How should you act with the "rarest of roses?"

Q: Did you know there was a special episode of Jersey Shore tonight before the VMAs?
A: Hopefully you caught it, because "special" referred more to its quality than it's time slot.

After I saw the season premiere of Jersey Shore's 2nd season I ran over to blog about it.
That episode was a homerun. It had a huge expectation to meet and exceeded it. The second episode was also very well done, but I am thankful that I did not start a weekly blog about it. The third episode was disappointing, and my friends and I had even begun to discuss our stamina for this gang. It's clear that that we are just at the beginning of this. It's all but assured we'll be seeing edited episodes air during WGN rain delays in just over five years.

They had a return to form in the last few epochs. Angelina being bitchy - Snooki making a stand - infighting! But tonight was remarkable. In ways I didn't think the show could.

I really want to take a large, healthy, bite out of this most recent - Sunday Night Special - piece.

Previously on the -Shore:
Vinny hooks up with Angelina! In a scene that is more lude than actually showing insertion - MTV showed a quick "hookup pause" to allow Vinny to extract a condom (which we are constantly made aware are quite large*) to "smush."

The wakeup phone call is courtesy of Vinny's Mom! Of course it's Angelina who answers it. Vinny's Mom is quite easily the single greatest person we have met through the Jersey Shore web of people; we all hope she's never seen an episode. The Mom wants to know who she's talking to and even continues into the mandatory small talk we've all participated in with the Moms of others. Although, I would assume, we've never had a hookup partner had to comply so quickly post coitus.

*Snooki's comment of "loosy goosey" as a description to Angelina's 'lady parts' was lude on more fronts than I can detail.

The Situation has been exposed this season for what he is in his own mind. Last season he was somewhat of a joke - constantly talking up his "game" but never yielding. Now we almost wish he was back to his lovable loser mentality (or even better - happy for humanity that he wasn't scoring). But this season he has been banging - NFL All-Pro level bangin' - and we have to endure his success so to speak. Say what you will about The Situation, he broke down the Angelina / Vinny hookup as poetically as possible. He asserts that, by Angelina not "letting Jose hit that," the ancient credo of NICE GUYS FINISH LAST is true.

[A quick note to my female readers: If you read this blog, you are not a Jersey Shore skank. You are a beautiful moral-rich individual who values people who treat others with respect]

Enter the family of Vinny. Once again we are reminded of the beauty that is the Vinny's
Mother. But this season we are introduced to another of "Clan Vinny:" A cataclysmic attack on all what Italian-Americans fight to overcome manifested in Uncle Nino. I'm thankful that MTV decided to show Ronnie's "creepy" sidebar comment to further illustrate just how insanely bizarre he made everything. To be honest, when he left - I couldn't believe the episode wasn't done... I was drained from viewing the monstrosity. (drained, but smiling ear to ear)

The second half of the episode is what made the episode go from Great to Magnificent:

More reason to hate Angelina: preying on our culture's love of the term "hookup" and it's implied vagueness. Only when painted into a corner by The Situation does she confess her sin to Nice Guy Jose. I liked Jose until this point. Regardless if he wants to believe it was "just kissing" he needs to get his Fossil Watch back and walk into the sunset.

The scenes of a stupid baseball cap wearing Vinny fist-pump dancing in the foreground to the Angelia/Jose confession brought in the biggest laugh of the season!

Part of the mid second season slump of Jersey Shore was the constant attempt to create new acronyms and t-shirt worthy sayings. Although "T-Shirt Time" (and the newly learned, from another, "high heel time" counterpart) is actually a valid and smart term, sayings such as "IFF" just seemed forced. Tonight we saw the true meaning of "DTF" (which means "Down to [have fun]"). I'm sorry women of the world, but the DTF distinction is being proven from your kind most wanting to "get it in" to use the syntax of Snooki. Pauly D's ability to draw in a booty call at post sunrise is beyond my comprehension. The fact she performed while another Situation spectator was eating an egg sandwich makes me consider leaving our society.

