Long Time Gone

I did not die or get lost on a mysterious island with polar bears and smoke monsters on my way back from Australia. I probably should have mentioned that earlier... My main problem was flying out to LA on the worst possible day ever (when Michael Jackson died). Not only did this make me lose the pool on which celebrity would die next (I had my money on you, Stephen Hawking! You let the team down!), it made travel way more difficult. I have impeccable timing. So as always happens to me, I had a very odd time that day trying to get through LAX (the worst airport I have ever been to and now hate with a passion) battling weeping freaks who flew in from all over the world as soon as they heard the news, hoping to go to his funeral. Then on my other flight, a guy had a heart attack and we had to force a landing, causing me to miss the event which was the main reason I was going to Chicago in the first place. I wanted to punch everything, it was truly infuriating.

The reason I haven't updated is not because of a lack of interesting events (far from it), but I've been busy with an internship at a local music magazine. Well, I was until I was wrongfully fired. I won't go into it, because that's unprofessional and bitchy, but let's just say it's up there in crazy boss stories with the time I was fired from the cafe in Brisbane for being a Taurus and not owning a cell phone.

So now I have extra free time for updating blogs and doing freelance work, some links to which I will post here occasionally. One of the things I did for my former internship was photograph Thursday's concert at First Unitarian Church. I had photographed them previously on Warped Tour '06 and was excited to do so again, since they've long been one of my favourite bands and put on an amazing live show. The morning of the show, my boss called to inform me I'll be not only taking live shots, but a portrait of the band too. A few minutes after I got off the phone with him, I literally threw up from nervousness. Gross, yes, but I feel that needs to be part of the story to illustrate how incredibly excited/terrified I was.

We were supposed to do the photo shoot outside the church, but there were swarms of teenage boys waiting outside, so I started taking pictures of them sitting on the steps inside. It was too boring a setting, so I spur of the moment told them to go into the daycare center room. I then instructed them to sit in the tiny kiddie chairs. Yes, I told one of my favourite bands to sit in tiny plastic chairs in a room that spelled like Cheerios and pee. I'm still reeling from the absurdity of it. The resulting photo was fantastic though, and I despise that it was never used in the article. So for the first time ever, here it is, I guarantee there are no other photos of Thursday like this.

Among my other adventures, I traveled with my roommate Katie to Lancaster to interview a band I (at first) knew little about. I will be honest and admit that I originally wanted to interview them when they were on Warped Tour just so I could go to Warped again, but it fell through. When offered to interview them at another time, I decided to go with it since they seemed interesting. Hence the long voyage to downtown Lancaster, an area I had no idea contained any sort of concert venues. I'm very tempted to post the MP3 of our interview, since it's hilarious and the word 'bro!' comes up at least three times a minute. But I sound like a twelve-year-old boy, so I'd rather not put that out into the world, ha. Here's a link to the finished article (go to pages 12 and 13): http://www.origivation.com/issues/origiVation_2009.11.pdf

Due to a mix-up, Katie and I were unable to see that show, but they put us on the guest list for their next show in Philly, which was last week. It was mostly us and tween girls, but we had a blast and made all the teeny-boppers jealous when the guys saw us and ran over to give us hugs and ask how we were, haha. Katie also went up to their one tech (Colton, who I mention briefly in the article) and said, "Hello! I met you when you were sleeping!" She didn't mean it to sound super creepy, but it sort of did, and I died laughing. Katie, you're awesome.

Other highlights of the past few months include dressing up with my other roomie Sean as Bill & Ted from 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure/Bogus Journey.' It was most excellent. Don't have any photos of that yet, but I'll put them up when I do. I had people tell them I was a convincing Keanu Reeves, not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not. Another fun dress-up opportunity was Zombie Prom, which I went to with my fellow zombie obsessed friends Paige and Anne. My favourite part was doing the zombie shuffle into a Wawa afterwards and having a horrified cashier give us weird looks as we demanded "brains! Or pretzellllllllls? Raughhhhh, if you have themmmmm. Thanksssss, aughrawrgahhhhhhhhhh!"

