Skip Day

I've had this recurring dream over the past few years. It's a bit bizarre. I dream I'm back in high school and it's a Friday. It's 5th period. And I'm skipping Band class. And it feels so good. haha. Why do I keep dreaming this? What does it mean? Lately the dream has changed a bit. The setting is earlier in the week, like Tuesday. And it's just me realizing Friday is Band Day and I'm going to skip it. And it gives me such hope. Then I wake up and disappointingly realize I'm 26 and I won't be able to skip Band on Friday.

Back in high school, I didn't even skip band that much. I think I only did it twice and I was senior. Once I got a pass to go work in the computer lab on my Computer Programming class work (nerd!) and the 2nd time I just didn't go to band, I probably also went to the computer lab. It was hard to get work down at school. Phil and I both foolishly sacrificed our study halls halfway through the school year for Creative Writing and to be Computer Lab monitors.

What does this dream represent? That I long for something to look forward to? That I had really grown to dislike Band during my junior and senior years? I don't feel very unhappy in my life. I'm not one of those people who are constantly looking forward to the weekend. One thing that irks me is when people will post Facebook statuses asking 'Is it the weekend yet?' and it's only Monday. These people must be really unhappy with their lives and jobs. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand being excited for the weekend if there's something significant coming up.

I also think about sick days. If I remember correctly, I only skipped days of high school a handful of times. Once in 9th grade, the day after our weekend performance of The Wizard of Oz; once in 11th grade, and twice senior year. Senior skip day was fun. I went to school that day, and since the majority of my class was missing, we didn't do much the whole day. Then I skipped another day later in the week. haha. I had two days off that week. The other day I skipped was the Monday after Anything Goes.

Skip Days were fun. I had a tradition of having a coke float when I was home all day. But high school was my only chance at skipping. In college I hardly skipped at all. In fact, the first time I skipped a class in college was during the spring semester of my junior year. I can't believe I had gone through 5 semesters without missing a class. And the only reason I even missed that first class was because we were filming the Intro for The Too Late Show. By the time I got back to campus, it was already 20 minutes into my Wednesday night class, so I felt it would be too awkward if I went in.

As the demands for The Too Late Show increased, classes often got sacrificed. One morning we were having huge technical issues with Joey Heid's computer and I stayed with him, missing my Intro to Computer Science class. Luckily that class was really easy and don't think the Prof took attendance. Another time I skipped it so I could make a Rilo Kiley mix CD. haha.

Senior year came, and one time I skipped my boring Anthropology class because I had to walk all the way down town to the post office to buy stamps to mail my electric bill. And another time I had to skip my Political Science classes because Dr. Mendoza was on the verge of a heart attack.

It's such a shame there's no skip days in real life.

Church of Tim Kasher

October the 4th I traveled to Philly to see Tim Kasher play at The Barbary, a renowned hipster bar. The show was pretty great and the new songs sounded awesome. I forget the opening guy’s name. He was kinda weird and probably drunk. Tim played practically the entire album as well as ‘Driftwood’ and ‘You’re No Fool’. My only complaint about the show was his album hadn’t been released yet, so I didn’t really know the new songs. But they still sounded really good live. I bought the album at the show though, for 10 bucks and 2 days before the release!

Here is my review for Tim Kasher’s first solo album “The Game of Monogamy”.

The album starts off with the Monogamy Overture, an instrumental piece, followed by A Grown Man. A Grown Man is an alright song, it sounded better live. The album really starts with the 3rd track I’m Afraid I’m Gonna Die Here, where Tim spews out everything that’s been on his mind.

The next song, Strays, it probably my favorite song on the album. Cold Love, the first single off the album, isn’t a bad song, but it was meant to be a single and is one of the weaker songs on the album. And finally, Monogamy is a pretty interesting song that gets right to the heart of what the album is about.

I feel like this album will only get better as time goes on and as I get older I’ll identify with it more and more. I like this album a lot.

Don't you, forget about me.

Hey blog--long time,

Tara and I saw The Scissor Sisters recently. Then two days later I saw the lead singer on the street about a block from office. Crazy! Good thing I went to the concert, or I would not have known it was him.

I finished watching The Last Airbender Show this weekend. The full title of the show is actually Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I didn't want to confuse it with that awful James Cameron movie I will never see. Anyway, the show was pretty great and I recommend watching it. Maybe I will tell you more about it one day. I heard the movie was pretty bad, and I don't think I'll be seeing it.

