Our Lungs are Black. Our Hearts are Gold

Certain things have been on my mind recently. Relationships, friends, the place I live, and music have all been on the top of this list. It's easy for me to think about all these things in my head, but sometimes I need to get it out. Not in a weird sappy kind of way, but rather a real way. I feel like each topic needs to be separated in to its own part and get the attention it deserves. I'm not in a shitty mood or anything, I'm just starting to realize that if I want to do anything with my life, I probably ought to start soonish, amirite?

Relationships: So, me and some friends made a movie recently for a film festival here in Corpus and it made me think a lot about the subject matter of that film...relationships. I feel like any post about relationships automatically makes your audience feel as if you are lonely and are in a bad place in life and need someone more than anything else. I assure you this is not true. I do not feel absurdly alone or out of touch. I do however feel like having someone around to be with would be cool. The film was about the idea of relationships and whether they were of any use or not. Is it worth it to be with someone and commit yourself when you can never be sure of what may lie ahead? Well, at this point in my life I think it is worth it. Will I think so ten years from now? Who knows? All I know is that it is so hard to find someone who shares your interests, humor, and general personality. In saying that, I kind of want to know what that feeling of relief is like when you find that person. I figure it's pretty neat.

Friends: I had the best friends growing up. Me and my friends were about as close as I think a group of friends that are not related physically can be. We did everything together. We played sports together, went camping together, hung out together. It seems that people always talk about the fact that people will inevitably grow farther apart as they grow older and change their interests and hobbies. I never felt this would bring me and my closest friends apart. Lets face it, it certainly did. One of us went one way, the other went another, and the other went yet another way. It's hard to stomach the idea that the people that were closest to you are no longer as close to you as you wish they would be. And this is no one person's fault. Shit changes. It's a cold hard fact of life that you cannot stay the same forever. However, it sure does suck. Hopefully at some point in the new future, that friendship that was can make some sort of reappearance.

The Place I live: I live in College Station. Its about as different from me personally as it can possibly be. This doesn't even really have to do with music or other superficial interests. It's hard to live in a place where you know the majority of people you run into have fundamentally different ideals and philosophies than you do. What do we have in common besides the fact that we attend the same academic institution? Almost nothing. It's really really sad. I feel like the people who live in the place I do are so concerned with things that people shouldn't really be concerned with. I enjoy the school and campus, but it is getting harder by the minute to tolerate people who surround me. And the sad part is I feel like I have tried to live a life of tolerance and understanding. It's tough.

Music: I don't really have a whole lot of new stuff to say in this department. As far as I know, most people are still pretty excited about the new releases set to some out in these upcoming months. The new Thrice album Beggars did leak far too early. I am guilty of downloading it and listening to it repeatedly. Its really good in my opinion. This may be because I have no real ties to old heavier Thrice. This could have made me a little more open to the idea of them getting slower and groovier. I dig it. some songs are better than others, but overall it's really cool. Also, I have been listening to a lot of a band called Living With Lions. Really good melodic punk music. Makes you feel happy and energetic. Check out their EP called Dude Manor and their full length "Make Your Mark". I can almost guarantee you will like something about it.

I feel like when I'm at parties having a good time, I tend to not be the same person as I would be in normal conversation and activities. I am starting to dislike this a lot.

Bye, now!

Cycling Trivialities.

I've decided that from now on the titles of my blog posts are going to be whatever song I am listening to or just got done listening to when writing the post. Today's title comes from Jose Gonzalez's song "Cycling Trivialities" of off his 2007 record called "In Our Nature". You should listen to it. The reason I have been listening to him so much as of late is because we used a lot of his music in this short film we made for the Corpus Christi 7 Day Film Festival. We have done this festival for the past 3 years. Each year the film has a significant improvement and we become more confident about our chances of winning with each passing year. This year was no different as we were probably more excited about this film than any of our previous entries. Roman has been directing each film we've made and has done a really great job of stepping up every year to bring something new to the table. This year we had some sweet expensive equipment that we normally wouldn't have as easy access to. We were able to use a $3000 HD camera that produced some great shots. This film as well of the previous two films has more of a thought provoking feel than cheap entertaining thrills. I feel like we were still able to entertain with this film however. It was about a guy named Sal (played by Razzy) and his breakup/aftermath of the breakup with his girlfriend Samantha (Ariel). Sal spends a lot of the film questioning the ideas of relationships, marriage, love, religion and other things associated with couples and their daily lives. The movie had a lot of dialogue, but I think it was appropriately done. The movie also chronicles the relationship of a "happy" couple (Me and this girl Lina). Its a cool juxtaposition. Anyways, here comes the epic fail part. We were supposed to turn in the film on Wednesday at 7:55. We turned it in at 7:5.....wait....wait for it.......7. Yeah, two minutes late. But don't feel bad, it wasn't even actually finished. We had some problems rendering it on the computer. They gave us till the next morning at 9 but said we wouldn't be in the competition but that they would still show our film. That was nice enough of them. I got a copy of the film yesterday on DVD and can say I am pretty happy with the turnout. Romey did a good job again this year. The dude has some serious talent. Hopefully next year we can actually be in the competition. I'll try to post the video online at some point.

