Here's the night, and it shines

I set out from school with a car full of bread. I mean FULL of bread. Having used all the space in the trunk, I loaded more boxes of Panera-donated baked goods into the back seat. It was for the Mae Community Outreach project me and a few other local Mae fans had been planning since August. We found out two days before that the band wasn't going to help us hand out the food, which left three of us to deal with a Beetle full of bread. Then the only guy on our team had to deal with something dumb that happened to his apartment and couldn't be there. Thankfully Renee brought a friend! But still, three girls carrying 60 pounds of bread equals not so successful. I managed to get lost on my way into Cambridge and drove around so much that my car fucked up again, and meanwhile (as Renee told me over the phone as I apologized profusely for my lateness) the band was trying to get out of Pennsylvania, where their van and trailer had been stolen the night before. So there might not even be a show.

I would've gone home, except I had this car full of bread. So I found the place, parked, and we set out. It was very lucky for our frail upper bodies that we ran into a college-age guy who was intrigued by our quest and agreed to help us out. The food was a tough sell, surprisingly. We walked around for a bit and when Noah had to leave, the rest of us took the food to the Commons via train. My friend Wanda met us there to help, but unfortunately there was no one to feed at the Commons either. We ended up taking the food to a church across the street, where there was apparently a service about to start. They were thrilled to have something to eat during fellowship and asked us to stay for the service. Everyone else was skeptical, but I hadn't been to church in a while so I thought it seemed like a good idea to stay, especially since we still weren't sure there would be a concert later. Wanda stayed with me.

It was an experience unlike any I'd had before. We began the service with a chant. Then we were invited to join in a spiritual dance... that is, the Electric Slide. I kid you not; we expressed our love for God by doing the Electric Slide in church. Then a black woman, the pastor, spoke about the events that brought her to the church and what a great impact dancing had had on her spiritual life. Even still, she said, dance is one of the most meaningful ways she worships God. After the sermon we took communion, passing the sacraments around a huge circle so that each person could offer the body and blood to the next person in line. I declined to sip the wine since about 40 people had sipped from the cup before me (at the beginning of the service they asked us not to greet one another with hugs because of swine flu o_o).

After the service I booked it back to the Middle East club in Cambridge, where Renee and her friend were holding a spot in line for me. The doors hadn't even opened yet. We were an hour behind schedule. But the band was on their way.

There was more standing and waiting to be done inside (luckily I had the stage to sit on). The opener, a local band, played three extra songs to kill time and we stood and waited some more.

Finally Mae and the others arrived! Jenny Owen Youngs played first. I wasn't too thrilled with her set, and it didn't help that I was already exhausted from walking around the city with all that bread for so long after hardly sleeping the night before. But Deas Vail - woah! Their set was great fun; I danced almost the entire time. And maybe the singer was kinda cute, too ^_~

Mae finally took the stage around 12:30. They only had an hour to play since the club had to kick us all out at 1:30, but the hour they played was epic! They poured so much heart into the set in spite of all they'd been through that day. You could tell they were tired. But you could also tell that delivering a great show was more important to them. And when it came down to it, without the 3-D videos and scratch-and-sniff CDs, Mae is still a group of great guys making great music. That's at the core of everything else.

After the show, I went to buy Deas Vail's CD and the guys thanked me for being so into their set. I was shocked they had noticed and even more shocked they recognized it was me. Then, as I was walking upstairs, two guys (one of whom played with Jenny) started talking to me. The other guy convinced me he usually plays with Mae when they're live but he didn't have a guitar since their stuff got stolen. I have not yet determined the truth of this statement; however, I couldn't find his name on any of their websites so I highly doubt he was telling the truth.

Shame because he seemed so nice at the time. We hung out for like fifteen minutes, during which he told me he wished he could make himself cry on command. This seemed like a pretty personal thing to share, so I trusted him. I should have realized he was a liar when he tried to convince some other girl Mae would be playing in her hometown in Florida in a couple weeks. I'll be he died laughing the minute I left... asshole.

O(k)toberfest

By a show of hands, who knows what Oktoberfest is?

OK, leave your hand up if you said it was a booze-free event.

Right.

Well, that's what my college decided it was. I opted to forgive them the misleading title and went with my roommates (including honorary roomie, Joanna) anyway. Hey, they promised me hot apple cider and cider donuts; how could I resist?

But there was no cider there when we arrived. No cider donuts. There was some kind of... bratwurst cooking over a grill and some root beer. Popular indie music and indie pop was blaring and three kids from the improv team were "dancing," otherwise known as flapping their appendages and writhing. You can imagine my ecstasy....

We grabbed some pumpkins from the pumpkin-coloring table; we intended to carve them and light them in our many windows. Then I bumped into my buddy Jarin and we were chatting when all of a sudden The Addict ran up and said to hurry up; the rest of my roomies were on the hay ride.

