Music Make You Lose Control

I love when I come across a band that stops me in my tracks and makes me exclusively listen to them for an extended period of time (days, weeks).  Right now, this band is Anberlin.  I think their reign is over, however, since my pre-order for The Graduate just arrived.    

Cerritos

Seen & heard at a park in Cerritos:

A dad with a shirt that said: "An apple a day keeps the STDs away."

A boy who told me "I saw a cat here last time and I almost murdered it."

You stay classy, Cerritos.

Ruthless

So I just got back from a concert.  It was Something Corporate featuring Andrew McMahon back from the dead after beating cancer.  I was really excited to see them and see the self-proclaimed newest venue in LA - Club Nokia.  Unfortunately, moving my sister out of her apartment took longer than expected so I arrived a little late, but the band had yet to start playing.

The venue was a three-tiered floor, and after spotting my friends, I went to join them on the lowest tier.  However, I was blocked by a BFG (read Roald Dahl if you don't know that one) who insisted this level was limited to x amount of people and it was first-come/first-serve and you had to have a certain type of ticket and you needed a bracelet and I really wanted to kick him in the balls and yada-yada-yada.  After trying other security guards, it was clear no one was budging despite the fact the floor was only 2/3 full (if that).  As I pondered ways to get into the pit, the following ideas crossed my mind:

-Follow the short girl who just exited the pit into the bathroom and force her to give me her bracelet (using force if necessary)

-Follow one of the security guards into the bathroom, somehow take him out (I imagined something with my belt and wrapping it around his neck) and putting on his security shirt

-Bribe the guard. This works in Russia, and security guards are just as scummy as Russian cops. Unfortunately I had spent all my cash on parking.

-Was it possible to jump from the upper level balcony into the pit and not break a leg/be seen?

In the end, I had to "enjoy" the show friendless and farther back with a pillar blocking the right half of the stage.  

I had planned to do a blog post about my favorite five things at concerts.  But after tonight's catastrophe I'd like to offer my five least favorite things at concerts.

1) Security. For reasons above obviously, but I've also been annoyed that no security guard has ever known any of the bands they're "protecting" - clearly, they have bad music taste.

2) Obnoxiously long in-between set times.  It does not take that long to tune a guitar.

3) Fat people. 'Nuff said.

4) Tall people.

5) People who are closer to the stage than me yet don't know a single lyric and probably can't even name the band.  They're usually fat too and dragged along by a girlfriend.

Honorable mention: girls with frizzy hair whose mane I always get caught in

***

Oh well, I guess it wasn't that big of a deal.  I'll just see Something Corporate again when they roll into town.  Oh wait...it was a reunion tour.  THEY'RE NEVER GOING TO PLAY TOGETHER AGAIN.

FML

Walking The Dog: Story II

Today, while my sister was walking Lily a woman called her a f*cking c*nt.

Later today, while I was walking Lily, she found a used condom.

LA is polluting my sweet Lily.

There's A Class For This

I hate when you can tell a class will be boring within the first five minutes of the first lecture.  You can just tell from the way the professor reads the syllabus (usually, if they're taking the time to thoroughly go through that thing, that's sure sign no. 1).    

I also hate when the room is deathly, awkwardly silent as everyone waits for the professor to come in and you want to strike up a conversation with the person beside you but you know everyone will be able to hear you and listen in as you ask the person if they remember you from the Writing 140 class you were both in a couple years ago and it turns out they do not remember you at all.  

The Switch

Sorry if you were expecting a post about Jennifer Aniston's latest terrible film.

The rival station to the big radio station here in LA is always playing clips of listeners claiming to have "made the switch" to this rival station.  They claim to never switch the station and listen to this station all day.

Who actually does that?  Are you telling me if commercials come on you're going to stick with that station despite the fact that the other station that plays the exact same type of music is not on commercial?  And where does radio station allegiance even come from?  I like NBC shows, but I'm not going to exclusively watch shows on that network and rob myself of enjoyment on other channels.

It seems stupid to me.  But then again, so does listening to the radio.

Stars

I'm a really big fan of stargazing.  To be clear, my stargazing was not spurred by my obsessive listening of Hayley Williams telling me how she wishes airplanes were shooting stars. 

This summer I would walk my dog late at night and just go lay on the hills of this deserted golf course and look up at the stars.  There's something about looking into that expanse that is really calming and awe-inducing.  It makes me wonder if more people's personal problems could be solved if they were looking up at the stars every night instead of a ceiling fan.  I really want a skylight above my bed in my future house. 