It was a really fun time doing this film with everyone and hopefully we can all still hang out at some point. I met some new and cool people (Grigor and Lina)!

Another thing that has been on my mind is thanks to Mike Hale and Virgil of Suburban Home Records. I realized after emailing them two about using Mike's music in our film just how accessible people in the punk community are. I mean, I could never in my life imagine being able to contact someone like Jay Z or the All American Rejects or someone else who has such a huge fan base about letting us use their music in our film. I understand that bigger artists are probably more busy and could care less about what some kids are doing in Corpus. But still it made me feel happy to be part of a community where you can just email someone or message them on myspace and get a response within a day or even an hour. Its cool to know that some people actually check their email and are willing to send some help your way. Even Jose Gonzalez's manager was happy to help and responded quickly. We need more people like them!

Listen to Mike Hale's "Lives Like Mine"
Listen to Jose Gonzalez's "In Our Nature", "Veneer"

The Thrice show that I mentioned in some previous posts is in the full fledged practice stage. We have had a bunch of practices and are moving along at a decent pace. We did realize there were some songs that we had originally planned to play that we will not be able to pull off. However we added new BRUTAL ones that I think we are all excited to play. We had all kind of lost confidence but have since regained it with the new songs sounding a little better than expected for the short time we had been playing them. That show should be July 31st, but more details will be given when we know them/it gets closer to that time.

Strike Anywhere, Polar Bear Club, Crime In Stereo, Ruiner show costs $12 in Austin but a No Harm Done, Golden Age show in Corpus costs $15....can someone explain that to me?

Ehh, I think I'm done with this post. Bye, now.

Welcome Back Riders.

I sat down today and realized in the whole almost 20 years of my existence, I have never really been more excited about things to come. The neat thing is that there isn't one large event that I am looking forward to, but rather many smaller ones. The problem about one big event is while there may be such an awesome adventure leading up to it, then a glorious time while it happens, there's also that large let down when it's all over. Once it's passed, what is there to look forward to next? In this sense I would prefer to have smaller more spaced out events that let me stay happy all throughout the ride.

So the events go as follows:

1) New albums from a bunch of awesome bands released around September and October
2) Possibly attending Fest for free (except for gas costs which might be split)
3) October 26th (Strike Anywhere, Polar Bear Club, Crime In Stereo, Ruiner...HUH...WHAT??? all on the same night...seriously...YUP.)
4) Thrice cover show (July 31st)
5) College Station band (maybe we make new songs and get good)
6) I got a job (Radisson Hotel front desk)

More detail you say? OK!

1) So, this is one of the best times for music in my life. I'm sure there have been previous times where so much awesome stuff happened, but so far this is the best to my knowledge. Strike Anywhere, Polar Bear Club, The Swellers, Crime In Stereo, Chuck Ragan, Ruiner, Against Me! (not totally into them, but it couldn't hurt), A Wilhelm Scream and so many other fantastic bands are putting out new releases within the next few months. The stuff I've heard posted on the interwebz from some of these upcoming records sounds really promising. Honestly, even they all released songs that sounded like their previous albums, I wouldn't complain. It would still top almost everything else. Some of these bands have signed to new labels and it should be interesting to hear what they sound like and how their music has evolved!

2) You've heard about this in previous posts. Might get to go to this super music festival in Gainesville, Fl at the end of October. That would be suh-weet!

3) Umm...this is hard to explain. No matter what combination of words I use, there will be no way to truly show excited I am for this. I would drive 3 to 4 hours to see each of these bands at different places. Somehow by the grace of Bridge 9 Records, this tour was put together. It feels like they made this tour for my friends and I specifically. It's quite unreal how super this is going to be.

4)Every year some friends of mine do this cover show of a band called Thrice. I never listened to them enough to form a valid opinion of them. However, now that I am going to be playing in this show to give the singer a break by letting him just sing and not play guitar, I have realized the songwriting genius in a lot of their early and later stuff. This show should be a lot of fun. It's going to be on July 31st at a warehouse. when more details come I'll let you (as in no one due to this blog's nonexistent fan base) know whats up.

5) We have a band called Stay in Touch. We only have one and a half original songs now but we sure are trying to change that. The first attempt at writing our own stuff was not bad. The song can use some ironing out, but hopefully when that's done, it'll sound cool! Head on over to our myspace and be our friend. I mean, or don't, I understand either way.

6)I started working again today and that was weird. I work as a "front desk agent" at the Radisson Beach Hotel on Surfside Blvd. It's around the Portland area. The job is cool because there's AC and I basically work with one room booking program the whole day. It sucks though because I think I'm going to be working a LOT. But, hey, more cash moneyzzzZZzzZ. There's this one lady who thinks she knows it all and thinks she's real cutesy and sweet. She sucks.

Anyways, that's all I have now. Don't read this, it's not worth your time. Bye, now.