Friday, March 26, 2010

I Went to a Show! Cursive, Alkaline Trio - March 25th

I will not let this blog eternally rest! It has been ten days since my last (confession?) post, and that is far too long. I'm determined, from this point on, to write something every day, whether it's that interesting or not (which, of course, it will be. I am very interesting and have varying interests!) Will I stick to that? Probably not! Let's go!
So last night, the 25th of March, I spent my evening at the House of Blues. The lineup? The Dear and Departed, Cursive, and Alkaline Trio, in that order. Cursive has been my favorite band for almost ten years at this point. Holy shit! I've liked something the same amount for ten years! Naturally, I wish they had headlined the show, but I understood the situation. Alkaline Trio has been around just as long as Cursive, AND they just released a CD a couple of weeks ago. And they've been on a major label, so they're arguably more famous, blah blah blah.
I made sure to get to the show early, because: A. I have OCD! B. This show was kind of pricey (granted, I got a 2 for 1 deal, so it cost me thirty dollars for two tickets, which isn't that bad. However, if you are quick, you will realize that means that without the deal, ONE ticket cost thirty dollars, which is too much! What you might not immediately realize is that the actual ticket only cost eighteen dollars. The fees for one ticket cost nine dollars! That is fifty percent of the ticket price, which is an outrageous percentage! I almost didn't go out of spite.) Since the show cost so much, I wanted to get my money's worth and see the opening band.
I should have known from their name (which is a bad name,) but the Dear and Departed would have been worth the money if I had spent free dollars, because they are not worth any money.
My first thought upon hearing their opening song was that it kind of sounded like Angels and Airwaves. Uh-oh! And then they continued to play for a half-hour, and it all sounded like the same awful opening song. Boo! Here's their setlist:
1. Who
2. Cares?
3. Go
4. Away!
5. Get
6. Off
7. The
8. Stage!

Next was Cursive. This was going to make the fourth time I've seen them. The first was with the Take Action Tour in 2002 at the very same House of Blues, and they played with Common Rider, Thursday, Poison the Well, and someone else. That was a good show that for some reason inspired the band not to come back for seven years. In 2006, I saw them in Houston with Jeremy Enigk of Sunny Day Real Estate and some other band with a name I can't remember. This was great because Jeremy Enigk is great, with or without SDRE. The third time was last November at One Eyed Jacks with Capgun Coup (boo!) and Caddywhompus (hooray!) I thought that show would have been packed, you know, because the best band was playing that night, but not so many people were there. The people who didn't go must have something wrong with their brains!
Anyway, Cursive has been great every time I've seen them, and Tim Kasher has been great because he is usually very drunk, and therefore, fun to watch! He has one of the best live voices around. This doesn't mean that he sounds exactly like the CD; on the contrary, he usually doesn't try to sound like the CD. Instead, he will vary rhythms (because he is very rhythmic!), or replace certain words, sounds, or silences with pained screams. The best!
This show was no different from all the rest. Even though they only played for 45 minutes, they packed that time period with excellence, and played a nice assortment of songs from across their discography except for their first two CDs, which is okay, because no one really wants to hear those. But they didn't play anything from their Eight Teeth to Eat You split, and they never do, which is crazy. You would think that by now someone would have told them that Excerpts from Various Notes is their best song. Oh well, they didn't have a cello anyway, though they did have a dude playing keyboards and trumpets (and they did play a number of songs from The Ugly Organ, which is basically known as their "CD with the cello," but cello or not, they had to play songs from that because that is great and everyone loves it and if they didn't play anything from it, there would have been a Teenage Riot!) They had four Mama, I'm Swollen songs, which I must say, has grown on me considerably, and sounds pretty great live. The rest of the set consisted of three songs from Ugly Organ, two from Happy Hollow, and one each from Domestica and the Burst & Bloom EP.
Here's their set list, pretty complete (but not in the right order.):
1. Sink to the Beat
2. The Martyr
3. Dorothy at Forty
4. Big Bang
5. From the Hips
6. I Couldn't Love You
7. Let Me Up
8. Mama, I'm Swollen
9. Some Red-Handed Sleight of Hand
10. Art is Hard
11. A Gentleman Caller.

Finally, there was Alkaline Trio, and it seems like most of the crowd was there to see them. While I was certainly interested in seeing them (they haven't played a show here in over ten years,) I'm not really a huge Alkaline Trio fan. Their first CD, Goddammit! is fantastic, and the song Private Eye, from their fourth CD From Here to Infirmary, is also great. That's about it.
I know lots of people like that song Radio, but these people need to realize that Radio is just okay, although it does have that line "Shakin' like a dog shitting razorblades" which is a really fucked up image. This is good because it is very descriptive and memorable and this is bad because it makes me think of a sad sickly dog trying to shit out razorblades.
But I don't hate them. I don't hate Radio. It's just that most of their songs sound the same. They all sound pretty good, but I have a really hard time telling one song apart from the other, and thusly, they are really boring. It seems like Matt Skiba and Cindy from the Brady Bunch found a book that explained "How to write a pop-punk song," and it explained that all their songs should be the same tempo and have the same intensity and that no one wanted to hear about drinking anymore and that they should write about spooky things and blood.
So they played, and they were pretty good, but like i said, it was boring because all their songs sound EXACTLY the same and Jeremy (Blum!) and I kept thinking every song was the first song from Good Mourning that goes "Step 1: Slit my throat! Step 2: Play in my blood! Step 3: Cover me in dirty sheets and run laughing out the house" which is so overly violent that it is silly and seems like someone writing a parody of an Alkaline Trio song. Anyway, we kept trying to sing that part because it always sounded like it might fit but it never did.
They did, however, play Private Eye! Very good! And throughout the show, I kept wishing for them to play a song from Goddammit, but knew in my heart that they probably wouldn't because that's their first CD and they've released six full lengths and two rarity compilations since then (!) so they have lots of other songs that they'd rather play about ghosts and goblins. Anyway, I vocalized this hope as "I hope they play Clavicle" because that's a great song, and guess what happened you got it THEY PLAYED CLAVICLE.
By this time, I wanted to leave because they played everything I wanted to hear and was willing to bet that they wouldn't play anything else interesting. Also, the place was pretty crowded, and I was getting kind of claustrophobic and tired from standing in one place. And, of course, my head had exploded after they played Clavicle, so I needed to go and take care of that. They left the stage, and then came back for the encore, and as they did this, I left. Yes, I know that they probably played Radio, and everyone probably went crazy, but I didn't want to go crazy, I wanted to go home.
But before that, I went to Taco Bell. Then home.
A good night!




