School's Done, TIme for Dumb!

I just handed in my finished project yesterday around 1pm. I'd only slept four hours between Wednesday morning and last night, so I was a little burned out, but it was worth the 2 1/2 days to do it. 16 hours collectively went to the motel and I'm not quite sure how many went to Isabella, so don't go thinking I worked on Ceramics readings for 2 days straight.
Anyway, now I'm ready to stupid things up a bit until Sept...duuuhhhhhhh..........
I was still tired this morning, but I got up anyway to watch cartoons. Some genius decided to put Batman on at 7:30 in the morning now. ...duuuhhhh....That's even alright, though, because I'll catch up on my sleep tonight. But right now, we're off to the ...duuuhhhh.....Farmer's Market to buy Pumpkin Bread and possibly some Rhubarb...and no, I don't share rhubarb very well, so get your own!

p.s., If we do get to play the weeked of the 12th, that Saturday or Sunday would work best for me. Besides, I'm sure others have to work Friday, and it might take some time to move equipment. I'll have to know soon, though, because if we do, we gotta bring 2 vehicles.

Time's Moving Along, Start Practicin'!

It's getting to crunch time for me with my ceramics project. My portfolio is due the 29th, and I still haven't done my paper. My plan was to finish my illustrations and work on it during the weekend at work, when I had more time to concentrate.
Nuts to that idea. Saturday we had a wedding at the motel, and I couldn't concentrate on anything because half the party was in the breakfast room until 3:30am, and I had to clean everything up, also partly because the breakfast person delegated the cleaning duties to the morning desk girl, who delegated it to the afternoon guy, who's partly lazy.
Then Sunday the same situation (minus the wedding) happened, and I got slammed with laundry until around 7am. So I got nothing done except some reading Friday.
On the bright side, i finally got my new laptop battery. It came all the way from China, but it was worth it, because I only paid like $75 for it, when normally this type wold cost over $100. I've gone so long without it, it's weird now having a laptop that actually feels portable. Stupid, huh?

Anyway, Karissa & I are thinking of coming up over the weekend of August 12th. It's the only weekend I have off before I have to start getting ready for school, and I thought it might be a good time to jam on one of those days, between the 12t-14th, if that works with both Kevin and Amadon's schedules.

Not Quite as Big as High School, but Weird Nonetheless

Wow, it didn't feel like it was going to be a storm day, but we got ourselves a little rain. In June it wouldn't stop, and now this is the first real rain in a while.
One business week (five days) until I'm done with school! Then I get a little break for about a month. It's so weird to think that I've had to do this gig for three more fucking years. And now, all of a sudden, it's coming to an end. Half of the friends I made aren't even staying in the country, let alone the same state. That's even more strange. The only bad thing about not having any more school is that I passed on some great opportunities like going to Chile, or Peru, or Guatemala, among other countries. Most of my reasoning was that in the last two years I was needed more at home for the baby--a good reason I might add--so figured any kind of traveling would have to wait until post-college. Now, I have no idea where the hell I'll end up. I still might have the Cyprus thing, but I'm being considered right now more as an understudy or backup than anything else. But that's part of the game, I guess.
In the words of Joe Dirt, I'll just have to keep on keepin' on.

Anyone Not Interested In the Post Below, Entertain Yourselves With This

I know this is old (May), but it still kills me when I see it. So if you don't want to read about guitars or band stuff, then enjoy the full moon.

