alias vortex
so yesterday evening, i stopped by my brother's place to pick up some stuff and look at his new Big Boy bed (for his 21st birthday, ross finally got a double). when i was about to leave, i noticed that an unfamiliar Alias DVD box lay askew on his dining table. my breath caught, a shiver of excitement climbed up my spine. "is that Season 3?" i asked in my most composed voice. ross drew back a bit, and i swear - he shuddered. "yeah" he said eyeing the box as if he was a seven-year-old who has finished everything on his plate EXCEPT the brussel sprouts which loom on the edge of his plate, the only thing standing between him and an evening of ninja turtle drawings and nintendo.
i feel that i must admit now that i am the one who thrust this upon him. i was the corruptor, the one who looked at his pre-alias being and said "you know, ross, you really ought to try it" and handed him the needle. then i was there for the withdrawal pains, when he called me up and said in a desparate voice "amanda! there are only 2 episodes on disc 5!!" and i said "there, there, ross, i'll get 6 from netflix soon."
when we discussed the release of season 3 a few weeks ago, i remember hearing at once the excitement, disappointment and fear in my brother's voice at the prospect of its return. who knows what he would do, what friends and studies he might neglect, the poor decisions he could make in such a state of alias duress? i believe he said something about it sucking the life out of him, and not being able to say no. now if i were still a student, i too might have reservations about embarking upon 22 hours of breathlessness, strife, tears, and all other manners of emotional flogging. and even the down-time will be spent with sleepless nights, expecting the sound of tires on gravel to be followed by gunshots or my closest friends to really be genetically-altered hitmen. have no fear, friends - i am confident in my resilience. my journey begins this eve. i'll see you on the flip side.
just good.
not much to say at the moment, but i was just listening to a mix cd which i've neglected the last few months and was reminded of this wonderful song by
neil halstead. i absolutely love this line: "years ago, you sent a postcard -- it's the one that always made me laugh. it said,
'send for reinforcements, 'cause there's too much here for me to love.' "
if you have real player and go to this link
here and fast forward 38 minutes into the sounds eclectic show, you can hear it. the song is "hi, low and in between." if you still haven't heard of
kcrw in LA or "
sounds eclectic" hosted by nic harcourt, you should check it out because there's always so much good music available for listening to online.
interesting tidbit: he recorded the album "
sleeping on roads" while he was living in his band's recording studio for 2 months because his girlfriend and he broke up and he found himself homeless.
sunday afternoon ruminations
a few things that have been on my mind of late:
memories of ACL 2003 - a lovely drizzly blissful experience from start to finish. i had a near epiphany when i realized how people must have felt at woodstock - walking into this space and being surrounded by such a feeling of peace and talent. it was the best weekend of my entire year, spent with good old and new friends and amazing music. it was the first time i saw ben harper, jack johnson, patty griffin and david garza perform. i was blown away.
memories of ACL 2004 - heat. lots of heat. hours of sweat and exhaustion. the sound on one of the main stages was very inconsistent so some of the best bands sounded terrible and the pixies ended up being a huge disappointment for that reason. calexico, however, was amazing.
the ACL after-parties both nights were awesome and just about made up for the days.
having house guests you don't know is risky. on friday night, i got yelled at from a girl i DON'T KNOW (friend of a friend) because i didn't tell her she was buying non-alcoholic beer at the grocery store and she demanded when we got home that i drive to the convenience store MYSELF and buy beer for her to make up for MY oversight. I WAS LETTING HER SLEEP AT MY HOUSE!!! once i was able to pick my jaw off the floor, i told her i didn't feel bad at all that she didn't notice she was buying the non-alcoholic version of her FAVORITE beer nor did i feel bad for not warning her.
7 hours later, when i returned from said friday afterparties, she woke up and asked if i could get her and her friend coke (of the non-caffeinated persuasion) before noon. when i managed to comprehend what she was asking and tell her no, she got mad at me and asked "why not?!?" and then asked if my other friends who were staying with me could get it. when i said no again, she responded with "really?!?!!" MISS MANNERS WOULD NOT APPROVE!!! did i mention it was after 5 am?
the good news is that the next morning when she asked if she pissed me off, i flat-out said yes and she later thanked me for being straightforward and having the guts to say how i felt. she said she respected me for that. my thoughts? thanks for your respect, get out of my house.
spooning, not opposable thumbs, is the most convincing sign of our progress as a civilization. really though, when you think about it, in the most basic of actions that animals can perform, this is where we're unique. just about all animals can pick stuff up, but who besides humans can do such a wonderful comforting thing as spoon? everybody loves to spoon! we are superior!!!
