victory should be naked
Joe gave me the "First Series" set of Doctor Who for XMas and my dad has already watched the entire first disk.
The bad is coming back. There's honestly nothing going wrong right now (well, except that I can't seem to get back on track with Weight Watchers after the holidays and I really don't exercise minus standing around at work all day. I mean I guess you could count the lunges I take checking for feet under fitting room doors.) but I can't escape it.
Joe and I saw Clutch play at Starland Ballroom on Saturday and it was fantastic...minus an early evening breakdown, which was finally solved with Jack Daniels and William Elliot Whitmore.
He put on one of those performances that I hope I can remember for the rest of my life, sitting in the middle of the stage surrounded by the amps of the handful of shitty metal bands that preceded him, sheepishly joking that he was out of place. But he wasn't. He was the only thing on that stage, with his hat tilted to the left and fore-arm tattoos peeking out of his blue button-up (with the top button undone, of course), stomping the beat out on the stage and waving his banjo like it was a shotgun. He was charming, even to the drunks and idiots up front that demanded he play every folky-country song they could think of. "I can't do that. Why? Well I can't duel without abother banjo so I can't play 'Dueling Banjos'." "No, I won't play 'Walk the Line'. Yeah it's an amazing song, that's why I can't play it - I'd ruin it." I think he got the biggest kick out of the 'Freebird' request, because that one he just laughed at, drank his Corona, and started strumming again. He was adorable. I love him.
Clutch was much less talkative. They just played. It was a two-hour set and we still left wanting a few more songs. Joe and I were both pretty surprised they skipped right over '10001110101' (I've tried translating it but it's not divisible by 8. I don't think it's binary speak for anything. Total. Bummer.) and 'Burning Beard', and I seriously wanted to see them do 'Careful With That Mic' cause I think he sounds so damned different in it. Either way, he's never what I expect to see - the frontman, I mean. He's small, disproportionate. He bounces around and stomps his feet and does a lot of stream-of-consciousness pointing and dancing. Joe and I had nudged our way to stage right by the time Clutch came on, and Neil was kind enough to play to our side quite a bit, facing straight at us in a spot that was almost certainly behind an amp to the rest of the audience. Maybe he saw me and thought I was worth playing to. Maybe he also read my mind and that's why the encore ended with the very 'Who's Been Talkin' that I'd been hoping they'd perform. Maybe that show was fucking fantastic.
I got in a little trouble on New Year's Eve for my Chris Antonopo-lust.
Joe was browsing some drummer's magazine and was already getting a little heated over seeing a guy he knew featured when he flipped the page and I gushed for the guy I'd seen drum for Vanilla Ice three years ago. Joe wasn't as amused as I was to see him in a magazine, and bared what may be called envy but he was more frustrated and defeated than envious. He, of course, would't tell me this exactly, and instead huffed off to get coffee and I sat feeling confused and curiously insulted at his outburst. To make an increasingly boring story short, it all worked out in the end and we gallavanted off to visit friends and family for New Year's Eve / our anniversary?
I question this last part because I'm not sure where the part came in where we did much more than acknowledge that we'd met last New Year's Eve. At first I didn't care much - we certainly saved money by eating the snacky food his sister extended to us in the midst of his small-but-noisy twin niece and nephew, and it was cute to be drunk and affectionate and recognized for being such at Justin & Jess' place (a drunken Jason demanded we call it our two-year anniversary because "we're destined for that anyway"), but as the night played out and I woke up in the morning (after an arduous journey of sobering, coaxing an obnoxiously playfully drunk Joe out of a basement apartment in the rain, and trying to drive his car back to Sayreville with one headlight and one high beam before falling asleep, and then setting us up in bed with water and pillows), I realized that yeah, it did matter to me that we do something special. A year is a big fucking deal and I'm excited about it. I'm fucking scared of it but mostly it's excitement. So I set him straight, he said "ok" and went back to sleep and I left for work. Stupid work.
The plus side of working New Year's Day is getting paid time and a half for a measly 4-hour shift. I was expecting longer, since I went in at 3pm, but apparantly the mall was closing at 6pm. Sweet. Kelly and I stole a gel boob for her bra and collected the girls (Meggie, Lyz, Sam), some beer and some cheese, made fondue, and watched John Tucker Must Die. There were some pretty cringe-worthy moments, because being more aware of sexual/racial/gender/class/etc stereotypes and misconceptions seems to mean that I can't enjoy any pop culture ever. I hated Happy Feet because of the uncomfortably sexual content (I prefer if animators choose one or the other - computer-"realism" or cartoony charicatures, but not BOTH. Female penguins don't have cleavage!) ethnic stereotyping and insinuations of racial dominance in penguins. To move on directly from there, Kelly and I both had to restrain ourselves from exclaiming "PENGUINS!" when a flock of flamingos ran across the screen and we immediately realized how stupid we were. Customers think we're twins. It never ends. Kelly thinks we should just start telling them "yes, we are" to change up the "no we've been best friends since third grade and people have always thought that we're sisters but we're not" response. Meagan spooned me and Sam ate lots of pretzels and Lyz left early like a chump. Every time someone asked someone else how their New Year's Eve was the response was "meh" with the exception of Sam who, surprisingly had a million and one stories about being drunk. That's my night in a nutshell.
I'm tired of typing now. I have work at Victoria's Secret at 4pm tomorrow and the Semi-Annual Sale is going to be hell. G'night.
