Always news you want to hear

The economy is getting even worse, just as I'm hitting the job market.

Hooray for fuckin' that.

All those ads I see about teaching English in Japan are starting to look mighty fucking tempting right now...

Don't read this if you taped ER tonight

(Or if you don't give two shits about ER/film nerdiness, since this will likely bore you to death.)

Ok, eeeeeeew. I cannot believe they did that.

For those who don't watch, or at least don't watch anymore, they had Romano have his arm accidentally chopped off by a helicopter rotor in severely disgusting slow-motion.

This occured while I was eating. I just about spit out my oreos.

I can understand the need for having a lot of blood on a doctor show, but that was just ridiculous. Especially, after the commercial break, the crane down to the bloody stump just sitting on the ground, then holding on it for about ten seconds just to remind us, "Hey, wasn't that disgusting?"

During subsequent scenes, the actors were waving the damn thing around like it was a fucking flag or something. It was absolutely ridiculous, and really poorly shot and edited.

Remember kids, things are scarier when they are not constantly shoved in your face. By the end of the episode, it had gotten more ridiculous than disgusting. The whole thing was done just wrong, wrong, wrong.

The episode was pretty much mediocre otherwise, but that part just disturbed me. It's everything that's wrong with the show in a nutshell: Completely ridiculous plot development, poorly written, poorly shot, poorly edited.

Meh.

Last First

It was my last first day of classes today, and I did feel a bit sad that I'm leaving school. Not because of the fabulous educational opportunities I'll be missing. Hell, I can read books and force myself to write asinine essays on them any day.

But I am going to miss the fact that I can wake up at 10, go to class, come home and eat, fall asleep after lunch while watching TV, go to another class, sit out on the lakefill, and come home and only have 8 hours of homework to do.

I'm also gonna miss fun professors like my Sociology Of Complex Organizations (herinafter refered to as SOCO, appropriately) prof, who handed out the syllabus, explained it, called herself a type-B personality and said she generally told students to go home after giving out the syllabus, then promptly told us to go home.

Or my Italian 101 teacher, who scared the living shit out of the freshmen by refusing to speak English for the first 20 minutes of class, then later proving to have a good, solid, Chicago accent.

But I guess this is the end, and while I'm really glad I won't have to deal with stupid shit like the Registrar fucking up the time for my Italian class and making me think I had the perfect schedule (no friday class) when in fact I don't, or CD-ROMs included with textbooks that for all their usefulness, work far, far better as beer coasters, I'm a bit sad.

Though that's probably because I need a job.

Lindsay Hits The Nail On The Head

From Lindsay's musings on moving to D.C.:

"Feminist lesbian poetry readings can be good. They can also be unfortunate forums for graphic and boring descriptions of sex and I-melt-in-your-arms cliches."

Ha, it's funny because it's so painfully true. Perhaps straight girls can see this quicker...

September Birthdays

I just got back from some festivities for my friend Conci's birthday, which were good fun, but I realized that it was at least the sixth birthday party I've been to in a week.

The question arises: Why are there so many damn people born in September? The fact that it's nine months after January spawns most of the answers I've heard.

There is the "snowstorm" theory, that if people are snowed in with nothing else to do, they'll simply go produce some offspring. Though from my own experience, I've noted that extended periods in enclosed spaces tends to produce more animosity than cameraderie (a.k.a. less fucking, more fighting).

There's also always the "Happy New Year" theory, wherein the parents get together on a New Year's vacation, although that really can only possibly account for people born up until about September fifteenth. After that, it gets to be a bit more sketchy.

I think maybe we have Martin Luther King, Jr. to thank. Before you send me vitriolic emails, hear me out:

His birthday is in the middle of January and it has been a holiday since before the time the people in my age group were concieved, and people weren't then and aren't now actually doing anything socially meaningful to mark the day, they're going on 3-day weekends with their significant other.

He certainly was a peace-love-general happiness type of guy, and I think he'd get a kick out of the idea that 9 months following the holiday that honors him, there's a spike in the birth rate.

He'd obviously be dissapointed that people were fucking instead of helping their fellow man, but I think he'd find this to be at least a moderately decent substitute.

Then again, it could just be the group of people I know having birthdays in a cluster, and I could be getting an angry letter from King's heirs any day now.

That old Sheryl Update

Ok, this was supposed to be posted days and days ago, but then I tried to post something on the Sheryl Crow Fan Forum, and the forum ate it, and then I tried to post here and my computer crashed before I had hit post, and I lost the whole bloody thing.

Clearly, my computer is not with me on this one.

So, if you don't know, I am a massive Sheryl Crow fan, have been since I was about thirteen. I have every word on her self-titled album and The Globe Sessions memorized, and most of Tuesday Night Music Club and C'mon C'mon, even though I wasn't too big a fan of it when it first came out.

After listening to it a great many more times, many of the songs have grown on me, though I'll note that all the ones I specifically mention as hating I still don't like (except Diamond Road, which I don't really like, but don't actively hate as much as I did).

Anyway, I had been trying to figure out how I was going to get to her show in St. Louis since it didn't initially look like she was coming to Chicago, but then a show was announced at the Ticketbastard, but of course, they were sold out, so I ended up having to go through EBay and pay three times the face value. I did take some comfort in the fact that the tickets were going for five times the face value right before the show.

However, despite the fact that my wallet is still terribly angry at me for this indiscretion, the tickets were worth every fucking penny.

I got to the HOB at about 6:30pm, and was utterly startled to find no line outside. Most of the people who had been waiting all day had utilized the "Jump The Line" thing that HOB offers if you eat one of their $15 hamburgers before the show, where they let you in before the rest of the mob.

