Wild Light and Doves, 6/7 @ House of Blues Boston

Note: I hijacked an internet-bearing computer at work because my manager is away and I can get away with it for another couple of days, but its abilities are limited so I can't post any pictures or videos on here just yet. I'll flush this out later...

Always one to be late to the game, I finally saw a show at the new House of Blues across from Fenway Park on Sunday night. Wild Light, who I can't seem to stop mentioning on this thing, was opening for Doves, the ambient indie kings of Manchester.

I've never been to another existing House of Blues so I wasn't sure what to expect. It was a great use of the space formerly occcupied by Axis and Avalon (RIP). The stage was wide and just high enough off the floor to give us a great view of the bands and the sound quality was sharp. There was ample room to dance around on the floor without inconveniencing too many, as well as easy escape routes should one need to leave the concert floor for a refreshment at one of the 3+ bar areas studded along the walls.

The crowd was surprisingly sedate during Wild Light's set despite the fact that the band announced the show was a homecoming and was their last stop on the tour with Doves. A 50+ man with a toothy grin asked me what their name was at the end of their set, so I know they made at least one new fan.

TBC...

Also want to write about Passion Pit and The Phoenix Boston Music Awards...but the bank has blocked many websites from their dear tellers. I'm off to explore what else I'm blocked from seeing online, and maybe help a customer or two...

Beep my Beep, Jersey

I don't know, but it's just fucking amazing for some reason.

I can't find much about Addeboy vs Cliff, but I do know that they're a house/electro duo from Sweden, and they look like this:

I found their video floating around on another blog that I have since lost track of.

The song and video remind me of middle school...and parts of high school. And the summer nights I spent at that 17 and under club on the Jersey Shore when I was 14. My pals and I would wear our most sparkly spaghetti strap tanks and whitest keds and have someone's parents drop us off outside the club, where we'd grind with the underage surfer guys and sweat our asses off until it closed at 10pm. What the hell were we thinking?

Still, those nights were awesome, and I remember them vividly. Who knew I'd be more of a clubber at 14 than I am at 23? Is that kinda lame?

Leave it to the Swedes to bring it all back. I wonder if that club is still around...?

Where do I go from here?

Living at home since school has been convenient, and I love my family very much. But I don't want to spend my entire life in Massachusetts. The year I lived in Maine doesn't count much because, well, I mean, it's upstate Maine. I need somewhere a little more stimulating.

Though I don't really want to end up renting in Boston, I've marked it with a black spot of possibility on my seismic map of the United States. Also marked are San Francisco, NYC and DC.

I just spent a few days in San Francisco and absolutely loved it. I could see myself there. I felt good wandering the streets and I couldn't stop myself from imagining a new life there. I want that place so bad.

But, I've also thought about moving to DC and NY, specifically Brooklyn. My past/future roommate would prefer NY, so that's probably the most likely contender.

DC is fun and I really appreciate their public transportation. But, it's a city full of Type A's. Compared to my other favorite cities, it's a bit stiff. But I know some really wonderful people in that area and that's always worth a lot.

I really want California though. That place just fit. It felt good. It felt familiar. It felt like home.

Seeing as we have no money, significant debt and dismal job opportunities, our options are limited. Or maybe they're unlimited. I'm willing to work any kind of terrible job so long as I can experience something new for a while. Anyone else?

To Be Well-Read

It has officially been a year since I completed college. I haven't had any homework, exams, professors or study groups in the last year. My senior year was an apocalyptic struggle due to a broken right foot, a sprained left ankle, the stomach flu and a few other unplanned unpleasantness, but despite all that, I've really missed school. I've missed being challenged, and educated, I guess.

Bank-tellering has been challenging. It's a completely different beast from what I've spent the last 8 or so years focusing my efforts on. Working in finance and counting all day has shown me that I'm more well-rounded than I had realized, and I'm proud of that. I feel like I can do any job well if I just shut my trap and suck it up. I've done that pretty well for a year, but I still miss the ole' book report and research paper now and then.

Grub Street, Inc helped satiate my need for literary sustenance for a few weeks, but now that's done and I have no one handing me assignments anymore, and I don't have to face the weekly pressure of reading a freshly-hatched short story in front of a room of strangers. It was a huge challenge, but it felt very good.

