ain't supposed to die on a saturday night

I picked up an album yesterday, "The '59 Sound" by Gaslight Anthem. I had heard the two lead singles on the radio, and liked both a lot, good late-night driving music, so when I was at Best Buy last night looking for new music, I figured I would give it a chance.

It was a pretty good reminder of why A) I have listened to the radio so infrequently over the last five years, and B) why I never buy albums anymore based off a catchy song on the radio.

I hate to sound like an old person, but every damn song sounds the same. There is no variety. If you skip through the tracks and listen to the first five seconds, 2/3 of them could be easily mistaken for each other. They play actual notes here and there, which is a plus, I suppose, but the best we get are little loops of four or five notes repeated over and over, in front of your usual package of three power chords endlessly churning out. My usual annoyance applies just as it normally does - when you have a few power chords and no "solo" or any actual playing of your instruments, the songs will be boring as hell, and in this case, they all sound the same, too.

My biggest problem with the album is the vocals. They have this weird sheen effect laid over them, which was noticible on the radio, but surprisingly more prominent on the actual album. Effects are fine, but it is incredibly obvious that in this case they're being used to cover up the fact that the vocals are lacking something.

Which brings me to my point - when the hell did it become acceptable and popular to have bands with a lead singer who can't sing worth a damn? This guy half-sing-half-talks and sounds tone deaf half of the time, and people love it. Same goes for that Killers band - shitty effects trying to compensate for a singer who can't actually sing.

Back to Japanese and Finnish shit, I guess.

i am so proud of you

It's a common thing to hear after meeting a famous person - "They're great, he's just a normal guy!"

I felt this after seeing Brendan Fraser a number of months ago. He walked in dressed casually, perhaps a bit young for his age, talked about films, stuff in general, and seemed like a really cool down-to-earth guy... for a celebrity. Were he actually an actual normal guy, he'd be the really cool one, who, while cool, wouldn't really have the time of day for you since everybody would be wanting to hang with him.

Don Hertzfeldt wound up being an actual normal guy. I thought he would be a bit cocky, perhaps even a bit egotistical, because there aren't many independent animators out there who are as well-known as he is, and who have been successful enough to never need a "real" job. It wound up the exact opposite, though. He is just a dude, the type of guy I could have seen myself hanging out with, bullshitting about movies with, having a beer with. Incredibly appreciative of fans and his success, very modest, quiet, well-mannered, intelligent, and just all around really, really nice.

After the screening of "I am so proud of you" (more on that in a bit) he stayed afterwards to hang out at the table-of-three-items-for-sale to sign some stuff, and by time we got to him, it had been over an hour. This was at the Music Box, so while there were a good number of people, it wasn't an amount that would normally take so long to get through (considering the rest of the line behind us it was probably another good half hour after we left) at an event like this. Instead of rushing people through, he was stopping to talk. If somebody had something to say, he'd listen, not giving a hint of "I need to move on to the next person in line," actually holding a small conversation, and never seeming anything other than perfectly happy to stick around and make sure he got to say hi to everybody. He was just a dude with an awesome job, happy to see that people love what he has made, and who wanted to make sure he let everybody know how much he appreciates it himself.

The film itself is great. It is directly a second chapter to "Everything will be ok," and while it has similarities, they are quite different. This one has a few more comedic moments than the last, is a bit longer, and also jumps around in time a bit, to great effect. I wouldn't dare spoil any of it, but I think it's just as amazing as the first.

The crowd was an interesting mix. You had normal people, you had anime / video game nerds who were there because of Rejected, you had the film snobs, you had the arthouse snobs, emo kids, long-haired hippy looking types, everybody you can think of, even a few metal kids. The internet-fans of Rejected (of which there were many) were a bit annoying though. They screened a couple older shorts before showing Ok and Proud, including Meaning of Life, during which maybe a third of the theater was laughing uproariously. It has a few funny moments, but people seemed compelled to laugh at stuff that I find to be overtly serious, simply because of "my spoon is too big." Rejected is brilliant, don't get me wrong, but it bugs the piss out of me when people automatically take everything else Don does as comedy. During what was probably the emotional climax of Proud, a few people were laughing, while I was shrinking down in my chair a bit in a futile attempt to hide the fact that I couldn't keep from crying. I guess I just managed to hit the nerd crowd. In line to meet Don the 40-something nerds behind me (dressed as late teens, one wearing 3d glasses) were having a heated, almost scholarly-sounding discussion on "AHnime," FFVI vs FFVII, and other stuff before I tuned them out.

