movin on up (3 flights

movin on up (3 flights of stairs): helped julia move into her new very cute apt today. quite a workout, ready for a meal and a beer.

w00t!!

So tickets for Phish at Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in August officially went on sale today at 1pm. I had somehow gotten lucky and won 4 tickets in the Phish lottery the other day (I'm never lucky! but I was!) but had already promised Beth & Eric (and Eric's friend) first dibs a long time ago. Which is totally cool and I'm super excited to go with them, but I was feeling slightly bummed because I wanted to go with Julia, Olivia and Sarah too. So Julia, Olivia, Sarah and I ALL went on livenation.com today and hit refresh every 0.2 seconds to try to get tickets. I also suggested that Julia try calling them on the phone a few minutes early and schmoozing someone until 1pm. Tickets sold out online in FOUR minutes. Sarah, Olivia, and I all struck out.

Well, this is old news, but Julia is my hero. She scored 4 lawn seats and offered two to Olivia and Sarah so now all of my best friends (who like Phish) and I (and a wildcard!) are going to Phish in August!!! It will be our second show of the summer!!! Man this summer is gonna rule.

Les Get it On

Friday! Les Claypool! Tonight!! YES!!!



A little while ago, my cousin blogged about beavers (kinda) and I left her a comment directing her to the Primus' video for 'Winona's Big Brown Beaver' which is awesomely bizarre. She suggested I tell the story of how I met Les Claypool on my blog, so here it is:

After high school, I was working at CD World (r.i.p.) with my friend Jon who was my introduction to Pink Floyd (I will forever be grateful to him). Jon's uncle was the stage manager for Phil Lesh, who was touring at the time. One day Jon asks me if I want to go see Phil Lesh with him, for free, and go backstage and all that. Duh, yes. And who was opening? Les Claypool. Jon and I were both somewhat obsessed with Les at the time, and Jon had built his own bass in woodshop our senior year. He'd told his uncle about the bass, and I guess his uncle had said something to Les Claypool about it. So we go to the show, we go backstage before it starts, it was some venue in North Jersey where backstage was just a big parking lot, so we saw all the tour buses and a few people just hangin around. Jon's uncle is showing us around a bit, and then Les Claypool just strolls by.

"Oh hey, Les," says Jon's uncle. "Remember I told you about my nephew who built the bass?"

And here is where Les Claypool, with the first words I've ever heard him utter off-stage, spoken in his strange nasally voice, solidified his reputation as the weirdest motherfucker alive:
"Oh, yeah, did you uh, didja make it out of chocolate?"

Jon just looked at him. I just looked at him. Neither of us could speak for what seemed like an entire minute in bizarro world.

"Um, no?" Jon said.

"Oh, well you should've, that would've been really cool."

And that was our conversation. I'm not a shy person, and don't think I really get starstruck (though haven't many too many famous people) but the weirdness of his question left me completely dumbstruck. And in an awkward finish, Jon's uncle snapped a photo of Jon and me with Les, which I have but don't have a scanner. To this day, if I ever see Les in person again, I only hope I'm armed with a chocolate bass.

Russian Chamber Chorus

Tonight, I'm going to see my friend's boyfriend sing with the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York. Guys in tuxes + chorale music + sitar = a classy night. And you can't be a nerd if you're classy, right? RIGHT?

You Are Now Entering Nerddom

I have to confess this before it gets any worse. I am NOT a sci-fi geek, sure I watched Star Wars as a kid but not Star Trek, and I could probably count the science fiction books I've read on one hand, and even those fall under the classic or literary fiction category (e.g. 1984, Brave New World). Ok, sure, I love the Transformers and Labyrinth and JJ Abrams shows and all of that, but - ok fine I'll just spit it out. It hit me today that I am simultaneously reading two books in which Slans are discussed. Let me explain. I've never heard of a Slan before, because, as I said and as I swear is true, I am not a sci-fi geek. I've never read A.E. van Vogt's novel Slan. Yet on my commute this morning, I began the chapter entitled "Telepathy" in the really awesome and NOT nerdy book by Michio Kaku called Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration Into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel.

