hedgehog

An approximation of events from July 24th - August 7th 2008

2008-08-08T19:30:28Z

(arranged by location and/or whatever else I feel like. Photos start below the cut.)

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Karyna and I decide to sell our cars and get a new(er) one. We plan on bringing hers to the dealer as a trade-in, and I put an ad on craigslist for mine, since it no longer runs. Someone responds to my ad almost immediately, and wants to come take a look at it in an hour.

I have to clean it out before they arrive. I haven't driven it in just shy of two years though, so most of the detritus is from my wedding, including a final, unopened bottle of champagne (let the good times roll). There's certainly no saving it at this point; I toss it in the dumpster along with fake costume wings, various maps and assorted toy rubber animals.

It's around this point I discover that not only does my car not run, have a broken trunk, a flat tire, a passenger-side window that doesn't unroll, a dead battery and a busted crankshaft sensor, but it's also infested with wasps.

Oddly, this is totally fine with my first buyer, and several hours later I'm standing in the driveway with a concerned look, watching the very unlucky tow truck operator hitching the car up. He manages to get through the whole thing without getting stung, and as I head back in the house to continue packing, a speedy blur in the shape of a tow truck speeds by the living room window, followed by a bright blue blur that was my car, followed by a more muted yellow, swarming, now-displaced blur.
The guy buying my car calls Karyna back livid and screaming, because after giving me the money and driving away to call a towing company, he gets a call saying the car's already been sold. Turns out he'd called another Adam, who owned another 1994 Blue Chevy Cavelier. Hillarity ensues.
Somewhere in this whole moving and packing business, I decide it's a good idea to pester a bunch of people into holding a secret show. The whole thing vaguely feels like I'm attending my own funeral and was probably way too much overkill considering I'm just moving to Texas, not Australia or Hades. Photos:

Greg

Me

Chris Bathgate

Jamie with Tim and Greg

I wish I had more photos here, but I didn't bring my camera and forgot to give Karyna a bounce flash, so a bunch of stuff was pretty dark.
We post additional craigslist ads in an attempt to sell whatever furniture we don't want. Warning: do not try this at home.

Result?
People asking if a black "lightweight vinyl couch" is leather.
People nitpicking and haggling on $5 items.
People responding to ads that say "today only" weeks later, which we can't delete sans internet access.
People making upwards of four appointments and canceling each, then just showing up.
People emailing to ask when a good time to schedule an appointment is, when the ad states we'll be home all day and to just call when you'd like to come by.
People emailing when the ad states to call (we found out later you can disable the email option.)
People flat-out not reading the ad.
People asking details about an item that is clearly answered in the photos attached to the ad.
People calling about the black leather couch.
More people calling about the black leather couch.
Even more people calling about the black leather couch.
People showing up alone when the ad explicitly states WE WILL NOT HELP YOU MOVE. WE CAN'T DELIVER.
People showing up alone and parapalegic.
People calling to ask if we deliver.
People calling to ask Really? We can't deliver at all?
People calling back to ask if maybe an extra $20 would help.
People calling to ask if we have particular items "in stock".
Someone named "Cookie" calling at 7am to ask when a good time to come by might be, when the ad states we will be available all day, starting at 11am.
Cookie calling back at 7:30am to ask the same question.
Cookie calling at 8am to say she's leaving for our place now.
Cookie calling at 8:30 to say she's lost and needs our street address again (it's in the ad).
Cookie calling at 9:00 to say she's back home, has directions, and is heading out again.
Cookie calling at 10:00 to say she's at our apartment, wondering if we got her other messages. Meanwhile I'm just sitting down to get a haircut, happily oblivious that a woman named cookie even exists.
Cookie calling at 10:15 to say she's still outside the apartment.
Cookie calling at 10:30 to remind me she's still there.
Cookie calling at 10:40
Cookie callling at 10:50
Cookie getting up off the front steps to greet me and ask if the large wooden desk, coffee table and couches are still available.
Cookie coming into the apartment, looking at each item, and taking a single dresser instead.
Cookie apologizing for all the calls, but she left her kids unattended at home.
Cookie receiving the full weight of my very confused stare.
Later in the week we have a similar experience, this time mostly our fault, with even more horrific results. Karyna puts an ad out for "300 VHS tapes and a free VCR to watch them - $30". That's a penny a movie, which we figure is a great find for someone older or injured who's got limited mobility, maybe a movie buff that just wants something a bit different, etc.

Karyna gets a call on a Saturday, and all I can hear is her end of the conversation, mostly explaining how many tapes there are (explained in the ad), that it's $30 (again, in the ad) and that she doesn't know what kind of VCR it is, aside from it being made by Panasonic or Magnavox or something. I roll my eyes, she makes an appointment for 6pm that evening, we go on with our lives.

Shortly after this exchange Tim calls; inviting us to a German beer festival, which serves authentic German beer and food and is conveniently located in a place called German Park. Christie and Jamie are going to be there as well. It starts at 4pm and runs until the polka band falls over or everyone stops being German. I think this sounds good and mention it to Karyna, who's pupils dialate like an anime character. She's part German. She's a huge German beer fan. We're so there.