(Anne, me, and Paige)

Apologies again that I haven't been updating. The Awkward American is far from being over, despite the fact I'm no longer abroad. Because even in America, I'm still awkward and American, so the title will always apply. More updates soon! <3

You are the King of the Divan

Good news, everyone! I actually went out and did stuff this week! Then again, at one point I also said, “Oh man, we played Dungeons & Dragons for so long that I missed 'Lost!'” Which is about the geekiest thing a person can say outside of discussing string theory. Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s top moments:

* Went to see an awesome local band called The Paper and the Plane. I actually found out about them through one of the music magazines Mom sent me in a care package. I told this to the band and we all agreed the irony of discovering a Brisbane band through a publication written in Ohio is much appreciated.

*I sat in the wrong class for an hour and was completely terrified the entire time because it was a complicated web design course and everyone was writing advanced HTML codes. All I know how to do in HTML is italicize and bold fonts. Sometimes I can add a photo or link. Why didn’t I just leave, you ask? Well, when I peeked in, I asked the professor, “Is this Digital Imaging?” because it was in the room we’re normally in, but a different teacher. He said it was and after ten minutes I figured this was the wrong class and he probably thought I asked him something else (for having a not overly difficult to understand accent, you’d be shocked how many times people have no idea what I’m saying). And you can’t just get up to leave in the middle of a lecture or they yell at you. It was horrible. Plus, I never found out where the class I was meant to be in moved to. :[

*None of you probably care about this, but The Horrors released a new single that’s completely different from their old style, yet still fantastic. It’s over eight minutes long and never lags once, that’s how good it is. I almost cried with joy when I heard it the first time (music geek alert!) and have probably listened to it twenty times since.

*In small groups for my Human Biology class, we had to do an exercise where we were given a list of symptoms and had to diagnose the 'patient.' The rest of my group, who are Forensic Science and Pre-Med students were convinced the ‘patient’ was just drunk. I knew right away he had a diabetic shock. Guess who was the correct one? I then convinced my group that I knew this because I’m an Anesthesiology major with a specialty in small mammals. Yes, I have outsmarted the future doctors and scientists of Australia. Twice! Bwahahaha. I really only knew it because I have a diabetic friend and watch 'House' religiously.

*My flatmate Madeline is obsessed with the comedian Tim Minchin and has tickets to see him every single night he’s here, so I went with her on Thursday. It was the first time I’d ever been to a comedy show and I loved it. Then again, it was a bit concert-like because Tim Minchin does mostly comedic songs, kind of like Flight of the Conchords, but one Australian guy with a piano instead of two Kiwis with guitars. Turns out, the friend Madeline was supposed to take Friday night canceled, so I went a second time. The other great part about this show was the venue, a reconverted powerhouse. Much silliness was had pre-show taking pictures with all the graffiti left over from when it was abandoned. After the shows, we got to meet Mr. Minchin and he’s lovely. He has a huge bit in his show about Americans and when I said hello to him he was all worried he’d offended me. I just laughed and said, “Well, I’m from Philadelphia, so I’m pretty much in agreement with you.” (His jokes were mainly about the Bible Belt and Manhattan)

*On the way to the second Tim Minchin show, we saw The Kiss Army! Well, it was only two guys dressed up as Kiss, so it was more like a Kiss Small Battlement. Still, it was pretty darn cool, they went all out with the costumes. People over here really like to dress up, it seems.

*This weekend I attended a small party for a friend’s birthday, which was actually on St Patrick's Day, but we couldn’t celebrate it then. So we wore green and pretended to be Irish a week after the fact, haha. It was good fun and like all the best parties, ended with us driving around wearing cardboard crowns from Hungry Jacks, blasting ‘Ca Plane Pour Moi’ while receiving many stares from passing cars. Yes, we started out Irish and ended with a Belgian punk/disco song. Yes, there is such a thing as punk/disco.

*If you haven’t seen it already, I posted my Ace Enders interview over at Popserious. Woo.

Also, thanks again for the happy stories, everyone. They were very effective. With the exception of the wrong class incident and a particularly gruesome lecture on skin diseases, I had a significantly more uplifting week. :]

I am Tired and Broken

I hath failed you all again with my false promises. If it makes you feel any better, I was too busy being alone on Thanksgiving with nothing much to do. So I bought a small apple pie (not as good as home made and a bit pointless without the Tofurkey I look forward to all year) and ate it while reading a weird book my friend left me about chess and the French Revolution. That’s as close enough to the traditional as I could get unfortunately. I hear there was a mass Rickrolling during the Macys Parade and I can only imagine my family watching it with no idea what it meant. Oh how I’d like to be a firefly on the wall for that. I know that’s not how the phrase goes, but I don’t want to be a normal fly, they freak me out.

