You're more than just a rhyme to us...

Death Cab and Franz Ferdinand Concert
Originally uploaded by Gravity Bun.

Wednesday night was the long-awaited Death Cab for Cutie/Franz Ferdinand show. Well, long-awaited and slightly dreaded, ever since Mike laughed when I told him I was going, and told me prepare to feel really, really old.

And at first I did. Because all the girls were dressed like Pat Benatar, but I'm pretty sure that none of them were even born when I was rushing home after school to catch Love is a Battlefield on VideoHits. But, like I've said before, today's ridiculous teenage fads are way cooler than the ones I chased. I mean, plastic jewelry and eyeshadow vs flannel shirts and sighing? There's just no contest.

Anyway, I've never been a huge fan, but I was still excited to see Death Cab. I willfully ignored them for years because I hated their name. I'm kind of unforgiving that way. I only relented and started to listen a couple of years ago, but I'm not really familiar with a lot of their stuff. Which definitely put me the minority - every time they started a song, a huge cheer went up from the audience before the first notes had finished. The first thing that struck me was the voice - Ben Gibbard sounded exactly the same as he does on record. I've never heard a singer sound so true to a recording. He wasn't the least bit ragged or hoarse from touring. It was almost disconcerting and actually made the performance feel strangely remote, like I was listening to it on headphones. I was also taken aback by their stage presence. I expected a bunch of wan guys shuffling their feet and looking embarrassed. Instead, I got rock stars. Howya guys doing out there? uh, good, I guess.

But once I got over my surprise, I was mesmerized. Death Cab for Cutie are amazing. I wished I'd memorized their albums like everyone else had. When they played Different Names for the Same Thing, the stands lit up with cell phones held high. I haven't been to a stadium show in ages, so this was all new to me...a few purists went for their lighters, but they were just small flickers in the greenish glow.

And if I had memorized their albums, I wouldn't have been so surprised at the reaction to I Will Follow You Into the Dark. I can't think of the last time I've heard a crowd sing along like that, as uninhibited as children. Midway through the song, the singing turned into shouting and one of the lines became a roar, followed by a huge cheer. I had no idea what had just happened, or what on earth everyone was cheering about. It wasn't until the next day that I realized the line was: we've seen everything there is to see/from Bangkok to Calgary. Which explains Ben Gibbard's introduction:

"You're more than just a rhyme to us"

And after Death Cab, Franz Ferdinand played. But it hardly mattered.

Health Overdose

Having heard that it would cure every possible ailment, I picked up a bottle of flax oil the other day. I think I read something it being good for trich symptoms, although I'm a little unclear on how (but I can't resist miracle cure bullshit.) The bottle didn't give any instructions on how much to take, and, rather than taking two freaking seconds to look it up on google, I somehow decided that a shot glass was proper dosage. What does it say about me that I immediately thought of a shot glass rather than a spoon?

Anyway, first night I got highly queasy. Still, I tried again last night, right before bed. Shawn walked in right after I had downed the shot and was gagging, my throat coated in oil. He saw the shot glass and asked if maybe, possibly, I should try taking a little less. It honestly never occurred to me before he said it. So suddenly I realized that I had taken a massively excessive dosage of flax oil. twice.

Why is it that even my best intentions end up as small disasters? Who else could managed to overdose on flax oil? I better get some damn shiny hair out of this...

Family Fun

My mother and my sister. My sister and my mother. Why can't they be sane? Why is my sister so intent on a complete personal implosion? Why does my mother worry about it so much, yet continue to fund it?

Why are me and both my siblings such hopelessly immature, dependant sponges?

Family counselling isn't enough. I honestly think we need a higher power, like SuperNanny. Lately I've started to daydream about her showing up on my mother's doorstep and taking charge. Calling us all over to lecture, "ess nah asseptable!"

God that would be sweet.

Actually, with all the attention lately on useless adult children, I can totally see that working as a spinoff. SuperNanny making a big activities chart that forces the 29-year-old to get out of bed at 8 and look for a job between 10 and 2. At 2:30, he gets a snack.

This honestly might be the best idea I've ever had.

(trademarktrademarktrademarktrademarktrademarktrademark)

The Birthday Curse, pt II

Continued, because this is turning into a very long post...

21 - Ah, my 21st birthday was extra special. First I worked a shift at Safeway (cashier was my replacement crappy job after I fled A&W). I suppose being a cashier isn't so bad if you've got the personality for it, but I really, really didn't. I can't even begin to list all the reasons I was badly suited for the job, but foremost among them were my chronic shyness and my habit of taking it personally when people scream at me. During my tenure, I spent a good portion every single shift humming Lost in the Supermarket under my breath. While I still love that song, I've barely been able to listen to it since. Anyway, after a glassy-eyed day of scanning and making change, I went home to my family's birthday party. These are very small affairs, consisting entirely of serving a cake and singing a horribly off-key version of Happy Birthday (my father was almost entirely deaf, so his musical stylings were particularly amusing). At the time, my sister was enrolled in a journalism program, and decided to use my birthday as the subject for her photo series assignment. Unfortunately, her first round of 'blowing out the candles' photos didn't quite work, so we re-lit them and did it all again. And again. After I was finally allowed to leave the candles extinguished and eat some cake, I slunk on down to the computer in the basement to work on a term paper. The subject? history of western culture. All of it. It was due the next day, so I stayed down there, typing away for the next twelve hours.

22 - I have no idea.

23 - On my 23rd birthday I got letter from a friend, telling me that a mutual friend had drowned in an accident. There's really nothing funny about this.

