Has Somebody Been Kidnapped?!

A few days ago I was watching the newest Louie C.K. special on Comedy Central. It was okay; not nearly as good as some of his previous ones, but he did briefly touch upon something that was interesting to think about. The point was about how impatient people are with cell phones and how you can communicate with people hundreds or thousands of miles away almost instantly. It's not just with phones either; think about how many different ways you can talk to someone one who may live in a different state than you in the blink of an eye. You have cell phones, landlines, text, instant messaging, Skype, etc... That's pretty good damn incredible, especially if you stop to think how far and how fast we have come with communicating over distances.

A few hundred years ago if say the King of England wanted to communicate with the governor of New York; it would take weeks to get the message to him and weeks to hear back. Around the same time you also had things like horse back, which was kind of faster. Then Morse Code, telegraph wire, the first phones, and I'm sure there are more I can't think of. The incredible thing is that even as technology has advanced it hasn't advanced as evenly. I just finished reading this awesome book about the Cuban Missile Crisis called One Minute to Midnight, and in it the author talks about how slow communications were between Washington D.C. and our own Navy. They were able to communicate faster with Moscow than they were with our own ships. What's the deal with that? (My inner Jerry Seinfeld)

Once you start going down the line from the 1960s', things start to increase at an incredible rate. More and more satellites were launched and technology leapt at increasing rates. Next thing you know the affordable portable phone is developed, the Internet gets going and changes how we communicate. Gone are the days of handwritten letters, no matter how cool or touching they are. Your first thought is something along the lines of what Jim Gaffigan said: "What the hell? Has somebody been kidnapped?!"

Now we can talk to anyone anywhere at anytime in virtually anyway. You want to instantly message them? Done. You want to talk to them? Done. You want to see them while you talk to them? Friggin done.  Plus it's not like this is going to stop. Smart phones are taking for example the very computer I am typing this on (Mac Book Pro for those wondering) and shrinking it down to a hand held device. Who knows where it will go next. Also it is cool because around the time that I was writing this my fiance was visiting South Korea and I was able to talk to her. How cool is that? Seriously. She was on another continent separated by the biggest ocean on Earth and I could talk to her.

I guess I just thought if you stopped and really thought about it for like a minute, this is sort of cool. Something that took weeks to months or even years, is done before you can blink. Plus it would be really funny to see some of those people who probably die if they didn't have a god damn cell phone and had to wait on some dude showing up on a horse.

Weedely Deedely Deedely Weeeeeeeeee! (Guitar Noises)

One of the few things in life that I know that I am legitimately good at (bordering on genius, okay not that great) is playing guitar. Since I was a little Josh (ages 0-10) I was enamored with it. The first real memory I have of a guitar and knowing it was cool was when my family lived in England or Great Britain or the United Kingdom or....I think that's all of their names. I looked up and saw this bad ass (what my stupid brain told me was bad ass at least) purple guitar; it looked like one of those lame ass C.C. DeVille guitars in retrospect, but I was hooked.

Flash forward to my tenth birthday.

I bugged my parents and finally I got one. It was a cream colored Fender Stratocaster, which I still have and plunk around on when I come home to visit, along with a little Crate practice amp. Immediately I was awesome. By awesome I mean that I made it sound like shit just by looking at it. The first time I broke a string I thought that I was going to get in trouble because I was a stupid child. I didn't tell anyone and kept it in it's case for a while. Eventually I let the cat out of the bag...and caught a beating. Just kidding?
Eventually my mom got me signed up for lessons with my first teacher Ryan. The first thing he asked me was what I knew, my answer: "I can play D." Swish. Well, in my eyes things progressed quickly. I was learning quickly and was one of the few people who legitimately loved to practice. I played all of the standard AC/DC tunes but soon got bored. Around this time Ryan moved to Minneapolis and I took lessons from the guy who taught him, Jeremy. He was great. He challenged and pushed me into newer territory making me better.
Also around this time I began to jam with some people from school, doing the shitty high school band thing. I don't want to say that I was hot shit or anything, but I kinda was. I mean one day the other guitar player's (at the time) was cool enough to give me a ride home and he said this: "...you know you guys are not bad, well those other guys are not bad; but you I can tell, you really like to play and practice..."

Flash forward to my sophomore year of high school.

I played football and broke my god damn knuckle. No guitar for like 6 months. Bye bye callouses, muscle memory, speed, accuracy, blah blah. I did make a triumphant return and I feel that I play better than before even with limited range of motion, just because I had to relearn things instead of just going all guns blazing.
Around this time I also made my first upgrade in the guitar department by winning a music store contest; by being the only one to enter it. Hey $200, is $200. Also my English teacher found out that I played guitar so she hounded me to come in and play for the class; no joke she did. So I did and ended up playing for two classes and missing my lunch. I also did this for a speech class. Needless to say my superstar skills and devilishly handsome looks got me some attention from the ladies.
Our little shitty band made an upgrade by getting my friend Ray to be the other guitar player. We both took lessons from Jeremy and we had a healthy competition between each other which helped us get better.