So, until I save up enough $$$ to sign up for another writing workshop, I've decided to challenge myself. In the pursuit of becoming "well-read" I will attempt to read all of the books listed on The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels. I've already read a few thanks to Framingham High School's exceptional Honors English curriculum (...) but can't remember much of them.

I've dusted off my library card and will being my "Well-Read Challenge of Summer 2009" tomorrow. My college roommate has just moved home and I plan on enlisting her as well, because 1) she's already read way more of these than I have and 2) we technically have a 2-person reading group that unofficially disbanded last fall when she became a slacker and stopped reading the books we picked (bitch) but I'll let it slide. She knows her shit, and I like that.

Here's to a summer of words.
Books already read in red. Ha!

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
   
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

Shit. But this will feel good.

The Shins, The Boring.

I saw The Shins on 5/20 at The Orpheum. A friend invited me and I agreed to go because, 1) I missed the friend, and 2) I like going to shows. However, I'm not a huge fan of the band. I had a moment or two back when I was 18 during my freshman year of college, much like the tens of thousands of other college freshman who still fall victim to the band these days.

Ok, they're alright. I grew tired of the band about a week after buying Chutes Too Narrow. They still bore me, but their live set bored me something fierce.

I don't know many of their songs aside from those on that big album that came out around the same time as that little movie that helped their star to rise. I don't think that's the reason I didn't enjoy the show though. Rather, it was the fact that they played all of the slowest songs in their catalog and it was such a snooooozefest. Even my friend, who I'm pretty sure liked The Shins a lot more than I do because she bought the tickets, was yawning and fighting the urge to curl up in her seat and take a cat nap.

Oh yeah, and I don't like shows at The Orpheum. Rows of stationary chairs? Assigned seating? $10 beers? Three strikes, Orpheum. Three strikes.

So, case and point, The Shins are really boring live and I think their fame has worked against them. Maybe in a small club with no chairs and a large bar they would put on a good show, and I was in fact told that they do great in that kind of venue. But that show in Boston was a fail. A crowded, sleepy, steamy, expensive fail.

Newport Folk Festival: August 1st & 2nd

This might be a little early to write about, but I don't want to forget that it's happening.

First, the meat and taters:

General Admission: General Admission seating is first-come first-served on the lawn. Patrons may bring blankets and low-backed beach chairs. Adult: $ 69.00 in advance, $ 75.00 on festival weekend, if available.

Venue: Fort Adams State Park, Newport, RI

What a dump, right?

Apparently, most people only buy tickets to one day of this 2 day festival. I will be one of those people. I plan to go August 1st, to see the following:

Pete Seeger, The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes, Gillian Welch, The Avett Brothers, Billy Bragg, Iron & Wine, Mavis Staples, Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Ben Kweller, The Low Anthem, Brett Dennen, Tift Merritt, Tao Rodriguez Seeger, Langhorne Slim.

The fucking Fleet Foxes. My beloved bearded baroque band of Washington state. They're the reason I'm really going, because it's the only scheduled show they're playing in the area.

Also, the venerable Iron & Wine. The closest I've come to seeing him live is watching an episode of Austin City Limits at 3am one morning. My fuzzy, crackly, horrible TV hardly distracted from the fact that it was an absolutely beautiful concert. His songs are mesmerizing.

My former/future roommate and I stayed up until 7am one night drinking wine and watching music videos. I kept playing this video over and over and over and over and over. We both swore to become flamenco dancers that night. These women are so sexy and graceful. They were the most strong, beautiful, confident, and amazingly sensual women I'd ever seen. And I said as much, over and over and over and over and over again that night.

Also, Tom Morello, of Rise Against the Machine, will be performing. At a folk festival. Who knew?

The legendary Pete Seeger is performing both days of the festival to continue celebrating his 90th birthday, which was May 3rd. HIS 90TH BIRTHDAY.

To help Pete celebrate, watch this video and buy a ticket to the festival here, because this land was made for you and me.

And not to be outdone by Pete Seeger, I am also going to celebrate my birthday. That's right, on August 2nd, I will become 23 years old. 90? Pfft. Whatever.

Update on Wild Light Show

I mentioned Wild Light 2 posts ago, and saw them in Northampton with Bodega Girls last Saturday.