I probably need to explain more: this book is seriously cool. OK, yes, I think teleportation and robots are really awesome subjects and yes, I chose, of my own free will, to read this book. But dude - you can't even get through one relatively mundane sentence in the Preface without being blown away. Case in point: "While interstellar travel for our civilization is clearly impossible, it may be possible for a civilization centuries to thousands or millions of years ahead of ours." That's a relatively mundane sentence compared to, say, this: "In high school...I built a 2.3-million-electron-volt betatron particle accelerator, which consumed 6 kilowatts of power (the entire output of my house) and generated a magnetic field of 20,000 times the Earth's magnetic field. The goal was to generate a beam of gamma rays powerful enough to create antimatter." See?? This shit is fuckin' cool.

So back to what I was saying, this morning I get to the chapter on Telepathy, which begins by Kaku describing Vogt's novel Slan, in which the protagonist, a "slan," is one of a dying race of superintelligent telepaths. In keeping with my insistence that I'm not a total nerd, Kaku goes on to discuss why telepathy isn't scientifically possible now and how real-life people, like the CIA in the 70s, have tried to use telepathy and what a truly telepathic person might be capable of, if telepathy truly existed, which it doesn't. This is cool! ...Right?

OK. Fine. I know, you're right. It's borderline nerdy. But then what worries me is that on my ride HOME from work, IN THE SAME DAY, I read yet another passage about Slans, IN A DIFFERENT BOOK. Granted, this one has nothing to do with teleportation or robots and WON THE PULITZER PRIZE IN FICTION so I thought, hoped, that I would save myself from becoming too nerdy if I read it simultaneously along with Kaku's book. But shit. In Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (which I started reading today after receiving it from a thankful editor at Viking/Penguin who offered to send me a book after I expedited a request for him last week; naturally I said yes and asked for this, which I've been dying to read), the protagonist is Oscar, "a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love." Sounds good, right? Well, it is. I'm 50 pages in already and can't put it down (I had to break to blog about these freaking Slans) but it's like I'm being stalked by the nerd police, if police were out to make you do stuff instead of getting you to stop doing stuff.

Observe:

Oscar had always been a young nerd - the kind of kid who read Tom Swift, who loved comic books and watched Ultraman - but by high school his commitment to the Genres had become absolute. Back when the rest of us were learning to play wallball and pitch quarters and drive our older brothers' cars and sneak dead soldiers from under our parents' eyes, he was gorging himself on a steady stream of Lovecraft, Wells, Burroughs, Howard, Alexander, Herbert, Asimov, Bova, and Heinlein...Could write in Elvish, could speak Chakobsa, could differentiate between a Slan, a Dorsai, and a Lensman in acute detail, knew more about the Marvel Universe than Stan Lee, and was a role-playing game fanatic.

I'm going to take comfort in the fact that, with maybe the exception of an H.P. Lovecraft story I had to read in college (fine, it was a science fiction writing class, happy? but I didn't do that well in it.), I've never read any of those authors and have no idea where Elvish and Chakobsa come from. Yes, I know Stan Lee but we've all seen Mallrats.

So STOP CALLING ME A NERD!!! For god's sake.

I'm fine. Really.

And I'm gonna go read some more about Oscar.

Here, have a picture of a panda in a tree.

Wiccit

Even though it turned out to be false, the reason M.I.A. naming her baby "Ickett" cracked me up so much is because of this guy named Wiccit from Ithaca. Everyone knew Wiccit. He is truly impossible to describe... let's just say he gave himself the name Wiccit...after the Ewok, and he always dresses like this:



I liked Wiccit, we were friends in a way, but he was definitely strange. And still is. A couple weeks ago, this video started circulating around the internet, and quickly became the talk of all IC alumni. This other guy we all knew, Josh Yampolski, directed it. The collaboration of these two is unprecedented, outrageous, and, uh... well, watch the video. But, warning: if you are prone to seizures and/or have a low threshold for things of low, shitty quality, you should still watch this. But be prepared. I had to blog about this for all my dedicated readers who may not have seen this yet. And for those of you who know you want to see it again.

All My Single Sprockets

I haven't posted much the past few days because I haven't done much. I'm taking antibiotics for this cough and therefore resting up, trying to get healthy so I can enjoy all the fun stuff I have coming up soon. Hopefully it works. Here is a fun picture taken at Beth's the night before St. Patty's Day, after we gave up on Single Ladies and put on various hats.

