Yesterday I got two invites for the same event on Facebook. A Jens Lekman concert being held at Northampton high school for only $8.
The show is being held to benefit Clara Gardener, a Northampton teen that lost both of her legs in a car accident this past August.
"We all love her and care about her so much, that we need to step up and we are," says crew teammate, Kierstin Knightly.
Clara Gardner, the 17 year old soon to be senior suffered some serious injuries that led to both legs being amputated at the knees. She was hit by an alleged drunk driver as she was loading a car at the Amtrak station in Springfield.
"I couldn't imagine the pain she was in when she was pinned between the two cars," Knightly says.
The show has been set up last minute due to Lekman's proximity to Northampton during his tour. Lekman is a 27 year-old Swedish pop/folk singer who has become quite popular in recent years. I had always heard of him, but never listened. When I received the invite for the concert I decided to give a listen and I really like it. His singing style at times reminds me of The Magnetic Fields.
The two cats of my house. Bailey is the big brown one, Owen is the little orange one.
So my old roommate moved out and a new one, Molly, moved in. She has a cat named Owen, about 6 months old. My cat, Bailey, already lives here and has now since last September. Needless to say, Bailey pretty much feels that he owns the place.
So the first time they met, about a week ago, wasn't too pretty even though Bailey is generally a very friendly and happy cat. We each held each of our cats in our arms and got as close as we could to one another. Extreme hissing.
Later we set them both free. This was when I heard probably the strangest noise that my cat had ever made. Never before had he sounded like this. This youtube clip pretty much sums up how my cat sounded, except he might have sounded even angrier.
when the cat says "why i eyes ya", is what Bailey sounded like ha.
Luckily, they have warmed up to eachother. The first week was hell though. This Monday Bailey let Owen lay on my bed with him. Since then they seem to be getting along swimmingly.
It's my old standby, though I admit I don't spend a lot of time seeking out other newer ones. I was also a fan of The Northamptonist, but he has since moved to New York City and that blog is more or less now deceased.
What I love about this blog is that it is both personal and political. There is always something fun in every post, he uses a mix of videos and pictures. He uses both found videos and his own original videos.
I don't like blogs that talk too much about families and kids... and where Tommy doesn't have kids, that rarely comes up. The content is more about interesting or controversial things happening in the community.
He has a great eye for noticing things around me that I never do. I often go to his site to find ideas for longer stories for classes or the Collegian.
The blog is especially interesting lately as Tommy has moved about a few times between Northampton and Amherst, and in his daily travels he passes through both towns. This is similar to how I live my life commuting to school in Amherst from Northampton so all of his content is of great interest to me.
Most recently I liked his entry where he mentions how a local bookstore is going out of business. I didn't know till I read his blog.
He links out a lot and the posts are always fun to read.
I also love that he makes his identity known and as a result I have met him in person. I see him around quite often and it's pretty great that I actually know the person who's local blog I like the most.
Last April I took a trip to Montreal with my good friend Sarah Zimmermann. And everyone knows that Canadians LOVE hockey.
That week the Montreal Canadiens fans had a riot and I believe had destroyed a police car. Two days later we were out and about while another game was about to begin. Cops were everywhere and the fans were out in full force decked out in their favorite hockey jerseys. The passion of the fans there reminded me of the Boston Red Sox's fans.
Here's a clip of the fans on the streets of Montreal near the hockey stadium.
iBrattleboro and Baristanet both seemed much more like a citizen journalism blog. While Loudounextra appeared much more professional. They had more interactive videos and overall seemed to be higher in quality.
Loudonextra.com reminded me of Masslive's setup.
iBrattleboro has a lot of event promoting on it. Both Baristanet and iBrattleboro have a lot of links on the side with great resources for the community.
Baristanet has an ad from a local tavern for election night festivities. They have other smaller ads from local businesses throughout the homepage.
Loudounextra is by far the most professional and most well funded of the three.