And I really want to be pretending airplanes are shooting stars with Hayley Williams under that skylight. 

Makin' the Bedrock

10 year old bed 

+ 

me body-slamming my brother 

=

Holiday From Real

I just came back from the most refreshing vacation I've been on in a long time. The reason: complete isolation from the outside world.  Vacations are about escaping from your real life, but I've found it's hard to get away from that when you're in a hotel with a TV or at a campsite where you still get coverage.  This past week, I had no Internet connection and no phone reception for an entire week.  It was really nice.  

One, because I got to read.  This always takes a backseat to the pointless hours I spend on the world wide web.  Two, because it was great to focus on relationships and not be distracted by those things that get in the way.  I got to know my extended family even better, and they're pretty awesome.

The only downside was coming back to find my 2 new Facebook notifications paled in comparison to my sister's 99.

Lake Powell. Isn't she beautiful?

Don't be fooled, this wasn't me... 

but this was. We had costume night, and I dressed up as my uncle to the left, who would grace us every day with this number that put the 'short' in swim shorts 


(I had to do some teenage-girl stuffing to fill out like he did however)

You're Boring Me

I wish there was a dislike button on Facebook so I could dislike people's statuses when they post something to the effect of:

so borreeeeeeeddddd

bored. any ideas?

i'M BoReD

I've never understood the idea of being bored.  Especially when you have Internet access (which these people clearly do since they're updating their status).  With the Internet alone you should never be bored - you can chat w/ friends, play games, read about anything, etc. But even without the Internet, how can you be bored?  There are millions and millions of books and movies out there that you can escape into.  Or millions of albums that need listening to.  Or if human interaction is your thing, call up a friend.  

Really, posting that is just a cry for attention. That I would dislike if I could.

MVP Like Steve Nash

Let me start by saying I love Nelly Furtado.  She's Canadian, I lived in Canada. She's gorgeous, I was called a "ladykiller" by a great-grandmother yesterday. She had a kid that nobody knows about, I..

Unfortunately, the closest I've ever come to a Furtado was on a school trip in Ottawa, Canada, where her cousin was our tour guide.  Anyway, I love this video of her performing "Say It Right" at the AMA's (I've probably contributed 50 views to its 1.5+ million count).  Here's what I love about it:

-2006 was Nelly's year.  Everybody loved Loose and all the singles that came with it.  I love the crowd reaction at the beginning - they are legitimately excited to see Nelly at the top of her game.  And for a maintream pop artist, she can actually sing live (paging Ke$Ha...actually, I can't tell if this is live or not...if not she at least knows how to lipsync right - Ashlee Simpson take notes).

-I love when artists slightly change their songs live (notice I said slightly - I am personally not a fan of Gaga's 2-minute interludes of banging on piano keys). In this video, the guy on the left does some crazy sounds, which I think totally give a new dimension to the song.  He plays off Nelly nicely. 

-At 1:57, she almost screams the "you don't mean nothing at all to me" line, which I love.  She actually co-wrote the song, and I can tell that line has some resentment/anger behind it.  

-Girl's got moves.  I don't think her feet move at all during the performance, which would make you think it would be pretty boring, but she captivates me the entire time with her swaying arms & later her dancing which you see just as the...

-guitar solo begins at 3:03.  I love how the guy comes out from the smoke, kind of timid and unassuming and yet completely owns the moment with a wicked solo.  Nice for him to get some glory too.  After watching This Is It and seeing MJ's amazing guitarist, I'm led to believe these artists don't just get your average guitarist to play for them.

I've already watched this another 10 times just writing this. It's so good!

Numbers

So I'm reading the Old Testament right now.  And in Old Testament times, people lived a long time.  Like, a really long time.  Adam - 930 years.  Seth - 912 years.  Noah was 500 when he became a father.

I think if we lived this long, it would totally alter our life perspective.  Don't we become a more lackadaisical society?  We'd put stuff off.  I think it would be great because you wouldn't feel like you're wasting precious time with things that you enjoy but really don't add any substance to your life (TV shows, I'm looking at you).

A downside - puberty lasts longer.  It'd be a bit awkward to be getting spontaneous erections and voice cracks when you're one hundred and fifty. Oh, and school would be at least 200 years - never mind, forget this idea.  I couldn't take that.