theatre and distractions

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So I’m in grad school. Theatre. And like most first semesters (or quarters, for Portland State), I am in lit classes and not acting. Relearning about the classics, which, for me, means talking blandly about A Doll’s House, teeth clenched, waiting for the day we get to talk about The Cherry Orchard and Death of a Salesman. I am entrenched in a dying art form, people. I have spent a lot of money and a lot of time reading, discussing, and acting in an art form that most everyone pays no attention to. Our core audience is elderly, and those people are going to be replaced by a generation of old people who grew up on YouTube and Die Hard and The Hangover. Here I am, trying to explain why George Bernard Shaw is such an amazing playwright, and my responses are generally, “But his plays are so long!”

Well, they’re right about that. GBS writes really long plays. Dude likes to talk, what can I say.

But I’ve found that immediately after starting school and reducing my amount of work time, my spirits have brightened considerably. I find my mind is clearer, my body lighter, my faith in humanity restored a bit. School is fun. Learning is fun. Knowledge is amazing, wisdom even more amazing. Moving is good, too. The ability to go to a class, then walk to the bus, then walk to work, then take the bus home — the breaking up of monotony is what life is all about.

I didn’t realize how bored I was until I started doing things. And then I realized that Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc, they’re all distractions. They’re fun, and I love to use them, but I hardly do anymore, because I’m busy. Busy with LIFE. Which is a lot more fun.

So … consider that an explanation for why I’m not around as much anymore.

9-1-1

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Ten years ago yesterday I was eighteen years old, working at a gas station in Nampa, Idaho, making (luckily) more than minimum wage. I had graduated from high school three months prior, and was, as usual, lax about getting into college. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and the prospect of a real, concrete job, even though it was at a gas station, was enticing. Little did I know that I would have to quit a month later because I was too young to sell beer.

I had worked the late shift the night before, and was planning on sleeping in to, oh, two, three PM, but instead was rudely awakened by my father at about ten-thirty in the morning, shouting downstairs toward my basement door, “Josher! Wake up! It’s World War III!”

The next minute or so is crystal clear in my mind: so many jumbled thoughts at once. Mydad wasn’t making light of the situation; hell, for all I know he really did think World War III was coming, or was here, or something. I’m sure a lot of people felt the same way. But to be awoken from a deep sleep by your father, a man you put a lot of trust and respect into, telling you that a war was happening, and that it was world wide, well, that will freak you out. And so I woke up half-asleep, in a stupor, scared shitless that they would reinstate the draft (which I, like every other eighteen year old male in this country, forcibly signed up for) and that I would be sent off to wherever the hell they were fighting with an M1 Garand and an Army helmet with a pack of Lucky Stripes strapped to it.

Hestitantly, I crawled up the stairs and walked over to the TV, and saw that my worries were not as bad as I had thought. Though what was happening was horrible.

Looking at my LiveJournal entries from that day, I saw that I wrote a lot of misinformation (I even wrote about a fake Nostradamus quote that “predicts” 9/11. At this point, is Nostradamus even real? It seems like every quote attributed to him is fake). Five thousand people dead? Three thousand? And then, the very next day, a post about buying CDs from Fred Meyer. So I guess that’s proof right there that terrorism doesn’t work. Especially on the other side of the country.

I had never seen the World Trade Center, though my brother Russ had, and got photos ontop of one of them. I had never even been to New York, or the east in general. I was sheltered, and seeing planes slam into buildings didn’t affect me as it did everyone over there. Still, patriotism ran rampant in the days following, as did, for some of us, the onslaught of national introspection.

Now, it’s ten years later, and the brave men and women who went through hell trying to save people in those towers can’t even get their health problems caused by the dust and smoke covered under their insurance. The number of innocent civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past ten years is more than 1000% of the number on 9/11. The amount of money George W Bush spent on mindless war is so big, it’s impossible to understand, so we almost forget about it.

Talk about terrorism.

live review: volifonix, excellent gentlemen, & just people – doug fir – 8/11/11

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You guys. I haven’t seen a live show in months. Months! I will be the first to admit that I have been No Fun and sometimes a Party Pooper. I’m not sure what got me into that rut, besides awesome video games. Seriously, Fallout: New Vegas has taken away a lot of my time. Plus I was kind of broke, from buying so many video games. While I do occasionally feel slightly bad for not leaving my computer chair some days, I really don’t regret buying video games or playing them with joy. I love video games. But that’s a blog post for another day.

