It Takes So Little

Stephen King has a tri-weekly (is that right? Or would that mean three times a week? You get the idea) last-page column in Entertainment Weekly, as I'm sure you know. Normally I skip right past it. I've been officially turned off to Stephen King for years, after trying hard to like him, as I've written about here before. I read five or so of his novels, and a handful of short stories, and I tried to like him, I really did. I know I'm supposed to like him. But after book after book of disappointments, I resigned myself to never really understanding what's so great about Stephen King.
Until now.
This week's EW features a column by King entitled "Prime Downloads," in which he basically makes a mix and provides a short review of each song on it. Now aside from the appeal to me of this concept in general, I was quite impressed by tracks three and six.

3. "To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)" by Ryan Adams. "Ryan Adams can do just about everything, okay?" he writes. "This just happens to be everything together, boiled down to three minutes and change."

6. "Our Love" by Rhett Miller. "Bouncy, funny, sharp, and impossible to get out of your head--perfect power pop, in other words. The best song of its ilk not found on a Fountains Of Wayne record."

Rhett and Ryan! On the same mix! That's two-thirds of my alt-country threesome present and accounted for! (The remaining third, of course, would be me.) What more could a girl ask for on a CD?
So in short, Stephen and I are making up. I may still avoid his novels like the plague, and I may not stop skipping the back page of EW on his weeks, but anybody who likes Ryan Adams and Rhett Miller really can't be all bad, can he?

In other, non-directly-pop-culture-related news, my one hundred twenty gig external hard drive arrived today. As soon as I can manage to set it up, I will be ripping CDs like wildfire. My iPod will be happy.

Hey, Jealousy

An excuse I don't want to hear again, about anything: "They're just jealous." This has got to be the most obnoxious, self-deluding excuse I've ever heard, and it gets used so often in so many types of situations. Like "These UGG boots I'm wearing aren't as hideous as you all say; you're just jealous." Jealous of what? That your feet are upwards of a thousand degrees in those sheepskin monstrosities? God, I wish my feet could sweat like that in 80 degree Georgia weather. And then worse, something like "They only say I'm in a terrible relationship because they're jealous." Yeah, keep thinking that we're sitting here longing to be the object of your gross boyfriend's misguided affections. It's just not true, and the people who invoke the jealousy excuse are just severly in denial.
So kids, next time you find yourself thinking that somebody is jealous of you, just realize you're lying to yourself and stop wearing or doing whatever nonsense you think people are jealous of. It's just in poor taste.

I Could Make A Habit Out Of You



As it's several days later at this point, I'm not going to write a long drawn-out post about my weekend, which was quite good. I'm sure if I did I would wind up revealing details I'd rather not share, or details you'd rather not hear, or just a bunch of boring stuff. So I promise this will be quick(ish).
Friday night I went to a party with Pooja in Lipscomb (a dorm here). The RA on a particular hall was out of town, and so each participating room picked a theme, decorated, had festive drinks and costumes, and just generally partied like college students do in the movies. Seriously, it was closer to what my pop-cultural expectations of college parties have always been than anything else I've attended (besides a few select frat parties). Very nice.
Saturday I slept all day, and then went to the Jump, Little Children (thus the picture) show at the Theater with David, Melissa, Lisa, and Anne, among others. Such a great show. Jump always plays really long setlists, but this one I believe consisted of 25 songs (which is a lot!), complete with two encores. We were right up in the front of course (of course!), and the crowd was for the most part wonderful. Everyone was really into the show and knew most of the words. After the show we picked up the new EP they're selling only at shows and online, Between The Glow And The Light, and I'm in love with it. Darkest Love, the first track on it, has been played probably upwards of forty times on my computer so far.
After the concert we collected a few others and went back to the dorm, where Kim was waiting for us, fresh out of the MCAT. She was, of course, ready to drink her standardized testing sorrows away, and who are we to deny her? No terribly exciting stories from the evening, I'm afraid. I mean, I got real talkative, but when have I not? Sheesh.
Sunday I slept all day (is there a theme?), and then the FRC end-of-the-year banquet was that evening on Herty Field. It wasn't bad--Hawaiian themed, relatively good food, et cetera. I feel a little bad that I don't feel like I'm going to miss this place though. Other people seem upset. I'm really just not.
And that essentially catches you up, as everything that's happened since has been pretty boring, including writing a Psych paper, attending an UGAzine meeting, and (today) listening to the Postal Service version of Suddenly Everything Has Changed about a hundred times. And now my week's pretty much over (except for classes that I've been managing to attend only sparsely). Think I'm going home this weekend (although there's a slight chance--though I don't want to jinx it--of a roadtrip to Charleston to see Jump at the Music Farm), so yeah free laundry! Guess that's it. So it wasn't quite as quick as I expected. So sue me.
On second though, please don't sue. Jump Little Children are getting all my money and I'm too broke to pay lawyer fees on top of that.

Not So Little You & I



Last Monday was the Jason Mraz show at the Georgia Theatre. It was really great, as I'd heard his shows are. I went with David, Kim, and Katie, and we were the first ones there-- quite the overacheivers, we are. In any case, getting there early paid off, as we were right in front and relatively centered. Within spitting distance, as the metaphor goes, but when you're directly beneath somebody who's singing, the metaphor is usually more of a reality.
So there was an opener, Aqualung, who sounded good but were far too mellow-- we were all almost asleep by the time they finished their set. Mraz's more energetic show was a welcome change. He stayed on for a long time, by all standards, and played mostly non-album tracks. It was exciting to hear some of the songs that will be on his upcoming CD, Mr. A-Z, which I believe is slated for an early August release and sounds like it will be as good if not better than Waiting For My Rocket To Come. So after the show, as we were up in front, we managed to get some of the stuff the roadies were clearing off the stage (y'know, set lists, stray drumsticks...the usual stuff). Except I ended up getting a bottle of Jason Mraz's orange juice, which is a little less common. It's cool though, we waited for awhile out by his tour bus with a small mob of people until Mraz had smoked enough pot on the bus to get him through the rest of the night, and then I got both he and Toca (his percussionist) to sign the juice. They were both very nice, and stayed out there until every single fan had gotten pictures and autographs and stuff. So it was a really fun night, and I'd definitely recommend anybody go see him if you get a chance.