I had already eaten and was broke enough from paying for the ticket that I grabbed a Chicago Reader and was more than satisfied to be the first person in line outside.

Because of this advantageous spot, I managed to be in the second "row" of people, almost dead center with an unobstructed view of the entire stage. I was about five feet from Sheryl Crow, and it was really goddamn cool.

The show itself was really great. The setlist was (according to the official website, with revisions I made based on what she actually played) as followed, with indications of album (TNMC, SC, TGS, CC) or band that she's covering:

Steve McQueen (CC)
Every Day Is A Winding Road (SC)
My Favorite Mistake (TGS)
C'mon C'mon (take a wild guess...)
You're An Original (CC)
Leaving Las Vegas (TNMC), leading into-
The Joker (Steve Miller Band)
Strong Enough (TNMC)
Home (SC)
Over You (CC)
Hole In My Pocket (CC)
A Change (SC) leading into-
I Can't Explain (The Who, sung by Sheryl's drummer Jim Bogios)
The Difficult Kind (SC)
All I Wanna Do (TNMC)
Soak Up The Sun (CC)
There Goes The Neighborhood (SC)
*************************************
Safe And Sound (CC)
Rock And Roll (Led Zeppelin)

I was really happy with the entire set, and I was pleased to note that You're An Original became a hell of a lot better with the removal of Lenny Kravitz. I still love Are You Gonna Go My Way?, but he just fucked up Sheryl's song.

I was also glad to see that most of the stuff I hated from C'mon C'mon got tossed, and that almost all of the songs I really liked got played. It was the 2nd time they played Over You and the 1st they had played Hole In My Pocket, so Sheryl had the words taped to the ground.

I don't blame her, since as I said below, I'd forget my damn name if I didn't write it down, and I've seen her forget the words to All I Wanna Do (then make fun of herself for five minutes because she had sang the damn thing about 2,000 times by that point).

Her band, which she introduced about six times, is fuckin' awesome. They're all incredible musicians, but I have to single one out: Jim Bogios, her drummer.

I've seen him drum for Ben Folds as well, and every time I see him, I am further convinced that he is one of the most underrated drummers around right now. He just goes absolutely apeshit on the drums and is the anchor of that band. If I could get a drummer with a tenth of his talent, I'd be a fuckin' rockstar.

The show was great, even though everyone in the band was obviously a little bit tired (though still clearly having a great time) from being on the road pretty much nonstop since May.

I'll spare you all a song by song recap of the concert, which I could give if I reaaaaaaally felt like it. Suffice it to say that the entire concert was really well done and I was impressed with how well the new stuff held up live.

Anyway, the highlight of the show for me was the finale. After playing Safe And Sound, which she was cracking her voice on even worse than she did on the album, and which dissappointed me terribly, Bogios started whaling on the drums, and I noticed a familiar pattern.

I had been told about the Led Zeppelin finale by a friend who saw Sheryl back in D.C., but words cannot describe how kickass it was, though I'll try:

As Bogios started going, she jumped up on the grand piano they had hauled out for Safe And Sound, and started dancing on it. At first, I thought the transition was more than a little weird, but then I really didn't care, because Sheryl absolutely ripped into Rock And Roll, which is my favorite Zep song.

I can't say exactly what it was that made it so fuckin' cool, but I think with this type of thing, you don't really have to. Something about it reminded me of both why I like Sheryl and why music means so much to me, the latter of which I think I had pushed towards the back of my mind recently.

I remembered what it was like to have an incredible performance just push everything away, and to just lose yourself in the moment and not worry about jobs or school or pay or survival or anything except the chord changes. It made me want to get off my ass and start recording.

And that, to me, was more than worth the price of admission.

I am now officially a tool

I did it. I cracked.

I bought a Palm Pilot.

I'm a film major! I'm not supposed to be enough of a geek to buy one. Only engineering nerds and Kellogg students buy them, right? I even overheard 2 Kellogg students discussing their pros and cons when I was in line at Norris buying my books for Italian 101 (yay senior quarter!).

However, I was beginning to realize that I would forget my own goddamn name if I didn't write it down, and I can't carry eight thousand post-it notes with me anymore, so I bought one.

I feel a bit less like a cog in the capitalist machine since I bought the shittiest current model off of EBay from what turned out to be a pawn shop in Orlando, Florida for 3/4 of the retail price (including shipping) and didn't pay taxes on it.

Take that, Uncle Sam!

The sad thing is that it actually helps. I'm much better about actually getting around to doing things when they're computer-based than when they're not.

I was so lost on the financial front until I figured out Quicken, and then I turned into the Mistress Of Finance. Or at least the Mistress Of Actually Paying Off All My Credit Cards Every Month. So far.

It's also kind of nice not having to try and decipher my own handwriting on my planner. It's really gotten bad lately. Everything is just a little scribble, so I can't tell if I've written "Buy Apple Juice" or "Go to Vegas."

I am still keeping The Evil Homework Book, as I named my paper planner when I first got it during my junior year of high school. For one thing, it has most of the songs that I've been working on for my new album (which I swear will come out eventually!).

However, I also feel the need to make sure to write everything down so that in case I break and/or lose this stupid thing, which I am almost guaranteed to do given how hard I am on electronic equipment, I won't be completely fucked.

So I've really just added another layer of redundancy to my life, but in a way, the redundancy makes life easier, in that I know I'm not forgetting anything. And until now, that had been a major problem for me.

Now, I can embrace my geekdom/toolness (depending on how you feel about palm pilots), take out my little mini-computer, and say, "Now what am I forgetting?"

And I shall be told that I forgot to call my aunt Louise.

Stupid computer, you go squish now!

I really was going to post an update, then my computer crashed and ate it.

Bah.

More updates to come tomorrow when I am at least moderately awake.