I mention that we should call "the tapes guy" back to tell him the showroom won't be open this evening, but she tells me she can't do it, the guy is too insane and slow and that I have to do it. I shrug, find the number in the received calls list, redial it.

I'm not typically so overly judgemental as to predict someone's mental capacity on the basis of a single word, especially not their name, but I'm making an exception in this case.

Written words fail here, so I've included a streaming audio re-enactment of what I heard that day.

I wish I could prove how little I'm exaggerating in my depiction.

Regardless, I leave a message, which probably sounds noticeably shaken. Something's come up, we'd like to reschedule for 6pm tomorrow (Sunday) if that's okay, give us a ring and let us know. It's around 2pm.

German Park is caught in some kind of 30s/40s time warp. It's completely surrounded in barbed wire and tall fencing. They make you wait in line for an hour --literally an hour-- to pay $5 and wait in another line for meal and drink tickets. I'm fairly certain by this point that if you aren't fit enough to work, they put in another line that leads to a train, which drops you off at the showers.

after waiting in line to pay $40 in meal and drink tickets, you then get to choose if you want to wait in the beer line or the food line. The beer line is mercifully shorter.

All told though, the pain/gain factor is pretty good here, particularly when you're gnawing on some dried sausage like it's the first food you've seen in a month here at Auschwitz, all the while laughing at the fools still waiting in line, jealously glaring at you. The beer comes in a bucket. Not a bucket that has bottles of beer in it, but literally a bucket filled with beer. There's a secret way to pour it that only Cristie knows about, and by the time we leave, six buckets later, we're feeling like regulars, sloshy stomachs and all.

A photo I snagged from Cristie's flickrstream:

Jamie invites us back to his place, where I wrestle his pug and forget my camera on a chair. By the time we leave it's quite late, I'm shitfaced, and Karyna's checking her messages. Dayle has called. Nine times.

Hey it's Dayle, just letting you know we're leaving now...
Hey it's Dayle again, just another hour or so and we'll be there...
Hey Dayle here, we're almost to Ann Arbor now...
Dale again, I think we're at your house. Are you 407?
Hey this is Dayle, not sure if you got the other messages...
Hey it's Dayle, we're going to get dinner and come back...
Hey, Dayle again, we're at Potbelly having dinner, just checking in...
Hey it's Dayle, we're back at the house, not sure if you can hear me...
Dale here, looks like we missed you...we're heading back to Comfy, Michigan now...

I should take this opportunity to point out that Dayle has mentioned he's from Comfy, asked if we know where Comfy is, or subtly slid in some fun-fact about Comfy nearly every time he's been on the phone. Karyna's repeated several times now we have no idea where Comfy is.

Even more baffling is he sounds not the least bit upset. So much so that when we call him back the next day to apologize and ask if he's interested, he drives on over yet again.

I'm not present to meet Dayle, but Karyna describes the encounter as an older man with a sullen 14 year old girl that looks about as soul-beaten as...well, a 14 year old girl that's just been forced to take a TWO AND A HALF HOUR DRIVE (one way!) with her grandfather, back and forth over the course of an entire weekend.

He asks again how many movies, and how much we want for them. He eyes the VCR and says he already has two, but takes it anyway.

Later, we look on several internet and real-world maps for Comfy. There seems to be no such place. I'm convinced Dayle is the Large-Marge of the VHS world.
My piano tuner buys my piano, not realizing it's one he's tuned for over a year until he arrives at our apartment.
We hire space in a semi truck from a company called Help-U-Move, who basically are just a dispatch liason between you and UPS. It's about half the cost of a U-Haul for comprable space. The bonus comes from seeing the house you've lived in for over three years, looking about the same as when you arrived, except for a giant tractor trailer cab sticking off the side:

The last thing I remember, after saying goodnight and going to sleep on the floor because our bed is now in the truck, is a foggy memory of just about everyone I've ever met in Ann Arbor shaking me awake, waving goodbye, and my being too asleep and unable to form sentences to say goodbye back. Apparently people had a bit of fun with the fact I can sleep through a warzone before managing to wake me up though:

I woke up hungover and with more to do than it seemed like the evening before, but there's absolutely no way we'd have pulled it all off without the help of everybody involved. Per so many moves I've done, my fondest memories are the ones made just as I'm leaving.
The next day Meg comes by, and her and Karyna go to pick up our new(er) car (pictured later). I throw half my life into a dumpster. We're stressed out as all shit because we're trying to orchestrate the entire thing around a reading Karyna's scheduled to do that night in Cincinnati. We get the cats in the small dog kennels we've bought. We drive four and a half hours into Ohio.