"the mountain" on the WB sucks. i only watched because of oliver hudson, but even oliver hudson isn't enough reason to watch it again.
brittany murphy has played not one, not two, but THREE psycho chicks. please see your oxygen channel on cable and refer to "david & lisa" (1998). this is in addition to "girl, interrupted" (1999) and "don't say a word" (2001). apparently, oprah was the first to spot her psycho potential. as for me, i knew from the moment she said "i'm outie" on clueless.
while spooning might be proof of our progress as a civilization, public auctions might be proof that we are descended from aliens. i spent 6 1/2 hours yesterday with my mom at a french and swedish auction in northeast austin. did you know that the auctioneer makes up amounts randomly? it's kind of like playing a game on price is right -- you have to pray that you put your card up when he lands on "ten" instead of "twenty." and if you don't act quickly enough, you might not even get ten or twenty, not because someone else bid before you, but because after a few seconds, he might decide that the first bid has to start at "thirty" instead. and all of this has to be discerned from rapid-fire verbal acrobatics. do they go to school for that shit? the good news is that i now have a periwinkle trunk to show for my never-ending evening, purchased by bidder #48 for the low low price of $40. hurrah!
of thirst and exhaustion
so if you haven't clicked on the link you can see to your right that says
www.whygodwhy.com/thirst then now is the time. let me tell you why:
when i am tired, hungry, sad, hungover, or when i'm pissed because i've been wading through real estate codes for an hour and still haven't found what i need for the course i'm editing, i open up this little site and giggle. and when i say i giggle, i mean it washes away the clouds of despair and lethargy from above my head and makes it entirely impossible for me to not be in a good mood. strange that a little site about beverages could do that? perhaps. but look for yourself. i recommend
this entry to start you off and if you like it, go to the archives and read from the beginning like i've done. if you're not amused, i'll buy you a snapple.
another site, which was pointed out to me yesterday in an effort to pull me out of my spent-all-weekend-at-acl-and-had-allergies-so-bad-that-my-nose-started-bleeding-and-i've-been-on-benadryl-for-three-days-straight stupor, is
Strindberg+Helium. Hee-larious. Especially when you're already in a state of delirium from sketchy office M&Ms.
plasticware
so as i write this, i'm sitting at my desk at work "eating" lunch and trying not to be upset that i totally just closed a document without saving it that i hadn't saved for an hour. if you'll notice, i've placed
eating in quotation marks. now why ever would i do this? because, my friends, i am using plasticware.
now, plastic is supposed to be a thing of the future, a symbol of progress, after all plastics make it possible. if you'll recall "the graduate," plastic was the field people told him he should get into to be a success. so my question is this: what exactly is it that plastic makes possible? when two plastics come together in the form of tupperware and plasticware, is there harmony? NO! there is only the sliding of tupperware across the desktop and the utterly demoralizing act of a knife with one and one half inches of a scalloped edge (which is supposed to aid in the act of cutting) slipping across the surface of a very tasty piece of chicken. where is the dignity in a plastic fork? this little white weakling ineffective collection of prongs which do nothing to hold their intended target? i would venture to say that it is quite impossible to look intelligent or dignified while holding a white plastic fork.
the execution of the eating process with plasticware is as difficult for me as it is to use chopsticks. still i persist. i refuse to use only my hands, i retrieve the dish from the edge of the desk and i spend a full two minutes making two cuts resulting in three bite-size morsels of chicken which are supposed to abate my hunger. at least with chopsticks, there is a hope for the future, a fantasy of elegant eating out of wooden bowls with dim lights, rice, colorful ginger and wasabi. there is also a kind of respect that accrues from the persistent falling of sushi from betwixt two sticks. in my fantasy, there is dexterity. not all the dexterity in the world can give a person grace when using a plastic fork.
