coffee shops
are scary places during the am, filled with crazy business types and parents with little kids. business must be the easiest thing to do. at least at the marketing or middle management level because all i ever hear is the most inane, lamest talk ever out of these people. meeting after meeting, going on and on about nothing.
weekend antics
holy crap! another weekend of more fun than i could handle. here’s the quick rundown before i get too tired and forget.
friday = vegan potluck at becca’s. despite a few rough spots like the dishwasher overflowing and soaking the floor and some traveling crust dude being creepy the night was awesome. the first potluck i’ve been to where pretty much everyone brought food. i was gorged. afterwords i went with stephen, bret, jen, tim, + others to this abandoned dance club where we hung out and wondered about what sweet shows we could have there in secret. after that i went to some parties with becca, bret, emmet, and some other kids who i barely know. the parties were pretty dead by that late hour so i went home and slept.
saturday = courier race. i hadn’t planned on racing and only went down there with dave to check out the action. i got peer pressured into racing though and gabe was kind enough to loan me the entry fee. it was exciting to roll through the streets at full speed, weaving through the traffic and breaking every conceivable traffic law. i rode with gabe and kane (until he flatted) and then gabe and some couriers for most of the race. it was the most fun i had in ages. it just fealt good to move that fast. later that night there was a party at bld with amazing blues singing by miss maime, a foot down competition, a bonfire and other hijinks. the only bad part of the night is that jen hit a pothole on the way there and endoed landed on her face and now it looks like someone punched her in the face with the swelling as extreme as it is.
sunday = recording justine handsome. recorded six of justin’s newer songs for a new demo today in my room and tim’s room on the computer. i think it sounded pretty good, but what do i know. took a quick break to eat awesome gluten free waffles and bannana sugar cookies at kane/michelle’s. after recording, played intramural soccer on one of andrew’s friend’s men’s soccer team which was fun, but some of the guys on the team took it much too seriously. after that, i called steven and we rode down to dodge skatepark to deliver brett some tools and then snuck into the mershon auditorium to see margarot cho which was awesome and hilarious, especially for free.
teen movies
was watching “say anything” which i found on my brother’s floor and i wondered, is the token rebel character in the recent teen movie “bring it on” given a clash shirt to wear because the costumers were lame and couldn’t think of anything better to say “good natured, misunderstood, bad boy” than a clash t-shirt, or is it as an allusion to the good natured, misunderstood bad boy played by john cusack in say anything who also wears a clash shirt. that would be pretty sweet.
i am not whining about my band
ok. i am not whining about my band… i am just trying to come to terms with what is a new eperience for me. really, i am. so recently, there have been a couple of instances that have just really been akward. at the monday night bike ride, somebody introduced themself to me and asked what my name was. i told her geoff, and johnny, interjected, “you know, from defiance, ohio”, which i think everybody took as a joke, but i would be horrified if they didn’t. but just the fact that someone could make that joke, and that people could take it seriously is really frightening. i guess ultimately people who i spend a lot of time with me will be able to decide for themselves whether i have some stupid rock-star attitude or not, and i shouldn’t really worry about random kids, but it always hurts to think that people might have misconceptions about you. maybe it’s because you suspect that they might not be misconceptions at all, which is scary, but i’m pretty sure is not the case.
weird event two. this kid sean put out a fanzine with an interview with us. he hounded us for weeks for the interview, and i was happy to do it. however, his enthusiasm for it was so intense, its still really akward. he dropped off some of the zines the other day, and it’s really hard because it’s a bi-weekly zine so it’s basically just our interview. i guess that’s cool, and the format and all, i’m just afraid of seeming self-agrandizing. also, it’s not that the interview is bad, but it’s definitely not how i would interview myself, and i guess it’s strange to see someone else’s representation of you displayed so publicly. it can’t help but feel like losing control.
weird event three. i was at a party last night and people started playing the cd. it’s really surreal to hear something you’ve made being played at a party. but more than that some kid started talking to me about the band. will and ryan and i used to talk about the band all the time when we first started, and maybe that wasn’t so good, but at least it was with kids who were are close friends and understood that the band was just a big part of our lives. but now i talk to kids who only know me through the band and it’s hard because i like talking about the band, but since i don’t know these kids, it seems like it’s all i have to talk about and i’m really worried that people are like “gee he talks about his band alot”.
