A-maize-ing

"I want to go to a corn maze this year," I told Paul one morning.

I got the "WTH?" look. It might have been because he'd only had one cup of tea so far. It takes about 3 to extract him from the clutches of slumber. But I interpreted it as, "What the hell is a corn maze? I've never been to one. It sounds gay," and vowed to drag him to one before the month was over. I convinced him it was cool by telling him they'd mowed it in the shape of Stewie and Brian from Family Guy.



So we went. It wasn't a huge maze, but we managed to get lost anyway. I kept stopping to answer the dumb trivia questions posted strategically around the maze. They were supposed to help you decide which way to go. They were all about corn and therefore none of my answers were more than uneducated guesses, but I still insisted on trying. Paul was ready to feed me to a carnivorous scarecrow by the third question. Tee hee!

After walking around in circles a few times, we realized that we could devise a plan of action by solving the maze on the aerial picture they'd given us when we got there. Except our plan backfired, we eventually got sick of wandering, and finally we gave up and crashed through a row of corn that, wouldn't you know it, took us right to the exit.

Win! Shut up, it was totally legit!

A midnight pomegranate party

One sunny September day, my friend Taz and I walked through the woods to a little farm stand I found once when I got lost. She loves going out in the woods since it's one place she doesn't have to worry about The Bitch (her roommate), but it had been really warm due to an Indian summer and she kept finding snakes on her walks. That's a bad thing if you're Taz. I went along to protect her; i.e. I walked in front of her and chased away the snakes before she could see them by yelling and flailing my arms a lot.

Soo moving on. One of my favorite things about fall is going to farm stands and little country stores to buy fresh produce, cheese, and JAMS! Jams are so yummy! Last year I discovered hot pepper jelly with cream cheese on water crackers. Mmmm nom nom nom. So, we went to the farm stand to buy jams. I had a little bag of change; the rest of my money had mysteriously disappeared. I definitely didn't spend it on concerts or anything.

You'll never guess what we found there.

POMEGRANATES!

My roommates and I had been talking for ages and ages about how most of us had never tried a pomegranate. We'd been meaning to have a pomegranate party to celebrate our birthdays, since we're all summer babies, and so I bought one. I got my jam, too - pineapple orange marmalade this year. Taz and I got freeze pops for the walk home. Hers turned her teeth blue.

I paid the cashier over $7 in change. He pretended not to hate me. Nice guy.

That night, me, Razzmatazz, Mnomanoms and The Addict cut open my pomegranate and a couple others they had bought without telling me.

They were very pretty inside. Someone suggested they would make attractive bathroom floor tiles. I was skeptical.

They sure tasted ugly. Frankly I don't understand how the pomegranate survived natural selection. It's got so little meat to it, and its such hard work to get at it. What a useless fruit! It would be better off as someone's tacky, barfy bathroom tile if you ask me!

It was dry and the seeds were hard and chewy. To my knowledge, and Razzmatazz confirmed this since she alone out of all of us had eaten a pomegranate before, the seeds are supposed to get soft and gooey when it's ripe. You shouldn't have to spit them out, ever. I think it would have been a weird experience even if the pomegranate had been properly ripe... but at least then it might have been a good weird. A yummy weird. Like hot pepper jelly and cream cheese.

In the end we resorted to mocking the pomegranates.

Delicious!

Another tale of woe for Derry the punchbuggy

When I drove back to school last week, Derry the punchbuggy made it all the way to the off-ramp without giving me any trouble. Then he started doing that thing that he did a few weeks ago that we supposedly got fixed. When I press on the gas, he makes a gut-wrenching sound as if I'd asked him to go from 0 to 100 in no time flat, but just sort of sits there without accelerating at all... or even continuing to drive at the speed I was driving before his little epileptic fit.

We found our way to one of the few spaces available on campus, but upon getting out of the car, I was promptly assaulted by some super-ninja stingered insect. Didn't see the thing. Didn't do anything to provoke it. I just wanted my laptop out of the trunk. I've never had an allergic reaction to a bee sting until now, and wow; it really sucks. Don't try it at home, okay? I walked around with an ice pack for two days and felt like such a little wuss.

