Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Jimmy Eat World and the Promise Ring were great last night. The Worcester Palladium, however, was not. The Palladium was exactly a bajillion degrees inside and humid as physically possible without it actually raining inside the building. From the beginning it was clear that no one there was to see anyone but Jimmy Eat World. Except for me, I just really wanted to see the Promise Ring. This band Recover opened up the evening and they put there all in it, but I wasn't so into them. After they played, I took out my ear plugs so Ms.Austin and I could converse and when it was time for the Promise Ring to come on it was so humid that I could do the squishy-rolly thing you need to do to put the ear plugs in your ears. I would roll them and by the time they got to my ears, they were already expanded. The Promise Ring came on and rocked until some kid threw what I thought was a bottle at Davey and hit him in the mouth and Davey walked off stage stating "You just bought yourself some silence. I hope you're happy now." Considering they only played three or four songs this kind of sucked. After a few awkward minutes, Davey comes back out and declares, "Fuck you! I'm not going to let you win. I'm going to finish my set!" That said, the Promise Ring picked up where they left off and continued a great set. Later I found out it was CD and not a bottle and the CD was picked up by one of the guys from the PR. Ater looking at the CD breifly he asked the kid if it was his band and the kid replied it was. "Well your band fucking sucks! Why do you think we would want your CD?" Got to love that. I also found out that the kid got arrested for hitting Davey with the CD. I was very happy with the Promise Ring, considering the last time I saw them was in 1997 or something when I saw them a the now gone Wetlands when they played Texas Is The Reason's last show. Their set was a good mix of songs off their new album and old stuff. After the Promise Ring, Ms. Austin officially declared that this show was worse than the show Fugazi played at Mass Art earlier this year as far as the temperature was concerned. And that show was pretty bad. Another thing that sucks abbout the Palladium is not only do they charge two bucks for ear plugs, they charge three bucks for little bottles of water that aren't even cold. Jimmy Eat World was up next and I'll admit it - I'm not the biggest Jimmt Eat World fan, but they certainly put on a show, despite looking tired as hell. Hell, they rocked. They were who everone came to see and they didn't disappoint. Save for a few words about how it was lame to throw stuff at Davey, they barely said a word and just knocked out their set which was fine with me because it was so damn hot and humid.

Other highlights of the night were me feeling like an old man (a recurring theme at most shows I go to now), seeing Sheffy Brah and Allie Kat, and watching these kids grop each other and make out for the whole evening. We determined they were high school kids and had no other place to grop and make out. Oh, there was someone's mom who was standing next to us buying this kid drinks and hitting on him. They scary part was he was doing the same in return, except for the drink buying part because he was underage. Even scarier part was this women was *such* a mom. Ew. Whatever you need to do to get your groove on, I guess...
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Tuesday, July 23, 2002
This article says what I've been saying for years. Digital audio and the quality, ease of use and expense it provides, doesn't make people's music better. If you write crap music, it just helps you make better sounding crap.
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Sunday, July 21, 2002
And how could I forget this weekend of debauchery known as Maura Mae's 21st Birthday Weekend. Shame on me.
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So, where was I? Right. Exactly.