Wedding DJ

So my awesome friend Katherine is getting married to Warren in June in Hood River, OR. They live in Portland. Katherine's friend Erin, who also lives in Portland, and I are co-Maids of Honor. Very happy. A little while ago, Katherine asked me if I knew any good DJs. (Ha! Do I breathe?) As it turned out, I happen to know of a pretty rad DJ named dmoefunk who, lo and behold, lives in Portland. I sent Katherine his myspace page. I figured it was a long shot, but he is a really fun DJ and has mentioned playing weddings on his podcast before. Well I just found out that Katherine booked dmoefunk to DJ her wedding!! I'm so excited!! Not only will her wedding be the most fun ever, but he also apparently loves DJing weddings AND charges a fraction of what normal wedding DJs or bands charge, and - bonus! - I feel like I have actually done something to help her with the wedding like a good maid of honor! Everybody wins! Yay dmoefunk for making my day.

Close to Me/You

"Close to You" and "Close to Me" rule. Please observe:

1. Burt Bacharach wrote "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and it is delightful. Dusty Springfield and The Carpenters sang it. It was Homer and Marge's wedding song in The Simpsons Movie. You know you sway every time you hear it.

2. A haunting version of 'Close to You' appeared as an extremely awesome scene in the very bizarre but amazing movie Mirrormask. Check it out:

3. The Cure wrote 'Close to Me' which, I've come to understand, is the almost greatest song ever. #4 and #5 prove why.

4. The Kleptones, under-appreciated and widely unknown mash-up masters, put out the amazing album '24 Hours' (available for free download on their website, along with everything else they've done) mixed The Cure's 'Close to Me' with Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Boxer' with Asheru's 'Think About' rap over it. This actually is the greatest song ever.

5. Lady Sovereign uses The Cure's song as the music for her new single, 'So Human.' It rules. Go get it.

Hypothesis proven.

I leave you with a picture of the first Closer in Phillies history to pitch a perfect season, Lights Out Lidge.

Beyonce Go Bragh

I'm not even close to being Irish, so technically, I'm not required to celebrate St. Patrick's Day at all. But I always do, even if it just means wearing green. This year, I actually did all my celebrating last night at my friend Beth's. Her sister Taylor was visiting and the three of us apparently decided it was a good idea to mix as many un-matching things together as possible: we drank Baby Guinness shots and white wine, ate a ton of cheese and sushi, watched 'Dream Girls' and then dressed in matching Sprocket outfits and tried to learn Beyonce's 'Single Ladies' dance.

Single Ladies Video
Believe me, it's even harder than it looks. We gave it our best shot for quite a while, and semi-nailed about one of the moves but eventually ditched the video for a good old aerobics dance party.

Today, we decided to abandon our plans to go to the parade once Taylor and I confessed we both hate parades. Instead, we ate homemade brunch, drank tea, and walked a few miles from Battery Park City to the South Street Seaport and, as three good Jersey girls, we shopped and ate in a mall food court. It was exhausting and funny, and in retrospect I couldn't be happier to not have been stumbling around midtown. I'm no Beyonce, but I'd choose a synchronized dance over being hit on by a bunch of drunk Irish dudes any day.

Babysitting

I just babysat for the kids upstairs, two boys who are 8 and 10. Man, it's great work! I made $70 for 4.5 hours, and all I did was play Foosball and this board game called Labyrinth which is actually really hard (I'm not the best strategizer), make some ravioli, talk about science, and watch Get Smart (the movie, which I had hoped would be a lot better than it was). I totally need to put up fliers in my neighborhood to get more gigs like that.

Oh Yeah

I almost forgot the most important thing: idaft.

work it. do it. (makes us harder better faster stronger.)

Phish Phriday

I just stopped at my neighborhood bodega to grab a few beers, and right as I walked in, the guy in the back said to another guy, "You eat meat on lent? I don't eat meat, but I eat cigarettes and pussy" (I walked in mid-conversation; this wasn't at all directed at me.) Nevermind the fact that you don't eat cigarettes - that's funny.

