to hell with you and all your friends

so i went to another concert tonight, Taking Back Sunday / Jimmy Eat World, playing on campus. their opening act was a band called the Format. they were good, a little too emo for my tastes, but still a good band. taking back sunday was up next, and they were real good too. again, not exactly my style of music, but that doesn't mean it wasn't fun. apparently they're very popular around here too, cuz the auditorium was filled with little emo punks who knew all the words to their songs. they little ones were kind of amusing, but so was mike. taking back sunday is one of his favorite bands, and i could see him going crazy from across the room. course, him being 6' 5" in a sea of middle schoolers helped. and i guess i shouldn't talk, cuz i went a little crazy when jimmy eat world came on. simply put, they rocked. you know it's a good show when the lead singer is raining sweat down on the crowd. there was just so much energy in them. the fact that they're one of my favorite bands and i knew the words to most of the songs they played just helped matters. and speaking of knowing the words, one of my friends pointe out something interesting. the band started off by playing some of their new stuff, off their most recent album. those songs, all of the little high school and middle school kids knew the words and sang along. the band then moved to some older pieces. particularly, they played "the middle", and it was quite easy to tell the difference in age in the audience, cuz only us olders kids knew the words. i never really expected to be in the 'older' group, at least not this early. i'm supposed to be the upstart, the one that gets told "i knew them before they were famous, you should have heard them then", etc. instead, i'm the one laughing at all the little kids who don't know the words to the best jimmy eat world songs. strange.
i can't believe it took me til this year really to start going to concerts. i missed out on so much these past few years, not going to see any bands. i really do love a good concert. the energy one gets from singing along with the band and a few hundred other fans, jumping up and down, moshing a little, it's amazing. seriously, there is nothing that i have found that is more fun than a concert by a good band. i'm glad i found this out eventually, if a bit late. i guess to make up for it, i shall have to go to as many different concerts as i can. screw the money, i'm in it for something better than material goods.

meet the parents

no, not the movie (though that was a damn good one). the parents, or really parent, i'm refering to is jaya's mom. she flew down to visit jaya last week, and took a bunch of us out to dinner and bowling on thursday. after meeting beth, i can see where jaya gets a lot of her personality from. i only wish i can be that cool when i'm older. jaya's mom seemed more like a teenager trapped in an adult's body than anything. i mean, when we were bowling, i forgot that we were with someone's mom, it was just a bunch of people hanging out, no age difference, whatever.
speaking of bowling, that was awesome. we went to this place called rock n bowl, which is either a bowling alley trying to be a night club or a night club trying to be a bowling alley. it's in this rundown kind of area, doesn't look like much on the outside, but once you get in, you see the lanes in front of you, a live band on the left, and people dancing everywhere. i mean it, there were times people had to wait for others to move their dancing of the lanes before they could bowl. granted, the balls weren't the best and the lanes were a little warped, but no one really goes there for just the bowling. anyway, after a couple of games, of which i had the high score, we decided to call it a night. or more precisely, jaya's mom did, while the rest of us went to quills. i guess there are some things that even she can't do with us. but it was still great to meet her, and have her pay for my dinner (hey, i'm a college student, these things are important to me).

i've noticed a trend in my life lately, or more precisely my drinking habits. the last few weeks, i've been going out on friday night, or in this case thursday, and then just hanging out around the dorm the rest of the weekend. not from any conscious decision, but i think i like it. it's a lot more peaceful, and the weekend seems longer this way. i'm not saying i've decided not to go out during the weekend proper anymore, just that i'm fine not doing it. like, this weekend, i actually was planning on going out friday, after playing board games with a bunch of people, but through no fault of anyone's, i wound up missing out on the drinking. funny thing is, i still had a great night. the games were fun, and hanging out with my drunk friends was even better. i see it as payback, because there have been plenty of times they've seen me drunk while they were sober. and then last night, i tried to take over the world. i wanted to go see finding neverland with jaya, but the sound was screwed up, necessitating my world domination attempt. unfortunately jaya and shaun decided not to let me do it. i came so close too. i had europe, pretty much, except for england, plus a large portion of asia. but as happens so often, england decided not to go quietly, and i wound up wasting all my armies trying to take it over. bastard brits. i hate risk.