Pauly D and Vinny have been banging big so far on South Beach, so I believe them when they say they they found people they like enough to take out on a date. The dual phone calls was such a wonderful thing to witness. I'm not embarrassed to admit I literally did a Tiger Woods quality (pun NOT intended) fist pump when he hung up the phone after getting a date with his interest. He's a young kid, and his awkwardness was endearing. Pauly D on the other hand, the oldest of that crew, is a G-D-Pro and his corny as hell ice breaking joke got us all to laugh. None of us doubted his ability to cultivate that Cuban.

And those two were so ecstatic! They bought new clothes, got fresh haircuts, and BOUGHT FLOWERS! Oh god, let me tell you about the Flowers-On-A-First-Date play: I've retired from it. The flowers signify more the guy's excitement on the date than anything else. I've only tried it three times. The first time was because I had a first date on the first day of Spring. A coworker had told me of this calendar-specific note and it prompted me to do it. One could say it eventually didn't work out, but since I'm 95% positive the recipient of those flowers is reading this post, and that we are friends today, is why I was glad I did it (even though she probably won't know I'm talking about her). The second time I bought flowers, I never gave them to her... instead I gave them to another platonic friend as a "white flag" of the date going awful. The third time, and the last time, I bought flowers on the first date I ended up giving them to the undeserving lady only because I didn't want to admit defeat by throwing the flowers away.

I'm not sure if many other people picked up on this: but Vinny's girl was working at a bar when he met her. Those girls literally have a financial stake (tips) in being overtly friendly to customers. Once again Vinny is young. And again I'm reminded that I too used to tip just a little bit more to those smiling servers (much to the chagrin of my friends). I've since learned my lesson, and hopefully Vinny has now too. Her phone call to cancel was painful for all involved. I'm sure she didn't have fun knocking him down, but I appreciate her not flat out standing him up and telling him she wouldn't go.

Vinny's quick hangup was brilliant! Don't say something you'll regret. Take the high road, take the loss, go to your corner and let the cut man stitch you up. What a sincerely nice moment to see Ronnie (the proven PLAYER of the house) be the one to console Vinny even if he didn't want any of it.

[side note: It's fitting that Ronnie is the most accepting of Angelina's recent Skanktastic Motives, for he has inexplicably come out of the "Motorboating Grenade Fest" incident without a scar!]

It was just a quick cut to Angelina after Vinny hung up, but I saw her laugh. I could not have loathed her more at that moment. Girls will continue to toy with boys, and every hurt does in fact hurt us all! Angelina, if you would have laughed at me like that I would have found my most "Snooki-eque" friend and had them nail you into submission... That made me very, no- UBER, upset.

But Vinny tried to call her back. We heard him unsuccessfully connect and not leaving a voicemail message. Maybe it was clear instantly to the female viewers (and the more seasoned of the rejected males), but Vinnny's girl clearly only took that repeated call to talk him off the ledge and to prevent more calls. Sadly, I'm not one of those seasoned men yet - and I rejoiced in Vinny's elation as we thought his date was back in business. Sadly, we soon realized it was just a show. Vinnny, you can't pick up a server.

[side note: A very close friend of mine has recently pulled off this amazing move. His current girlfriend is actually "that hot bartender" that he met while going to his favorite spot last year. Then again, this same close friend is an amazing person - one of a handful of people I would literally take a bullet for and know if anybody could do it - he could]

Finally, if Pauly D and Vinny really liked these "rarest of roses" why the hell are they trying a 80s sitcom double date? I've never been on a double-date. I don't want to. There are only two friends I'd trust to go out on a double date with... In both cases, in true George Costanza form, I'd feel horribly outmatched for these two friends of mine are both smarter and wittier than I am. I'd constantly feel as if 'my date' would soon request an upgrade.


My Lord, I love you Jersey Shore - don't you ever change.

Don't you think it's TOO EARLY to think about NYE?