Today is Friday the 13th, the second Friday the 13th in a row, and the second of three in 2009. Three Friday the 13ths in one year only happens once every 11 years. Personally, that means 2009 is supposed to be a very lucky year for me, and today one of the luckiest days. The third will occur in November, the 11th month, so that will pretttty much be one of the luckiest days ever. If you're superstitious. I am. 11 is (if you couldn't te11) totally my number. Nobody understand this better than Julia; for some reason the number 11 brings us good luck and has been the number behind a lot of awesome things. Maybe it's a Hurley thing, or the opposite of one. I do think things happen sometimes that seem like fate, but if you believe something enough, you create your own luck. I believe in fate, but I also believe that we control our own destinies. Maybe that's a contradiction, I guess I'm just somewhere in the middle.

I have felt pretty great all day. I woke up and listened to Phish in the shower (an old tape mix someone made for me about 11 years ago - last night I pulled out my cassette collection) which got my day off to a nice start. I had a bacon cheeseburger from Lucky's for lunch. Now that March is (Ican'tbelieveit) almost halfway over, June is getting close. Which means I'm going to see Phish soon, for the phirst time! I'm super stoked. Plus of course, last weekend they kicked off their tour with three shows in Hampton. I read a few articles and saw the set lists last week and, well, it got me back on a Phish kick for sure. The set lists are insane, and from what everyone is saying, they still have what it takes. All three shows are available for download on LivePhish.com (when I downloaded the first show yesterday, it was free, now it says it's not, I don't know what's up with that). I just put on the 3/6/09 show and it is rocking so far. The applause when Phish takes the stage for the first time in 4 years is out. of. control. Man, it sounds like so much fun, I can't wait to experience it!!

Of course, tonight is 2020 Soundsystem, so I don't want to get too ahead of myself. The show is at Le Poisson Rouge, which is French for "The Red Fish." I love fun Fridays! I feel like tonight is gonna be awesome. I love that feeling. I hope everyone is having a good, lucky day - not an unlucky one!

And on that note, you know you love this:

2020 soundsystem

I'm super-psyched to go see 2020 Soundsystem tomorrow night. It seems nobody I know has ever heard of them, which is understandable since they're a UK band that rarely tours here. One of the reasons I was so psyched to go to Camp Bisco this past summer was to see them, and I went, but didn't see them, because I had to take care of a friend who was sick. But! I get to see them tomorrow night with one of my favorite friends, Sarah, who I hardly ever get to hang out with anymore except we're making a valiant effort lately and doing pretty well! In an email today from some promoter, I got a link to 2020 Soundsystem's last live show at Studio B. Listening to it now. I'm very excited to dance tomorrow.

Life is what we make it

Life is what we make it
Originally uploaded by aknacer

I have subscribed to Flickr's Top 5 photos of the day on My Yahoo! for the past year or so, and I quickly noticed that almost every day, 1 of the top 5 are by this guy, aknacer, or his girlfriend, Rosie. So I read into some of their comments, and discovered that these two lovely creative people and talented, creative photographers actually met on flickr. It's one of the greatest modern-day love stories I've ever heard. He's from NC, she's from London, they met because of their photographs and fell in love. Now they're engaged and have a whole flickr world of people, including me, rooting them on and helping them out. Their story is beautiful and inspiring to me, and I always love seeing their photos. They both seem to have really positive and optimistic outlooks on life, too, which I also find very inspiring. Their story gives me hope, and I know the same is true for many, many people, which you will be able to see if you read even one comment string for one of their photos. They have a blog together, which aknacer links to under this photo. Also check out one of my favorite projects they've put together, this video made by putting together still images from the first time Rosie visited Aaron here in the states. Aww!! The video is here, under "NYC Roadtrip" : http://nacedesign.com/blog/archives/category/the-life-and-times-of-arf


Separately, both Aaron (aknacer) and Rosie (rosiehardy) take really awesome photos, and they each have their own very unique style and are both super creative, and insanely busy. They both seem to live and breathe photography. And together, they take beautiful photos like this.

And here is one of my favorite pictures Rosie has done. (Sue, this is the crane picture.) Rosie posted this when I was in my major origami crane phase, and then when my Nona died, this photo was a big inspiration for me to make cranes for her funeral. I make 36 of them, for "double chai" which in the Jewish tradition means double life. I strung them together and they went into the casket with her. I will forever be thankful that I did this and had the courage to speak at her funeral. It wasn't easy.