I still use livejournal and I joined this very interesting "group" over the summer called wtf_nature. People post videos and pictures and info about weird animals or health/nature related thing.
Now I've heard of wild animals hanging out in backyards, but this is just ridiculous. This fox decided to use someone's giant trampoline and he LOVES it.
On the note of Scott Brodeur's last entry, I found the article he posted from the NYtimes about the Facebook friend experiment to hit home.
After a week the responses stopped coming in and were ready to be tabulated. Fifteen people said they were attending, and 60 said maybe. A few hundred said not, and the rest just ignored the invitation altogether. I figured that about 20 people would show up. That sounded pretty good to me. Twenty potential new friends.
I just made an event for the first party I'll be having at my apartment this year. So I myself have invited about 68 people I believe. My roomates will invite more I suspect. I want it to be a big party, but people are so weird.
Currently 9 are confirmed to attend, and 8 are maybe, 2 not attending. The maybes bug me because a few of them I am actually close to and it makes me annoyed because they really might not come.
I do have faith in those who are confirmed so far.
I also went the old fashioned route and called people up and left voicemails inviting them. Some of them don't even have facebook, makes you work harder ha.
Keeping in mind that people are generally flaky about coming to events... I made sure to plan it far in advance so I don't have to deal with people saying they are already busy. Now they have no excuse not to come because it's November 15th.
Who shows up to my parties totally shows who my real friends are ha. Within reaoson of course, I can't expect all of my friends from home to be able to make it.
I can blog and blog till I'm blue in the face (keyboard?) and be totally happy with it, think it's interesting. But still, no one will comment. I suppose this is why I should just post a lot without thinking too much about it.
For my post I sort of over thought it. I was dead set on trying my darndest to get the comments in a natural way. I thought: what are people talking about? what might get them all riled up?
First thought was Sarah Palin. I thought, "BRILLIANT".
Not so much.
Still the comments didn't really come to me. I hadn't thought out that my Sarah Palin hate post would likely get lost in the shuffle of many others just like it.
So I resorted to advertising my blog on facebook and twitter.
I had one friend, Jeff, challenge my thoughts on Palin, though only on FB, he kept promising to comment but never did. I'm still waiting for the day he defends her... because I really am interested. Also it would be amazing because this guy is the king of procrastinating writing to me. Worst Las Vegas pen pal EVER.
On the other hand a few good friends of mine put their two cents in for me like Kelsey, Teresa and Mike. A few class mates chimed in too. I responded to the posts as much as I could. I still have a hope it could be commented on even more.
Scott Brodeur brought up in class that the subject of Sarah Palin will just be sort of dated. Thus hard to get any comments after a while. Also - politics is often something that people are reluctant to discuss or feel intimidated to respond to.
I certainly feel for that.
I was a bit surprised that my post didn't draw more comments. I thought people would vehemently agree or disagree with me and start some all out posting war. No such luck.
I think that in the future I will try to do more posts where I put something out there, and don't say much about it myself. Then ask the readers to make their own assumptions in responses. That seems to work pretty well. The more open the post is, the more people respond it seems.
I wish that I had went with something funny and random like Katelyn did. She got 24 comments! So jealous!
Most of you are probably familiar with Jason Schwartzman's acting work in such films at "Rushmore", "The Darjeeling Limited" and "Shop Girl." But I bet you didn't know that he used to be in the band Phantom Planet. He wrote their song "California" which was the theme song to the teen drama "The O.C."
For a number of years Schwartman stuck to acting but last year he released his own solo album under the name Coconut Records. He recorded it in just a week at home with help from friends like Kirsten Dunst and Zoey Deschanel. The record, "Nightiming", isn't terribly revolutionary but it's cute and fun.
This is the only music video for the album, for the song "West Coast." At first I thought that it wasn't the official video, but it turns out that Schwartzman got permission to use Mark Gonzales's 1998 skate video footage.