Please Don't Hide Your Love Away



Tuesday night Chris, AB, Farah, and I decided to make an impromptu roadtrip (if 60 miles can qualify as roadtrip) to Atlanta to see Red Letter Agent perform an in-store at Criminal Records in Little Five Points. We were running late so we wound up doing probably 90 down 85 trying to get there on time (we would know for sure, of course, if AB's speedometer wasn't broken), and somehow we managed to get there only 15 minutes late despite leaving about forty minutes late. The band played several songs off their new CD, Burn The Good Ones Down (which I have since listened to--very good), and then just stuck around awhile to chat with the twenty or thirty people who'd gathered in the parking lot to watch. It was nice, a good way to spend an afternoon, but sadly, the cute drummer that we first encountered at a coffeehouse in Midtown this summer (Black 22, was it?) appears to have a girlfriend now. Alas. Good band, anyway.


If I Had To Marry A Magazine...



It would be Paste.
I don't think I've mentioned Paste here before, but it's a national music magazine run out of Decatur that seems to be designed specifically towards my particular musical tastes. On their website, they describe the musical genres they tend to favor as Adult Album Alternative (basically modern rock), Americana (the alt.country I so love), and Indie Rock. So you can see why I would be excited. Also, it's a lovely magazine, extremely intelligent and well-written, and very pretty (which you wouldn't think would really matter, but it does).
In any case, this past Thursday the founder and editor of the magazine, who happens to be a Grady alum, came to do a lunch seminar about running and writing for a music magazine. So of course, I RSVP'd yes. It was really cool; the editor, Josh Jackson (no, not Pacey...unfortunately) seems very nice and down to earth. He and one of his assistant editors spoke about getting the magazine started, and all the troubles they've gone through the past couple years, and how they're just starting to be pretty successful as far as magazines go. Overall it just got me really excited about my future career. I would love, love, love to intern for Paste, maybe next year or the summer after, but first: I have to become good at writing! And I have to get clips! Oh, this could prove disastrous.

'Cause It All Amounts To Nothing In The End

I haven't written here in a while. Mainly just because I had a really shitty week, and between bad personal stuff, fruitless studying for tests, and Mitch Hedberg dying, anything I could have written about would have just resulted in a really depressing or angry post. And who wants that?
On a completely unrelated sidenote, don't you hate it when after a night of in-dorm debauchery, you notice that everything is sticky? I keep finding more and more places that something must have spilled. Wow, we're messy.
Anyway, I'll focus on the non-shitty things that are in the works for now. Like how Thursday night I ate dinner with Bidwell who I hadn't seen in forever, and then came back here and Kim and I dyed our hair (mine to black and hers to auburn), and then much later most of the girls went to Subway to get free subs (every Thursday night in March, between 12 and 3 am, they gave free 6-inch subs to girls), and then how Kim, Katie, and I didn't get to sleep until 7 am because we were planning and executing April Fools' Day pranks all over the dorm. Yeah, I definitely didn't make my one Friday class, as I woke up at almost 5 pm. Some of our pranks went very well though-- we Saran-wrapped some girls into their rooms, newspapered Sonika and Melissa into theirs, switched all the clothes in Myra and Michelle's closets, erected a waist-high pyramid of Dixie cups leaning against AB and Chris' door so that when AB opened it in the morning they all came [loudly] tumbling into the room, we rearranged the keys on Lisa's keyboard so that they spelled out APRIL FOOLS (with the zero as the second "O" and inexplicably, with the comma key as the second "L"). My favorite, or at least the most clever prank we pulled, was on Ben: we took a screen-shot of his computer as it was when he left his room-- internet window open and everything-- and then hid his icons and start bar and set the picture as his wallpaper, so when he got on his computer none of the buttons would work or anything. It was great, but now I have to keep my door locked whenever I'm gone or sleeping (hardly anybody ever locks their door here-- we only do when we're out of town) out of fear or retaliation.
Yesterday evening I bailed on some friends who were going to see Sin City, because I was so not in the mood for a movie like that (they provided mixed reviews-- what it boiled down to I believe was that most of the boys liked it a lot and most of the girls thought it was only okay). David came over instead and we drank juice and Coke with nothing remotely alcoholic mixed in. And now everything is sticky.
Tonight Ayrun and Kate and Ali are coming to visit from GCSU-- I don't exactly know what we're doing, because there's been talk of a certain party that I reeeeally would rather not go to so I don't know if I'm going to be forced into it or if it's open for dicussion.
Tomorrow I will study for Telecomm. All. Day. Long.
And Monday is the Jason Mraz show at the Theater! David and Katie and Kim and I are going and I'm real excited-- I've been on a Mraz kick for weeks now and I've heard he's great live. So that'll take up a huge chunk of my Monday that I otherwise could be using to study for Tuesday's Telecomm test (thus Sunday's study marathon).
So in general, you know, I don't know if the bad outweighs the good or vice versa, but I guess I just hope it all evens out in the end.