The Bi-Monthly Update?

Sheesh, I'm really getting awful at updating this thing. There's a reason for that though: been getting a lot busier (or at least a lot more occupied) these last couple weeks. Still haven't heard anything new on the grad-school front, so as of right now I'm Tuscaloosa bound if nothing else tunrs up [though I haven't committed to anywhere yet].

So what in the hell have I been doing that's been taking up so much of my precious time? Well, in the last week alone I worked 40+ hours, drove 1,600 miles, and at one point was up for 40 hours straight. That and a bachelor party, a wedding, and week of house and dog-sitting for family friends.

1,600 Miles? Well, I drove from Tallahassee to Chapel Hill the past weekend to see friends (specifically, Meg) and to check out the N.C. State campus. The latter was important to me as I didn't want to commit to a school I had yet to ever set foot on - even though that didn't deter me from enrolling at Georgia Tech. So after working 11p-7a on Thursday night/Friday morning, I came home and took a 3 hour nap and proceeded to drive 10 hours north to North Carolina. The drive was exhausting, and only audiobooks, mp3s, caffeine, and sheer will alone made the drive possible. Spending the weekend with Meg was great - we had a lot of fun together just hanging around the city. The horrendous drive was made up for by my wonderful host, and leaving on Monday really, really sucked. Oh, in case you wanted a visual for miss Meg, here goes [forgive me, Meg! My friends are curious!]:


Meg, Tarheel Extraordinaire

So Monday I drove straight home, another 10 hour sojourn through South Carolina and Georgia, only to turn right around and go straight back to work.

The rest of the week, Tuesday-Sunday, was spent at the house of some family friends as a housesitter and a dogsitter. While the dogs could be very irritating at times (barking at all hours of the day/night), the huge 52" Plasma HDTV setup they had certainly soothed my insomnial woes. ESPNHD was the channel of choice on the TV pretty much 95% of the time - I couldn't bring it upon myself to change off of such an amazing channel. Oh, and widescreen HD Xbox play is also freaking incredible. I almost cried when I fired up Halo 2 for the first time.

Wednesday night I woke up at around 6pm to let the dogs out (suprisingly, they were barking again) - but I didn't know that I would be awake for about the next 40 hours. I went to work at 11pm, left work at 7am, then drove to Jacksonville on Thanksgiving day to have dinner with the family. I left Jacksonville around 6pm and got back to Tallahassee close to 8pm - only to turn around and drive out to Monticello for Andrew's bachelor party. Now typically when you think bachelor parties you probably think of strippers and other likewise debauchery. Not with us. For this party picture a cold night in a dark clearing between two foresty areas with a campfire in the middle. Now add 20 guys, all dressed in black with ski-masks and the like, one keg, a few bottles of liquor, and a ton of hotdogs. And picture them playing Capture The Flag, drunk as hell. We couldn't see a thing, we were freezing, we couldn't run straight...

What a time.

Poor Robert Eaton, one of the groomsmen at Andrew's wedding, pulled a face-plant in the middle of the game and managed to bloody himself all nice and proper with a huge scrape to the face/forehead - he looked real good in all those wedding photos. For his bachelor party (whenever that will be) we've already decided that he's gonna wear one of those boxing helmets that protects the whole head and face. We've got to have Bobby looking slick for those pictures, you know?

The wedding was on Saturday at Los Robles Park in Tallahassee. Or rather, it would have been at Los Robles had the rain not decided to come down in buckets early Saturday afternoon. The wedding was moved indoors, and after showing up early to help re-arrange the area (it was set up for the reception, had to move tables and the like and set up rows of seats) the wedding went off without a hitch. The service was a good one, and Alexandria looked absolutely beautiful. Her and Andrew both just glowed with happiness, and I have to admit most of their friends (including myself) did too. Congrats to them - pictures will follow in the near future whenever I can get them from somebody.

The rest of the night was spent with the wedding reception (which was a blast) and then some drinking and chilling over at Teresa's place. My date for the wedding, Elise, ducked out early in order to make the drive back to Destin before it got too late in the night. Hella weak, but I understand given the circumstances that she had some work to get done.

Now that we're caught up on current events (did you care? hah!) I've got some other things to say:

Traveling 1,600 miles in a car in one week sucks.
If not for Audiobooks-on-MP3-that-I-downloaded and some other good music, I would've been a-goner. What books? "Rainbow Six" by Tom Clancy, "Equal Rites" by Terry Pratchett, and "Wyrd Sisters" by Terry Pratchett. God bless my '99 Chevy Malibu for keeping itself together, and for my AIWA CDC-MP3 in-dash mp3 player for hodling up.

I've been neglecting some music that I downloaded earlier this year.
I downloaded Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance earlier this year but never really listened to it - what a mistake. The three-track barrage of "Give 'Em Hell Kid", "To The End", and "You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison" is probably second only to the three tracks that opened Bad Religion's 2002 album The Process of Belief in terms of sheer tenacity and momentum. This is music that rocks and makes you want to get up and scream along. Other gems I've overlooked include Death From Above 1979's album You're a Woman, I'm A Machine and Penance Soiree by The Icarus Line. Those two albums are pretty raw rock-and-roll, but after some sifting you really see the quality of the music. If I weren't so enamoured with some good recently-released albums (like The Arcade Fire's Funeral) then I probably would've spent more time listening to them. Also good albums: Bows and Arrows by The Walkmen and Shake the Streets by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Look for a "Best of 2004" within the next couple weeks (or at my current posting rate - months).