The show was at Iron Horse, a literal hole in the wall on a side street that you wouldn't know was there unless you had already managed to stumble by it once before. There wasn't much of a crowd, but the crowd present was spirited and friendly.

Also, the bartender was fucking amazing. He reminded me of a saloon owner from the Wild West, complete with an oxford shirt under a dark vest and long scraggly hair. He recommended certain drinks to my friend and me, resulting in our quick intoxication.

Bodega Girls were amazing. The lead singer jumped off the stage and made good use of the ample space available to him on the empty dance floor. Well, empty except for my table on one side and the members of Wild Light propped up against the wall on the other. I thought they'd be hiding downstairs somewhere waiting for their set, seeing as they're becoming big wigs with all their big wig touring, but no. They were among the plebes the entire time. I was impressed, and drunk.

I'm pretty sure Wild Light played every song on their debut album, Adult Nights. The dance floor filled up quickly, and everyone who was previously unfamiliar with them picked up some of the lyrics and were singing along with the band.

After the show, the band hung around a bit and talked to friends. I pushed my way through and started telling them about my love for their album and how it's become a valuable writing tool for me. Which is totally true. But, I was drunk, and I'm pretty sure I said something like "from one artist to another...thank you!" They were so friendly, all shook my hand and introduced themselves and were very gracious. True gents.

But the fact that they tolerated my inebriated ramblings really makes me hope they'll "hit it big" or whatever it is bands wish for. I will definitely be seeing them with Doves at House of Blues in Boston next month.

Next time though, I think I'll lay off the sauce.

Sweden wins again: FIRST AID KIT

I've always been fond of female singer-songwriters. I had my hulking black boombox perched on my windowsill for most of the 90's cooing out everything from Jewel's Pieces of You, to the banshee anthems of Alanis Morisset's Jagged Little Pill, Fiona Apple's nightmare-inducing Extraordinay Machines, and a healthy side of prime R&B courtesy of Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of... in 1998.

This love for the empowered singer-songwriter femme fatale developed further into our current decade. It's morphed into something a bit more hipster and hokey, very unlike the broody tunes with which I entered adolescence in the 90's. Now, instead of Alanis and Fiona, it's Kate Nash, Regina Spektor and Kaki King.

The 2000's are nearing their end, and with the end of another developmentally complicated decade I feel I must continue my journey along the river of the female songstress with a new breed of talent. I present my latest obsession: First Aid Kit.

Meet Johanna and Klara Söderberg, two Swedish sisters who were still infants in their cribs when Alanis was singing to me about traffic jams and irony.

I accidentally found First Aid Kit on youtube while searching for Fleet Foxes, whom I was planning on writing about. Eventually I will write about Fleet Foxes, and the Newport Folk Festival, and camping, and the general appeal of bearded men. I serendipitously found a cover that these girls sang on a log in the woods of Sweden. Their voices gave me goosebumps that still are struggling to recede.

And they're so young! They are the same ages as my two little brothers. Which, naturally, leads me to wonder why the hell my little brothers haven't formed a melodic folk duo yet. I mean, what the hell? The only thing I've seen them perform together is "Albie the Racist Dragon" from Flight of the Conchords.

I'm going to try to adopt Johanna and Klara as the precious little Swedish sisters I've always wanted. I also want to take them camping, though I think they could kick my Yankee ass in that department. I mean, 1) they wear amazing flannels regularly, and 2) they film live performances in the woods. They win, I think.

Favorite of 2009 thus far

Wild Light. An indie band from New Hampshire. Have been compared to early U2, Arcade Fire (with whom they've toured) and Bright Eyes. Not convinced yet?

I first heard their single, "California on My Mind," on WFNX out of Providence while driving home after another bleak day at work. I couldn't get it out of my head but I also couldn't remember the name of the band. I kept hearing parts of the song on the radio, but the band name escaped me for a good 2 weeks. Why? Who knows. Incongruous black holes along Rt. 9 that only hit when I hear a good song. Or maybe I'm just very dull after a day full of bank-tellering.

Doesn't that drive you crazy when you hear a song that you instantly love, and need to hear again, but it alludes you somehow? Finally, on one rainy ride home, I heard the song again. I pulled out my notebook and wrote down some of the lyrics so I could ask my friend Google to find the song for me. Google, once again, prevailed.