final thought- 2001: a space odyssey is one of the weirdest movies i've seen in a while. i guess i need to read the book, cuz the movie just confused me. kubrick is an awesome director, the shots and sets and everything were awesome, but the last 15 minutes made no sense. this is not to say it's not a good movie, it's very good, but i enjoyed his other ones better, especially clockwork orange. if anyone out there can explain 2001 to me, i'd be forever in your debt.

triviality

i have a new favorite day. you can keep your red beans and rice mondays, your thirsty thursdays, 24¢ night tuesdays, happy hour fridays, big cup wednesdays, and whatever other days you may have. i now live and die for trivia night at friar tucks. from now on, wednesday nights, that is where you'll be able to find mike and i- relaxing at the bar, putting back a few beers, and, just for kicks, winning ourselves $2oo bar tabs. last night, he and i wandered down to tucks, not exactly sure what to expect, thinking that it might kinda fun, but not really thinking we had a chance of winning. we went in, sat down, took a look at our competition, and our expectations fell a bit more. every table was full, as well as the bar, all teams that had at least 4-5 people, often closer to 10, plus they were all older, late twenties at least. here we were, two teenagers, no clue what we were doing, going up against experienced trivia people. well, we sat down at the bar, ordered a couple beers, and got ready for the first round.
**side note- game rules: there are four rounds, with ten questions each. the announcer asks each question in a round separately, and we write down the answers on the sheet provided. each correct answer is worth one point. of the four rounds, we have one joker, which we can use to double the points received that round. as there is only one, when it is used can be very important. points are tallied after every round. the points from each round are added together, and the winner is the team with the most after four rounds. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place all win prizes.**
so, anyway, first round comes around, and the questions, while definitely trivial, aren't as hard as we expected. we turn in our sheet, and start to relax a little. few minutes later, the scores after the first round are announced. much to our surprise, we're in 5th place, out of about 12 teams. we start to realize we can actually do this. second round, we rock it. we only missed two of the possible points, plus we used our joker to double our points. all of a sudden, mike and i are in first place, with a good chance to win. round three, however, kills us. not that we did bad, just mediocre. unfortunately, that's enough to drop us a little. last round, we did good again, bringing us back up to 4th place, just out of the money. final results, we were one point behind third, 3 behind second, and 5 behind first. not bad for our first time. we actually could have won it, cuz we had at leas 7 questions that we had right, but changed our answers at the last minutes. still, the important thing is that two freshman held our own against all of those seniors and grad students. we know that we can win this thing, and we will be soon. there's one more trivia night left this year, then it starts again next fall. if all goes to plan, mike and i won't be paying for drinks ever again.

we are the champions

so we lost the basketball game. you thought we won, didn't you? cuz of what the title was, huh? well, haha to you, that was just the song i was listening to when i started this post.
um, yeah, sorry bout that. ok, anyway, yeah we lost, but i'm over it. we're still the freshman champs, the guys that beat were all like in their late twenties and early thirties, we've still got three more years to win this, and i have my free t-shirt. so that's cool.

but enough dwelling on the past. it's time to think of the future. more specifically, what i'm going to do over the summer. as in, what movies i'm going to watch. you see i have a list of movies that i need to see. some of them are oscar winners, some are not. some did well in theaters, some stunk worse than a dead skunk in july. some are serious, some are comedies, many are more of a thinker type movie. no matter, all of them either i myself have decided i need to see or someone else has recommended them to me. here they are, in no particular order
*A Clockwork Orange
*Donnie Darko
*Y Tu Mama Tambien
*The Godfather set
*One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
*Schindler's List
*Taxi Driver
*Goodfellas
*Adaptation
*Citizen Kane
*Reservoir Dogs
*Boondock Saints
*Traffic
*Dogma
*Wag the Dog
*Election
*Bringing Out the Dead
*Insomnia
*2001: A Space Odyssey
*Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
*28 Days Later
*Hotel Rwanda
*Full Metal Jacket
*Game of Death
*Wet Hot American Summer
and last but most definitely not least...
*Sin City
so that's it, that's my list of the best movies i've never seen. it in no way is complete, i know i'm missing many good ones. that's the reason i'm posting it. i want all you people who read this to give me more suggestions. this could be risky, both because you might suggest bad movies, but also more because there's only about 4 of you who actually read this, so it's not like i'll get a large selection. not that you guys have bad taste (well, one of you does, and you know who you are. seriously, what you watch is just disgusting). i'll be updating this list periodically, as i watch some of the movies and add more to the list.