Protip - If you ever want me to shove my fist into your mouth and tear your tongue out, raising your voice slightly so people around you can hear that you are pronouncing the term "anime" as "AHH-knee-may" is a quite effective way to do so

So anyway, it was a great experience. I hope he comes back to Chicago if he does Chapter 3. The night ended on two strange notes, though. One was this rush of creative inspiration that always comes with a night like this, but even moreso tonight when I was seeing an independent filmmaker who has found moderate success and has not gone corporate, only doing his own thing. The film got so many things flying around in my head, and talking to him briefly on being a film student interested in animation god many more things flying around - so many things I want to write, things I want to try to animate, music I want to record to write/animate to... but I can't really focus on any of this, since right now, focusing on work, stressful goingson at home, and especially the black hole of stress and anger that is finishing school in a program that is worthless and that I owe $100k to, really is too much to handle at once to have any free energy for creative drive. I literally don't have the time or energy for anything creative. Work is fine, but school and the health of my family is too draining. If I could somehow finish school tomorrow, I would be so excited about having time to dedicate to putting together something great- but that's not an option.

The second weird thing was that during the screening I got a voicemail from one of my two coworkers saying they're leaving the Genius Squad. He is a great guy, both to work with and to hang out with, and it'll suck not having him around. He always kept a good level of humor and joking sarcasm with people around the desk that made it much easier to get through the tough days, of which there have been many.

heard they'll do anything for a klondike, but i'll do anything for a blonde dyke

(I've honestly heard people saying Kayne is great with lyrics)

Occasionally I get hit with things that bother me seemingly out of nowhere. This time it was a person up at the Genius Squad talking to my coworker. They were talking about iPhones, and at some point I interjected with my annoyance at my continuing lack of one for myself. 

The girl says, "What, your parents won't get you one?"

I respond, "Not that, I have my own plan on AT&T that I pay for, my parents have a seperate plan, and I'm not a new customer so I'd have to spend $400 on the phone."

"Oh, I ran into a problem where my parents didn't want to get me one, but (I kept nagging blah blah I got it)..."

Going to an expensive school in an expensive neighborhood, I suppose you're supposed to expect stuff like this, but it still catches me off guard where somebody close to my own age has their parents buy them stuff like expensive iPhones, and automatically assume that the reason I don't have one is because my parents won't pay for the more expensive phone/plan. I most certainly wish my parents had the means to buy me an iPhone out of the blue, but even if they did have the means, they wouldn't do it... which I am acutally happy about, being spoiled by one's parents would grow tiring quickly... but I really do want an iPhone, lol.

Though, that Google's Android OS is quite awesome... we'll see what the state of Android vs iPhone is by the time my parents switch companies in January (cheaper for me to get a smartphone if I can be on a family plan again instead of my own - it's literally half the price).

awkwardly speaking with nothing to say

I've had a couple things happen over the last few weeks that have made me step back and take a look at myself, or rather how other people look at me.

I was hanging with the guys a few nights ago, watching the Hawks game and playing pool in my basement (which is a whole lot of fun, I need to twist their arms a bit and make it a regular thing). On our way to get food afterwards, somebody mentioned some Japanese song, "Marshmallow Strawberry Flower" or some shit, and a crazy video that accompanied it on YouTube. He assumed we knew it, which we didn't, but he was surprised that I didn't, saying "You don't know it? Aren't you the Japan freak?"

This caught me decisively off-guard. At the end of my high school career and the first year or two of college, I was really into anime, but I was never the hugely obsessive type who inexplicably finds it a good thing to identify as "otaku," I was simply somebody who appreciates a good show. I discovered an entirely new approach to storytelling that I hadn't been exposed to previously as an American, so I was eating it up. I also have listened to a good deal of Japanese music in recent years, and expressed a distaste for a large amount of modern American music.

I don't find myself to be a "Japan freak" in the least. I don't like Japanese media any more than American media; it's all just media to me, the media I consume just happens to come from a few different places. People seem to take these things as automatic signs of being an "otaku," however. I mention that I listen to Japanese music, and apparently, I'm automatically a mega-nerd. I understand how people can jump to that conclusion, but it still annoys me. What I don't get is why people I've known since I was 7 think I'm a "Japan freak" who must know obscure Japanese pop songs or memes.

I've found myself having a little bit of annoyance - hatred, even - with the anime club on campus. It's perfectly fine to have an anime club (though I would argue that the club does not fulfill it's goal of bring in socially inept kids and giving them people with similar interests so they will eventually branch out socially - in actuality it just gives socially inept people other friends who do have similar interests but are equally inept socially, and the person's only friends wind up being the other anime club members, to the point where they might not even try to make outside friends, and they wind up even worse off than before), but it gets on my nerves when society jumps the gun and assumes I'm a mega-nerd simply because I listen to Japanese music and I watch anime every now and then. Again, I understand why the gun is jumped - most people who appreciate Japanese media in the US are, in fact, horridly nerdy. It just ruins it for those of us who aren't horridly nerdy, but simply open to media from other cultures.

