stay in the shallow end

I realized we missed the Rainer Maria show here in Charlottesville, so I thought I’d put together this list of upcoming shows that we have planned on going to. The Satellite Ballroom is getting some great acts!

• 9/13 Jump, Little Children at Starr Hill (SH)
• 9/16 Of Montreal at the Satellite Ballroom (SB)
• 9/18 Tilly and the Wall at SB
• 9/19 The Pixies at the Charlottesville Pavillion
• 10/14 Cat Power at SB

And here’s a couple in DC at the 9:30 Club:

• 10/2 The Decememberists
• 10/15 The New Pornographers and Destroyer

Looking at the 9:30 Club schedule, Death Cab and Social Distortion are two other shows I’d love to see. Of all these shows, I think I’m most excited about Cat Power. After reading about how insane she is, especially when it comes to live performances, I can’t wait to actually witness it first hand.

Interested to going to any of these shows? Let me know!

Today is the last day of my first week school. I started last week on Wednesday. I’ve now officially done my first ridiculously stupid thing, and soon thereafter, a second ridiculously stupid thing.

I have classes everyday. Some days they start at 8:30 and other 10:15. Last night, I set my alarm clock so I’d be up in time to get ready for my 10:15 class. I still managed to run late as I was getting ready, so I hopped on the city bus near my house rather than walking to the free UVA bus. I made it to the classroom just before 10:15, and lo and behold, it’s empty. On Tuesdays, I have class at 8:30. Pissed off at myself, I headed back home. When I got home, I realized that on Tuesday’s I have my second class at 10:30, and I’d successfully missed that one as well.

At this point I wanted to kill myself. I’ve been working on getting my act together for school, but events like this are just completely demoralizing.

So those fancy toilets I blogged about a couple of months ago are also installed in O’Hare. There’s a brouhaha about how they spend $67,258 per month on the plastic alone for the toilet condoms, and an additional $51,423 per month in maintenance. Maintenance includes a contractor going around and checking whether or not the plastic needs replacing. Amazingly enough, this totals up to $1,424,172 so you can have fresh plastic under your bum while using an airport bathroom.

Read the whole story at the Sun-Times here.

A few things from the last few days:

• I’m done with Greatest Hits CDs. I was looking for a Cure song, and I first looked at the greatest hits, but it lacked the track I was looking for. I picked up the album it first appeared on (Disintegration), and it turned out to be phenomenal. It tells a story, captures a mood, and flows in a way that compilations just don’t.

• Disintegration plus my two most recent album acquisitions mark an increasingly rare event for me. The last three new albums I’ve acquired have all been awesome. The other two are The Little Machines by Her Space Holiday and Get Away From Me by Nellie McKay (thanks to Jeremy). I’m glad it happened, because I’ve become increasingly frustrated at my prospects of finding new music that I like (although the Cure album is far from new music).

• I love surprise bargains! I went to Hair Cuttery to get my hair cleaned up around the edges, because I’m growing it out a bit. It’s your typical Supercuts-Fantasic Sams-Mastercuts type place, and on the wall it said $14 for a hair cut. Fair enough I thought. Well, it turned out that because i was just getting the edges cleaned up, it was only $5. Sweet! I left Juanita a fat tip and walked out happy.

I just spent about 20 minutes pruning my buddy list and the numbers in my phone. I managed to drop a good chunk of the list due to out of date contact info. In other cases, they are contacts that were old clients or old leads that I have no need to keep in touch with since I’m starting school.

Looking at the remaining list of names in my phone, I see people I know I’m never going to call. I should remove them, but I don’t. Their presence lets me delude myself into believing that there’s still some sort of bond between us. Maybe some days I scroll past one of their names, and I think, “Oh, I could call so and so,” and that simple thought makes me feel that they’re still in my life.

Buddy lists are a different beast. There’s rarely any incentive to prune a buddy list. Mine has only undergone one major pruning a few years ago when I did a mass Opium/Pit purge (for those that weren’t members, Opium and the Pit were the mailing lists for Jump, Little Children and Ben Folds Five). I’d accumulated a few dozen screennames, many of whom I only spoke to once or twice. Now only four of them remain.

Given the amount of time I spent in front of my computer, it’s not surprising that how well I keep in touch with a given friend is directly related to how much they are online. There are people I went to high school with who I barely spoke to, and I happened to get their screenname after they went to college and all of a sudden they became some of my closest friends. There are others who I thought I’d never fall out of touch with, but now it has happened. Apparently picking up a phone is way too much effort for me.

So if you’re reading this and I don’t have your screenname, send it to me. If you don’t have a screenname, go get one and send it to me.

A list of things that I didn’t think/worry about while at the Superchunk show Friday night:

• I still haven’t done my taxes, and the extension deadline is in two weeks.
• I have no idea what the professors are talking about in my summer methods seminars.
• Three of the closest friends I’ve made in Charlottesville left for the west coast this week.
• I’m far behind where I should be with my client.
• I’m 27 years old, but I feel 37.

It was an awesome show. First show I’ve come back from in years with sore calves.