The Sugarloaf Mountain Expedition

I'm taking a meteorology class.
I know what you're thinking, and NO. We don't get to study these:

cool meteors

No, in meteorology we study these:

lame weather patterns

So today for class I got to wake up and drive out to a special place called Sugarloaf Mountain in Germantown Maryland for our semester field trip.
Again, I know what you're thinking.
When I say "Sugarloaf" you think THIS:



Lord knows I did.
In reality Sugarloaf mountain is THIS:

Photo I didn't take

Yeah, lame, I know. It isn't made out of ONE candy cane. And that house way off in the distance? Yeah, it's NOT made of gingerbread. It's a barn owned by an old lonely man.

I arrived in my silver minivan at the bottom of the mountain where I was greeted by a group of other students in their own cars. None of us knew where, exactly, on a mountain, we were supposed to meet. So in our confusion we asked the elderly teacher's aide (who was having a quaint picnic on the grass) if he could point us in the right direction.
Apparently he misunderstood, because he pointed us precisely in the wrong direction. In fact, in the opposite direction we were meant to be going.
Consequentially, we found ourselves driving through a couple farms, up a dirt path, in circles, around the mountain, until we all arrived at a water pumping station in the middle of a grassy knoll.
We backtracked, and eventually the old man called the professor and pointed us in the right direction.
The rest of the trip was pretty standard. Walking around, taking wind, pressure, and humidity measurements, and walking around some more. They had some fancy-pants contraptions for us to use, but it didn't take much to tell us it was hot and humid.
To be honest, I wish I had just joined the old guy with his picnic.
Live and learn.

A Blog Post

My mother was kind enough to inform me that my parents do, in fact, read my blog. Not quite sure what to make of that. Especially when she informs me I should cease the use of words including but not limited to:
"Douchebagginess"
"Douchebag"
"Douchehead"
and just plain old "douche."

It's a real shame because it happens to be one of my most favorite words.

I mean how else could I describe film-majors, people who live in Bethesda, and Jane Austin? Am I now forced to relegate myself to abbreviating it to just "D-bag" from now on? Does that not mean the same thing?

Sigh.

On a related note, I need someone elses opinion. If you don't know already, Death Cab For Cutie has released some new singles, the most popular of which is "I Will Possess Your Heart." I actually heard an edited version get some radio play, and I don't know what to think. It's good, but I'm not quite sure what to make of the (what i consider to be) long, drawn-out, instrumental introduction.
Here it is.

I Will Possess Your Heart (Full Album Version) - Death Cab For Cutie

Don't get me wrong. I do like it. But part of me is worried this may be the beginning of what most bands indulge in when they realize that people will listen to their albums no matter what some tracks sound like. It happens to all the greats. The Beatles. Radiohead. Let's face it, they're brilliant, but some "songs" are basically the musical equivelant of fingernails scraped across a chalkboard and then smashed with a hammer.
But hey, what am I saying here? We'll probably all get the album anyway.

This live track I definitely approve of.

Cath - Live Acoustic

Dinosaurs and Radio

My buddies Micah and Robert have their very own radio show at Biola University called the Birdy and Ferdy Show.
It's excellent.
So excellent in fact that I decided they should get a phone call from a certain John Hammond.
This is a recording of their very special St. Patrick's Day Episode.

The Birdy and Ferdy Show - Episode 4

I make a brief appearance roughly a quarter into it.

"Spare No Expense"

Of Pigs and Business Cards. Aka, the Best Things I've Ever Seen... (today)

I apologize for not posting much this weekend. I've found myself to be a bit sick, and posting songs or reviews with the sniffles just doesn't feel the same.

The good news is that I've found what I consider easily one of the best video's in existence. This is it.
So without further adeu, I want you to watch this, in it's entirety, and then tell me exactly what the eff is going on.



No. I have no idea.
Apparently it's a video used to teach proper business card ettiquette in Japan.
It's a real shame because I've been crushing business cards and then staring at my business associates with an expression mixed with anger and sheer bliss, for years.

Perhaps what I like most about this video is how the background is clearly green screen, a somewhat surreal and inexplicable fact when taken into account how hard it could be to find a bland brick wall to film against.


I've missed lots of the strange happenings in Japan. Including this new exciting gameshow involving a "sticky wall of tape," a pit filled with flour, and a group of three or four people at the bottom mocking the participants.



Or this, a game where participants cover themselves in a strange oily substance, then water slide onto a giant gameboard where they have to grab onto a small round handhold.



The best part? Take a look about fifty seconds into that. Yeah, the host appears to be a mentally disturbed man, dressed as a woman. It's just the little cherry the Japanese have managed to place upon the top of the greatest pieces of entertainment available.


This comes to a story I've been meaning to share, but simply haven't.
One of my favorite things about Japan are their toys. Specifically this one. (which someone has been kind enough to mix footage of with Terminator 2)



Some people call it a stress pig. Which makes sense because it smells strange, is painted badly, and is clearly filled with an unidentifiable liquid. It stresses me out just looking at it, which is brilliant because I want to unleash that stress on the pig itself. So what we have here is a neverending cycle of smashing pigs.
It's brilliant.