A Word About Guitar-Playing (Most of You Might Want to Skip This)

Apart from the fact that I didn't think any guys beside me read my blog (it's okay, I'm secure), I was surprised to see a comment from Amadon on my last one. You may all point and laugh at his sappy comment.
That being said, there are points within that comment to be addressed.
First off, I want to play. I've wanted to play music with PEOPLE for 4 YEARS now, but couldn't really bring myself to find a new group of guys to play with. I may or may not be good at rhythm guitar, but damned if I still ain't extremely anal about who I play with (ha, anal about who I play with, that sounds dirty). I think that's why I've only ever been comfortable with Amadon & Kevin.
Amadon has always frustrated me to the point of screaming with his "barriers". I put them in quotes, because I believe he's put the "barriers" up without realizing it. As for playing better vs. creating, the two go hand in hand. Think about this Amadon, you've got ADD! Your biggest problem has never been that you can't play, but that you can't get the patience to play! I won't say I know the extent of what you're going through in that Ama-brain of yours, but I do have a good idea. It's hard as hell to fight that decision to practice when all you want to do is create the damn song. I've written so many songs even in the past 4 years that I've stopped recording them in the songbook. And there were 3 songbooks before I quit writing in them. But with practice comes technique. And with technique comes style, and with that you can finally be comfortable with the guitar around your neck. I've already posted something about the music I listen to, but if I had to label my playing style it'd probably be acoustic heavy metal (it can never be an easy, clear-cut label, can it?).
Look at Dimebag. He's never had any musical training outside of self-learning, listening to records, and guitar mags. How different are we in our learning? Hell, if nothing else, take baby steps. You built a guitar with better sustain, hit one note, and vibrato the hell out of it for as long as you can. Then do it again. That's how you build on it.
One other problem: we still need a bassist. I've entertained wild notions, but we need to ask ourselves where our low end is going to come from. The White Stripes get away with not having one, but I don't really think we'd sound so great without one.
I thought about asking Derek to play again, but I don't think he'd want to anymore, plus I don't know if he remembers how to play many songs anymore. Hey, Amber, maybe you could convince Ben to pick up the Cello again. I'd play in a band with a Cellist. Worst case scenario, I suppose I could dust off my brother's bass, even though it cuts out, but I'd rather stick to rhythm guitar.
I totally agree that we were a good band, even if we didn't sound the best. That's because we weren't afraid of eachother, and that we saw that everyone was having fun with it. I think Derek wanted acceptance that we didn't completely give, and that may be why he was the first to drift away.
I always remember 2 events where we proved ourselves, and unfortunately neither was actually AT a show. I don't count Spring Days, even though we got a great reception. We just didn't sound that great.
I remember the practice right before Crazy Days 1998. I remember Kevin getting fed up because we couldn't get Gone Away right, so he just started playing it fast. The song itself didn't sound good fast, but we played so tight and in key that I couldn't believe it was us. Even that part that Amadon always fucked up (the "I reach to the sky" part) was played right.
The other one is the sound check before the Iron Root Tree Fuckers-I mean Folk- played. I think Amadon got more out of playing with us, especially since he was practically phased out of their band right before the show started. I remember playing Lucid Nightmares, and when I did the solo (short and simple as it was) with a wah pedal, Derek just looked at me, surprised. Afterward, he said he was standig by my amp and heard the solo really well, and was amazed that it sounded awesome. I was surprised, too, because I knew that there was no harmonious correlation between my solo and the song. It was written a week after I first picked up the Dean. When we did play that night, we were almost phased out twice--once when Brandt Wolfe almost got into a fight with Jon from IRTF (Jon's fault), and the other time when we were told our time was shortened to 2 songs--by IRTF. I still think the crowd liked us more, if for nothing more than our Green Jelly cover of the 3 Little Pigs. by the way, Amadon, if we jam, guess what one of the first songs is going to be? Get your falsetto voice ready.

Mimbres Mystery

This post is in response to Janelle's comment on my last post, which was a question about the meaning of the cricket on the Mimbres pot. Mimbres are well known for the integration of animals and human characters on their pots, and often times even animal-human hybrids also. I could lie to you guys and say this is where Walt Disney really stole his ideas from, but April would beat me. Again.
To be honest, I had to look it up, and I still couldn't find the meaning behind the use of a cricket in the bowl. Rabbits and bats two of the animals I most often see besides humans. Generally, their use of animals and humans is highly suggestive of their religious beliefs. One of the popular ones tended to be that of animorphic beings, suggesting that possibly these are depictions of deities or humans in animal form.



