Bringing the Drama

peer pressure isn’t always a good thing. in this particular case though with the free ipods, i decided to give it a shot. help me out by clicking here and doing one of the offer things. you can end up getting the ipod free. i chose to order some computer help cds that i’ll return as soon as i get them. i’ll be refunded my $7 shipping and be out no money. my friend jacob recently got confirmation his ipod shuffle will be sent to him, and i helped him with a referral towards an real ipod. my friend trey has already received his ipod, so apparently this stuff works. please help me out and spread the ipod love.

i’m going up to nashville tomorrow to be in my buddy brooks’ wedding. i was living with him when he met his fiancee lindsey, so its kind of cool to know where they started from to how they’ll become man and wife on sunday. its the first time i’ve ever been in a wedding, so it’ll be a first in that department for sure. i talked to brooks today and asked if i could be paired with a good looking bridesmaid. i told him our friend chad who is already married should get the not so hot bridesmaid. its only fair, right? so i leave tomorrow for my weekend of adventure. stay calm in my absence and help me get my ipod.

i haven’t seen any of the ‘godfather’ movies, but i know enough. i usually try to sit with my back to the wall in a restaurant so i can see who’s coming. i went out with claire last night, and when we sat down at the restaurant, she sat with her back to the wall. i asked her if she had the same thing i did, from ‘the godfather’. she said no, so obviously it was just because she arrived at the table first. i’ll have to keep this in mind the next time i go out with her. and surprisingly enough, the date went well. i don’t know why, but i kept thinking it wasn’t going to go well. am i sold? no. is she worth not moving to orlando over? no. will that even come into play? maybe not.

at work yesterday, i get this email from my boss about him nominating me for this leadership program at work. basically you get to work in different departments for a few months at a time so you can get a full picture of the company. so if i got into that, i probably would not be moving. i’d actually be motivated to get a masters, etc. so we’ll see what happens. but i guess the direction i’ve been praying about off and on the past few months is coming, just not in the timing i want it in. then again, that’s how God works, right? His timing.

i am usually pretty modest about things, but my review for cold roses got published. i hope you like it.

marika, i hope i did okay.

so tonight was the big new found glory/eisley show at the house of blues. my two friends named jacob and i went for free. it was going to be really good. the tickets said the doors opened at 6, and we thought the no name band ‘reggie and the full effect’ was leading off, starting we figured around 6:30. so we drove around and found a parking spot in the quarter and got to the HOB at 7. perfect time, should have been end of R&tFE and start of eisley. we saw the eisley guitars and gear out on the street and thought they were bringing them inside. we get up to the door and see the following “eisley 6:20-6:55, R&tFE 7:15-8:00, new found glory 8:30-10″. i read that exclaimed much disdain over eisley having to open for some band none of us had heard of. they went from opening for bands like snow patrol and coldplay (yes COLDPLAY!) to opening for some band called reggie and the full effect??? WTF? so the gear we saw for eisley was their stuff getting loaded on the truck. we figured since we had comp’ed tickets, we’d go in and see how things looked. since it was an all ages show, there was no alcohol being sold. we went upstairs and saw the merch tables. mostly NFG stuff, none of which i’m interested in sporting. R&tFE had not even taken the stage, and there was muppet music playing. we figured it wasn’t worth our time to stand around with all the teenage kids ready to psuedo mosh and left. i wouldn’t have minded staying for some of NFG, but on this particular evening, all i could think about was how eisley had to open for R&tFE. (WHO IS THAT?) there is a silver lining to all of this though, they are coming back early july and headlining the parish room, where i’ve seen most recently mutemath. its smaller than the hob main room, and they are coming with lovedrug, who jacob says is good, so sounds like the july show will be better. i did get the full length eisley cd yesterday though with my amazon order, and i like the new songs. i’m looking forward to seeing them live.

anyway, after the hob debacle (WHO IS R&tFE and why was eisley opening for them???) we walked around trying to find a place with shiner bock on tap. we tried calling friends to look up on shiner’s website of locations, which proved fruitless. i swear they used to have a list of locations on the website. unsuccessful, we trekked back to the car and rode over to a diner called huey’s. we each got these club sandwich type things that were fried. oddly enough, they were quite good. good times with the monte cristo’s (the sandwich) and abita amber. i was initiated into the post concert activities of going to huey’s, even if we didn’t really see a concert. after that we all went our separate ways.

