Up to Date.

Shit I'm so disappointed. Last night I met the sibs from The Knife without their masks on and I felt so special to know what they really looked like, but I just realized that it was a dream, which makes a lot more sense since in my dream it wasn't a guy and a girl but two guys. Gawd.

So I've got a lot of ground to retread. I'm just gonna post YouTube vids in between to balance out all the text. Like this:



Nov. 2

I saw Frida Hyvönen, the Wrens and the Walkmen.

I was surprised by how good the sound was at Skirball. It was wild how loud it got, even with my earplugs.

I didn't care for Frida Hyvönen, I thought her lyrics were laughable and she was pretty unremarkable for a "girl with piano" act. Except I'm aware that it's also the kind of music a lot of people dig, plus she was cute, but I couldn't believe she was eating grapes in between songs. Maybe they help her with the singing? ::shrug::

The Wrens may have been almost sorta just a little bit amazing. It was my very first time hearing the Wrens. Well what really shocks me is that they were so old (read: probably in their late 30s). They sounded a little British to me on certain occasions, so I couldn't believe they were from Jersery. Er, JERSEY. They weren't being very showy at first but all of a sudden, bassist dude went wiiiiild and we was all like WTF GRANDPA CALM DOWN but he didn't and all the kids left their seats and rushed the stage and they looked SO HAPPY to be there. Funny about the bass, it looked real shitty and taped up all over and I wondered why, but then the dude started throwing the bass into the air and trying to catch it and I was like, "Oh... that's why..." At the end they were like, "Fifteen years ago we thought we were rock stars" and how they used to volunteer at CMJ too, and

The Walkmen were pretty good though they didn't take over the stage the way the Wrens did. Boogie-Down Nicole said it was the worst Walkmen show she'd witnessed. I liked it, except for the encore Ham came out with this electric saw and uh cut part of this guitar off. We were all confuzzled and the smell and the dust was weird. Oh yeah, biggest applause: "The Rat". I do love that song, but still.

Nov. 3

Went to see Junot Díaz who was hilarious. A must-see, seriously. He didn't want to read that much, so he just wasted time by talking to everyone about Rutgers (where he attended) and stuff. These students from BMCC were there, and all the rich NYU kids were a li'l scared, you could feel it, lol. Except for the most part I want to cry because he's such a good writer and I'm afraid I'm never gonna get to. I mean I don't want to be an author, I just wanna have a basic grasp on the English language goddamnit!



Nov. 4

I went to a CMJ panel on how to make it as a VJ. I went because Kim from Top Model was a panelist. And yeah, she looked beautiful. Also, Steven from Fuse was there. I really liked the panel. Since these people are on camera all the time, they were all very talkative and kept the panel going. Steven hogged things a bit though, revealing too much about himself: he used to be a middle school teacher and he thinks Micky Avalon is gonna be huge. I was like, Micky who?

After that I stayed for a panel on The Next Big Thing. It was basically people plugging their own projects. Like Jim Diamond (y'know, "the dude who sued the White Stripes") was plugging for a band he'd recorded recently and it pretty much sounded like one of those Detroit New Garage Rock bands, 3rd-rate White Stripes, etc. Or like Sarah Lewitinn (yeah, I KNOW) was plugging for The Oohlas. I mean she's cute but she was looking rough and her hair looks terrible. And someone from XL picked an artist from her label. I thought the panel was gonna discuss how buzz is created, I didn't think it would be so narrow as to literally pick 5 artists to expose to the crowd. We also had to listen to one full song by each of the artists, which ate up most of the one-hour panel without leaving much room for chitchat. It's not to say that the songs were bad, but there could have been a really interesting dialogue that just didn't happen, y'know?

The sad thing is, the panel moderator (who was from the Shortlist Music Prize) was the only one who picked someone totally unrelated to him, and he actually seemed really embarrassed about his pick, because rationally he understood what a dumb choice it was, but at the same time he sincerely liked it. Well guess who the fuck he chose: Micky Avalon.

Now the song was hilarious, because when I saw his picture I thought he was some white version of the kids out of Wassup Rockers, but uhhh apparently he's a crazy Jewish hip-hopper kid. But don't mind all of this, the fact is that this dude is on MySpace Records. Brace yourselves, y'all, this guy's probably gonna become really popular. Somebody get me a barf bag plz.