Cincinnati, Ohio

We arrive about a third of the way into the reading, which is being held outside, but it's now raining, so the whole thing winds up moving indoors, then outdoors again. Cincinnati is pretty much the same lifeless shithole every other city in Ohio is. It's humid as hell, everyone has a few too many PBRs and starts ranting on the socio-political subtext of Battlestar, Galactica. It's a decent time, but the likelihood I'll ever see any of these people again in my lifetime is quite narrow.
Cincinnati Hojo? You naaaaas-ty.
The Howard Johnson hotel we're in smells like medicine and old farts. Every trash receptacle in the place is overflowing. Even the cats hate it, and cry at the doors endlessly. I get maybe three hours of sleep at best. When we wake up there's a large, completely naked man talking on his cell phone outside our door. We find soggy fast food bags and sodas discarded next to our car, the parking lot is full of cigarettes laying in damp dish towels. I'm convinced there's not a surface in the whole city left untainted by obese, convenient, grease-filled sorrow.

PICS!
In the morning, we head to our next stop: Louisville, Kentucky to have lunch with Karyna's publisher. On the way, we officially pass into the beginnings of "Y'all country":

and I get a coffee that looks like a Duplo Darth Vadar head:

We get into Louisville, home of Sarabande books, and have lunch with Karyna's publicist Nicole (who was also at the reading) .

Louisville, Kentucky

The Sarabande building:

They have a giant marionette of their logo:

We have lunch at Lynn's Paradise cafe, home of the best fucking catfish sandwich I've ever had. Austin has yet to rival it.

I should mention that despite the dizzying heat and humidity, I fell a little bit in love with Louisville over the hour or so we spent there. It's also around this point that I'm reminded why I left Ann Arbor despite a pretty stable job and some good friends. Somewhere in between Lynn's Paradise Cafe and learning about the massive indie music scene there in Louisville, I feel this wave of relief wash over me that there's still places in the country that haven't been converted into one giant Crate & Barrel wasteland.
3pm and We're back on the road. Destination: Memphis. We're told Graceland is a total warzone though, and we've already had the cats in and out of the car way too many times to stop in Nashville and punish them further. So we stop instead in...

Dixon, Tennessee

...at a much nicer Ramada inn. Even the cats love it.

On the way in, we notice there's a restaurant across the street called O'Charlies. Karyna looks it up online, and the reviews are all grand, but everyone keeps going on about the rolls they give you before your meal gets there. We wonder aloud how good a fucking dinner roll can be, shrug, and head over.

It doesn't seem that much different than an Applebees or something, except a bit nicer and with less flare. The warm lighting makes the kitchen's cooler light seem eerie through the glass pane that divides the two. Our waiter comes over, sporting one of those weird caught-in-a-rainstorm looks that balding younger men seem to go for , and it's the first time I'm fully inundated with a truly severe barrage of Y'alls. Verbatim:

y'all-y'alls wants some rolls to gets y'alls started?

Karyna and I nod, thinking Yeah, bring it. Show us what you got, roll-man. Roll-man does not disappoint, and slaps down what I can only describe as some kind of miraculous concoction that replaces bread crust with a thin layer of sweet butter. They melt so fast they might as well be cotton candy. Our actual food arrives and we don't even care.

Roll-man is named Mike or Matt or something, and is over-eager but somehow not in an annoying way. When we mention hearing about the rolls in true tourist fashion, he confides he's worked here for about six years and has gotten rather tired of them, but still, now and again he'll partake of the buttery breaded delights.
Morning comes and I've gotten a much-needed six hours of sleep after watching Batman Begins for the first time. I haven't really followed any superhero movies in ages. Nolan seems like he's going for some more gritty, realistic sort of Batman and missing the mark. Christian Bale just comes off as mostly ridiculous. We get back on the road for the final twelve hour haul to Austin.

It's a good thing I've gotten said sleep too, because somewhere between Arkadelphia and Texarkana, a car carrier switches into our lane with no signal, driver consumed with a conversation on his cell phone. it's packed traffic and we somehow lucked out that there was an empty spot in the next lane over. I toot briefly, politely, the first time I've honked a horn in perhaps seven years. We don't stick around to see if he'll flip us off. This was my first time in Tennessee, and frankly, aside from some decent dinner rolls, I hope it's my last.

Austin, Texas

We arrive late at Karyna's parents' house after getting briefly lost in an Austin that's slightly different than when Karyna left it. I suck down a bottle of wine her mom leaves out, and the three of us have a few late-night smokes while the cats get adjusted. The more aggressive and ridiculous of the cats, Sviddy, makes himself right at home in a stuffed animal stash belonging to Karyna's youngest sister Anna:

A few photos from the following morning:
later that afternoon, we go pick up keys and take a look at the apartment we've so far only seen in photos, and proceed to take more photos of it.

bathroom:

Bedroom:

Kitchen/dining room:

Outside:

A few shots of the new(er) car:

It's so, soooo nice to be driving a standard again. Even with the AC blaring, I think we got about 38/mpg highway.

