12.11.02 1:38am

So it's official. After finding a rather advanced community of insects in our kitchen cupboards (they had elected a mayor*) and having our patio chairs stolen, and finding a wad of gum and a smashed egg on Sonja's car, we're moving. It turns out this town is like every other college town: Full of assholes**. Not that it really surprised us to discover we lived next door to a bunch of idiots and a couple doors down from a gaggle of morons, and three doors down from a crappy alternative band***. We had just hoped that we had chosen an apartment complex that was nice enough that we wouldn't have to worry about all of that.

Thus, later has turned into sooner, and Sonja and I are going to start aparment hunting again in the next few days. That's not to say that Lawrence is not a decent town, which it is. We've grown out of that whole college mentality, and now we want out of here.

In other, not-so-cynical news, my job at KCTV is going great. This week was supposed to be all training for me, but I have instead ended up running a camera for the evening newscasts, which is not unlike running a studio camera at cy46. Except, of course, that these cameras are about seventeen times larger, are made of rocket parts, and you have to carry them on your back while a union guy sits on your shoulders and barks instructions like "zoom in!" where you have to run towards the set and hope that the crushing girth on your back doesn't topple forward and kill the anchors. (They dock your pay for that. Unless it's a weather anchor.) There is so much going on in the studio during a newscast, that it's easy to miss a cue from the director, at which point the union guy on your shoulders cracks this huge whip made of old XLR cables over the back of your neck, which means "Hey buddy, pay attention." Overall, I really like my job, and next week, I'm supposed to get a new union guy.

Footnotes:
* He was quite corrupt, though, so it's probably for the best that Sonja eradicated the entire city with a bottle of Windex.
** First use of an obscenity on this site. That's how pissed**** off these people make me.
*** No apologies to fans of three doors down.
**** Second use of obscenity on this site. Next week, I'll probably have nude midgets or something.*****
***** I probably shouldn't have typed "nude midgets," since now people searching for "nude midgets" will be sent here. Crap, that's three times now. Why can't I stop typing "nude midgets?"

12.08.02 2:18am

In keeping with my recent pattern of copying my friends' websites, I have added a few features and would like to take this opportunity to share them with you.

First off, there is a new guestbook. I used to have a guestbook a long time ago, and a bunch of people signed it, but it was lost in the great redesign of September, so if you signed the old one, please sign the new one. Thanks, I think you're swell.

Second, a few people who will be shopping for me this holiday season have asked for a wish list, so here it is. (Good news, you can still be the one who buys me the segway scooter, since we'll all need one eventually when they redesign all the cities.) There is also a new link to it in the navigation bar across the top of this page.

I thought about changing the background color of this page, but then I decided against it. What do you think?

12.06.02 4:52am

I have just spent the past two hours downloading 1.38gb of mp3's*, including the new Phish album, "Round Room," in its entirety. Sad to say, it is not that great. If you know me, and how much I like Phish, you understand how disappointing this is for me.

I had high hopes for this album, especially when I heard an advance release of the song, "Walls of the Cave," via Netscape. "Walls" is a ten minute song unlike any before it, and has the sound that I had always hoped Phish would evolve into. It starts out mellow, a logical step from 2000's album, "Farmhouse," but halfway through, it picks up speed and transforms itself into a spirited piece that had me anxious to hear the rest of the album. Unfortunately, "Walls" is the album's only bright spot.

"Round Room" signals Phish's return to performing after a two-year, self-imposed hiatus. During those two years, each of the band's four members involved themselves in a multitude of side projects, resulting in five albums and one movie. When it was announced that Phish was heading back on the road, and would release a new album (next Tuesday), I couldn't wait to hear the results of two years of experimentation and exploration. I thought for sure the band would reemerge with a new sound and with a new energy, comparable to their early days. Lead singer Trey Anastasio's solo tour and subsequent album was bursting with life, which I assumed would transfer over to Phish when they regrouped.

The new album, with the exception of "Walls," feels like a step backward for the band, or at the very least, a sidestep from "Farmhouse," by failing to break any new ground. At the beginning of the 11th song, "Thunderhead," Trey sings "I need a new way to express myself..." and I couldn't agree more.

*I found a 190kbs connection via Kazaa, and downloaded just about all that I could, 99% of it being songs I've never heard by artists I've wanted to investigate.