Sometimes I wonder what people "get" from me as a first impression (or for that matter just in general). I have long hair, I'm kinda pudgy. I dress casually, often jeans and a hoodie, sometimes a "nicer" button shirt with some graphic tee under it. Generically, I suppose. Not grungy-looking but not like I'm a college prep type or anything. I find myself to be normal in conversation. I can talk about movies, music, sports, games, computers, life, your average range of stuff. People just seem to find me very strange, though.

I wonder about this since I get a very certain type of girl hitting on me - the extremely quiet, timid, "homely"-looking (I'm not a shallow person but it's simply a fact that myself and others take looks into consideration - to an extent), hide-away-when-you-raise-your-voice, (seemingly) cripplingly nerdy type of girl. I see a thousand beautiful girls a day at this job, but the few times now and then when somebody is overtly hitting on me, it's always this type. They stop and awkwardly talk to carry conversation past the point where their computers are done being fixed.

One case about a month ago hit me hard. This incredibly shy, timid girl, who seemed to be fascinated by the fact that I was holding normal conversation with her (you could tell it was the type of person who expects to be treated poorly since has likely been picked on her entire life). She left her computer, came back, I gave it to her, she went and sat down at a lab computer, pretty routine... until she comes up, trying to seem happy when in actuality she was extremely nervous (this one I can say for sure; I have experience with the feeling), and hands me a post-it note with her number, saying she likes me and she'd love to get to know me more. I take it, not entirely knowing what to say and entirely caught off-guard, and she leaves.

Being me, this made me feel like utter shit, since a girl I had decisively zero interest in kind of just directly asked me out. Ultimately I kind of forgot about it after a few days and she hasn't been back, which makes me feel like a shitty person, but really, I'm simply not interested in the least, and I also have no real urge to make new friends at all at this late in the game.

However, the real problem... is that this was the first time I've ever been directly asked out by a girl. I've had a couple harmless flirting things here and there, where the possibility is there but neither party ever address it and it eventually passes, and a time where it went from acquaintance to friendship and then just kind of moved into more than that on it's own - but I had never been asked out. The first time I was by an unattractive and painfully timid girl when I was 22.

This is the kind of thing that fucks with your head the more you think about it. I know I'm not the most appealing guy around. I have many interests, but none that most girls want to talk about most of the time, and I'm not the most attractive guy around and have a shitty body but I don't think I'm flat-out unattractive, I'm overweight but I at least still have a neck and distinct joints. I like to think I have a good personality, but I'm not really aggressive when it comes to women, and the cliche of girls liking aggressive and backhandedly mean guys really seems to be fact, at least around here.

When you get hundreds of girls walking around you every day, in the kind of jeans girls tend to wear around here, and the only ones to show interest are the ones you have no interest in, it's hard to get thoughts like this out of your head.

Anyway. Job is hard lately. The higher-eschelon people in IS refuse to fix things as simple as the wireless instructions on the website (which effectively tell you how to crash your Mac every 15 minutes 100% of the time), which trickles down to lots of angry people taking stuff out on me that's not my fault. It makes for a stressful job, especially when home life is hellishly stressful, and school even more so.

I need a break, bad.

maybe tomorrow is a better day

My band's name will be Only in Theaters.

Our first album will be named TK-421.

Tracks one, two and four (of ten) will be released as singles.

The lead single, named "Tina Fey is a Bitch," will top charts and be called "bombastic."

While it will not be our most popular song, track eight will be widely regarded as the album's best.

Our sophomore album, A Scream of Wilhelm, will outsell the first, but will not be as critically acclaimed.

Our third album, Apple Crunch (You Can't Unhear It), will be considered a true return to formm and evolution.


...So maybe I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. But I am actually writing some music. Mostly just the instruments, not much figured out yet as far as lyrics go.

fifty dollar haircut on a ten cent head

just a funny lyric

tired eyes

Haven't posted in a while. It's partially due to the fact that I know of only three people who read this and doubt there are any I don't know of, but mostly because I've been godawful busy. There are a lot of things going on.

The most obvious one is school. I am fine with the day-to-day semi-pointless nature of working 9-5, and for the time being, while I have certain squabbles about my job and my paychecks, I am fairly happy with it, and have no problems whatsoever going through the motions. Classes, however, are another matter. I have only general education classes to finish up now (history, science, math, etc.), and it is rather hard to... well, do them at all. I am so entirely burnt out with school, and so utterly hateful of my program, the near-$100k debt I owe for it and the incredibly inadequate professors I have had in major and non-major classes alike, that it is hard to simply go to them, let alone do the work for them (it doesn't help that the work for them does not apply to me or my program in the least). I realize that part of college is simply getting through it, showing that discipline and everything, but it is so overtly pointless at this late stage in the game that it's hard to keep up the lie that I not only realize but also accept that as fact.