duty calls

i haven't posted in a few days, and i kinda feel guilty or something. i owe my adoring public a daily update about my fascinating life. ok, not really. it wouldn't make any difference in anyone's life if i stopped this, but still, i feel as though i'm negligent. however, i'm not going to do anything special here, cuz i don't have anything to say. mostly this post is coming out of boredom. i have a basketball game in an hour or so, the next round in the playoffs, so i'll probably write about that later tonight. other than that, there hasn't really been anything all that interesting happening in my life lately. i'm coming ever closer to the end of school, only 7 days of class left. i really need to start thinking about packing, what to store here, what to send home. luckily, i don't have a whole lot of stuff to worry about. jaya's mom comes in tomorrow, jazzfest starts this weekend, and my special order should be here in a couple weeks, so the near future looks to be more exciting than life lately.

home stretch

so i finished my paper, essentially wrote nine pages in about 13 hours, ending at about four this morning. course, then i played solitaire for another hour, finally getting to sleep a little after five for the second time in three days. but, it's finished, which is all that matters. and now that it is, i'm pretty much done until finals. i have one document assignment for latin america, should take me 20 minutes. other than that, nothing. i just gotta go to class, try not to snore too loudly, and generally plan out my summer. i have nine, days of school left, plus finals. it's kind of amazing. i'm almost done with my first year of college. seems like just yesterday i was heading off to kindergarten. and now i'm basically a sophomore in college. i do not feel old enough for this. but, i guess i am. in five months i will be twenty. twenty! i won't be a teenager anymore. that's huge. i mean, 18 is big, and 21 is fun, but really, 20 is, for me at least, when i start thinking of someone as an adult. that's when you're old. i mean, in reality, probably not much will change, i'm still gonna be the same immature person, but still. twenty. god, i'm not ready for this.

ehhh, that's still a summer away. before i start thinking like that, i'm going to enjoy my good mood for a while longer. why am i in a good mood? well, apart from almost being done with school, i got housing (room 322), plus i was quoted in jaya's blog. granted, i think she missed some of my best lines, but it's still an honor. plus, the weather's nice, i have good classes next year, it's almost the weekend, and the OC is on in half an hour. ok, that last one was kinda dorky, but i like the show. fuck you. get off my back.

quick update

it is now 3:15 in the morning, i am somewhere around six pages into my eight page paper that is due in 8 hours, and my shoulder itches. i am hopped up on caffiene right now, at the point where i'm tired, but not really. like, my body is tired, and wants to sleep, but my mind is wide awake. i'm having trouble concentrating on my paper, which is why i'm doing this instead. i also appear to be rambling, whether from the liter of soda i drank, the entire pack's worth of cookies i ate, or the fact that i have gotten about 9 hours of sleep in the past three days, i do not know. all i know is that my shoulder really, really itches. and that i should be writing my paper.