Q: Where won't I be on December 31, 2010?
A: Same answer as last year: The Congress Theater

With way too much time before December 31, 2009 - I was already feeling bad.
About this time last year, Girl Talk announced a NYE show at the Congress Theater. I instantly knew it would be an awesome event and that I had no chance of seeing it. Last weekend, when I saw Pretty Lights open for The Chemical Brothers they said, "See you this New Year's Eve at the Congress Theater."

History had a way of repeating itself.
For those that don't know, here is a taste of Pretty Lights:

Ping?

Q: Have you downloaded iTunes 10 yet?
A: When you do, please follow me on Ping.

Ping, for all intents and purposes, sucks right now.
I don't buy music anymore from the iTunes Music Store. Give me Amazon any day of the week and twice on the first day of the month when they unveil their list of $5 albums!

A friend instantly described Ping as having "the potential to be extremely awesome or annoying." That pretty much sums up the new music-based social networking that Apple introduced with it's newest iTunes software update.

If you are one that likes to catch me in a hypocrisy, you must be smiling because I've long held the belief of only maintaining one social network profile at a time. Let's just say that I'm putting minimal effort into whatever Ping is offering because they aren't offering much.

You can "follow" both Music makers and Music purchasers. The ever awesome Lincoln Hall (a concert venue that can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned) posted for people to follow them on Ping. Less than ten minutes later I was signed up and following. Sadly, Lincoln Hall (at the time) was the only "follow-worthy" entity on Ping. Seems like Apple only gave advance notice to the Gagas, Perrys, and Coldplays of the world. The first two bands I searched to follow, Radiohead and Broken Social Scene, weren't on there.

The one cool thing was an exercise I went through during the sign up process. Ping wanted me to list ten songs I "liked" to give others a sense of what music I like and if others may want to follow me. (FYI: Follow in terms of reading comments/reviews on albums and seeing what I wanted to buy)

Here is the screenshot from the ten songs I choose.
The timing was pretty great, seeing as how I had recently completed my "15 albums" list:


The ten songs I chose were:
Shampoo Suicide
Star Guitar
New Year's Day
Voyager
Young Folks
God Moving Over the Face of the World
Climbing the Walls
I've Seen It All
Take Me Out
Flashing Lights

Am I recommending Ping to you?
No.

Do I think you'll probably - eventually - download iTunes 10?
Yes.

At that time, are you going to sign up on Ping?
Probably not, but if you do - you should follow me and I'll follow you...

Cause we all know Apple is such a struggling company with big difficulties about getting publicity for it's new products. Their inventions never seem to catch on and could use our support.

Where were you going in such a hurry?

Q: And where did have to be at 6 pm last Sunday?
A: I was freakin' going to Mass like a good Catholic!

I got nabbed by the "Red Light Cameras" this week. Found out about a week after I had actually committed my crime. The damn thing arrived in the mail and felt like partial blackmail, partial teasing (like a "nah nah na nah nah" bully taunt), and a partial punch in the gut.

This was a "Right Turn on Red" situation.
Instantly, I looked at the pictures and said, "How do they [expletive deleted] know I wasn't stopped before the turn?"

It's video, dude. I logged on, where you see the incriminating above screen capture, and saw surprisingly high quality video of my infraction.

Now here's the funny part. I was rushing to get to Mass. The time stamp clearly puts me on a Sunday Night, two minutes before the 6 pm Mass, at the stoplight just down the road from St. Al's!

For all that is holy, can't I pay this with a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys? Talk about putting $100 into the wrong collection basket.

P.S. This is a second draft of this blog, after much profanity deletion.

Where can you fly solo?

Q: Have you ever gone to a concert by yourself?
A: For the first time, last night, I did.

Last night I saw The Chemical Brothers live. Their set closed out the first night of the inaugural (I hope there are more in the coming years) North Coast Music Festival. At about the 40 minute mark of their nonstop 90 minute set they played "Star Guitar." I instantly fell in love with the track when its music video debuted on MTV 2. The track was the first single off 2002's Come With Us album, which might have been the first album I ever pre-ordered from Amazon (I was in my last year of Marquette at the time). "Star Guitar" has remained a mainstay of nearly every single travel inspired playlist I make for myself on iTunes.