Home life has been shaky at best. I am not comfortable in the suburbs, there is nothing there and I only have a few friends, so when I'm not out with them I'm either A) at work/class all day or B) at home feeling horrible. Weeknights aren't bad, since I'm only there a few hours, but weekends are hell. It seems that life slows to a stop, and after a full Saturday or Sunday of being at home, it is hard to even care enough to go out and see my friends should they call me later on in the night. It probably seems silly to somebody who does not understand that funk you can get into, but it is harder than it probably sounds to deal with.

My mom is in the hospital for her crazyass cancer treatment. Something about them taking her stem cells, giving her intense concentrated radiation, and after six weeks in isolation giving her her stem cells back to essentially save her from the radiation. They say it isn't that much more risky than the standard kemo she's been doing for a while now, but I'm not entirely sure I buy that (note the part where her immune system is quite literally nonexistent for a month and a half). I suppose I could be doing worse, it "helps" that we've been dealing with this cancer thing for a while now. The harder part is that my sister and I aren't allowed to go in and see her, since we're both on college campuses with god knows how many germs and infections crawling around on us. Even my dad seeing her is borderline (though they're letting him a couple times a week it looks like) since he's around us so much. I feel bad in a way that it isn't tearing me up more than it is, but it still isn't exactly easy to deal with. The house is even more empty and depressing for the time being.

I came back from work a few days ago to an empty dark house (a couple days before my mom went in). There was no reason for me to feel this, since everybody was simply out at the hospital, class or work, and I knew that, but somewhere in the back of my head the thought flashed by that maybe the house is dark and empty since everybody is at the hospital because things with my mom took a turn for the worse. It wasn't the case, and logically I knew it wouldn't be, but the fact that the thought came to me is sort of telling of the place I'm at right now. Previously, my mom had cancer, whatever, I'd even joke about it now and then in the years where it was seemingly "gone," but now it's like, fuck man, my mom has cancer. The kind that kills you. It doesn't mesh with my apathetic/sarcastic (but secretly caring) approach to life.

The selfish part of all this is that I can't move out. I hate living at home. It isn't even my home, it's my family's house, my home is in Lincoln Park, my home is the DePaul campus and the surrounding area. Every time I drive past the old apartment I get a good twang on my heartstrings. The bulk (of the remainder) of my social life is there, and I'm just sort of... in my element there. I feel awkward and out of place in the spacious, drawn-out, artificially laid-back suburbs. I also just hate the house, it's a little too big and spacious and empty and artificially laid-back itself. It's cheaper this way, but I've been driving lately so it's not a ton cheaper anymore, and I really can't force myself back onto the Metra/CTA since it's so much nicer to live by your own pace after four years of public transit. I wanted to move back into the city, I really really wanted to, or even just to someplace else in the suburbs as to have my own place, but it isn't really a possibility now, since stuff needs to function at the house and the main functioner...person isn't around for a while.

I'm a little bit behind in classes already, which is far more stressful than it should be. Money problems are looming, I probably will have to actually stop driving since it's so damn pricy, and  that debt is terrifying. The job is way more stressful than it should be. I can't sleep. Sometimes it's hard to find joy in movies or games or any other hobbies of mine. The main "good thing" I have to look forward to right now is the Blackhawks season, but I keep getting reminded that many of the people I loved to go to games with are gone.

Through all this, I'm trying, I'm really trying, to get some writing done, but with everything spiraling out of control lately it is really hard. I've found a number of good influcences lately, movies that make me go "that is the feel I'm going for," music that makes me say "that's the mood I'm going for," just little things here and there in life that my head picks out. I've started writing all of these down, and I have two pages of influences/inspirations so far. In theory, they'll be helpful for getting me in the correct mood for writing, to get the juices flowing, but right now it's hard to even sit down in the first place.

Plus the one I was working on to finish for class has almost entirely fallen out of my focus, and this other thing I've been sitting on for years is starting to come together in my head, and I really want to just write that... but I have to push through the BS school script first. That's another big block, come to think of it.

Anyway. More later.

P.S.: The fact that all upcoming Pixar films are being released "theatrically and in Disney Digital 3-D" is terrifying. If they're standard films also released in 3D, then fine, whatever, but if they're made with 3D in mind and then "squished" into a 2D screen for those who choose to see it without the gimmick... not cool.