Derry made it home okay this weekend, so we didn't take him to the shop. Big mistake. Coming back, I hadn't even made it as far as the city, which is about halfway between home and school, when he had another seizure. Smack dab in the middle of some of the worst towns in our area. Afraid of pulling over and getting shot, I kept driving until I hit town. My parents had to come retrieve me and take me back to school.

Now I am here without a car, which wouldn't be so bad if A) I hadn't just paid $89 to join a gym off campus, B) I didn't need to go to the store to replace my deodorant, which inexplicably disappeared from my drawer over the weekend, and C) I had something to give Mama Swede for her birthday. As it stands I am presentless, deodorantless, and losing money while gaining weight. I'll bet little Derry never realized how important he was. I sure didn't. I'm sorry, old buddy. Get better quick so we can go puttering around town again. Love, Amandasaurus.

Atlas

Everyone famous is dying, and frankly I don't blame them. I don't want to care, I don't want to fight, I don't want the government taking my money for its delusional purposes. I don't want to have to do anything that doesn't seem right. I want to do what's important to me without being beholden to people, least of all institutions. God I hate institutions.

If everyone famous walked off a cliff, would you follow?

Maybe.

I want to live for something. I want the parameters of my faith to be clear. I want a singular, concrete quest with a singular, concrete goal and I want it to define my actions, my life, myself.

I want the world to be different but I don't know how to change it. There's an ocean of problems and I am paralyzed. Too much is wrong. It's not me and people vs. the world; it's me vs. people vs. the world. I feel like Atlas, breaking under the weight of the universe (or the weight of my own, cancerous little universe growing leaden on my shoulders).

It's nobody's place to solve things - yet it's everybody's place, and so many of us do nothing. Even me. We can put all the band-aids we want on this broken world, but sooner or later someone has to do a heart transplant. We are not surgeons, so we do nothing.

"I am a living, breathing hell; come on and resurrect me."

Magical Musical Road Trip Extravaganza pt. 4

My family used to play a cheesy game at the dinner table, where we'd go around the table and everyone got a chance to say the highlight and lowlight of his or her day. In Rex-family fashion, allow me to share with you the high and low lights of Rev Gen 2009. Let's look on the bright side first.

We sat in on Paul Colman's set purely because we wanted to have good seats for Jon Foreman's set, which was next. But Paul turned out to be one of the most entertaining individuals I've had the good fortune to see. We later talked to him and he said he'd love to come play a show at our school. WIN!



Jon Foreman played us a song about being an outlaw, which he literally wrote in his sleep. He also played a number on some wacky variation of a harp, which a friend had given him earlier that day and which he hadn't even had a chance to tune. Somehow the song was still brilliant. Probably because he's Jon.



No one moshed for Relient K, which I'm sure was as sad for the band as it was for me. Nonetheless, it was as great a set as always, made all the more amusing by the fact that the lead singer (Matt Thiessen)'s hair gets more wild every time I see them.



Switchfoot closed out the day with a set that would've sent the Richter scale scrambling for cover. Jon alternated between climbing the scaffolding and swinging drummer Chad Butler's cymbals around the stage, and pausing to ask everyone to look up at the stars for a minute while words of wisdomatic gold dripped from his lips. "We don't know why the dry times come," he said, "but those are the times that force us to dig deeper below the surface."



If you want all the juicy details (and lots of exciting pictures!), go here and here! Remember to click on "Entries" when you get there!

Now for the lowlight. I think this accusatory letter, which I sent to the people at Rev Gen last night, pretty much sums it up:

"...we purchased Switchfoot Interview Passes at $15 apiece and we did not receive what we paid for. The item was called "Interview Pass" on the website. So, naturally, we walked into Tent 7 expecting to see an interview with Switchfoot. Wouldn't you? Imagine our disappointment, then, when only half the band was present and the frontman, the one responsible for writing the songs, was conspicuously absent. All right, there's a little disclaimer at the bottom of the ticket saying interview times are subject to artist availability, so it would hardly be fair to lodge a complain purely on that basis.