The bad is coming back. There's honestly nothing going wrong right now (well, except that I can't seem to get back on track with Weight Watchers after the holidays and I really don't exercise minus standing around at work all day. I mean I guess you could count the lunges I take checking for feet under fitting room doors.) but I can't escape it.
Joe and I saw Clutch play at Starland Ballroom on Saturday and it was fantastic...minus an early evening breakdown, which was finally solved with Jack Daniels and William Elliot Whitmore.
He put on one of those performances that I hope I can remember for the rest of my life, sitting in the middle of the stage surrounded by the amps of the handful of shitty metal bands that preceded him, sheepishly joking that he was out of place. But he wasn't. He was the only thing on that stage, with his hat tilted to the left and fore-arm tattoos peeking out of his blue button-up (with the top button undone, of course), stomping the beat out on the stage and waving his banjo like it was a shotgun. He was charming, even to the drunks and idiots up front that demanded he play every folky-country song they could think of. "I can't do that. Why? Well I can't duel without abother banjo so I can't play 'Dueling Banjos'." "No, I won't play 'Walk the Line'. Yeah it's an amazing song, that's why I can't play it - I'd ruin it." I think he got the biggest kick out of the 'Freebird' request, because that one he just laughed at, drank his Corona, and started strumming again. He was adorable. I love him.
Clutch was much less talkative. They just played. It was a two-hour set and we still left wanting a few more songs. Joe and I were both pretty surprised they skipped right over '10001110101' (I've tried translating it but it's not divisible by 8. I don't think it's binary speak for anything. Total. Bummer.) and 'Burning Beard', and I seriously wanted to see them do 'Careful With That Mic' cause I think he sounds so damned different in it. Either way, he's never what I expect to see - the frontman, I mean. He's small, disproportionate. He bounces around and stomps his feet and does a lot of stream-of-consciousness pointing and dancing. Joe and I had nudged our way to stage right by the time Clutch came on, and Neil was kind enough to play to our side quite a bit, facing straight at us in a spot that was almost certainly behind an amp to the rest of the audience. Maybe he saw me and thought I was worth playing to. Maybe he also read my mind and that's why the encore ended with the very 'Who's Been Talkin' that I'd been hoping they'd perform. Maybe that show was fucking fantastic.
I got in a little trouble on New Year's Eve for my Chris Antonopo-lust.
Joe was browsing some drummer's magazine and was already getting a little heated over seeing a guy he knew featured when he flipped the page and I gushed for the guy I'd seen drum for Vanilla Ice three years ago. Joe wasn't as amused as I was to see him in a magazine, and bared what may be called envy but he was more frustrated and defeated than envious. He, of course, would't tell me this exactly, and instead huffed off to get coffee and I sat feeling confused and curiously insulted at his outburst. To make an increasingly boring story short, it all worked out in the end and we gallavanted off to visit friends and family for New Year's Eve / our anniversary?
I question this last part because I'm not sure where the part came in where we did much more than acknowledge that we'd met last New Year's Eve. At first I didn't care much - we certainly saved money by eating the snacky food his sister extended to us in the midst of his small-but-noisy twin niece and nephew, and it was cute to be drunk and affectionate and recognized for being such at Justin & Jess' place (a drunken Jason demanded we call it our two-year anniversary because "we're destined for that anyway"), but as the night played out and I woke up in the morning (after an arduous journey of sobering, coaxing an obnoxiously playfully drunk Joe out of a basement apartment in the rain, and trying to drive his car back to Sayreville with one headlight and one high beam before falling asleep, and then setting us up in bed with water and pillows), I realized that yeah, it did matter to me that we do something special. A year is a big fucking deal and I'm excited about it. I'm fucking scared of it but mostly it's excitement. So I set him straight, he said "ok" and went back to sleep and I left for work. Stupid work.
The plus side of working New Year's Day is getting paid time and a half for a measly 4-hour shift. I was expecting longer, since I went in at 3pm, but apparantly the mall was closing at 6pm. Sweet. Kelly and I stole a gel boob for her bra and collected the girls (Meggie, Lyz, Sam), some beer and some cheese, made fondue, and watched John Tucker Must Die. There were some pretty cringe-worthy moments, because being more aware of sexual/racial/gender/class/etc stereotypes and misconceptions seems to mean that I can't enjoy any pop culture ever. I hated Happy Feet because of the uncomfortably sexual content (I prefer if animators choose one or the other - computer-"realism" or cartoony charicatures, but not BOTH. Female penguins don't have cleavage!) ethnic stereotyping and insinuations of racial dominance in penguins. To move on directly from there, Kelly and I both had to restrain ourselves from exclaiming "PENGUINS!" when a flock of flamingos ran across the screen and we immediately realized how stupid we were. Customers think we're twins. It never ends. Kelly thinks we should just start telling them "yes, we are" to change up the "no we've been best friends since third grade and people have always thought that we're sisters but we're not" response. Meagan spooned me and Sam ate lots of pretzels and Lyz left early like a chump. Every time someone asked someone else how their New Year's Eve was the response was "meh" with the exception of Sam who, surprisingly had a million and one stories about being drunk. That's my night in a nutshell.
I'm tired of typing now. I have work at Victoria's Secret at 4pm tomorrow and the Semi-Annual Sale is going to be hell. G'night.