I went to Newbury Comics that day and bought the album, and it's been spinning in my car stereo since. It's turned out to be a really amazing writing tool, too. I always think most clearly when I'm driving, and that's why I get most of my pages written in random parking lots up and down Massachusetts. Turns out, driving + Wild Light gets the pages written even faster.

I'm seeing them at Iron Horse in Northampton in May with Bodega Girls, a completely ridiculous group [that I think will be amazing live] with a sound best described as a "lo-fi hedonistic dance party."

Ironically, I'm going to San Francisco the very next weekend. Fuck California, though.

It's them Brits again

I don't know how well The Charlatans are known in the US, but I do know that it isn't easy to find their albums at my local record store. What gives?

I've been listening to this song a lot. The video tries too hard to be indie and it features the trust fund hipster "celebuspawn" of the UK, but...I have no good excuse to justify my actions. I hum it at work and try to reenact their hip English dance moves in the mirror at the end of the hall, even though my brother tells me my moves are heinous.

Nevertheless, here's a bit of good ol' Brit Brat Pop.

What have you done for me lately?

I'm very inconsistent with this thing, and it has absolutely no focus aside from whatever youtube video or wandering thought I'm focused on for at least a minute. I have reviews of some restaurants and bars to do, but I need a little free time for that. Surprisingly, working inconsistent hours, writing/transcribing, the occasional nap, hair cuts and damaging my already dismal ligaments at the gym has left me with little time to sit down and play on the googlynet or watch a bit of tv.

There's also a lot of time dedicated to cats. I know for a fact I would be a happy cat lady because I have no problem telling my cats jokes and letting them claw at me all day.

This isn't my cat, but he is about 95% identical to my Binx Monster. Binx looks a bit more like a bat and his eyes are almost popping out of his head. He also has tufts of white hair on his chest, armpits and crotch. He matured so fast!

Anyways, I dropped a major bucket of change on my first writing workshop yesterday. This month I start a multi-week fiction workshop with Grub Street and I can't wait. I've been stalking this organization for over a year now, waiting for the right time to join. I thought maybe I would try for an internship there because then classes would be free, but it just doesn't work into my bank lady schedule. Bank hours are great. So easy. Wonderful. Home by 4. But internships are out of the question.

So I saved some green and called them up, and I'm one step closer to achieving my one goal in life: write awesome books, have publishers kiss the rings on my fingers and beg for my manuscript, have the awesome books turned into amazing movies starring whichever hunk I may or may not be interested in at that point, and then take my money and move to a mountain overlooking the ocean in Maine. If only a mountain overlooked the ocean in Maine. I'll be famous and wealthy by then so I'll just call up my (soon-to-be) friend Stephen King, and he'll lead me to/build me my dream Mainer Manor. I mean, we both went to UMaine. Our paths are destined to cross.

I don't really like his books though. But I bet he won't like mine either.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Spike Jonze. Maurice Sendak. Monsters. Arcade Fire.

This gives me goosebumps!

The loss of my innocence

From my darling mother I inherited brown hair, brown eyes, an inability to keep plants alive, and an unfaltering love for Daniel Day-Lewis.

It started with Last of the Mohicans. It is my mom's favorite movie, and I was forced to watch it when I was too young to stomach its mature themes. The movie literally haunted me.

I first watched it on a tiny silver television we found stuffed in a downstairs closet of a solid old house that we were renting on the shore of Christmas Cove, Maine. The violence was excessive and the throbbing love stories woven into the plot were above my prepubescent comprehension.

Despite all this, there was one thing I clearly understood: Daniel Day-Lewis was a one hot hunk of man.

...we now own Last of the Mohicans on VHS and DVD.

WANTED: THAT JOB I WAS PROMISED

I googled "new grads recession jobs" in an attempt to find articles that would help answer why the hell I can't get a job and to find a bit of reassurance and support.

I know everyone is struggling--unemployment checks are the most common type that I cash at the bank. I hear heartbreaking stories everyday and a staggering number of my customers have little red flags that pop up when they do a transaction because their mortgages haven't been paid since November.

It's hard not to get completely discouraged, and it's been a wicked blow to my confidence that I haven't been able to start a career, or apply any of the skills I worked hard to earn in school. So many people, myself included, can't help but feel like it's their fault they aren't able to find their place.

