Well, okay, don’t really clap your hands, because a) I can’t hear you and b) depending on what setting you’re in, everyone around you might think you’re some kind of moron, but just to get a quick reader count, everyone who reads this blog, post a comment!
*waits patiently*
…I just picked up Call of Duty 2 for my PC. Translation? I’m going to be playing it. A lot. In every waking moment of my spare time. The sooner I can get to the Pointe du Hoc level, the better.
I’ll let ya’ll know how it is…
~Andrew =)
And now, a brief update from the news desk…
Corpse found dead after motorcycle accident. This may not sound weird, but the corpse was actually a passenger on the bike and had been dead for six hours before said motorcycle crash. The driver of the bike fled on foot. The corpse was wisely wearing his helmet, but he was already dead so it didn’t really matter…
Donald Trump earns $25,000 a minute to talk. His advice? “Get the best people and don’t trust them,” he said. “Work with them, but they have to have respect for you.” Sorry, Mr. Trump, but it’s hard to know if someone’s the best without trusting them, and I don’t think “respect” and “fear” are quite the same thing. I’ve seen how people around you cower about possibly hearing the words “You’re fired”, I wouldn’t exactly call that “respect”… :P
Justin Timberlake defends Britney’s honor over baby pictures that were released over the internet. First off, Justin, after that whole “Cry me a river” song, what’s with jumping to your former woman’s aid? And secondly, oh joy, Britney’s baby’s been photographed. I cannot possibly contain my excitement. Could someone hand me a barf bag?
Chairman Mao does weddings. No word yet on if he’s available for company Christmas parties or Bar Mitzvahs.
Bush named Greenspan’s replacement. I’m not sure what suprises me more, the fact that I didn’t know greenspan was retiring or that I didn’t know Greenspan was still alive. Apparently, he’s not yet dead.
I have NO idea who this guy is, but I think he’s pretty good…
Ah, the question… What have I been doing in my nearly three-month absence from the blog scene? I’ll try my best to keep you as up-to-date as humanly possible on this (all three of you who actually read it, that is…)
August
Recovered from vacation (translation – locked my brain back into a “work” mode, a mode which it will probably stay until my next vacation… hopefully sometime early next year). Sometime near the end of the month (maybe it was the beginning of the next month… it’s all still a blur in my brain), Jenn (one of the Amber Glen employees) and I come to the conclusion that we like each other. A lot. This poses obvious HR issues (Employee-supervisor relations, anyone?), so we have to tell John. Upon telling John, we find out that apparently everyone on the staff saw us coming before we did. It’s great knowing everyone else knows you like someone ages before either of you realize it… Even Michael apparently knew it was coming, and he’s a whole bloody 3000 miles away…
September
Let’s see here… Things actually became official between Jenn and I on September 18th. 9:15 pm that night, to be exact. We flipped a coin to see who got to ask who out. Tragically, I lost. She was gracious and allowed me to ask her out later that night, but because of that coin toss, she got first honors. :-)
A week later my sister gets herself a boyfriend. Curious timing, if nothing else, but all is well with that (they’ve walked in on me cleaning my gun before… Ironically, I didn’t even plan it that way…).
For some reason I saw Napoleon Dynamite this month. I honestly thought it was the stupidest movie ever made (which is saying something, as I’ve seem some really stupid movies in my time). For some reason, though, I can’t stop quoting it…
“You’re ruining my life! GOSH!”
AAAAARGH! I did it again!
OH! Ultimate Spider Man came out for PC this month as well. Flippin’ sweet game, I’m now trying to earn all the unlockable-type stuffs. Beat the game already. Once beaten, you can switch which character you’re roaming manhattan with. Spidey you collect tokens and stop random crimes. As Venom, however, it’s VTA (Venom Theft Auto), where the entire point is to cause as much damage as you can. This carnage is somewhere near Incredible Hulk proportions, as you can throw cars off of bridges, snap military people in half… Oh yeah, knock attack helicopters out of the air with cars… All great for relieving tension after a stressful day in traffic. :-)
October
It’s this month that I have to admit I’m a little worried. I haven’t heard from Ellia, my friend I met down in Sacramento while on vacation, in a really long time. I don’t know if I just have lousy timing getting online or what, but she just hasn’t been around. Last I heard from her was the night her brother was supposedly going to call off his wedding, which I don’t know if the wedding ever took place or not at this point… Hasn’t responded to any of my e-mails, even left her a voicemail, but nothin’. Bothersome, as I’d consider her a really good friend. Whatever reason she’s not been around, I’m trusting it’s good. She already promised she wasn’t going to drop off the face of the planet for years again. Still, all I can really do is pray she’s okay.
