thesuccub.us

People are still crowd surfing? Huh…. …   ….   …   … Wait?! There’s still a Lollapalooza?

Huh… … …

In the past few days there have been some very serious signs of the inevitable Robot-Alien Invasion. I will now count the ways:

1. On Thursday, the electricity went out in my office building. To be fair, they were doing work on something and hit a power line or something legitimate, however, at the time this seemed CRAZY. Picture yourself and your entire office powered down: no Internet, no lights in some parts of the building, your smart phones which are probably linked to “the system” down meaning no emails! How do you even communicate?! You are forced to talk amongst yourselves over your cold lunch because, naturally, there is no microwave.

(OK despite there being a logical explanation for the power outage… what followed is what really blew my mind.)

2. In speaking to a vendor on Friday located in Buffalo, NY, my phone cuts out. He calls back and apologizes to me (here I think it’s my fault because our phones had been weird since the power issue) No, he says, I’m sorry, my power has been going out all day.

3. I go to grab a cup of coffee from Catalina on Washington to find them crazed! Their credit card machine has been down all day and they will have to manually write down the card number!

4. In chatting with my Jazzercise teacher she says she has not gotten any emails on her phone all day, but has had multiple emails when she actually checked. (this is weird, c’mon)

5. I get into my car to find that all of my pre-programmed radio stations are gone! All new radio stations have replaced them, and they are all bad country.

6. In doing the laundry on Sunday, I spill bleach all over the floor!

OK number 6 has nothing to do with anything, however, it still sucked.

PS check out Crystal Jackson’s blog for more on how the world is ending.

I feel like I’ve finally had enough time to digest the Arcade Fire’s new album “The Suburbs,” that came out this past week and sadly I am not one of those people who gets albums early (Joanna!).  After a slight sophomore slump (IMO) the much anticipated (by everyone and me) new album came out last week to “universal acclaim.” So is it good? Yep, it’s pretty darn good.

Butler and crew said in the NYT that they intended to make a cohesive album, and I’d say they succeeded. Each song has the same theme and feel, and while the songs are much different than the previous albums they stay true to that Arcade Fire “sound.” My one problem with this album is that it never rocks. Ever. There are plenty of places that it could, “Ready To Start” literally has 18 different points where it could start rocking and chooses not to. On purpose? Maybe, but I am missing the “Neighborhood 2″ kick of previous Arcade Fire ventures.

What’s more interesting (to me) about this album then the actual music, which is very very good, is this idea that the world is going to hell and life as we know it is headed into the can. If you know me, this is a constant theme in everything I think and talk about, and I’m happy that the AF feel the same way. Songs like, “We Used to Wait,” “The Sprawl” (number 2 being the best song on the album), “City With No Children,” etc etc. Pretty much the whole album is about this feeling that the world going in a horrible direction, and there’s not much we can do to stop it.

I feel like this is a generational thing. Everyone I know my age has echoed these feelings to me at one point or another. We (us being the people in our 30s and up) are the last generation that remembers life before the internet. Imagine that? We certainly used to wait for things; mail, phone calls, even dial-up!

Rob and I ponder sometimes how we ever found anyone before cell phones. Remember that, when you used to have to tell people where you were going to be at a specific time so that they could come meet you? Or you could stay at home and wait for them to call to “make plans.” My friends and I used to play this game (we were already out of high school so “play” is an arbitrary choice of words) called Law and Order. It entailed us driving around to various diners in town trying to find our other friends who may happen to be at said diners. Yes, this game is very lame sounding, but think about how odd the concept would be to today’s kids? Having to literally search for your friends, in diners no less!

Anyway, now I’m on a tangent. If you haven’t gotten the new Arcade Fire, do it. It’s beautiful and sad and even a little angry, just not very rocking.

If you haven’t tuned in for the Onion AV Club’s Undercover, you are actually not missing all that much. In theory (and in practice), it’s an idea that has pretty much been done before (bands cover other bands, yes I’ve heard of this). But it’s fun and exciting to see who will cover who, and the lineup is really good, as are the songs chosen to be covered.  Some of the covers have been Gawd awful (What happened there Cursive?) and some pretty decent (Fruit Bats, Ted Leo, pretty much nailed it).

Today, was Superchunk covering The Cure’s “In Between Days,” and it’s awesome! This was the best news I got all day. Superchunk and The Cure are two of my favorite bands of all time, so the combination of the two is like one-huge-awesome-amazing-best-thing-ever.

Here are other combinations of two favorites that I enjoy:

Peanut-butter and Rice cakes
Pickles and Ketchup
Blue ink and a Sharpie
Free and shoes (this never happens)
Lotion and Wrinkle fighting formulas
90210 and DVRs
90210 and Days Off From Work (this also never happens)
Saturday and Sunday
Striped shirts and Boat Shoes
Vodka and Other Martini Ingredients
Rob and Me

What are some of your favorite combinations???