this picture really conveys how exciting the voxtrot show was. please note the matching green t-shirts and looks of apathy. (they were playing when i took this)
my new favorite picture i've taken. this is "the shells."
eight songs
ahh moby
there are eight songs in this world that bring me to tears nearly every time i hear them. some of them are probably not songs you'd expect to have this reaction to (or that i expected to have this reaction to) or even songs you've heard of. they are: "
holland, 1945" by neutral milk hotel, "
piano man" by billy joel, "
when it's cold, i'd like to die" by
moby, "
a day in the life" by the beatles, "
last resort" by papa roach
, "man over" by robinella & the cc string band, and "down by the riverside" - an old spiritual. when incubus had just come out with make yourself, my brother made me a copy of the album and i listened to it quite a bit. i was in austin at the time, but in my hometown of midland where ross was still in school (this was '99 or '00 i think), there was a guy who laid down on the train tracks that we had to cross every day to get into town. ross told me that he was on his way into town, listening to that album and "the warmth" was playing. he came up to the tracks just after it had happened. the conductor of the train said that the guy had looked up before the train hit him and then laid his head back down. now i can't hear that song without thinking of that guy, resolved enough in his desire to kill himself that he put his head back down on the tracks.
turn turn turn
so the last few weeks, i've not had the best luck. lots of people have flaked on me, i've been broke and still trying to get the apartment in order, but this last weekend seems to have reversed the trend. sunday, after finding the $14 i spoke about in my last entry, ashley called and we were both hungry and she and i and logan decided to go for sushi and then catch
hero afterwards at the drafthouse. on the way up to the ticket counter, i found a $20 bill in the parking lot. which brought the amount of found money in one day up to $34. hallelujah. hero was absolutely awesome. i never saw crouching tiger, hidden dragon. not because i didn't want to, but sometimes when there's too much hype around a movie, i lose the desire to see it. in fact, i've never seen this type of movie, or a jet li movie for that matter. it was beautiful. the fighting was elegant and the sword blades sounded like windchimes. sometimes i forgot to listen to what they were saying because i was so enthralled with the colors and textures. there is so much beauty and art in asian culture that it amazes me how harsh the language can sound on its own.
monday i spent being productive, made a target run, finished up things at the apartment, and then adrienne came into town and we went out for drinks and appetizers at baby a's. the everclear margaritas kicked my ass. we met some people at trudy's and then headed to headhunters for the
assacre show. seriously, it was awesome. more on that later.
tuesday i photographed
minus the bear and loved it. i was worried that the heavy sampling might keep the show from being that great live, but i was wrong. there was less sampling that i thought and they were really awesome. they played my favorite song (absinthe party in the fly honey warehouse) and i discovered the joy of being a concert photographer: 1) i get in for free. 2) i
have to stand at the front to get good pictures. and no one yells at me yet for cutting in front of them, so in addition to taking pictures of my favorite bands, i get the best perspective in the house and no one questions me because of my big bad-ass camera. next on the docket is wilco and calexico. yay!
yesterday i found an ad looking for visual artists and photographers to teach after-school programs for kids through the dougherty arts center. this is exactly the kind of experience i would love to have and have been hoping for -- i'd be teaching kids black and white and color photography and framing and lighting and everything i miss and would love to do again. my friend jen even said she would help me write a class proposal since she did a lot of teaching in grad school.
my evening was quiet as i've been reaching a peace with my surroundings. i was very pleased to discover last night that i have an awesome bath for taking baths. it slopes just right so i can actually lean back in it and it doesn't make that annoying draining sound that happens when a drain doesn't close completely. i happily watched the gilmore girls on dvd, had leftover thai food and discovered the next bit of information: the city of austin has 47 public pools that it runs. i've been wanting to work out again but my neighborhood doesn't have enough streetlights to make me feel comfortable walking at 6 am before the sun is up. i hate to exercise in the heat and i'd prefer to swim anyway, so yesterday i did some research. i found out that the gregory gym pool is closed for renovation for the next year. i didn't want to spend money on a membership anyway, but i did want to swim. so last night, while perusing the web, i found that there is one neighborhood lap pool open to the public when everything else is closed for the summer.