Things that have been happening lately. Sort of... In reference to this, that weekend I saw the Get Up Kids/Superchunk/Hot Rod Circuit tour two days in a row, one show at the Webster Theatre and the other at the Worcester Palladium. You have never seen a band more embarassed to headline some shows as the Get Up Kids. Every other comment out from them onstage was how good Superchunk is and how without Superchunk there would be no Get Up Kids. Talk about your guilt complexes. All bands played well but you have to give it to Superchunk, they rocked out like the seasoned band they are. Also noted at these two shows I felt like an old man. Now I'm only in my late twenties, but I'm confident in saying that if I wasn't twice as old as most of the attendents, I had at least 10 years on them. On Sunday of the that weekend, Ms. Austin, who also accompanied me to the second GUK/SC/HRC show, and I visited Axis on Lansdowne for and evening of Piebald, Ben Kweller, Taking Back Sunday. This band, Circle and Square from Brooklyn opened up the evening and they were good, although they seemed a little on the timid side. Taking Back Sunday were up next and in short, blew the doors off the place from the start. I first saw them a year ago at three day show in Long Island and thought they were great and bought their demo. When their album came out on Victory in March I liked the record a lot. Seeing them a year later, it was obvious that they had improved on their already great live show. I think TBS surprised a lot people their. Simply put? They rocked and that's all you can ask for from a band. Ben Kweller, Ms. Austin's favorite of the night, was up next and he was really good and played a solid set but lacked the intensity of TBS or at least it was a different type of intensity. The local boys, Piebald, came in to close out the show. I hadn't seen Piebald in something like 5 or six years? I saw them play with Karate and the Shyness Clinic in Amherst. They were good and goofy, I mean they played Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer." This show was to be a video shoot for their second video, it was unclear which song it was. Their first video for "Just A Simple Plan" is pretty good and is supposed to be played 120 Minutes on . 120 Minutes... Remember Dave Kendell? Those were the days. Anyway, Piebald are rockstars now. They had the crowd in the palm of their hands. From start to finish it was a great show.

After that it was just adjusting to the horror of going back to work after having a week off, something I haven't had in 4 or 5 years. In all honesty, it sucked. It sucked hard. I went to the opening of the Grange Gallery, which was a good time. I saw DJ Shadow at the Roxy. I went and saw The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys with Ms. Austin a few days later. I bought Amelie on DVD. The movie was great, of course, but the extras were average. The Royal Tenebaums had much better extras. On Esperanza's advice, I saw Pumpkin. While I thought Altar Boys was great, I'm still not sure how I feel about Pumpkin. Sorry. Went to Ms. Austin's birthday party on Friday. The cops came at 12:45 am which put a slight damper on things. I left soon after in case they came back and I didn't want to violate that nasty jaywalking parole I'm serving. In other news, on my G4 I have two hard drives, one 80 GB with OS 9 and a 60 GB running OS X. The OS 9 drive shit the bed, while not entirely tragic, still sucks. Looks like it's OS X from here on now.

Things in the future? Ms. Austin and I are going to check out Jimmy Eat World and the Promise Ring on Tuesday. Root Hog Or Die opening this weekend. After all that? There is some supertopsecretspystuff in future that will hopefully come to fruition. Fingers crossed.

Today is Ms. Austin's actual birthday. She's 24. Send her some love. Or money. She's not picky. Well, you know what I mean.

