Then You Become So Uncomfortably Numb

Well, Butch Walker Week has come and gone, and y'know, you never really realize how stressful a week like Butch Walker Week can be. But the good definitely outweighed the bad, so I'll just recap the highlights.

Tuesday, August 24th: Letters hits stores:

GO BUY IT NOW!

Tuesday, August 24th: The Tower Records Instore:

The roomie and I drove down to the Buckhead Tower Records, getting only moderately lost.

A performance of five or six songs from Letters

Culminating in a signing

Wednesday, August 25th: The Live-X:

I was unable to go (partly because tickets are quite hard to get for Live X's, and partly because I was unwilling to listen to 99X often enough to hear them give away tickets), but you can LISTEN to it.

Thursday, August 26th: The Athens Show:

Got there hours early and waited for doors to open with fellow Butch fans.

Val Emmich opened for American Hi-Fi who opened for Butch and then served as his backing band.

The show was amazing; the crowd was less so. Stupid drunk frat boys.

I managed to flirt the merch guy into giving me one of the two or three huge (and by huge I mean...hmm...3 feet by 3 feet? Maybe 4 by 4. Well, in any case, big) foamboard Letters promo signs. There's nowhere to put it but it's just a good thing to have around.

Friday, August 27th: The Atlanta Show:

Got there relatively early--managed to be almost as close as Thursday night, anyway.

Red Letter Agent opened for Val Emmich who opened for Hi-Fi, and so on. Turns out that the drummer for Red Letter Agent lives in Tom's apartment building and that they're opening for Bain Mattox at Tasty World this Thursday.

The show was even more amazing than the Athens show, and the crowd was much better.

During "Freak Of The Week," all the openers came onstage and played along with Butch. I've determined that when it comes to rock shows, the more guitars, the better.

You know what? Butch Walker?

Rocks.

See? Aren't you proud? You might've thought I was going to spend hours writing minute-by-minute accounts of each BW Week event, but I resisted the temptation and consolidated it into one--just for you. Be glad.
And rumor has it there'll be a fall tour--if there is, and there's an Atlanta date on the list (duh), and you haven't managed to make it out to a show, you'll come with me. You will. You should, at least. I think you'd like it.

As I Take Off My Heart Won't Stop

Hell yeah I'm skipping my Stat lab this evening and driving to Atlanta with Lisa to attend Event 1 of Butch Walker Week--the instore performance/signing at Tower Records on Peachtree (7 pm if you'd care to join us). Hell yes we are. Go buy your tickets to the Athens show at the 40 Watt website! Hell, go buy tickets to the Variety Playhouse show if you want to come!

And by the way...

WHERE'S LETTERS?!

Two hours later...

HERE'S LETTERS!!

On A Sunday

I've been feeling good lately. In a much better mood than usual. This could be attributed to a number of things, but I couldn't name any of them. And I'm excited about classes tomorrow, which is very abnormal and should pass within minutes, but is still better than dreading the morning.
Because tomorrow morning is FOOTBALL TICKETS!!! And about ninety of us are going to Stegeman at 7:45 (even though I don't have a class until 11:15...because we're crazy) to pick up our tickets so we'll all be in the same section. And because tomorrow marks Day One of BUTCH WALKER WEEK!!! Although there are no Butch Walker related activities going on tomorrow, so it's not so official. Unless of course, I'm pleasantly surprised by a nice shiny copy of Letters stuffed into my mail-slot tomorrow afternoon. Which better happen. Or else. Myers Mail Room, I'm lookin' at you.
Lastly, I ate sushi for the first time tonight. A bunch of us went to Utage, this sushi bar downtown, and...ate sushi. It was problematic. I'm now of the opinion that sushi, while relatively tasty, is nowhere near worth the trouble.

You Are The Smell Before Rain

So. It's been awhile.
I've been busy though. Not "getting stuff done" busy, but "doing stuff" busy. I think I've done more socially in the not-quite-a-week that I've been here than I would have done in an entire month this summer. It's most definitely nice to be in Athens when everybody else is, too. And the people in my dorm are very friendly, so that makes things a whole lot easier.
As far as classes go, they're obviously the least fun part of school, but I think I'll live. Michelley and I and some other people we know have Psychology together, which should be fairly easy and relatively interesting. Then there's Statistics, which is going to be troublesome, seeing as I'm ridiculously awful at mathy stuff and the professor could put an insomniac to sleep. Intro to Print Media I have with Nick, so we'll have somebody to study with/do the Red & Black crosswords with. And then my last semester of Italian, I have with the very cool teacher I had the first semester with, so I anticipate an easy and even fun semester. And that's all I'm taking. I feel like such a slacker, only taking 13 hours, but anymore right now would just be overkill.
I've watched more Olympics than I know what to do with; textbooks are incredibly heavy, cost more than they're worth, and will rarely be opened; Butch Walker Week commences in a grand total of three days. And this place is exhausting.

Mild Discomfort

After getting bored of reading unintentionally funny books at Barnes & Noble, Erin and Jake and I decided to "people-watch" at the Mansell Starbucks again.

Armpits. Was. There. Again. Sitting in the exact same spot.

Talk about creepy. We couldn't get nearly as good a parking space as before, so not much could be done, but it was exciting all the same. I wonder if he goes there every night.

