The Grind Date

I've never been on a blind date. I've been rejected more times than I'd like to admit, but the opportunity has never presented itself to go on a blind date or be setup with someone. I'm not sure if I would take the opportunity if it ever came up, not because I think it's weird or because I look down on it, I just think that it's not the best environment for me to showcase myself as an interesting person to be in a relationship with. There's a weird expectation that comes with being setup with someone you've never met, whether it be via a close friend or eHarmony, that would stress me out, like if I'm not compatible with the person, that would make me believe that something was wrong with me. "eHarmony said we're compatible but I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm a dick!" Being set up is kind of weird because if you fail, you feel like you're failing your friend, or you feel like your friend doesn't know you at all, or is a total prick playing a prank on you.

Plus, I kind of like to find out that I have common interests with people organically so I find them as a pleasant surprises. I like the exercise of seeing how many times I can say "me too!" in a conversation and be sincere about it. Being set up or using eHarmony has a lot of "yeah, I know [insert name] told me" or "yeah, i read that in your profile", and that's just no fun for me, but I must admit watching a blind date from a distance is WAY fun.

In sophomore year of college, I ate out a lot with my friend Phil, (now of Percolator fame). We didn't veer off to many exotic places, usually settling for the cheap and the convenient. One place we often ate at was a Thai restaurant, Thai Spice, which wasn't exactly fast food, but not fancy either, so we were surprised to be sitting next to a couple on their first (blind) date on a Friday night. There weren't any other places to sit at and we didn't know they were on a first date, or a date at all, and we certainly didn't care. We had other things to talk about (nothing of incredible importance) and we were very good at entertaining ourselves, but at one point we grew silent, not because we didn't have things to talk about, but because the conversation next to us became so entertainingly painful.

"So I like to go to concerts."
"Oh cool."
"So there's the band you go to see, and then there's a band before that."
"Okay."
"That's called an opening act."
"Right..."
"So the opening act goes on for like half an hour before the main band goes on."

And at one point the girl had a really awkward realization and said to him "I think you've been talking this entire time." and I'm not sure how Phil and I were able to keep our composure and return to our conversation. Obviously going on a date is difficult and I'm sure most guys look like asses when they're the one in the middle of it, I'm sure I'm no better. It made me feel bad for the guy and made me wonder why humans have to be so complex, why we need dating services and our friends to set us up with their friends. Why can't we just be like the animals and smell each others' butts and have the females present themselves when they're ready? Wait, that's called a dive bar. Nevermind. I'm signing up for eHarmony right now.

Studying For The Sigur Rós Midterm

Some bands/artists are really intimidating to get into. Sometimes it's because of their extensive back catalog (like Bob Dylan), others is because of the amount of musical ground they cover (Bowie), and perhaps because an artist has put out some sketchy albums (The Kinks, Brian Wilson). These are artists that usually can't be confined to a 1 Disc best of, and who wants to buy a best of collection anyways? Personally, it makes me feel really lame, and it's usually the record label's idea of what "the hits" are so it's usually less than satisfying. (Side note: I would think that iTunes and Amazon would make best ofs obsolete by now, but with these NOW compilations still selling millions of albums, most of America does not agree with me.)

The one band that I'm having trouble getting into is Sigur Ros. They don't have the most extensive catalog and they're not genre jumpers, they're just Icelandic. I'm not racist towards people of Icelandic descent or their music (still loving Bjork). Sigur Ros doesn't sing in English (well it's very rare) and only one of their song titles are in English, which makes it extremely hard to identify their songs. I have tickets to their concert in a couple of weeks and I'd like to be familiar with what they're going to play beforehand, like I would for any concert. I think with a Sigur Ros, with their 10 minute opuses, it's pretty essential.

I perused the band's message board and found their setlists for this tour. Because I am not privvy to the Icelandic language, I could not tell off the top of my head if I had a good majority of these songs in my musical library so deducing what songs I needed to buy from iTunes became a difficult chore: copy song title from message board, paste song title into my iTunes library to see if I already had it, if not, copy song title to iTunes store to buy song. Usually this process is much more basic. It's looking at the song titles and knowing if I had them or not, there wouldn't be a need to copy, paste, or even look in my library. Luckily for me, the songs I didn't have all came from one album, saving me money, but not really saving me any time.