Work, work, work… all I ever seem to do is work. Did get to have an “artsy” weekend before Canadian thanksgiving, spent that Thursday night downtown for “First Thursday” with Jenn, where we toured the art galleries. Well, we toured two galleries, is more like it, and walked from first avenue to 10th avenue, back to broadway, then back to first (and about 6 blocks along either direction of those streets) trying to find a certain gallery, which we found out wasn’t even a part of first thursday anymore, then we proceeded to take the MAX out to the airport, walk around the airport for a minute, then took the max all the way back out to Sunset TC, during which we got to witness a drug deal go down. Yeah, if there was EVER a night I wished I was packing…
Continuing right along said weekend, we also went to the first in the symphony series I have tickets for, the best of “Roberta Flack”, which was interesting. She was great and all, but most of her songs were about wild, passionate monkey-sex, which made things a little awkward. Then there was one (count ‘em… one) song in which the basic premise to the lyrics is “it’s okay to say no, don’t let him make you compromise”… Quite the paradox. Or is that a juxtaposition? Meh… who cares…
Canadian Thanksgiving I spent with Jenn, her mom, and her two brothers out in Seaside. Now yes, I realize I’m not canadian. And I realize that Jenn isn’t either. However, she wanted to celebrate because she’d spent a year at school in canada, so who was I to argue? I’m too weird to turn down celebrating canadian holidays. :-)
Oh yes! And we’re really digging in and doing holiday preparation, including hiring. This is great for me, particularly considering the fact that John did an interview with someone I gave him a recommendation to interview, and it’s been one of his best interviews thus far. We’ve also reorganized the store in places and whatnot.
And, next week, Falling Up releases. If my review didn’t give off my enthusiasm, FREAKING AWESOME CD!
So, that’s about it… Not a whole lot. Probably more than you wanted to know. But I’m BACK! :-)
This week, we got a shipment that has the new Falling Up album. The one that doesn’t release until next week. And, joy to end all joys, my shipment came complete with a demo copy. Now, we’ll never be able to play this in-store unless at a youth event, but it gave me the chance to listen to it a week early.
IT seems this is a year for follow-up albums from Tooth and Nail. First it was Anberlin’s “Never Take Friendship Personal”, which was a spectacular album. Then Thousand Foot Krutch’s “Art of Breaking”, which blew me away as a new defining album for TFK and became quickly my new favorite CD. Now, poised to drop big, Albany-based Falling Up is taking the favorite album title back home to Oregon.
They’ve released a few songs off the new album on purevolume , but all of these didn’t even scratch the surface of how good this CD is. The first track, “Searchlights”, starts off with a mellow strings arrangement before breaking into strong rock guitar and synthesizer loops. Their sound is vaguely reminiscent of Linkin Park in a lot of ways.
The first song that’s almost really mellow is the fifth track, “Contact”, which still captures all of what makes Falling Up so great- strong contemplative vocals Jesse, and the musical talent of the other guys supporting his vocals. (side note – if you want to be amused, check out the video on their myspace profile… There’s a great video mockumentary where Jesse gets busted by one of his bandmates singing backstreet boys).
What really got me was the track “Exit Calypsan”. This track was released previously on the X 2005 compilation CD. Now, in my first listening to this CD, I nearly skipped over this song because I figured I’d already heard it a hundred times (it was my favorite falling up song when the compilation came out). However, I listened to it anyway and was thoroughly amazed to hear they’d added polish to an already incredible song, thus giving the track my “Favorite Song” award all over again. They refinied/improved the opening strings arrangement/drum beat, and added harmonizing vocals to the verses. It gives the whole song a more “finished” sound to it (which is strange, since the original version was great).
All in all, I cannot WAIT to buy this album now. It’s something that’s a weird hybrid between rock and techno, and it really works. And no, they didn’t pay me and I’m not merely supporting this CD because I want to make sure the hometown boys do well. This really is that great of a CD, from any Oregonian or otherwise. Get it. NOW.
(Well, okay, not now… The 25th… Go get it then… If you find someone selling it now, thought, let me know… I’ll have them run up the flagpole for reaking street date… :-)
This is just a post to remind mysaelf what this feels like… The Blog is back!
(Thanks to Eric for getting it back up… Don’t know how you did it, but… W00t! This server may rarely have downtime, but when it does… IT goes down for months… Let’s try to keep it to a week tops next time. :)