Monday, September 29, 2008

What Is This Quintessence of Cotton?


Do you ever get that feeling while in the middle of a massively intense and long essay-based test that you are SO in the zone and everything you're writing is brilliant? Most people do. But the extra-special Mary aftertaste is the paralyzing rush of paranoia that maybe you've just been at this so long and had so many Diet Dr. Peppers while working on it that at this point you're writing jibberish but you're too out of it to know it.

So yeah, long story short I rocked my take-home Shakespeare test. I think.

But all I could think about while doing the test was how much I wanted to blog about Al Pacino. I know, I'm insanely lame. But I felt super strongly about it! So to make myself finish the test and not blog about how much I loved Scent of a Woman I went down the street to Denny's at one in the morning and stayed there until almost five with my Shakespeare materials and was the weird girl in the corner and loving it. So now I can do what I please.

Except now I don't want to talk about Al Pacino. Although he is basically a god. Hoo-rah. Instead I want to talk about my hoodie.

This hoodie is the essence of all hoodies. It does what every hoodie aspires to do: protect and serve. I was my guardian angel and safety blanket on my way home from Afognak Island. It deserves a blog devoted to it.

I was stuck in Kodiak for a full day before my plane left at 7 pm, and I had nothing to do but wander the streets for five hours before it would even be worth it to arrive at the one-room airport. Since I was too young to even chill in the bars I was stuck on the one little tourist strip looking at all the pieces of driftwood. And it was there that I picked up my little unwanted friend. We'll call him Doped-Up Fisherman Boy.

He was a 23-year-old hard core drug user right out of rehab ("It's all good now cause I just smoke weed now") who was working the fishing boats to try and stay out of trouble for the summer. And apparently it had been a slow couple of weeks cause he had washed ashore here in Kodiak and didn't have much to do except follow me around and try to convince me to come and check out his vessel. Pretty sure there was some tricky double talk going on there.

The leering was starting to get majorly out of control, as was the accidental brush-past moves, but I really had nowhere to go or even anyone to look imploringly at since it was drizzling and I was the only shopper in most of the stores. I had already had a terrible couple of weeks and I felt like if he looked down my shirt one more time I was going to scream.

And that's when I saw my hoodie. Size XXL made for mountain men out to kill the bear and eat heap big fish, it was soft and hung down to my knees and stretched out so far on either side that the slightest hint of a curve was completely obliterated. Plus it had a nice deep hood that I could pull up so that there was no hair and hardly any face to prove I was female. It was sixty bucks, way more than I even spend on jeans, but I bought it in an instant. Doped-Up Fisherman Boy did not approve, especially when I said I didn't need a bag and just pulled it over my head.

The hoodie brought me comfort, and I think it had enough wiliness inherently in the fabric to find a pay phone and call a taxi while DUFB was getting crazy fascinated by something shiny. Yeah I was at the airport four hours early, but the hoodie made the seats comfortable enough to sleep on. Since then the hoodie has been my constant sleeping/vegging/snuggling companion, and I hope one day to submit it for display at an office for a good cause, like the Castration of All Leering Fisherman Institution.

PS I know that I'm not supposed to post during the day but since I was only allotted a two hour nap while working on the test it still feels like four a.m. so please let this slide. Al Pacino is the man.

I Am In Love With Al Pacino


More to continue in a couple hours once I make a dent in this take-home test.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Waves Are Headed In Three Directions At Once


Do you ever just lay on your hard floor, sink into your two-millimeter-thin carpet, stare at the ceiling and just blast a whole CD without doing anything else? People seem to do it all the time in the movies, but I don't think I've done it since junior high, and that listening experience was just me playing "I Knew I Loved You" by Savage Garden on repeat for a whole summer because I danced to that song with Kylen Zibetti at the end-of-year dance in seventh grade.

If questioned about this I will deny everything without a blink of an eye.

But anyways, the point is (aside from me remembering now that my carpet back then was wayyy thicker and I wish I could stand my parents just to live in such luxury again) that despite all the iconic images and the cliche nature, it really is a phenomenal way to live music.

Or maybe the point is that I'm a geek that takes herself too seriously and tries to squeeze out some meaning from a day where I barely left the apartment.

But regardless of the motivation of my musing, soaking in music like that just rocks. Listening can be a really intense experience when it isn't in your roommates car or as you're walking the halls trying to decide if you can show your face in your ethics class when you don't have the paper to turn in.

And while my roommate may think I'm absolutely insane to be doing this at three in the morning, at least it drowns out the fact that she is constantly and creepily talking to herself under her breath, even in the midst of her brushing-teeth-for-seven-minutes-straight ritual (and yes I did time that).

I highly recommend late 70's rock or out-to-prove-how-shallow-the-world-is 90's. Both have great layered melodies that can kinda blow your mind when there's nothing in there already to diminish the experience.

Also go for the late late late night listening if you aren't into illegal stimulants, I hypothesize that it's the only way people like me can really appreciate the full wonders of The Who without inhaling.

Oh, and kids, stay away from too much Dashboard. It just makes you really whiny in the morning.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Coming From A Strange Synthesizer Place


I'm musing about setting a rule for myself that I can never start blogging until after two a.m., I think it'll produce the most entertaining tidbits this way.

I've immersed myself in a huge music project--not huge in the groundbreaking, contributing to the progression of art and therefore society way, just huge in amount of time and brain matter I've squeezed into the making of one lousy "mixed tape."

Don't worry, the mix is for myself, it isn't intended for a specific audience (well, I'll force it on Becca but like that's news that she is has to endure everything that passes through my head), so I'm not about to make some awkward and stomach-turning declaration of any sort. That kind of behavior is so two months ago. I simply haven't been able to sleep for the last two nights, and this seemed at the time to be a worthwhile effort.

The fact that I have my first exam in almost two years just might have contributed to this crazed devotion to my newest burnt CD. But I will not tolerate such a speculative line of questioning.

But my past academic delinquency and unconfirmed current nerves have nothing to do with this epic music search. I have for two straight days been trying to find a copy of the song "Different Situation" by Athenaeum (for free because I am the cheapest scam artist you have the pleasure of knowing) and it has still eluded me! Bollocks. But I will not be defeated! I will find my passive indie rock song AND learn that the Ordovician period comes before the Silurian by the end of this night or pull my earring out in the attempt.

Sidenote: (new piercing+stressful times)^how little I have slept=always fiddling with it, aka getting a little shiver of pain every 2.5 seconds. Kinda feel like I have a trendy inconspicuous cilice on my person. How wristcutters of me. Or devout, take your pick.

Ha! Victory! While multi-tasking I was finally able to make a breakthrough (now that Queen song is stuck in my head) and "Different Situation" is all mine! What bliss, what a landmark achievement that is now forever recorded on the information superhighway.

Hmm maybe I should have tried to be a little more profound on my first post.