You might wonder why I'm going to this concert if I'm not a diehard fan who already knows all their songs. It's because I know that they're an amazing band to watch in concert. They've made my sister cry (or possibly crygasm). I've liked what I've heard from them (I did own 3 albums of theirs before doing this extensive research). I just haven't been crazy enough to learn their language and the song titles. I'm sorry I don't remember Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása off the top of my head or that I have no idea what that means. I've oraganized a playlist on my iPhone of the songs they've been playing and I've been getting familiar with them. I might even be able to tell you what song is playing in a really butchered way, like "ooh they're playing Sagglepuss" (Sæglópur).

I might not be singing along with the songs at the show, but I think I've done enough studying up to thoroughly enjoy the show, as long as they don't stray too far from what they've been playing so far. I don't think I ever studied this hard in college, actually. Here's to hoping I ace my test in Poseur 101.

College Isn't Like Movies About College (But My First Day Kind of Was)

The 80s was full of wacky college movies and maybe, since I was just a child, I don't seem to get the appeal of them. There's Animal House, St. Elmo's Fire and Revenge of the Nerds. Then Van Wilder, and I guess to a certain extent, the American Pie series, decided the "reach out" to my generation. I've seen very few of these, not because of their inaccuracy, but because of their lack of appeal. Though their inaccuracies may be part of the reason these movies seem pretty lame. The premises are mostly the same. Drink, get laid, don't get kicked out of school, repeat. So basically they're like high school movies, except there's drinking every day and not at a end of the year party, so I guess in that regard, these movies are relatively kind of accurate.

I never had the idealized version of college that these movies presented, mostly because I had no interest in joining a frat, and a lot of these movies center around getting in a frat, being in a frat, or waging war on another frat. I just wanted college to be a lot better than high school, and that hope was definitely fulfilled. There were no crazy parties (there were parties), there were no Girls Gone Wild moments, no crazy drug freak outs, but I definitely matured as a person and became less sheltered. I really didn't know what to expect going into college other than it was going to be different than high school. It was something that I realized immediately.

I moved into the dorms a couple days into Welcome Week because I wanted to catch a concert in San Diego before I moved in. Once I got my stuff in the dorms, and got my parents to finally leave, I went to go see all my friends that I had made at summer orientation (sadly I keep in touch with 0 of them now). This was before I had a cell phone (back in the year 2000...) so I would occasionally find myself knocking on a door with nobody home. The one person I really wanted to see was my friend Gwen, who I had bonded over Radiohead with during the aforementioned summer orientation program. We had kept in touch over the summer, and I had found the Kid A leak on Napster. Her dorm wasn't too far from mine so I decided I needed to tell her of my awesome find immediately.

Over our e-mails during the summer, I knew a few things about her: she had a boyfriend who went to a college up north, she was getting a single room (no roommate), and we liked a lot of the same music (Radiohead aside). What I didn't know was that these three facts were going to make my introduction to college extremely uncomfortable. See, when I knocked on her door, I could hear music and I could hear Gwen giggling, so I was pretty sure she was there (no roommate). When she opened the door she was in a towel, so I felt kind of embarassed, that I was catching her on her way to her shower. She was happy to see me and asked for a second so she could change and of course, I obliged. So she opened the door, full clothed, and invited me in, only for me to find a corpse in her bed. She introduced the corpse to me as her boyfriend, who got up and shook my hand. He was a nice guy, I told her about my Kid A find, and she was excited. She invited me to brunch with her and her boyfriend and I told her I'd get her a copy of the leak then. I left the room and immediately started to process everything: she wasn't going for a shower and there was a reason that music was playing in her room... and I almost started to hyperventilate.

Even with 4 older sisters, I have never walked in on anyone having sex or anything even close. I'm pretty sure this was the first and only time in my life that anything like this had happened. Luckily Gwen made it as easy as possible on me. If we were in the movies, this event would've played out differently. I would've knocked to no answer, opened the unlocked door and would've heard her scream at the top of her lungs. He would've chased me out of the dorms with a baseball bat and I would've found refuge in the skanky girls sorority house to which more embarassment would probably be doled out.

Lucky for me, college wasn't like the movies.