Musings -or- Why I Am Right

I would have to say that my reaction to the “musical confrontation” yesterday was true-to-form, to use the parlance of our times. I played a reserved defense, then composed several snappy, cutting remarks with which to come back, but never actually plan on saying any of these things to him.

My latest, and most concise, criticizes him for his assumptions about society in a college town like this. It seems to me… that he lives here in Lawrence because he feels like he can walk around in his “Borg Invasion” hat, and that somehow makes him fit in. He uses his past endeavors as indicative of his present relevance, which simply does not cut the mustard, so to speak. He assumes that his “talent at identifying good music” and his “experience promoting the best bands in the country and inventing progressive rock” makes him a worthy critic with a voice that is echoed by the opinions of the masses, but the truth is that this is not the way clout is generated in college towns.

From my 5 years of experience living and working in lawrence, I have found that the best way to generate a good reputation is to be yourself, do YOUR thing, let other people make their own choices, and above all, BE NICE! This town is run by hippies, which, in turn, attracts more hippies, and makes this the kind of place where people don’t value the opinions of those who think they know best.

I feel like i’m digressing here. The point is, every reason he cited for why his opinion was relevant was counteracted by the fact that he was an asshole. And the fact that I did not overstep my boundaries by trying to tell HIM why HE was wrong is the REASON I am right. I mean, these are opinions, matters of taste. The only rule that governs them is that everyone generates them for themselves. So poo poo to you, old man.

WHAT A JERK!

Some -psh- GUY who comes in to the shop almost every day, wearing this Borg Invasion hat and greasy unwashed old grey hair, just left, angrily decrying my taste in music.  He called it “all no-name, synthesized crap,” so bad it was “tragic.”  I had a few choice comments to make about him, but restrained myself, defending myself by pointing out that it was merely HIS opinion.

*huh* to which he retorted, “I promoted some of the biggest musical acts in the country, I did promotions for milton’s in kansas city and I invented progressive rock, so i think i would qualify as someone who’s opinions matter!  and this stuff is just crap.  It’s not offensive, but it’s just terrible.”

What a jerk.  Stupid old guy with a borg hat on, what does he know anyway, if he’s been assimilated already?  Plus this guy always comes with exact change, always grabs his own cup and throws his money on the counter, as if he can’t be bothered with face-to-face interaction.  Then he sits down and does computer stuff for hours.  No tip asshole!

Future!

Today a delegation from the Fair Trade Coalition came to the coffee shop to solicit a donation in their 2nd Annual Regional Conference.  I believe in the value of fair trade, so i didn’t throw them out, but the thing is, fair trade coffee is more expensive, so i view the purchase of said coffee as a donation in and of itself, and doesn’t necessitate the further donation to a group that promotes the use of fair trade coffee.  It’s not that I’m callous, it’s just that I feel like i AM promoting the use of fair trade coffee, a kind of silent endorsement.  Our thing here is good coffee.  Anyone can use fair trade beans and make a horrible cup.  It is the quality establishments that deserve promotion.  Starbucks uses fair trade beans.  That’s the only part of their entire business model that’s fair, yet they are still garnering recognition as a socially conscious establishment simply because they use fair trade beans.

Which brings me to my point.  I propose that a news publication, grassroots organization, or simply a philanthropic/enterprising individual to document the quality of various coffee shops in a given locale.  This could be a weekly column in a newspaper or blog, it could be a comprehensive analysis included in a visitors guide to increase tourism, or assembled as a pamphlet to be distributed among the coffee-minded.

In my original plan, I would be the ultimate authority, but I can also see where multiple opinions can create a more moderated, level-handed evaluations, rather than a quick judgment that could doom an establishment to failure.

If anyone out there is in a position where they could employ an educated coffee snob, I’d be willing to take the job!

Camp Zoe Dreamin’

Back in my Schwaggin’ days, my mind would be geared towards the following freak out fest all the time.  I was always anticipating the next ’stock and how i was going to make it the best one ever.  I thought about it while i was awake, while at school and in transit thereto, while eating, while working, while talking about music and concerts at work, while sleeping.  I have probably had over a dozen dreams at or about schwagstock.  Some good, some bad–kinda like the people you see there.

When i had succumbed to the soul-sucking, cold, heartless, vain reality the last shreds of hope for ever returning to my other home, when i stopped constantly planning the next big blowout and started envisioning my life as a teacher, the party time nate kinda died out.  I had still planned on stretching my freak legs this summer, but without the annual gathering of the tribes at the sacred camp site at Schwagstock, my life just seemed incomplete.  The loss of this important part of me was also felt in my dreamscape.  I no longer dreamed of camp woo.

I just wanted to write this little blog post to let all of you out there know, but most of all to remind myself, since you guys don’t really exist anyways, that the SCHWAG’S BACK!  The dream is not dead, because i dreamt about it last night!

