not falling down

My phone has no ringtones and I’ve never owned a CD I didn’t rip, but the record industry has finally found a way to get even me to pay for songs I already own: Rock Band. At least the downloadable tracks have the value-add of being interactive at multiple levels. What they do not have, sadly, is a way to cater exclusively to my taste. Until now!

I put these together working on the three-songs-per-band model they’ve established on Live so far, and basically within the creators’ bent toward three- or four-piece groups and a fairly narrow definition of “rock.” Also with the fact that I don’t really know anything about music before 1998.

Semisonic:

• “Brand New Baby”
• “Closing Time” (well, I mean, come on)
• “Get a Grip”

Queen, although I know these are all impossible for one reason or another:

• “Bohemian Rhapsody”
• “Under Pressure”
• “Killer Queen”

Jimmy Eat World:

• “Lucky Denver Mint”
• “Sweetness”
• “Nightdrive”

Barenaked Ladies (man, this is hard):

• “Brian Wilson (live)”
• “Too Little Too Late”
• “Maybe You’re Right”

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists:

• “Me and Mia”
• “Counting Down the Hours”
• “La Costa Brava”

I know there are already a million Foo Fighters songs, but still:

• “Everlong”
• “Breakout”
• “All My Life”

The New Pornographers:

• “Mass Romantic”
• “Letter from an Occupant”
• “Sing Me Spanish Techno”

And, finally, U2 (yeah, I know they’re working on it):

• “Desire”
• “Mysterious Ways”
• “If God Will Send His Angels”

I invite you to eviscerate me in commentary, or post your own wishlists. Maria, for example: Prince? Lisa: TMBG? Someone: Beck or the Decemberists?

Update 1432 hrs: Andy suggests replacing “Sing Me Spanish Techno” with “The Bleeding Hearts Show,” and offers a Tragically Hip three-pack:

• “New Orleans Is Sinking”
• “38 Years Old”
• “Fireworks”

And Ken, inevitably, has a list with a lot more depth than mine:

Jamiroquai:

• “Canned Heat”
• “Alright”
• “Black Capricorn Day”

Smashing Pumpkins:

• “Cherub Rock”
• “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”
• “Today”

Guns N Roses:

• “Welcome to the Jungle”
• “Live and Let Die”
• “Nighttrain”

Pearl Jam:

• “Life Wasted”
• “Alive”
• “Rearviewmirror”

Talking Heads:

• “Psycho Killer”
• “Uh Oh, Love Comes to Town”
• “Take Me to the River”

Beck (most doesn’t translate well to guitar, bass and drums):

• “Loser”
• “E-Pro”
• “The New Pollution”

Spoon:

• “Don’t You Evah”
• “I Turn My Camera On”
• “Sister Jack”

Jimi Hendrix:

• “Spanish Castle Magic”
• “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)”
• “Fire”

Pink Floyd:

• “Comfortably Numb”
• “Money”
• “Arnold Layne”

Sublime:

• “Smoke Two Joints”
• “Santeria”
• “Pawn Shop”

And single songs:

• The Dandy Warhols - “Bohemian Like You”
• TV on the Radio - “Wolf Like Me”
• !!! - “Must Be the Moon”
• Arctic Monkeys - “I’ll Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”
• Styx - “Renegade”

And Scott put up a list for Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears, who would be insanely fun (and REALLY HARD) to play in RB–not impossible, either, as Harmonix has been pretty good to indie rock:

• Flight of the Knife
• Imitation of the Sky
• Son of Stab

Sometimes I am mean! Sometimes I am a mean person.

But she started it.

Mom and Grammo, you might not want to read this.

I got a new phone a couple months ago, with a reassigned number, and sometimes I get unexpected phone calls for the person who used to have it (I believe her name is Kate). What I had not received–until last night–was unexpected text messages.

