Surprise! Another Mix

This is a mix to Phil, because I figured out I can break my reliance on burning CDs!

The Good Old Days- Eels
(In case that link doesn't work because I think it might have iTunes restrictions attached to it, I suggest looking it up on YouTube. Or downloading it. It's very worth it.)
The Way I Am- Ingrid Michaelson
The Happy Song (Dum Dum)- Otis Redding
Dancin' in the Moonlight (cover)- Switchfoot
November Blue- Scott Avett


Hey, I love you.

Why I've Been Up For Almost 3 Hours

And it's 6 15.

Some genius in my building let off the fire extinguisher, thereby activating the incredibly obnoxious fire alarm in my building. Said genius let the fire extinguisher off on my floor, so when my roommate and I stumble into the hallway (in embarassingly short pajamas) all we see is a thick cloud of white smoke and so we bolt.

Outside.
In the cold.
At 3 30 AM.

Only to be told an hour and a half later that 1st and 2nd floor residents can return to their floor, but since the mess is on 3rd, we are not allowed back on our floor until they clean it up around mid morning.

List of Things I Will Do To The Responsible Douche Bag:

1. In keeping with my piratical instincts; keelhaul
2. Possible tarring and feathering, followed with either the aforementioned keelhauling or being run out of town on a rail.
3. Laying this person out on the train tracks a la Snidley Whiplash and waiting for one of the reliable Helena trains to do the job.
4. Perform some sort of military style sleep deprivation torture, akin to what I am currently experiencing.
5. Good, old fashioned beating. With a bag of potatoes for internal damage, and then a fire extinguisher for some poetic justice.
6. I am envisioning a mob scene with pitchforks, torches, and maybe a battering ram on this person's doorstep.
7. Also on their doorstep; flaming poop. Tons of it.
8. Please look up the monologue Wesley gives to Humperdinck about pain in The Princess Bride.
9. Bitch slap.
10. If this person is a male; family jewels. Female; nipple piercings.


I know this list may seem harsh to you, so I just have to say...

never ever mess with my REM cycle.

Fall (TallBallSmallCallGall...Rall?)

The leaves have started to crunch under my feet, and tea with mint in it has become comforting. I have lit my pumpkin candle, and cardigans are practical in their mid-weightiness.

And I'm not ready. I feel this transition sneaking up too quickly. I'm not ready for cider with cinnamon sticks, or pumpkin patches, or big bowls of metallic wrapped candy. The holiday season is too precious to just spring itself on me like this, and it happened so quickly I don't know whether to slap on my sweaters and start raking leaves, or stubbornly wear shorts and wait until mid-October, when it rightfully should start feeling this way.

Regardless, I've shut myself away this week to get work done, and I feel like a newborn panda blinking in the sun this weekend when I've spent hours at coffee shops. So many people! So many hellos to say! How do people do this all the time? In seventh grade I wanted to be a hermit in the Yukon. Maybe I'll return to that plan. I'm much more productive that way.

Obviously ADD has struck today...and it has struck hard. With Thor's mighty hammer. Talk Like a Pirate Day on Friday was a wee bit disappointing, but avast! I still got to threaten to keelhaul mutinous lily-livered scallywags. Pretty satisfying.

Gerber Daisies and How I Found Out I'm Arrogant

At the end of my summer vacation this year, I packed up my things and moved back to school. While I was unpacking my storage unit full of things I had left behind, I realized how much crap I have. My parents were barely able to fit all of it into my dad's Tahoe (which, for reference, is roughly the size of the nation of Chad), and when we got to the small room allotted to me in the apartment, it was ridiculous to imagine how I would ever find creative and geometric ways to fit all of it. So I had to get rid of about ninety percent of it. In past years, this would have been so difficult. I would have found excuses for each piece of rubbish I owned ("Oh, but THIS bottle of multi-vitamins has gel caps, and who knows when I'll be in need of ingesting plastic?").

Surprisingly, when I opened all of the boxes with my wayward possessions this time, I felt no attachment. I sifted through the old video games, the back issues of Glamour, the eighty thousand candles in assorted scents, and old Snoopy adorned purses...and I simply closed the boxes again. The only thing bothering me about the whole ordeal was the fact that I held on to all the meaningless pieces of junk for so long. That I had complicated my life with things.

Why did I hide behind things? I went shopping for clothes when I had no money. I bought movies even though friends owned them. I was afraid to see who I would be without a barricade of consumerism to protect me. If people couldn't tell who I was from the movies and music I liked, and from how I dressed, I didn't want to take the time to let them in.

Well, my room is much much emptier currently. My checking account is perilously low, but I'm able to admit that to my friends now. (Really, guys, it's just pathetic). I didn't do any before-school shopping trips, and I wear the same jeans for a whole week. I also forget to wear make up a lot now. I still spend a bit too much on coffee, but I compensate by stealing my produce from the school cafeteria.

Life's pretty awesome.