In my dream, i was at my parents’ house and it was time for me to leave.  Except i wasn’t packed.  And since i was at my parents’ house, I didn’t have anything to pack.  I freaked out, trying to scrape things together, but i don’t think i ever made it out of the house in the dream.  I think this dream has something to do with how I’m not leaving on Thursday this time.  In the past, I would be preparing for at least a week leading up to departure, so that i could have all the details ironed out and checked off the list.  Since I have to wait for the wife to leave town first, I feel like I am going into this whole business half-cocked, like I’m cutting off a foot so that i can run a three legged race.  I’m sure everything will be fine…

WOOOOOOOOOO!

Ween Summer Tour 2008

Attention!  Ween is going on tour this summer!  They’re stopping in KC on July 13 – I certainly hope to make it out there, the Crossroads venue is pretty sweet.  I got some buddies that might be able to get me out there for free, too!  That’s the benefit of living in a college town for 6 years.  you tend to get in tight with the establishment.

The robot mafia supports ya! But don’t tell anybody! Spread the word.

So! Top underground news for this week…SCHWAGSTOCK!

I thought i wouldn’t be able to go because of molly’s birthday, but as it turns out, her and the girls are planning a weekend in STL for Saturday and Sunday night! That means once she leaves, I have to pack super quick and get on the road as soon as possible so I can still catch at least one of each of the sick shows for the weekend!

I’m not sure how widely I want to spread the word, so that i could surprise people, but, knowing me, I’m sure to be on the horn to as many people as I would tell anyway, here as soon as it gets to be a decent hour of the morning for waking college students. They all tend to get a bit grumpy if I disturb them before 10.

I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in, and stops my mind from wandering. Where it will go?

Brother Nathan (If all else fails)

If all else fails, I could always become a brewing monk.  Because what is a monk?  A religious scholar? I could study the bible… A priest (or priest in training)?  Only working on sundays? hmm…  I think i could handle that.  I could spend the afternoons playing frizbee golf with my brothers, discussing the finer points of practicing our religion, afterwards checking on our latest abbey ale, which could be “sold” as a tax-deductible donation to the church!  How awesome would that be?

Maybe I could just make this my retirement plan.   B)

MRr. rrrr

So… I’m seeing a chiropractor on Friday.  My back fucking hurts!  It’s been painful for about three weeks (maybe more?) like i have a really big pop that just won’t come.  It was bad sleeping in the hotel.  It’s getting worse now that I’m home.  Today it was almost crippling, I woke up, fed the cat, and rolled around the floor in agony.  Luckily I have some stockpiled meds, because Ibuprofen barely made a difference.  It just sucks because i hate the way they make my head feel, like it’s full of concrete.

Um…Yeah, the Beatles

My car iPod connector is kinda weird.  If you aren’t currently listening to any music, it will play, as soon as it connects, the entire library alphabetically by artist.  When you turn the car off, the iPod keeps playing unless you press the pause button.  Yesterday I got in the car after my night class and the Beatles were playing.  I always knew i liked their music, but it has been a long time since i had listened to them, and I had never really listened to Sgt. Pepper, and I rediscovered how much I enjoyed them.  I really like how trippy they are while still being pop.  My teaching with technology class has really gotten me thinking about the ways technology influences my life and creative ways to further integrate blah blah blah. anyway i was thinking about art and music.  One of the sweet things about LP’s is the cover art and liner notes.  The large size of the records allowed for larger artwork and generally facilitated more creativity in inserts, etc.  As technology made the media smaller and smaller, tapes, CD’s, and now mp3 makes music of almost zero physical size.  I know that I get most of my music from the internet, and since my CD player crapped out in the car, I generally don’t use them at all.So.  My idea is to make music entirely digital, record and release it digitally and host it on the internet.  The only problem is how the retailers are still going to make their money, and here’s the sweet part.  The way the music would be purchased would be in a large, LP-style folder complete with multiple pieces of artwork, complete lyrics, etc, and a card with the URL for the download site as well as a password for downloading the purchased music.  People will still buy the music from the store for the artwork and extras, but since all that is being released is cardboard and paper, that cuts down on resources and overhead for production of CD’s, too.   

