Internet Reading Binge begets Political Obligation Flashbacks: Where are you, Professor Mokrosinska?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8127461.stm

I went on a run today. Usually when I'm active it gets to my head and I start, what's it called? Oh yeah, thinking. I finally ordered my materials to study for the ACE test, which cost me some 80 dollars. I wasn't thrilled--the things I do to keep myself off my own butt.

I ate some cheese for dinner cuz I went to Chipotle for lunch (hence the run) and felt so gross from eating almost an entire burrito I vowed not to eat a whole meal tonight. Anorexic? Have you ever had a Chipotle burrito? It could feed an entire family. A family of five!

Thomas sent me a link to Auto-Tune the News #5, which I watched. I lol'd. Then I watched the rest of them and came to a stunning realization. It went like this:

"Wow am I politically ignorant!"

I generally prefer walking around this godforsaken country with my eyes closed and my ears plugged because I barely take into account opinions other than my own. This, however, leaves me completely out of touch with the goingson in the world around me. I've been living in Chelsea Land. It's not a bad place, really.

Anyway, some conclusions I've drawn from my quick scan of the last year or so in politics:

1. Sarah Palin is SO DUMB. Like, oh my god, how dumb. And I think her hair is some sort of super-flexible plastic. I wish I could get close enough to find out, but I might be too tempted to slap her.

2. Katie Couric is a good singer. No, not in real life. In Auto-Tune Town. She is, however, making her way in the world. I wonder if she's really that smart or if she's just reading scripts half the time. Did CBS need a pretty face to spew the horrors of reality? Or could she be next term's VP nominee? Katie Couric 2012? 2016? Will we still be around? Oh, those Mayans.

3. The European Union is humble. According to the article I posted at the top of this entry that I've just now gotten around to acknowledging, they've cut out marketing standards for produce on the EU level. They want the individual markets to take over in the decision-making process. In other words, the EU is going to stop hating on ugly foods just cuz they ugly. I wrote a note to myself: "Pass the buck?" I don't know if that works in this situation.


How this all relates to the Political Obligation course I took last Fall in Leiden, The Netherlands begins with my very very basic understanding of government involvement. Some people like a whole lot of government involvement because they think that once they've voted the "right" people into office, they can take it from there and make the proper choices in accordance with everyone's needs and opinions on major (or minor) issues. Well, I don't know what country THEY live in, but my country's leaders probably don't deserve that kind of faith. Lest we forget, they are humans. They may be slightly smarter than the majority, but they mostly got to where they are on a slip n slide of fancy buzzwords and greasy palms. Well, most of them anyway. Then again, I'm biased, too. I am not a robot.

The other group of people (this group includes but is not limited to my dad) wish for limited government involvement in the nation's (whichever nation, this is pretty universal) issues. To what degree and concerning what issues varies depending on a person's political upbringing and financial status, mostly. There are people who believe in scaling back government to the bare minimum (I'm talking John Locke, who doesn't really scale back as much as create from ground zero) and then there's those who which the government didn't have to stick its nose in so many nooks and crannies of every day life. The ugliness of our apricots and carrots is one such issue. The fact that the EU stopped and said, "Hey, you really think this is necessary?" is inspiring. I just wish my own country (I know the EU is not a country) could do the same. However, what led them to that decision? Was the regulation costing too much money and that's how they decided to cut back? It wasn't because they felt like maybe they had their hands on too many radishes and wanted to leave some of these issues to the little guys? (Cuz we have nothing better to do with our lives/markets). I like to hope it was the latter, but I like to bet (euros) it was the former.

Quesiton: Are we obligated to follow the regulations we personally deem unnecessary or wrong?

Question: What did they do with the ugly produce? Donate it to the ugly animals kept caged in the ugly zoo on a small island near Abu Dhabi (see Garfield and Nermal)?

I might pay to see that.

Anyway, those were some midnight ramblings from a political novice...well, what comes before novice?
I hope you're thinking. Maybe, like me, you will start reading the paper seriously and not just looking at the stories with funny headlines like the one I posted above...I may have just lucked out with that one.