Flash forward to "real life".

Once college came, boy things changed. Gone were the days of playing for hours on end with out responsibility. It became more of when I could, although I always tried to play at least one hour a day no matter how busy. It got easier to do once I started working at a music store and teaching lessons because I was playing upwards of five hours a day and some of my students were really good. Now that I'm in grad school and inching towards real real life, who knows how much time I will have. I do know that no matter what I will always love to play it is one of my first loves and something that I know I am really good at; there is no doubt about that. The shitty thing is that when school is in session, I can only play maybe 3-5 hours a week if I'm lucky. On breaks "Whoa Nelly" do I go to town. I'd say about 10-15 hours a week. The first few days I suck balls (in my mind), but at about day three or four my callouses are back in full form along with speed, accuracy, and my memory. Side note: I have this game I play with myself. I like to learn tune all the way through, play it about 900 times and then not play it for about  six months to a year. Then I try to play it off of memory without the aid of a book. The first time or two I just sort of feel it out, but by take three I have it all the way back.

So as time has gone by I have also upgraded just about everything and gotten rid of almost nothing. I have somewhere around 10(ish) guitars and about 6-7 amps. Even though most aren't really worth a damn or even "sexy" guitars I love 'em all for different reasons. They all have different sounds and feels. I should probably stop getting them because I only have two hands and can only play one at a time, and it gets a bit costly to maintain them. But I love it, it's like crack.

I Aim To Hit You In The Face In One Minute!

A few days ago I saw True Grit (bad ass movie by the by). This little doohickey is not going to be about the movie per say because my url is not Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB; it's about the old bastard who sat next to me and tried to give everyone around him a play by play of the movie.
My mom and I get into the theater and it is surprisingly full. Not that that is a bad thing, it's just in my whole movie going life, I have only seen a handful of full movies. As we sat down, I took stock of the spaces around us. My mom had the aisle and I was next to her. Next to me there were two seats and behind us there were two seats. Those two behind us went to a younger couple; so I realized that there were only those two next to me and that was it. Then about 5 minutes into the movie Father Time and his bag of bones wife stroll in. I could see them waiting for a moment of light to look around and then like lighthouse in a storm they spot those two seats. In the blink of an eye they were there. SHIT!
Well, they sat down with Mr. Wrinkles sitting next to me, and this was the start of me resisting the urge to hit him in the face. The man was one of those skinny old guys but breathed like a 900 man being wheeled in on a forklift. Then he ate so ungodly loud. My favorite part was on deck though: play by play.
Since True Grit was originally made in 1969, this guy thought that it was going to be a straight remake. Nope, guess again old man. This version is a "re-imagining" if you will. It is supposed to be based more on the book than the original (Note: as of this post I have not seen the original 1969 version or read its source novel). Every time some scene that looked vaguely, VAGUELY familiar to this old bastard he would do a play by play of it for his wife while forgetting to dial down his voice. If that was not annoying enough, he was wrong every single time. Let me say that again. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. My personal favorite was near the end when the Maddie character falls down the hole and sees that dead body. She notices that it has a knife on it. As she tries to get it she notices some snakes. The movie theater narrator (the old bastard next to me) says and I quote "Oh, watch this. There is going to be one snake that jumps out at her." Not only was there not one snake, more like 12; it didn't jump out at anyone. They just sort of fell out of the body.
As we left the movie theater I wanted to get a good look at this bastard. Just then I got the urge to punch him in his gizzardy neck. But I swallowed my hate knowing that I would never see him again. The moral of this story is that you should KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AT THE MOVIES! Except if its the previews because who cares about that shit? And much like babies and children, the elderly are very annoying.

What's That Smell? Part Four: De Plane! De Plane!

Well, well, well; first blog of the new year and also this marks the completion of the first whole year of this masterpiece of writing. Time flies and I have written some truly breath taking things; my god they are so beautiful. They make Olivia Munn look like a man by comparison. Anyways, new year; new tale so here we go!