Music Takes Me Up

When I owned my one and only car, this was one of the bumper stickers. My other bumper sticker was the Dark Side of the Moon album cover. When I was driving around Cherry Hill, NJ and Ithaca, NY between the ages of 17-19, I apparently wanted the world behind me to know one thing: I am a hippie. Well, those days are behind me now, gone but not forgotten. I like to think I'm a pretty responsible and mature adult now, but if any part of that hippie in me has survived, if any one thing has grown with me and remained close to my heart all my life, it is music. My tastes have evolved, but music has always been extremely important to me: playing it, learning it, listening to it, dancing to it, living it. Bill Cosby said, "Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes." Nietzsche said, "Without music, life would be an error." I couldn't agree more with both wise men. Sure, without music, life would still be worth living, I guess. Nature and stuff is cool. But to me, life without music would be sad and boring.

Why am I telling you this? Today a note thing was going around on Facebook - 20 Albums That Changed Your Life - and I have just been thinking about how important music is, and how hard it is to pinpoint the 20 most influential albums in my life thus far. Music has been crucial in my mental and emotional growth, in so many ways. I've gotten through the hardest and saddest times of my life by finding solace in music; I've had the best, most fun times of my life experiencing music.

I did make a list on the fly:

1. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
2. The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
3. Radiohead - The Bends
4. Daft Punk - Live at Coachella
5. Charlie Parker - Bird
6. Younger Brother - Last Days of Gravity
7. Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucia - Friday Night in San Francisco
8. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
9. Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
10. Nirvana - Nevermind
11. Michael Jackson - Off the Wall
12. Joni Mitchell - Blue
13. Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
14. De la Soul - Stakes is High
15. Jay-Z - The Black Album
16. Fiona Apple - Tidal
17. Kleptones - 24 Hours
18. Weezer - Pinkerton
19. Pixies - Doolittle
20. Velvet Underground - Peel Slowly and See

There is a story for every album listed, and I can remember where I first heard it or at least a specific time in which I was listening to it and realized that it had profoundly affected me and deeply moved me in some way.

...but all day since I made the list, other albums have been popping into my head that I feel should be there too. Jethro Tull's 'Benefit', for instance - I heard this when I'd started studying the flute and it blew me away that a flute could be part of a rock and roll band (not to mention Jethro Tull's awesome musicianship, lyrics, and overall kickassness). Rusted Root's 'When I Woke' - I listened to this album at least twice a day for over a year straight. They were one of my first concerts. Digable Planets' 'Reachin'(a new refutation of time and space) and Jurassic 5's EP were two of the albums that made me fall in love with hip hop (I'm white and grew up in Cherry Hill, so cut me some slack if I was a little behind the times). Fela Kuti's 'Expensive Shit' turned my world upside down freshman year of college (and the same can be said of everyone in my Political Economy of African Diaspora Music class in which we were all introduced to Fela - it spread over Ithaca like wildfire). Countless recordings of the orchestral works of Debussy, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Ravel... these all had a major impact on my life throughout high school and influenced me and my music education in huge ways. And motown! What would I do without motown?!

I could go on and on, forever, and the list will be never-ending and ever-evolving, as my tastes evolve, as I discover music I haven't heard before, and as new music is made. If it's frustrating, it's the most pleasant frustration I've ever known. I will gladly revise my list forever and be changed by music in different ways forever. More than anything, it's what gets me out of bed every day and helps me dream peacefully at night.

And on that note, today's song is, for once, applicable.
I'm *this* close to figuring out how to embed an mp3 so you can press play right here in the blog, but still bear with me. And anyway, this video has a singing lemon and a dancing banana and I like it.

i just set up my

i just set up my phone so i can blog via text message. let's see if this works. technology rules!

Happy Purim!

Today is typically the day on which the Jewish tradition is to drink until it's impossible to stand, but seeing as it's Monday, I did not drink. I did, however, eat a corned beef sandwich at Katz's Deli and get some dessert treats at Russ and Daughters (first time there!). The woman who weighed my one hamentashen and one chocolate-dipped macaroon was so nice! Apparently we both really like those chocolate covered jelly rings even though we can't explain why, and we both have developed a taste over time for dark chocolate. Yay!