24 - I can't even remember what the problem was, but I was going through some job drama at this time and was mainly unemployed. I finally ran out of money and decided I needed to appply for Unemployment (or, as it was euphemistically renamed, Employment Insurance). Not entirely why I decided to do this on my birthday. Anyway, I started filling out the form on a computer at the office and soon got to the date of birth information. As a check against typos and mistakes, the computer would pop up with a confirmation message after every entry. Thus, when I typed in my date of birth, a dialogue box popped up, informing me that "YOU ARE 24 YEARS OLD." Yeah, well happy birthday to you, too, asshole.

to be continued again...

The Birthday Curse

Several years ago, after a string of crappy and/or thwarted observances, I decided that my birthday was cursed. This isn't surprising - I naturally tend towards paranoia and self-pity, so believing in the odd personal curse is to be expected. Don't even get me started on my red wine curse. Anyway, the birthday curse is fairly well delineated: it began on my eighteenth birthday and can only be avoided by ignoring the event completely. Proof? Oh, I got proof...

18 - Ah yes, the intro to adulthood. My older sister decided to help me celebrate by letting me tag along on her usual rounds. She's always been much more of a social butterfly, thus a regular night out required us to hit about five bars and meet up with a dozen people. The evening culminated at the Ship and Anchor, where she introduced me to a table of people and then left me there while she went to another bar. I spent a good couple hours waiting for her to come back, listening to random guys talk about guitar string and drinking way too much beer in an effort to keep up. Numerous girl drinks + several pints of Warthog = bad news for the barely legal. I celebrated my entry into adulthood by throwing up in the bathroom of the 17th avenue Boston Pizza...

19 - Admittedly, I don't really remember. My guess would be something involving the Republik and beer, which was already starting to lost its allure...

20 - I had been working at A&W for about six months when my 20th birthday rolled around. It was hellish even by the standards of teenage fast food jobs, mainly because of a amusingly demented boss who had obviously gotten into 'the food service industry' because it offered her almost unlimited bullying opportunities. Such was the economy at the time that nobody could risk quitting or getting fired - it could take months to find another crappy job (it makes me jealous now, to see how places go begging for workers - signing bonuses, wages way above the minimum, kids hired on the spot. When I was in high school, any job that did not involve fries could ask for a degree) Anyway, back to the curse: after a long morning filled with verbal abuse, I checked the upcoming schedule and saw that I was booked to work two full days the next week - my birthday and the day after. Suddenly, I knew I couldn't possibly do it. Fries and misery was okay while I was still a teenager, but as soon I turned 20 it would make me feel like a hopeless loser. In one moment I realized it, and it couldn't be undone - today was my last day.

Of course, my manager lost it, my mother was livid, my father disappointed, even my friends and boyfriend were concerned. Which made it a fairly crappy birthday, with everyone shaking their heads because I was 20 now, and should be more responsible. (on the upside, the rest of my last day was awesome. You have no idea how funny a screaming fastfood manager is when you don't care anymore. Comic gold, people)

Eagle eyes

The shame of getting sucked in by that Mark Ecko video has not been helped by Shawn's constant mocking. He never fell for it - after I found out it was a fake I showed it to him and he just sneered: "just look at the lettering on the plane! It's too clear. The video is bitmapping, but the font is a vector graphic? I don't think so."

Uh, yeah, Don't know how I missed that.

The Greatest of All Time?

I can only hope the video is real, because tagging Air Force One should get you some kind of medal.

ETA: Not real. Duh. But dammit, I wanted to believe!

The legal disclaimer is actually pretty funny, once I took the time to actually explore and read it:

"You, the viewer of the preceeding are hereby advised that the video does not depict a real event. It is intended for the sole, limited and express purpose of entertainment and to induce you, the viewer of the video, to think critically about freedom of expression and speech and the government's responses to the same. Therefore, and by reason of the foregoing, the producers, creators and distributors of this video hereby verily certify that the foregoing fictionalization and dramatization was not real."

But the Wooster Collective hurt my feelings when they said "We didn't post that it was a fake because we has [sic] no idea that anyone would think that it was real." Guess I'm just an idiot (but getting insert that [sic] makes me a bit happier.)

Mileage

I've decided this running crap is actually a really bad idea. I know that it must have seemed like something I had to do, signing up for a half marathon, but I really can't remember why.

Oh, who am I trying to fool? I want to run a half marathon, but I have a hard time believing I can do it. Today's run was 9K and I was exhausted at the end. The farthest I've run in the past couple years is 10K...yet somehow I'm going to be covering twice that distance? 20 kilometres and then another 1.1 - just for fun. In six weeks, we'll be up to 10 miles. I've only run 10 miles once in my life and it took a really, really long time.

What I really want to do isn't the half, there are two 10-mile trail runs. One runs from Canmore to Banff, between the mountains. The other is Moose Mountain - five miles up the mountain and then five more back down again. Why does that appeal to me?

Desk Job

"I found myself wondering - what will the Richard Scarry book of the future look like? based on my experience, I think it's going to be about eighty lavishly illustrated pages of a cartoon mouse sitting at a desk, typing, with headphones on"

The most brilliant thing I've heard this week. (from the 43 folders podcast The Richard Scarry Book of the Future)

Pretty much describes me and everyone within a twenty foot radius of me.

This Just In...

Metric @ Neumos - Seattle, Wa
Originally uploaded by Crickontour.

Metric is big with the kids. I had no idea how popular they were until I saw the insane line-up for their show at Mac Hall last night.

Also popular: mini mini-skirts and footless tights.

Last night around 6:30, I stopped by the student centre to grab a coffee before my writing class. Apparently the doors to the hall didn't even open until 7, but there were already hundreds of all-ages kids crowded on the stairs, and spilling out down the entire length of the food court. Every time a sound came from the hall, the line buzzed with excitement, imagining their heroes inside-so close!

Lining up an hour before the doors even open? I can't remember the last time I was so excited about a show. Christ, I can't remember the last time I was so excited about anything.