(Imagine this with laser sound effects in the beginning)

Date: January 3rd 2011
Time: 4:30 am  (PST) - 9:00 pm (CST)
Place: San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, Grand Forks

So I'm preparing for my epic journey back to the motherland. My chariot is going to be the awesome Super Savers Shuttle; you know the blue vans where you nearly die reaching your destination. The guy was late, no big deal though. My flight was at 7:00 am and I was the first one to be picked up out of what turned out to be 4 people. The Russian Bear ( my driver) finally picks me up and I wave bye to Mandi only to sit outside for another 10 minutes as he plugs in the next location on the GPS. Finally we get going, and we pick up who turns out to be a run of the mill dumb as dirt sorority girl*. Next up some old self righteous woman who felt the need to say the following things time and time again: 1) "I'm going to Thailand to teach English." 2) "I got a call saying that they were going to pick me up in 5 minutes. He didn't show up so I tried to call this number because I thought that he missed me." (She said this like the driver was deaf and or not there) 3) "I don't get it, my flight is from SFO to L.A. and then to Thailand; why do I have to go to the international terminal? I don't get it?" Our fourth was a lady who much like myself said nothing, except what airline we were flying.

Um, so the flight to Seattle was not bad I guess. The airport sucked big fat wieners. Then as we are about to board the flight to Minneapolis they decide to abruptly change the boarding time to 30 minutes later. YEY! I love sitting in this shitty airport with a Hudson News stand! (This was what I thought). We then get on the flight and here is where the fun begins.

I'm riding bitch. Again like from SFO to Seattle. Super duper. Then I try to watch Predators and find out my MacBook Pro's disc drive is on the fritz, looks like I'm reading the whole time. As we get ready to land the same dance begins: I need to get the fuck out of there to find my terminal and people won't move their god damn asses; "Let's just take our time; that's how accidents happen." SON OF A B! This was a problem because for my next connecting flight was scheduled to depart in about 45 minutes and boarded in about 15. So I race literally through the Minneapolis airport stopping only to pee. I then reach my terminal which was conveniently located on the exact opposite side of the airport. Once I got there, two things happened. 1) My flight time was changed to 30 minutes later. So I rushed through the airport looking like a tool for no reason. 2) There was this guy who looked 100% like a turd bomb teacher of mine, all the way down to the hipster glasses. He resembled him so much that if anything had happened to him, this guy could fill in for him and no one would be the wiser.

Finally, the flight is boarded and who sits by me? Not the guy I just mentioned. I know it seemed like I was going that route. It's this old fart who decided that he was going to annex my leg room and claim it for his chair. He then decided to play with his cell phone and text. Good god that was hilarious. His phone had the classic old guy leather case on it that was cool for about 1.5 hours in 1995; and he took about 5 minutes to send a simple three line reply. How do I know? It was to me. Just kidding, that would have been weird. Seriously though I was so flabbergasted by it that I couldn't take my eyes of it. It was like a car accident almost. So painful to watch this guy try to be hip with all the youngens. Although the next thing he did was more on the side of sad and tragic. After he annexed my leg room for the greater good of seat 5C, he decided he wanted to get some work done and he whipped out his brief case. No problem except for the fact that his brief case contained a few pens, a crumpled magazine, and a legal pad with some scribble phone numbers and names. It reminded me of that episode of Seinfeld when Kramer went to work and the only thing in his brief case were crackers. So he went to work and started off on a real hot streak, writing down a name or two. Then for the next 25 minutes he would stare into space and then scribble something for two seconds and stare off for five more minutes. Having accomplished a mountain of pressing paper work he called it a day. About 20 minutes later we land and go through the same song and dance. "Hey lets just stand here for awhile".

Thus concludes the journey from San Francisco to Grand Forks. Will anything exciting/annoying/crazy happen on the way back? Stay tuned!

* I will go into depth at some of the brilliant comments she made later. Good stuff.

ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?!

As I have state before or has been deduced from some of my stellar work, I love me some music. More so I love concerts. I usually don't like sitting in some crap ass bar paying a cover charge/drink minimum/smelling like smoke. Instead I like larger concerts. I think that it is because a bigger place allows for some production that enhances the music. The following is a list of my favorite five concerts; in no particular order.

Slayer: The Roy Wilkins Auditorium in Minneapolis (2003)

SO MUCH FUN! My best friends and I were front row the entire time (we had to sit through some crap ass bands to maintain that front row). My friend Ray and I were on Jeff Hanneman's side of the stage and he walks over and stares at us and throws his pick in our direction. Just then some ass face put his gross hand up and knocked it down. The security guard who saw that it was meant for us picked it up and in what was actually 0.5 seconds but seemed to take about 15 minutes; he picked it up and it sat in his hand just staring at me. I then snatched it up so fast and hard that I nearly tore his plastic glove off. He then asked me if I was the one who got it, I said yes and he high fived me. Awesomeness.

Ohm: The Baked Potato in Los Angeles (2009)

Chris Poland is one of my favorite guitar players. Awesome in every aspect. Just wow. Anyways I was in LA for the NAMM show and got the chance to see his band Ohm play. The best part(s) of this were that we got there early enough to see them sound check and afterwards he walked past me and said "Sound good?" My brilliant response "Oh yeah", I said this while managing to not shit my pants. Then they played and it was incredible.