Now I'm home and am about to continue catching up on Lost. I only have 7 episodes to watch before I'm completely caught up for Wednesday's new episode. That means I've watched 4.5 seasons (almost 90 hours) in the past month. It's insane. I'm ready.

The song of the day has nothing to do with Purim, but I discovered J. Boogie's Dubtronic Science a while ago (most likely through NPR) and I like them. Their songs have wicked grooves and make me jam on the subway. Because embedding videos from YouTube is so easy and I still can't figure out how to embed an mp3 (one of these days, I will), today's song is in video form again. Visuals are cool, you know you like it.

Lions and DJs and Shaft, oh my!

Check out this video mash-up by thesmokeeater(s), DVJs from Amsterdam who found me on MySpace. I hardly go on MySpace anymore and usually ignore friend requests from bands/DJs, but I do appreciate a good mash-up so I checked them out. Glad I did! In the same vein as Mad Decent's video podcasts (which I love), thesmokeeaters combine awesome musical mashups with cool pop culture visuals. It's fun for the whole family... or you know, your ears and eyes. It's very cool that DJs are getting so creative and branching out into live performances with VJs doing visuals, artists painting live, and even real instruments. Definitely makes going to a show more fun than watching a guy press buttons on his laptop. Of course, many DJs are and have been way past that, but it's good to know that more are straying from that awful hipster uninspired norm. Today's theme is brought to you by the letters M, I, and A, by total coincidence.

Classic Times

I had an awesome night last night with my friends Julia and Diana. Julia came up from PA and we all went out for Mexican food and drinks at this place La Taqueria in Park Slope. It was the first time all three of us have hung out in about three years, and, despite many whispered conversations between Diana and Julia about Lost revelations I'm not yet privy to, it rocked. It was just like old times. We went to Union Hall, and I quickly remembered why I don't go there anymore: it's way too crowded and filled with yuppie hipsters. Nonetheless, free karaoke in the basement was surprisingly awesome. We all sang - even Julia and me, who weren't wasted. Everyone danced with everyone. Diana sang with everyone. The guys running it got up and did a killer Guns n' Roses song. So fun!

I've been super happy all week, spending a lot of time with friends, feeling like a huge weight has been lifted. And now today feels like spring, and the World Baseball Classic game is on my TV right now. Oh, how I've missed seeing Jimmy Rollins play! Seriously, every day just gets better and better!

Today's song goes out to M.I.A. because she named her son Ickett. N.A.S.A. - Whachadoin?

**update** Turns out M.I.A. didn't name her son Ickett. I'm not sure what she means by "LOTS OF LOVE STICKIT!!" but I'm pretty sure it means she's still crazy (in a good way).

Daft Punk Tron 2011

ummmmmm Billboard just announced that there is a remake of Tron scheduled for release in 2011, and Daft Punk has been signed to do the soundtrack. News can't get any more awesome.

I'm on a boat

I have only one thing to report on Day 3, and it's the song of the day, which is definitely this, in video form:

Undated

It's Day 2 of This Thing We're Doing (my wonderful cousin and me) and I'm still up for the challenge, though I don't have much exciting news from today. Had a good laugh at work when we received an undated check for a permissions fee. Since it wasn't dated, we couldn't process the payment, so we tried calling the woman (her # was on her check) and the # was disconnected. So I pulled the backup and found an email address, wrote to her, said it would probably easier if she told me what date she sent the check and I could write it in with her approval, or of course if she wanted me to return it and send a new, dated one, to just let me know. [Note that this check was enclosed in a returned, signed contract, which she dated December 2008 (yes, our mail is slow sometimes.)] She emailed back almost immediately saying "Oh sure, why don't you date it August 19, 2009, oh but that's too late to cash isn't it, why don't you date it today?"

Please note the quotes signifying that this is her response verbatim, and a few other things:

(cuz - I <3 lists too.)

