lazy or busy

i could make excuses all day for not writing on this blog.  here are a few of my favorites:

• it's mold awareness month.  i was being aware of mold.
• i was cast in a b-movie zombie flick.  zombies don't use the internet.
• the coriolis effect

the truth of it is, i mostly forgot.  lots of interesting events occurred.  big bro got hitched, i got a second internship with eventric, i mixed a song that alien orders had recorded in practice, i finished In Cold Blood, and the cashier at the local jewel-osco shorted me five stickers for my free cookware scorecard.  hussy.

i'm going to try to be better about it, honest.

saw a fellow jma intern's band at schuba's tonight.  they were called carbon tigers, and were a very technically proficient band, which made me all the more proud to be an un-technically proficient musician. i'm not saying that what they did was bad by any means (it really wasn't bad.  they had very skillful compositions), i'm just glad that my bands have always been on the "pure energy" side of the music spectrum and not on the "intricate detail" side.  i get to jump around and yell more that way.

jeff and jill and i had dinner.  i had a vegan burrito.  jeff, if you read this, thanks again.

i'm starting two projects tonight.  first, i'm mixing a second song from the alien orders practice.  this one is called "day terrors", and is shaping up to probably be one of two songs that we play under 120 bpm (for non-concert band nerds, that's about the tempo of "getting better" by the beatles).  i'm also starting a biography of winston churchill called Churchill: A Life (creative title, right?) by martin gilbert.  apparently this 1000+ page book was expanded upon later in gilbert's career, with him advertising 14 books on Winston Churchill, ranging from 967 to 2165 pages long.  this guy has a serious hard-on for churchill.  i can't wait to read the book.

that's about it for now.  joey and i did a bit of work on some alien orders songs, rearranging them for two guitars + bass instead of one guitar + bass.  weezer on friday, alien orders practice on saturday and sunday.

oh, i also went on a serious neil young kick this weekend, as well as an iggy pop video kick.  can't beat iggy for his live show, and i probably listened to the live rust versions of "hey hey my my" and "my my hey hey" a dozen times each.  new thermals album is growing on me, but i doubt i'll end up liking it as much as their last three.

two for the price of one!

i didn't blog yesterday.  i'm sure my already innumerable legions of faithful readers were devastated.  in order to make up for this disappointment, i plan to recount two days in this one post.

forgot to wear my retainer again two nights ago.  yes, i still wear my retainer on occasion.  i am sort of obsessed with dental health when you get down to it.  used to brush my teeth as many as 7 times in a day.  i've backed off a little since then because it's likely that the excessive brushing did me more harm than good.  anyway, i could tell my teeth were a little out of alignment.  obviously a terrible start to a day.

the rest of the day was fairly mediocre.  met a second intern, mike, and jeff's wife jill.  i was still a little cobwebby at that point in the morning, due to my apparent inability to buy coffee filters, and made a fairly terrible stuttering first impression on both of them.  i plan on winning them over slowly but surely, culminating in a dramatic scene at the senior prom.  or maybe that's a john hughes movie.

came back to the apartment, came in through the back door, somewhat startled sarah's boyfriend.  he was waiting for her.  nice guy.  tall.  i offered him spaghetti.  he politely declined.

i played guitar and quietly sang for a while.  it was not pleasant.  i do not sing well at low volumes.  i eventually gave up on this and gave into sleep.

i wore my retainer that night, though.  it was a good decision.

been reading In Cold Blood.  it's a great book so far, i'm about a third of the way through.  i need to mix the Alien Orders live recordings so everyone can listen and learn.  not necessarily learn how awesome we are, more so that members of our band can learn the songs and learn what was done right and wrong in the songs.

i've been eating baby carrots and peanut butter fudge at night.  two nights in a row now.  the fudge is good in small quantities, the carrots are good in large quantities.  i should probably invest in some ranch dressing for the carrots.  but for now, these are no a la carte carrots.

anyway, i've been doing stuff at my internship.  i'm applying for Pitchfork either tonight or tomorrow.  it would be nice to have a change of pace in terms of internships.  right now i spend a lot of time catching up on music news and compiling lengthy artist reports for jma reps to read over before they meet to discuss promotion plans.  i'm learning quite a bit though.

SHIT.  i almost forgot!  you need to listen to this.  it's a JAM.

Bloggin'

So.  I've started a blog.  I'm gonna level with you, I'm probably not going to keep up with it.  However, there is the slightest chance that I will blog on a regular basis, and have a record of things that have happened to me.  If anyone else read this, I guess it would be an added bonus.

FUCK MY COMPUTER.  It's gotten some stuff stuck under the trackpad or something and now randomly clicks whenever it damn well feels like it.  I have threatened it with bodily and softwarily harm, to no avail.

I literally punched the fucker just now.  It got the hint and is not giving me any troubles at the moment.

Started my internship at JMA today.  The guy who hired me apparently left JMA a couple of weeks ago and didn't tell anyone he hired me.  JMA was planning on taking a few weeks off from having interns to reevaluate the direction the program should go.  Then I show up.  I was the only intern there at 9am and one of two interns until mid-September, when the other intern leaves for UC.  Should be interesting if nothing else.

I ended up walking about 7 miles today instead of taking a bus.  Just felt like walking.  I got a pair of jeans and a bottle of Coke out of it.  Listened to Beggars' Banquet and Let It Bleed.

Saw a posse of the smelliest, most obnoxious people I have ever seen.  From what I could tell, they were a band of hobos, roaming the streets of Chicago until they caught the next streetcar.  I held my breath for about fifty feet before and after passing them.  I still smelled them.  They were young, too.  And they had dogs.  I think that's what bothers me the most, the dogs.  A terrible life for the people, but a worse life for a dog that could've lived in a more dog-friendly environment, like a china shop, or the moon.

So that's my first post.  Treasure it, it may be your last.