The next day we're kind of in Limbo since the truck with our bed and the rest of our things hasn't arrived yet. Karyna's parents and two younger (half) sisters are planning on taking a train ride to Dallas to visit another half-sister, so we drive them to the train station, and sit for awhile checking up on internet. Margot and I have traded a few random emails at this point, and between driving and moving stress and everything else I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm still not sure if it's better to go on hating someone the rest of your life and holding onto that, or having some kind of lukewarm diffusion that I'm not sure leaves you with anything. I've always done the former for fear of the latter I guess. It's easier to do that sort of thing now that I'm on the other end of the country I suppose. I'll let you know if I figure anything out.

So after awhile of having a giant internet surf-orgy and trying to figure out if there's anything in the house that's edible besides Fritos and Fishsticks, we decide to go to the first place I fell in love with in Austin, the Alamo Drafthouse. There's nothing we're really dying to see, but since we just saw Batman Begins, we figure it's probably a good excuse to go see the new one since everyone's been cumming in their pants over it.

Every single Alamo Drafthouse is sold out until the very latest show. We try other shows and those are sold out too. It's Saturday, it's a movie theater you can get drunk in. How we thought this was going to be easy is beyond me.

So we settle for a normal theater which winds up being okay, except everything in the concession stand is Texas-sized, so when I order a medium popcorn and drink, I get the equivalent of a Michigan super gulp++. I'm overwhelmed with the amount of shit they're suggesting I put in my belly. The girl at the counter struggles not to laugh.

Thoughts on Batman: The Dark Knight

First off, I think Heath Ledger did one hell of an Al Franken impression, but I don't know if that gets him an Oscar just because he's cute and dead. On the other hand, I totally get why 15 year old boys have been sitting outside the theater trying to look as sullen as possible in full joker makeup for the past two weeks.

Christian Bale's Batman voice has gotten even more husky and over-the-top. He asked where Harvey was so many times, I started imagining him doing Batman in a famous Jimmy Stuart film. Picture it with me now:

* AND NOW I'D LIKE YOU TO MEET A VERY GOOD FRIEND OF MINE...

* HERE, LET ME GIVE YOU MY CARD...

* I'D LOVE IT IF YOU COULD ATTEND A SOCIAL GATHERING I'M HAVING NEXT WEEK, JUST A FEW FRIENDS, VERY INFORMAL...

* THAT'S A LOVELY PHRASE, ISN'T IT? ALLOW ME TO SAY IT AGAIN: "THE EVENING WORE ON..."

* HE'S A POOKAH...

etc, etc...etc.

The whole homeland security subtext felt a bit overstated, and I can't get over how the "we're cut from the same cloth" trope still resonates with people as deep. I agree with the NYT article that criticized the fight scenes as being shot too close, a trend in aughts filmmaking that needs to stop.

That aside, it was okay.

I had to get a bank account started to cash one of my old job checks, and a few people said to check out Frost Bank. I wanted to do a credit union, after the nightmare that Chase has been over the years (different blog entry), but we needed cash for new furniture, since we had to practically give all our old furniture away to the yuppies on craigslist that think they can get leather sofas for $20, so I went with it.

We walk into the "Frost Financial" building that google maps says is closest to home, and it looks nothing like a bank, it's more like a weird office lobby. Apparently it *is* a bank, they've just changed their look to reflect all the different financial services they offer. Everyone in there is horrible and turbo-power-chipper. The greeter apparently doubles as my financial adviser. Two background checks later, I have the privilege of waiting two days for my payroll check to clear. We get back in the car, turn a corner, and pass two check-cashing places.

Fuck.

I return on Wednesday, and greeter-lady is there once again, asking me questions about the minutiae of my withdrawl. She hands me off to some creepy blonde square-jawed superhero looking guy and returns back to her station in front. The computer is "being slow" though, so I wind up waiting so long that Karyna gets sick of waiting in the car and comes in. Greeter-lady recognizes her and asks where we're going to shop for furniture. Karyna tells her we're probably checking out some vintage shops out on north-loop. This is not the "IKEA!" answer she's expecting, and she lets out an audible "ughhhhhh" and pretends to return to some important paperwork. Weird hyper-extroverted jogging women keep coming in and are too loud and too intense. I need to close my account ASAP.

Karyna and I wind up going around to every fucking vintage thing ever, and I buy countless old dusty model ships and random junk, but we can't seem to find a few critical furniture pieces we want. Until we get to this one place. It's filled with the biggest old model ships I've ever seen, as if it's an omen. The owner is shitfaced and practically falling out of his chair. He's in the middle of giving us a discount, when this guy Ciro --part assistant, part guy who just showed up seven years ago and refuses to leave-- insists we need to listen to his song first if we're going to get a discount.

He explains his nephew is the bassist for Queensryche, but he's not musical at all. Some friend of his met some girl years ago, but she was 20 years younger. He drove out and told him he met her too late. The guy breaks off the relationship, dies of a heart attack two years later. Queensryche-uncle guy wakes up in a sweat seconds after his friend dies, repeating the "i met you too late" phrase over and over in his mind. Six minutes later, he has a hit country music song.