No work and no play makes Chelsea schizophrenic.

me: IM MUNNA EACHOO

it gets to be twelve and my brain goes "Ding! Lunch time!"

and my stomach goes "Nuh uh. You're fat. Wait until 1 pm"

and my brain goes "Shut up stomach, you're the fat one, I'm all nerves, stop drinking coffee"

(heh pun)

and my stomach goes "Fine, we'll wait until 12 45, how's taht?"

and my brain goes "You know, I don't know why YOU want to wait, I'm the one who's always thinking about how fat YOU are. You're not even able to think! I'm going to make Chelsea go to the fridge RIGHT NOW and get Thomas' Chinese food and eat it all up."

and stomach goes "Gurgle."

Sent at 12:34 PM on Tuesday

Thomas Kennedy: sorry phone rang

me: that's ok

just pacifying a civil war over here

Types of Parties

Prenatal
Pizza
Puberty
Pool
Procrastinators'
Promiscuity
Pale Ale
Post graduate
Pub
Passivity
Professional
Pinnacle
Prenuptial
Pregnant
Panic
Parental
Past Your Prime
orthPedic
Post partum
Pearly Gates

My Trip to Virginia Tech

I finally emerged from the rock I've been hiding under long enough that I could make the one-million-hour trip west to Blacksburg. For the sake of wasting time in the car and trying my hardest to make the butt-numbing hours of a roadtrip go by faster, I always like to visualize progress of long-distance car rides in terms of checkpoints:


Start: Williamsburg
Checkpoint 1: Richmond, 00:58
Checkpoint 2: Charlottesville, 01:17
Checkpoint 3: Roanoke, 02:02
Finish: Blacksburg, 00:49

Total: 05:06 hours


Ok, so I lied. Or Google maps lied. Either way, it was a particularly long drive there. I think the factor that weighed in the most on my perception of time was the weather. It has been very hot lately, like 92 degrees, and this is not conducive to long car rides.


Things I don't like about long drives in the summer:

1. I have to wear shorts, so my thighs stick to the seat. Peeling them off every 20 minutes is the second least fun thing one can do in a car.

2. The bugs are out again, so driving fast = bug splatter on the windshield that even the Brawny man himself couldn't wipe up.

3. Heat makes me sleepy. Sleeping in the bitch seat is impossible. Severe neck pain is highly probable. This is the least fun thing one can do in a car.


But, enough negativity. This weekend was great. I haven't been back to Virginia Tech since my freshman year of college. Nothing's changed. Saturday afternoon, I packed up my hangover, had three bottles of water and a cinnabon mini and headed to campus. When I got there, I felt as though I had never left. There were no tingling nostalgia feelings when I walked by McBryde or Thomas Hall, but I did have a nagging feeling that I had an Intro Chemistry assignment due...


Basically, my weekend can be summed up by the following things:

Friends
Fun
Scrubs
El Rod's
Bollo's
DT
Ho-trains
























Hokie Pride


Yeah, I have to say I still have a little bit. Besides, W&M football is abominable.

Tommy & the Tall Girls

Monday's I'd Like to Dedicate This Song to All the Ladies Out There was "Friends Only." It was a really fun show because I got to play things that you probably wouldn't ever get to hear otherwise. I try hard to support my friends in their musical endeavors, and I've really enjoyed watching their different styles change and mature over the past few years.
I'm sad to say that before the show I hadn't checked out Tommy & the Tall Girls, my cousin Tom's band. Had I gone to their MySpace page when Tom put the word out a while back, I might have played some of their stuff on my show.
So Tom (who I am fully capable of beating up, just to set the record straight) is in this band, Tommy & the Tall Girls, in Toronto. I don't want to give Tom a big head, but I really respect him for his musical efforts, and I really love most every song of his I've heard. He's got a good sense of humor and an appreciation for very classic-sounding love ballads with quirky pop elements. Maybe I am just a sucker for songwriters who do that [this is where I admit that I should probably expand my musical horizons beyond the Magnetic Fields, but the truth of the matter is that I just don't feel like it].
Back when I was at Pratt (worst art school ever) I had to make a music video for my film class. Tom was coming to visit me around that time, so I used one of his songs, "Antarctica," and filmed him lip syncing to it. I think the aforementioned humor in Tom's lyrics can be exemplified in my favorite line, "And the bars don't close, 'cause they don't exist, won't have to stumble home drunk and delirious."
Anyway, Tommy and the Tall Girls has Tom on lead vocals, guitar and mandolin. I probably should have left this for later, when I could hear more than the recordings on their Myspace page, but I felt it was an appropriate posting following the "Friends Only" show. "Sad Drunk Broken Heart" was probably my favorite, as a charming song from the intoxicated and lonely heart (with some really pretty trumpet and saxophone). "Brass Tacks" and "Come Out" also offer really great brass backings and both appeal to me in the same way that so many of Tom's other songs have in the past. Hopefully at some point I'll be able to see a live performance and listen to more recordings. But seriously, check these guys out, I endorse them fully.



much love,

Ali

Things I Wish I Hadn't Eaten Out of Desperation

Anything left in our malfunctioning mini-fridge that smells like old milk and was turned off for an entire day.

