(no subject)
It’s been a long while since I’ve rock & rolled. Oh wait, since I’ve “Updated my livejournal”, that’s it. Cuz let’s face it, I Rock & Roll 24/7/365(6). Things have changed a lot in the past couple months. It’s strange. Some things have changed so much its hard to even describe the events that put me at where I am today. I’m looking back at my last post and trying to determine what my state of mind was at the time.
It was the end of summer; I had just about finished working at the Health Dept and was getting ready to head on back to UD. I had already made the decision to avoid going to Lexington often for numerous reasons. I was living in a house now with 4 strangers and I wanted to be able to get to know who these people were. I didn’t want to be “the roommate who left every Friday afternoon and returned every Sunday night”. I also wanted to make real friends up at Dayton. There were plenty of people who I was “friends” with up here, but in reality I had only a small handful of truly strong friendships. Finally, certain um “motivations” no longer existed, or had at least been reshaped enough that they did not require me to go to UK nearly every weekend of the semester. That decision may have been the best I’ve ever made.
The weeks that have since passed, approximately 10 of them (at UD), have been the greatest of my life. I could not have imagined the impact staying at UD for the weekends would have on my life. I have only been away from UD (I’m counting being at Ultimate Tourneys as being at UD since I was with all UD people) on three weekends, and at UK twice. The end result, I’ve made some of the greatest friends a guy could ask for.
Ultimate continues to be the single greatest thing I have going on in my life right now. The people, the game; all amazing. The weekend at North Face was easily the greatest weekend of my life. The only one that even gives it a challenge is Bonnaroo ’05 and that was a $200 music festival. Riding up solo with Budd as my only co-pilot resulted in ½ of the funniest road trip of my life. From stories about transporting dead deer to a summer camp, to dining at a McDonald’s so classy that I felt underdressed, the trip was a blast. While in Cleveland I was treated like a king by the wonderful Hensel family who welcomed us into their home. The night was spent recounting the adventures of conspiracies encoded within pornography and the brave woman who was attempting to discover them at 2:30am in the library; a story that earned me the introduction “This is Pat Maloney, the greatest story teller on campus” at a party the other night. The games the following day went well, though the tourney set up screwed us out of playing in the A bracket. At the tourney I was able to see Alex, who I had played ultimate with on the summer league. I was also able to see Rosie, who was running the tournament. It was more than a little awkward as people expressed their frustration with her set up in “less-than-polite” ways. That night I took part in the greatest game of Scategories ever played. Some answers included “Pooch’s Personality” for “Things that are cold beginning with the letter P” and “Roger’s & Hammerstein” for “Villains/Monsters beginning with the letter V” (Both answers came from Budd’s team). We also held a tournament of the enormously addicting game “Cups” which involves throwing a disc at poles to knock off the cups placed upon top. Myself and Anna lost in the finals to T. Knight (the most balla’est shit eva’) and Josh, who had dominated all opponents up until that point. We were also fed deliciously by the Hensel family for the second night in a row. The next day of tourney play saw us easily reaching the finals of our bracket before losing to Grove city to take 8th place in the tourney (had the set up been different we could have probably taken at least 4th or higher). On the drive back to Dan’s house from the fields myself, Budd, and Joe (one of my housemates) managed to get lost something like 3 times and I made a U-turn over the grass to go from an on ramp back to the off ramp to keep from getting on the wrong interstate. When driving to Steph’s house for a last team dinner my car, now with only Budd again, took the wrong interstate (why would they put a sign for I-71 right before the ramp for I-70!?!) but it worked out fine as I was able to remap out the route and still beat the other cars to the final location. After eating the most amazing grilled chicken I’ve ever had and meeting a set of quadruplets we left for Dayton. My car now consisted of Budd and Pooch (who at the last second ditched her previous car because she “knew that I’d be laughing the entire way home if I rode with you guys”) as we drove back to Dayton, staying