Thursday, January 25, 2007

Upstairs

The boys who live upstairs have some of the most annoying habits I've ever witnessed. It's like living with a spoiled younger brother who always gets his own way, except you can't ever exercise the familial privilege of shouting at him and locking him in his room. The boys upstairs are very fond of believing they are singer-songwriters. Unfortunately their version of singer-songwriter involves too many late '90s covers and a completely stupid amount of foot stomping. I should add that the foot stomping rarely, if ever goes with any actual rhthym, making it hard to tell whether it is actually foot-stompingly good sex, poor dance coordination, or some weird combination that I don't want to think too hard about. And this shit goes on at all hours. It appears that when the Muse tells you to play a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah cover (they're quite fond of "Upon this Tidal Wave of Young Blood") at 3 am, well, you just GOTTA play that shit.

Monday, January 22, 2007

How you say...

I'm in love. Completely, utterly captivated. Exactly my type, too: sweet retro sampling spread over deep bass with a smooth flowing emcee on vocals. And Canadian, too! They have the best national anthem AND fake-looking money with poetry on it. Plus, they make movies about curling.

THUNDERHEIST was what I was crushing out on all day on. It consists of two people, Isis the emcee and Grahm the DJ. They have four songs up on Myspace and damn. Listening to their stuff was like the ecstatic moment when the DJ starts playing the exact song you've been dying to hear all night. You spill your drink, you're so excited. That's what every song was like. Totally perfect party music. The only song you can download right now is "SueƱos dolces," in which they sample the Eurhythmics' bread and butter. Listen to all, however, and be jealous of our northern neighbor which is the only place that ThunderHeist is playing shows right now (with the exception of a SXSW showing.) A 12" is in the works but hasn't been released. If this isn't enough for you, the band is Diplo-approved.

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

THE BLOW - 'parentheses'

Technology

...is a bitch. Something went wrong with the spacing on my last post, so instead of a dramatic narrative list neatly separated by double spacing and as indicated by *, you got a ginormous neverending paragraph punctuated at random by *. I kept trying to re-upload it with proper spacing (and the preview kept psyching me out because it would show the spacing) but ultimately Blogger won and thus, no double spacing.

I'm posting the "Parentheses" video by The Blow because it is adorable. And I really wish there was a karaoke like this near me.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

2006 in Review

2006 was a year of change and transition for me, so it was pretty much doomed from the beginning.

Highlights include, but are not limited to:

*My final semester of college, a ridiculous affair in which I took too many credits, continually stressed out, rarely saw friends and did the bare minimum of effort in my organizations. It culminated in April in near-continuous crying episodes to parents and professors and barely graduating, my GPA having taken a severe pummeling for my idiocy.

*Graduation day, where I realized belatedly that maybe I should have been a bit more involved in the academic aspects of college. A day of excessive highs (finally graduating) and lows (everyone crying as they left Framar and realizing that the departure was really the last).

*The entire month of June, as I frantically looked for jobs and tried to decide what the hell to do now. More crying.

*Living in friend's basements for the summer, working temp jobs and looking for apartments in the DC area, having decided to live here because, well, I couldn't think of anywhere else that would be better.

*Finding an apartment where I wanted to live, that wasn't horribly overpriced or about to collapse at any moment.

*Still working as a temp as my place of employment delayed and delayed the decision on whether or not to hire me. Attempted to formulate a backup plan in case I wasn't hired, but could think of nothing better than going back to ye olde food service industry. Tried not to think about it.

*Realizing that I was not going to make friends my own age at work, as it is a mostly middle-aged nonprofit. I am also singularly unsuccessful on the bar/club/twentysomething scene. Begin going down to alma mater on most weekends to save my sanity and to assure myself that some people still do like me.

*Falling prey to an especially severe case of seasonal (or post-collegial) depression as fall ends and winter begins. Become convinced I should be doing something else, something more worthwhile, but what exactly I should be doing remains a mystery. I try to cheer myself up with distractions but any feelings of cheer live a short and unhappy life.

*Becoming more and more paranoid about my lack of social skills. In a particularly deluded occasion, when three different friends/acquaintances do not contact me for a while, I start believing that they now hate me. Later, I find out that one's mother had a malignant tumor and the others were just away for vacations.

*New Year's Eve, the first that I would be drinking and partying on, the previous ones having been spent with the (nonalcoholic) parents. The evening starts off well but quickly disintegrates into a sodden night of self-disgust and negative contemplation. At a bar I refuse to dance with my friends and assorted revelers and instead lean against wall, drinking heavily and wondering at the pointlessness of everything. I begin the new year hangover free and rather sheepish about my previous behavior. The rain does not help things.

In short, 2006 was an utter waste of time. It would have been better spent watching TV series on DVDs, Seinfeld maybe. I probably would have laughed more.