Much of what I have read has also stated that the use of the classic black on white motif is suggestive of a continuing struggle of light forces over dark. I really don't know how much credibility I can lend to that theory, though. I mean, much of that is attributing our modern-day attitudes to a culture that lived over 1000 years ago, a habit that is extremely hard to even become aware of.

I don't claim to know what their beliefs are, but I can see the stark contrast between black and white, and I can see that the use of patterns integrated with characters might make it more noticeable and more vividly expressed even than on colored bowls. Maybe, then, it was intended as a marketing tool to sell more bowl (or conduct more trade for thair bowls).
Any other ideas?

As Long As This Is, It's Not Nearly Long Enough

Alright, this might turn out a little geeky. Not like Batman geeky, but like I'm going off on a tangent geeky. There isn't really a point to this post, but then again, there doesn't really have to be, so there.
I've been thinking off and on for a while now about music. I never really thought about how to define myself musically. I've always just referred to myself as a metalhead. But that's not entirely accurate. I mean look at my personal profile. Those bands aren't all metal. Johnny Cash is TECHNICALLY old country, blues, and folk. Nick Cave is more like mood rock. Tom Waits is Tom Waits music (I have no fucking clue what to call him, and I don't think "beatnick" is nearly broad enough).
The thing is, I like clean-cut labels for myself. I hate having to explain too much of a self-proclamation to people, because I can see when there eyes glaze over, and I take it as an insult when they bump their head on the coffee table as they pass out from boredom.

Subtangent: It drives me nuts how hung up people are on the "permanence" of labels. Unfortunately, we're taught (almost always with humility) at an early age that labels are permanent, leaving lasting impressions that are harder to wash out than duct tape glue. We forget that we forget what those impressions were half the time. We also forget that one of the most foremost geniuses (genii?) in physics was an idiot in math. We seem to remember the kids who killed their school peers as having trenchcoats or dyed hair, but not that they were struggling to express themselves without realizing that they were adolescent and fucking nuts.
I don't find labels permanent. I think of them like clothes. You change them (hopefully) often; many you grow out of, some you don't; some are really cool, some are of questionable taste or even goofy; some are well-worn, yet are persistently worn...you get the point. They're interchangeable.

Ok, back on track. What kind of a label can I give myself musically? A music-head? A folk-banger (sounds like the plural to motherfucker)? A beat-metal-folk-classico-country listener? A music teacher? I don't know. Maybe when someone asks me what kind of music I like, I'll just tell them what I don't like. Well, no, because for all the music I do like, there's an equal amount that I can't stand. I love Pantera, Superjoint Ritual, Metallica, Type O...but I hate Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Seether, Six Feet Under. I like Pearl Jam & Days of the New, but I hate Creed and Phish (I REALLY hate Creed).
My best idea for a label would be that I like emotive music.
But wait a minute, what the hell does that even mean? And why does it sound pussy to use that term? Well, I don't know why it sounds pussy, but I'm using it because it's the best term to use. And I'm secure. So there.
It took me a long time to even come up with a term like "emotive", and it is in fact a word. It just basically means to show emotion, but I'm not really meaning it that way. What I mean is, listen to "Domination" or "Cemetery Gates" by Pantera. Dimebag's guitar literally screams, and it boils up this kind of excitement that a lot of other music just can't. Many would call it panic, or maybe even rage. Listen to "Hollow", and hear it come out in the guitar and singing.
Listen to System of a Down and tell me that that guy isn't exhausted at the end of a concert set. He puts so much out in his singing style, it actually hard NOT to get into. "Spiders" is a great song for that--so is "Toxicity" and "ATWA".
Listen to Johnny Cash, hear the pain of life in his voice. Listen to Tom Waits, hear that same pain waxed a bit more philosophically and to more experimental music. "No One Knows I'm Gone" reminds me of Louis Armstrong, While "The Piano Has Been Drinking" reminds me of that song by the Naked Trucker (I can't remember the whole name of the band) about the guy who thinks his deadbeat dad took off to be an astronaut. Ok, that's a little vague--the unique quality is that both songs are funny until the end, when you realize how hopeful and hopeless that characters in them really are.
I've been listening to three bands lately more than others.
I don't know why, but I like Dark New Day. I think it's because they're metal, but they're so mellow about it. Plus the guy can sing well, but also scream right. You don't hear it much, but guys like Phil Anselmo, Dave Williams (Drowning Pool), Serj Tankian, among others, just crawl out of the woodwork and give me hope for heavy metal. Besides the singing, Dark New Day uses clean guitar sounds and make it work with metal.
I don't even know how to describe Mushroomhead. They're a little like Slipknot (also a band I've newfound respect for), only the music is different. I saw the video for "Sun Doesn't Rise" the other day, and damn near shit myself, it's that cool. The song that hooked me was "Bwomp". There's a part about 3 1/2 minutes in, when in a wail the singer say's "What do we have to hope for? Why do we even try?" I guess I can't really explain that. If you get it, you get it, if you don't, sorry.
The last band is called Machete Avenue. I've only been able to hear 2 of their songs, because that's all that's available. I found them on www.soundclick.com, and I liked how they amped their acoustics. Plus the guy sounds a bit like he pushed his voice through a cheese grater and it definitely gave the impression of anguish.