He starts the CD player.

What follows is the Jesus Build My Hotrod version of Achy-breaky-heart. It's passable session guys doing some country song, with an audibly drunk old half-mexican guy moaning about how he met someone too late. 2 late. 2 late.

He goes on about how he's played this for hundreds of people now, and they all think he should be a famous country musician. He sells cars, he makes thousands of dollars, he's drunk and projecting what he wants to be, whatever.

We get out of there with a steal on two items and a fairly shit deal on another, and I can't help but wonder if those were both two legitimately drunken southern stooges, or we just fell victim to the oldest redneck trick in the book.

I'll try and find the song online somewhere. It's truly fucking horrible in that can't-get-it-out-of-your-mind sort of way.

The semi truck people keep promising they'll be there tomorrow, and it's tomorrow, and they promise again they'll be there tomorrow. I of course accept this completely, whereas Karyna proceeds to get into some battle-of-the-ages with the help you move guy. The semi shows up an hour later. My girlfriend is the fucking enforcer.

85¢ breakfast tacos. Huzzah.

We unpack. It's still a mess by and large. The decent parts of the apartment now look like this:

Dining room / breakfast bar:

Dining room / office (we need new chairs, the bookshelf is a mess):

Living room (not pictured: Karyna's massive cinder-blocks-and-2x6' board bookshelves which have rendered my hands into sandpaper from moving)

Kitchen (I'm so ecstatic by the whole dishwasher / disposal thing I could scream. Finally, a kitchen I can get into cooking in):

The only part of the bedroom worth showing:

The only part of the bathroom worth showing:

Music shit:

Misc Living room shit:

Some of us are completely unaffected by the whole move thing.

We've already found an awesome local bar. In fact, I'm posting from it as we speak, since our internet is still screwy back at the house. The Parlor is this fun little punk bar that's a block from our house, has free wifi, cheap pizza, good beer, and fills up with seemingly cool people by 4 in the afternoon. Here's a photo I just took about four minutes ago, in the still empty bar:

There's cheap coin-op pool, awesome music, and we're in the middle of watching The Daily Show and Colbert Report on the one TV in the place. It's across the street from a well-regarded community theater, and frankly even when community theater is horrible I kind of love it. There's an indie movie rental place right next door. I kind of love our neighborhood something fierce.

I think the decision to leave Ann Arbor probably culminated though, when I was in a sub shop yesterday, and it was blaring the first Fugazi album.

There are places I live and do okay in, and hate. There are places I love, and tend to live in them fleetingly and poorly. I'm worried I'm going to be broke here. I'm worried I'm going to have fun here and then it will end, and I'll be someplace I don't like as much. Then again I'm not worried at all. I'm here. I'm doing okay.

What trying to move cross-country* over the span of ten days looks like

2008-07-23T19:02:09Z

(...and watch your girlfriend do a poetry reading in Ohio, and do lunch with her publisher in Kentucky, and help a friend move cross-town, and do an unplugged show, and shop for a new(er) car, and sell your old car, and all your stuff....)

My google calendar I reccomend "week view" [amoung the tabs on the top right])

ooooh the pointless voyeurism. It even updates as I edit it, so it's a gift that keeps on taking.

*granted, the short way...

It seems like I leave this entry every three years.

2008-07-22T23:44:12Z

A week from tomorrow, Karyna and I are packing whatever belongings we haven't sold, putting the cats in the car and driving to our new apartment in Austin, Texas. We got a sweeeeet space in Hyde Park.

Karyna's doing a reading in Cincinnati along the way. If you're in the area and interested in coming, let me know and I'll toss you the address.

Any Ann Arborites who need furniture, or a piano, or a car on the very cheap should let me know.

wait for it....wait for it....

2008-07-19T19:33:40Z

the third clip had Karyna and I in tears:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/19/round-two-of-colberts-make-john-mccain-more-exciting-green-screen-challenge/

coverflow for internetz

2008-07-19T02:56:52Z

Found this firefox add-on today...

http://www.piclens.com/

I like the google image search, since I frequently have to search for shit for design work etc.

the youtube thing is kind of hype since you can't view titles out of zoom view, and I usually want lots of specificity in my youtube searches, but overall it's kind of neat if you're bored and just want to browse around.

A Bed of Mulch, Just Checking

2008-07-18T04:02:32Z

annnnnd album #1 done! I have one more song to post after this, it just needs some casio drums before it's ready for public consumption.

This is the fourth track on the first CD, and the most quiet. I'll be posting the third track tomorrow, which happens to be the loudest. Laura (and anyone else in my building) can tell you all about enduring it.

Stream it here, or download it here.

Lyrics:

I haven't seen this person since I was five, but I ran into a girl who knows him, and apparently he got into skateboarding in his teens and then became a web developer. He was my first best friend. His mom fed us apples with cinnamon and sugar and we watched lots of Mr. Rodgers. There was a house past the big field that he insisted a witch lived in. We both had a crush on the same girl in Kindergarten.