I had never heard of Gonzales before, but it turns out that he revolutionized skateboarding. He and Natas Kaupus were the first skaters to skate on handrails. He was also one of the first people to skate in "switch stance."
Gonzales has also created a parallel career for himself as a fine artist.
I find it interesting that Schwartzman opted to use old skating footage instead of making his own video. But the song is "West Coast".. and skating is inherently California esque. Then again, he released the record on his own label, and likely doesn't have the money to shoot his own video.
Also noteworthy - Schwartzman's brother is in the band Rooney.
What do you think of the song and the use of the skate footage? do you think he's a good skater?
I went to New York City for the day on Saturday to see the dress rehearsal of Saturday Night Live.
During the day my friend Kira and I went to NBC to take the studio tour. We saw the nightly news studio and the SNL studio. I learned some very interesting facts.
Only 2% of people who apply for SNL tickets get them. The audience only sees about 60% of the skits. Some of the other stages built the audience can't directly see, and you watch them on monitors.
On Friday morning I learned that Sarah Palin would be on the show. It was strange being in the same room as her... she wasn't funny, except maybe when she danced.
Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin also made appearances.
I'm interested to go back and watch the "live" episode and see what sketches they cut. They tape the dress rehearsal and use them if the live version didn't come out as well.
Oh... and I got an NBC Page's number.
Honestly I've been sick and really stressed out... I'll probably write some more about this later. Sorry my posts have been lacking.
This is essentially what my image is going to look like, except that the phone will be in a half tone.
So at this point in the semester I have one screen print done, and I'm about to print my second one. The first process was done a different way, with drawing fluid, applying the fluid directly to the screen with a paintbrush.
This time we used a machine called an "Exposure Unit" to expose our screens, applying a coat of photo emulsion on to the screen. Then we taped a vegetable oil covered xerox of our image onto the screen. Magic works in the exposure unit and after 2 minutes your image is on the screen! You just rinse it out.
So maybe it's more complicated than that, but it would never make sense to you unless you saw the machine. Or maybe I'm just too lazy to try and explain it better. There is the whole part where after applying photo emulsion to the screen, you must wait 2 hours for it to dry before you can expose your screen.
Luckily wikipedia breaks it down for those interested. The process on here is very similar to what we did, though not 100% accurate.
I'm really getting into screen printing and I'm very proud of this second image. My concept for the semester is dealing with the concepts of distance and closeness in the physical and mental capacities. This image is specifically about how technology affects feelings of closeness.
Kind of have an idea for the next print, but not really.
I'm officially sick by the way! I'm on antibiotics. I need sleep, now. Except I am going home tomorrow and then to NYC for SNL on Saturday! Gonna be worn out this weekend.
Tonight I went to Paradise City Restaurant and bar in Northampton to watch the third debate between McCain and Obama. I met up with my friend Adam and his girlfriend Liz.
This was the first debate that I didn't watch in my living room while avidly following twitter. In fact I didn't look at twitter once tonight!
What a different experience being surrounded by people's real time reactions in a bar as opposed to twitter.
It was pretty clear to me this time that Obama won, keeping his cool as usual.
Now with respect to a couple of things Senator McCain said, the notion that I voted for a tax increase for people making $42,000 a year has been disputed by everybody who has looked at this claim that Senator McCain keeps on making.
Even FOX News disputes it, and that doesn't happen very often when it comes to accusations about me.
I'll talk more about this later as I think I'm getting sick. I know I'm gonna feel worse in the morning... not going to classes tomorrow.
Earlier my old roomie, who is currently in Seattle working for City Year, called me up. She was like "Hey Drea, my friend is gonna have 2 extra rooms in her apartment next year. We should move in there." and I was like, "Yeah, if I could find a job there!" And then she told me about The Stranger.
Dan Savage has a syndicated advice column called "Savage Love", it runs in Boston's Weekly Dig, where I interned over the summer. The column is so interesting because it's a gay man giving straight people advice.