roughly with Mark Anderson’s car. But the weekend of ecstasy was not over yet, and we received a call from Mark while sitting in traffic slightly outside of Columbus. Apparently they had been planning on making a stop in Columbus to drop Anna (my partner in Cups) at her house. When Anna had called home to tell her parents she would be stopping by early she had been told by her mother that four apple pies and handmade cinnamon ice cream were waiting for anyone who wanted to make the stop. Needless to say, we stopped (Interesting side note, Anna is apparently the sister of my O-chem lab partner Krista and I was totally caught off guard by her presence there, small world eh?). As myself, Mark A, Pooch, Budd, Anna, Addison, and Mark Latta ate pie and ice cream in Anna’s kitchen we engaged her mother in some casual conversation. The conversation was highlighted by Budd describing a hypothetical person whose sole job is to cover up the disappearance of students at OSU. The description was ended with the again hypothetical phone call that a parent would receive if their son were to disappear on campus. “Mr. So & So? I'm calling on behalf of the OSU student affairs committee. Recently it came to our attention that your son has left the university. According to our data he became a hippie before running off with a lass and joining a commune. Thanks for your time and good night.” At which point Addison proclaimed “I think its time for us to leave after that.” We continued back to Dayton, happy and content with the most delicious pie and ice cream I had ever tasted in our bellies. The conversations with Budd and Pooch were similarly hilarious on the way back to Dayton, though they are mainly lost to history. Finally the greatest weekend of my life had ended.
Ultimate also got me finally partying in the Ghetto on weekends. I had no idea what I was missing. In my opinion people don’t just go to the Ghetto to drink. I think another major part of it is the gathering of people in one area who are all insanely awesome. I was tentative about partying a lot up here at first, but the first weekend changed all of that. In two nights I was hooked. Starting slowly by meeting up at Pooch’s house and then following them around a couple times I discovered what a wonderfully unique place the Ghetto really is. At other places I’ve partied it’s always about bringing your own, or a cover charge or something like that. If you don’t know the people who own the house, odds are you aren’t welcome there. You have to at least be with someone who has a connection. People are always focused on themselves more than others. At UD, it’s the exact opposite. You are welcome at probably 90% of houses in the ghetto, regardless of who you know, or who you are with. Cover charge? Bring your own? Try, “Beer’s in the fridge and on the porch, help yourself”. In any given night you can visit 4 or 5 different houses and have a great time at all of them. You meet tons of new people every night and they are always welcoming. It’s addictive. Partying at UD has really spoiled me. Last weekend I went to UK for the classic “haunted keg” and was literally bored out of my mind. Not only were half of the people there really weird, but the other half ditched out quickly without telling me and the other couple left over people where they had gone. We sat around wondering what the hell happened. I felt kind of betrayed. Honestly, I don’t really want to go back. If Angie hadn’t asked when I was coming down so that we could party together, it would be January before I partied at UK again.
The party I had attended the night before was basically the antithesis of the UK party scene. Budd was throwing a Beatlemania party at his house, and to put it lightly, it was the greatest party I had ever been too. I was attending as “Bungalow Bill” from the song “The Continuing Adventures of Bungalow Bill”. Also in attendance were “Sgt Pepper”, “The Yellow Submarine”, “8 Days a Week”, “The Walrus”, “The White Album”, two versions of “The Sun” and who knows what else. The party was a collection of 40+ happy people howling along to classic Beatle’s tunes. Budd was basically in continual ecstasy and at one point turned to me and said, “I’ve waited for this my entire life”. After around 1 am though, the party started to grow even larger as other parties began merging in. Did it matter that these people weren’t in alignment with the Beatlemania theme? Hell no! JR’s Ghostbuster costume was literally art. The gun dispensed beer for christsake! Later that night I walked, accompanied by the wonderful Francine, back to my house (didn’t need to bother with a ride!! Another great part about Ghetto partyin!) and went to sleep, about as content as I had ever been.