I saw Inception a few weeks ago. A lot later then everyone else did. I liked it a lot. I probably had a few minor criticisms, mostly about the end, but I thought the first hour and 45 minutes was pretty solid. My complaint really is that the ending dragged a bit and took too long to get the climax.

A few weeks ago I actually considered getting a Twitter account. But I decided Twitter is still really stupid. And profoundly confuses me. I'm having a hard time standing Facebook so as it is, and have lost of lot of interest in that.

Blog, have I ever told you about how much I hate the music stores in NYC? I have tried to get the new Jenny and Johnny album twice, with no luck. I will try one more time, braving the elements and venturing into Williamsburg. If that doesn't work, I may have to surrender and finally buy my music on, uhh, itunes. Or maybe buy it from Amazon. I miss Philly where I could practically see the album I wanted to buy inside the windows of Repo Records.

I believe my goal for this blog was to write about various media I liked or didn't like, and I'm sure I've offended all zero of you who read my blog. I guess I kinda failed at that. New shows I'm looking forward to this fall are S@#$ My Dad Says, Running Wilde, and probably Outsourced, which seems like a good premise, but also slightly racist.

We haven't talked since the LOST finale. I like the finale when I watched it, but I feel looking back on it, I may not like it as much. I watched to try to re-watch it. I'll probably re-watch the entire series sometime. The entire last season of LOST really annoyed me. There is an 11 minute epilogue on the DVD that I watched online. In it, they answer or at least somewhat address like 10 unanswered questions from the series. That's really annoying. Why didn't they just make the whole last season like that? When you think about it, like a 3rd of the last season was pretty much pointless. I'm not going to get into too many details now, since I know Maria probably hasn't seen LOST season 6 in Ghana.

I'm think about what show I want to watch next. I'm really leaning towards Angel. And I think Tara and I might start Dexter soon. Plus, I still really want to dive into Twin Peaks soon.

I should really hook my blog up to my Facebook. (but I won't) and then never log on to Facebook again.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson

I first learned about Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson (MBAR henceforth) when Phil gave me a copy of his self titled EP and first album, Summer of Fear. I listened to the EP first and was hooked. The first song Buriedfed is amazing with energy and emotion. The rest of the album is great and carries the emotion, but I guess my small criticism would be I wanted more songs bursting with energy like the opening track.

I finally got a chance to listen to Summer of Fear (both albums are off Saddle Creek By the way) a couple weeks ago in anticipation for seeing him live. I finally got my wish about the energy, as this album rocks out with a lot of energy. My only minor criticism with this album is for some reason MBAR sings at a higher pitch instead of the deeper voice from the EP. It reminds me of Elvis Costello from the Carpetbagger song off of Jenny Lewis' solo album. But no matter, his voice has grown on me.

Phil and I were hoping to attend the show at Le Poisson Rouge on March 10th, but Phil was unable to make it, so I had to go solo. I was really excited because I haven't been to a show in a while. Doors opened at 10:30, which seemed late to me. Most shows I've gone to in Philly would end around 11. The first band was Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers. This was a pretty entertaining band live. I'm not sure if I would enjoy their album though. The lead woman (Shilpa Ray?) had a lot of energy and would often scream while playing her table accordion thing. This is fine live, but I don't know if I would like an album with a lot of screaming. Granted it was energetic, happy screaming and not screamo. Good live band.

The next band was called Suckers I believe. It seemed everybody was there for them. They were also pretty good, but I was starting to loose energy. It was starting to get pretty late and I had to hold my heavy winter coat.

MBAR finally went on 12:45. That's pretty late. The crowd emptied out a lot by then. I was getting tired, so I had to go sit down on a stool for part of the show. Jeez, I used to make fun of people who would sit during shows. I will say in my defense it was 1 in the morning. And I haven't been to a show like 4 months. Anyway, it was just MBAR by himself, playing guitar or keyboard. I guess another guy was supposed to show up, presumably a drummer, but the guy stopped answering his calls and didn't show. I guess this kinda limited him in what he could play, since he couldn't play a lot of the rocking songs. He played a lot of songs I didn't know, which was surprising, but I guess he kinda had to. It was cool to see him in this intimate, acoustic setting. Especially if he becomes more popular. But I hope next time he has a band.

I highly recommend his two albums. Check them out!

2009: Destiny Called

This is really late this year. Meh.