Currently listening to Into Another's Seemless on iTunes and there's nothing wrong with that.
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Thursday, July 11, 2002
The Royal Tenenbaums DVD, you ask? First class, I say.
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Wednesday, July 10, 2002
If you happen to be in upstate New York this weekend, my friend Chris Stain and some of his friends have opened up a gallery. It's called the Grange Gallery and you can check it out here.
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Monday, July 08, 2002
After having the past week off, the very last thing I want to do right now is go back to that place called *shudder* work. More on my weekend later.
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Friday, July 05, 2002
After moping around the house all day, I decided yesterday evening that it had cooled down enough to venture outside. Decision making time had come. "Do I wear my Vans or my flip-flops?" Thinking I was only going to go to Toscanini's, which wasn't so far away, I opted for the flip-flops. Imade my way to Toscanini's where I got a flavor I had never had before, Banana Peanut Butter Cup, which turned out to be pretty good. I decided to enjoy my tasty frozen treat outside and started to walk toward the Esplanade where people were gathered for the Fourth of July fireworks. I made my way to the Harvard Bridge which is actually just before MIT so people end up calling it the MIT Bridge, but in reality it is the Harvard Bridge and it is exactly 364.4 Smoots plus one ear long, but I digress... Tons of people were at the Bridge and plenty of boats were anchored in the Charles and I somewhat recoiled when I noticed that some had decided to go swimming in the Charles. *shudder* Not really wanting to be apart of the crowd, I decided to go to the movies thinking that most people would be attending the fireworks. I made my way to the Fenway 13 where I opted for Men In Black II. MIB2 was pretty good, perhaps the best part was a small cameo appearance that I won't name here, however I think the first one may have been a little better. You could hear the fireworks from inside the theatre and I managed to catch the tail end of the fireworks while walking back home. I wasn't even outside of Kenmore Square when I encountered the mass exodus from the Esplanade, needless to say I felt like quite the salmon. I made my way to the MIT Harvard Bridge, where I witnessed the people hawking free movie tickets. "FREE MOVIE TICKETS! I GOT FREE MOVIE TICKETS HERE!" "What movie are they for?" "It's this great new movie called 'Dianetics'..." Ugh. It was around this time I discoverd the error of my flip-flop ways. Flip-flops, or at least the ones I was wearing, are not made for long distance walking. My feet started to really bother me. With no mass transportation in site I kept walking for next half hour until I was home. This morning I wake up and find that my feet are slight swollen around the balls of my feet and ache like a bitch. And we all know how bitches ache, don't we? Fuck flip-flops.
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Thursday, July 04, 2002
I don't think I'm ready for much of anything.
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Oh, yeah. Happy Fourth and all that jazz.
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The fifth, not the third, time was the charm. Yesterday, the power lines across the street were sparking and ocassionally flaming up. The fire department was called several times and by the time they came, nothing was happening. When the power was out in the afternoon, Dorfman suggested I find somewhere else to sleep because the heat would be too much in our apartment when he left. I mulled around about what to do. I hadn't eaten at that point, but it was kind of too hot to eat. I thought about going to the movies again ( early I had seen The Bourne Identity), but never really got around to it. I thought it funny because of an early conversation with dad when I told him about how I was going to go to the movies to escape the heat. He suggested that an airconditioner would only cost $100-150. I told him that a movie was cheaper. And with no power where would that AC unit get me now? I met Natetrain when he got out of work and we went get ice cream and visit Newbury Comics. We took the T home and found that power was restored. We weren't even home for 10 minutes when the power lines started sparking and flaming again. Naterain said forget it and left for the AC paradise of Miss Leah's apartment. The fire department comes, the fourth time that I had witnessed, and again by the time they got there nothing was happening. Not even five minutes after they left it started again, this time worse than before. Huge streams of sparks started to fly and the line again caught fire only this time the line couldn't take it and sanpped. Pretty much every hose on the block after that line went black. By the fifth time the fire department came, the lines in the air and the one lying on the street were in flames. They just sat and watched it, waiting for it to go out on its own. Eventually the utilities people came and turned off the transformer and secured the loose lines. Nothing happened for a few hours after that until the utilities people came back and fixed the lines.
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Wednesday, July 03, 2002
Apple buys Emagic. Okay, I'm a little late on this, but holy deal! Interesting turn of events. Perhaps this is to help produce the much rumored iMusic for Apples i-Line of software apps? Hmm...
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So, with just about three hours of sleep and still having the shakes either from all the caffeine I have consumed in the past 12 hours or a lack of sleep, we (Natetrain, Leah and I) have made our triumphant return to Beantown from the Mid-Atlantic mess that is Washington DC!

Despite leaving Beantown Monday morning around 7:30 am (a little latter than we planned), we managed to make it to New York City by 10 am. We're not quite sure how that happened, but I think someone bent the law of physics in our favor. Of course, it took us another 45 minutes to actually get through the city, but at least we witnessed a semi over turned and in flames and charbroiled down to the steel skeleton of the cab right where 95 makes that split to either the Triboro or the GW. Action and adventure.