NYC Days 2 & 3

The past couple of days have been utterly exhausting.  The past two nights I’ve been going to bed at about 1, setting the wakeup call at 9:30, but never making it to the bus before noon.  We have been stopping at this bodega in staten island for bread, meat, and cheese, and making sandwiches to bring with us to manhattan.Tuesday we did a lot of shopping at Times Square.  I pretty much exhausted the discretionary spending portion of my budget right away.  I bought a ton of shit at the Virgin store, like a Rolling Stones ice cube tray… he he!  I got a swatch, it’s freakin sweet, it has eight little wheels in it that turn and make designs, ask me, i’ll show it to you.  I’m probably going to be wearing it all the time now, since my lacoste watch is really nice and I want to save it for when I get dressed up.We went to see the Empire State Building.  It took us over an hour to get to the observation deck, and it was fucking hot inside, so i was all sweaty when i got to the top, where the wind was cold and fierce and cut right through my sweaty fleece.  It was a really breathtaking view, though.  I did enjoy it, I got some good videos (my memory card is full), it was weird to me (not really now that i think about it) that there were fewer people speaking English than not.  I heard a lot of spanish, some french and german, japanese (i think).  I’m sure there were others, but it is hard to remember because i didn’t focus on that.  I really liked taping all the people up there and the way they were acting and interacting.  I liked that I could basically tape anyone and everyone, because they were all focused on getting their own shots and not paying attention to me.After about an hour up there (it’s true about the New York Minute, time really flies here), we caught the train down to Greenwich Village and ate at Famous Original Rays (“There are like 30 ray’s pizzas.  they all claim to be original, but the real one is on eleventh” -Santa from “Elf”), and went to the broadway comedy club in chelsea, but we were grumpy and not feeling it, plus there was a two drink minimum and everything was hella expensive and they didn’t even have good alcohol anyway.  So we cut out of there before our first round of juices came.  Plus we were worried that  we would miss the last ferry to staten island (we later found out that they run every thirty minutes all day and all night long).  We decided, since firstly the boys couldn’t drink at the club, secondly, since the drinks were so expensive, that we’d find a liquor store and drink at the hotel.  It took us about a half hour to find one, we asked a bunch of people who all directed us to closed shops (dammit) but eventually marshall remembered the one we passed on Broadway.  A fifth of Crown royal cost $45, and a pint(what i got) cost $27 (the price of a fifth back home), but i attribute it partly to new york, partly to the part of town we were in (broadway, as in the original famous broadway.  We have broadway in kansas city, but it pales in comparison).  We got back to the hotel at about midnight.  The boys didn’t want to go to sleep, so when the wakeup call came, they (me too) kept sleeping.  We ended up getting up at about 10, and three showers later, we were on our way.Day 3: Wednesday.Today we went to the world trade center site.  What a waste of time that was.  Well kind of.  They had two city blocks closed off and it was hard to walk around it.  But i kinda tried to imagine what the towers used to look like and what it would have been like to be in that area on 9/11.  That was the first thing we did, and we were still tired, and i had the my first bad latte in new york.  it was as bad as java break, seriously.  I only still drank it because i needed the caffeine, but i’m sure there wasn’t as much as there could have been.  I watched her make it, the coffee was pre-ground, she didn’t pack it, and for the “extra” shot, she just pushed the button again without reloading the portafilter.After WTC we went to the museum of modern art.  We went to the first floor and i was kinda pissed, because they didn’t seem very artistic.  some chairs mounted on the wall, like a perpendicular waiting room.  some knitted stuff, and a naked chick doing a hula hoop, fun to look at, (i guess that is what art is?), but then i remembered that the best stuff is on the top floor (remembered from my trip to SF), so we skipped everything else and went straight to the top, where the exhibit was called “designs of the elastic mind.”  (aka right up my alley).  there was so many different awesome things there, there was green lazer designs on this long hallway, tons of shit too complex to describe.  There were prototypes of different kinds of technological doo-dads, like oxygen generators, a light machine that is designed to augment seasonal affective depression, which is what makes you sad in the winter, sneakers that used your kinetic energy to charge batteries that would then be used to run lamps at your house, and many others, i really can’t do it justice.  that’s why i have pictures (and movies too).  After seeing all the cool shit there, we went down to the museum of sex.  it was interesting.  They had a collection of toys that i had never seen.  They had a female urinal…hmm…  Then they had a big section on sex in movies and the evolution of porn.  Then we went to find the apple store on 5th avenue.  The address was 767, so i thought i would go to 77th and 5th, but no.  Really it was on like 55th or so. and it was raining.  and i got soaked.  luckily i brought some towels from the hotel (it was raining when we left, and none of us had raincoats), so i was able to dry off pretty quickly.  from there we headed on down to the highline ballroom.  we had to wait outside and there was like a foot of space under the awning, so only my feet got wet.  The show was really really really good.  the venue was sweet, and i got some good video.  Now we’re home, my body is exhausted and my mind is racing, turning the wheels to remember all the stuff we’ve done.The boys (and me, too) are getting progressively more tired.  We decided to sleep in (longer, anyways…I personally think that sleeping until 9:30 is a god-sent blessing) and have a more laid-back day tomorrow.  Our plan is first to get some food and take it to central park, chill out, then go to chinatown and get fake Rolexes, little italy for some gelato, take the ferry to the statue of liberty, and maybe if we have time, we will go back to MoMA to see the other floors.  Tonight we are also going to see the Cribs concert in Brooklyn.  I kinda like that music, it’s good for “indie.”  i think i’ll have a good time.Well that’s about it for now, except i didn’t say about my weirdly vivid dreams from last night.  I remember that I had three distinct dreams, and monte was in the second one, and i was at a drug party with my bosses and co-workers in the last one.