Dis is diamond do
lee like me

I am not as young as I once was, and I confess this took me a while to parse. At first I thought it might be some kind of arcane dance instruction. Eventually, I determined that I was being asked to be some sort of intermediary. So wasn’t it only fair that I be brutally honest with Diamond?

no,

I replied,

he said hes in2
guyz now lol

Diamond was understandably confused! I soon came to see why:

Who u talkin
about im talkin
about leeanna
dat light skin gay
gurl

Ah, so I was being asked to play Cupid between lesbians. Having been burned on this before, I resisted.

Oh dat bitch, she
a ho u dont want
nun a her, she
got the gwarts

At this point, Diamond called me. I let it ring through to voicemail; surely when she heard my greeting she’d figure things out for herself.

Then she texted again.

Ray who u talkin about

(Ray! I… am… Ray!)

im talkin about dat gurl
dat was wit us
today

At this point we picked up our takeout food and I decided to let the matter drop.

Until the next morning, when Diamond called me again, then texted when I didn’t
pick up.

Get up n start
gettin ready cuz
im goin 2 the
library at 11

Despite a resurgent suspicion that my dance-instruction hypothesis was correct after all, I decided to come clean.

Okay, I can’t
keep this up anymore.
Have you not figured
out from the
voicemail
greeting that I’m
not whoever you
think I am?

Diamond had now had T-Mobile shout “Bren. Dan’s. VOICEMAIL!” twice at her, so naturally she sought clarification.

Who is dis

Dis is Brendan.
Like it says, very
loudly, when you
call my voicemail.
Listen, if you
hook up with Lee
you’ll send me
pics, right?

Either Diamond wanted to confirm said greeting once and for all or I had finally drawn her ire. She called a third time, and then:

Tis is diamond
mom if she do
hook up ill kill her
want a pic of
that dont ask no
more dum ass
question i kill u
diam is not a hoe
dont ask 4 no
pics

Now the teenage lesbian was pretending to be someone else! In Soviet Russia, Internet wastes time on you! But the sheer verbosity of her reply surely indicated that her blood was up; I thought maybe that was the place to stop.

It only took her half an hour to start gloating.

U dont have any
more dum ass
questions freak

You poked the bears! Why did you do that! Will suggested an appropriate greeting for my final reply.

Dear Mrs. Diamond:
Your textual fusillade
has left me chagrined.
You’ll have no more
dum ass questions
from me; forthwith,
I’ll issue only
the most
erudite queries.

Now pics or gtfo.

Sadly for us, dear reader, she chose the latter optin.

Good bye & dont
text my phone 4
diamond

And there, it would appear, the matter rests.

I just wish she’d accidentally typed in Ken’s number all those times instead.

Who the fuck sent me the creepy email with the talking monkey?

Update 2307 hrs: Ken did.

I made brownie pie and we ate Spinelli’s. DC and Beth got me a book and a bunch of great Actors Theatre stuff, and Yale got me some stuff he found in his car, and he, Ken, Kyle, Scott, Lisa, Monica, Mom, Ian, Maria’s family and especially Maria got me a present I would never have let myself buy: a real camera.

Thanks, ballers.

So uh STEAMPUNK TRANSFORMERS.

I think the last time I bought a Transformers comic book was in 1987, but I think now that it’s been almost two decades, I HOLY CRAP I’M OLD

My uncle John offers a rhyming take on Atlantis, and my mom gently reminds me that of course I didn’t invent the form: both “California” and the game were inspired by a picture book she read us when we were young, called Whose Mouse Are You, by Robert Kraus.

Also, saved from the LJ comment thread:

Will:Where is Atlantis? Under the sea.

What’s under the sea? Not you, and not me.

Well then, where are we? The internet.

How’d we get there? Zeroes and ones.

What do those stand for? Video fun.

What is flypaper?

Me: Sweetness that kills.

David: What can’t be killed?

Scott: Everything dies.

Josh: Why do they die?

William: They run out of time.

Beth: What is time?

Kevan: Memory. [Then, because of a crosspost:] Curse you, time!

