writ. dodging classification

I have not ordered these in any way.

Name 4 books on your bookshelf:
1. The Neuromancer - William Gibson
2. Dance of Days - Mark Andersen, Mark Jenkins
3. Dune - Frank Hurbert
4. The Portable Henry Rollins (compilation) - Henry Rollins

Name 4 DVDs in your collection:
1. This is Spinal Tap
2. Swingers
3. Fight Club
4. Bubba Ho-Tep

Name 4 things on your walls:
1. A Soul Coughing Calender from Y100, signed by all of the members of Soul Coughing
2. A poster of Indian origin that shows “Bad Habits” and or things not to do for children. Like running in the street or playing with tools alone. Its great it shows little kids with their hands bleeding and getting hit by buses.
3. An Aruba License plate my brother got me, and my old PA license plate for my Subaru that i sold/traded in.
4. My cubical wall in my office has a Space invaders button that Mat made.

Name 4 things in your closet:
1. Clothes
2. Skates
3. Old Computer parts
4. Ironing board

Name 4 artists in your music collection (playlist or other):
These are the first 4 things I thought of .. i have too many to really make as if this is some sort of preference or order to this…
1. Cake
2. Fugazi
3. NIN
4. David Bowie

Name 4 real life stores you shop at regularly:
1. Best Buy
2. Borders/Barnes & Nobles
3. Old Navy
4. Dicks Sporting Goods.

Name 4 animals that you’ve come face-to-face with in real life:

1. Bison
2. Cat
3. A Big Dumb Chocolate Lab name Rocky
4. A Sea Bass

Name 4 things in your wallet/purse:
1. a Guitar Pick
2. Mat’s OM Media Business Card
3. Money
4. Old Receipts

I’ve noticed lately that I really haven’t been fullfilling the graphical nature of my weblog. I really like having some sort of appropriate graphic to go along with my blog posts. Lately though I kind of have been forgetting that. Partly because some posts I’ll write up during work or some other time when i don’t feel like rooting around for pictures (and or can’t go doing uploads and other sorts of stuff while I’m doing the post). So i usually say oh well i’ll find something later today and slap it on the heading or something. That “later today” thing hasn’t been happening lately.. and then before I know it .. i have something else to write about, and again forget to put some sort of graphic with it.

So i’m taking a cheap way out for this post. just to get the ball rolling, and I’m using a pic i have from my imagery gallery thumbnails.

Part two of my easter weekend the continuation of what i was up to:

2. Go see Tim’s and bill’s comic/gaming shop that they opened in Downingtown. This I’ve been plotting for months (like even before Christmas) I just never got up there, so since this was my “triumphant” return to the area I figured I had to do this finally. Since Chris hadn’t seen the place i picked him up once he was awake and I got into the area on Saturday and we headed out on a trip to find this comic place. It took us about an hour and a half because, ONE: We didn’t know where the shop was except a vague idea and TWO: we of course wouldn’t actually just call the shop to figure out exactly where it was. So needless to say we eventually did call Tim and realized we were headed the right direction and he told us some landmarks to look for. The place is called Fat Cat Comics in Downingtown, PA, on W Lancaster Ave. Right down from the Rita’s water ice. They’ve got a big neon sign that says “Electronics Gallery” probably from the previous owners. Really cool place I’m pretty impressed with it. The place seems to be really coming around.

3. I went out to dinner with my cousin Jack, his wife Jen, My brother Jim, and my Sister-In law Melissa. We hit the Outback. I got the Alice’s Spring chicken, the best thing on the menu, it was delicious. Its got all you need. Fries, Chicken, Bacon, and Cheese. If thats not heaven I don’t know what is. It was a good dinner of talking about a lot of crazy things, and laughing. Sidesplitting even. I’ll leave it at that. I get to see jack and his family far too little, it was good to be able to get out with them. :)

Then Easter day was a good day of food and lounging around with my brothers big Chocolate Labrador, Rocky. My dad did his best impression of Martha $tewart and made this crazy thing called a Turkey Roll. Really good, and very moist turkey, which almost seems a contradiction in terms, until you have this thing. After that I just headed back to my apartment, since I didn’t want to be driving later at night and wanted some time to just wind down at home, before sleeping and getting back to work today.

Overall a pretty good weekend, got to see a bunch of people in just 2 days, and hopefully it won’t be so long until i am back up in that area again.

Wow for some reason i feel like i’m almost way too matter of fact with my account of the weekend. Hmm.. I dunno maybe I can spice it up sometime. But really it was a well needed uncomplicated weekend, visiting with family and friends back home.