But then the interview was cut off after ten minutes of surface-level questions whose answers could have been found on Wikipedia in under two minutes, so that the man hosting the interview can tell us about his daughter who died in a car accident and how her death taught him to seek hope from God. A wonderful message. I truly am sorry for his loss and I truly am glad that he found hope in spite of it. But this was not the time or place to discuss such matters, as the fans under the tent had paid money to watch an interview with Switchfoot. And then he had the gall to try and convert us to Christianity. At a Christian festival.

His sermonette was out of place and condescending. I have never felt so emotionally manipulated in my life. Moreover, it was dishonest and unjust to take kids' money and not deliver what was promised. This is the least Christian thing anyone has done to me in quite some time...."

Total LAMESAUCE, right?! And worse than the injustice to us, it was disrespectful toward the band (or anyway, the half of them that were there.) I know this because I'm a journalist. You don't ask people questions you could've looked up answers to. It's a waste of the interviewee's time and it makes you look unprepared, uninformed and unprofessional. The poor guys were bored silly. Joanna and I agreed that Drew was definitely texting under the table.



But the rest of the day was so wicked awesome that getting ripped off, driving 16 hours, and sleeping just ten across the entire weekend WAS SO FANTABULOUSLY WORTH IT!

Magical Musical Road Trip Extravaganza pt. 3

Previously on A Dustland Fairytale: The Music. The Road Trip. Now it's time for the MAGIC!

Joanna's friend Steve joined us just in time for Jon Foreman's set.



We booked it out of there as soon as he finished so we could be first in line at the merch table for the Switchfoot signing, which wasn't for at least another hour.



So we were chillin' there, and chillin' there, and finally I got a little bored and took a walk around to photograph all the preposterous Christian products being marketed.





I got back to the Switchfoot table, and Joanna and Steve were still just chillin' there. No one else had showed up for the signing yet. It was a little unnerving.



Then Steve figured out that we were waiting in the wrong spot, so we went out into the hot sun to join the queue already waiting for the signing. Boo.



I wish I had a picture of me with the guys, but cameras weren't allowed. The lyrical genius I've admired for six years, a.k.a. Jon, wasn't even there. I barely had enough time to tell Tim that I think he's one of the greatest bassists mankind has ever seen, not to mention that when you say something in that amount of time it doesn't exactly come across as sincere, but still - 4/5 of the band signed my brand new Switchfoot shirt. Magic!



A little while later I spotted Paul Colman and we went to ask him if he would come play at our school. During his set he'd said just to email him and he would play anywhere. Apparently he does his own booking, which will make getting him here loads easier even if Campus Events Council won't cooperate (which they probs won't since they suck about 94% of the time).

Joanna had gotten a free shirt from a booth that was promoting our school and she tried to give it to Paul so he'd remember us. I think the people who designed the shirt were being facetious, as it features a picture of the crappiest building on our campus, the dining hall, and boasts beneath it, "Home of the Lane Student Center!" But Paul declined on the grounds that he only wears black shirts.



Steve introduced himself and Joanna felt the need to inform Paul that her friend was weird. Paul then gave us a lecture on political correctness and convinced us to call Steve "unique" (at least while Paul was around. I abhor political correctness and continued to call Steve "weird" for the rest of the day.) Anyway, weird or unique, Steve decided his picture with Paul had better live up to his reputation. This was the result. Poor Paul never saw it coming.



Then it was my turn to be in a picture. Paul was upset with me for being too tall, so he made me crouch down a little while he stood on his tip toes. He would've had to be six and a half feet tall to actually look this much taller than me.



But after that he conceded and let me be the tall one.



Thanks for that, Paul.

And that concludes the Magic segment of the Magical Musical Road Trip Extravaganza! But things were not to remain so peachy. Tune in next time to watch a scandal unfold....

Magical Musical Road Trip Extravaganza pt. 2

Cue 6+ hour-long discussion about sex, drugs, and rock and roll (you think I'm kidding but I'm not). Many, many moments of wisdom were shared in our total sixteen hours of driving (which is more than double the number of hours we slept). We decreed that neither hot dogs nor condoms should ever be purchased at a gas station. We discussed the possibility of me being the second virgin mother in recorded history. And we found this, which simply should not exist:



It was past one when we arrived in Joanna's tiny PA hometown. Now it may have been tiny, but it owns my town in two important ways. One, it has a Wal*Mart. The fact that it's a Wal*Mart is not so exciting. The fact that it's open 24 hours a day is. Two, it's got a movie theater. A DRIVE-IN movie theater. And a stop light, which Joanna was very excited to point out. Joanna's house made me giggle because it tried to be compact in silly ways, like having really steep and tiny stairs. There was a pretty fish tank in the living room, where I slept (a grand total of ten hours across the weekend). The sofa was far more comfortable than my bed at school. I wished I could've spent more time on it.

