The first radio show was yesterday! It started fifteen minutes late because when I got to WQHS there had been a power outage the night before and someone had unplugged everything to save it from serious damage, and I had to be helped to set things up.

I also don't have a DJ ID for the website yet, so I didn't get to post the playlist. If you're interested in what I played, here is a list:

Get Up (Sex Machine)- James Brown
Everybody's Gonna Be Happy- The Kinks
Palm of Your Hand- Cake
Girls and Boys- Blur
Happy Birthday Ralph- Atom and His Package (for Ross because it was his birthday)
Jesus is Just Alright- The Doobie Brothers
Flim- Aphex Twin
I've Got A Feeling- The Beatles
Bizarre Love Triangle- New Order
Goodnight Moon- Shivaree
Modern Love- David Bowie
Don't Let's Start- Common Rotation, originally TMBG
59th Street Bridge Song- Simon and Garfunkel
Good Vibrations- The Beach Boys
Early Morning Rain- Gordon Lightfoot
Pulp Fiction Set:
Inc Misirlou (used as the Pulp Fiction Theme)- Dick Dale
You Never Can Tell- Chuck Berry
Son of a Preacher Man- Dusty Springfield
Joker and the Thief- Wolfmother
Secret Agent Man- BLUES TRAVELLER (I found this in the old drawers full of unsorted CDs) off of the ACE VENTURA soundtrack
Frontier Psychiatrist- Avalanches
If I Fell- The Essentials (a-cappella Beatles tune requested by my mom who created a screen name for the sole purpose of requesting music)
Street Spirit Fade Out- The Darkness (covering Radiohead)
DARE- The Gorillaz
Minute by Minute- Girl Talk
The Sea- Morcheeba
Down on the Corner- Creedence Clearwater Revival
Rubber Biscuit- The Blues Brothers (originally by the Chips)
(My Baby Got Run Over By A) Steamroller- The Adicts

You know what's fun? Because it's NOT having to move ALL OF MY SHIT out of my room and into either WARE or SANSOM PLACE EAST for two days while my CARPET GETS REPLACED BECAUSE OF MOLD.

ESPECIALLY THREE WEEKS AFTER YOU REPORTED THE PROBLEM AND SAT AROUND FOR THREE WEEKS WHILE NO ONE TOLD YOU WHAT THE STATE OF THE MOLD IN YOUR ROOM WAS. ESPECIALLY WHEN ONE OR TWO PEOPLE WOULD COME IN, TELL YOU THAT THEY WERE GOING TO COME AND GET THE MOLD OUT OF THE PAINT AND THAT WAS ALL, AND NEVER MENTIONING THE FLOOR.

I have to pack up ALL OF MY STUFF.

ALL OF IT.

ALLLLLLLL OF IT.

And lug it somewhere for THREE DAYS. THAT'S IT. JUST THREE DAYS. And then lug ALL OF MY STUFF BACK. ALL OF IT. TO THE FOURTH FLOOR OF A BUILDING WITHOUT AN ELEVATOR. AGAIN.

I hate lots of things right now.

And I want food.

And I need to go to the Siggraph meeting this time around instead of being like "OOPS off doing better things!"

AND LISTEN TO MY RADIO SHOW TOMORROW MORNING, PLEASE

WQHS.ORG

10-12 AM

LUCKY ROCKETSHIP UNDERPANTS

WITH YOUR HOST

ME!

That is all.

During junior year of high school, listening to music was an enormous part of my life. I spent a lot of time in the drawing studio, and so I would pop in a CD when I got there and just listen to it while I worked for an hour or more on my AP portfolio. All of the albums that I would listen to are albums that I adore even now (and do not apologize for, no matter how poppy or shitty some of them might seem), though I am in a very different place psychologically, as well as physically.

So! List of the albums in no particular order:

Neutral Milk Hotel- In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Radiohead- Itch EP
Sage Francis- Inherited Scars
The Beatles- Abbey Road
Radiohead- Kid A
(What's the Story) Morning Glory- Oasis
Eels- Electro-Shock Blues
Radiohead- The Bends
Tom Waits- Asylum Years
Ben Folds Five- Whatever and Ever Amen
Ben Folds- Ben Folds Live
The Blues Brothers- The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Cake- Comfort Eagle
Cake- Motorcade of Generosity
Cake- Prolongning the Magic
Elliot Smith- Figure 8
Various Artists- Garden State Soundtrack
Various Artists- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Soundtrack
Cake- Fashion Nugget
Semisonic- Feeling Strangely Fine
Radiohead- OK Computer
Various Artists- High Fidelity Soundtrack
Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts- Cowboy Bebop OST:1
The Killers- Hot Fuss
The Strokes- Is This It?
Various Artists- Kill Bill Vol. 1 OST
The Postal Service- Give Up

SHIT I have to go to class now oh dear okay well I will add to this list in a later entry, but that's a large portion of it.