now driving home at 9:40 on a night i figured i was going to be out later, and remember, the night i was originally supposed to go on that double date…i called steph and got claire’s number cause i didn’t have it in the car with me. i figured i’d see if she wanted to meet up at ihop for coffee or something. so i called her up, and she said ihop would be cool. i got there later than i thought because some people are idiots who see single lanes on interstates and freak out. anyway, we talked for a few hours, it was cool. and since i haven’t blogged about the other night, i’ll say it didn’t go exceedingly well, but it wasn’t bad either. i’ll take her out to dinner sometime this week. steph thinks i should give it 3 or 4 dates. we’ll see if it goes that far. it was funny, the july 19th deadline i talked about the other day, jacob asked me at bible study thursday “is she worth not moving to orlando over?” when i told him no, he didn’t take it well. i hadn’t thought that maybe publicizing that type of thing may get my friends looking to set me up a bit more now. ha. anyway, after meeting claire for coffee tonight, i found we had some things in common. she asked me if i’m a huge u2 fan as if being one was a bad thing, and i noted that. also, she said something about liking ashlee simpson. but she was serious, i even gave her a chance to say she was kidding. we’ll see how the dinner goes.

WTF? eisley opened for reggie and the full effect??? who is that?

this entry is for my buddy jacob who has passed the ‘musical baton’ to me…

Total space my music is taking up on my boss’s computer: 4gb

The last cd I actually spent money on was: Ryan Adams - Cold Roses

The song that’s playing right now: Elton John/Ryan Adams - Tiny Dancer (live)

5 songs I can’t stop listening to:
1. Ryan Adams - If I Am a Stranger
2. Eisley - Telescope Eyes
3. The Strokes - Hard to Explain
4. Usher - Caught Up
5. Dave Matthews Band - Sugar Will

now i give the baton to all the people who read this blog…run well.

alright, so at the end of last week, i told chad that i am seriously considering orlando. for real, i’ve looked up and found a few jobs i’d be interested in. i told him one exception, i’d stay for a girl. so then the next day he tells me that his wife has told one of her friends at school about me. so friday night i went over to chad’s and we played burnout while steph (chad’s wife) was at a party. i ask steph when she gets back if she did indeed tell one of her friends about me. she affirms the rumor. i now have a double date planned for tomorrow night. it all seems very fishy considering the timing. anyway…

i finally got the new found glory/eisley tickets from xbox in the mail thursday. i now have FOUR free tickets. pretty nice, huh? so saturday night should be good.

in other less than exciting news, my friend andy might be moving. his current g/f who he’s constantly said he’s been trying to get rid of accepted a new job in houston. so after talking with andy yesterday, it sounds like he’s going to put some feelers out to find out about job openings for him. like my friend laurin says “he loves her”. i guess if he moves, it’ll balance out when my friend len moves back. i hate that kind of trade, but what can you do? and of course, me staying to worry about any of this rides on tomorrow night and a girl named claire. well, maybe not just her, but i’m giving myself a deadline, after laurin’s wedding, i’m making the decision. so basically the night of july 19th.

the title of this entry comes from the fact that originally the double date was friday, then saturday….then as i was typing this, i realized that i had the concert saturday, so i called and rescheduled. so if it wasn’t for getting all hyped up following 24, i would have never sat down to write this, and i certainly wouldn’t have the double date tomorrow night.

mosoltov friends!

have you ever been to movies on opening night? kari’s blog today gave me an idea for a blog and i hope she doesn’t mind. i like going to see movies when they first open because you skip having to deal with people who are only going to see the movie cause its ‘cool’. like the chick who had her cell phone go off during daniel day lewis’ monologue scene in gangs of new york. opening night movies have no cell phones going off because everyone is there to see the movie because they want to see the movie. the crowd gasps when they’re supposed to, and they get all the jokes. its like seeing a movie with a whole lot of friends, you’re there for a common purpose. i’ve been to see a handful of movies on opening night, and all of them were great experiences.