Dear Mrs. Lachey,

Damn you, Jessica Simpson, you stupid bitch. "Angels" was my favorite song in middle school. It's bad enough that you are indirectly to blame for the horror of your homely younger sister being inflicted upon us. Couldn't you have stopped there? Was it really necessary to butcher such a nice, pretty, British pop song with your breathy sighs and wide-mouthed yells? I see you've been taking lessons from another Barbie-turned-singer, Faith Hill, at ruining otherwise-lovely songs that you've borrowed from otherwise-respectable musicians, but I really wish you'd stop. Thanks very much. And while you're at it, tell your sister to get rid of the mullet, stop pretending to be rock, and to cease spelling her name in a way that is offensive to the English language. Again, thank you in advance.

Sincerely, Amy

Dear Robbie Williams, Angie Aparo, et cetera,

STOP SELLING YOUR SONGS TO IDIOT POPSTARS. Thanks.

Love, Amy

"We judge. It's like our hobby. Some people do arts and crafts; we judge." --Sex & The City

Why is it that when my curfew was midnight, I would be speeding to get home, cursing stoplights, and sighing with relief when I pulled into my driveway at 11:59, while now that I have no curfew except "not too late," I always just happen to make it home by around 11:55 without even thinking about it?
Tonight we realized just how little there is to do in Alpharetta on a Saturday night--we watched people. Erin and her friend Kate and I went to dinner, and then decided to people-watch at the Starbucks at Mansell and Alpharetta Highway. (And when I say people-watch, what I really mean is make people uncomfortable by staring at them for long periods of time.) It's got glass walls, y'know, so we lucked out and parked in the parking space right in front of the door. There were two people sitting outside, separately, in front of our car--a middle-aged nerd who was on his second coffee and was pretending to study a diagram of something, and a very attractive teenage boy who was sitting alone looking nervous. The boy sat, looking around as if waiting for someone, for a good half hour. We just sat in the car and made him (Stripes, we called him, after his shirt) and the nerd (Armpits, we called him, because he kept not-so-discreetly picking at his armpits) very uncomfortable. Eventually it occurred to us that if this boy was our age, he would be waiting for people in his car, so we decided he was 15 and waiting for his mom to pick him up. Sad, too, because he was cute. He left after about thirty minutes, though, and we were left with only Armpits.
Now it was clear that Armpits knew we were watching him. He pulled the whole "I'm going to look around with a frustrated look on my face so it appears as if I'm just waiting for my friends to arrive" thing, but no friends ever arrived. Kate was afraid he would think that we thought he was hot: "Don't guys think girls like them when they stare at them?" she asked. Well, not when said girls are staring and laughing hysterically every time you scratch at your armpits. Not so much, no. Finally I think we made him so uncomfortable that he got up, grabbed his books, and walked away as quickly as he could, leaving his trash.
After Armpits' untimely departure, there weren't many people left to watch--there was Yellow, a woman who had walked straight out of 1987, who wore bike shorts decorated like the Saved By The Bell opening credits, and the Trashies, a group of teenagers in which the boys wore muscle-tees and yet had no muscle and the girls wore acid-wash jeans. But none of them sat near us, so we elected to leave. On our way out, we saw a car in an otherwise empty stretch of parking lot--and it was Armpits reading in his car! After screeching to a halt when we realized this, we turned around and parked a few spaces down from him. He looked at us a few times, flustered, while we stared straight ahead and tried to hold in our laughter, but after only a couple of minutes he turned his car on and drove away. We did not follow.
After we left, we tried a couple other Starbucks (the one near Milton and the one by AMC) but neither proved as exciting or productive as the Mansell Starbucks. If you're ever in the mood to creep people out, I can tell you, that's the place to go.

"Lonely--baby, I'm not lonely
Baby I'm not--I've got my imaginary friends
Happy--baby, I'm so happy
Baby I'm so--I've got my imaginary friends."
--Old 97's, Lonely Holiday

My room is completely empty save for the sheets on my bed, clothes for tomorrow, and my computer. The walls are bare, the other bed is sheetsless, the floor is cold tile, the closets are empty, as are the drawers, and it feels like a prison cell. A nice one, with a big circle window and internet access. But a prison all the same.
It's horribly depressing! I mean, how would you like to be sitting by yourself in a bare, empty room with nothing to do except sit on the internet or read a magazine? You wouldn't feel so happy, I'll tell you that much. It's easier in the long run that my parents came up and moved everything out tonight instead of when I check out, after my "final" tomorrow, but for now it just feels empty.
Well tomorrow I'm coming home, and I have a full week (!) until I have to move back up here. So I'm going to make that week just lovely, cheaply though, as I'm horridly broke. It'll be nice. Let's hope for sun so I can tan, friends to be available so I can have someone to play with, and someone to leave a crisp hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk somewhere so I can have some money to spend.
Oh, and what makes my stay tonight in an empty room even worse is that I could and should be seeing Hey, Revolution! play 80's covers tonight at Tasty World and yet can't, because I have to wake up at the crack of dawn for my Playwriting "final" (which isn't even an final, just watching kids present their plays, so I think I shouldn't even be required to attend). Ah, well, I guess it's best for me and my broke self to just sit tonight. It's times like this I wish for a roommate.

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