Anyhoo, continuing backwards to two Fridays ago, I got a photo pass to take pictures of some bands I was an embarrassingly big fan of in high school. I don’t quite listen to them as much now, but since I never got to see them back in the day, I thought I should at least make my inner 17-year-old happy. Well, even my inner 17-year-old felt like a geezer in this crowd. I’m pretty sure the guys in the band (who are only a few years my senior) and I were the oldest ones there, and that’s saying a lot coming from someone only about to turn 21. Halifax were the first up and I felt incredibly weird rocking out to their awesome cover of ‘Straight Up’ by Paula Abdul because looking around, I was the only one singing along. Sure, there was appreciative dancing and people seemed to like it, but nobody else knew the words. “Ew, this song is SO old.” scoffed the tiny scene girl to her fashioncore posse standing near me (they all had to be about 14). “Excuse me,” I interjected, “but some of us were alive when Paula Abdul was more than the crazy lady from American Idol.” But it turns out she didn’t mean the original, she meant this cover version was apparently ancient. This version which was released in 2004 on the Punk Goes Pop compilation I listened to obsessively my Junior year of high school. I was still older in 2004 than those kids are now. I wanted to cry. Then I’m pretty sure I did cry (in pain) when the next band came on.

The second act was one I wasn’t too familiar with, they’re called Haste The Day. I really need to research opening acts more before going to concerts, because this is usually where things go wrong. Haste The Day are a Christian metal band. Yeah, I’ve heard of that musical genre before, but like narwhals, I find them highly unusual and refuse to accept their existence until I see one up close. Let’s just say their fans mosh for Jesus enthusiastically. I was standing up front after Halifax, taking pictures (no guard rails between the stage and the crowd, every photographers’ nightmare) and when Haste the Day started, everyone rushed forward, causing me to sharply hit my shins on the foot high stage. Actually, it wasn’t even a proper stage, I’m pretty sure they were playing on way too low to the ground risers. I got to spend their whole set pushing backwards against a crowd of whippersnappers so that I didn’t topple onto the stage and be pray-screamed to.

Then Scary Kids Scaring Kids, the act I was especially there for, took the stage. Yes, I now realize I probably should have known a band with a telling name such as theirs might not have been the best to see in concert. But darn it, some of their songs are actually quite catchy if you look past the yelly parts. And I’ve always had a bit of a crush on their keyboardist, whom I was awkwardly about five inches from almost their entire set. My knee gave out a few times thanks to being smashed by the crowd into the stage and I’d be sent forward again, my hand landing on his keyboard to make a lovely BWAMP sound. That was embarrassing, but I continued taking pictures (with both a digital and manual camera, oooh impressive). The cameras are fine, but let’s just say that the bruises on my shins and knees are still healing over two weeks later. I talked to Pouyan (the keyboardist) afterward to apologize for being a guest soloist and we had the following conversation:

Me: “Sorry about being all up in your grill the whole time.”
Pouyan: “Aw, no problem. You were kickin’ ass and taking pictures!”
Me: “Haha, thanks.”
Pouyan: “Wait, are you American?”
Me: “Yeah, from Philly.”
Pouyan: “Oh, so THAT’S why you were holding your own so well, haha. When we played there it was mass chaos.”
Me: “Usually tends to be that way. So, I hear you guys like to play Uno when on tour.”
Pouyan: “Yes indeedy.”
Me: “Your other deck must be getting worn out, so I thought I’d give you my X-Men Uno set. I don’t use it much anymore and something that cool can’t just sit on the shelf.”
Pouyan: “Oh my God! You are my hero.”

With my former prized possession in even better hands and a hug from Pouyan, I happily limped to the bus stop headed back home. Even though it was crazy and I was a tad out of place, it was nice to finally see SKSK and Halifax. As I mentioned before, bits of their songs can be screamy, but I’ll leave you with this (sorry I can't embed it in the blog like usual) to see/hear why younger me especially loved SKSK. I still find it hilarious and one of the best music videos made on a low budget. Oh, and Pouyan is the one in the passenger seat playing Game Boy.

Next post I'll finally get to the Byron Bay trip, complete with lots of photos of nature and the beach. Hip hippie hooray!