Monday, February 27, 2006

Stars

So I saw another Canadian band on Saturday. Stars are an emotive pop band with mostly songs about love lost, and sex. Recorded the band is very good, though in my opinion they are a rung below some of the more explosive bands coming out of the great white north. Live they seemed to lack a certain something. The mixed placed the male vocalist (Torquill is his name... poor guy) way out in front, and what sounds sincere on the album sounded overly dramatic live. Not to mention his morrissy like faints made him look like a big Ham. Stars' star however, is Amy Milan. The woman has an incredible voice, that did sound sincere. At they're best, they require the interplay of male and female vocals. And that interplay lacked a chemestry one hears on the album.
This is not to say the band was bad, they just did not live up to expectation. On the good side, the encore brought me to tears... Two doosies in a row... But then again I cried when Spock died in the Wrath of Kahn. Hell, I cried when Apollo Creed died in Rocky 4. None the less it's allways good to feel a little like an almost empty tube of toothpaste at a concert, the emotion squezed out of me.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

My Test

Current mood: Conflicted
Category: Life

Well folks apparently I passed. I guess they graded them a little more lenient than normal due to the problems with the test. I don't know what to say about it really. I had an odd reaction. I got the email, and I sat there for about 5 minutes. I knew I should be happy, ecstatic even. But I wasn't... then I cracked. (Thanks to the friend who was there) Here's an example of beating oneself up. I was upset that passing this test didn't make me feel better. So I spent the night being miserable.
I'm really getting sick of my own mood.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Accents

Coming from Chicago to the very international city of New York, I've
had some problems with accents. Give me a Polish or a Ukrainian, or a
Latvian accent I'm fine. Anything eastern European. Outside of that,
me and my ringing ears have a hard time with al the new accents I'm
exposed to here in NYC. For example:

My first job here in New York was working at a video store on the
upper east side. I would work at one of two stores as a clerk doing
clerky duties. I was in the store once and a dread-locked woman came
in with one of the oddest accents I've ever heard. It was explained
to me later that she was a Jamaican woman who'd lived in Germany for
some time. She came in and asked for the movie "Gorillas Hunting"
"What?" I responded.
"Go-rill-as Hunt-ing" She responded slow pronouncing each and every syllable.
"Let me see if we have that?" I went over the computer and looked it
up. "Nope sorry ma'am, no Gorilas Hunting."
Another clerk came over and said "Yes we have the movie Good Will Hunting."

Friday, February 17, 2006

Grotesque Old Ladies

So I mentioned here in Blogger that I was going to address what it’s like being a Midwesterner in NYC, and so far all you’ve gotten is whinny bullshit about my bitch of an ex-girlfriend and a few things about indie rock shows. Well I’m gonna get started on what this is really about.

After living in New York for about a year I discovered there were a group of new Yorkers I hate… old ladies who have had so much plastic surgery that their faces have been stretched up into a permanent smile. The Mrs. Wildensteins of New York really get my goat. Well I was sitting on the bus going back home up 1st ave, to my apartment on 72nd. I got on and sat down next to a guy on the side of the bus with 2 seats about 3/4 of the way back. In front of me there was an Asian woman with her son, who looked about 5 or 6. He was gazing out the window at the UN as it went by. We went forward a stop and this old lady got on. Her face was stretched so far it was comical. She looked like a character out of that movie Beetlejuice. She looked down at the Asian lady and started right into her.
“Ma’am, that child is too young to be taking up a seat.” She said in one of the nastiest voices I have ever heard. “Damn little children like that should be sitting on their parent’s laps. Don’t you know OLD people need to sit down.” The mother calmly just ignored the woman turning slightly toward her son who was no longer looking out the window… He looked scared. I don’t know if it was this old lady’s voice or her strangely alien face. “Did you hear me MA’AM?”
I could feel my blood begin to boil, and when that happens my mouth just starts to move. “Excuse me ma’am,” I said stressing the ma’am. “But if you wanted us to think you were old and give up our seat to you… you shouldn’t have spent all that money on the plastic surgery.”
The look of shock on this grotesque face was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in my life. The look when a couple of people sitting across from me and behind me started clapping was gratifying. When this lady pulled the cord and pushed her way off the bus I started to feel a little guilty, but not that much.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

And Now

I have a migrane headache. Fuck Valentine's Day

I read somewhere that telling folks about having a headache makes it hurt less... so sort of Psychology bull crap. So Bloging to the entire world should make me feel better.

Ouch.

bill

Friday, February 03, 2006

When the Past Comes Alive

Current mood: complicated
Category: Life

So I wanted to show someone something I had written... So I fired up myold EPSON computer that I wrote with in college. Just hearing the archaic sounds the old clunker made brought me to another time and another place. Oddly my writing was often done when I was upset, sad or angry, so it took me to a very similar time in my life.
I read through a bunch of it. Some is just downright awful. Much of it is only half formed ideas that were never finished. Some of it was just bizaare, (see below). Much of it though is autobiographical. Things about by first love, things about my freshman love triangle... But the most interesting thing I bumped into was something I wrote after my ex cheated on me the first time. It was all about trusting her despite what she had done, and just hoping that she would learn and understand how rare that quality is in people. It talked of hope, and how hope is linked with doom, because when you hope you have something to lose. With no hope there can be no real dispair.
I hope now that I don't lose that trust. I know it's foolish, to trust in people the way I do. But it's something that makes me who I am, makes me not just a sarcastic know-it-all. I've always had faith in those around me, that they would be just as conserned for me as I am for them. But I feel myself hardening, growing brittle, as if I'm slowly being lowered into liquid nitrogen. I hope i can thaw.

LOBSTER

Something about the situation I was in was making me uncomfortable. And I was pretty sure it was the fact that sitting across from me was a six foot tall lobster. Its stalked eyes looked me up and down. I felt like a UPC symbol being read in the grocery store. Its elbows (I'm not sure if lobsters have elbows but it was the place where its forearms bent) were resting on the table and his claws stuck straight up into the air. In one of them a glass of cola fizzed. The other was holding a cigarette to the animal’s beak like mouth. Oddly, threw a crack in the crustations exoskeleton a patch of long brown hair fell down either side of the creatures face. It blew smoke rings art me and begun to babble something about the service at Denny's.
"I notice that little sign as I walked in about Denny's serving people no matter what race and I was so relieved. You wouldn't believe how hard it is for a six foot tall crustation to get good service these days. What the hell is this world coming to."
Some how when Jon asked me to take his friend out to eat I never expected this.