeeee! Here are the mix tracklists.

Who Cares Mix:
Bruises - Chairlift (that song from the iPod Nano commercial)
Los Angeles - Frank Black
Linoleum - NOFX
Rock and Roll Dreams'll Come Through - Ted Leo
Crushin' - The Fat Boys
Jesus Etc. - Wilco
No Bad News - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
Arpeggi - Radiohead ('06 live version, much better than In Rainbows version IMO)
Needle In The Hay - Elliot Smith
Bottle of Blues - Beck
Strawberry Letter 23 - Shuggie Otis
One Night in Bangkok - Murray Head
Lift Me Up - Bruce McCulloch
The Grand Finale - The D.O.C. (ft. Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and MC Ren)
Lift Me Lord - Bill Hicks (This is about a thirty second track that I didn't list on the insert)
Everyone's A VIP To Someone - The Go! Team (also an unlisted bonus trizzack, sucka!)

We Care A Lot Mix:
Wolf Like Me - TV On The Radio
The Laws Have Changed - New Pornographers
Where Is My Mind - Pixies
What Difference Does It Make? - The Smiths
Roland - Interpol
Cellphone's Dead - Beck
Funky Days Are Back Again - Cornershop
Almost Crimes - Broken Social Scene
Was It You? - Spoon
Caring Is Creepy - The Shins
Another Person - Jay Reatard
The Youth - MGMT
Sleepwalk - The Ventures (bonus trizzle, y'all)

So I finished up burning the discs and I just wanted to get out of the house. I was going to get McNuggets because they're pretty much the only thing I'll get at McDonald's that's not a breakfast thing. Fuck McDonald's though, last time I got breakfast there they totally screwed it up. I will never use the drive-thru again. How do you forget the egg in a Steak, Egg and Cheese Bagel? Twice! UGGGGGH!
Anyway, I ended up stopping by the restaurant to give this girl the CDs but she wasn't there. Whatev, I'll see her eventually, I'm sure. The restaurant was cool, but super dead. Still didn't get crazy busy from the inauguration people yet, so that kind of blows. I ate a burger and it was delicious and filling. I ate a killer steak on Sunday too. Food overload and I love it. Speaking of food overload I took some candy and stuff to the restaurant. One girl there had never had a dried banana before, she's 21. That seems crazy to me, I gotta say. I also got these candies made by Tootsie called Crows, which are like Dots but instead of being fruit flavored they're black licorice, which everyone at work was like "Gag me!" but I love black licorice, it tastes like Jager sort of.
After leaving the restaurant I didn't know what to do. I think it was like 9:30 so I thought that I could get to Border's to spend my bad ass gift card on John Hodgman's 'More Information Than You Require'. No dice though because I thought they closed at 11, but they close at 10. Wah - wah.

1/16/09

Used to be alright

What an awesome week it's been! I worked Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and made killer money. Especially on Wednesday when I covered someone else's shift and made $200. The great thing about that is that I didn't even feel like I was busy at any point. I just had awesome customers who got it. Fucking rad!

Anyway, so right now I'm just chilling. I can't figure out what to do with my Friday night right now. I should go out, but there's no real reason to at all. I just walked my pep peps and I think it's about two degrees outside right now. I do need to go to the store to get CD-Rs but I'll do that later. I'm so glad that I got my transmission fluid level topped off and my car's running smooth again. What a relief to know that that's all it was. I hate having car troubles of any kind and as much as I might bitch, in my personal life about how bad VWs are, I'm very thankful that mine is still going strong. Knock on wood.

My friend in Colorado wrote and said that she has secured a stint substitute teaching, which could lead to a long term job in the future, so that's exciting.

Great Best Show this week with the hotdog vendor guy and Paul F. Tompkins. Jeers to my dad for calling in after listening to the show for only zero weeks. That was fucking stupid and his cold open was something that Tom could have really messed with, but he left it alone.

1/12/09

Other things control me

So, I'm trying to get back into posting more but have been spending way too much time screwing around on the net. It's gotten really bad in the past two weeks and I think that I'm going to have to place restrictions on my internet usage, because what I'm currently doing is, I think, making me depressed in some way. I read that being on the net, and specifically, looking at porn can make you really depressed, so that's always in the back of my mind.

