great blog day, everyone!

I'M ME

Lindsey introduced me to a fantastic song last year. "I'm Me" - Lil' Wayne

The song isn't even that good, it's the LYRICS. Some key excerpts:

"Niggas is bitches, bitches, I think they full of estrogen"

"Last year they had the Grammys and left me in Miami
Sleeping on a nigga like I'm wrapping in my jammies
I'm rapping when you sleep, I was rapping when you were in jammies
Mel Gibson flow, Lethal Weapon, book 'em Danny"

"Let's go, niggas don't see me cause I'm better and bold
The only time I will depend is when I'm seventy years old
That's when I can't hold my shit within so I shit on myself
Cause I'm so sick and tired of shitting on everybody else"

CLASSIC. Go listen and fall in love, just as I did.

Women - Women

Today, Women release their self titled album on Flemish Eye Records. Instead of putting in the effort to write a full review, here are some random sentences about it:



I like it, quite a bit actually.

I don't quite know why I like it as much as I do.

It's pretty lo-fi and sounds like it was self produced in a garage. Maybe it was. I'll look it up later.

It rocks, sometimes, but never really opens up to full chord strumming and consistent crash cymbal-ing, preferring instead to have multiple guitar riffs build over stick clicks or a kick drum, being both dynamic and minimalist.

The vocals and melodies are delivered with a we-only-sometimes-and-even-then-only-kind-of-give-a-fuck attitude. At times, their voices are pretty, with multiple reverbing harmonies, and sometimes they're almost talking the lyrics in fifths and barely sliding to each word with an almost No Age-esque effect... but I like these guys more.

Sometimes there are squeaky violins. And pretty bells. And noodley guitars. It's almost like the Ruby Suns took a left turn at the intersection of dream pop and math rock.

The guitar sometimes has a This is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About tone but with riff more befitting of Pinback or Faraquet.

Woodbine is 3:39 of a single note with increasing scratchy textures. Wei-urd.

Group Transport Hall is a 1:11 simplistic acoustic pop piece that sounds like a homemade Sung Tongs track but would never have been written by Animal Collective.

Black Rice and Shaking Hands are fantastic songs.

I want to post a few tracks here but don't know how. I'll direct you to their Myspace so you can at least hear Group Transport Hall and Black Rice.

I was going to end my sentences here, but I just Googled these dudes. I probably just should've just quoted their website, posted the link above, and not said anything at all:

"The debut album by Women was recorded by label-mate Chad VanGaalen over 4 months on ghettoblasters and old tape machines in his basement, an outdoor culvert and a crawlspace. Sometimes light and spacious, at other times eerie and dense with an ominous weight, this self titled album touches upon Velvet Underground, The Zombies or This Heat while not really having any obvious precursors – a lo-fi masterpiece cloaked in layers of vibrato and guitar wash.

Noisy and claustrophobic songs smash through junkyard trash brawls while others lift and soar across the landscape of 50’s-informed pop; a contradiction and an enigma, the debut album by Women will find its way onto summer bike ride mixes and the turntables of record store devotees."

That sums it up. You can download the full thing at this blog's post. I recommend it if you have the time and hard drive capacity.

Recommended for fans of: Dan's music, Greg's music, Erinrose's music, Tom's music, usually not my music.

Xoxo.

TUESDAY MORRISSEY BLOGGING #1

HE.

NEVER REALLY LOOKS AT MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY.



I GIVE HIM.

EVERY OPPORTUNITAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY.

detroit

I'm working at this guy's house until we find a new state headquarters. There's all sorts of stories of Aretha Franklin drunk in certain rooms.

**NY CELEB SIGHTING NO.3**

Yeah, the Feelies reunited and Sonic Youth played a double encore, but today's concert at Battery Park was all about Danny Tamberelli , who I saw rockin' his trademark Mets hat and looking very heavy.

Time: Approx. 6 PM
Location: Battery Park entrance




Do it to it, Polaris:

Happy 4th

H-Town

I don't know what you guys think of Lil Wayne (except for Dan) but I can't get enough of him (along with most hip hop fans...)

Anyways, this song is great. It's originally by Shawty Lo who I think is in D4L (of Laffy Taffy
fame), and it has Ludacris and Young Jeezy and they do pretty well, but Lil Wayne's verse is amazing. he doesn't even have to really rap, and he still has my favorite one liner of the year (Cause all my kicks fly, like Liu Kang). And the beat is sweet
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uQ566BTxPc8

I won't be offended if you don't listen to it.