I'm not sure why I thought it would be a long shot for The Chemical Brothers to play that song last night, but it the chance of hearing it was the sole motivator for my attendance. After all, I've now seen 8 of my 12 songs from my "Songs of The Decade" list live!

But immediately after the track ended I felt a very difficult to explain feeling... But I'll try to illustrate:
I wanted to turn to the person next me and say, "That was it. That was why I'm here now. That might have made my [musical] year." But I couldn't, because there were only strangers around me. I felt great, maybe even ebullient, but it got smacked against a wall of loneliness.

The concert, or the North Coast Music Festival as a whole, was on my radar for sometime. But the $40 ticket price tag was just a bit of a stretch for me. None of their albums came close to cracking my "15 Albums" list. More so, I don't think any of my friends would stomach a "electronic / dance music" genre concert. However, when Groupon posted a daily deal to buy a ticket for the price of $17- not to mention, without any of the clubtix ticket fees - my back was against the wall. With the clock ticking down (only had about 12 hours between hearing of the deal and when it would expire), I pulled the trigger and bought myself a ticket. Only buying one ticket. The key rationalization: I wouldn't forgive myself if they played "Star Guitar" (I knew I would check the set list) and I wasn't willing to spend $17 or didn't feel self confident enough to show alone.

I had talked myself up to convince me that I could handle a solo trip to a concert. After all, I'm usually in my own world once the music starts anyways. You can't hear what your friend is saying and people don't discuss much beyond a nonverbal nod if one's attention needs to be diverted elsewhere momentarily. Also, nobody is paying attention to anything not on stage. Hey, I play well with others. Talking to strangers is probably one of my more favorite leisure activities. You can go as far as to say I thrive at it. Vacationing by myself has become the norm now, and going to a movie theater solo is almost preferred.

Last night started out wonderfully. Traffic wasn't a pain, I found FREE PARKING nearby Union Park and the Will Call line wasn't as painful as you would think. Casual conversations resulted from interjecting random and anecdotal comments to both the groups ahead of and behind me in line. Just as I wanted, I walked in during the tail end of the the set by Pretty Lights. Great sound, but I was more floored by the scene.

Yes, I listen to a music I can't define - yet others try with labels such as Dance, Electonica, Big Beat, 2-step, Drum & Bass, Jungle, Trance and/or Club. But, I have never been to a concert from this genre.

CLARIFICATION: Cut Copy is by far the closest, but they might be considered a little too retro-pop to be grouped in with this genre. More importantly they utilize actual drums, guitars and keyboards as opposed to relying solely on boards and decks.

In four words, I'd describe the scene as: more glowsticks than joints.
Or is that five words? I don't know.
I was able to have a good stroll around Union Park as Pretty Lights ended their set. This was by design because I wanted to take in everything and not feel so much that I was standing by myself without anybody. There were quite a few merchant stands selling, and I use this term as pedestrian as possible: glowsticks. Let's just say that I had zero clue about the vast variety of those... things... and am sure the term I'm using is borderline offensive to them. There are wands, nun-chucks, scepters, hats and in one awesome case, something that resembled a large houseplant made out of neon Koosh balls.

Rock and pop acts have recently began incorporating a video visual element on stage to accompany their sets. I have the assumption that the trend started with this crowd. The Chemical Brothers did not disappoint in this area as well. It's a something I've always wanted to see with my own eyes, and last night I finally did. For that I am very thankful.

Admittedly, a small part of me wanted to be closer to the stage. I would like to see the wizards behind the curtains for one, and get lost in that jumping throng with hands held high. But I would have needed to arrive many hours earlier than I did, and I didn't have the inner-stamina to handle that by myself.

The drive home, logistically, was the best I've ever experienced. After the set ended I got to my car at my own pace and was home in less than half the time. But it was a silent car ride. And that's when it hit me... the odd pairing of joy and loneliness I mentioned (and had experienced) earlier.

