Today, I came across this great set of videos depicting a young man who makes PVC instruments on Popwatch. There are a lot of DIY instruments out there and I absolutely love them. It takes so much more just to learn an instrument, let alone one that you actually made yourself. If I had the time (and probably a lot of help) I'd love to build things like this.
The other fun thing about these videos is that you have to guess what the songs are. These PVC pipe covers of songs have a nice quality. I would love to hear these pipes being used with other (traditional or DIY) instruments. Or you, know, if this guy released a CD on bandcamp, I would totally check that out too.
Among other things, this video has a much clearer sound. The cover of "I Just Can't Wait to be King" sounds particularly great. The instrument fits well for this kind of song.
What caught me about this song was the title. You don't hear those kinds of pronouncements, especially ones that use words like ghetto, that has connotations of Otherness and oppression. As I was listening to the song, the political was obvious: "Don't you know, that it's true, for me and for you, the world is a ghetto?"
I was reading a book today that dealt with critical race theory, and one of the comments was that those of African descent didn't really have a homeland. This song is obviously related to that sentiment.
I love good political music. I wish more people listened to stuff overtly political.
Yes, the interview went okay. I say okay because I don't think I have the experience for it, but I did my best. I don't know why, but I wasn't as excited for this interview as I was for previous interviews.
I was being interviewed in a coffee shop, which would have been fine, but music I recognized kept playing. Two of them were the following: Radiohead's "House of Cards" and Spoon's "Paper Tiger".
This might be my favorite Radiohead song, though I must admit I am also a fan of Thom Yorke's "Hearing Damage." I like how mellow this song is. I like how it's a song about trying to get a woman to have an affair. The singer talks about the woman's relationship as a house of cards, but anyone familiar with affairs knows what they qualify as. (The singer is a jerk, obviously.) Also, this video is really cool!
And this is Spoon's "Paper Tiger." The moment this song started I thought "Oh, it's Spoon!" I've been in love with this band for almost ten years now.
Music has an odd way of dropping into one's life. As a listener, you construct meaning for a song based on the moment in your life it came around. I don't think I ever imagined either of these songs being associated with interviewing.
Tori, Ashley and I went out to dinner. We went to a little restaurant near home. The last time I had been here, I had gone with Jennifer when I desperately needed to talk to her. I had the mac and cheese and it had been terrible. I wasn't going to do that again. I ordered saganaki and a veggie burger instead.
I love a good veggie burger. I know a lot of people complain that they are not that good because they do not taste like meat, I do not notice much of a difference. I'm actually pretty impressed with their ability to get a bunch of semi-mashed vegetables to taste like meat.
And then there's saganaki. It's delicious. It's a simple thing, but I have it infrequently enough that when I do have it, it makes me really happy. Tori and Ashley had never had it before, so I let them try some.
Ashley talked to us about her father and traveling. She was complaining that her Dad only likes to go to the beach when they go on vacation, and that she would like to go to museums and monuments and shop a little and do all the other things that normal people do I vacation. I suggested Rome to her, because it's close enough to beaches that might satisfy her Dad and lots of museums and things she would like.
What I should have said, now that I'm thinking about it, is about the area between Rome and Naples. That whole area is supposed to be covered with beautiful beaches and lots of history. Ostia is an important ancient Roman city.
And between Rome and Naples is Monte Cassino. It's one of those places I've always wanted to go to. As someone who is interested in monasticism, Monte Cassino is important because it is the birthplace of Western monasticism, where St. Benedict of Nursia, the founder of the Benedictines and inspiration behind so many other orders, began his community. In addition to that, it is also the former site of a pagan temple to Apollo and the site of the Battle of Monte Cassino. A Polish cemetery is located there, where over a thousand Polish soldiers who died during that battle are buried. Also buried there are St. Benedict (for obvious reasons) and St. Scholastica, his sister and a nun. The monastery also once held the archives of the Keats-Shelley House in Rome.
I want to go, want to take a tour, want to take in mass, want to look through their archive, and want to put red poppies on the graves of those Polish soldiers. (It's part of a song, "The Red Poppies of Monte Cassino.")
Never mind, I don't think Ashley would like to do this as much as me. Talking about traveling got me daydreaming again. One of the many problems with traveling is that it seems to be a never-ending desire. Going a little does not really satisfy it.
After we finished eating, and paid our bills, we went home.
As I was staying at Nate and Megan's, I tried to be a good houseguest, which meant being as out of the way as possible. Megan and two of the other roommates went out for the weekend, so it was just Nate and I hanging out. I was thinking about blogging here to you, but then I decided that I should do something nice for Nate and co.
I had just taken a shower, and, perhaps feeling like there needed to be some cleaning, I started working on the kitchen. In my pink bathrobe. I started on the dishes, but then realized there were just too many, and many of the things were caked on.
So I went looking through their stuff for one of those brillo pads that scraps stuff off really good. That was my first clue that people didn't clean too often, because there weren't any. There were just one sponge.