Savage is the Editorial Director of The Stranger, looking at their site, they've got some great articles. It reminds me exactly of the The Dig which makes me love it. The whole sarcastic, young, alternative newsweekly thing.
I was reading Savage's feature this week, "In Defense of Dignity," and I was struck because it brought tears to my eyes. He is a great writer in my opinion. The article is about his mother dying of pulmunary fibrosis.
They gave my mother some more morphine—not enough to kill her, only enough to deaden the pain while her lungs finished her off. Still: Was she in pain? I'm haunted by the thought that she could have been in pain—the pain we promised to spare her—but had no way to tell us, no way to ask for more painkillers, no way to let us know that she needed us, that she needed our help, that she needed us to do whatever we could to hasten her inevitable death and end her suffering.
The story is really sort of heart wrenching, but a good read and a good argument for assisted suicide, if you call it that.
Today the article I told you that I was writing before ran in the Daily Collegian. I wrote a profile piece of the father of western Massachusetts blogging, Tom Devine.
Here's the intro to my story:
You've probably seen him hanging around the Haigis Mall; a man about the age of your father, in his daily uniform: a worn baseball cap, a ratty T-shirt, some classic blue jeans and usually some well-loved Converse Chuck Taylors. Thomas "Tommy" Devine was a student the University of Massachusetts in the late 1970s, during its party hey day. Now, Devine is known as the "father" of the western Massachusetts blogosphere. He never did finish his degree at UMass, but still went on to become influential in the Pioneer Valley.
I hope you'll read the story, I linked it above. Devine's life is a very interesting one.
It's funny because I just bumped into him at the W.E.B. Du Bois library, while he's making his daily blog post himself.
I have a couple other articles in the works now, one potential one that will run in the Arts and Living section about my trip to NYC next week to see SNL. I'll chronicle my time there, touring the NBC studio, how I got the tix etc.
The other story will be a feature for my section about the Flywheel in Easthampton. The music venue was a staple to the local scene for years. They moved out of their old location and have yet to finish remodeling the old town hall in Easthampton to re-open in.
Running my own section of the paper this year has been interesting. I hope if anyone in class wants to write features stories that they'll contact me! I need stories guys!
This blog was getting really politically heavy... so I hope today and yesterday lightened it up a bit.
Lately I've been downloading a lot of Kink's music.
I downloaded an album called "The Great Lost Kinks Album."
There's an interesting story behind the album. It was an 1973 LP comprised of unreleased material. Reprise Records released the material after The Kinks moved to RCA Records.
The Kinks and their management were not told about the release of the album, they only learned that it existed because it showed up on the US Billboard charts.
Kinks song writer Ray Davies took legal action against Reprise. As a result Reprise discontinued the album in 1975.
The vinyl LP became a huge rarity. On Ebay a sealed copy of the album recently sold for $100.
The Kinks are perhaps best known for their hits "Your Really Got Me" and "Lola." "You Really Got Me" was the first hit song based around power chords and later heavily influenced heavy metal songs.
Here's The Kinks playing "You Really Got Me" live.
I used twitter again last night to (attempt?) to converse with others and share quips about what was going in the second Presidential debate.
I used both #umassprez2 and #debate08 for hashtags. Both hashtags were trending on the twitter search throughout the night. I was surprised that the UMass tag made the trends! It made me feel like I was really a part of something when I participated in it.
I made a lot of new twitter friends; I found some familiar UMass faces twittering on #umassprezz2. At least 6 other people from places like Missouri and Greenwich Village decided to start following me too! I have a following!
Shelby Landeck in Steve Fox's Politics, Journalism and the Web class commented on their entry that she found participating in twitter, watching the twitter tag feeds, and watching the debates was overwhelming. I very much feel the same, reading other twitters and thinking of my own caused me to focus less and really get a grasp on what was being said.