So googling "new grads recession jobs" stacked a few really great articles in my lap. And, yes, that is how I phrase my googles. Just yesterday I googled "cat pee inside everywhere" and "anxiety bank teller fear." Google helps me work out my issues, one incorrectly phrased query at a time.

An article on Allbusiness.com was obviously written by a robot, because it churned out all of the typical "duh" advice spewed on the news all of the time that doesn't actually help at all. They had one particularly discouraging blurb:

The possibility of an economic recession is leading employers to set high expectations for new hires. As a result, it has become more important than ever for job seekers to leverage their experience, enthusiasm and long-term value to employers to have the best chances of surviving potential layoffs due to budget cuts and downsizing.

I don't know how much more enthusiastic I could be short of dropping to my knees at interviews and waving my arms above my head shouting, "I can DO THIS! PLEASE let me do this!!!!"

Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist, a really encouraging blog full of career/life advice from a successful woman who's "been there," had this to say on the subject of new grads vs the economy:

The best thing you can do for yourself is take time to figure out who you are and where you fit in the world. No one teaches you that in school. You need to do it yourself. Grad school is a way to delay this process, rather than move you forward, according to Thomas Benton of the Chronicle of Higher Education. So instead of dodging tough questions by going back to school, try being lost. It’s normal, and honest, and you will end up with more self-knowledge and less debt than your grad-school counterparts, and in many cases, you will be similarly qualified for your next big job.

Ahh, that's the kind of advice I've been looking for.

And this one I especially love:

You don’t need to be learning the perfect thing in your job. You just need to be learning. Don’t tell yourself you need a job that gives your life meaning. Jobs don’t do that; doesn’t that make you feel better? Suddenly being in the workplace doesn’t seem so bad.

I've been trying to look at the wide wide WIDE range of jobs I've had since graduating last May in this way. I've learned a bit from all of them. Learned what I hate, what my strengths are, and what I need to improve upon (i.e. stop being so shy and try to drop my voice a few octaves so I don't sound like a 14 year old/muppet.) I've also had the chance to meet a huge array of wonderful people from all types of backgrounds, all working for the same cause. We all just want to find a bit of peace while we earn our keep, and to enjoy it day by day.

And, just in case you didn't get the point yet, Penelope slams the final nail into the grad school coffin here:

In a world where people did not change careers, grad school made sense. Today, grad school is antiquated. You invest three to six extra years in school in order to get your dream career. But the problem is that not only are the old dream careers deteriorating, but even if you have a dream career, it won’t last. You’ll want to change because you can. Because that’s normal for today’s workplace. People who are in their twenties today will change careers about four times in their life. Which means that grad school is a steep investment for such a short period of time. The grad school model needs to change to adapt to the new workplace. Until then. Stay away.

In the fall I was hell-bent on attending grad school. I got the recommendations, the applications, the transcripts, and the fancy heavy-weight paper that says "I fucking mean business" but just couldn't commit. Do I want publishing? Creative writing? Teaching? Law? I have no idea. I want them all. So until I can commit/afford such an investment, I'm just going to keep working and learning...in the school of hard knocks!

Framingham vs Economy vs Cultural Rift

An interesting article about how the recession-depression is affecting the culturally conflicted Framingham, my home town.

Lauren Conrad: Trust Fund Tart, Designer, Intern, Reality Star, Author....?

My peer, Lauren Conrad of "The Hills" and "Laguna Beach" fame, has written a young adult novel "loosely based" on her own life experiences.

Plot: A 19 year old girl moves to LA and becomes the star of a reality show.

It's just too easy to mock this one.

The best part? L.A. Candy is the first installment in a 3-book series!

L.A. Candy is a reference to cocaine...right? Cute.

scotch + history + michael cera

Drunk History Vol. 1 - Featuring Michael Cera from Michael Cera

If all history specials had been made this way, I would have paid more attention during my two years of AP US History.

zapatos calientes y tamales calientes

After a long, long, LONG week that I was happy to see the end of, I decided to reward myself with some new shoes. I bought 2 new pairs last week, but my love tank still was not full.

