mm hm

                                        WANT

rly?

"In lieu of alcohol, the Jets said, they'll pass out green and white "rowdy towels" to the first 70,000 fans arriving at the stadium."

Jets ban booze


So you can't drink a beer, but here's a cool towel. What a joke.

all for naught

So this is it. This is the end of the damn decade. 


If you had told me, in 2001, right out of high school, that I would go the whole decade without getting my Bachelors, I would have told you to go screw. 


If you had told me I'd go through most of the decade without a girlfriend, I would have thought you crazy. 

If you had mentioned to me that I would gain a ton of weight, lose it, put it back on, lose some of it again, and repeat a vicious cycle, I would have been confused. 


If you would have told me that I would completely destroy my knee and mess up my life in a skateboarding accident, I again would claim you crazy.


If you would have told me that I would only talk to 5 or 6 people from my graduating class at the end of the decade, I would think your were nuts.


If you told me that my best friends would be people that I barely knew in high school and that I'd be living all around Long Island with those same people, I'd kindly ask you to tell your story walking.


If you had said to me that I would have run two full marathons, 6 half marathons, and that I'd be starting a training program for a Half Ironman, I may have punched you.


There is absolutely no way to possibly predict what's going to happen to me in the new decade. I don't know what I'm doing for lunch today, let alone in 2015. I am looking forward to it though. The 2000's have been a decade of ups and downs to the extreme. I like to think that through everything, I've kept a real positive attitude. I would never, ever say I was depressed, but there were definitely some times where I was really bummed. I have always kept my head and spirits high, and that's probably the only thing I can guarantee on doing in the next decade.


Happy New Year

i miss the wetlands

I just watched (for the second time) Wetlands Preserved, a beautiful documentary about the legendary downtown venue, the Wetlands Preserve. Between 1998 and 2001, I went to probably around 35-40 shows at Wetlands. Although I was going to mostly punk and hardcore shows there, I always felt a special bond with the place because of it’s hippie roots and dedication to the environment and other social causes.

So after watching Wetlands Preserved, I was feeling real nostalgic. I spent about an hour on YouTube looking for shows I might have been at. The best one I found was this video from a show in December of 2000. Anti-Flag headlined, Flogging Molly played an amazing set before them, and I’m almost positive Bigwig opened the show. I remember it being literally 19 degrees outside, but the Wetlands was known as being the hottest place in NYC, no matter what it was doing outside. After watching the docu, and a dozen other videos on the Tube, I realized that we don’t have anything remotely comparable to what we had in The Wetlands. There will never be a venue like that again. I’m also realizing how good Anti-Flag used to be. Before Justin Sane went all Davey Havok on us. Damn, I probably saw them 3 times at the Wetlands. These days, if you wanna see Anti-Flag you have to go see them open for My Chemical Romance at MSG. UGH!

really?

commack girl suspened for bringing peppermint oil to school

Really, Commack? Really?

bored

a silly itunes game. bored. whatevs.


How many songs total: 1343
How many hours or days of music: 3.1

Sort By Song Title
First Song: ABC - Ziggy Marley (also, ABC’s by K’Naan)
Last Song: ‘87 - Bouncing Souls

Sort By Time
Shortest Song: You Gotta Stay Positive - Good Clean Fun (0:05)
Longest Song: Suzy Greenberg -Phish (18:23)

Top Five Most Played Songs:
1) Hummingbird - Born Ruffians
2) I Need a Life - Born Ruffians
3) Ziggy Says - Ziggy Marley
4) The Good Life - Ghost Mice
5) Oversleping - I’m from Barcelona

Last Album: 8-Bit Heroes - New York Robbers
First Album: All Hour Cymbals - Yeasayer

First Song That Comes Up On Shuffle: All Choked Up- Hello Nurse

Search the following and state how many songs come up:
Death - 3
Life - 28
Love - 70
Hate - 2
You - 156
Sex - 3


well that was fun.

blame canada

I am such a fool. I have had SirusXm radio in my car for the past 6 or 7 months. It’s the greatest investment I have ever made, by the way. Terrestrial radio is a dying medium. Aside from the fact that there isn’t a decent station in New York anymore, they have become less and less bold with anything they do, it’s just a really, really boring scene. But I digress. I’ve been mostly listening to Opie and Anthony, but there are so many great music stations. Stations that play punk, stations that play indie, there’s a 90’s Alt channel, hell, there’s even a station that plays only Jimmy Buffett (and other Margaritaville inspired music).


About 6 weeks ago, I was sitting in stand-still traffic on the Long Island Expressway (shocker? hardly!). I was casually scrolling through the SirusXm stations, and I noticed that XM 87 was playing “Hummingbird” by Born Ruffians. Born Ruffians were pretty much my favorite band of 2009. My iTunes top 25 of the year featured 10 of their songs. I owe this, of course, to SarahSpy and her 2008 Best Album list. (Her 2009 list is pretty impressive as well. Freelance Whales might be my Born Ruffians of 2010). So naturally I turned on channel 87, which is called The Verge.

The fact that I went 7 months without discovering this channel is pretty much my only regret of 2009 (forget losing my job and falling into debt). This station plays the best bands that I have heard in a long time. And here’s the kicker. It’s almost all exclusively Canadian artists! I’ve been suffering the monotony of American indie bands for so long while there are so many undiscovered gems north of the border. Shame on me! Why the hell has everyone been telling me to listen to some boring ass shoegaze band from Williamsburg when I could have been listening to an upbeat but poppy indie band from Saskatchewan? Shame on all of you as well!

Now I know I’ve had some beef with Canada in the past. There’s no evidence of it, but probably 13 years ago, I created an Anti-Canadian website, using the now defunct Geocities. But that was so long ago. Since then, I have really embraced Canadains and their way of life (except French Canadians). And now that I’ve discovered a handful of awesome bands from our neighbors to the north, I have a whole new respect for them. So while you keep listening to your simple noise band from Flatbush, I’m going to keep on searching for the best song writers in Winnipeg.

Here’s a few of the awesome bands that have taken over my iTunes the past few weeks.

Rah Rah - Sounds like a party

Library Voices - Pop as Fuck. But so good.

Quinzy - I’m not gonna lie. I feel good when I listen to Quinzy.

Japandroids - I remember Michael Nelson writing something about them when they were playing in NY not too long ago. I wish I checked them out then. How only two people can make such great music is beyond me. I mean, the Presidents of the United States of America put out a lot of great music with 3 people, but Japandroids combination of a drum and a guitar is so rad.

So that’s that. For now. I’m sure I’ll be stuck in more LIE traffic sometime soon, and I’m sure I’ll discover the next big thing from Quebec sometime soon too.