Both Obama and McCain had a few snide remarks, Obama even laughed to himself while McCain was speaking. It seemed a lot more catty than the last debate.
Tom Brokaw, the moderator, tried to keep them in check with the time limits from the start, he had to get more aggressive towards the end because neither cared to keep it to 1 minute.
Fellow UMass Twitter SPsullivan caught McCain botching a Teddy Roosevelt quote. I like the live fact checking.
A lot of people picked up on McCain's new "my friends" phrase that he unabashedly overused.
The debate really focused on the state of the economy, with good reason. Yesterday the economy in Europe was also having major trouble.
John McCain refused to prioritize between healthcare, energy and entitlement reform (social security and medicare). While Obama, actually ANSWERED the question and prioritized... like a president would.
Brokaw: The three -- health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities?
McCain: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom. I think it's very important that reform our entitlement programs.
There was of course another big issue with lag on twitter. You could really see people getting riled up in their twits, too many twitters = FAIL. I know a few times the site completely stopped for me and I had to refresh.
It was interesting to see what both professors and students were saying.
I personally focused on being a bit petty at the beginning and digging at McCain's ancientness. As the night wore on I tried to be a bit more civil and focus on the meat of the debate.
I find it hard to call a winner in these debates. It might help if I read over the transcript of the debate. Between twitting and following others I don't believe I was able to absorb enough of what was actually going on. Twitter can be distracting, I found myself hitting refresh every minute to try and keep up. But perhaps that is my mistake. I should look at twitter and use it at my own pace, and concentrate on the event more.
Twitting to a live event is my favorite way to use it. The commentary and insight of others is invaluable. They catch some things that I didn't, like the botched quote.
Here's the whole debate if you missed it, or y'know, if you want to just relive all of the excitement!
I really like what I see on this site. I was starting to read a piece that was an open letter to John McCain from an Iraq vet.
Also the Cheat Sheet has a wide array of stories up, ones I hadn't heard of yet. So the content on this site has been at the least, refreshing.
NYtimes's headline this morning read something like "European Stock Market Collapsing Too!" but on thedailybeast, they choose to focus on Iceland which was an interesting angle.
The layout is great, I don't see it specifically leaning one way or another. I can see some balance, but maybe a little leftist. The story called "The Enablers" is something I'm going to read later on. It's all about the congressmen and woman who enabled the mortgage meltdown to happen.
Now, I'm going to tell you from the start of this, I don't claim to or think I am incredibly knowledgeable on politics. But I have been trying to keep up, watching a lot of interviews with Palin, or news pieces about her.
And what I really think is that I don't like her at all. Maybe hate is too harsh, as I don't know her personally.
"Now she said it, I didn't," Palin said of Albright. "She said, ‘There's a place in hell reserved for women who don't support other women.'"
As it turns out, Palin misquoted both Albright and her mocha cup, which reads: "There's a place in hell reserved for women who don't help other women."
I know she is only in the McCain campaign as a cheap ploy to win swing voters over, or to enrage people on the same wave length as me. But her complete lack of professionalism frustrates me more than anything, the thought of her being next in line to lead the country is unbearable.
Really? SERIOUSLY? She couldn't even quote her "Starbucks mocha cup" correctly?
And she twisted the quote so much. Yes, all people who don't support you, all mighty Sarah Palin, must be going to hell. There you go pouring religion into politics! Isn't religion separate from state guys? C'mon.
If anything, Albright's true quote puts Palin in a bad light. How does not supporting other women having a right to choose help other women, Mrs. Palin? Please, Sarah Palin, help me out by taking away a right that other women had to fight for me to have, just because of your personal beliefs.
From her non professional demeanor to her unprepared responses, I can't have one ounce of respect for this woman. If she seemed like a responsible and prepared candidate, I would be more supportive, but I can't just support her because she is a woman.