Easter Weekend Update:

First I went out Friday night to a party with my friend Heather. It was for this guy Don’s sorta house warming (he’s been in the house for a while now lol, but its cleaned up and ready now I guess). I know Don through various other parties. Pretty cool guy, he works in radio, and for the life of me I can’t remember what show it is he works for, but it’s a Baltimore area station, and I really should know it but I don’t lol. It was a good time. Most of the fun of the night was hanging out talking about things and tormenting his cat with those balls on a string thing. The cat was having fun and plotting which person next he was going to attack, and we were all amused so no harm no foul. Margaritas were had; good beer was in the fridge. Pretty good time overall. Things kind of wound down early though since some people had to get on the road home, for Easter obligations I guess. I pretty much didn’t know half the people at the party but isn’t that how it always is? After that we conned Theresa and Noah (whom i hadn’t known were going to be at the party), into coming back to my apartment to hang out and play the highly addictive game of Tetris attack. God that games addictive, Noah’s hooked already. Boehm, my roommate was apparently asleep or something. We tried to be loud but to no avail. Sheesh wouldn’t even come out for his own cousin (Theresa is my roommate’s cousin, to fill in the blank there).

Ok moving on.

Saturday morning at 10am i promptly headed off to good ol’ Brookhaven, PA, my hometown, to visit with my family and some friends for the Easter holiday. Despite the fact that i was being completely non-committal and indecisive on what my plans actually were I got to see most of the people I wanted to hang out with for the weekend. What gave it a little more kick is that I really haven’t been up in the area since Christmas, which is quite a while for me. In fact i think its my longest time not being up in that area since I lived out in North Dakota, and there were obvious reasons for not being back in PA with any regularity then. I really am not exactly sure why it took me this long to come back up and visit, I guess I’ve just been busy, I’ve had a lot going on since the beginning of the new year (a good portion of it I guess you could read on here maybe lol). It was good to be back in the area though, and good to see people.

Here’s the rundown of events and accomplishments. I had a few things I kept saying I was going to do and since I wasn’t up in the area I never got to do them:

1. Hang out with Tony and finally see his and Noreen’s little son Vincent. I did that and then went out bowling with Tony and his buddy Nick. Man that kid is cute, I think i was totally mesmerized by the little guy. He’s only a few months old still (i guess like 5 months or so? god i’m terrible with knowing these things!). But wow cute kid, I’m happy for them, the kid’s doing well, and it seems Tony’s parents were fawning over the little guy. I already know little Vincent (vinnie) is gonna be a ladykiller.. No doubt lol ;). Then after seeing the kid me and Tony headed out to bowl for a while, and the kid was staying with grandparents and Noreen was feeling tired so she just stayed in with the baby and grandparents as well. It was really good to see Tony as well. We talked about life, and things going on. I guess I’d say Tony’s a guy I can always talk to about stuff going on and I count on him for a perspective, usually optimistic. Of which i’m always apreciative of.

OK Part 2 coming later this ended up being a long post so I figured I’d split it….

Well. I’m coming to you from what seems to be an intoxicated stated. It really does take a bit of effort for me to actually type in regular sentences with properly spelled words. Go me.!! Well really it just takes a lot of use of the “backspace” key. So do i have anything to post? I’m not sure.

Jason … that bastard… got me drunk. Its called Irish whiskey and ginger ale.. That was the combination.. THen after that it was steve with his insesant deman for tequila shots. i tell you otherwise I wouldn’t drink at all. If not for those people. I really just need to blame them for all this . I really do…….

Ok, This post has gone on long enough and I’m getting tired of hitting the backspace key so that I actually am spelling things correclty on my weblog entry. I know it really doesn’t matter all that much but I feel as if I shoul be accurate.

Ok .. peace. see ya’ll later. Damn you jason!! damn you!!!.. (see you finally got some recognition on my blog) (SO post a comment if you actually f’ing read this thing!!!)

Well .. yeah I’m like a huge Nine Inch Nails fan. I’ve been relatively quiet about stuff on here, cause well i read all the news and i figure anybody else that wants to know already does. But this is worth posting.

The Radio single from the upcoming NIN album has hit airwaves, I’ve yet to hear it on the radio, cause well i just don’t listen to that much radio, and the only people to play it around me would be DC101, and well fat chance I want to sit through all there broadcasts to just hear it once. So I’m excited to see that www.nin.com has posted in there current’s section a link to a video of sorts of the new single, with the song in its entirety. Badass, i like it. I want to hear the whole freakin album!!

Here’s a link to save the .mov file ;)

also link to currents section

Well i was poking around on Pitchfork today. I found this little interesting project, called Burn To Shine. Basically the idea is that they got a bunch of local bands together for the area they wanted to do it in and get them to a house that was going to be demolished, and had each play a song in the place before it gets demolished, basically do a concert for the empty place, as a send off to its demolition. Then they filmed the demolition as well. Ends up being something that sounds pretty interesting. 45 minute dvd in whole.

The first release of this series is for Washington DC. The thing is being produced by Brendan Canty of Fugazi, so obviously some Dischord relation ;). The list of bands in it are on the site. The next one that is editing now, to be released sometime soon, is for Chicago, IL. With the likes of Wilco. I’m betting I’m gonna start buying these as they come out.. its just too interesting ;). Plus i like having interesting Music related DVD’s.

On that note I bought “The End of the Century: Story of the Ramones” documentary today for 12 bucks.