We left for Jersey bright and early Saturday. After I told Joanna she wouldn't need to brush her teeth because it's not like we'd be eating any onions before the show, we both got breakfast sandwiches with onions in them. No making out with bands for us. JUST KIDDING, PAUL.

If you haven't laughed with me over the road signs in PA and Jersey, I strongly encourage you to take a detour to A Silvertongued Serenade. It was good times, made even better by the fact that we somehow managed not to hit any traffic until the last 500 yards from the road to the parking lot. Sweet deal.



We caught the tail end of And Then There Were None's set. I wish they'd change their name to something that takes less time to type. Anyway, they were fun and I joined what the singer called an "awesome pit" (because it was far from being a mosh pit; it was more of a ... dance pit). He also kept talking about fried Oreos that were apparently being sold nearby. Ugh. That's almost as repulsive as a gas station hot dog.

We sat in on part of Corey Crowder's set, which I had really wanted to see because I love this song by him. But most of his music had a slightly different flavor to it. Suffice to say that he was scheduled to play the Nashville Stage for a reason.



So we left to browse the merch. We returned for Paul Coleman's set and there were NO good seats left. Paul saw right through all of us who were just trying to claim good seats for Jon Foreman's set, which was coming up next, but he proved himself more than worthy of the large crowd with great music, audience participation (he pulled people up on stage and made them play instruments, even if they didn't know how), and sheer hilariosity. He made fun of everyone present, including himself, which was why we knew it was fake when he acted like a big-headed rock star. Oh, AND he had an Australian accent. I normally get annoyed when artists talk too much on stage, but I could've listened to this guy all day.



After Paul's set, Joanna's friend Steve joined us. He was one of those instantly likable people and I stole his hat to show that I approved of him. The tent filled up even more as fans kept pouring in to watch the lead singer of Switchfoot play his solo set. It was a good set and made up for the fact that he didn't play an acoustic after-show show when I saw them last week.



If anyone ever wrote a love song, it was Jon Foreman. One I had never heard was "Rob Me Instead," which was about outlaws. The chorus said "Honey, keep the gun and rob me instead." Silly, yes; sappy, maybe, but I'm a sucker for that. Then Jon pulled out this crazy harp and said, "my friend just gave me this this morning... I don't even think it's in tune, but I'm gonna play a song on it anyway." Only Jon. And only Jon could tame a brand new, untuned instrument into making beautiful music.



I can't say much more about Relient K than I have before. Oh, my first and forever love! They never get old.



But the crowd that night totally sucked. I was the ONLY one dancing. Steve and I attempted to start a mosh pit, with halfhearted assistance from Joanna since we caught her off guard, and everyone around us just got annoyed. Wtf guys. It's Relient K.



I was really happy they played "The Lining is Silver," which is my favorite off their last EP, but overall I was disappointed. I look forward to seeing them in October AND THERE HAD BETTER BE MOSHING.



Switchfoot played last, and there was more than an hour between sets but we didn't dare move. People around us were sitting on the ground to rest because they were afraid of losing their spots. I kept saying loudly MAN UP AND STAND UP, but nobody cares what I say.

The band finally came out. The show was every bit as genius as the last and more. The lighting was everything it had been indoors, but Jon was far more entertaining since there was scaffolding for him to climb and space to swing Chad's cymbals around the stage without taking out any fans.



Of course Jon had a deep quote for us. He said, "we don't know why the dry times come, but we know those are the times that force us to dig down deeper." In search of the wellspring of hope or inspiration. In search of God, who is the wellspring of those things and everything else that is good.



Then he stopped everything in the middle of "Stars" and asked the crowd to look up for a minute. There were spotlights in all directions so it was hard to see, but the stars were there and the lyrics rang true. When I look at the stars, I feel like myself.