The third panel I went to was one on the influence of bloggers. I met my classmate Monica there. It was nice to see someone I knew. Well as the panel went on (which included Fluxblog dude and a Pitchfucker) my eyes started wandering and all of a sudden I made eye contact with... um, Kareem. Haha. It made me feel better about being at a panel on bloggers. At the Les Savy Fav show a couple of days ago he said Ryan Schreiber was sitting a couple of rows behind me. That also made me feel better; I may know what Kelefa Sanneh looks like but it's cos he's cute. Kareem has no excuse for knowing what Ryan Schreiber looks like. LOL.

After the panels I recovered by having dinner at Rachel's house. Maria was there too! Dinner was really good! Damn.



Nov. 5

Hung out for like an hour with my presentation partner. Remember? We're doing schtuff on Touch and Go? It was pretty awesome, and there was a weird moment, too: his suitemate walks in and we say hi and he says, "I think I know you from somewhere, WSN?" YEAH! He's the kid who seemed like he got into music because he got injured in his junior year of high school and lost his football scholarship and ended up with a guitar in his hands while he recovered. You know the type. And then we both fessed up about not having gone to meetings for a while. Haha, aw.

Nov. 7

There was a career fair for the noobs at NYU Law. Cute "kids". In quotes because they're all older, sometimes much more so. But still. Whatever, I got to smile at high-maintenance lawyers (some nice ones, too), and the snacks were pretty sweet. Even the Pepsi I pilfered tasted pretty good.

Nov. 9

LES SAVY FAAAAAV!!! GREAT!!! ENERGETIC!! SHORT SET (AND THANK GOD COS I WAS ABOUT TO DROP DEAD).

Missed the two openers. Boogie-Down Nicole and I spent the time bonding and talking shit about people. Y'know. And then inside we met Kareem who was happy (read: a bit on the drunk side) and was all like, "You just missed me DJ" and I felt a bit sore about it because I do love the kind of shit he DJs, but it was all good. I also found out my classmate, Monica is a mutual friend, so I was asking her about it and one of the first things he pointed out is that she meows.

She literally meows. It's just a habit, and if she wasn't cute she'd probably get a lot of shit for it, but I think it's endearing. Kareem said it freaks him out a bit cos he used to have a girlfriend who did that. WEIRD! What is this, some trend I wasn't aware of? Tch, better than hipsters wearing those palestinian scarves. Don't deny, you know what I'm talking about.

We also couldn't figure out whether Steve Buscemi dies in Reservoir Dogs. I've never watched the movie, so I dunno. I only figured he did because he dies in most of his movies...

Anyway, the show was great, it was a bit scary when Tim came our way but it wasn't too bad, didn't get no spit from him and he wasn't hassling people that much. Maybe he got a little talk from the NYU folks. Whatever, I'm just glad he didn't make me cry.

But next Thursday I wanna watch Ugly Betty on the TV because it's a pain having it stream on my computer.



Nov. 10

Work was a pain, but then when Boogie-Down Nicole and I walked to the train so I could go home, there were a shitload of police cars and fire trucks at Houston & Broadway. Fuck. So then Nicole and I walked to 2nd Ave, and the train wasn't working but I didn't realize so I walked into the station and at the bottom of the stairs was... UHHH ALBERT HAMMOND JR. And I was like, "OMG LOOK AT THIS GHETTO ASS STROKE GETTING ON THE SUBWAY" not that he was looking bad, oh no, he looked quite nice, but I'm just sayin'. I mean, this might be the most mundane thing I've seen someone do since I witnessed Frodo "Jordan Catalano is Mad Jealous of Me" Baggins getting on the line for coat check.

Well anyways, I was really stressed out and I was like, "How cute, a stroke on the subway" so I didn't say anything to him, though Al got out of the train station and I followed suit because I saw Boogie-Down Nicole had come back and was like, "Yeah biznatch, trains ain't runnin'". Nicole did see Albert come out of the train and she told me I should have told him I liked his album okay, and I was like, "Goddamn missed opportunity arghh". Well, anyway, we went to her dorm to see what happened and the Gothamist Map said that someone had reported a "suspicious package". Ohhh boy.

This Weekend was Gael García Bernal Weekend.

I watched Mala educación and El crimen del Padre Amaro. I liked the former much better than the latter, though I have to say the acting was fantastic in El crimen. But I love Almodóvar and the movie was too fucking meta to be true. And it was so colorful! Aw and the kid in it was so cute with his ears sticking out!

Also, I'm a bit pissed about the version of Mala educación I got, supposedly it's the "NC-17" cut, but honestly, some bits of El crimen freaked me out a lot more than Mala educación--I really feel like they both should have been R movies.

The amount of homework I finished: zip.