AC/DC: The Fargodome in Fargo (2000)

I was in the way back nose bleeds for this one but it was still the LOUDEST concert I've ever seen and I was front row for two Slayer concerts. They played everything you would expect them to and it didn't sound tired at all.

Faith No More: The Warfield in San Francisco (2010)

One of my all time favorite groups. I touched upon the adventures that went into this concert in an earlier post so I won't dwell too much on it. But it was awesome. They played everything you would expect and we were able to see them play with Chuck Mosely, something that they hadn't done since about 1988 I believe.

Metallica: The Fargodome in Fargo (2004)

Front row again. Very fun. My friends and I were singing the whole time and it was awesome. Then during "Master of Puppets" James Hetfield looks right into my eyes and then two things happened. 1) I forgot the damn words. 2) I turned into a girl. Then later on during "One' Kirk Hammet plays the final solo right in front of us. The lamest thing that happened was at the end of the show. The whole band were throwing pics into the crowd and this asshole security guard in front of us decided that rather than being cool and giving them to us, he would pocket them. All 15 of them. Lame.


I don't get out to see as many shows as I did in my younger days when I was an undergrad and in high school. Mostly because of time and money, but when I do it is still fun. And that's how I'm gonna end this one. Peace out gang.

End Of An Era

Since the semester just ended and I transferred out of Graphic Design into Printmaking, I felt that I would talk about some of my feelings/insights/rambling incoherent thoughts on the subject.

When I was an undergraduate at UND I did a lot of things and found that I enjoyed Printmaking and Graphic Design, in that order the most. Not sure why I chose to go with Graphic Design when I feel that I was and still am better in Printmaking, maybe it was the fact that it should be easier to get a job with Graphic Design. Anyways the classes I took there in retrospect didn't really prepare me for the overwhelmingness (is that a word?) that I would soon feel. I mean sure it started out fine and they eased us into it, making me feel like I could do it. But how quick the tide can turn.
We were told how rough and tumble things would be in the real world, how you had to know just about everything about everything WHILE also realizing that you're just a designer. If that doesn't compute let me break it down real fast: if you are doing something related to say brain surgery for some reason, you need to know everything there is about brain surgery so that you can be the smartest (in a perfect world) person in a room of both designers and brain surgeons. While also not trying to be a brain surgeon. That's what it's like in a nutshell. VERY,VERY overwhelming.
I guess that I realized that I just like design and not love it. I don't want to spend hours upon hours working on something that I might not care about. Also design is so vague. Half the time it seems like a guessing game on what a teacher is looking for. One of my biggest peeves was that it became a god damn money pit. Every project got more expensive, this past semester I probably spent a good $500 at least on ink cartridges. Then there is paper and other miscellaneous crap to go with it. I guess another thing that I could never get into (some of my designer friends felt the same way also) is that I don't want to save the world. It seems that everything has to be about saving this, conservation, informing people about evil corporations, blah blah blah. That's not me and it never has been, and it also loses me very quickly. Plus I don't know if it's just me but if Graphic Design is all about being unique and coming up with stuff that normal people don't think of, why is it that just about every designer out there wants to do one of these boring things? Kinda seems to defeat the overall goal, might be me though.
Anyways so I'm done with it as a major/future occupation. I mean there are things about it that I still like and will probably hold my attention. I won't forget (fingers crossed) it and can integrate it into my future work as a Printmaker. Also I made some pretty cool design friends and if any of them stumble upon this I very much enjoyed working with them. But upwards and onwards!

Damn I Love A Good Book In The Evening

I don't know why, but ever since my last semester of college, when I took a "Vampire Literature" class to fill up my English requirements I have totally been into reading fiction like that. Now I'm not talking about wussy Twilight stuff, its more of the violent vampire (there are two kinds: sexy and violent (I learned that in the class)). It's just so good; but as of late I have been exploring the other monster realms with werewolves and also my new recent favorite: zombies. There is just something about those types of books that I find interesting. Maybe it's the unrealistic nature of them or just the fact that it happens in a real world setting.
The funny thing about this is that for the longest time I was all about nonfiction books, my thought process was that you couldn't write something better than someones life that they actually lived. My personal favorites were/are "The Dirt", "To Hell & Back", and "Juiced". But ever since that class I have been hooked on reading this stuff. It's an interesting hypothetical survival tale. Hiding, scrounging for supplies, trying not to get bitten, what happens if you do; stuff like that. I know that it's not for everyone but if you start reading it, it really makes you think. It might have gotten to me a little bit because since I like to walk more than ride the bus, I am constantly thinking "If zombies came at me right now, what would I do?". Messed up, I know.
I just think that I have read and seen to many zombie things. Of course this will never happen, but you never know right? If it does I will be maybe adequately prepared to run and hide. Maybe I should start reading nonfiction again, but then again that stuff really did happen.