i hate housing

as you can probably tell by the title, i'm not particularly enamored of the Tulane housing office right now. after everything that's happened, not getting a room, getting stuck on the wait list, worrying that the four of us weren't going to be placed together, i thought i was done with it all. room assignments were supposed to be sent out today, and we'd see where we were, and that'd be it. no more wondering, no more worrying. except for one little thing- no fucking room assignment. i mean, shit, this is a pretty important thing for students. you'd think that tulane would be considerate enough to keep to the schedule. assholes.
ehhh, enough of that. i probably should be doing something productive with my time instead of complaining about housing. it's not like i don't have any schoolwork i need to do. my politics paper in particular is due in two days, and i've barely done any reading for it. i meant to do that this past weekend, but i got a little lazy. after having to get up before 8 friday to go meet with my advisor at 8:30 so i could register at nine, i didn't get to sleep til 5 the next morning. i then woke up at 9:30 to head downtown with jaya and raleigh for french quarter fest. that was fun, just wandering around the french quarter all day listening to different bands, watching street performers, getting some sun. correction, a lot of sun. probably not the best move, especially on my tattoo, but hey, at least now i'm not so horribly pale. i'm pink instead. after we got back, i was ready for a nap, but wound up going to play tennis with mike, jared, and ryan for a couple hours. decided not to go out drinking that night, stayed in and watched velvet goldmine on jaya's suggestion. strange movie, good but strange. i probably would have liked it better if i had been more awake, but i was pretty much dead on my feet by then. i barely made it to big easy with jaya after the movie, but i'm glad i did, cuz i decided to splurge with my last few greenbucks and got myself a buffalo meltdown. that is now my new favorite food. three big chicken tenders covered in hot sauce, lettuce, tomatoes, lots of cheese, ranch dressing, all thrown on a huge bun. i couldn't finish it all there, i had to take it back for later. then, with my stomach extremely full, i lay down contentedly and slept for about twelve hours. after waking up at 1ish, i did nothing for the rest of the day, just relaxed. actually the whole weekend was like that, just very relaxed. it was a nice change from normal, when i go out at night, do a lot during the day, have to worry about school, that sorta thing. it almost felt like summer. speaking of which, only three weeks of class left, then two weeks of finals, and i'm done. it's so close, i can almost taste it. i'm ready for school to be over. not ready to leave my friends, or all the fun here, but the actual classes? oh yeah. now if i can just get this politics paper done, that's it until my finals, no more actual work. which is good, cuz i have some big weekends planned before the end of school, to be capped off with a little something i order last night, called absinthe. but i'll talk more about that later. right now i have to go watch a storm, maybe do some reading for politics.

money well spent

so this week, my bank account went down by about thirty bucks. not a huge amount, it's still significant, especially when the money goes to tickets to shows that i'm not sure about, have never heard of the acts or whatever. wednesday, it was for cake. that wasn't so risky, cuz i do like cake, but their opening acts, i didn't know what to expect. the first band, robbers on high street, ehhh. they weren't bad, but they weren't great either. about what i'd expect from a opening act. after their set, i was ready for a good night, nothing special, just enough to make the ticket worth it. however, the next band, gomez, put a stop to that. they were introduced as the best live band, and while that may be a bit of a exaggeration, they are up there. they were really good. their lead singer, or at least one of them (they kind of switched between three different people) sounded a lot like the lead singer of shinedown. like him, this guy could do things with his voice that i can only dream about. besides that, they just really tried to get the crowd into the music. which they did, apart from a few people who were there just for cake and wouldn't even try to enjoy the music. their loss. eventually though, they did get their wish, and cake played. it was all i expected, and a bit more. i mean, they're not my favorite band, but they're still good, and when they played "going the distance", well, i may have sung along a bit. just a little bit.

thursday was a long day. it started with me being late for politics, having to run across campus because, one, i didn't want to miss the class, and more importantly, i thought we would get our tests back. we did not, however. anyway, then i came back to the dorm, had to deal with more housing crap. i thought i was done with that when we got placed on the waiting list, but there was the issue of perhaps they hadn't put the four of us (me, mike, ryan, and jared) together for our room next year. luckily, we got it all sorted out. after worrying some more about classes, and where i'm going in life (fun stuff), i was ready to laugh. 7ish, jaya and i headed over to mcalister for dane cook's tourgasm. halfway there, we caught sight of the line- two of them, heading out to the street and then splitting each going opposite directions for a few hundred feet. apparently dane cook is popular. we eventually got in, and immediately started laughing. not because of any of the comedians, but because of the choice of background music. it started with pretty woman, moved through some journey, maybe a bowie song or two, that sort of thing. not exactly what you'd associate with a crowd of twenty something college students. soon enough, the actual show started. there were three comedians, plus the host. the host wasn't the greatest, but the others were good. real good. the first guy, gary goldman was funny, he had me crying once or twice from laughing so hard. and it just got better from there. the second guy was even better. he didn't try for any of the highbrow, intellectual humor, starting with the suggestion that fat people should have midgets to pick things up for them, and moving from there. it was awesome, and we hadn't even gotten to the main act yet. when dane cook finally got onstage, i didn't think i could laugh anymore, for fear of rupturing something. somehow, i made it, which was difficult, because mr. cook is one of the funniest guys i've ever heard. a lot of it was probably because i'm finally at the age that i know what he's talking about. i mean, when he described being the drunk guy at a party, all i could think was, been there, done that. that was one of the best nights i've had in a while. the comedy show one, not the getting drunk and stumbling to the bathroom one.