Tuesday, March 16, 2010

We Had an Emergency Room Honeymoon!

March 15th was my maternal grandfather's birthday.
March 17th is St. Patrick's Day.
And for twenty-three years, the day in between was pretty insignificant.
Last year, March 16th was set up to be a pretty good day. My favorite local band, Antenna Inn, was playing that night at the Saturn Bar. They were to be followed by Caddywhompus, and I had only heard good things about them. So I got there, stood outside for a while, socialized and smoked cigarettes. Once I entered, I ordered some red wine, which I rarely do since I don't like red wine; however, this wine was served in a single-serving mini-bottle that made me feel like I was either drinking on an airplane or playing the part of a radioactively-enlarged monster terrorizing the cast of Sideways.
As Antenna Inn set up to play, I found a place to stand in the already-crowded stage area. My legs started to ache. I've never really been a fan of standing in one place for a long period of time, and I wanted to sit down, but knew that wasn't gonna happen, so I tried ignoring it.
Right as the band started to play, I got lightheaded, and it felt as though I had stood up too quickly. My vision went dark. Usually, however, that feeling disappears in a matter of seconds. This time, it just kept getting worse. I couldn't see at all, and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to stand for much longer. Knowing I needed some assistance, I turned to Kathleen and Richard, or at least where I thought they were, and told them I needed to sit down. However, the feeling of passing out grew stronger, and I couldn't wait for them, so I turned towards where I knew I could sit down, and blindly barreled my way through the crowd. In my stupor, I ran face-first into a metal pole. Finally, my friends caught up to me, and helped me sit down by a video-poker machine.
After a few minutes, my vision returned. I was covered in cold sweat, and i wanted to go home, so Kathleen drove me in my car.
I had never passed out before. EVER. So i went to the doctor the next day, but they guessed that I probably just had an anxiety attack.
That night, I went to the ER because I couldn't breathe when I laid down.
They thought it was pneumonia, and treated me for that.
Two weeks ago, my left foot swelled, and I couldn't stand for long without my legs getting stiff.
The doctors were baffled.
They gave me a CAT scan, a MRI, an ultrasound, they did x-rays.
They did a biopsy on the rashes that had shown up the previous summer, never went away, and had been previously disregarded as being plain ol' dry skin.
They did a biopsy on my kidney.
They did a biopsy on my lymph nodes.
On March 16th, I got sick in a way that I hadn't before.
A month later, I found out I had lupus.
A year later, I pretty much have it under control. My blood work looks normal. They've got me on a ton of medicine. Most of it does its job, though I have been pretty sick recently, probably as side effects to new medicines I started taking or as side effects to old medicines I'm coming off of. Things, however, are a hell of a lot brighter than they were one year ago.
I'm sure this won't be the last time I talk about lupus or lupus-related things. (I have all kinds of wonderful stories.) Unfortunately, it was a pretty big part of my life this past year, and it will always be a part of my life. I'm determined, however, for it to not be a big part in the future.
Anyway, happy anniversary, lupus.
I got you some paper.

Monday, March 15, 2010

*sigh*

Listen -
MY BAD.
I have a tendency to start a blog, write a couple of entries (if I'm feeling particularly peckish,) and then forget about it completely. About a year later, the urge to write again returns, and i start ANOTHER blog, in which my first post usually explains how I have a tendency to start a blog AND SO ON. (I'm going to go ahead and also apologize for the excessive use of typing in all caps that I have already done and will continue to do.)
So.
This particular blog started as an attempt to make my way through my unnecessarily large movie collection. By blog's end, I had reviewed two movies, neither of which I actually owned.
I then moved on to I Finished the Internets because, well, i had.
I started a Tumblr blog for a while, also called I Finished the Internets.
And now I'm back here. I've taken the moniker of T-Shirt Rebellion for a long time now as a sort of all-encompassing title (hip-hop star, Twitter, AIM) and it seems appropriate for me to use it in my blog web address and name. And I've just always liked I Finished the Internets! They are now together as one.
So what's my mission statement for this blog? Every time I've named one, I get bored with the idea quickly and then give up on the blog. So the mission statement for this blog is that there is no mission statement, and the only rule is that there are no rules, and this party is going to go from 10 o'clock 'til question mark. It will be about all things, but mostly will allow me to speak more verbosely than twitter or facebook.
Ok, never mind. This is my mission statement:
Recently, I've been pretty sick and most of my days and nights are spent at home. This has essentially killed my social life and I rarely see or speak to anyone. This blog is for me to keep in contact with people. Have you been missing my caustic wit? Come get your fill! And leave comments!
If we aren't friends on twitter, I'm there as tshirtrebellion. On facebook, I'm Shawn Dugas.
And I promise I'll actually write in this one.
Probably.