Release the hats

Man, for like a minute we had perfect autumn weather and I even found my scarf and switched to darker beers. In protest of this week’s sun, here’s an October mix to drink your pumpkin ale to:

 

 

So I’m writing a screenplay for a horror movie with flat stereotypical dudes as props for my strong female characters and exactly zero rapes. Wasted effort or huge waste of effort?

Eh, we’ll see. I’m really not enjoying writing in screenplay format though and might turn it into a manuscript. OR I might just forget about it in a week until I watch the next awful bit of schlocky bullshit that makes me want to throw things. If I even get into what’s set me off this time I will never get to the next order of business.

The next order of business: Shows. Holy crap have I seen a lot of good bands since I moved. Saw A Frames/Golden Error/Hot Guts last Thursday, the xx/Warpaint/Zola Jesus on Monday, Swans the week before, and Pissed Jeans a couple weeks ago. Grinderman in NYC is looking good, and bunch of other interesting stuff is heading through Philly before the end of the year. I need to start carrying earplugs because shows just happen it seems, and I’m never quite prepared.

Taking photos at shows is either too awkward or less interesting than watching the bands or not allowed at all. The venue for the xx show prohibited photography so only select media types and rule-breaking assholes got photos. I’m not sure which group this one was pilfered from because it was forwarded to me. But look: my friend and housemate, J, scored some sweet dead center Row A tickets:

Fancy!

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Scandalous Happenings!

I am–if you weren’t already aware–completely in love with my house-mate’s dog.

smootch the pooch

Later after smootchin’ with the pooch my friend came over to give haircuts (another bullet point on my list of things I love about being back in Philly) and cured my inability to see out of my left eye. A miracle! Bangs grow way too fast. I don’t even know how this speed is possible because I never ever ever drink or even look at milk. Gives me the heebies just thinking of it. So where’s this milk-does-a-body-good style shit coming from? Am I somehow getting calcium from beer? That must be my superpower.

I was going to write about going to see Pissed Jeans last week and The Swans the other night, but it’s super late and, again, I’m a responsible adult now. Right!

Oh look, it’s been October for 19 minutes! October! Bonfires! Haunted attractions! Pumpkin ale! At last.

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Something happened!

Well! I am home! In Philadelphia! I was hired for a job similar to what I was doing in DC based entirely on my resume without even a phone interview because I have experience in the firm’s industry and the exact position that was open. (Formerly useless knowledge finally paying rent for its spot in my brain. Hooray!) To top it off, a room at a house one of my friends lives in opened up, and the timing just couldn’t have been more perfect. So I live here now. In Philadelphia! I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not just visiting — this is for real. How did this happen?

Our house is awesome. I love the neighborhood and can walk to work. Check out this celebrity sighting from our roof deck:

I’ve met a shit-ton of new people and I’m incredibly bad with names, so this has been a fairly stressful week. So far I haven’t called anyone’s significant other by their ex’s name, so I suppose I’m doing better than usual. Of course I’m not complaining –it’s the best having a core group of friends in the area to introduce me to their friends. If I didn’t have them, I’d have to like, make an effort.

It’s almost midnight and now that I am a responsible adult again I am going to bed and I’m going to stay there all night and not get bored and watch stuff on Netflix. True fact!

Let’s do this:

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Procrastination (to the tune of Joy Division’s Isolation)

Hello, Internet! Fancy meeting you here.

I’m in a weird mood, and also back in Vermont, uh, recharging. Yeah. The weirdness isn’t bummed-outness. It’s more like, now my feelings about returning to my hometown have been confirmed (yesssss!), and my expectation of it not being, like, immediate gratification have been validated. I’m kind of relieved that it’s going to take more time and effort because if it hadn’t I’d be huddled under a (thin) blanket or possibly a sheet, with my jaw clenched waiting for everything to fall apart and land on me. The weird mood is about me being correct and trying to decide if it is worse to be correct about this or just always correct in general and, so, rarely pleasantly surprised? Maybe a “bit of luck” would’ve been nice? But again, also terrifying. Well good for me! I’ve got something to work toward, and I’m much happier when I’m focused on something.

So, I was too busy enjoying my time to document it. I’m terrible at taking photos while things are happening, so I pretty much have nothing in that department. I drank a ton of good beer and enjoyed a lot of good hangs. My friends are all charming and adorable and hilarious. (Probably more so than your charming, adorable, hilarious friends but I can’t prove it, and you can’t disprove it.) I fell in love with my friend’s baby, and a St. Bernard another friend is dog-sitting. (GUYS! I got to walk a ST. BERNARD. Not a euphemism.)

I’ve been doing a lot of writing! Well, obviously not here. I’m also drawing again which is good because two years ago I spent way too much money on a fancy set of pens and have felt guilty about it ever since. However! I’ve convinced myself that things would turn out better if I was using my table and not balancing things on my knees in bed, which led to my new tightly held conviction that I can’t accomplish anything decent or worthwhile until I move my table over next to the window. This requires rearranging my room –the room I don’t want to be in, in the state I’m trying to get out of. Waste of time! But if I don’t work through the extreme procrastination I will keep blaming the table’s distance from the window for my inability to ink these sketches, instead of admitting I’m a lazy baby.

Oh babies. I think I’m reaching some middle age milestone where my emotional outbursts are no longer limited to a regularly scheduled portion of the month? I’ve decided that I’m unsubscribing from the Zooborns feed because the sight of baby elephants and orangs and newly hatched turtles is too much for me. I see them and my heart aches. Growing pains, like the Grinch? I don’t know. I do know that the devil is truly just a metaphorical construct because if he were a real thing, the blood of one of you, my nearest and dearest, would be on my hands while I was enjoying a new life with my new baby elephant roommate. Sorry, but I’m not going to lie. Maybe I should get a turtle once I’m settled somewhere.

Oh look, another internet mixtape: (Fifteen tracks including music by Swell Maps, Maximum Joy and Colin Newman.)

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