Summer Concerts Start!

I’ve mentioned Feist here before, but it deserves being mentioned again.

Last night I went to her concert in the Hammerstein Ballroom and will go again tonight. Because she is that good. I love how creative her music videos are, and the music itself is so easily addictive it’s easy to become obsessed. See: me.

Here is one of newer music videos of her new CD, The Reminder. If you don’t own it already, you need to re-evaluate your life decisions.

My favorite part? One of the comments that reads…

I remember this kid in my kindergarten class that had some brain problem so he couldn’t open his left eye. I wonder how he turned out.

I’m going to start commenting on other blogs with thoughts and statements totally unrelated to the material in question. Because it is genius.

Look At Me Trying To Make A Habit Out Of This!

I’ve been trying to rediscover some music recently and can I tell you, Internets, that it is yielding some awesome sounding consequences.

As with most things, once I like something I use it to the point of breakage. My Chucks, for example. They now have holes in both sides where the lace holes are stitched into the shoe, but I still wear them several times a week. I love them and refuse to give them up until I’m walking soleless through the streets of New York City.

I end up doing the same thing with music. I find something, I listen to it, and I don’t stop until I begin to cringe at the opening chords. So I end up forgetting about it for months, if not years, and put it out of my mind. But every so often, I end up heading back to my iTunes library and rediscovering. Like when I listened to Radiohead’s OK Computer after having bought their new CD In Rainbows? I’m not embarrassed to say that Thom Yorke and company gave me a mind-blowing audial orgasm.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been listening to these CDs, one after another…

With Love and Squalor, We Are Scientists
More Adventurous, Rilo Kiley
The Photo Album and Transatlanticism, Death Cab For Cutie
Arcade Fire and Funeral, The Arcade Fire

The sad part is that I have to listen to them on my computer. My iPod is missing, somewhere hidden in my shambles of a room. I know it’s here somewhere, but I haven’t the drive or energy to look for it whenever I think of listening to it. So looking back on this paragraph, I really shouldn’t be complaining at all.

This is going to be a pretty musical month for me. Wednesday I’m seeing Moby, later this month I’m seeing Feist and Tegan and Sara, and even later than that is Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z. That isn’t even MENTIONING the new music I have to buy, like Death Cab’s new CD, out in May.

I know it is a problem worth having, especially compared to other issues, like college loans and insufferable roommates, but my life is being inundated with new and old music, and I don’t have nearly enough time to spend with it in order to listen to it all.

Woe is me?

He Got A Really Good Pokemon Card

Vermin: 1, John: 0

I was over at a co worker’s desk when she looked up and pointed out the biggest cockroach I’ve ever seen outside those silly little petting zoos that are hired to come into elementary schools and children’s birthday parties. The ones that have a guinea pig, some sort of tarantula and a hissing cockroach. Those petting zoos were dumb.

OH! But I forgot that back in 4th grade, Mr. Gravini kept a pet cockroach in the class. Dozens of ten year olds formed the lasting habits of many a food disorder during that year just so they could dump their lunch in the cage and find it magically gone in a week’s time.

Anyways, those situations were different, as they called for cockroaches in cages and away from my living and working space. This one broke what I had ALWAYS believed was an unspoken, cardinal rule between myself and cockroaches. You stay away from me and I stay away from you. If you violate this, I will kill you. This goes for a lot of things that have more legs than they do eyes. Exceptions include, but are not limited to, nice dogs, cats and hamsters in cages.

So when I look up and see, sitting right on the fire alarm light, this disgusting brown THING, I freak out.

Slight workplace history. We have mice. And not just mice that are content to run around on the floor away from you and everywhere you go. These are ninja mice that find ways INTO OUR DRAWERS in our DESKS. Keeping some nice Rice Krispies in your desk for breakfast every morning? Better check it for mouse droppings. Like to make some popcorn around 3pm everyday to satisfy that hunger? Well, the mice not only found a way into your desk cabinet, but they opened up the popcorn, ate it, and left. These mice know how to do things.

The last thing I need is a cockroach infestation. Because the only thing worse than one cockroach is many cockroaches. This could have been a mommy roach. Or a flying roach. Or a mommy roach that flies and lays eggs as it flies so that wherever it goes it just is crapping out babies all over the place. No one. Can know. For sure.

So with a small audience [who did NOTHING to help in this crusade...help came in the form of suggestions like 'Trap it in a cup and tape it to the floor!' or 'Cover it in white out!'...nothing ever before has made me think that I work with C students more than those suggestions], I approached the cockroach with a golf umbrella in one hand and a whiffle ball bat in another.

This was the plan. I’d use the umbrella to whack near and about the cockroach. I only wanted to get it to crawl up the wall and away, or, God and Jesus help me, fly AWAY from me. Then, while the cockroach was on the run, I would hit it with the whiffle ball bat. I saw no flaws with this plan.

The cockroach was sitting on top of the alarm, just sitting there LICKING things while the feelers moved all over. Jesus, Mary and Joseph all my skin is itching like I have bugs on it, just TYPING this. So I took the umbrella and began to swing it around, hitting the wall and the fire alarm in the process. The cockroach moved a little towards the wall, getting ready to climb, when BAM.

I hit it. Right smack dab on the head. It didn’t fly away from me. It didn’t climb up the wall. It fell. It fell about 7 feet and people, I shit you not, landed ON THE FLOOR with an audible THUD.

I just stood over it with my golf umbrella and whiffle ball bat, staring. The thing wriggled, got to it’s feet, and ran underneath the closet door.

You guys, there’s a several pound cockroach living in a closet around the corner from my desk and Olympic level mice athletes breaking into our desks. I have no idea what to do next, but safely assume it involves girlish screaming and the standing on high objects. Possibly erratic stomping of the ground as these things cartwheel around me.