I arrived at DSW still in my bank lady attire, which apparently looks expensive, because one of the salespeople, Halil, came up to me and asked if I make a lot of money. I went "HA!" and said I have two part time jobs but remain below the poverty line. He then offered me a job because he said I have a "good eye for shoes" and that he can tell that I "think outside the box." I went "HA!" and we had a good laugh.

After giving Halil my contact information so that I could join their savings club (I think that's why I gave him all my information...), he said he's going to look into getting a job at my bank. He's also a substitute teacher at my former high school and middle school. For some reason this creeped me out a little.

Halil did inspire me to use my "good eye" to find a crazy pair of shoes because I was in the mood to throw down for a pair of crazy shoes. I spent some time looking around, taking care to "think outside of the box," and I found these:

But I got them in black.

I feel like a hot little tamale in them.

Yes, these shoes make me feel like a plate of steamed Mexican food.

Abbey Road Time Lapse

After seeing this, I will take care to never attempt to recreate the Abbey Road cover.

During the day.

Secrets...

I was looking at an old blog of mine that I abandoned in October (one that was even more self-indulgent and personal than this one. Ha!) and I found a list of things I wanted to remind myself to write about. Problem is, I don't have any idea now what I had to say about any of this stuff. I don't even know what most of it refers to. I should start adding footnotes to my lists. But I'll probably forget.

The secret list:

-sigur ros

-nyc

-fear in brooklyn

-accordions on the L

-beyonce

-malden future

-hunting puffins

-education vs gothabilly


Why did I feel the urge to discuss beyonce? Or the hunting of puffins? And what does education have to do with gothabilly, and why are they in conflict?

This will keep me up all night!

I also found this:

"after seeing craig ferguson at wilbur on saturday night i'm so very attracted to him. who care's that he's 24 years older than me...i can't control my carnal desires. fergie's on my list."

oh, yes...that I remember...

A trend I can sure as hell follow with my head held high high high

(Lisa Lutz, author of The Spellman series, and Julie Powell, author of Julie & Julia)

I've been reading a lot lately. I have an addiction to compulsively buying books. A compulsive addition. An addicting compulsion? Asante sana squash banana.

Tonight I visited ye olde B&N and traded a fat $20 for 3 more books. Two were from the bargain aisle, hence my most excellent savings. I've had really great luck at the bargain aisle/table/bin/box/corner (or whatever incarnation in which it may be.) If you dig, you will find.

My best bargain buy was The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz (pictured up there.) B&N had a $1 table (!!!!!!) at their store in Hadley, MA and I was on it like a cat on cucumber. Like my cat on cucumber. I think I have the only cat in the world who prefers a crisp and juicy cucumber over a hot and bloody piece of steak. True story.

The book was $1 plus tax but thanks to my excluuuusive membership to the store, I got it for a slick 98 cents. Wow!

Anyways, this is almost completely irrelevant to this post's intended subject.

The Spellman Files was one of the best books I've read in the last few years, as was it's sequel, The Spellman Curse. I am sweating out the last few weeks until Revenge of the Spellmans comes out in March.

So off topic!!!!! Thinking about that damn cucumber-eating cat has completely distracted me.

I'll make it quick before I get lost again.

Lisa Lutz described herself as a chronic underachiever and permanent temp. Julie Powell, whose book is being turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep described herself in this same manner. Perma-temps, a little too miserable and unable to commit to any visible path. They were working to live but not really living.

Not really living...until...they wrote hit novels!

So you see, my problems are solved. This trend of somewhat-underachieving women who work dead-end jobs until their fingers gnarl and their high heels are ground to stubs becoming successful authors is a bandwagon I plan to jump onto.

Now now now, I'm not an underachiever. I achieve really hard. So effing hard my fingers are gnarling. But I'm great at the temp thing. That's all I've ever really done. In fact, I was hired for a second part-time job this very day! So even though I'm not in my desired industry and my career prospects are dead in the water, according to Lutz and Powell, I'm on the right track.

(another prospective temp job all aspiring writers should consider...)
(...cough cough, Flight of the Conchords...)

Hooray for inspiration!

Temp-4-ever.

Animal Collective: YAY

I've been a fan of Animal Collective and their weird hypno-pop for a few years now, though I admit to having lost track of them within the last year. That was until their video for My Girls appeared.