Tuna for breakfast.

Tuna made with the mayonnaise left in our malfunctioning mini-fridge that smells like old milk and was turned off for an entire day.

Pasta with vodka sauce left in our malfunctioning mini-fridge that smells like old milk and was turned off for an entire day.

FM(dorm)L.

-Chelsea

After sleeping way too long (because I was debating whether or not I would actually go to class), a list of things I have not consumed today

pizza
cold pizza
toast with butter and jam
orange juice
bread crumbs
sushi
Italian food
a cold glass of milk
anything from Dunkin' Donuts
the carrot cake sitting on my boyfriend's stove (that no one is eating)
lima beans
fruit
Chinese food
packets of MSG
a Five Guys burger
anything on the food pyramid
beer
pixie stix
a coke
orphaned children
the skin on my bottom lip


Ali

Dan Deacon Dan Deacon Dan Deacon

WCWM sponsored one of Baltimore's biggest acts, Dan Deacon, on April 5th. Deacon made it to Pitchfork's 25 best records of 2007 with Spiderman of the Rings and his newest album Bromst has already made it to their Best New Music, ranking in at 8.5 pitchforks. He also made it to Rolling Stone's top 100 hits of 2007 with his single "Crystal Cat."

To be honest, I wasn't entirely impressed with Bromst when I first heard it. I don't want to completely shut it down, it's really just not my kind of thing. But, as a good DJ would, I promoted it. It was amazing that WCWM was able to book Deacon (usually UCAB books all the cool artists). Also, I had heard amazing things about Deacon's concerts. So I bit my tongue, played the ads that Stephen Reader and I made on both of my shows, and waited it out to see how it really was.

And seriously, all promotion and loyalty aside, it was pretty awesome.

Deacon's show was all about lights and crazy dancing. He starts with a warm up activity reminiscent of preschool teachers and crunchy yoga instructors, asking the audience to raise their arms and then crouch to the floor and wiggle their fingers. At one point during the performance, he had everyone in the audience line up and create a bridge, with each person running through and starting another link until the bridge had extended outside and then come back in.

Another bonus? His band had awesome matching white jumpsuits. Dan Deacon wore a WCWM shirt given to him by the station earlier that evening. The music was pretty great. Having been to the concert, sweating, dancing and taking photos, I appreciate what Deacon is doing, and how much work and coordination really goes into his music. I think his is the kind of music that requires extraordinarily loud volume and the ability to shut your eyes and just let loose and rock out. Otherwise it's just kind of "eh." At some point, amidst all the chaos of people flailing their arms and trying to be as close to Deacon (who was on the floor with the crowd) as possible, I realized that every good thing I had heard about the Dan Deacon concert experience had come true... like a magical fairytale.

And after the party it's the after party. I got to meet everyone but Mr. Deacon himself. Not being what you would call a "groupie" this was a fairly new experience for me. (I regret not going to the after-party Jens Lekman attended just about every day of my life) Despite the requests for unpasteurized cheese and sufite-free wine on the rider, everyone seemed pretty chill. And I'd say they seem pretty normal too, except that they were touring the US on a modified school bus for the next couple of months.

However, I was awoken the next morning by the band playing Limp Biskit on the loud speakers in my boyfriend's living room at 7:30. Suddenly the magical experience of the concert the night before turned into mild distaste for the 14 or so person band who slept on the couches, floor and coffee tables of Alice Street and then drove away in a school bus on a rainy Monday morning. Limp Biskit? Really?