Last night was a blast. I went out to do Karaoke at this place that seemed like it was going to be a dive bar in Dundalk. When we drove in the parking lot, it was in a strip mall. This did not raise our expectations. When we got inside it ended up being a pretty cool place. Definitely seemed like a lot of regulars. I totally felt like we were out of place at first when we got in. It ended up though that everybody there was pretty nice and cool, and we totally brought a vibe with us to the place that made the whole night a really fun time. The Karaoke DJ ended up talking to us a lot cause he was excited to have some new different people in doing different types of music. Its probably the most fun I’ve had out in a long long time. It was a great ending to a week that has been sort of trying on me. I’d kinda felt like I was in a funk and bummed out all week, and this just completely turned it around.

So ok who went with mike to Karaoke you ask? Well the list of culprits in this whole foray into cheesy singing was my friends Heather, Jamie and Noah. We had some other suspects on the list but a few ended up dropping out for whatever reasons. I wish I could remember all the songs all of us did, but because of the fact that we all were able to do about 4 or 5 songs in various combinations of everybody sometimes doing songs together, I can really only remember what I was involved in last night. Plus me drinking Gin and Tonics all night probably helped my forgetfulness a little as well. It was a great crowd also. Was just enough people to be have a really good time with a bunch of people you don’t know, but not too many that it was just too hard to get up to sing. The place did get pretty busy, so I figure there were just a lot of lurkers/watchers there to laugh at bad singing. Ha I showed them, I actually sang well!

I started off my Karaoke night with my best rendition of Back in the USSR by the Beatles. It was kinda funny when I went up there to do this, at least I found it funny. Every song that I’d heard in the place before I came up to do this had been some form of kinda slow country/southern music. So here’s me suburban white kid, singing the Beatles, and a song about the USSR no less. I could really care less about the context, I just love the song its just a really awesome tune, and a blast to sing. Well either way I couldn’t tell if the people in the bar were too much into it, but hey I think ended up getting a pretty good round of applause after I was finished so I took that as a good sign.

Next, Noah and I, got ourselves in the best Dan Akroyd, John Belushi mindsets and did the Blues Brothers - Gimme some Lovin’. That was a blast, and we tried to do the whole blues brothers dance which I think ended up just making us look funny. Whatever it was cool.

Third, Hell - Squirrel Nut Zippers. I did this song as my first ever Karaoke song when i was out visiting Heidi in L.A. So I figured it had to make an encore with Karaoke last night, especially because with the crowd at the place, the request list was pretty easy to get on. (in LA you had to be really on your game to get a 2nd song, like putting both in at the same time). I don’t think the crowd knew what to think of this song. I’m betting they thought i was crazy. Especially this old Cowboy looking guy who was sitting at a table that was 4 feet from the mic stand I was using.

Then, through some trickery on my part Heather and I did Sweet Home Alabama - Lynard Skynard. She originally mentioned this song saying I should sing it, I said I have no idea of the words but I kinda know the tune so I bet I could just read the teleprompter and do a pretty good rendition, but SHE had to come up and sing it with me. So at first she was kinda reluctant, saying she didn’t know the song well either, but eventually I cracked her and we did it. I think we sounded pretty damn good honestly.

As for the rest of the songs I was in on, we did All the Small things - Blink 182, with all 4 of us, then did Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen, with myself, Noah, and Jamie. That was a test! of my skills I have to say for some parts. Then lastly, somehow, I got wrangled into doing the Grease-Megamix with all 4 of us. We were the second to last, and I think the Karaoke DJ did this on purpose cause he kept on talking to us most of the night, saying he really liked the stuff we were doing and that we were a pretty fun crowd. We kinda mixed up the regulars stuff that he usually gets all the time. So that made me feel good.

In the end all i can say is damn it was a blast.

I think its either just a change in frame of mind, or I’m just looking forward to the incoming spring. Today I drove around with the top down on my car and it was freakin 68 degrees out. My god it was great. I can’t describe how good it felt. I mean i don’t mind the cold and I in fact like it sometimes. But when spring comes it really does give you a feeling of coming out of some sort of emotional hibernation.

Well with this, I find myself Listening to G-Love and Special Sauce quite a bit. Its my new kick for music. Over the weekend I got two more of his CD’s .. Yeah Its That Easy, and Philadelphonic. I also ended up gettin Leftfield -Leftism and Flaming Lips - Zaireeka (which is a whole bag of worms in itself).

I have always liked G-Love and meant to listen to him more, but I jsut never got around to it. I’m always buying other stuff. I guess there was just a change in my frame of mind lately that lead me to actually finally getting some G-Love, and with that I’m thankful. Its great stuff, and totally fits the mode I’m in lately.

ok thats all for now .. Lates.

new music abound
ears searching for the unheard
compulsion drives me

New CDs this week:

G-Love - The Hustle
Talking Heads - The name of the band is..
The Prodigy - Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned
Wilco - A Ghost Is born
Beastie Boys - To the 5 Boroughs

I haven’t given any of them a good listen yet, as i just bought them last night. I love having more new music than I know what to do with. This acquisition should keep me going for a while. I think so far i’ve listened to the Prodigy album the most. I’m still forming an opinion. Prodigy records have always made me appreciate really good rap lyricists. This album is no different, it integrates it well.