Another great thing going on in my life right now is the radio show I have every Wednesday at 10pm. Being on the air and getting to play all sorts of random stuff has been amazing. The process of going through my now extensive library (I just recently passed 5100 songs) and picking out stuff to fill about 1.5 hours of air time (I talk a lot) is stressful but fun. My boss, Franny, is fan-fucking-tabulous. The 5 min I spend with her between our shows (she happens to be right in front of me in the time slot) is often a mini-highlight of the week. If you want to listen in you can do it at 99.5 FM if you are in the Dayton area, or you can go to www.udayton.edu/~flyer-radio and stream the broadcast from our station’s website. Listen to it and call in or IM me in the studio!!
Musically, if I were to sum up what I’ve gotten into since august, it would be impossible. I’ll just list the best albums I’ve picked up since then and maybe add in a quick note for each one.
Primal Scream - “Riot City Blues” - Kind of like country/punk/rock
Thom Yorke - “The Eraser” - fucking amazing, a fine way to waste time while waiting for that new Radiohead album to come out
Sufjan Stevens - “The Avalanche” - pretty damn good for the “leftovers”
Brendan Benson - “The Alternative to Love”
Murder By Death - “In Bocca Al Luppo” - music for the mob
M. Ward - “Post War” - “Chinese Translation” = pure bliss
The Pixies - “Doolittle” - the band that invented alt-rock
Mew - “And the Glass Handed Kites” - gets better every time I listen
The Thermals - “The Body, the Blood, and the Machine” - honest to God punk rock
Grizzly Bear - “Yellow House” - very VERY chill stuff
Mint - “Magnetism” - one of my new favorite bands
Beck - “The Information” - he does it again. I have a new favorite song every time
The Decemberists - “Crane Wife” - Fucking amazing, opens strong with “Crane Wife 3”
Of Montreal - “Hissing Fauna…” - Awesome new stuff from a band unlike any other
Beirut - “Gulag Orkestar” - Just say the title. So awesome. Oh, the music is good too
The Whitest Boy Alive - “Dreams” - You HAVE to get this, regardless of musical taste
My Chemical Romance - “Black Parade” - Oddly enough, reminds me of Queen. Which is never a bad thing
The Shins - “Wincing the Night Away” - The wait was worth it, they get better again.
Alllrighty, it’s been a long post, but hopefully you liked it. Now I’m relatively back to being current so maybe I’ll update a little more often? Leave lots of comments, it would mean a lot to me ;)
It was the end of summer; I had just about finished working at the Health Dept and was getting ready to head on back to UD. I had already made the decision to avoid going to Lexington often for numerous reasons. I was living in a house now with 4 strangers and I wanted to be able to get to know who these people were. I didn’t want to be “the roommate who left every Friday afternoon and returned every Sunday night”. I also wanted to make real friends up at Dayton. There were plenty of people who I was “friends” with up here, but in reality I had only a small handful of truly strong friendships. Finally, certain um “motivations” no longer existed, or had at least been reshaped enough that they did not require me to go to UK nearly every weekend of the semester. That decision may have been the best I’ve ever made.
The weeks that have since passed, approximately 10 of them (at UD), have been the greatest of my life. I could not have imagined the impact staying at UD for the weekends would have on my life. I have only been away from UD (I’m counting being at Ultimate Tourneys as being at UD since I was with all UD people) on three weekends, and at UK twice. The end result, I’ve made some of the greatest friends a guy could ask for.