Give it some time...it starts off slow but it's such a great song. It makes me think of Disney World and pineapples and red shoes and green leaves and lemonade in shorts.

The whole album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, is great. Great for road trips and trips home from work (it's therapeutic to yell "Whoooo!" along with the chorus to My Girls.)

And isn't it nice to hear a happy song that's all about a dad wanting nothing more than to be able to provide "four walls and adobe slabs" to shelter his girls? It makes my heart throb in a very sweet way.

Chester French. Yay or Nay?

I can't decide what I think about these guys. I'm going to make a list:

Pros:
*undeniably adorable
*Harvard grads (pfft, but whatever...)
*I've always appreciated musical duos (see: white stripes, mates of state)
*local boys
*super catchy
*violent video (i like being surprised)

Cons:
*I just can't decide whether I really like them

I think that, in the spirit of being open-minded, fair, balanced, knowledgeable, yellow, downtown, equal, curvy, mellon...I should listen to another song by them. It isn't fair to judge a band based on only one song, right?

This verdict will require more contemplation and more tracks.

Oh, I just thought of another con.

*One member of band in question [see: Max] was married to Peaches Geldof. Said member is now divorced from Peaches Geldof. But she's a pretty big con.

Nothing I con more than trust fund tarts who spend their days doing blow and divorcing rather than working and appreciating.

Okay, okay, so I'm bitter. I don't want to spend my days doing blow...but I wouldn't mind the trust fund or the Chester French.

A Renewed Effort!

As the days wear on, my career prospects get bleaker and bleaker. Or perhaps just further off course...publishing is going under and nobody need's a new writer, so I will recommit myself to this blog because being a bank teller only exercises half of my brain.

It exercises the half that is horribly under developed. Calculating and cash handling all day has literally given me head pains. The deep recesses of my cerebellum are throbbing in ways previously unknown to me.

I'm trying to think of it like exercising. The more times you get on that treadmill or lift that iron, the easier it will become and the less you'll feel like a cripple the next day. If I keep exercising my math head, my math head will get stronger and be able to run farther.

So, uhh...right right right. I'm going to do this thing more. Do it a lot more. I've been many places since my last post and I want to rip them apart and/or give them flowers. I'll make a list to remind myself:


*Big City: Brighton Ave., Allson
An alternative to the 80 minute wait you face at Sunset Tap on a Saturday Night. Less food, less beer, but more tables and toilets. What more can a gal ask for?
*Sanctuary: State St., Boston
I am by no means a nightclub person. Is that even the right term? Clubs. Hip joint. Hot Spot. Hot steamy room that charges you $5 to walk in the door, $3 to hang up your coat and $7 for a sip of vodka tonic. Maybe I started my foray into the land of the nightclubcrawlers at the wrong place. Maybe conceptual clubs aren't my thing. Three floors, the bottom is "hell" and the top is "heaven". All I know is that after walking from Beacon Hill to Sanctuary in a new pair of patent brown t-strap heels (meow), stomping down a flight of stairs to hang my coat in hell and then the two story ascent to heaven was painful enough to challenge one of Dante's circles. My blisters be damned.
*6B Lounge: Beacon St., Boston
Adjacent to Emmet's Pub, this place was just...blah. Dark and moody interior with some really excellent seating options in the windows jutting out onto the street, but the service was terrible and the food is your basic pub fare with a Beacon Hill price tag. Will any member of my 20 person party return? Not likely. We reserved a large table to fit our swollen crowd only to find upon arrival that the doorman had given it to another 20 member party who he mistook for ours. We were too hungry and determined to get drunk to bother finding another place that could fit us, so we parked it on their comfortable leather lounge seats and helped ourselves to a bounty of $5 drafts (none of which were comped despite the lounge's inconvenient faux pas, and the host's subsequent rudeness).

Tomorrow after my shift at the mine I'm going to Harvard with my brother to hear a lecture by Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide. Aside from wanting to skip down the halls of Harvard and pretend I'm a serious intellectual for a few hours, I have a secret motive for attending this lecture. Here are some hints:

Science
Poetry
Dr. Zhivago
Replacing a book of poems entitled "Lara" for the more appropriate title of "Sarah" ("r" is meant to be rolled and the first syllable grossly elongated. Think "saaaaaarrrraah")



To bed!