Also, Diablo 3 was announced. http://blizzard.com/us/splash.html;jsessionid=51D12E60CFFC63F86431838F190B8A7B.app11_04

representative aldo prosbelsdff (i forget)

A minute ago, a 75-year-old state rep walked into the office.

In wonderment at all the 20-somethings around him- "wow, look at all these young people! y'know, young people are gonna win this thing."

everyone sort of laughs with him.

"just like the dean campaign in '04."

there was horrible silence.

Der Besuch Der Alte Dame

My mom and bro rolled into town late this morning, and we've been outfitting my apartment and eating well all day. Anne, Amanda, and Carolyn came over for lasagna dinner, and (correct me if I'm wrong) a good time was had by all. The food was good, and Jackson shared with us a couple of the videos that he and his friends have posted on YouTube. Says the auteur: "We just get really bored, and then we make videos." Their artistic scope is about as wide as it gets. Tonight, we were treated to a Vietnam War reenactment with imaginary guns (and hyper-realistic gunshot sound effects) and a mock workout video in which Jackson goes by the rather inaccurate moniker "Big J." Here's their crack at a music video, which the co-star himself admits "is actually pretty stupid," but is worth watching for the first minute or so, if only to see my brother goof off in a snowsuit for a while. At least that's why I like it.



On another note, the new Beck album just leaked, and on first listen I like it better than anything he's done since Sea Change. The album-to-hair awesomeness ratio is off the charts:

You have to do a bit of digging to find a link that hasn't been taken down, but it's possible. I'd post one myself, but I'm afraid of the man.

Cruisin' in the STL

I settled into St. Louis on Sunday, and by Tuesday, I had already begun to get antsy. The first few days I read some books, slept, wandered around the house, and then drove around. I ate at some places I usually eat at the first week I'm back in St. Louis. Then I painted my room blue. It had been blue before, but the new blue was blue gray, the old blue was blue black. No joke. But the color is more different than the names would suggest.

Now I'm digging up the chainlink fence that borders the street and encloses our backyard. We don't have dogs, cats, or anything that needs to be kept out, and anything that wants to come in can pretty easily jump the rusted metal fence. I've set a deadline to have it done by Friday because on Saturday we're have a family get together at our house.

Point is, I'm pretty bored. E-mail me!

Home for a Week

Things I do only when in Milaca:
- Play Freecell (while waiting for dial-up pages to load -- turns out Zimbra just doesn't open if the connection's too slow. I waited 22 minutes today.) I don't wanna brag, but I'm, like, really good at Freecell.
- Eat Cool Ranch Doritos (my parents for some reason always have them. Like, always. My dad also has about 17 full-size Snickers bars in the kennel fridge. He bought them to give to these motorcyclists participating in his charity fundraiser but they didn't want them. Some of them are the new caffeine-injected Snickers. Needless to say, my parents like snacks as much as I do.)
- Go to bed at 10:30. I watched two hours of Project Runway season 2 (REMEMBER ANDRE?!) with my mom last night then was tuckered OUT.

Also last night, my mom and I went into my dad's office to use the fast internet. She thought it would make her feel better about my safety in Brazil if we could watch some Youtube videos filmed in the favela where I'll be working (it's called Mangueira). After about three videos that were documentaries of bullet-filled bodies with tags like "drugswar" she decided that was actually NOT the best way to feel more comfortable. So we watched this one instead:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EQ3GOVycA7M
Isn't it pretty?!
Tomorrow I'm going to set up my travel blog. Also tomorrow we're going to the sporting goods store to buy mace.

On the plus side, DQ has a new Girl Scout Cookie blizzard! Thin mints IN ICE CREAM! I'm at the Dairy Queen now using the free wireless. Hot eats, cool treats, you know.

gone till november

a couple hours before my flight to detroit, my mom and I went to atwater's, a soup place we go to every time i'm in town. it's in a sort of open air market with fruit stands and a lot of other good stuff. Halfway through our soup, we saw a security guard tackle a 15-year old kid. the guard held the kid to the ground and kept yelling "calm down, son! calm down!" he wouldn't apparently calm down. even handcuffed, and flipped on his belly with the security guard's knee on his back, the kid kept kicking and wriggling. after a couple minutes, he stopped. the guard reached into the kid's pockets and pulled out three large jars of jelly. he laughed to himself, shook his head, and put the jars on the nearest stand. five minutes later, the actual police arrived, flipped the kid over, and tried to get him up. he wasn't moving. apparently, he had seized while being subdued. i don't know if he died, but it didn't look too good.

i got into michigan a couple hours after that. i'm falling into the same caffeine heavy hectic routine, but i can't get the image of that kid out of my head. it's a disconcerting thing because i have so much to do, and i need to think about so many other things.

i'm a lot less depressed than this post suggests, but i needed to write about this and i didn't know where else to do it.

also, i don't know why the internet won't let me embed this, but it's worth watching- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBHHtpTwJeM
(wyclef wrote it for me).