So anyway, a lot of cool shit has actually happened in the past three weeks. My dad and brother came to PA for the holidays and that was cool even though I think I was a crab 90% of the time. I basically just didn't feel like doing anything. Even the parties I went to should have been really fun for me but somehow weren't. At all. I liked seeing all my friends, but I would just want to leave after 45 minutes, so then I would deal with that by drinking too much and stuff would just devolve. Horrible. I told my friends who live in other parts of the country that I'd keep in touch more, in fact I owe them emails right now. Anyway, I'll try to be more on that in '09.

I'm still sequencing this damn mixtape , but I now have a more positive outlook on that because I don't care. Making a mix is something I did maybe once in high school, yet for some reason I just think it's the most high school thing you can possibly do. I mean you have to pick songs that you think the person will like, but you don't want to get too personal either and it's just BLAARRG.
So anyway I'm listening to the mix right now and I think it's totally fine. And it rocks to boot. I'll post the playlist when it's totally finished.

So what else has been going on? I do want to give a quick mention of two things that totally rock real quick. First off the amazing Fredericks of New Port Ritchey (it's Florida!) soundboard created by Regular Joe and posted on the message board over at Friendsoftom.com. Fantastic job. Fredericks is certainly the new year's most exciting character and if Tom can get him to quit smoking that would be another in the annals of Best Show triumphs. The other thing is an interview with Seth and Jonathan of Uhh Yeah Dude fame. I watched and read this last night despite the fact that it's probably five or six weeks old. Anyway, good stuff, check it out.

So now that the holidays are long behind us I need to get back to normalcy of some kind. My dad and brother left for their respective homes last week. I was glad they came down and it didn't end up being as crazy stressful as I thought it was going to be. Probably because I mostly just did my own thing, which isn't much. I worked a few of the days that they were here but not many. I'm just starting to work more now and that's been pretty cool. I need to find another job soon and that's going to suck. I just keep thinking how soon I won't have any free time at all, which might not be a bad thing necessarily. I just really need to hit the pavement and look for work. I get such a panicked feeling when I think about looking though. To even think of cracking the newspaper makes me want to totally throw up.

I've got to get back in contact with my doctor soon. I missed an appointment with him back in November and have not yet done anything about that. Isn't that terrible? I still have a decent supply of meds though, mostly because I've been slacking on taking them. I really need to start taking them everyday to avoid shit becoming overwhelming again. But I just don't want to be a flat, monotone person like I was this entire spring. To talk to the people I work with now about when I first started is really crazy because there's been such a marked change in my personality and the way I interact with people. I'm so glad to be back to my old self, but I also know what is at stake as far as not taking my medication and thinking that everything will be cool. I have to look at the night on a curve.

This past Saturday night I went to an awesome opening reception for a new restaurant/ artspace that a friend just opened up. It's in New Cumberland and it looks like it's going to be totally sweet. There were bands playing and more cute art girls than I could shake a drawing of a stick at. It was a lot of fun and it was nice to just go out solo and see everyone there. I ran onto friends right away and we talked and had wine, which I haven't had in a while. Then I went to Pete's and watched Boston Legal with the bouncer, who's a huge fan of Monk. Then some of my friends from work showed up and that was cool. I ended up sleeping at my friend's house and watching Pineapple Express with her. The next day I realized that I maybe could have hooked up, but the previous night the thought never entered my mind.

I came home yesterday from her house and immediately started reading Klosterman IV after putting it off for the holidays. What a great book! Even the stuff that I don't really care about reading (Val Kilmer and Steve Nash come to mind) are really great and I just love Klosterman's style and the questions he poses both to his subjects and to the reader. Great stuff. I wish I could write, but I have long since chucked that idea out the window. Even here on this blog I'll see things that aren't even really sentences, just two half thoughts crazy glued together somehow. Maybe I just need to write more. Maybe I'll post again later.

1/10/09

holiday recap

Thank God the holidays are over. I had a good Christmas and an OK New Year's Eve, but there's really not too much more to say. At work we had our gift exchange and my friend Rachel hooked me up awesomely with Chuck Klosterman IV and Pablo Honey on vinyl! I have no idea how she knew that I liked Klosterman, but was really happy that I liked my gifts.

Anyway, then we went to Coakley's and we had a good time.
I know that I should write a more detailed summary of the events of the last two weeks but I just don't care to right now. I'm basically just posting to get back into the habit of posting. OK, bye.