Subtangent: If any of you have seen Evil Dead II (and if you haven't SHAME ON YOU!), there's a part where the girl's dad is trying to get reach the group from the dead. One of them says something to the effect of how it sounded like someone was trying to break through to their realm. The line was cheesy as hell, but I always thought the concept that something would try so hard, at risk of death or some other kind of unfortunate transition, to reach across realities for whatever purpose. I don't know why, but I always imagined it would involve (theoretically) some kind of ungodly pain and a lot of it. It's the same way with music. There's a point somewhere in there where you can't take it just singing this unemotional crap, and some kind of thing just rips out. It's in harmony with the song, it's in key, it's even timed well. But it's like a scream or wail or a growl and it's expressed to the point of exhaustion, and you wonder how the hell that person managed to bottle it up in the first place. And once it's through, you see how much pain it caused in coming out. Listen to "Daddy" by Korn. I don't know if Davis was really crying and if all that really happened that he sang about, but if it didn't, he's a hell of an actor, even on a CD.

So, there you have it. Three bands I've gotten really into. Two subtangents to lead everyone somewhat off track. And one label, maybe a permanent one, to add to my collection. It took a large Pepsi at 2am to get this goosechase out of me (was there, in fact, a point to catch?), and I still haven't even unpacked my acoustic yet. But hey, it was fun to self-reflect, and if I ever have a thought about this again, I can think, 'refer to blog entry 07/15/05.'

Finally Got a Good Dawn Pic

Taken around 5am.

Red Dawn

Something interesting must be coming this way, because the sky in the east and the west (but not in the middle, which is weird) were dark orange around 5am. There were clouds moving northeast, and cloads futher to the west that looked like they were headed the opposite direction, which looked like bad news. There used to be a saying among sailors, "red sky at night, sailor's delight--red sky at morning, sailor take warning."
I don't know how accurate that is in terms of metorology, but I've seen it a few times preceding some nasty weather. I know Devils Lake got it pretty good, but it must be moving pretty slow to just be getting here this morning. Anyway, maybe next time we have a sky like this, I'll have a camera handy.