1. This woman is clearly out of her mind.
2. Why would we date it August 19, 2009? Really, why? Aside from the fact that it would then be about 6 months overdue and we'd have to just keep it in our check drawer (we don't have a check drawer) until August 19th, at which time we'd have to have a large notes reminding us to a) enter the check on that day and b) find it; does that date have any significance whatsoever?
3. Once this woman realized that was not the best option, she did not edit her one-line email, she simply added to it: "oh but that's too late to cash it, why don't you date it today?"

So I dated it and processed the check, ran it to my supervisor, we cracked up, end of work day, end of story. Really, though, ftw?

Season 4 of Lost is sick so far. 2 episodes in. New characters coming to the island (to save them?) and some realligned trust issues. I'll binge watch the rest of the season this weekend and am pretty excited.

I noticed yesterday, at the start of This Thing We're Doing, that I posted a new song that I like. Or at least it's new to me. How bout we keep that up and listen to a song a day? This is a good purpose for me to blog 25 days this month: share 25 awesome songs. I've been catching up on old NPR All Songs Considered podcasts and have heard some great stuff, in addition to my infinitely growing music collection. Until I can find the happiest, best way to post music here, I'll probably do it a bunch of different ways and sometimes direct you to other sites, which I'm a fan of doing anyway. Knowledge is power, or cool. Whatever, have some.

Today's song is from Eric Chenaux, Canadian lyricist and guitarist who writes simple, beautiful, lulling, sweet songs. Check him out. "Rest Your Daylights" is the song that hooked me first, but I think I love everything he does. It has nothing to do with crazy check lady or Lost, but I never said I was going for a theme here.

The Pursuit of Happyness

I just (finally) saw The Pursuit of Happyness. What a film! a) I love Will Smith; b) His son is so cute, and (surprise) super talented; c) I cried my eyes out. When he hits rock bottom and is sleeping in the bathroom at the train station, I lost it. I looked around my apartment at everything I have - most of it completely unnecessary - and started to cry because I feel so lucky. I've definitely had moments, recently, when I've had to struggle to pay the rent and to eat and have been terrified that I won't make it, but I've managed to scrape by. And I know that no matter how bad it gets, I still have a home, a family, awesome friends, and lots of useless crap - I still have my life. Then when he's told he gets the job - holy stock broker batman, that was the end for me. Maybe I'm over-emotional lately, but that was an incredibly beautiful film. The happiest endings are those that arrive after the most tragic and sad events. I think a main reason this movie struck such a chord in me is for that reason. I know that the hard time I've been going through - winter, bad relationship ending, sickness, etc., will end, and the result will be a happiness greater than if I hadn't gone through any hardship.

Along these lines, I want to recommend an album I've been loving a lot the past few days - partly because the songs are about loss and sadness and stuff I can relate to right now, but also because every song is so heartfelt, haunting, beautiful, prolific, and the vocals are killer. It's sorta indie/rock/country/bluegrass. Check out The Avett Brothers from North Carolina. I love every song on their album "Emotionalism." (see? I am emotional lately.) But it also has some happy, rockin songs so it encompasses all emotions, including happiness. And it's just a great album. Listen to 'Paranoia in B-flat major'

trudging along

i didn't like today. it was monday, it snowed a lot, my commute to work was crowded and long, and my nasty cough isn't getting better. but now i'm home and trying to un-gargamel myself.

on the bright side, i am still reading "the unbearable lightness of being" and liking it a lot. i read a passage today in which kundera talks about tereza reading 'anna karenina' and the symmetrical composition of anna meeting vronsky when someone is run over by a train, and then at the end, anna throws herself under a train. (i've never read this book but i think i will/should at some point.) kundera writes,

"[this] may seem quite 'novelistic' to you, and i am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as 'fictive,' 'fabricated,' and 'untrue to life' into the word 'novelistic.'

i am always very drawn to any kind of literary theory in which the essence of fiction vs. truth is pondered. i wrote my senior thesis on this subject and am constantly trying to prove this very philosophical theory that fiction is not false: it is often capable of revealing truths more than real life can. and this is why i love fiction.

also on the bright side, i renewed my mlb.com audio pass today so i can listen to all the phillies games, and listened to the phillies come back from a big deficit to beat toronto 12-6. yeah, it's only spring training, but good news is good news.

i'm going to try to do this thing my cousin is doing and blog at least 25 days this month. let's see how i do.