The tractor was already driving away. I went "okimcomingbyejarin!!" and chased after The Addict, who took a running leap onto the trailer's sideboard. I couldn't decide what to do with my pumpkin. I hated to lose it....

But the tractor was getting away, so I chucked Mr. Pumpkin into the woods and dove for it. The hayriders cheered and made room for us. Highlight of the night!

The ride ended 48 seconds later. How anticlimactic.

I can't help thinking this whole night would've sucked less if they'd just left the event at face value and passed out booze. At least we wouldn't have had to remember how lame it was. =/

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!

Dismantle. Repair.

I'm home. I wasn't going to leave til tomorrow, but I didn't feel like sitting still. I still don't feel like sitting still. I'm very restless and discontent. I want to be somewhere else. I want to be with other people, and the people I want to be with the most are the hardest to pin down.

On the bright side, I got to see Joe tonight! It felt so normal for him to be there, and I can't explain why; even when he was going to Gordon last year, it wasn't like we hung out all the time. But somehow it was like he never left. We made pizza at his sister's apartment and I brought peanut butter brownies. I bring brownies to almost everything, and if not brownies, then ba-freakin-nana awesome bread or seven-layer dip. Pretty much I buy people's friendship with food. Ahaha, I hope that's not actually true. I just really like feeding people.

Anyway, after that we went to the Prancing Pony, which is the new "tavern" on campus. It's got a lovely atmosphere and really feels like the old-time pub from Lord of the Rings. There are only two problems. One, it's not actually called "the Prancing Pony," although all the cool kids call it that. It's actually named after our donor's cat, Chester, and when some kids decided to be funny and steal the "Chester's Place" sign, our donor got pissed and threatened to withdraw funding. Eek. The other problem is that it's not even a real tavern because they don't serve alcohol. I'm not saying I'd drink it, even if I was of age. But come on, people. As my poetry professor said one class, "Why don't they get a fake brothel on campus, too?"

I digress again. After the tavern, we went to Claymore, where a friend of Joe's and Sarah's gave them free drinks. Good stuff. Claymore is where most of my meal points go these days. Heh. Throughout all of this, the crowd of people with us was dwindling until it was just me and Joe. We walked around and visited some people in Wilson and Rider. One of Joe's friends in Rider has covered his entire wall with bottle caps. It looks fantastic and I kind of want to cover my bedroom door with bottle caps so I can pretend I'm half as awesome as this kid.

A little before 10, Sarah and Joe left for home and I decided to do the same. And here I am, ready for the next thing. I'm ready for another concert. The more you go to, the worse the withdrawal symptoms get. Gill and I might go see Cobra Starship on Friday. That would rule. Unless it's all psychotic little girls like last time. Ugh.

Overall it was a good night. It was great to finally see Joe again. So why do I feel so discontent, like something just isn't right? Like I'm not doing anything with my time or with my life, and I never have anything to show for the things I bother investing in, and I feel like I'm constantly dismantling things and relationships and other people and myself without having any clue how to repair them.

Wow, emo shpiel. Sorry to dump that on you. I get this way every so often and you can't hold it against me; I'm a woman.

Everything is always for the band.

This is the second update I promised earlier this week. You see? I keep my word (usually ^_^).

Eli called me up the other day around noon to ask if I wanted to go to a show that night, and of course, that's an offer I can't refuse, even if I don't know the band. So we drove about an hour to this sweet-in-a-really-tacky-way little venue to see a band called Kiros.

Except when we got there, the place was still closed. The doors were supposed to have opened, but even the bands hadn't gotten inside yet. Eli sort of knew the guys in Kiros from the time he met them at Soulfest and he introduced me to a couple of them.

Finally someone opened the place and we helped unload the equipment from the trailer. I was freezing because I never bring anything into concerts, so I'd left my coat in Eli's car and was toting equipment wearing just a t-shirt. Well I mean, I obviously had pants on. But it was still really cold. Then Neil, who plays guitar for Kiros, let me borrow his gloves, which were big enough for me to fit both hands in one glove and looked positively ridiculous on me. So, naturally, I wore them all night and even threatened never to give them back.

Eli and I talked to Kiros a bit more while the other bands set up and played. The first thing Ryan (also guitar) said to me - and the only thing he kept saying to me all night - was that I smelled like poop. He even wrote it on the poster he signed for me. But I think I talked to Neil the most. And at least he knew how to be a nice person (i.e. he wrote on my poster that I smelled good ^_^). Not that I had a problem with Ryan being a goofball. Hello, think about the guys I hang out with at home....

