My Awesome Life

(txt)
Me: What should I blog about?
Alison: The show, your awesome life


Get ready...

...for the most attractive, innovative and awesome younginz.

Allison and Caitlin are still the only girls for me.

And Miles and Christian are the best Best Friends you could ever count on. That's why. They're counted on.

Justin's singing is so wonderful that I hope he never grows up (his voice cracks at certain points and that's why).

Pirouette were inspiring...

and TOO AWESOME for driving from bumblefuck to play on my back porch and call it a day. Nicest dudes/ette in the world. Their full length is going to make my year.



TV Dinner draws a crowd. I still love Anna! And that other girl in blue, with the short hair... for no reason, I hope she has a crush on me. It'd just be kind of cool. She goes to most of the TV Dinner shows and was really excited to see me at Prom.



Trey is TVD MVP <3. style="font-style: italic;">Raising Arizona, Lost in Translation, Rosemary's Baby.

Later that day, I snapped in study hall. I had actually been having a really great time in the Library with Jon Plush and Chris Burcham who are athletes and also my friends (which, admittedly feels really good. Also: these are really good human beings). I was even having txt convos with Miles, Mimi and Murph (whoa). It was last period so a few minutes before the bell, the world was restless and Father Pileggi asked (nicely, as always) for everyone to push in their chairs. We did but the round table behind us didn't. They were small fuckers, sophomores probably.

"Hey, push in your chairs."
"No."
"Push in your chairs!"
"No."
"Listen to me, why the hell not? Father asked you to."
"So you can do it."
"I swear to God, so many people in this school lack any semblance of respect and the whole sophomore class fall in with that."
"We're not sophomores! That just proves how retarded you are!"
"Joe, My Friend, calm down."
"Sorry Father."
[bell]

Am I stupid for opening my mouth and refusing to let this shit stand? I don't think so, but what do you think? I just believe there is so much fucking constant, blatant disrespect from all sorts of faces and it drives me nuts.

There definitely is not enough to write about school this week but Friday night I went to my senior prom.

















What you need to know is this: Kara and I looked great. Kara was the best looking girl at the prom. Kara was the most fun anyone could ever hope for (universal acclaim!). Dinner was pretty good. The hotel, it goes without saying, is really nice. We didn't dance in the ballroom. We danced how we dance (which is rhythmically, hand in hand with lots of twirling) in the room with the dessert table and the mingling kids. After Prom defied expectations. I actually won something: XL Temple t-shirt and four Blue Rocks tickets. Kara and I sang four songs karaoke (once again, universal acclaim!) : "What's New, Pussycat?" (we broke down laughing,) "How Bizaare," "Hunger Strike," and "Can't Buy Me Love." I'm not going out on a limb when I say that we had the most fun out of anyone there.

I drove home and thought these things:
I'm not wearing my glasses so everything is in soft focus
We were listening to "All My Friends" (which should be the world's prom song 2008) and, yeah Charlie, I guess I felt infinite but what does that even mean in the first place you prick?
"Every time I blink I hear the deafening crunch and the edge-of-death screams, look over and see the blood --Kirk Road, Old Kennett, the elementary school for the handicapped..."

Allison starts a new life for the summer tomorrow! She is awesome, she is going to thrive, she is going to leave before it makes her cold, she does what she wants. Good luck my frienddddddddd.

Softly Focused

That's the Decemberists. One of my favorite videos and also one of my favorite events in European History (the Decemberist Uprising).

Friday I'm going to see Black Kids. Pitchforkorific.

I really like this Duffy record. She could be called derivative but she doesn't deserve it. I'm going to review it here tomorrow or the next day.

Tuesday: Photoutdoors

Sunday: Photoutdoors

Tradition that lasts a lifetime

Beggars Banquet

I should be doing laundry but I'm not. I should be off to bed soon but my nights just get later and later. I should have written a Losapio paper. I should have cleaned the house after school. I should stop buying gasoline. I haven't done/am not going to do any of these things because I don't feel like doing much of anything constructive anymore!

Everyone knows what this is so I won't even bother to mention it by name. But I will mention that: I have three or four or five articles due for the last issue of the paper, I have Probability notes left un-taken, enormous stretches of Spunk and Bite left unread, Government tests to be made up, books to be bought for the Novel [but come to think of it, I haven't bought a book for that class since Slaughterhouse-Five. Now that we're on the subject, this is what we've read since: Perks of Being a Wallflower, On a Pale Horse (the man who murdered death!!!), Marine Sniper (no need explain), Third and Indiana (incredibly plain. Might be an attempt to illustrate a point about life in Northeast Philadelphia, but still: Mr. L knows nothing about the greatest city in the union and it sucks to hear him try to talk about it), The Alchemist (absolutely elementary. "Find your destiny!")], a website to design, another website to design (outside of school)... with eight days of school left, on top of a job that I hate more each day, a social life that remains miraculously consistent and a band that I love to rehearse with.