Zooming right along, we make our goal of Washington DC at around 3 pm. We are greeted to the Capitol City by a woman pulling up beside me and telling me my back wheel was "wobbling like it was going to fall off." After checking it out on Constitution Avenue in front of the Washington Monument, we decided that any wobbling was either an optical illusion or well within safety measures (After all, we (I) just drove 8 hours straight on the thing and if it was going to fall off, it would have by now. There's logical thinking for you). We call up my sister who lives in Arlington to meet up and get safely to her place at around 3:30 pm. There at Chez Heather, we decide our course of action. With my sister leaving for work for 5 pm, we make our way to the Metro and head toward White Flint, here we dine at a recommend eatery called The Vegetable Garden. I, of course, botch the Metro fare vending machine and instead of getting the $5 day pass, I get $22 of regular fare, which kind of sucked. Of course with a name like The Vegetable Garden you know it is going to be vegan Asian fare. We eat some fine dishes that quickly turn into soy bombs in our stomachs (not even the Natetrain can do dessert!) and witness some Diet for a New America type vegetarians, if you know what I mean, relish their freshly-squeezed juices and meat-free entres. We quickly realize while the food was good, it certainly was not what our friend had claimed it to be. C'est la vie... We were amused at the fact it advertised itself as "one of the top 31 vegetarian restaurants in the US" by some publication. 31 being such a strange number, we decided that it must have been ranked 31st. We quickly get back on the red line to our goal and final destination, Fort Reno Park for an evening of Fugazi.

Getting off at Friendship Heights, per the direction our friend gave us, we realize that somehow Natetrain forgot the directions to the park. With the help of a few locals, we quickly make our way to Fort Reno Park. We walk up a hill and find on the other side is a crowd of what I estimate to easily be 3,000 in front of a stage. The crowd was certainly diverse. You had a little bit of everything which is certainly an accomplishment. You had your traditional DC punks, hippy punks, alternarockers, Ambercrombie kids, people that you would think would be friends with your parents, etc. I saw everything from toddlers and babies to people in the elderly years all getting along, all having a good time. Having missed the opener of Quix*O*Tix, who I would have liked to have seen, but I'm not shedding any tears, we are just in time for Fugazi. In short, Fugazi was great. They played mostly songs from their latest album, The Argument. Natetrain was a little disappointed that they didn't play any of his favorites, but was pleased overall with their performance, as was Miss Leah. I think by the time Fugazi was in full swing, there could have been 4,000 people in attendance. A few of the "notables" in attendance were Glen E. Friedman, who was moving around on stage like a little monkey taking flicks, and Mark Anderson distributing flyers for something in the crowd. By the time it was all done, Fugazi played for an hour and a half with one three song encore. We quickly made our way to a nearby Whole Foods for some tasty beverages and frozen treats only to be hassled by a cop on the Metro telling us there is no food or drink allowed past the gates. No wonder it's so damn clean. We make our way back to Arlington, where we stop by my sister's work to say hey. From there we walk back to the air-conditioned paradise that is my sister's apartment and watch Hoosiers that just happens to be on TV. Natetrain was just psyched to be somewhere that had AC and cable. All in all a good evening and I am the last to hit the sack at around 1 am.

By the time everyone got around the next morning it was around 10:30 or so. We opted for a light breakfast at the Whole Foods by my sister's where I had a "just okay" vegan blueberry muffin and an excellent Peanut Butter Chocolate Moo'd Jamba juice. It was great and the guy at the juice bar gave me the big size for no additional cost because their was so much left over. We decided to head into DC since Miss Leah had never been their. We get there via the Metro and go to the Smithsonian. The best thing about this Metro trip was seeing this rather large man get off the train with his shorts and his t-shirt stuck rather far up the crack of his ass. My sister and I couldn't help but laugh. I know. I'm horrible. First we ventured to the Museum of American History where we saw things like Prince's guitar, Ella Fitzgerald's AmEx card, Mr. Roger's sweater, Indiana Jones' fedora and leather jacket, The Fonz's leather jacket, Archie Bunker's chair and a lot more. Obviously we were into more of the pop culture side of things. Natetrain decided he wanted to "see some dinosaurs," so we walked down the street to the Museum of Natural History where we partook of dinosaur reminants and the Insect zoo. When we exited the Museum we were accosted by some cult members doing "the pick." The whole episode was pretty embarassing with the guy giving us "smiling violations" and stickers that said clever things like "Girls Kick Ass." The clincher was when he offered us "Kama-sutra love beads." It was at that point I want to throw up and kick in this guy's teeth. It kind of bugged Natetrain and me for the rest of the day. The other thing that sucked when we exited the museums was the brutal DC weather. It was one of those days were the temperature and the humidity matched - 96 degrees and 96% humidity. You know those days where you can see the haze on the horizon? Well, you only needed to look down the block to see it yesterday. An archetypical dog day. Blah.

