I quit

I'm not touching anything for 3 days. 50,000 words is a lot.

Rock!

Last night I drove to Louisville to see Death Cab for Cutie. Sometimes I do just have to be emo. The concert itself was o.k., but the combination of people watching what passes for hipster or indie in Kentucky and the completely over the top theater made the whole excursion worth it. The other concert goers, mostly high school and college aged, were obviously tricked out in their hippest hipster duds. There was probably enough hair gel on the males present to burn the place down in five minutes flat. Luckily, there is no smoking allowed in doors in Louisville anymore. If this concert had taken place 4 months ago, I may not have made it out alive. As for the females, there was a strange proclivity towards wearing arm warmers. Little do they know that is totally manufacturing chic; I wear Kevlar arm warmers every day at work to protect myself against random glass injuries. I wonder what they felt they were protecting themselves from, the tide of emo tears during "I will follow you into the dark"? Emo tears do burn...

Anyways, the people watching was amazing, but the theatre, The Louisville Palace, was simply over the top. The stage is housed in a giant Chinese pagoda, set up to look like it's outside. The balconies and niches contained ornate Grecian urns and false Roman gods with artfully placed fig leaves. The ceilings were scalloped and embellished to the extreme of Rococo architecture, which contrasted nicely with the art deco paint job covering every scroll and fluted column. The floors in the were a mix of old, broken tiles and linoleum. The whole affect was quite overwhelming, making everything, including the mass quantities of emo kids and amusingly pretentious band, pale in comparison. Quite awesome.

Really, though, the concert itself was just kind of normal. I've seen a lot of concerts, ranging from huge arena concerts like Radiohead to tiny little club shows for bands that no longer exist like Radish. My standard, as a result, is fairly high, and Death Cab came no where close to the two concerts that stand out above all the others. The first concert of utter pleasure would have to be the Da Vinci's Notebook concert I went to with Jerzy the summer between Freshman and Sophomore year. At Club Passim, next door to Veggie Planet in Harvard Square, the room was packed in the middle with tables and around the edges with stand alone chairs. Jerzy had made reservations in advance, and apparently done a good job of it. Our table was directly in front of the stage. The opening act was not only humorous, the tall Rockapella singer's solo project, but actually surprisingly talentful for an opening act. The main act, though, was unbeatable. Da Vinci's Notebook may be the funniest people on the face of the earth. They kept the audience in tears from laughing so hard, teaching the sign language to "Enormous Penis" and making fun of the youthful looking couple at the table directly in front of them. I believe I was even serenaded to for "Title of the Song". The group was obviously putting all their energy into the show and the audience, small and packed in, was more than willing to reciprocate. The ended with the "Fuck You" song, which they have never recorded and practically never performed. The experience left Jerzy and I giddy as we ran for the T station in an attempt to catch the last train for the night.

The other concert that stands out in my mind is seeing TV on the Radio with Drew in what must have been the following fall. Downstairs in the Middle East on what I think was a school night, it felt like someplace I shouldn't be. The people there were too cool for me. I had heard TV on the Radio on NPR a few weeks earlier and Drew had bought the CDs from amazon immediately following. We were definitely music posers. Either way, the crowd was small, as the band was still in its pre-pitchfork-rave-reviews days, but quite dedicated to being there. The rain probably made the crowd even smaller, but everyone hung on every note. The audio looped and layered in lush, new ways when performed live rather than being remastered. The lead singer's voice was smooth with amazing depth and range. The entire group seemed to be channeling each other, seemingly never missing a beat. The Cambridge bar curfew came and went with merely a comment that the police could try to shut us down if they wanted. By the time we emerged into the rain-slicked street, the T had stopped running but the music echoing in our heads made everything great. For two hours, we had felt part of something different and wonderful. There is no accurate way to describe it.

So last night's concert was enjoyable and I do like Death Cab's music, but it wasn't the best I've ever had. On the other hand, the fight in the parking garage after the show where one heavily eye-linered girl accused another raccoon-eyed girl of ruining her Death Cab concert, may have been the best emo moment I've ever seen.

Saving the World is Cold and Other Life Lessons from November

I now wear flannel footy pajamas to bed at night (they do make them for big people). This is in addition to the flannel sheets on my bed, the fleece blanket, the wool blanket, the fluffy comforter and the flannel-backed quilt. When my parents came into my apartment last weekend they commented on how cold it was, to which I went over, checked the thermostat and responded, "It's not even below 60." I don't enjoy being cold, but as with air conditioning and light usage, I feel that I'm doing my part to not kill the world. I wonder how different I would be if my parents had warned me that saving the world would be such a cold endeavor.

Other amusing tidbits from the first 2 weeks of November:

It turns out I can write about 2500 words an hour. I wish I had discovered this when I was avoiding writing my AHS capstone last spring.

When writing fiction, characters quickly become based off of friends and relatives, often a conglomeration of quirks and traits from multiple people. I'm sorry if I butcher your personalities.

Dialogue is terrifying. For some reason, I am afraid of writing dialogue, thus I am more than 25,000 words into a book and have yet to write any. No one is ever reading this novel.
No one.

That is all.

I was wrong

Everything negative I ever said about Kentucky I take back in full.

On Halloween night I was trying to head to a new acquaintance's house for a Halloween gathering. I grab the directions and a bowl of artichoke dip and head out into the misty, mid-forties night. The directions start "Take a right on Alexandria", which is not a road I live on, or one I'm actually familiar with, so I start heading south on a major road thinking I had overheard something about it being that direction. 4 miles of well-marked roads later, I leave the county and start thinking I need to turn around. The road quickly narrows to two sixty-miles-per-hour busy lanes with very few cross roads and no buildings. At the next sign of a turn off, I signal appropriately and take a left. All is fine, except now I'm on a smaller country road and want to be heading the other direction. Deciding it's safe, I decide to pull a three point turn on the narrow, but paved road. Point one goes well, point two goes well, and then we get to point three. In an effort to really make it, I tried to get a little too close to the edge of the pavement. Beyond the edge of the pavement was a 2 foot drop. With a thud, my front right tire falls off the pavement, leaving the frame of my car in contact with the edge of the pavement and one rear tire off the ground. I futiley try throwing my front-wheel-drive car in reverse and flooring it. I get out and wandering around the car looking confused and on the verge of tears. I'm in the middle of nowhere and don't know what to do. At this moment, a pair of headlights appears coming in my direction. I quickly turn on my flashers and greet the people who will be my saviors. They look at my car and quickly call their neighbors for a tow line without even asking. Another car pulls onto the road from the other direction, inquiring if everyone is o.k. and offering more help. These four random strangers push my car out of the ditch, give me directions and send me on my way. The whole episode took less than five minutes, but these people were amazingly nice, taking time out of their evenings and getting dirty to help an obviously distressed driver. Amazing.

After the accident last week where I hit a Sylvania exec and now this, I think I need a little better sense of the passenger side of my car.