When you see a movie by yourself, you can talk to anybody who's seen that movie about it. When you go to Las Vegas by yourself, you can talk to other people who have also been there and understand it. They know what you mean when you say the walk to In-N-Out is a lot longer than they realize.

Not the case now.
This is what I underestimated.
The journey to the concert is more fun with someone. Talking about what songs you're hoping to hear. The trip home is a much needed recap. It feels more real. This post is more for me, to document to myself that it actually happened because last night, sitting on my couch after the show, I felt unease. Here I was, seeing something that I've waited almost 9 years to see and didn't have anybody to share it with...

Finally, at the bottom of this post is a video of something that was very close to what I saw last night. They only difference is that the below video has much more people, but I assure you that Union Park was packed and once again I wish I was one of those people who could estimate counting large numbers of humans.

What was your first album?

Q: Ah, don't you remember the cassette tape?
A: I hope to one day tell someone, "Maybe 8 tracks were cool - don't really know - but I can assure you cassettes sucked... Unless you're talking about a cassingle (cassette single) because those were awesome."

I misrepresented a bit in yesterday's post:
Bell Biv DeVoe was my first Compact Disc of Music.
It was not my first "album."
Face Value by Phil Collins tops the first album list.

Oddly, I remember the last cassette tape I ever bought/owned:
What's the Story Morning Glory by Oasis.
Are you thinking that's a rather recent choice?
Ah, let's turn the clock back to 1995.

My Dad's old 1988 Cutlass Cierra.
Before I finally, myself, bought a Kenwood Portable CD Player.
Before the ever awesome cassette-cord-to-CD cord device!
A tape deck needed tapes.

People have such a great relationship between their cars and music.
MySister once gave up "music or radio in the car" for Lent (Something I could never, ever, abstain).
When asked, "why do you walk to class with headphones?" I'd reply:
"Do you drive in silence?"

I've come a long way since 1995 automobile audio.
From the Cranberries and Oasis cassettes to the Ben Folds Five and Foo Fighters CDs in my portable "discman" (Although it wasn't made by Sony).
I don't remember the first CD I put into my first car (A realization that is equally making me sad and furious).
But my last CD from the Saturn "Shifter" went directly into my next Toyota "Pony" (In Rainbows).

Now I'm well ahead of most.
An iPod enabled after market wonder.
No longer bound by 80 minute playlists!
However, I still always have a backup CD loaded as well (it's currently this album).

Do you remember your first album?
Your last cassette?
I typically ask people (especially on dates) what's playing in their car right now.
Even if you aren't an attractive single women with exceedingly decreasing standards, I'd love to hear your answers to the above.

What are your 15 albums?

Q: Remember that "25 Random Things" phenomenon?
A: Here's a musical spin on it.

Copied from numerous F-book notes:

The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you've heard that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what albums my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note.

Without further delay (I'm up against a time limit, remember) here we go, with artwork!

1. Poison by Bell Biv DeVoe (first album)


2. The Colour and the Shape by Foo Fighters (money in the bank)


3. Whatever and Ever Amen by Ben Folds Five (Darren Jesse & Robert Sledge, anyone?)


4. I Was Thinking of You the Whole Time by Neil Cleary (FAMILY PRIDE!)


5. Odelay by Beck (makes me wish I could sing karaoke)


6. Funeral by Arcade Fire (very sad I was so late to the Funeral)


7. Discovery by Daft Punk (can't walk to class without it)


8. Selmasongs by Bjork ("Strong men also cry. Strong men also cry.")


9. The soundtrack to Trainspotting by Various Artists (soundtracks have been a big staple of mine)


10. Broken Social Scene by Broken Social Scene (Mountie Rock, I love you)


11. Everything is Wrong by Moby (based solely on one track, but what an amazing track)


12. OK Computer by Radiohead (best album at the worst time of my life)


13. In Rainbows by Radiohead (best album at best time of my life)


14. Achtung Baby by U2 (not the first U2 album I heard, but the first I owned)



15. Things Fall Apart by The Roots (Hip-Hop couldn't have had a better introduction into my life)