Austinites! Sell me.

2008-07-11T20:07:22Z

Karyna and I are more than likely moving to Austin, TX in the near future.

Pros:

(Presumably) Higher paying employment

(obviously) huge music scene, best place to get back into playing live I can think of.

Fresh Blood

The Alamo Drafthouse

Cons:

Hot as hell

Competing with UT compsci kids for jobs

Competing with 500,000,000 other bands for gigs

Tree Roaches

As you can see, a statistical dead-heat. I need one more pro here. Dish.

Look Kid, Just Shut Up

2008-07-08T01:58:57Z

Next up is the first song on the first CD, which I've been putting off for ages now.

stream it here or download it here

Sadly the strongest vocal take had weak French Rs. I'm rusty.
Lyrics:

This is directly followed by GI Joe Sails On on the CD, which was the first thing I ever recorded for Nymphomania

More tomorrow.

The Babysitter Calls Me Boyfriend

2008-07-07T14:17:23Z

I was a recording machine this weekend, and laid down five songs; one of which was a re-take of a song I thought could be made a lot stronger. I think I was right.

Stream the new version of The Babysitter Calls Me Boyfriend or Download it here.

I have to edit the rest of the stuff from this weekend, but I'm now one song away from finishing the first CD. I also took a ton of photos over the weekend and sent out some submissions to journals. Which means my target date for the first disc (August 13th, one year from when I started) is right on track.

I've started to listen to the songs in the order they should appear, to see if I need to rethink my sequencing, and miraculously a lot of it comes together really, really damn well considering my total lack of forethought there. I'm a little concerned that the middle-end (tracks 9-12) is a bit lacking in the rock and might lose interest. It might be a risk worth taking to keep the chronological integrity of the thing. I'd rather not have songs explicitly singing about being seven come after ones singing about being nine. There's not much wiggle-room. It probably needs the driving test a good dozen times.

My lower register feels like it's getting stronger lately. Songs I would never think to attack from that angle are starting to sound more compelling that way than using my high end, which has been steadily narrowing. I originally thought this song was going to be sung high, but both times, after doing vocal takes both ways, I decided to go low.

Breaking the Speed Limit to Catch the Space Shuttle

2008-07-01T13:32:28Z

Download it here or stream it from here.

I'm particularly fond of this one. It's one of those childishly simple yet fun things to play, despite Karyna and our housemate having to hear me fuck it up about 20 times.

This is track 11 on the first CD, directly following My Sister Thinks This is the One. It's a rather abrupt start, as I want it to feel like it's continuing the story from the previous song. Wheat in Our Eyes, an 8th Grader comes directly after. Both are sample tracks on the newly redesigned website.

Fun fact: My friend Greg's voicemail makes its musical debut at the end point.

Fun fact #2: I was talking to someone about the Casio SK1 a few nights ago while at the bar, and he instantly began parodying the "human voice" preset sound, which is rather distinct and uselessly silly. I instantly decided I needed to do a song with that preset buried somewhere in the mix. I pitch-shifted the hell out of it, but it's in there.

Fun fact #3: As of this August 13th, Nymphomania will officially be one year old. It's exciting to think that by then I should have the full manuscript done and one full CD out...three more songs and we're there.

Lyrics:

TheAlleged Disappearance of Hunger during Starvation

2008-06-26T07:23:39Z

Another new tune! Although the main guitar riff is an oldie I pulled out of the woodwork.

Stream it here or Download it here

I'm pretty sure this is the first and last ever rock song about preteen sexual experimentation unless we can exhume the body of Freddy Mercury or something.

I'm also kind of scared to admit to myself how much of the lead comes off as derivative of G&R's Mr. Brownstone. again, particularly considering the subject matter.

Lyrics:

today was first anniversary day for Karyna and I :]

a bad trip, three boys die.

2008-06-25T09:31:38Z

New song. stream it here*. If it's easier to just download it, grab it here.

Really simple chords if you wanna play along: Dmin, F(133210, I use my thumb), Amin, Cg, G for the verse, F, G for the bridge (with an Amin thrown in on the third measure), and then F and G again for the break, muting the first and third beat with the F.

I'm really, really close to the first two albums written. I wish I had more instruments though. If you've got a spare bassoon in your pants or something, lemmie know.

The poem's nearly verbatim, as there's not much subtext. I'm seventeen, take a bunch of blotter packed with pcp and some uppers, flatline in the hospital. Survive.

A Bad Trip, Three Boys Die

I only skip
develop a fear of blood pressure

the security guard in my hospital room
wants to propose to his girlfriend

I'm playing with my pulse, green and mounted
like a poisoned elephant, kept from the graveyard
preserved, black-eyed, how they found me—

face down in a piano, spent & unresponsive

the lights brush angel dust from their shoulders
I keep losing my place

* Does the streaming flash player I use even work for you? I never know how (or more likely, if) people are listening. I need to get my google analytics rockin so I know if you're knockin.