Also, you have permission to call me a disgusting hypocrite, because I found a John Mayer song I can't get out of my head.

Saturday at Mile High Music Festival (or How I Almost Got Puked On)

Mile High Music Festival
Sunday June 19- Feeling Fierce like a Tom(Petty)cat

So there is the occasional moment after hours and hours in the sun, with countless jam bands droning on while semi-conscious stoners bob their heads, that I ask myself, "why did I even buy that ticket?"

Well, the answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind. Actually, it was hanging in the non-existant breeze of the 100+ degree weather of Denver's first Mile High Music Festival. With the headliners being Tom Petty and Dave Matthews, over 90,000 people total showed up for the event. That alone was enough for me to peel myself off my couch, injured knee and all, and hobble over to Dick's Sporting Good's Park (please cease your immature giggling) to daintily pick and choose from an overwhelmingly underwhelming line up.

Now I am NOT going to be a Negative Nancy here! It happened that on this inaugural MHMF, Denver chose to highlight an extraordinarily safe sampling of bands. But let me take you through my days.

Saturday

There were a few bands on Saturday that I had been longing to see, like Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, Andrew Bird, Spoon, and Josh Ritter. I was actually pleasantly surprised when my group and I meandered over to one of the three open air stages in the morning to hear a packed half hour set by a man named Eric Hutchinson.

At a festival, it's basically guaranteed you're not going to love the acoustics. The bass' high end is lost to the ground absorbing its low shock waves, and treble often floats off into nothingness. So to hold a crowd, an artist has to be pretty engaging. Eric Hutchinson was an engaging little so-and-so. He sounds as if Gavin DeGraw developed talent and an excellent sense of humor, and then used them both.

After that, our group split off as those with more questionable music taste went to find the previously mentioned Gavin, and I proceeded to get my face melted off by Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers. They not only knew how to rock hard and wear fedoras without looking like tool kits, they even managed to throw in excellent movie lines into their set.

(Ex: Are you tellin' me that you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?? Doc, that's heavy stuff!)

I was soon being wooed for the first time by Josh Ritter, who won my heart and ears more than any artist at MHMF. The man did not stop smiling the entire time he was on stage, and his lion-cub-like energy made me abandon all my hipster toe tapping, and full on jump around while he played a selection of his more up-tempo folk rock masterpieces to an awestruck and footloose crowd. And yes, he played "Kathleen." And I restrained myself from telling everyone around me that I shared a name with a JR song. Yes...that was difficult.

The temperature by mid-day had breached 100, and since as a Coloradan I am not used to much more than 80, I shuffled my way into Andrew Bird's tent performance and took a seat in the back, since I have seen him before. Surprisingly, his set, though very good, was much more mellow than what I would expect for a festival setting. It made me love him a little more while I let my core temperature drop down from around 300 and let his ethereal whistling energize me for what was next. Which was...

Spoon!

I've been waiting to see these guys for a while now, and they did not disappoint. What a time to be playing, too, with OAR drawing big crowds and people exhausted from the heat starting to get cranky as they elbow their way up to the main stage to claimjump for Tom Petty. But Spoon drew and kept a crowd with their solid set list that appealed to the dancier (I Turn My Camera On) and the rhythmic head swaying (The Beast and the Dragon Adored).

After Spoon I rejoined my wayward friends for the tail end of OAR, who has never impressed me with their repetitive jams and "so chill" ambiance that they can never seem to push past or improve upon. Regardless, there is something to be said for being in the middle of a crowd all jiggling to Crazy Game of Poker. Even I threw my hands up and screamed, "HOW 'BOUT A REVOLUTION!"

One...damp...spot on the afternoon was the close call I had when an overheated and over saturated party dude let his lunch fly about five inches from my friend's and my feet. In a true display of festival brotherhood and solidarity, everyone around promptly gagged and kicked a mound of trash over the festering stink puddle. Which many tipsy people then stepped in, despite many vocal warnings.

I now see the practicality of both invisible electric fences and neon pylons.

Then came the hour and a half wait for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Since I was the gimp of the group, we all pushed towards the gate and secured sitting spots. The 90 minute wait was made bearable with the setting of the mile high sun and the prospect of seeing Tom's golden head of hair bob in time with Free Fallin'.

Which he played just about immediately! Good thing I know more Tom songs than I originally thought.

At the end of the day, we, along with 60,000 other people, dragged ourselves to our cars and tried to fight both road rage and exhaustion as we thumbed the schedule for Sunday.

Which I will write about soon!

Fictitious!

This is the only finished song of the summer. It has been spawned from a mixture of listening to my oldies (Alanis, Tracy, Michelle) and the newer ones (Edith, Rosie, Feist, Zooey). Edith Piaf is not new, I know, but I didn't start listening to her until last year. So here it is. It has no title as of yet.