The first couple sets were okay. Nothing spectacular musically, and the crowd was really tiny - like maybe 50 people? I'm bad at estimating. Anyway, Eli and a couple other people got the semblance of a mosh pit going (if 3-5 people can be considered a mosh pit) and I joined in. Because there was so much space to run around, we were going pretty fast and it was scary when we actually collided with each other. But really flipping awesome.

Kiros' set was good times. Ryan started by lighting Tyler's cymbals on fire, which created a massive fireball when he started playing. And the songs were downright catchy regardless of whether I could sing along, although Barry, the lead singer, taught us newbies some of the words so we could join in.

Eli and I helped Kiros pack out after the show. At this point, it was like half an hour to Eli's birthday and he used that fact to his advantage by inviting the guys to fast food after the show. So when we finally left around midnight, Neil came with us in Eli's car and we followed the van. But Wendy's was closed, and so was McDonald's, so we wound up at Taco Bell.

Hi, I'm a vegetarian. At least at Mickey's I could've gotten a fake-shake (they don't use real milk, I'm told). Neil recommended the apple empanada so I got that and cheese quesadillas. Then we all squished into the back of the van to eat.


Hehe, Tyler's face in this one....


Barry gives Eli a birthday hug.

Barry tried to pretend like some brownies they had in the van were actually for Eli's birthday, but they were totally sketchy brownies. I have a feeling they left out the vegetable oil or some other crucial ingredient that boys wouldn't understand the importance of. I promised to make them amazingtastic brownies someday. (If I'm going to make a habit of keeping my word, I should probably not make promises that aren't easy to keep...)


Ryan with the brownies.


Barry tries to carve Eli's name into the brownies.

After we'd all eaten and enjoyed a few good laughs at ridiculous names we made up for tours (such as "The Velocirap-tour"), it was time to go. I was having so much fun I would've stayed all night, but by then it was probably around 1:30AM and we had at least an hour's drive back to school. I totally fell asleep on the ride back. I think I even snored a little, which always happens when I fall asleep sitting up. How embarrassing. ^_~

Priceless quotes:
"So when I turned seven, she turned... existing." (Neil talking about my sister, who has the same birthday as him.)
"You smell like poop." (Ryan)
"Tour baby! We're taking your baby on tour with us!!" (Neil)
"Come on! Give me a high five!" (Ryan, chasing a little girl around trying to get her to give him a high five. But Neil told her not to, and she wouldn't even look at Ryan after that.)
"I'm not gay; I'm just in a band." (Neil)
"Oh! Excuse me for interrupting myself with that awesome fart." (Neil)
"The Rugrats Rep-tour!!" (Barry)
"The... God is our Lord and Crea-tour!" (Ryan)
Me: Can I have a sip of your soda?
Neil: Only if you call it by its proper name. Say "pop."
Me: Okay, can I have a sip of your pop?
Neil: Sure!

The Evil Behind the Energy

Today I had to give an oral presentation on Rockstar Energy Drink and its marketing strategies. We gave out samples of Rockstar to everyone in the class, then proceeded to tell them why they shouldn't buy Rockstar because in doing so they're supporting Michael Savage, host of the Savage Nation radio show. Some of his worse moments include:

"Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists happen to be Muslims."
"I'll tell you what autism is. In 99% of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out."
And my personal favorite, directly to a gay man who called in with an airline horror story at Savage's request: "Oh, you're one of the sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig."

After we'd finished, there were a few shots of Rockstar left (we gave it out in ketchup cups XD), and I figured that since I now knew everything about the product except how it tasted, it was about time I tried some. That little shot was enough to make me choke. And THIS is the most popular seller in Gordon's bookstore?!

After class, Sam said to me, "I'll never forget the look on your face after you took your first sip of Rockstar...."

Glad to have been such good entertainment.

Oh yeah, and this morning I woke up from a dream in which I drank our glowing Mountain Dew concoction, and when I looked at my stomach, my innards were glowing. And then they were going to fall out, so I was like, "Guys, we gotta go to the hospital. Someone's gotta come with me. I'll drive, but someone's gotta come with me."

----------------------------------------------

Stupid poet rant:

Why can’t people understand that WRITING POEMS does not make you a POET? These days there are a million and one emo kids bleeding all over their notebook pages and calling it poetry. And I suppose it's a sort of verse, yes; but if all you ever do is bleed, kid, you’re not a poet.

A poet ought to paint her words with a feather or trace them on the surface of the sea. The process is fragile, as subject to change as clear skies in Boston – but you carve your words in granite with a chisel, never to be rescinded. Every one of them is there on purpose. You will not hear of changing them: heresy! You don't write for yourself. But you don't care if your words are any good, so you don’t write for anyone else, either.

How can you call yourself a writer when all you do is bleed?

Stupid boy rant (abridged):

I don't go out on a limb for just anybody. I would offer you my heart, but worse than breaking it, you'd just ignore that it was even there.