Then I noticed that someone had tried to bake stuff. There was a small cake in a pan.
"Should I put this in the fridge?" I called to Nate, holding the pan up. Nate was on the other side of the room, on his computer, working on his online class.
"Yeah...that's a good idea."
There was a cupcake pan with chocolate cake still stuck, glued really, to it. I would need to soak this. Soaking something requires that I temporarily plug their sink. So I went looking for the rubber stopper that every house has. Nothing.
This of course led to the next best thing: filling the two bathroom sinks with water and then plugging both of those up. And then putting in the pan, silverware, plates, a water bottle, Tupperware.
On the way to the first bathroom sink, I found a spoon sitting next to a sock. If I had seen it in any other context, I would assume it was a piece of modern art. I showed Nate and he was grossed out by it.
Putting things in a different part of the house would mean I would need to carry it. They had a plastic dish holder/rack thing that was meant to hold dishes as they dried. I was about to use it when I noticed that too was stained a orange color. I imagined it was meat sauce from something. But I could be wrong. So I started scrubbing it.
In the meantime, Nate saw me and decided I needed some music to help, so he put it in some Lady Gaga, a favorite of mine. He put on one of my favorite songs, "Bad Romance."
As I was cleaning, I bounced around and sang the song, as Nate almost certainly knew I would. Nate, for some odd reason or another, really likes me singing. He sang along too.
There was something nicely and bizzarely domestic about the too of us. I could totally see us living together, doing this sort of thing. Nate would make food, I would wash dishes, we would pretend to be in a musical about the woes of college life. We'd be bigger than Rent.
After "Bad Romance," Nate put on "Telephone," which I am embarrassed to say is a song I'm actually working at perfecting.
I scrubbed at the rack thing. The tough thing was it's odd shapes and little crevices that I couldn't get to with the sponge. If I had a toothbrush on me, I could have used that, but I wasn't willing to sacrifice my own, and I was afraid going to look for one wouldn't work, since I had already tried to find a vacuum cleaner, to no success.
I went out last night with some of my friends. We first went over to one of the local coffee shops for treats and conversation.
One of the things that's always a bit of a problem is volume. Tori and Ashley are particularly loud. (You know things are bad when I think people are loud.) There were a few brief moments where this looked like it was going to be a problem, but it was mostly okay.
I was surprised by Tori and Ashley. Ashley usually does not like being told that she is wrong (she's picked fights with me over very little) but Tori basically schooled her in Islam last night and Ashley didn't react as badly as she usually does. Ashley's in anthropology, and anthropology has a bad reputation for being racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc., and even though Ashley doesn't go for the racism and homophobia, I have heard her say some pretty misogynistic things on occasion. This time, she said some pretty awful things about Muslims, and I sometimes wonder how it is that we grew up in the same community. We knew a lot of the same people, including a lot of Muslims (we live in an area where there is a high population of "Middle Easteners") and yet Ashley has a totally different (i.e. mostly negative) point of view about them. But Ashley didn't do as she always does (repeat herself until you give up), so maybe that's a sign that she's changing?
I talked mostly to Michael, Lisa's boyfriend. He's a really nice guy, but I always feel like he's hitting on me.
This brings up one of the many problems I have. Apparently, I am too nice to guys. Josie says that I make people feel way too good about themselves and Dan has commented before that I am easy to talk to. Josie believes that a lot of guys think that I'm interested in them because of the way I behave around them. There are a lot of guys I'm interested in, but never, it seems, the ones who are interested in me.
The other problem is that I'm not sure how to strike a middle ground between being nice and being nasty. I know how to tell someone off (some of my readers have seen me do it), but I (apparently) don't know how to be normal around people, not overly nice and not mean.
So, with Michael things are always a little weird, because well, Lisa's right there. And I'm honestly not interested in him, and not just because of Lisa. I met Michael before Lisa did, and I decided against him. And I really don't want to make Lisa unhappy. She's been very nice to me over our seven years of friendship, and it feels silly to throw that away, especially over a boy.
Later, we walked over to a store to do a little shopping. While walking there, some one was playing "Boom Boom Pow" and I danced in the parking lot to it. (You can all blame Gary for getting me into that song. Boy is a much better dancer than he looks.)
We went to look through cards, which is something that is super foreign to me these days. In my family, we're not allowed to buy cards, because my Mom makes them. So I haven't been in a card rack in almost a decade. I mostly made terrible suggestions to Ashley, like saying she should get a Grandfather-themed Father's Day card for her Dad. Lisa is a cute whore, and she got really excited when she saw cards that were from Hoops and Yoyo. Am I totally out of the loop here? I've never even heard of Hoops and Yoyo before, though their website has so much sound stuff on it. Lisa was giggling and carrying on about how cute they were, especially this one slug character. I honestly don't ever worry about buying Lisa a present. If it's even a little bit cute, she'd probably love it.