probably the most memorable is when my friends and i went to see matrix reloaded on opening night. now of course, everyone thought going into the final two matrix movies that they were going to be great, there wasn’t going to be a giant disappointment with the movie. so we go, the theatre is packed to the gills. the lights go dim and the music starts. you know what i’m talking about. the loud horns and then the matrix theme. then the warner brothers logo, the anticipation builds, then the film starts going slanted, then you can make out the opening scene with trinity, then the film goes unwatchable. people started to boo, but of course these days no one stays with the film reel, its all automatic. people start yelling at the guy nearest the window to climb on top of his seat and knock on the glass. he does so, but nobody is in the little room. more booing. it was chaos, but so much fun. then they cut the film off, and fix things, but we’ve missed the entire action sequence at the beginning with trinity jumping a motorcycle off a building to another building. good thing it was a dream sequence and it was replayed later, so i didn’t feel too bad. but the whole experience made the night memorable. other good memories of movies on opening nights, the whole crowd cheering like it was a football game when the humans beat the aliens in independence day, people applauding the two towers, the way people were buzzing before spiderman 2 started, or the shear emotional outpouring at the passion. oh, and one other memory, my friend andy organized a whole lot of people at work to go see matrix revolutions on opening night at the imax in new orleans. it was pretty cool, and the feeling outside was ‘there is still hope for this last one.’ and then when it was over the weak clapping, like the kind where you know its people feel they have to. yeah, it was a bit disappointing.

maybe i’ll go see the new star wars opening night. if i can remember when its going to be.

so here’s why i haven’t finished the cold roses review and won’t until i can sleep on it and review it tomorrow….(story following)

i’m sitting at my desk tuesday dealing with kind of being bored, seeing i had 6 more hours of work to go, when my boss comes by my desk:

boss: “SCOTT! can you go to the cape today?”
me: “um, yeah, sure.”
boss: “come with me”

i then proceeded to find out they needed a couple of parts for the external tank down at cape canaveral and my boss wanted me to fly them down there. literally ASAP. i was booked on the 11:55 flight to orlando. it was like mission impossible or something, “if those bags are opened, its over. if security wants to open those bags, just turn around and come back.” and i’m serious. this all happened. so i jumped in my car and drove to the airport. i was supposed to just fly down, drop the parts off to my coworker jamie and fly back, but my boss said i should stay overnight and “make the best of it”. rock. so i got to orlando and jamie met me at the rental car counter and got the parts. he gave me directions to kennedy space center and left. i went straight to ksc and jamie met me and we got to walk around in the big VAB. even that picture doesn’t show how big that building is. it was originally built for the saturn V rockets, so its over 360+ feet tall. we took an elevator all the way to the top where they are working on the nose cone for the tank. cool. we hung around for a few minutes, then left. jamie and i went and ate at this place called the tiki hut, i had the grilled mahi mahi. we hit up ron jon’s and then jamie had to go back to the VAB. i went to walmart for a toothbrush and other essentials since i had literally left work with what i had on and my cell phone.

this morning i got to walk around on the launch pad. this launch pad, with a shuttle on it and everything. one of the guy’s that took us out there took several pictures, which includes me standing in the doorway the astronauts walk through to enter the shuttle. for serious, it was one of the coolest things ever. i was right there! did you know that big transporter thing that brings the shuttle out to the pad actually rolls on a 10 ft deep bed of rocks? or that its a person’s job to make sure no birds fly around the shuttle, otherwise she blows a horn to scare them away? those are both true.

then i left and met up with my friend TJ in orlando for lunch before my flight home. it was good to see him again, i hadn’t seen him since i went to orlando a couple of summers ago. we went to this burrito place downtown near his office and i realized some things. orlando has a lot of people my age…with jobs. i found that encouraging, one of the reasons i think i’m not really happy here is there aren’t that many people my age in slidell. i realized on the flight back huntsville probably won’t be that much better than here other than a more interesting job. and my job here probably doesn’t get any better than walking around the launch pad like i did this morning. so i don’t know, i might just move to orlando or something. who knows, but it was a bit of an eye opening trip that’s for sure. i’m going to see how it goes and maybe decide at the end of july. i have a few weddings to go to and some concerts to attend. but after that, i’m undecided.