So, wanting to share my bliss, I stuffed a smashing pig in an envelope (covered in a layer of bubble tape) and sent it to a lovely lady. In my haste I briefly considered how a smashing pig would manage a cross-country journey, but then thought if it managed to get here from the land of the rising sun, it could certainly manage to get to California in one piece.

Well, I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong. Especially when my plans literally burst inside the package, probably ruining several other letters and causing a major collapse within the post office infrastructure.
No, the pig didn't make it. And the lovely lady had to retrieve a pig-juice soaked envelope from the University post office.
What lessons have I learned from this? Always have a backup pig. The Japanese are only as crazy as I am. And always crush business cards while giving them the crazy eye.
Lesson learned.

Artsy Fartsy

Here's some drawings I've made in my figure drawing class.
As you can tell, I've made my teacher angry by forgetting to add backgrounds.
And by getting most of it wrong.









Usually, to get ourselves ready for the long drawings we do a couple short five minute charcoal ones.

To be completely honest, I actually tend to like those ones better.
They can be pretty abstract, but a lot more expressive.





These are actually supposed to be throwaways, done on newsprint paper.



I don't know what it is about them but I feel like they sometimes turn out better than the detailed ones.



This last one is my favorite.

What I've been listening to lately

I've been listening a lot lately, just not in classes, church, or at home.
This is what it's been to.
Most of it is live versions of Clem Snide.

Like this beautiful one called Joan Jett of Arc.

Joan Jett of Arc - Eef Barzelay (live 1)

Ooh! Here's another version of that one with a little bit of drums hanging out in the back.

Joan Jett of Arc - Clem Snide (live 2)

And I have to admit, though I didn't quite love Across the Universe, the soundtrack is pretty awesome. Or at least this track is.

Happiness is a Warm Gun - Across the Universe

One album I've been listening non-stop to is The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter. Seriously, it's a great album.
Here's a live performance version of his song Temptation of Adam, unfortunately a tad low quality.

The Temptation of Adam - Josh Ritter

Other than that there's been a good amount of Neutral Milk Hotel goings on.

Holland 1945 - Neutral Milk Hotel

In An Airplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel

And this last one is my favorite. I've been listening to it a lot. Another one from Eef Barzelay:

Weird - Eef Barzelay

How I Celebrated April Fools Day

I woke up again in D.C.
It was the least funny prank I've ever experienced, and somehow also the most cruel. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse I ended up back at school for eleven hours where I was lucky enough to remember I had a French quiz I didn't study for.
After that I had the good fortune of picking my parents up at the airport, and this is where my great April Fool's Day adventure begins.

There are two airports in and around the D.C. area. One is National Airport, the other is Dulles. For those of you who don't know, Dulles International is easily one of the worst places in the world. It's huge, inconvenient, and far away. So when I heard my parents were arriving back into town through National I took it as a blessing. After sweeping up all the burnt remains of my crazy party weekend underneath the rugs of the house, I hopped in the car and headed downtown to pick them up.
The geography of D.C. is an interesting one. National Airport is conveniently located across the Potomac River, which separates the Rosslyn section of Arlington from that of Georgetown. There are a number of bridges that cross it, however the most prominent and useful is the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
It's also the only bridge in D.C. I can name, and the only one I know for certain can get me to the airport.
So when I drove up to the Key Bridge at eleven o'clock last night and saw a bunch of trucks like this blocking my path:



With people who I assume were doing this:



I thought, "Great. My parents are stuck at the airport and now the city is under attack by freaking zombies."
So I had to turn off onto an onramp that lead me into the heart of the city. Thinking maybe there was a second turn off for the bridge, I double backed the other way through Georgetown and found that the other side was also closed off by more Hazmat trucks and police cars.
Basically at that point I had no idea what I was going to do. So after calling my brother Nick, I followed the river past the Kennedy center and managed to get across the Potomac by way of West 66 which lead me to the other side of the Key bridge. My next problem was finding my way to the airport from there. Luckily for me, there was a nice little sign with an airplane on it to direct me. Unfortunately for me, that sign was right after the exit I missed and I ended up taking the 66 East back across the river into the heart of D.C. again.

D.C. manages to be a physical representation of all douche-bagginess this world has to offer. It's a knot of frustration constructed by a historical lineage of douche-bags determined to make existence worse for anyone in it. An example of this would be how someone out there thought it would be a good idea to place all the exit signs in the city AFTER the exits instead of a little bit before it. It's like a nice little joke.
"Oh you THOUGHT this was the right way, but guess where this road is taking you now?! IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION! Isn't that hilarious?! What's that? You wanted the airport? Well I think you should see the Lincoln Memorial instead! Nope, you can't turn around now, 'cause there's no U-turns for another three miles!"
Eff you D.C.
Eff. You.
So yeah, I got to see the memorials, the cemetary, and eventually the airport where I was given the pleasure of welcoming my parents back to this god-forsaken wasteland. I was tempted. I considered walking out of that car, into that terminal and booking a flight home to sweet sweet California. But I couldn't. Just a little over a month left, I can take it.
And the reason for all this trouble?

http://www.nbc4.com/traffic/15768095/detail.html?rss=dc&psp=news

Yeah. A bucket. A bucket with nothing in it. Or a pail. They don't even know which one it was.

But I know someone who does.