What REALLY has been getting my goat is people like Elisabeth Hasselbeck from The View, staunch Republican supporters, claiming that Palin somehow (through a divine Christian miracle?) has more experience than Obama. Over at Comedy Central.com there is a great piece breaking down how Palin for sure entered politics after Obama did.
Not to mention the extreme hypocrisy of the McCain party for incessantly trying to put down Obama for lack of experience, compared to the "Maverick" himself. So instead of sticking to your guns of needing experience, you bring in someone less experienced than your opponent who you criticize for being inexperienced?!
It is a joke and an insult to all women, that she is "representing" us as any sort of presidential candidate. Someone who thinks her state's proximity to Russia qualifies as foreign policy experience. Someone who would love nothing more than to take choices away from other women.
Here is the video where Sarah Palin, bless her heart, tries to quote Madeleine Albright via her Starbucks mocha cup.
How do you feel about her? As a woman or just as a concerned citizen of the good ole U.S. of A. Do you think she's qualified? I'm interested if anyone who reads my blog supports her and why. Does she also make your blood boil?
So, yes, there was a tina fey SNL palin debate opening this week. But really... I love this clip.
Andy Samberg is becoming a really great cast member. Here he is impersonating Mark Wahlberg and he NAILS the voice. It kills me. I've watched this about 5 times tonight.
Actually I might watch it once more before I go to sleep.
Really. Never. It would be useless for me to even have tried to cover one of those events.
So I decided to twitter about the Vice Presidential Debates between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden even though I was at The Collegian.
This situation made it infinitely more frustrating. I streamed it live from CNN.com, first the audio was too quiet. Then I got to plug my laptop into some speakers, but every so often it started lagging BIG TIME. Then in addition to that, twitter was lagging for me. Sometimes what I wanted to type would literally take 2 minutes to show up. I just kept doing the best I could with the situation.
Then finally towards the end I realized people were watching it on TV in the other room. So finally things went my way, not until then though.
I tried not to be biased, but I kept only hearing Palin, I think because I find her voice so annoying. So therefore I more or less only commented on her.
She said a lot of phrases that I have heard her say repeatedly in the past such as but not limited to: "bless their hearts", "the maverick", "ingenuity", "McCain said...", "_____ rears his ugly head" and "I think what the American people need is something new and different" (hypocrite much?)
Palin didn't answer a lot of questions well, saying she wouldn't, similar to Jonathan Safran Foer.
I tried to keep up with the general discussion but my lag and the volume of response with #vpdebate on twitter was hard to follow.
In the end, two new people started following me on twitter.
Ah, so, tonight was the season two premiere of ABC's Pushing Daisies. I started watching the show last season, mostly online, then caught the last couple episodes on TV. There were only 9 episodes in the first season thanks to the writer's guild strike. I thought not too many people were into it, people I knew at least. I really got into it though.
ABC has been promoting it for weeks though. I had been worried it wouldn't get a second season because it started during the strike.
On E! there is an article with spoilers for the season.
I had been anticipating tonight since... oh last February.
The show was nominated for 12 Emmy Awards this year.
The premise is that Ned, a pie shop owner, can bring back people from the dead with his touch. The only catch is if the un-dead is alive for more than 60 seconds, someone else must die in replacement. Also, after the 60 seconds, if Ned every touches them again they will be dead again forever. Emerson Cod, a private detective, accidentally discovers Ned's secret and convinces him to solve murder cases with him by questioning the dead. In the first episode he brought his childhood sweetheart back to life.
Wikipedia tells me that the idea of the show is based off of Bishop Severus of Naples who supposedly brought a man back to life to solve a fraud case.
Anywho - one of the best shows on TV in my opinion. Reminds me of a cross between one of my all time favorites, Six Feet Under, a now deceased HBO show and the art direction of French film Amelie. Love the story lines, love the characters, love the sets, love the camera work! What's not to love actually?
Here's a promo clip for season 2, hopefully you can get a feel of the show from it.