Mountain Dew: Solution to America's Energy Crisis?

Forget expensive electricity costs! Say goodbye to foreign oil dependency! Mountain Dew is the answer!!

Tonight, Sarah Mac, Eli and I went to Shaws and bought a whole bunch of Mountain Dew because we saw this video of a guy making glow-in-the-dark Dew by adding baking soda and hydrogen peroxide to the soda. I thought a glowing bottle of Mtn Dew seemed like a great thing to carry around on Halloween night, no matter what your costume may be. But unfortunately, it turned out the video was faked, so instead we broke open a glow stick and poured that into it. The level of epicness was seriously disappointing, so we gave up and shneckled instead. And to think that for that hour or so, I was convinced I'd solved the energy crisis with simple baking and first aid supplies....


So nobody sues me or deletes my blog or anything stupid like that, the Strong Bad video is not by me; OBVIOUSLY it came from Homestarrunner.com. This should go without saying, but in the world of lawsuits, nothing does.

Jesus has a new face (again).

After I got my laptop fixed from the time I shut the power cord inside it, the webcam wasn't working. I brought it into the Apple store and the guy at the genius bar entered a code, which seemed to fix it. But then I got back to school and it wasn't working again. Three weeks later, I finally got around to making another appointment (which was a story all it's own... more on that in a minute.) Turns out the brand new display they installed was a dud, so the lappy has another new screen. Fortunately, this one was free of charge.

If I never properly explained why the lappy is named Jesus... it's because he got resurrected after 3 days in the Apple store ER that time I broke his face.

Sooo the story of making my appointment. I was out looking for Halloween costumes with Katie and Sarah last night, and we stopped by the Apple store. I decided I'd just make an appointment to get the dumb webcam fixed so I could cross it off my to-do list. So when I made this appointment, I asked to borrow a pen to write the time on my hand. The guy who was helping me offered me a card to write it on, but I was like "nope. I'll lose that. Hopefully I won't lose my hand. If I don't come back tomorrow, it'll be because I don't have a hand anymore." And for some reason he found this utterly hilarious and begged me to come back. Then as we're leaving Katie was all, "way to flirt with the Apple store guy...." Which made the whole thing ten times funnier.

The trip to the mall was otherwise a complete failure. Katie did not find the jeans she wanted. None of us found costumes. I guess a Princess Mononoke outfit is kind of hard to find, even when you limit yourself to simply finding a shapeless purple dress on a clearance rack somewhere. By the time we left, poor Sarah was asleep on her feet. But when we went to Target to get drugs for Sarah's cold, I found this knit dress that was uber cute, besides being the perfect color and blah-shape for a Miyazaki heroine. It was a bit of a splurge - $30 - but it's serving many a purpose, one of those being to show off my sexytastic legs. XD

Then Sarah and I did our hair purple. I tried to bleach part of it first, since I was doing streaks instead of tips this time, but the blonde dye failed. I finally got the strand a shade lighter than it had been and put in the purple. It looks more blue than anything, and unless you look closely, it could totally be mistaken for dark brown. Which I guess is a good thing if I'm going to see my mother in the next month. Even though she's probs reading this. Hi, mom.

Oh, and I got to totally embarrass myself in the bathroom because Philmont, this amazing band from NC, asked fans to help them make a music video by singing along to one of their songs. But first, they asked that the fans prepare in some way - do their makeup, hair, stretch, drink an energy drink - so I filmed myself dyeing my hair, then I donned my headphones and proceeded to rock out all over the bathroom. I lip-synced the whole thing because by then it was past midnight and I didn't want to bother anybody, but this one girl came in while I was going nuts and I confused the heck out of her because she was already half asleep. And of course I couldn't stop to explain. I look pretty flippin special for about 90% of the video, which is unfortunate, but I'm gonna send it anyway and just pray that they use the 10% where I don't look like an r-tard.

Well, I should try and finish some homework before the Art/Music/Justice show tonight, which I'm only going to so that CEC will have money to book Philmont. Maybe I can just do homework DURING the show. It's not like anyone's gonna be dancing. I mean, there are pews. Not to mention people here are pretty conservative for students at a liberal arts college. Merh.

FIVE DAYS UNTIL COBRA STARSHIP!!!

In search of Boy

Uuummmmm.

Katie and I are taking turns smelling my PJ shirt because for some reason, it smells OVERWHELMINGLY of boy. And I am baffled and confused for several reasons. One, I don't think I've even spoken to a boy in person in like two or three days, let alone hugged one or schneckled with one. Two, this is the shirt I SLEEP in. And three, it's not like this thing came straight out of the wash or anything. I've already worn it one or two nights, and this is the first time it's smelled this good. o_o

Conjectures and theories are welcome.....