Ultimate continues to be the single greatest thing I have going on in my life right now. The people, the game; all amazing. The weekend at North Face was easily the greatest weekend of my life. The only one that even gives it a challenge is Bonnaroo ’05 and that was a $200 music festival. Riding up solo with Budd as my only co-pilot resulted in ½ of the funniest road trip of my life. From stories about transporting dead deer to a summer camp, to dining at a McDonald’s so classy that I felt underdressed, the trip was a blast. While in Cleveland I was treated like a king by the wonderful Hensel family who welcomed us into their home. The night was spent recounting the adventures of conspiracies encoded within pornography and the brave woman who was attempting to discover them at 2:30am in the library; a story that earned me the introduction “This is Pat Maloney, the greatest story teller on campus” at a party the other night. The games the following day went well, though the tourney set up screwed us out of playing in the A bracket. At the tourney I was able to see Alex, who I had played ultimate with on the summer league. I was also able to see Rosie, who was running the tournament. It was more than a little awkward as people expressed their frustration with her set up in “less-than-polite” ways. That night I took part in the greatest game of Scategories ever played. Some answers included “Pooch’s Personality” for “Things that are cold beginning with the letter P” and “Roger’s & Hammerstein” for “Villains/Monsters beginning with the letter V” (Both answers came from Budd’s team). We also held a tournament of the enormously addicting game “Cups” which involves throwing a disc at poles to knock off the cups placed upon top. Myself and Anna lost in the finals to T. Knight (the most balla’est shit eva’) and Josh, who had dominated all opponents up until that point. We were also fed deliciously by the Hensel family for the second night in a row. The next day of tourney play saw us easily reaching the finals of our bracket before losing to Grove city to take 8th place in the tourney (had the set up been different we could have probably taken at least 4th or higher). On the drive back to Dan’s house from the fields myself, Budd, and Joe (one of my housemates) managed to get lost something like 3 times and I made a U-turn over the grass to go from an on ramp back to the off ramp to keep from getting on the wrong interstate. When driving to Steph’s house for a last team dinner my car, now with only Budd again, took the wrong interstate (why would they put a sign for I-71 right before the ramp for I-70!?!) but it worked out fine as I was able to remap out the route and still beat the other cars to the final location. After eating the most amazing grilled chicken I’ve ever had and meeting a set of quadruplets we left for Dayton. My car now consisted of Budd and Pooch (who at the last second ditched her previous car because she “knew that I’d be laughing the entire way home if I rode with you guys”) as we drove back to Dayton, staying roughly with Mark Anderson’s car. But the weekend of ecstasy was not over yet, and we received a call from Mark while sitting in traffic slightly outside of Columbus. Apparently they had been planning on making a stop in Columbus to drop Anna (my partner in Cups) at her house. When Anna had called home to tell her parents she would be stopping by early she had been told by her mother that four apple pies and handmade cinnamon ice cream were waiting for anyone who wanted to make the stop. Needless to say, we stopped (Interesting side note, Anna is apparently the sister of my O-chem lab partner Krista and I was totally caught off guard by her presence there, small world eh?). As myself, Mark A, Pooch, Budd, Anna, Addison, and Mark Latta ate pie and ice cream in Anna’s kitchen we engaged her mother in some casual conversation. The conversation was highlighted by Budd describing a hypothetical person whose sole job is to cover up the disappearance of students at OSU. The description was ended with the again hypothetical phone call that a parent would receive if their son were to disappear on campus. “Mr. So & So? I'm calling on behalf of the OSU student affairs committee. Recently it came to our attention that your son has left the university. According to our data he became a hippie before running off with a lass and joining a commune. Thanks for your time and good night.” At which point Addison proclaimed “I think its time for us to leave after that.” We continued back to Dayton, happy and content with the most delicious pie and ice cream I had ever tasted in our bellies. The conversations with Budd and Pooch were similarly hilarious on the way back to Dayton, though they are mainly lost to history. Finally the greatest weekend of my life had ended.
Ultimate also got me finally partying in the Ghetto on weekends. I had no idea what I was missing. In my opinion people don’t just go to the Ghetto to drink. I think another major part of it is the gathering of people in one area who are all insanely awesome. I was tentative about partying a lot up here at first, but the first weekend changed all of that. In two nights I was hooked. Starting slowly by meeting up at Pooch’s house and then following them around a couple times I discovered what a wonderfully unique place the Ghetto really is. At other places I’ve partied it’s always about bringing your own, or a cover charge or something like that. If you don’t know the people who own the house, odds are you aren’t welcome there. You have to at least be with someone who has a connection. People are always focused on themselves more than others. At UD, it’s the exact opposite. You are welcome at probably 90% of houses in the ghetto, regardless of who you know, or who you are with. Cover charge? Bring your own? Try, “Beer’s in the fridge and on the porch, help yourself”. In any given night you can visit 4 or 5 different houses and have a great time at all of them. You meet tons of new people every night and they are always welcoming. It’s addictive. Partying at UD has really spoiled me. Last weekend I went to UK for the classic “haunted keg” and was literally bored out of my mind. Not only were half of the people there really weird, but the other half ditched out quickly without telling me and the other couple left over people where they had gone. We sat around wondering what the hell happened. I felt kind of betrayed. Honestly, I don’t really want to go back. If Angie hadn’t asked when I was coming down so that we could party together, it would be January before I partied at UK again.
