The rough draft of my short story is complete. I've been working on this all semester and the words seem to have lost their meaning for me. Like if you look at the word "does" for too long. Or "Roads. Ro-ads."

Anyway. If you want to read it, let me know and I'll email it to you. It's 9 pages, so I'm not posting it on here.

I'm being critiqued on Monday. I will be glad when that's over with. Then I can start working on the two annotated bibliographies and the research paper I have to do before the end of the semester. Yesss.

Atlanta vs. New York City v.1

This post begins a series (Ideally, it will be a weekly installment, but let's be honest here. It's not gonna end up being weekly.) on a topic I like to call "Atlanta vs. New York City". (Atlanta came first because it's first in alphabetical order.) Due to the fact that I don't actually live in Atlanta, the topic will also include the surrounding area, geographically speaking.

Volume 1

Last Thursday, Sara and I went to see Matt Pond PA at the Loft in Atlanta. (For those of you that have seen The Baxter, may I suggest that, in your head -- or perhaps aloud -- you read the name Matt Pond PA in the same tone as the line "Elliot Sherman. CPAAAA!" If you don't know to what I refer, kindly disregard aforementioned statement.) I had seen Matt Pond PA play at the Brooklyn venue NorthSix a couple of years ago and was very impressed, despite not being familiar with many of their songs. If I recall correctly, the show was sold out. The music was great, the banter between the band and the audience was great, and the crowd itself was filled with non-hippie bearded guys, which was really great.

I bought my ticket for the Atlanta show a few weeks before the big night. I was willing to pay the extra three dollar "convenience" charge to buy it early because I knew that they had sold out several shows around the U.S. Hoping for good music and many non-hippie bearded guys, I walked into the Loft only to find that, apparently, 19-year-old frat boys like Matt Pond PA in Atlanta. Of the North Face fleece and sunglasses-around-their-neck variety. Also, it seems the emo kids around the state have also caught onto this band. That's right, the emo kids that sing at the top of their lungs in their best Dashboard Confessional voice. While obviously dissappointed to be surrounded by the kind of group that I was (because, right, I'm a music snob, an elitist, if you will) -- I think Sara and I were some of the oldest people there besides the band members -- nothing detracted from the music itself or the band's banter. All in all, it was a good show. Problem was, I wanted to close my eyes the whole time and pretend I was back in Brooklyn. But then I couldn't see Matt Pond's lovely face.

This was obviously written by a woman.

"Without much pain, few do Love's joys respect;
Then are the sweetest purchased with felt grief,
To floods of woe sweet looks give relief;
A world of sorrow is eased with one smile,
And heart-wounds cured when kind words rule the while.
That foregone wailings, in forgotten thought
Shall wasted lie disdained, once dearly bought."

From "Love's Victory" by Mary Wroth

And, seriously, this has nothing to do with the last post. I just thought it was nice.

What NOT to do when you're waiting for a boy to call...

...and you're 98 percent sure that he won't:

Do NOT:

• Watch Pride and Prejudice. Especially alone.
• Think that the comedy entitled Just Friends will end with the characters being "just friends".
• Take your cell phone into a concert. You will "check the time" repeatedly throughout the night. It is especially bad when you have the phone on vibrate mode and everytime the bass reverberates, you think your phone is ringing.
• Let your heart stop when your phone blinks, letting you know you have a voicemail. It's usually your brother or parents.
• By all means, do not listen to music that reminds you of him. Or any sappy music of any kind.
• Over-analyze why he's not calling. It's most likely his own hang-ups and has very little to do with you personally. (In fact, keep telling yourself that.)
• Tell yourself that he'll call tomorrow. He won't. And that's one more day that you'll have your hopes up.
• Blog about what NOT to do when you're waiting for a boy to call. The boy in question will, inevitably, choose that time to read your blog.

Best Summer Music Festival...Ever?

This year's Sasquatch 2006 in Washington state sounds amazing. It's a three day festival that starts on May 26th. The line-up includes:

-- The Flaming Lips
-- The Shins
-- Beck
-- Ben Harper
-- Bauhaus
-- NIN
-- Death Cab for Cutie
-- Sufjan Stevens (ahem)
-- Rogue Wave
-- Iron & Wine
-- Gomez
-- Queens of the Stone Age
-- Pretty Girls Make Graves
-- Constantines
-- Architecture in Helsinki
-- Arctic Monkeys
-- The Decembrists
-- Matisyahu
-- Nada Surf
-- Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah
-- We Are Scientists


...and several other bands. How awesome is that?!? If I wasn't going to be in Ireland that week, I'd say it was time we all headed to the Pacific Northwest.

What tha?!?!

Check this out. Looks like I really didn't have much to say when I moved back to Georgia, huh? Geez.

Portraits

I don't think anyone can deny the beauty and innocence of a child's smile. (I know, right? Too dramatic and cheesy.)

Here are a few of my favorite portraits of kids from different people on flickr. Hope you enjoy 'em as much as I do.

From doogin

From The Bleam

From Phitar

From Genevieve

I'm thankful for: I think it's pretty obvious with this post.

Walk the Line

I watched Walk the Line again last night. And I've got a few points:

-- I think Joaquin Phoenix was great for this part.

-- Though the movie is already pretty long, I think they should have left some of the deleted scenes in there. They would make the movie a more accurate adaptation of his autobiography.

-- On the DVD, in one of the deleted scenes, John Carter Cash, the son of Johnny Cash and June Carter, appears as a radio DJ.

-- But mostly, my thoughts aren't directed to the movie itself but to the life of Johnny Cash. It just doesn't seem fair to me that somebody that was strung out on amphetamines still found somebody that really loved him and that he was married to for about 40 years. Meanwhile, good, non-addict, 24-year-old girls are wasting away here. But he was an sympathetic character (and person). The movie did a fairly good job of making the viewer understand why he was the way he was.

-- I think Johnny and I would have been friends if he had known of my existence.

-- I think Joaquin and I would be friends if he knew of my existence.

-- I am Johnny Cash's 8th-cousin (twice removed). C'mon, you knew I had to mention that.

Ciao and Hei.

Someone in Italy and someone in Norway read (or looked at) my blog today. I'm pretty sure they didn't really read much since the Italian visited for one second and the Norwegian stayed for a whole 37 seconds. But just in case you come back, benevenuto and mottakelse, respectively.

Woo-Hoo! I'm on Spring Break!

Yes!

Where am I going, you may ask? Cancun? Panama City, Florida? Skiing in Colorado?

Nope, none of the above. I'm going to stay home, sleep late as often as possible, start and finish my short story, and finish up some graphic design things I've got going. Exciting, huh? Actually, I'm really looking forward to it.

I was talking to my only friend in my French class yesterday, and he's going to NYC. Man, I was so envious when I was telling him about things he should do while he's there. (I just searched to see how cheap last-minute flights to New York would be. Not cheap at all, it turns out. Big surprise.)

I'm trying to console myself by thinking that the high here today is 76 degrees, while it's snowing and not getting above freezing in New York today. Yep. Okay, that did it. Have fun, guys. I'll be sitting by my pool, basking in the warm sun. In fact, if any of you want to see the sunny South...