The bounceback

I feel completely incapable of writing anything worth reading as of late. The problem is that everyone else (or at least those who I keep up with, blogs or otherwise) is doing something moderately interesting with their summer. I'm not spending my summer in Europe, bragging about my lavish life and pouting about how I don't have any moisturizer. I'm not road tripping with a fun group of close friends, nor am I working a particularly interesting inner-city job.

So to everyone doing something moderately interesting with their summer-- fuck you. You're ruining my blog. I can't write when I feel uninteresting. It comes out sounding all emo and shit, then people think I'm all shut-in and nuts and they stop inviting me to hang out.

Maybe I should start acting outlandish and neurotic. Talk about money and adapt a wacky political stance. Get a self-diagnosed social disorder. Hey, it works for the popular blogs on LiveJournal.

Lazy is my lifeblood

So I completely missed the boat on ACL tickets, just like I did for the 2005 show. Bye bye Muse, The Killers, Bloc Party, and the National.

Three-day passes are sold out and one-day passes will sell out on the 19th. Which sucks, because this year's show is probably the one that screams my name louder than any lineup possibly could. Four out of my statistically top-five bands are playing over the course of that fateful September weekend. I'm tempted to roll the dice and see if I can just show up for whichever day the National are playing. That would solve the complication of finding people to hang out with and a place to stay for three nights. And chances are that I'd get to see at least one of the other bands on my shortlist.

Or I could just not go.

Is ACL worth attending if just for one day? It's almost like masochism, teasing yourself with 12 hours of music when you could have seen 36 glorious hours worth of amazing performances and packed food lines. And of course, this all hinged on the the fact that you were too lazy to type in your credit card number and address on an easy-to-use website as soon as tickets came on sale.

Oh, well. Skipping a year will be fine, or going for one day and zero nights will be fine, too. We'll see in about a week.

I'm a plagiarizer and I didn't even know it... erizer.

Four years ago I started writing what was to be the hilariously damning, creative story that defined growing up in Panama City Beach. It centered around a protagonist that you'd find growing up anywhere in PCB. It was a little angsty but it flowed and everyone that saw what I had written loved it. My magnum opus, so to speak.

Maybe one day I'll post what I had written so far on here but I had previously posted snippets here on CN to much fanfare. A few days ago I opened the file, which I touch from time to time, to add a few more pages of content. It reminded me how much I not only like writing but reading as well. So I picked up BEE's Less Than Zero today and started chugging away at it.

By page two I was thinking to myself "Jeez, this sounds just like what I wrote back in high school." The tone of the main character and the theme of hating your hometown were already resounding in the first few paragraphs. Then, on page three, I was floored.

Bret Easton Ellis used the same EXACT scene in his story, written ten years ago, that I wrote in my story. The character sits back on their bed and looks at the wall, lamenting the poster of Elvis Costello on the wall. The poster, the internal dialog, and just... it was the same thing.

It's not like I feel this is some spooky cosmic coincidence or anything, but it is weird that BEE would include a scene just like mine in a story with the same overtones as mine. When I was writing it back in high school, I was knee-deep in Chuck Palahniuk novels like every other smart and slightly depressed teenager of our time. What I wanted to do was write something with the same dejected transgressional fiction as Chuck with a youthful perspective that damned my hometown.

Sound familiar?

I only knew halfway who BEE was back in high school. Just the American Psycho guy. Little did I know that my choice of reading material and my upbringing would turn me into his little literary progeny.

A prolific and housebroken college junior

You know what I like? Big, boldface, capitalized words that denote the theme of the next couple paragraphs. Monolithic motherfuckers that really let you know what you're reading about.

MUSIC

The word on the street is that Interpol has a new album coming out next month. Now, you'd figure that I'd be all over that shit like Pete Doherty at an all-you-can-eat heroin buffet. The truth is that I'm not exactly excited as much as I am anxious and a little worried. Let me walk you through it.

Interpol is like my cute, well dressed and New York-y baby. I was honestly into them before anyone else back during my freshman year of high school. Hell, I'm listening to them right now. I've grown through the most crucial years of my life jamming to their catalogue, including bootlegs of concerts and shitty-quality B-sides. Turn On The Bright Lights was like the soundtrack to my life sophomore year. I made it a downright ritual to open my Friday and Saturday evenings with "Untitled" before I actually got to any parties. It's such a noir soundtrack to those weekends that run late, with overtones of love lost and the darker, more brooding side of music that I love so much.