I really can't stand U2.
U2 has finally made my illustrious "bands I can't stand list" alongside Aerosmith, Creed, New Found Glory, and Blink 182 (and countless other pop-punk bands). Now I'm not here to demean them or belittle them - they're one hell of a band. I respect U2, I just think that the music they're making now is complete and utter crap. I absolutely love The Joshua Tree and War, but with 1991's Achtung Baby things just started to head downhill quality-wise for me. Songs like "Sunday Bloody Sunday" have been replaced by crap like "Vertigo", the band's newest single. "Vertigo" is possibly one of the worst popular songs I've ever heard. Ugh.

Exhaustion sucks.
But the reward of seeing a beautiful woman after 10 long hours of driving on no sleep makes it all worth it. Women have magical powers, I'm certain of it.

Okay, time to go pass out. Work's only a few hours away...

First Grad School Update

As of today, November 15th, here's how they stand:

Accepted:


Still waiting to hear:


Tuscaloosa, here I come? Maybe.

Music and Movie Roundup

First off, The Amazing Race season 6 starts up this coming Tuesday. My advice is to watch it. I personally think this show is one of the best on television, and with NBC's The Apprentice one of the only good reality TV shows.

I've seen a few movies in the past week or so and here's what I think of them:

The Incredibles: Simply put, a fantastic movie. You need to see this movie. While probably more adult-oriented than any other Pixar movie I can recall, this one was one of the best - if not the best Pixar flicks. Much better than Finding Nemo (which I thought was good but very overrated) this movie will be one I can't wait to get into my DVD library. But a must see, without a doubt.

Garden State: So I finally got a chance to see this movie, a movie I'd been wanting to see for a long long time. Thankfully, I wasn't disappointed - an excellent movie. Great storyline, some of the best character development I've ever seen, and great dialogue helped make this one of my favorites in a long, long time. Chalk this one up in the "do not miss" category as well. Oh, and the soundtrack is phenomenal.

Team America: World Police: Now, if you haven't seen South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, then you might not be prepared for what happens when Trey Parker and Matt Stone get together to make a movie - everybody is fair game. Every single group of people you can think of gets made fun of, and the results are hilarious. This movie is satire at its finest - as over-the-top as you can get - and when you tie in the rediculous script with the fact that all acting is done by marionettes, you've got a great comedy. Definitely worth seeing, especially if it hits the $1 theaters at a town near you or late night on HBO or something.

We Were Soldiers: When I first saw the trailers for this movie, I thought "yawn, another war movie." And I only saw this flick after my parents raved about watching the DVD after it arrived in the weekly Netflix shipment. I watched it, and I really liked it. One of the better war movies I've ever seen - though my mother's calling it "the best Vietnam War movie ever" was a bit preposterous - how can you forget Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now? Mel Gibson's acting in this movie was absolutely brilliant and I do recommend this movie, especially to those who enjoy good war movies.

Ali G Indahouse: Da Ali G Show is a hilarious show, but I wondered how they would be able to pull a full-length movie out of the Ali G characters. The end result: mediocre. While this movie is funny and worth seeing, it isn't worth buying or anything. Rent it, watch it on TV, or if legality and morality aren't your strongpoints, download it. The flick is an enjoyable way to kill a couple hours and there are a few side-splitting moments that make it worthwhile.

Now, for some quick music reviews:

The Arcade Fire - Funeral: How to describe The Arcade Fire - perhaps as a strange mixture of the lyrics of Modest Mouse and the Pixies coupled with the grand musical arrangements of The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi. This album has some of the absolute best instrumentation that I've ever heard. When I first put in the CD and was listening through, I was taken aback by the phenomenal quality of the instrumentation. While the lyrical and vocal style of lead singers (and Montreal based husband-and-wife team) Win Butler and Régine Chassagne may take a while to warm up to (much like the aforementioned Pixies and Modest Mouse), once you do the album really becomes something special. This is one of my favorites for the year, and I can't wait to figure out where this sits in the 2004 album rankings.

The Mars Volta - Tremulant (EP): The first offering of half of the old band At The Drive-In, this album came a few months before TMV put out their masterpiece De-Loused in the Comatorium, one of 2003's best albums. "Disturbing emo" is how I'd characterize Tremulant, a 3-song EP that shows the brilliance that TMV has. I like this EP, but it's nowhere near the piece of work that De-Loused ended up being. Still, it's worth listening to a couple times.

Eminem - Encore: Now, I liked the firstEminem album. I thought The Marshall Mathers EP was one of the best rap albums ever. I loved The Eminem Show. Even the 8 Mile Soundtrack was good. This album though, it left me wanting more. I just really couldn't get into it at all. Maybe one or two songs caught my attention, none in the way that it seemed every single track on The Eminem Show did. I'm disappointed now, but maybe it'll just take a few more listens for the album to grow on me - but I doubt it. More listens sure didn't change my very low opinion of Nelly's latest albums.

I'm also listening to a few more albums, but don't think I've heard them enough to fairly critique them at this point.

Oh, and Halo 2 is hella sweet. I really want Mario Power Tennis and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. The first Metroid Prime is in my top 5 of all-time games so more than likely I'll buy it the second I can and play the bejeezus out of it. I pray for my social life.