I miss my camera.

It is sitting at home in my room, along with some recently-developed-but-not-yet-printed film, gathering dust. I really just want to have the strap coiled around my right forearm and get to press down the shutter for that really satisfying "kathunk," before I wind the film and reposition to take another photo. So what if the light meter is broken and much of my film ends up over or under exposed, so what if it is at least twice as old as I am, so what if it's only half mine and the other half belongs to my sister, I miss the camera. I even miss the masking tape on the back that told me what lighting situations called for what shutter speeds and apertures (even if it was peeling off and kind of gross colors).

BUT

I have drawing for now. And digital design (which is interesting. I need to get better access to a copy of Illustrator). Maybe I can have photo in the spring. Or next year. Or maybe it'll have to be a hobby as I get deeper into various illustrative media. I dunno. I'm not sure I have the energy for printing photographs. It was fun, and I love taking photos, but I don't know if printing things was something I really loved. I also was pretty unable to remove myself from my work and look at it objectively. I could never really tell if a photograph was "good" or not. Drawings are easier that way, I've discovered. I mean, it's still really really hard to remove one's self from one's work. More so, I guess, but at the same time, it's easy to look at objectively.

I'm gonna go now because my roommate is asleep and I feel sorta bad about still clacking away on the keyboard.

Sooooo weekend!

I love working in the studio when there is one one else in there, especially when I'm working with oil sticks. I know that seems like a weird statement to make, and fuck it, it kinda is. There is, however, something about oil sticks that I really really like. It's like using oil paint, except someone who only has drawing skills and very limited painting skills (read: me) can use them. Oil sticks also smell like oil paints, which is another weird thing to say, but I have always loved that smell. It's kinda like how some people like the smell of gasoline. I like the smell of turpenoid and oil paints. Anyway, there's something really nice about standing in a corner of a darkened drawing studio, working on a self portrait for class, and listening to really really amazing music, while getting one's hands completely covered in oil paint. My hands were grey for the better part of Saturday. I love having artist's hands. I wouldn't even attempt to wash off the oil paint were it not, you know, cancerous.

It's really strange how much of the media that I work with for class causes some sort of lasting health damage. It's as though some overlord of the whole world decided that, not only would artists make very little money and then have to spend that very little money on art supplies, but the very art supplies that the artists purchased with their blood, sweat, and tears, would eventually give them cancer.

Gotta love dramatic irony. Well, except that artists know that the materials are cancerous now, so that sort of removes any possibility of it being dramatic irony.

Shut up, it's early.

I never heard back from the station manager/program director guy about what sort of training I need, so I figure I'm gonna just wait until next week for Lucky Rocketship Underpants to officially begin.

It is BEAUTIFUL out, so naturally I just watched Castle in the Sky (older Miyazaki movie for those of you unfamiliar with it- it's by the same guy who did Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. I've only seen spirited away, SO! I'm making my way through it all. Being a biiig dork). It was really nice. I'm not sure if I liked it more than Spirited Away, but I liked it a lot.

Soooooo I think for the rest of the day until my dad gets here, I'll probably sketch some Banksy stuff (that motherfucker has a wonderful style that I want to learn before I can build off of it) or go to the studio and work on the self for drawing (HUUUUUUGE piece. And I was dumb about it. Oh well, I still have more time). I'm currently wearing just about the most awesome t-shirt ever (the communist party t-shirt from Threadless- it has Fidel, Mao, Lenin, and Stalin at a party with the requisite red party cups, and Marx has a lampshade on his head and is throwing up the horns... I adore this shirt).

Mmm right so that sketching that I was going to do. I should do that.

Sayonara, mothafuckahs.

Soooooo here I am. It's mothafuckin' early (8:24), and I'm chilling with my bowl of cereal, probably a little too leisurely considering that I have class at nine and should put real clothes on as well as brush my teeth and perhaps even (HEAVEN FORBID!) get my shit together for German. For reference, German isn't my first class. Not by a long stretch. I have it at 1:30. It's just that I have class from 9-12 before then.