Ken: What time is it?

Stephen: It’s hamburger time.

David: Do hamburgers rhyme?

Scott: Not on my dime.

Me: OKAY NEW ONE. What is a curse?

Scott: Bad karma, realized.

William: How is it realised?

Ken: Through the teachings of the Maharishi.

Beth: What is the Maharishi?

Me: A teacher of hunger.

Scott: Where is the hunger?

David: In the bowels of the cursed…

Which seems like a neat place for a cutoff.

How many is seven?

Ian has been and gone, leaving giggles and makeouts in his wake. Thank you very, very much to Deb Core, Sumana Harihareswara, Joan Wood, Sharon Calhoun, Lisa Brown, Scott Stauble, Kyle Neumann, Angel Brooks, Ken Moore, Monica Willett, Sean Hoban, and especially Maria, whose idea this was in the first place. You guys are the champions of friendship!

On Halloween, I had the privilege of yelling at children during Lisa’s family’s Haunted Yard. It was awesome! They’ve been doing it for years, differently every time, and they claim that this one was their last–Lisa’s parents are selling that house. Fortunately, her sister-in-law Mary Beth captured the Haunted Yard experience on digitized video!

Night Vision Cam Power Activate! (32Mb)

Watch the upper right of the screen toward the end, when they’re getting their candy–the man chasing the children until they cry is the legendary Ken Moore. It’s not often Ken has the chance to show off that particular talent. The Haunted Yard was to Ken as World War II to Churchill.

This is the entry where I gush about my mp3 player! Pretend it’s 2002.

My messenger bag is considerably lighter now that I’m not carrying my Discman and fifty CDs in it all the time, and I never have to try to hold three things while standing up again. That’s awesome! I sneakily got a refurbished Shuffle directly from Apple, so I got the one-gig version for the 512 price, and it’s still got a year warranty. That is also awesome! I get to carry the Magic Future Perfect* Radio Mix Tape From Heaven around in my pocket and it makes me happy.

It doesn’t introduce me to new music like the radio and mix tapes are supposed to do (remember when the radio introduced you to new music? Ha ha!), but that’s what I have Lisa and Will and Maria and Ken for. Ken, move back already, dammit.

The audio quality on the Shuffle is really excellent–I’ve actually noticed instruments in the midrange I never heard before, and there are none of the audible compression artifacts I used to get with my mp3-CD player. The one thing it doesn’t have is a bass boost, which is crippling. I am a little bit addicted to my bass boost. I am addicted enough that tonight I purchased paraphernalia with which to enjoy my dependency. Having an equalizer the size of a pack of cigarettes really destroys the point of having a music player the size of a stick of gum, but man, I was getting the dee tees. I’ll probably bitch later about how it works out.

Before I knew the Koss equalizer existed, I was actually considering looking for some converters and a battery-operated guitar effects pedal that would let me change the bass, and just carrying that around instead. Then I thought “ah, but that would strip the signal to mono.” Then I thought “and would be completely insane.“

I was annoyed at first that I had to partition the areas for audio storage and file storage separately, but I fit every song I wanted in less than the 800 megs I’d reserved. There is a remedy, as it turns out, but honestly I’m only using it to listen to the second good duet in the history of pop over and over again.

(The first, and previously only, was “Under Pressure.” Bowie and Queen.)

* A grammar joke!

I like Netflix a lot, and Maria and I have used it to power through almost four seasons of CSI in a matter of weeks. I suppose now I should start renting some “movies” with it, although, man, there’s a lot of Next Generation and Six Feet Under sitting in my “Q.”

I have three Netflix “friends” registered: Ken Moore, David Clark and Garrett Sparks. Today, bored, I was scrolling through the Netflix Top 100 when I noticed that almost every single one of them had a little purple person icon next to it.

Between the three of them, they had watched ninety-seven of the all-time most-rented Netflix movies.

I’d like to inform you guys that you’re all whores.