I'm busy doing nothing. This summer is polar: work (a lot. Maybe even another job, to occupy me in the mornings between 8 and 1 or 9 and 1, employer's preference. Options: gluten-free bakery, township building... cutting lawns? Should I put myself out there and cut lawns? I wish I could babysit... Girls are lucky.), graduation (6/6), grad party (6/14), North Carolina (6/16/-23), Chicago/Pitchfork Fest (7/17-21), orientation (7/24-25), North Carolina Mk. II (7/26-8/8)... And all the money I've saved up since the two break ups (with a girl and a debit card) probably will not last into the fall... "Do we only need to keep working because it pays rent?"

I love MTV's the Paper. Like Current TV, I find that this show glues me to my chair and even during commercial breaks, I don't get up to instant message, grab ice cream or water, adjust, grab a blanket, do laundry... I just sit. Never do I want to miss one second of Amanda Lorber's sincere power grabbing and the truly infuriating, base, vexatious and wholly awful people that stand in her way. Mrs. Weiss elected Amanda -in-chief! Like, what are you going to do? Trevor, your immature pouting about what a bitch/idiot you think Amanda is for speaking eloquently doesn't make your snooty girlfriend Gianna any prettier. Gianna, what purpose do you serve, exactly?

I'm actually online reading the Circuit instead of watching what unfolds before it's sent to print. It's kind of surreal. I'm reading this column Lorber wrote about going to college undeclared. It's hard to believe it actually exists. It does, here: http://www.cypressbaycircuit.com/. Granted, I'm only into two minutes of reading it but it's pretty solid. Though, its 39 pages, while totally impressive, seem to be loaded with a lot of the second-hand news crap we try to keep out of our paper.

Let's face it: Alex Angert is a really ugly kid and an unintentionally gaudy dresser. But, he reps Philadelphia. But, what the fuck is the deal with that? What is this kid's background? Does he want to go to PSU? Are his parents alum? Is he from the area (Phillies and Fliers caps)?

Message to human race: PLEASE, STOP TANNING. Instead, do something useful with your time and/or money like donating to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation.

Now, I find it hard to stop listening to the Rolling Stones. If you need a good place to start, please check out Beggars Banquet. For some reason, I think the Stones stir bad feelings and hesitation, but really I felt the same way and they don't bite. But steer clear of anything after Exile on Main Street and I would never go see them live today. I'll wait for a time machine, thx.


My brother in large lips, Mick Jagger.

Last up at dawn

"I'm going to take off work and just study, like do a practice test, brush up, repeat. I'll probably take a break from like 8-10 to watch 30 Rock and the Office re-runs then the new episodes. After that I'm gonna study more, til like one a.m. probably just because we don't have to be there until noon and I can sleep in."
-Me, laying out my cram-plan for tomorrow's A.P. Modern European History Exam to different classmates.

Matt didn't want me to take off work because he's a bitch. Not really, but we call each other that. I was really sleepy when I got home so I just watched CNN with my mom until she got swept away to St. Bartholomew's. Then, I watched my Office re-runs on NBC.com (actually pretty cool!). I studied from 8:35 to 9 listening to the Talking Heads (it was hard to concentrate.) Watched the Office and 30 Rock, both really satisfying. The Office has been going nuts with the "let's make the viewer feel very, very awkward" thing but it adds a phyisical aspect to my normally passive television watching (that is, near-constant cringing and wringing of arms). Back in my room, I picked up my yearbook and read through almost all of my classmates' activities. Why? I don't fucking know.

Everyone went to bed and I moved back downstairs. I've been watching Green Day videos and reading about my once-beloved, obscure emo/screamo bands (the ones pre-negative connotation 0f emo). What I really will do, though, in a few minutes is take the cram packet up to my room and after straightening it up a little, lay down and read up on British financial policies (Disraeli, Gladstone... who was the liberal? Dizzy, I think...). I would write about my spring playlist(s) but, I have to go do that.

Especially

Things at skull were especially unbearable today.