Then Antics came out my senior year. I was probably way too excited for that album because, though I listened to it just as much as TOTBL, it didn't quite connect as well to my life at the time. I was experiencing the heartaches of my first big breakup and what I really needed (or maybe not needed, but wanted) was a darker TOTBL. Some real sulk-in-the-corner shit. Instead I was greeted with something a lot more upbeat, with Paul forgoing the darkness of baritone vocals for something else. I liked it but... meh. I guess I was slightly disappointed-- not by the music but by the way the music should have connected to me. Though on the plus side, it did cheer me up a lot better than listening to "Dust in the Wind" on repeat.

And here comes their newest album. I hear the first single is already flying around the P2P world, but I'm just not motivated to give it a listen. I feel like I honestly do respect this band more than a casual download. I'm actually going to wait until the release date, buy the CD, and listen to it in its intirety like the indie fuck I am. I just hope that Interpol dishes me something that I can connect with this time around.

Speaking of sophomore and junior albums...

• I haven't really connected with Boxer as well as I did Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers and Alligator. I've also started masturbating to the thought of seeing the National at ACL this year.
  
• I can't get into A Weekend in the City, either, but I earhumped the dreadlocks off of Keke and Bloc Party back when Silent Alarm came out.
• Spoon has a new album coming out, too, but for some reason I genuinely love their entire catalog. I'm not too worried about their new business.
• Has it really been a year since Black Holes and Revelations came out? Matt Bellamy, you sure know how to make catchy music that never gets old.
• Modest Mouse's newest album? Like every other Modest Mouse album-- two or three catchy singles and a bunch of other songs to space out to while you're driving. Be careful, Isaac, or your side project might actually become better than your supposed claim to fame. Just ask Ben Gibbard what that's like. Death Who For What? You mean that guy from the Postal Service?

Now let's talk about

THE ESPLANADE

My AC now works. Didn't cost me anything to get it fixed, either. I called the maintenance hotline, placed a work order over the phone, and they did their magic while I was at Kroger. So now I have AC and more on-sale canned chili than my poor toilet could ever handle.

Here's a funny story. Really funny. So I went to Time Warner to pick up my cable modem nonsense exactly a week ago. In the package was the modem, cords, Laffy Taffy, and everything but the technician they TOLD me that I'd need over the phone that I'd need. So I ask the nice secretary at the desk if I need to go ahead and schedule an appointment. I've never had Time Warner service, and the leasing office told me that in order to get cable service I'd need a technician to flip a few switches in the Cable TV closet down the hall. And she's all like "No, don't worry about it. Those things are amazing! Plug them right into your cable TV outlet and they work!" Right. So I ask her if she's sure I don't need an appointment with a technician, and she assures me that the magic Internet leprechauns will find my modem and give me high-speed porn as soon as I plug the damn thing in. Okay.

So I get back to my place and plug the modem in and-- would you guess-- the "cable" light on the modem is blinking in such a way that all the blood vessels in my eye burst open. I blindly dial up Time Warner tech support to hear the guy on the end of the line, Kenny, tell me that I do need an appointment and that they actually did schedule me one when I went in to get the modem. Strange? Yeah. But they won't be available until Friday. That's fine, I think to myself. I can go a few more days without the Internet.

Friday rolls around. The word from Kenny is that my technician will be rolling in between eight in the morning and noon. I wake up and make myself decent enough to answer the door, watching early morning talk shows to kill the time. The View is really lacking without Rosie, I notice to myself. Then I realize that it's 11:45 and no one has called or anything. So I call up Time Warner tech support again. This time another guy answers and tells me that Kenny actually CANCELED my appointment when I called last time, with a note that said the appointment wasn't necessary. Strange? Yeah.

So this guy, suddenly realizing that there's been a big mistake made, decides to bump someone's Monday appointment so that I can see a technician ASAP. I wade through the weekend without Google Reader or gossip blogs or Facebook or any of the things that make life worth living. And yesterday, I finally got the Internet set up. But you know what the technician said before he left?

"You know, they could have done all of this over the phone."