I have my feet in the sky and my head on the ground
This trip has turned me upside down
And I don’t want to ask where the birds might land
It’s just too real
And a little too in hand

When you looked at me and my sunburned knees
When I smelled the fire before the kerosene
You pulled the alarm at my front door
And you appeared around the corner
I don’t know what this is foreshadowing

Fly low with my hands clasped tight
And your literary devices just took flight
Metaphorically I’m high as a kite
Quite literally I’m so frightened of you

Drunk and stupid I shook your hand
And I couldn’t really understand
Why the wheels in your eyes were like bed time stories
About knights who speak in allegory
And a two am princess who gets left behind

Fly low with my hands clasped tight
And our novel finished in just one night
Metaphorically we put up no fight
Quite obviously we’re so frightened of you

Will you shake my head again?
Will you write fiction and then
Will you sneak out the front window and
I’ll write the ending as you go.

We're Bruce Wayne, biage!

Kay and I have embarked on an epic voyage this summer; rewatch all of our cornerstone movie favorites. Which means a lot of trilogies. Today we started on Pirates of the Caribbean, resolving to skip through much of unnecessary Kraken battles in 2, and most all of 3. Our list of movies to work through is, so far:
Indiana Jones
OT Star Wars
LotR (Extended)
PotC

Also, I really recommend watching the first Pirates with the Jack Davenport/Kiera Knightley commentary on. It's pretty short and very amusing.

So, on the topic of lists, Kaitlin and I started discussing what we would do if we had the money and time of Bruce Wayne. Because we can. So we proudly present, from the same people who brought you Awesome Things from Canada and Celebrities We Would Enlist on our Ninja Death Squads:

Things We Would Do/Procure if We Had the Time and Expendable Income of Bruce Wayne
By the KT Mafia

1. Buy an old, old wooden ship named Diversity and sail around shooting cannons and speaking only in joxy British accents. (Eddie Izzard is welcome on such voyages.) (As are crumpets.)
2. Buy one of those man made islands in the "World" development. Preferably Canada.
3. Become highly trained sommeliers and bakers. Our pastries will solve global warming.
4. Become extras in major motion pictures and television shows based in Vancouver and New York.
5. Finance the Arrested Development movie, become executive producers, and buddy up to the cast. Exchange witty repartee daily.
6. Get Sam from Top Chef as our personal chef/love monkey.
7. Become highly accurate sharpshooters and archers.
8. Own the entire inventory of the Sharper Image.
9. Be seat fillers at top award shows. Or just buy the front row at all top award shows.
10. Throw bitchin' VIP parties to rival P Diddy's White Party. We would have more visually assaulting parties. Like an Orange Party.
11. Become non-academic archaeologists a la Action Indy/Tomb Raider.
12. Buy up national landmarks like Mt. Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, and Old Faithful and stage huge music festivals on/around them seasonally.
13. Have a huge mansion, obviously.
14. In that mansion, have an annex as a personal theatre with the most movies/tv shows on DVD ever owned. Ever.
15. Also, a whole wing dedicated to botany run by our fleet of Korean botanists.
16. Also, a whole wing dedicated to music with its own state of the art recording studio and soundproof rooms and acoustically balanced concert halls.
17. Have a library of solely first edition books. Leather bound a must.
18. We would also have apartments/condos/adobe huts/penthouses/bungalows in the following states:
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado (primary place), Connecticut (to schmooze with old money in New Haven), Florida (only the Keys), Hawaii, Illinois (Chicago), Massachussetts, Maryland (D.C), Montana, Nevada (Las Vegas), New York, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington
We would have villas/houses/apartments/lofts in the following international locations:
Vancouver, Argentina, Turks and Caicos, Australia, New Zealand, London, Monaco, Madrid, Prague, Lake Como (to become BFF with George Clooney), Cape Town, Reykjavik, Moscow, Tokyo.
19. We will own a 200 ft yacht for more modern sailing adventures. We will have jaunty captains hats as well.
20. We will own a whole fleet of Segways. Our fleet of personal assistants (including stylists) will follow in a V formation on their own Segways wherever we go.
21. Buy a plane/trick out a plane to make it even better and snazzier than Air Force 1.
22. Personal perfume/clothing line. Name to be decided later.
23. Resurrect good shows/ cancel crap shows through financial manipulation and/or the take over of FOX.
24. Buy Joss Whedon's, JJ Abram's, JK Rowling's, Eric Kripke's, Tim Kring's, Mitchell Hurwitz's, and Josh Schwartz's friendships for secrets about big reveals.
25. Buy Laurel out of Bead It! and hand over control to Jessie.
26. Hire a scientist to develop a cure for Kaitlin's horrible jewelry allergies so she can join the ranks of earring wearers everywhere.


This list will continue to be expanded I am sure. Back to work, everyone! Tomorrow is Monday! Actually, today is Monday...

Well shoot.

27. Official work week to be changed from Monday-Friday to Tuesday-Thursday. Somehow change minimum wage to 26 USD per hour.

Though we wouldn't need it anyway.

We're Bruce Wayne!