i drove there this morning and counted the lanes, watched people swim for a little while and noted the presence of an actual lifeguard. i thought about how nice it would be to feel that exhaustion again, that hunger and adrenaline after a good swim. i felt like i was in a different austin. there were kids walking to school with their parents and i was by a sandbox and park and watching parents walk out of their houses and affix backpacks to their kids and a crossing guard smiled and waved at everyone that drove by. it seemed a good sign. i realize that this is a long entry and only somewhat relates to karma, but what it does have to do with is this: i think i'm happy in austin. and at the moment, austin seems to be happy with me.
skater dreams
a couple of months ago, i was reminiscing about high school fashion, particularly the height of JNCO jeans. back when the leg openings were less than 44" and they weren't all cutesy punk girl/ avril lavigne style. those jeans fit me better than any other jeans i've owned. i went in search of the pairs that i'd had in high school and even got on ebay to see if any of these circa '97-'99 jeans were to be found but i was unsuccessful. i asked my mom if she remembered seeing any boxes from when we packed up my childhood house when it was sold two years ago. she didn't recall. well a few weeks ago, my mom came to visit me in my new place, bringing with her a box full of the jeans i'd worn in high school and my freshman year in college. jeans full of holes and tears, soft with wear and run down with love. see i am ridiculously faithful to pants. no seriously. my freshman year, i had these wide-leg khaki pants from pacific sunwear with a white stripe down the side that i seriously wore
every day. i took them off once a week or so to wash them and promptly put them back on as soon as they were clean again. they were so soft and wonderful and my boyfriend's roommate shawn actually nicknamed me "pants" because i wore them all the freaking time. you don't give away things like this. you retire them. just like you retire a flag. if you don't want to keep it for a memory, you can't give it away or throw it away - you have to burn it. and since you don't want to do that, you put them in a box and wait till someday you can make a quilt of jeans and khaki pants, a skater quilt if you will, so that you'll always have these memories to surround yourself with. anyway, so i opened the box today since i'm trying to put away the last thusfar destination-less items in my apartment. i pulled them on (they fit surprisingly enough) and looked at myself in the mirror. i thought about wearing these with an iron key dangling from my belt loop that unlocked the drawer i kept my diary and love notes in and i noticed a little rectangular outline in the backpocket. i reached in to retrieve this paper and in my hand was $9. nine dollars from no later than 1999 folded up crisply from the back pocket of these well-loved jeans. i felt happy. not because i'm broke and need the 9 bucks (though that is a plus) but because these faded blues that i value so much gave me something of value. ok i've gotta go try the other ones on now...
UPDATE: ok i'm not even kidding - i just found a five-dollar bill in the khaki pants. also from 1999. everyone go try on old clothes with pockets!
a whole new world
so i thought you guys might like to see what i've been doing. here are a few of the shows i've photographed recently. the pictures are alright - it's a new way of shooting for me and i hope to get some more interesting stuff in the future. next week i shoot metal monday and minus the bear on tuesday!
phantom planet
alex greenwald hanging from the rafters at emo's
deathray davies
more deathray
rarrrr
the start
how do i love thee?
let me count the ways.
it appears that rivers cuomo of weezer has a blog on myspace. i'm guessing it's legitimate because i learned of it in an article on pitchforkmedia.com about weezer scrapping all the songs for their 5th album because rivers had a
fucking stroke of genius and wanted to start over. in one of his blog entries, rivers has posted his harvard readmission essay and all i can say is, why the hell does rivers cuomo want to rule the world? is it just every geek's dream?
back in the day, i loved rivers. he was this talented, totally insecure geek and wrote these awesome songs. he then become some kind of militant songwriter in search of perfection and ended up only learning how to write little clean catchy tunes. this is not the first time this has been done. hundreds of people write catchy tunes - there would be no MIX stations without them. you are not unique for this, rivers. the thing that makes me so sad is that the green album did well and rivers felt validated in his silly pursuit of becoming a song-writing machine and because of that, we have no more songs like "Tired of Sex" or "Only in Dreams." now what do i think of rivers? i am unimpressed with his philosophical and world pursuits and inflated ego and think that he's squandered his talent. nothing is worse than wasted talent.