The party I had attended the night before was basically the antithesis of the UK party scene. Budd was throwing a Beatlemania party at his house, and to put it lightly, it was the greatest party I had ever been too. I was attending as “Bungalow Bill” from the song “The Continuing Adventures of Bungalow Bill”. Also in attendance were “Sgt Pepper”, “The Yellow Submarine”, “8 Days a Week”, “The Walrus”, “The White Album”, two versions of “The Sun” and who knows what else. The party was a collection of 40+ happy people howling along to classic Beatle’s tunes. Budd was basically in continual ecstasy and at one point turned to me and said, “I’ve waited for this my entire life”. After around 1 am though, the party started to grow even larger as other parties began merging in. Did it matter that these people weren’t in alignment with the Beatlemania theme? Hell no! JR’s Ghostbuster costume was literally art. The gun dispensed beer for christsake! Later that night I walked, accompanied by the wonderful Francine, back to my house (didn’t need to bother with a ride!! Another great part about Ghetto partyin!) and went to sleep, about as content as I had ever been.
Another great thing going on in my life right now is the radio show I have every Wednesday at 10pm. Being on the air and getting to play all sorts of random stuff has been amazing. The process of going through my now extensive library (I just recently passed 5100 songs) and picking out stuff to fill about 1.5 hours of air time (I talk a lot) is stressful but fun. My boss, Franny, is fan-fucking-tabulous. The 5 min I spend with her between our shows (she happens to be right in front of me in the time slot) is often a mini-highlight of the week. If you want to listen in you can do it at 99.5 FM if you are in the Dayton area, or you can go to www.udayton.edu/~flyer-radio and stream the broadcast from our station’s website. Listen to it and call in or IM me in the studio!!
Musically, if I were to sum up what I’ve gotten into since august, it would be impossible. I’ll just list the best albums I’ve picked up since then and maybe add in a quick note for each one.
Primal Scream - “Riot City Blues” - Kind of like country/punk/rock
Thom Yorke - “The Eraser” - fucking amazing, a fine way to waste time while waiting for that new Radiohead album to come out
Sufjan Stevens - “The Avalanche” - pretty damn good for the “leftovers”
Brendan Benson - “The Alternative to Love”
Murder By Death - “In Bocca Al Luppo” - music for the mob
M. Ward - “Post War” - “Chinese Translation” = pure bliss
The Pixies - “Doolittle” - the band that invented alt-rock
Mew - “And the Glass Handed Kites” - gets better every time I listen
The Thermals - “The Body, the Blood, and the Machine” - honest to God punk rock
Grizzly Bear - “Yellow House” - very VERY chill stuff
Mint - “Magnetism” - one of my new favorite bands
Beck - “The Information” - he does it again. I have a new favorite song every time
The Decemberists - “Crane Wife” - Fucking amazing, opens strong with “Crane Wife 3”
Of Montreal - “Hissing Fauna…” - Awesome new stuff from a band unlike any other
Beirut - “Gulag Orkestar” - Just say the title. So awesome. Oh, the music is good too
The Whitest Boy Alive - “Dreams” - You HAVE to get this, regardless of musical taste
My Chemical Romance - “Black Parade” - Oddly enough, reminds me of Queen. Which is never a bad thing
The Shins - “Wincing the Night Away” - The wait was worth it, they get better again.
Alllrighty, it’s been a long post, but hopefully you liked it. Now I’m relatively back to being current so maybe I’ll update a little more often? Leave lots of comments, it would mean a lot to me ;)