My girlfriend’s cousin Peter is in a band called Just People, and he was arguably somewhat instrumental1 in getting her to stay in Eugene, OR, rather than flying off to Hawaii and never being heard from again. Peter is about to move up to Portland, and the rest of the band is already here, so whenever they play a Portland venue, we go, because they’re genuinely a good band, and Peter is an excellent guitar player, and their shows are always fun and lively.

Last night we made the trek to the Doug Fir to see these three bands play. I hadn’t been to the Doug Fir in a long time. Their burgers are still delicious. Their bartenders still take forever to acknowledge your existence. That mannequin in the window still freaks me out.
The venue wasn’t especially packed the entire night, which is a shame because Portland, for god’s sake, you need to go and enjoy this kind of music. No more Horse Feathers. No more twangy jangly Appalachian music. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of going to see a show and getting four dudes with huge beards, and one woman playing quarter notes on a violin, like before the show they gave her a goddamn lobotomy or something. It’s ridiculous. It’s time to embrace the funk. It’s time to, as Technotronic said back in 1989, “pump up the jam.” And thankfully, that’s what happened last night.

First band up was Volifonix, a quintet from Eugene playing a jambandesque funk mix that was immediately enjoyable. The lead singer reminded me of a jammier version of Electric Six (minus the humor). They also had elements of early Living Colour in their sound, which is always a plus in my book. Also their bass player, Elijah, was pretty knocked out, but really, he kind of has to be, considering that genre of music demands a strong rhythm section.

Anyway, they blasted through a great set, really set the bar high for the entertainment for the night. The highlight, of course, was when their saxophone player, Tomo Tsurumi, hailing from Japan, performed some awesome Japanese rap over a song called, I believe, “Wow Wow Wow Wow.” A woman I can only assume was his mother was in the audience, dressed, for reals, in what looked like a traditional Japanese kimono, and just looking happy as a god damn clam watching her son take the stage. I loved it. I lover her maybe more than the song itself, to be honest. It was sentimental, okay? So Tomo, thank you for that, and kanpai!

After Volifonix was my unexpected highlight for the show: Excellent Gentlemen. I must admit, up front, that I am a huge Stevie Wonder fan, as well as all the funk music I’ve gotten my grubby paws onto. So when Excellent Gentlemen began playing (I had no idea what I was about to listen to), I was blown away. They wear their influences on their sleeve – Stevie, of course, and some modern day Cee Lo as well2, and generally any funk band that uses a talk box (Roger Troutman, for example). They blew the roof off the place, to be honest. They were tight, they were confident, and their music was perfectly composed and excellently performed. And their drummer looked like he was a line cook at a restaurant. I just have to say that. Kind of off topic, I know, but never before have I seen anyone, much less a drummer for a band, and immediately thought, “That guy looks like a line cook!” I don’t know. It was the black baseball cap coupled with his shirt. He looked like a line cook! It was uncanny.

I would like to go off on a tangent for a bit. If you haven’t signed up for Spotify yet, please do so. It’s amazing, and even more importantly, you can listen to all the bands from this review there! It’s a hell of a lot easier to do this than to try and find their music to steal online. Look, I’ve stolen a lot of music online in my day, and that’s because there was no outlet to listen to music before I bought it. Spotify solves this. You can listen to an album and not feel too bad because there are some ads (or you pay a fee to remove the ads) and at least the band gets some of the profit. Not a lot, I know, but some.

Obviously, the best way to support a band is to see them live, and/or buy their merch, especially if their merch is self-released. The more money that goes straight to the artist, the better, I say. But at least with Spotify, you’re not outright stealing music from the internets. The internets is bringing you music! It’s saying, “Hey, here’s some music for you to listen to. Yeah, there’s some ads, and yeah, they are some of the most annoying ads you’ll ever hear, with some of the worst music you’ve ever heard, but at least you’re not a dirty thief, right?”

Alright, back to the topic at hand. Just People! I’ve seen them play a couple of times now and they always impress me. They’ve got a great following and really lively, engaging jamband music, without being too jambandy. You know what I’m talking about. I’m not a huge fan of the jamband scene, so I get leery at listening to those kinds of bands, especially ones I’ve never heard of before, but JP puts on a great show, and they defy the jamband stereotype by having strong lyrics and tight songs. Very upbeat and powerful. I was worried that, after the awesome performance from Excellent Gentlemen, maybe they wouldn’t be able to compete, but they did, and then some. Not that music is a competition, except maybe a friendly competition, wherein all candidates try to out-funk each other3.

And that was it! A really stellar night. This company called AudioGlobe was streaming the show for free on their website, and making copies of the show for people who wanted to pay five bucks. So I now have a live set of Excellent Gentlemen from that night. Pretty sweet!