Check out my photos from the show on flickr:



Also, I really like this video

<3 Ali

P.S. check out Omar's review of the show

Tycho Brahe

"That's a fucking epic mustache, Tycho" - Sir Francis Bacon

Inspired by a conversation I had with a friend from afar, I decided to investigate the death of Tycho Brahe. I remembered his name from my high school physics class with Mr. Applegate, but was unaware of the details of his life until I stumbled upon this link:

http://www.scientificblogging.com/geeks039_guide_world_domination/great_thinkers_who_met_tragicomically_gruesome_ends

So, who's Tycho Brahe, you ask?

Well, I'll tell you. But only if you're patient.

...
.....
.......
.........

Okay, you've waited long enough.

Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer, astrologer and alchemist from the sixteenth-century. He was the mentor of Johannes Kepler (zoiks!) and is famous for quite a few things:

1. The Tychonic Geo-heliocentric system of Planetary Orbit
2. Contributions of herbal medicines used well into the 1900s
3. Losing part of his nose in a duel with Manderup Parsberg, a danish nobleman, over who was the best mathematician
4. Getting a moose drunk

Oh, Tycho Tycho Tycho. Is that what geniuses do for fun? Go to the National Honor Society kegger on a school night--moose in tow--toke on some "herbal medicines" and fight Pythagoras' students 'cuz you think the theorem is dumb?

And what's more--you pushed that moose down the stairs, didn't you Tycho?

You bastard.

You know what? Maybe you did the world a favor holding it in at the King's cocktail party while he jabbered on about leaving behind an honorable legacy and slid his hand up the wenches' skirts. I can just picture you, standing there, doing the pee-pee dance. Sucker.

Tycho, you were such a bro. In a bad way. But I think I would get a kick out of writing your epitaph. Where's my time machine?

--Chelsea

Why you shouldn't mess with Frankie Lymon

Yesterday's I'd Like to Dedicate This Song to All the Ladies Out There... took a pretty strong cue from my other show, No More Rock&Roll for You!, on which I try to play early pop, heavily influenced by the genius of Phil Spector (the self-proclaimed Da Vinci of our time), Motown, Rockabilly and pretty much anything you'd hear in an old-fashioned diner. There's just something about the bubbly days of drinking milkshakes, getting your boyfriend's class ring and telling all your girlfriends about it that just sort of tickles me.

One of my favorite artists in this late-fifties/early sixties era is Frankie Lymon (and the Teenagers). You may know him from such songs as "ABCs of Love," "Rockin' Robin," "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" and "I Put the Bomp (in the Bomp Bomp Bomp)." Frankie Lymon was what we call a child star. And if you thought Britney getting married, anulled, married, showing her lady-parts while getting out of a limo, having children, divorcing, shaving her head, getting really fat and joining the circus has been wonderfully fun to follow, you should probably consider a history lesson in Frankie Lymon's childhood...

This adorable teenager started his career at age 13- but just because Britney got to the Mouseketeers before that, and the Olson twins were on Full House in diapers, doesn't mean you shouldn't give Lymon credit where credit was deserved. I think Beyonce would refer to him as the male version of a diva... Lymon grew up in Harlem, was known for hanging out with women twice his age and hustlin' (when he was ten). Despite this tough childhood, his first hit made it to #6 on the pop single Billboards when he was 14. The boy knew how to do it right. He inspired many of the girl groups of the 1960s (listen to him sing, you'll understand why) and as one of the first black teen idols, the Jackson 5 as well.

The kid married about fifty different women when he was in his twenties. He was also heroin addict. Sources disagree as to whether Lymon joined the US Army to escape drug charges or whether he was drafted, though I'm not sure there's much of a difference... regardless he wasn't the army's most outstanding recruit.

Unfortunately, like many people who peak in their early twenties, Lymon overdosed at the age of 25. Twenty years later, Lymon's three wives (he apparently didn't bother with divorce before moving from one to the next...) were all fighting over his estate. In my mind this qualifies Frankie Lymon as the original O.G.

Recommended listening: ABC's of Love, Melinda, Goody Goody, Why Do Fools Fall In Love?, Little Bitty Pretty One, Short Fat Fanny, Waitin' In School, Rockin' Robin


kisses,

Ali

Update: I'm Blog!

Hey blog-o-sphere,

Ali and Chelsea here, representin' da ladeez with our own little piece of the blogging world. Get excited because we'll be posting details from our shows, thoughts and feelings, maybe a little angsty poetry for your enjoyment, and, of course, our favorite lists from McSweeney's.

xoxo,
Chelsea