After a four day respite, I had forgotten how to be a student. I carried the same books around all day (AP Euro study guide, the Believer, small commonplace book, green folder) and things just seemed especially awful. I declared JF an actual douchebag at the end of the day, a description that really doesn't fit him but seemed appropriate as he moved his things from his mother's car into his ugly, obnoxious copycat convertible. Mrs. M was especially threatening with my long overdue library fine. "J.U.G. if it's not in by sixth period." Walking out of school, shortly after seeing JF actually, I realized I hadn't yet paid it. I hope I don't now have a demerit. In American Government, Mr. S wasn't here, giving the incorrigibly bothersome populous free reign. There are several kids whose names I do not even know that never cease to annoy. WC who was especially flamboyant and ignorant; LR got on my last nerves in one-eighth the time (why the fuck does he feel the need to show me his Ray Bans every time we pass? Stop trying to please; we are equals.); DB was even more unshaven and BH, thankfully, was absent or else I may have been forced to put the digital (as in my fingers) gun to my head. Mrs. D heaped praise which I do not deserve seeing as I have not turned in any assignments due in the last two weeks (at least). Mr. L was undeservedly more fucking militant today and that got me more worked up than anything else. Within three minutes I hollered at the class: "Stop badgering me!" Mere miliseconds before he chimed in with his patent whine/yelp: "Gallagher, you're just so bitter these days." I proceeded to shut my mouth for the next 49 minutes and it felt good.

Sometimes I think I should shut my mouth more. Sometimes I think I should block it all out so I don't end up, not on purpose, putting myself on a level higher than everyone else. I feel like such a reluctant snob sometimes but in a school filled with truly unsophisticated boys that really do believe women should not vote because they get moodswings and protest with all the fervor of a football game the reading of Plath and Dickinson, put their (or more accurately, their parents) money first to car stereos and exhaust systems, blissfully declare their school the best the area has to offer, go to the library to talk, wear school paraphernalia on the weekends.... can I really be blamed? It's hard out there for a kid who has recently taken to reading a magazine that doesn't have interesting pictures in it. I don't go to lunch anymore.

Wow I feel like a snob. I took the weight off today by going outside:

I didn't mention I got your average haircut (courtesey of Fragale Brothers (for life)) and an awful breakout on my forhead!








On like, positive notes though, in addition to going outside:
Matt and Anna are both going to Temple so the familiarity factor in collegiate Philadelphia is gonna be super high!
Groups of friends can now hang outside!
House show!
A great spring playlist I will blog at length about tomorrow!
Current listening has been nothing too new, though I'm gonna love the new No Age... I'm trying to get the physical thing:
Sleater-Kinney (winding down)
The Rolling Stones-Sticky Fingers
Massive Attack-Mezzanine
Air-Moon Safari
Bikini Kill-Reject All American
X Ray Spex-Germ Free Adolescents
An old Kinks greatest hits I have on wax
Beatles-Rubber Soul

Winding down, it's much too late Love

All I Need to Find

What the fuck does it mean when my stomach is tied into multiple knots, I'm achy, nauseous, cold...?

And I can't stop listening to Air or checking Facebook or doing anything that isn't what I should be: crawling into my bed.

One thing though: tonight I went to an AGCS show which was mostly awful. I felt like shit and the bands were shit and so many people are worthless pieces of shit... I don't mean that in the extreme, especially considering I was one of them. I went to see the Deans' last show ever (?) and I wrote a lot about it, including one big idea-laden interview with John Ciccone which I'm going to continue writing and working on it until it is... Bangsian.
'

Violent Reactions to Some

There are people out there that I know/have known and that make me want to vomit. I just encountered one on the internet, gagged and then this tick that sometimes happens to me... happened... I kind of snap my head to the right four or five times saying "Fuck [whomever should be fucked.]"

I've been going back and reading a lot of Lester Bangs. He was the dude who, in eighth grade, pretty much convinced me that becoming a rock writer was the dream. Bangs is just on a level above anybody else... I have no idea where he gets this shit. After months of reading Spin and Rolling Stone, my dad got me Mainlines, Bloodfeasts and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader. Shortly thereafter, I did a project for Mr. Fox's typing class on a career. Journalist. So I guess I'm going to make it a project over the next day... week... month to just sit, listen to records, write and try to get on his level. I think my stuff has gotten too Pitchfork. Not enough Lester, you know?

I put Mezzanine on for like, the millionth time this year. This is such heavy shit. Just dense levels of electronic percussion; vocals draped in sex, shade and mystery; wavering synths. Bristol baby, 1998, what's good?! Nothing, obviously. It sounds like it just rains and people stare out windows on public transport.

I don't go to lunch anymore. I just sit in the library. I love being anti- at school and nothing but loving and delightful outside. Those walls make me sick.

Movie Night tonight... sans movies, with the addition of Lucky Strikes. I love my extended family. That is, those people I spend time with.

UPDATE:
M83's new one Saturdays=Youth is a, forgive me, thing of beauty. If you know me, there is the obvious reason (that it is indeed an album about youth). It's heavily nostalgic, idealistically high school, unabashedly 80s and as ethereal as your mother's womb or your poster-laden, messy bedroom. Not to mention, the cover is awesome. It makes me think Lucas meets Donnie Darko meets Breakfast Club.