Oh and here’s the video of Superchunk…

Superchunk covers The Cure

I know, I am always behind the times. Robs and I finally watched the Katie Perry “California Gurls” video.  (PS you can’t embed the video by Youtube rules, probably because KP’s record label knows it will be ridiculed all over the interweb). This may, or may not, be the worst song ever written. I’m going with “may.”

That being said, Robs and I decided that the below is a much better video/artistic endeavor..

I wrote about my trip to NYC in a previous post (literally the one before this) but I had to add this video of the greatest commercial I have seen in a long time. If you know me, you know I love horribly-awesome local ads. This one takes the cake.

So I just got back from a whirlwind trip to the ‘ol NYC. The trip was filled with heightened emotions for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into here. All in all it was a good trip, much better than I could have hoped for. Here’s the highlights (and lowlights).

High – meeting up with Joanna (!!!) at the posh/hipster Ace hotel.
Low – not feeling cool enough to be there, twelve dollar wine.

High – Getting up at 6:30am to join Harry and the Korean’s watch Korea kick Greece’s rear in soc.. er.. football.
Low – being drunk by 8am, wait no, that goes under high.

High – Madison Square Park BBQ
Low – massive amounts of fat people, eating BBQ = am I still in Houston?

High – Getting totally lost for an hour trying to find Rob and Ben in the LES (yes, this is a high because it means I haven’t changed at all)
Low – Topshop. Are you serious? I was so excited for this store and it is basically an overpriced H&M

High – Seeing everyone I love and many surprise guests atop a roof deck bar on a beautiful night
Low- Cash only? C’mon!

High – Long Beach, sunshine, Jess has a 50 year old boyfriend, Rob get his favorite pizza, Angel, Danny, Rachel, bagels, running in the morning on the boardwalk along the beach, the resurgence of Rob’s Strong Island accent, the crazy old couple yelling at eachother about umbrellas
Low – sun burns

High – only in NY can you go to a restaurant where they put a bowl of pickles on the table before you even sit down. Oh yeah, and black and white cookies
Low – Rob, why did you let me eat that whole black and white cookie?!

High – Adam, Tom, Tracy, Courtney all in one shot!
Low – How did I get stuck with this bill?

High – Pat!!!! From NY1!!! How I’ve missed you so.
Low – the smallest hotel room ever

High – Grandma! Bagels! Jersey corn! Never ending food! Tennis with dad and not playing all that awful considering it’s been 8 years since I last played
Low – this will go unmentioned

High – Seeing my entire family and all my best friends together in one place to celebrate my incredibly wonderful sister
Low – why we were all there

High – Tori and Oscar on the beach at night running around in the waves
Low – that was the last night in NY

As you can see it was an awesome trip, with goods and bads. We even got lucky enough to catch a flick and an insane homeless woman on the subway screaming about people honking their horns too loudly while she is trying to sleep… on the sidewalk, and I got to see two cops kick two passed out drunk men on the street (yes! I’m home!).

While it’s nice to come home and wash my clothes and have my things and sleep in my own bed, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t sad to be back here. Vacations always go so quickly, but this one seemed to be over before it even began. If nothing else though, it made me grateful for the people in my life I will try not to forget it.

I occasionally listen to the radio on my way home from work, mostly to annoy myself with how awful the current state of music is. Today, I almost jumped out of my own driver’s side window while driving. Man, music right now is terrible. Have you heard this one?

(I couldn’t  find a real video for it.)

Calling this guy Spose “Maine’s biggest hip-hop act” is really not saying much, considering their other big rapper is the assistant floor manager of the L.L. Bean in downtown Portland. This song is basically just “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” but worse/justasbad.

I have on my desk a “Quote of the Day,” rip off calender. The quotes, I would say, are by and large inspirational. Although, sometimes the quotes are less inspiring and more about wisdom or life. The quoted range from people like Nietzsche, to Einstein, to Vince Lombardi, to Woody Allen and so on. Sometimes there are quotes from people I’ve never heard of.

I would be lying if I said ripping off the page to see what the day’s quote is, wasn’t the first thing I do when I get into work, and probably the best part of the day. I have even ripped off a few choice quotes and posted them on my corkboard (yes I have one). Sometimes on Fridays, I cheat and look ahead to the next week, and then I feel bad.

Today’s quote is this: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”   
- Semisonic.

It took me a whole minute. Semisonic.. Semisonic? Where have I heard that… WAIT Semisonic!? Are you kidding me! A bad, one-hit wonder, 90s band is plaguing my ”quote of the day” reprieve. Happy Wednesday.

In case you don’t recall Closing Time by Semisonic, I will remind you of it now.

Rob and I just saw this in the gas station Quick-stop. Single serve SPAM? Is this a Texan thing or has the world gone into the trash can, again?

Check out the hole at the top of the package, so if the Quick-stop wanted to hang it on on a spinning rack display or maybe if you want to hang it on your Christmas tree or something.