On that note, here's a picture of some horses:

the greatest best country god has given man on the face of the earth

2008-06-21T18:34:42Z

one of the best Colbert Reports I've seen in quite some time.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/23604/the-colbert-report-the-colbert-report-61908

I can't believe that first Hannity clip is real. Sometimes I really don't get it...wouldn't even the most blindly nationalistic individual tire of hearing 24/7 praises lauded to an abstract concept? I guess Jesus freaks don't get sick of talking about Jesus. I guess I don't get sick of talking about how strage it all seems. Are people all just obsessive in our own unique ways, and it's just that some obsessions seem more productive and well-adjusted on the surface (making lots of money, the peace corps, etc)?

My piano's out of tune and my guitar needs some adjustments since the neck is about to snap. I'm going crazy not being able to work on the project, especially now that the first two albums are completely written. I need to start thinking about booking, which is my second least favorite activity, closely behind networking with bands.

I want to have a cookout in the park soon.

degrees of degrees

2008-06-20T12:38:49Z

One of the silliest slashdot threads I've read through in quite some time.

http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/06/19/1911235.shtml

the response to " when did Fahrenheit stop working?" was the one that did it for me.

...so is that 13 times, or 7?

2008-06-18T11:48:03Z

"We're about 10 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and about three times faster than Internet Explorer 7," Mozilla developer Mike Beltzner told InternetNews.com. (source:internetnews.com)

your car is full of crap.

2008-06-18T03:24:29Z

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece

asterisk8 @ 2008-05-30T09:26:00

2008-05-30T13:29:03Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7427417.stm

I'm waiting for the wacky, madcap comedy where we bring them to New York and try to civilize them, but they teach us a little something about life and love along the way.

class wars

2008-05-15T12:35:53Z

I find this old phonograph and put it in the passenger seat of my car. It sounds really good, so Karyna starts putting on random vinyl from the back seat. We're driving around listening to Bowie flubbing about Janine and chain smoking with the windows down full. It's a gorgeous summer afternoon and we're both psyched to be on vacation.

We're going through the Berkshires and our ears pop from the elevation. "We're almost to Vermont!" I say when some douchebag passes by in a Ferrari and sideswipes us. The record gets scratched right at the good part and he zooms off before I can even think to give him the finger. "It's okay, I always buy a spare" Karyna says, pulling another copy of Space Oddity from the stack. She's trying to get the needle set to the part of the song we left off on when a few hundred feet down the road we see the asshole with the Ferrari and his trophy girlfriend stopped by a cop and his car is flipped over.

I get out to help him flip the car, but mostly I just want to make some snide comment that maybe if he didn't get such a cock car and drive like a shithead he wouldn't get so many tickets. "Oh I didn't" he responds, "I just wanted to get this guy's attention and ask him for season tickets" he says, pointing at the cop. The cop smiles weakly and shrugs, then makes no attempt to help us right the car, which oddly has handles for bumpers. The rich guy and I flip it upright but I almost throw it down the street because it weighs about as much as a slab of cardboard. I look the car up and down. It doesn't even have a scratch on it and my car looks like it's been hit by a train.

So the asshole claps some imaginary dust off his hands and gets in the car, leaving his door open so he can show off this secret glowing lever thing that flips the car on command. He demonstrates, and I go to grab the bumper to fix it again, but before I get a firm grip he flips it back automatically from inside the car, nearly ripping my arms off. By now I'm getting really pissed and he starts really flaunting it to his girlfriend or call-girl or whatever, doing full flips and endos and shit. He starts blaring Ace of Base while the cop claps like a schoolgirl and raises the roof, throwing his tickets in the air. They rain down like misdemeanor confetti and I'm huffing it back to my car, cursing every rich asshole in the universe under my breath.

I slam my dented-in door about four times before it latches and notice in my absence that Karyna's upgraded the phonograph to a stand-up model that barely fits in the seat, but has really killer bass. It's really hard to drive because my arms have both fallen asleep and she starts playing techno records —really bad internet techno type stuff— and yelling "BOOM" really loud every time a kick drum gets hit. She's shaking her head and going "WOOOOO!" in my ear and finally I can't take it anymore and just park in a driveway somewhere and pretend we're home.

"What the fuck are you talking about, this isn't even the same color as our house!" she yells, totally not falling for it, so I suggest we go over to the McD's across the street and discuss it over a burger. It's around now that I realize even though we've been going north through Massachusetts, we're in Rhode Island, and the gas station that my friend Caitlin and I saw a gang war happen at is right across the street.

I tell Karyna about the whole gang war anecdote while we eat our burgers and look at the gas station, when suddenly there's this huge parade of thugs and cops. At first I think it's happening all over again, but it turns out it's literally a parade, and all the thugs are wearing pink and baby blue shirts with matching do-rags and dancing with confederate flags. The cops are in hot pants and everybody's doing the locomotion. "We are not" Karyna says, pointing at me with a limp yellow french fry, "fucking moving here."

fear and pressure

2008-01-23T12:49:29Z

glaucon sent me this about a week ago and I only just noticed it now.

pure yay.

cool.