I also don't know if I have a radio show tomorrow because no one has emailed me about training... therefore (three dots), I don't know how to use the equipment. Hopefully the station manager checks his mothafuckin' email before then and tells me.

Wow, so this was a really exciting entry. Sorry you might have thought it was going to be otherwise, kids.

Off to Drawing to do self portraiture. Eeps.

During Digital Design Foundations on Monday, we were flipping through a book of logos that had been designed by a firm, and all at once, a simple black circle filled with white and the letter "T" got me super excited. Now, while I've never been much of a person to get homesick, there was something comforting about that logo. A few pages later, the professor flipped by the logo for the New England Aquarium, and I got a similar feeling, though not as strong. Later, I found myself flipping through it on my own, searching for these symbols, finding comfort in the logo for WGBH, channel 2, and the picture of the Arlington T stop that accompanied the picture of the logo.

Tonight at dinner, I was talking to Ted, when he asked what sorts of ice cream places there are in my town. Being that he was from a few towns over, we immediately launched into a discussion about where the best ice cream was, before Ted's face lit up and he said, "you know who has the best ice cream? Bubbling Brook," and I immediately smiled and started extolling the virtues of Bubbling Brook, which is a very local creamery in Westwood with some of the best ice cream (and the best atmosphere, for that matter) for miles around.

I guess that even though home was never really something that I felt belonged to me, there are certain things in Boston and the surrounding towns, especially the T, that will remain forever mine. And that's pretty neat.

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

So. Click on this.

You there?

Good.

Now look at Friday's schedule.

The very first thing.

That's right, kiddles. I, by some error in judgment on the part of QHS, was given a radio show. If you don't understand the title, this might help you:

"Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants won't help." (I tried to find an image of it but the interweb hates me)
-Calvin to Hobbes.

WELL, folks! I hope that Lucky Rocketship Underpants will help at least some of you get off to a good start in the mornings on Friday... You can listen to it streaming at wqhs.org, or, well, actually, that's the only way you can listen to it...

Now I find myself trying to figure out what the first song that I ever play on air should be. I mean, granted, there won't be more than four people listening. BUT A GIRL CAN DREAM! But yes. I wonder what I should play??

So, shameless self promotion is really the only purpose of this entry. I'm sorry to disappoint.

I woke up at ten AM with designs of finishing this weekend's homework before class, but as usual, I find myself completely unmotivated to do so. So, here I sit, surfing the web, trying to come up with a name for a radio show (which is not going well), and eating a really (un)healthy breakfast.

There was really very little point to this entry, except as another means of procrastination.

Fuck it, I'm gonna do my homework.

Recently I've been listening to a live Sage Francis album that I bought on South Street a little over a week after I got to Philadelphia. It's called "Road Tested: 2003-2005" and it's a collection of some of the better quality live recordings of Sage stuff during that time period. I'm trying to figure out what it is that has me listening to that album as much as I have been. Part of it might be the idea that it's live and therefore some how more real than a studio track (which is a little bit ridiculous because who says that what is produced in a studio is no less real than what is produced on a stage. They're just different). Maybe it's because I know that Grüvis Malt is playing on a lot of the tracks, and anyone who knows me knows that I had a huge Grüvis phase, which I do not regret in any way.

The track that I find myself going back to, however, is Specialist. It's a song that starts out, "The one that I'm with thinks sex is a beautiful thing, and that's simply adorable." The live recording has a band backing Sage in a really amazingly dense and sort of warm way (vague, yes, but you have to hear studio versus live... it's wonderful). Another section of the lyrics are "I may just change and adjust when I branch out/ Leave, get off my damn couch and achieve/ What I dream/ about leave my house hand out my keys/ To the sleepless/ beauty who failed math class and can't count her Z's." Okay so the line markings were kinda arbitrary and copied from the lyrics site that I copied and pasted that from, but still.

So pretty.

"She's a fairy with broken wings, I used to watch her perform, and if she hears me I hope she sings songs that had me going right back..."

Shit, I love this stuff. Maybe it's the idea that Sage Francis did a lot of poetry competitively, and therefore has a really spoken word way about his rapping, though it is definitively rapping.

I don't know. It just kinda makes me smile.

One two check to the people at the left check one to the folks in the front...

If you can't hear me good enough, turn it up.

(Horn section!)