How to prepare a common murre (Uria aalge)

This is the bird I study.

AHHHH!

In other news, I rode on an ATV for the first time yesterday! I climbed on behind Talon (that is really his name), the best friend of the boyfriend of Lanaya (whom I met not even 2 weeks ago). "Lean where I do. Oh, and hold on tight." Turns out he was the crazy driver -- Lanaya's boyf Danny just rolled along, Talon was trying to scare the shit out of me. Speeding up and down, short stops, sharp turns, hiding in the bushes to ambush Danny... I thought I was going to die at first, but then it was just pure FUN. (Although I still wasn't sure if I would survive the trip.)

Nothing like trusting my life to someone I barely know in a really blatant way.

My Body Sucks

I just got back from the orthopedic surgeon's office and it turns out there's a reason for my repeated shoulder dislocations besides the occasional spastic movements of my lanky limbs.

Quoted from the internet:

"A Bankart lesion is a specific injury to a part of the shoulder joint called the labrum. The shoulder joint is a ball and socket joint, similar to the hip; however, the socket of the shoulder joint is extremely shallow, and thus inherently unstable.

To compensate for the shallow socket, the shoulder joint has a cuff of cartilage called a labrum that forms a cup for the end of the arm bone (humerus) to move within. This cuff of cartilage makes the shoulder joint much more stable, yet allows for a very wide range of movements (in fact, the range of movements your shoulder can make far exceeds any other joint in the body).

When the labrum of the shoulder joint is torn, the stability of the shoulder joint is compromised.

A specific type of labral tear is called a Bankart lesion. A Bankart lesion occurs when an individual sustains a shoulder dislocation. As the shoulder pops out of joint, it often tears the labrum, especially in younger patients. The tear is to part of the labrum called the inferior glenohumeral ligament. When the inferior glenohumeral ligament is torn, this is called a Bankart lesion."

Guess who has a Bankart lesion? This guy.

One of the frustrating things about this (there are a few I'll go over) is that this is my second fucking avulsion. Remember that injury I had at the end of my junior year of high school that ended my track career forever? That was an ischial avulsion, pictured below:

Note that piece of hip bone that the hamstring broke off and pulled into the thigh like a total douchebag.

So now I basically have that again but in my shoulder. And I'll keep dislocating my shoulder and chipping away little bits of my bone unless they suture that little fragment back where it's supposed to go. Fucking lame, right?

...Which brings me to another frustrating thing: surgery. A month in a sling. No athletic activity for 6 months. Physical therapy for 5 months. What the fuck? Looks like my IM volleyball days are over. Oh, and I have to take two more PE credits before I graduate. How? Good question. You don't need your arms for step aerobics, do you?

On the plus side, getting an MRI is kind of cool (for you nonscience people [all the bros and most of the hos (besides Erinrose last week)], an MRI provides the top pic). I got to slide into this sleek looking tube and lie there for 30 minutes listening to Dave Matthews and G Love. It rocked. To prep, the doctors injected some dye directly into my joint, which is uncomfortable, but I got to watch it happening on, like, a live video X-ray thing. I could actually see the needle approaching the joint. When I moved my arm a little bit, I could see the bones moving around. Now I know what I will look like as a skeleton. It was surprisingly cool. And I hear the dude who basically told me to sit still and moved the machine over me is raking in $650,000 a year. Noted. Maybe I'll change my medical focus to radiology.

But I digress.

The point is, this sucks. I think the actual surgery will happen right after Thanksgiving. Also, no one posted on the brog for over 24 hours so I decided to fill it up with my whining.

On an unrelated note: what are people doing for July 4th? I kind of want to go to NYC. Will anyone be there? Can I crash on a floor? Does anyone else want to come if the previous question is enthusiastically responded to?

Xoxo