During the whole second day, Natetrain was playing his best Clark Grizwold, deciding where to go next. We ended up to the Washington Monument and then upon seeing the Lincoln Memorial in the background, he proclaimed "let's go!" We struggled in the heat and humidity and just before Memorial we scored some frozen treats courtesy of my sister. They were called "Firecrackers." They were red, white and blue. Frozen treats had never tasted so good in all of our young lives. After spending some time at the Lincoln Memorial we decided we decided to catch cab back to my sister's, however, we could not resist another chance at some frozen treats, this time Italian ices. We decide to stop by the Vietnam War Memorial, which is by far the most serene and powerful of all the memorials and monuments. Looking at all the names upon names was certainly humbling. At the base, there was the occassional photo or letter. Most of the letters seemed to be from junior high or perhaps high school students who probably barely remember the Gulf War, muchless understand a real war such as Vietnam. The students' letters all had a reoccuring theme - "I'm not sure if what happened was right or wrong and I probably will never know. All I can say is thank you." One letter was accompanied by a compass. The letter explained how at first a compass doesn't make sense and doesn't point north, but with experience and practice one can always have a compass that points north. With experience that comes with life one finds the answers, perhaps this paricular student is hoping that with his life's experiences he will be able to make sense of things and always point north. Another student's letter states he left a mix cd he had made of some rap music. He explained in his letter what in the music he felt helped him relate to Vietnam. He hoped that the soldiers whose names were on the wall, would appreciate it if not like it. The cd was gone, presumably picked up by some passerby. Perhaps the token that struck the biggest chord with me was a solitary dogtag. All I can remember from the tag was that the soldier's last name began with an H, his blood type was A, he was a Lutheran and that his name was not on the wall immediately before it.

We made it back to my sister's around 5 pm and left at about 5:30. Hitting some rush hour traffic, we make it to Baltimore by 7 pm. Not bad. Our drive is dotted by conversations serious and not so serious. We passed a billboard in Jersey for an $83 million lottery pay off. We talk about what we would do if we won such a prize. I'm not sure if that conersation fell under serious or not so serious. Maybe both. We cruised to New York City by 10 pm and by 10:30 we made it to Kate's Corner for some late night vegetarian fare. Leah and I had the Karin burger (she had a side of fries while I opted for the mash potatoes) and Natetrain got the McKate with fries. Unfortunately, our stomachs again could not accomodate any desserts. We rolled out of New York at around midnight and by the magic of caffeine, determination and no AC in my car, we arrived in Boston at around 3:30 am. As we pass an Allston sports bar's sign on the Mass Pike entering Boston, we are greeted by the fact that it is still 82 degrees. We make it to our humble abode which like the rest of our street has no power. I found out this morning from Dorfman that had witnessed the power line outside of our house bursting at around 10 pm. He originally thought it was someone setting off some pre-Fourth of July fireworks. Our apartment is hot with fans so you can imagine what it is like without them. Around 5 or 6 am I can hear the utilities people wrong on the line and like magic, my fan comes to life though offering little relief.

I toss and turn and wake up thinking how late it feels. With no watch and all the clocks in the apartment are blinking 12:00, I can't help but think it's 10 or 11 am. I take a cold shower and then turn on my computer to check the email that has been neglected for the past three days. Only 84 new messages, most of it spam. I look in the upper right hand corner of the compter. It's only 7:37. Which brings us to where we are now. My plans for the day? Pay the rent, perhaps catch a movie and get into some AC (today it's in the high 90s already and the humidity is up) and maybe see if Ms. Austin is working and get some frozen treats. Oh, yeah. and probably crash hard at some point.
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