i’ll deal.
mastering in cool edit pro
acoustic guitar amplification
the beginner’s guide to mastering
http://www.computermusic.co.uk/tutorial/mastering/mastering1.asp
anonymous blogging
syntax checking a bourne shell script
sh -n
weekend antics
this weekend has been really fun, and with a lot of kids out of town, i didn’t have such grand expectations. but it’s been awesome. primarily because i’ve gotten to spend time with people who are close to me, or who have been really supportive of me, but that i’ve kind of neglected.
on friday, i called steven to see what was going on, and he said that becca was planning on going to the strike anywhere show at the newport (big, dumb concert hall across from campus) and that he was going to sneak in. i asked if i could come along, and he said it was no problem. we hung out for a little bit and becca told us about the vegan potluck that she was having next weekend which was exciting. we even made a flyer for it. so after a little while, we headed over to the concert hall. the lines were huge, the show had sold out, it was crazy. tons of kids just rabid for afi. we didn’t have to spend much effort sneaking in after all, as a friend helped us get in really easily. strike anywhere sounded good, and they played with energy, but in a hall that size, it just seemed hollow. the kids were kind of ambivilant to the whole thing which i thought was disappointing because i like strike anywhere, and i think their lyrics are really good and intelligent. the kids where so out of it that after the show, when becca and her friend were hanging out at the merch table with the roadie for strike anywhere, a bunch of kids assumed that her friend was in the band just because he was wearing tight jeans and had that floppy indie-rocker haircut. hilarious.
the explosion was just lame. the music is tolerable, i guess, but the guys just come off as such bro-dogs. i couldn’t handle it. the whole set exhuded sleaze.
i have always thought afi was pretty ok. i saw them a couple of times at krazyfest and had a good time, but i never fealt any kind of connection with their music. i thought a lot of the lyrics were pretty simplistic or ambiguous and their music was getting more and more typical. so, seeing kids just rabid for them was crazy. and you had a real mix of the hipster hardcore kids and the gothed up kids. it was strange. the best comment i heard all night was, “davey’s [the singer for afi] all queer and fem, but he’s totally badass at the same time”. classic. but not paying and being detached from the whole experience worked out really well in the end as watching them was just like watching some ridiculous arena rock band and the sheer over-the-topness made it fun.
after we got tired of watching afi, steven, brett, and i went to the party at derek and emmet’s house. shannon and katie’s band played their first show and i liked it a lot. it was fun and pretty interesting. then some metal band played and i liked them a lot more than i did the last time i saw them. i got to say hi to matt from cincinatti, and jamie and eric luck stopped by which was cool. after the metal band, brett and i walked home while stephen stayed to drink and mingle.
yesterday i was going to help dave shoot his self-portrait video for art school, but then i realized that everybody was out of town so i should help with food not bombs. i went to jonnies and sort of hung out with bz and justin before we all decided that there wasn’t enough interest/people to do fnb. this sucked, but oh well. i went to make flyers for jessika dissaster’s midwest zine fest. after that, i rounded up jonnie, justin, and kevey to go play “punk rock soccer”.
we had always played soccer when the weather got nice, but recently there were 100s of flyers up for “punk rock soccer” and i had no idea who the kids were who were doing it. we got there, and of course the punks were late. gabe came, but other than that, i knew none of the other kids. still, it was really fun and we played punks vs. pickup kids against a few soccer jocks, and some mexicans. it was fun, and even though the game was pretty intense only a few guys took things too seriously.
after the game i was pretty warn out, but we stopped by steven’s work and he gave us the hook-up so at least we had a way to reload. i talked to kevey for a while and then headed home. when i got home, i talked to mandy for a long while. this was rad, because mandy really likes to talk and i feel like i’m often dismissive because i’m often running late to somewhere or really not in the mood to talk. but that night, there was nothing better to sit on the couch and chat with my roommate. my friends all consider her the “good roommate” or “the fun roommate” and i admit that she’s a pretty interesting person who has a perspective that i might not totally agree with but that is at least enlightening.