2007-12-12T03:39:09Z

http://freerice.com/index.php

photos: november pt1

2007-11-30T02:17:08Z

I've been on a photo-editing rampage, from vacation photos to wedding photos to show photos....here's the first chunk, mostly travel photos from Thanksgiving.

Some of these you've seen before, but might be fun to see edited. I normally don't try and go for illustrated appearance, but since people already saw a lot of direct-from-camera shots, I thought I'd go a bit nutty. Here's hopin'

Full Gallery

Some previews (much higher res versions on flickr)

photos: new flash

2007-11-15T12:40:00Z

new flash arrived today. nothing special, just playing around with bounce shit / taken in near darkness with flash as sole illumination:

Some info on the one above, since someone already asked about it in another journal:
I had the flash at 0deg (fully up), with a black card in front, but tilted 45deg outward.
Light bounced off the wall to the side of him, slightly off the wall behind him (but not the couch, which would have gotten shiny),
and off the ceiling, after being diffused somewhat by the card. Essentially light coming from three angles, diffused twice.

Exif ..

exposure: 1/45s
f/4
ISO-100
focal: 31mm (46mm equivalent)
metering: spot

I used a custom white balance, but the "outdoor" and "shade" presets on a camera without custom options should work pretty good. The "flash" wb setting is a bit eh on most cameras I've tried.

The rest of these are all out-of-camera other than being resized. Obviously I'd do level adjustments and some crop/rotate maneuvers, but for sake of pseudo tutorial from a total flippin' amateur...)

did a few more with dim room light last night:

(that comforter always winds up slamming everything a bit far into the green channel, and I should have probably re-ajusted the white balance accordingly)

outside:

Then for the real fun: this morning at 6am with all the lights off:

That last one's pretty ugly, but I couldn't see a frigging thing, and it was a fun challenge to try and illuminate the curtains somewhat without casting too hard a reflection into the window. flash in position 0 with black bounce card tipped 45deg, covering the front entirely and cutting out celing bounce so that most of the light gets diffused off the doorway behind me. More than likely this is all family-of-angles shit I don't understand in the feckin' slightest. There's a sad derth of info on the web in regards to it.

One of the biggest challenges seems to be guaging the distance capabilities of the flash unit. In my case it's a shitty $50 flash that doesn't have much distance power to speak of.

Providing I have a bounce surface (ceiling, wall, etc) within 8 to 10 feet of me, I'll diffuse towards that, trying to emphasize a touch more of the light to a side wall for some nice key-lighting. Particularly fun however is the rather haunting quality that happens when you throw a bit too much in one direction or another, and get a sort of pseudo-vignetting as the light drops off in the other directions:

it's vaguely lamp-lightish. the warm white balance probably enhances that effect.
For subjects where I don't have much around me (ie: outdoors), I'm instead flipping the card to the back and directing more light at the subject. Depending on the distance I might keep the card straight up (close subject) or angle it forward to channel more light towards the subject and lose less to the sky (further subject).

obviously there's distances where my flash just can't do it anymore, in which case I'll pop it down a notch to pos. 30 or 45, and put the card on top of the flash head...it's a bit ugly, but slightly more diffused than just dead on at 90 degrees.

If anyone knows of interesting online lighting resources, I'd love to check 'em out. The next thing I'd love to try, aside from some night-time leaf-freezing shots, is a neutral density filter, for long-exposure shots during daylight.

oh, and much thanks to Greg for lettin' me borrow his banjo:

(side bounce, minimal room and window light)

I should have a banjo-led song or two posted by the weekend :]

photo updates

2007-10-21T11:27:54Z

pumpkin carving:
full set here

(in my subjective opinion) highlights:

full set here
highlights:

photo: karyna

high res versions available per usual if you click the "view all sizes" button.

few pics from this week

2007-10-09T10:59:27Z

I promise many more photos once the next two weeks play themselves out.

thumbs, full size below the cut:

clasped several latters
my hands were merely

descended stones/ no one had to waste
a perfectly good safety net

overheard—

god it makes me want to die
it was happening already
hyperbolic much?
an unintended exaggeration

consumed everything that was left
hidden in the public shrubbery

stranded there smiling, braced for impact
suspended just underneath
any tangible desire/ couldn't bounce, just lacrimate,
promise nothing is wrong

I got a piano!

2007-09-02T15:48:35Z

Thanks to Sara posting a bulletin on myspace about a free piano, I now have a shiny lil Milton in my bedroom!

I’ve wanted a piano pretty much since I moved to Ann Arbor. My old place was too small, and I hadn’t come across any good craigslist deals in the "new" apartment that weren’t completely falling apart.

my ears aren’t great, but I think there’s only about 3 slightly out of tune keys up top. I’ll probably get it tuned in about a month after its settled in.

I’m going to have to record a piano album now.