  1. Is that a pun? Oh lord. ↩
  2. Of course, Cee Lo wears his influences on his sleeve as well… ↩
  3. Don’t confuse this with the hipster version of “out-funking,” which is when they compete to see who smells the worst. ↩

computer nostalgia

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For years, I have been terrified to building a computer, and skittish at best at upgrading one. Despite my knowledge of software and operating systems, I really knew very little about hardware, and even more about the new technology that was coming out. I grew up with old computers, 486, Pentium, Pentium II, etc. The idea of a “two core” processor was foreign to me. My last computer, the one I bought aaalll the way back in 2004, had a single core processor, and back then no one called them “single core” processors, it was just Intel or AMD. Back in that time, I purchased a 256MB thumbdrive for $45. Now that just seems ridiculous. But it also seems ridiculous when I think about my first time dealing with computers, playing Space Invaders on a sepia-toned monochromatic 386 computer with two 5.25 floppy drives and Windows 3.1.

As of 2009, I have owned a dual core processor machine, with 4GB of ram and a 500GB hard drive. It is called Magrageeves (I give my computers weird names) and at the time it was a godsend. My old single-core computer, Albatross, was getting very, very old, and had experienced a bad static electricty problem oh, nearly six years ago now, and thus would freeze up randomly, forcing me to restart frequently. The only reason I stayed with that computer is because I was too poor to buy a new one. It was college, what can you do. So the purchase of a brand new system was exciting to me, but also kind of nervewracking. I had to buy something relatively cheap, but something that could do what I wanted, namely play video games. So I opted for a dual core, because quad cores at that time were super expensive. Five hundred gigabytes, I thought, would last me forever. How do you fill up 500GB of space? The cost of Magrageeves was $470.

Later on I purchased a “bare-bones” computer kit for $200. An AMD Phenom quad core processor, 2GB of ram that I upgraded to 4GB, a 500GB hard drive, power supply, a shitty case, etc etc. I was supposed to put it together myself. I was nervous. See, Albatross had been sitting in the garage for months now, collecting dust, and at one point I decided to turn it on. I turned it on and experienced a series of beeps and no Windows loading. After some investigating, I quickly discovered that Albatross was Dead, a lifeless hunk of scrap metal. So I did something that I would do frequently with toys as a child: I took it apart. God damn it felt good. I hadn’t taken apart anything for a long time, because at some point it became apparent to my developing brain that while I was good at taking things apart and investigating them, I was horrible at putting them back together. I distinctly remember the piles of parts of Transformer toys I disassembled and then kind of half-heartedly reassembled, and how they looked nothing like they used to. I then said, Well, let’s stop doing this.

So I took apart Albatross and looked at what made it tick. Of course, what was in that box and what is in my newer computers is a little different. Better technology, more upgraded thingymajigs. I don’t know the name of everything, but I know generally what goes where, how to plug in things, etc. And I used that information along with basic instructions to build the bare-bones computer. It was painless! The only issue is that the hard drive light doesn’t light up, despite plugging the right connecting pin (or whatever that’s called). But I did it. I constructed something. It made me feel good. It was as close to working on a car as I’ll ever get.

Now my plan is to upgrade! I was going to upgrade my dual-core to a quad-core behemoth, but thankfully through some research I found that the motherboard on that computer can’t handle more than 4GB of ram. So the next idea is to upgrade the quad core and make it the main computer in my house (the other being a guest computer/recording computer). I can add a 1TB hard drive, a shiny new ATI Radeon graphics card, and two sticks of 4GB ram (this mobo can go up to 8GB) for under $200, though I’ll probably have to chip in and get a new computer fan, too.

Oh, and randomly, I discovered that Albatross’s 80GB hard drive still works, and so I put it in the quad-core machine. Honestly, I’ve never had a hard drive fail on me, ever. People must be pushing those things like mad to get them to burn out on them.

I know this goes against the general patois of this blog, but I’ve become quite proud of my ability to deal with computers like this, and I can’t wait to buy the parts to upgrade my quad core. There’s something about getting your hands dirty and putting stuff together yourself that makes you more invested in those things. For some it’s gardens, for others it’s cars, and for me it’s computers. So there! Deal with it! *sunglasses fall onto my face*

a bit on amnesia: the dark descent

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Okay, I’ve been wanting to write about this game for some time, because I played it, in like fifteen minute increments, for the month of May and I finally finished it and I wanted to talk about it. Because it’s scary as all hell, but also, it’s not?

LOOK PEOPLE THERE ARE SPOILERS, OKAY?

Maybe you’re one of those people who are never going to play this game ever. If that’s so, please, continue reading.

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