so i’m working on this review for cold roses…today i sat down and listened to every song and took notes. then i realized i didn’t want to write about what i thought the songs were about. music is open to such interpretation, i don’t want someone thinking of a song in terms of what i wrote and not what they think. so tomorrow when i go to write the review i’m going to end up writing about how the songs sounded, maybe a general feeling for the album as a whole. and for the record, the first cd is about loss and sadness and the 2nd disc is about hope. at least that’s my impression. some of the lyrics are really good too, really visual, but that’s no surprise really. i’ll post a link to the review if its deemed postable on the website i’m writing it for, we’ll see.

this weekend was pretty nice. first time in 3 weeks i didn’t have some kind of activity to take up my entire weekend. my sister took a trip to austin to visit a friend. i’m kind of hoping she sees it as an opportunity to move away. not that i don’t want her in town or anything, but i’ve become more aware that she’s really patterning my mom’s life. i have suggested she go live with her friend in austin, but she kind of laughed it off. maybe the trip there will make her think “you know, i could really live there.” besides, austin is a kick ass town, or so i’ve heard. i’m thinking of going to their musical festival in the fall, or autumn. autumn is such an underrated word.

yesterday was a full day. i got up around 9:30 and rolled over to the mall and bought my ryan adams ticket. good ol’ TM tacked on a $7.30 charge. i’m so glad congress went after microsoft on monopoly concerns. i rode my bike down to chad’s and inspected the wood floor installation. he was coming along quite well, at least after he had chiseled an uneven part of the foundation down. then yesterday night a few of us went into town to see the louisiana philharmonic orchestra do a free show in the park. it was pretty cool. but we noticed we were out of place since we had not brought a blanket, a picnic basket, and some wine with us. maybe next year we’ll bring an ice chest full of beer just to be different. although i was kinda missing a good bottle of shiraz last night.

oh, and chad’s blog now has among other media, a 20 second video of ’scotch and chocolate’ from jazz fest.

seven words:

ryan adams, house of blues, new orleans

that’s right ladies and gentlemen, yours truly will be in attendance at a ryan adams show, june 13, finally, after so long hearing about ryan adams shows from marika and others i will be finally going. its like some kind of milestone. its weird. since when does your #1 favorite artist play a show you can attend when you are at the height of your fandom? hardly ever. the last time this occurred was april 2003 when i saw nickel creek. i stood there in awe as they played ’speak’ literally less than 5 feet in front of me. its just one of those things, as a fan of live music, that you just have to think “i’m going to remember this moment for the rest of my life”. today i was telling my friend chad about how i usually buy concert shirts for some shows i go to if the shirt is cool. i told him “i would buy a shirt that said ‘ryan adams will kick your ass’” in reference to the incident where some moron yelled out for summer of ‘69. for some reason i remembered this as how a fight broke out. now that i look it up no fight broke out and just a big break in the show occurred. sad, but funny how urban legends grow. even so, marika and i both agree ryan gets a free pass to get all rockstar.

the internet is quite the strange bird. you can meet people from all walks of life almost and make great friends. you can also meet people and wish your hardest that you lived closer. truly a blessing and a curse. two years ago if you’d have told me i’d count several people i met over the internet as friends, i’d have called you absolutely insane. but now i look back with no regrets. i relish the times i get to spend with my ‘crazy internet’ friends. i’ve been thinking of this during the past week, just wanted to say that since i’ve really let time go by with not much going on.

work this week has been okay. i’m actually directly involved in the shuttle launch, so that’s cool. in other words, what i’m doing directly relates to when it will happen. i’m doing a lot of depending on other people, which i don’t necessarily enjoy, but its okay. of course, my day today was improved with the aforementioned musical concert being announced, but even so, i’m enjoying doing work on the current project.

oh, and these three months we’re all living right now, check this…of the bands i have listed on the right of this page, i will have seen nickel creek, eisley, ryan adams, and lifehouse. pretty amazing, eh? and i’m going to see eisley for free. i was searching around last weekend for some troubleshooting tips for my xbox. i found a page about how xbox was sponsoring the new found glory tour (of which eisley is opening) and about how xbox had tickets. so i email asking how i could get tickets. the response i got back was “send me your address and i can hook you up with tickets.” rock and roll.