let's get personal

when i started doing this, i had trouble deciding how personal i should be when posting. mainly i've kept it fairly light, not going to deep into how i'm feeling and stuff, or writing about much that could be considered embarrassing. well, today, i change that. it shouldn't be a big deal, it's not like anyone i know reads this thing anyway. and what i'm gonna write about isn't that bad, most of you will probably just laugh, possibly cry, be disturbed, or bored, or whatever.
so here it is, the big personal secret- i am a virgin. that's right, i still have my V card, i have not yet lost my cherry, and various other cliches. normally i wouldn't really care, but i was looking at classes for next year, and i realized i have less than a month left of school. i'm almost a quarter of the way done with my college career (undergrad at least), a time when we are supposed to be fucking like bunnies, hooking up frat parties, making out with random girls at bars, that sort of thing. and here i am, i can count on one finger the number of girls i've kissed. ok, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. but the point stands- in less than six months, i will be a 20 year old virgin. disgusting, ain't it?
i know exactly how i got here too. see, middle school and the first couple of years of high school, the time when people are starting to discover the opposite sex, go on dates, play spin the bottle, whatever the kids do nowadays, i was a bit of a social outcast. i mean, it wasn't like i was hiding in the bathroom, never talking to anyone, but i wasn't a casanova either. i didn't go to parties, didn't hang out with many people outside of a small group of friends. because of this, when i started to move away from my outcast status, and hang out with more people, i.e. girls, i always was afraid i'd screw it up. and so i wouldn't do anything, cuz i didn't have enough experience. and then i'd be even more inexperienced. and that'd lead to me being even more nervous, and so on. a vicious cycle it was, even if it was pretty much all in my mind. because it really was in my head, just me being stupid. that didn't diminish it's effectiveness though.
anyway, so that's it, that's my story. i don't really know the point of all this, or why i did it. mainly i guess i just wanted to complain a little.