*Warning* -This Post is Entirely Geeky- *Warning*

This post is actually in response to a comment I missed on my short-but-sweet Batman movie post.
I haven't heard anything really about a specific goal of remaking the Batman movies, but I would hope they just let sleeping suck-ass sequels lie.
I'd personally love to see a sequel to Batman Begins, but not as a remake to Tim Burton's movies or anything. I still like the imagination that guy brought to the first two. I daresay I even didn't mind Val Kilmer, although the neon and flamboyance was already getting to be too much (then again, Burton used Prince for the soundtrack to the first movie, so go figure--remember "Batdance"?).
Begins wasn't even a remake, it was getting back to basics with Batman. The primary goal of the entire movie was to make you think it could actually happen. This is actually the goal of pretty much EVERY movie, that's why actors have to be good to get paid (okay, no they don't, they just have to be pretty. But good acting is the ideal, anway). But think about how ludicrous it would be to have a man dressed in a bat-suit delivering vigilante justice to city low-lifes, and upstaging the police force to an embarassing degree. Sounds silly, doesn't it. That's what makes a GOOD superhero plot so hard.
Spiderman was good, but hammed it up a bit much with the whole "power/responsibility" phrase. Movies like Hellboy and Punisher (both of which were fucking cool) weren't about superheroes, but guys (and demons) with government jobs they would come at odds with throughout the movie. Fantastic Four is clobberin' crap.
Comic movies have become so iffy lately that it's a gamble to get a decent plot to work with effective visuals. That and Hollywood movies are trying for mass-market appeal, so PG-13 abounds for almost all comic book movies--except of course for Punisher, Sin City and I think Aeon Flux coming out later this summer.
For Batman, one of the most definitive graphic novels out is Year One, which gives much more tangible detail to the origin story. Christopher Nolan apparently knew this, and jumped all over the emotional aspect of the beginnings of Batman. Plus he didn't beat around the bush with a bunch of fancy shit. Batman is all about getting the job done and calculating his next move, not showing off how high he can kick or having a batarang programmed to fly at three people in succession. That concept was brought out even in the very beginning of the movie. Instead of a bunch of opening credits, and an overly dramatic scene, the movie opens with low, ominous orchestral hit, a huge fucking swarm of bats, and and revamped, much cooler bat-symbol slowly appearing as they fly away. It's like we've been waiting this long, and Nolan said "just play the god-damned movie."
Sorry I'm gushing, I must look like a Star Wars fan. I can't help it, though. I've waited over a year for this redemption of Schumachers shitty Batman sequels, I've seen all the spoilers (I knew about the Batmobile since last September), and I was still impressed. I couldn't even eat my popcorn for the first half of the movie.
Anyways, if any of you have read this far, sorry. This post doesn't really have a point. I'm tired, someone made the mistake of expressing an interest in something I'm totally into, and I thought I'd go on a little tirade.
But I do have some good news (don't even say anything about fucking car insurance!). This is more for Kevin, if he happens to read this, and any other guy that comes across this blog (girls don't typically go for violent computer games). They have officially finished shooting DOOM--the movie. And starring as the unfortunate marine, The Rock.
I leave that for the men to let it sink in.

One Week, An American Dream of Amish People, Old Photographs, Endless Driving, and Donuts...(keep going man, don't you know this is bat country!)

10 days already? Huh. Wow. June was a pretty busy month. A lot of bad shit seemed to happen right alongside the good didn't it? Oh well, let's see what kind of damage we can do to July.
Isabella has become quite the traveller. In the past 7 days, she's been to the Mall of America (twice!), Ikea, 2 motels, Niagara Caves (236 feet below the Iowan soil), Amish country, and a backyard wedding with amazing country charm. Yesterday was spent at my dad's where she was practically mauled by my sister's family and my mom.
You would not believe how tough this little cookie is. She was put under a lot of stress this past week, and behaved well (at least well considering the circumstances--she had her crabby times) right up to the last half hour of a 7-8 hour ride home, where she got a little carsick (who wouldn't?!). We got old time photos (which I've always wanted to do), pictures of sharks, caves, plenty of Is shots, and, of course, I got donuts. There is a stand at Camp Snoopy (Kevin will remember) where you get to watch the donuts being fried up and sugared by the guy, and they taste better than ANY OTHER DONUT EVER. A trip to the Mall is not complete without that.
I gotta work in 15 minutes, so I'm gonna pull an Amber, and say I've got more to tell, but I'll post later.