I have some really fabulous pictures from that set, so bear with me while I share a few of my favorites. My album on Facebook is overflowing.








And that concludes the Music segment of the Magical Musical Road Trip Extravaganza! Tune in for episode 3: Magic - next time on A Dustland Fairytale!

Magical Musical Road Trip Extravaganza pt. 1

What a weekend! It's going to take more than one post to chronicle the epicness of our magical musical road trip extravaganza. So I shall begin with the road trip, and after that we'll move on to the magic and the music. Sound good? Good.

While driving through the lovely state of PA, we amused ourselves by trying to pronounce the silly names on the exit signs. Or rather, I amused both of us, as Joanna is a Pennsylvania native and already knew how to say it right. Here are a few that I couldn't resist sharing, absent some of the best because we just weren't quick enough with the camera.



We've got Fogelsville, home of the old fogeys; we've got Kutztown, which is full of puking Germans; we've got Viktorkrumsville, which I'm sure Hermione would be thrilled to visit; we've got Hell and Bethlehem sharing a stoop; we've got the home of the singing cow. Sorry about the lack of photo evidence of such gems as Lackawanna University (I imagine all the students there wake up in the morning, think about going to class, and decide they just don't wanna) and the fruity Mexican town of Avoca(do). Also missing is the utterly unpronounceable "Schuyllkill." Two syllables. Swear to god. But my favorite of all is the creative misspelling of "Wisconsin" in the center of the collage. I thought we were in PA...?

Love, Miss Rex

Detailed accounts of music, magic and madness at A Dustland Fairytale!

Music: "If anyone ever wrote a love song, it was Jon Foreman." Read more
Magic: "I barely had enough time to tell Tim that I think he's one of the greatest bassists mankind has ever seen, not to mention that when you say something in that amount of time it doesn't exactly come across as sincere..." Read more
Madness: Coming soon!

Note: the new Dustland Fairytale is a little quirky. After clicking the link, click on "Entries" and it should go right to the post you want!

Fangs... sort of down and to the side

I drove from the north shore to the south shore through traffic and construction on a Monday night, and joined Cara for another hour plus of driving into Rhode Island, all in pursuit of our beloved Cobra Starship. Little could we have known that everything that could've gone wrong, would.

The exit we were supposed to take didn't exist. We went straight to exit 3 without ever passing a 1 or a 2. We finally found our way to the neighborhood where the concert was taking place and it was S. K. E. T. C. H. Y. To the extent that I crossed myself every time we came to a stop line in case being a stationary target would invite gunfire.

^ A shady Sunoco where we pulled over to check the GPS.

The only reason we even found the venue was because Vicky T, who plays keytar for the band, was standing on the sidewalk outside the first time we drove past.


Then we parked in the sketchy garage and argued with the "valet," who ultimately let us keep the keys.

The venue was called Hell. I think the name must have referred to its location; the inside wasn't so bad. Sure it was tiny - I imagine hell being much bigger than this place and having much worse music - but there was no grease on the walls. No blood stains. No bullet holes. Judging by the ladies' room, it was at least as clean as the Palladium. Which isn't saying much, mind you; I'm just saying it could have been worse.

However, the volume in hell would have been about the same. I don't know why sound guys (and girls) can't figure out the difference between a medium venue and a small venue... and a hole in the wall. You just can't play music at Palladium volume in a hole in the wall like Hell. It effing hurts. My ears didn't stop ringing until Friday or Saturday.

The show was okay. I always say there are two bands in this world that make me want to shake my ass: Cobra Star, and 3OH!3. Still true. But one thing they're not is showmen. They don't interact well with the audience. They don't spread the love around. I was three rows back from the stage and didn't once make eye contact with them. Gabe never came over to shake hands with any of us.
They talked a lot between songs without really saying anything. I've seen them before and their banter was funny then, but it mostly fell flat tonight. They didn't play more than two songs (if that) from their "new" album, which came out a whole month ago. I thought the point of touring was to promote new music? I get that the point of Cobra Starship is not to give a fuck about anything or anyone, but if they keep up this attitude toward their fans, it won't be long before they don't have any.

At least that's the way it should work.

But their music is just too damn good to hate 'em!