thank you professor conway

so yesterday as i woke up around one, it suddenly hit me the amount of work i had to do. i had a five page paper due today on a book i hadn't started reading, plus various tests and quizzes. i immediately got right to work, and finished everything in a timely manner, then got a good night's sleep. ok, actually, i spent yesterday reading said book, and didn't start the paper til about 10 last night. however, i proceeded to amaze even myself, as i was able to turn out 5 pages of what i think is quite high quality work, even if it did take me til 6 this morning. so it was done, and i was ready to collapse in my bed for a few hours of sleep before class. just one problem- my bed had no sheets and was covered in wet clothes, cuz when i do laundry, i'm too stupid to realize that if you put too many clothes in a dryer, they don't get dry. and then i was too lazy to fold them, or hang them up, or do anything except leave them on my bed. so there it was, 6:30am, trying not to wake up my roommate, just wanting to stretch out on my bed, but the best i could manage was some kind of half cross legged stance, with my head propped up on the bedpost, my left leg pulled up next to my right knee and resting on the wet pile, and no blanket or sheet or anything. man, it was so comfortable. eventually, i managed to pass out, only to awaken a couple hours later to put the finishing touches on my paper and get to class. and now the best part of my story- when i got to class, it turns out that my professor had bumped back the due date for the paper til friday. so instead of turning in my paper that i had just gone to all that trouble to finish, i got to take a quiz. woot! it actually wasn't that bad, cuz now i have time to revise my paper, plus i think i did well on the econ test i took right afterwards, with no studying put in whatsoever.
but enough complaining about school, at least for now. i only have four more weekends here til summer, and i can only hope they're as fun as this one was. though, maybe it might be better if they weren't cuz i might never recover.
the weekend start thursday, when i played trivial pursuit with jaya and liz and raleigh. of course, being college students, there was alcohol involved. vodka to be precise. a lot of it. half a shot everytime we missed a question, which naturally happened more often as the night went on. we also decided to reward whoever got a piece of pie by making everyone else take a shot. i'm proud to report i made the other three drink a decent amount.
then, friday night, ryan's friend was in town, so i hung out with the guys (aka drank). we all decided to get ourselves 12 packs of keystone. that worked out to 70 beers we snuck back into the dorm. so we sat in mike and jared's room, watching dodgeball and playing circle of death, killing time til we headed downtown. however, once we left, we didn't get very far. jared got kicked off the streetcar for drinking a beer, and mike got off with him. i decided to join them, not realizing that the streetcar had kept going for another 10 stops or so, instead of one (i was a little drunk at the time). so shaun had to get off with me, since he decided that the fact that i jumped off a moving streetcar meant i was not sober enough to walk a mile or so by myself. silly shaun. anyway, we all made it back to the dorm, then i went to bother stacey and jaya, who were watching a movie. after making a fool of myself for a while, i passed out on my bed. which, come to think of it, didn't have any sheets then either. man i'm lazy, that's like 4 nights in a row that i didn't have sheets on my bed.
anyway, the weekend was capped off by a theta party. went with stacey and jaya and the rest of the girls. then we met up with ryan and his friend waiting for the bus, and once on the bus, had to put up with the antics of a very rowdy group of girls. i think they said their names were lexie, mego, and gabstar, but i wasn't paying a lot of attention. just kidding guys, don't hurt me. it was kind of a costume party, the theme was las vegas, so i went as an example of what happens in vegas stays in vegas. shirt badly buttoned, hair messed up, tie barely staying on, swimsuit, and BALLS written on my head in lipstick. the bar we went to wasn't the best, i had to wait probably three days to get a drink, and then it was all bitch drinks left. i say that like it's a bad thing, but i kinda like some of the bitch drinks, smirnoff especially. however all they had was bacardi, which is not my favorite, so i had to be content with three of those. then later in the night, i had a van halen- rum, vodka, amaretto, kahlua, and milk. turns out, when you mix four different types of alcohol together the drink gets strong. luckily, i only had the one. it still got me there though. after we got back, i wound up a having a long talk with jaya, about life, the universe, and everything, pretty much. and despite what she says, it wasn't weird. no different really from any of our other conversations. and you don't have to worry, ok jaya?
and then i fell asleep until i woke up at the begining of my story.

skid row

i'm burning out. i can feel it, watch it happen. slowly but surely, i'm approaching the wall. little over a month left of school, and i can tell it's going to be a race, and i don't know what'll win out. hopefully i can push on, get all my work done, not fail any classes, and just get home. i only give that about a 60% chance right now. which means it's almost as likely that i'll just give up, say fuck it to the world, and basically stop caring, much as i did for the end of senior year.
maybe it's just the fact that i have a paper and a test tomorrow that i'm not ready for that is making me say all this, but i don't think that explains all of it. it's just i have a lot hitting me right now, schoolwork, personal stuff, whatever. and the weather isn't helping. it's hard to concentrate on anything when it's 80 degrees out, sunny, perfect. though even that is a bit of a cop-out, cuz it's been nice out before, and i haven't felt like this.
it really is just that i have a lot of stuff going on, and fun as most of it is- all the drinking, hanging out with friends, late night conversations with jaya- it's begining to wear on me. not to say i'm going to stop, but maybe i'll try to tone it down a little. i just have to make it a little farther, and i can relax. i can try to forget about a lot of this, move on, whatever. and, most important of all, i won't have to worry about school for three months.
i'm tired. tired of having to deal with schoolwork, tired of my roommate, tired of getting up, tired of not knowing how to deal with my personal life. i'm just tired. spring break didn't help at all, it just made it worse to come back to this stuff.
ok, maybe what i need to be doing is my work, instead of complaining about it here. if i can get through this week, i'm that much closer to the summer, and farther from the big burnout.