Best Accomplishment:

Finally moving to New York. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this for a while, but I am definitely meant to be here. There are so many opportunities here. Taking the sketch writing class was also pretty helpful. Meeting Tara. And finally driving across the country was great and something I always wanted to do.

Best CD:

This one is pretty tough. Nothing really blew me away this year. I had a conversation with Ron about this back in the Fall how there wasn’t really anything going on musically that was exciting people. I may have to come back to this one some day, but I will say two albums I liked a lot were Fantasies by Metric and Curse Your Branches by David Bazan. They are both pretty great, but I don’t know if I would call them Album of the Year. Maybe after I listen to some other stuff from 2009, I’ll have a better answer.

Worst CD:

I don’t really have an answer for this one.

Best Concert:

Best Concert of oh nine was Bishop Allen at The Williamsburg Music Hall with Jordan. I saw BA 4 times this year and that was the best one. I wish I had seen more shows this year. I also saw, with Jordan, The Get Up Kids, AC Newmen, Human Highway, and a David Bazan house show. Also, I got to see Weezer for free so that was awesome!

Best Movie:

Inglourious Basterds. It lived up to the hype.

Worst Movie:

I didn’t see a lot of movies this year. Tough to say what my worst movie was. I guess I would say Watchmen. Although I didn’t hate the movie, I feel like I don’t remember it too fondly either. I would like to see the director’s cut one day though.

Best Book:

I once again sucked at reading this year. I think I’ve just been reading a lot of bad books I couldn’t finish. My book of the year is A Confederacy of Dunces. I also liked The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao a lot.

Best TV Show:

I guess best new TV show I started watching is Parks and Recreation. Recently I’ve been watching a lot of new stuff, but that’s in 2010.

Favorite New Place:

I really like The Alligator Lounge in Williamsburg. I hate to admit this, but I also like Williamsburg in general. Astoria is kinda nice too.

Best Blog Entry:

Nothing stands out as being my favorite blog entry of the past year. I guess that means I need to write more blogs. It’s a shame I never wrote about my cross country trip.

Person of the Year:

Jordan Mollot! Jordan influenced my life in so many ways this year and traveling across country with him was a blast.

Douche Bag of the Year:

Glen Beck. What an embarrassment to this country.

New Friend Award:

John Krawiec. I’ve gotten to know him pretty well this year at work.

Party of the Year:

Party of the year was Alan Carroll’s birthday. Other parties were St. Patrick’s Day in Hoboken, Brian Small’s party in April, and a Christmas party with Tara in December.

Best Celebrity Encounter:

Jordan and I saw the girl who plays the receptionist on 30 Rock at Best Buy. Jordan and I also Jenny Slate’s show at the UCB. Oh, and Ellie Kemper was in the crowd at a UCB show.

Biggest Disappointment:

I worked a lot and didn’t really get to do too many fun things during the week.

What one thing about the past year would you change:

Probably the same as the above, worked a little less.

Greatest memory of the past year:

The thing I’ll probably remember the most this year was meeting Tara.

Theme of the Year:

The theme of the year was SetUp. I think a lot of things that happened this year are all setting up some big things for 2010.

Quote of the Year:

“I don’t know what to tell you, Chris.”

Biggest wish for 2010:

Keep pursuing my comedy dreams.

Anything to look forward to:

I would like to travel more. I would really like to visit LA. and if Chris moves to Cincinnati soon, I’ll probably go visit him. I would still like to go to Germany soon too, haha. I’m going to try to keep writing. Maybe write one sketch a week. My cousin is getting married in April in Florida and I think I’m going to go down for the wedding.

Roger Ebert

This is a pretty amazing article about Roger Ebert. I knew that he had surgery and oral cancer, but I don't think I was aware that he had had his lower jaw removed.

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/roger-ebert-0310

I'm going to try to update my blog more often. Yeah, I saw that every year. I'm almost done with my 2009 survey, I will post that soon.

Oh Nein

Alright Kids, time to start wrapping this year up. Here is the outline for the 6th annual Dusty Kaster Year in Review Survey Thingy. I added 2 new categories this year. Favorite New Place and Douche Bag of the Year.


Best Accomplishment:

Best CD:

Worst CD:

Best Concert:

Best Movie:

Worst Movie:

Best Book:

Best TV Show:

Favorite New Place:

Best Blog Entry:

Person of the Year:

Douche Bag of the Year:

New Friend Award:

Party of the Year:

Best Celebrity Encounter:

Biggest Disappointment:

What one thing about the past year would you change:

Greatest memory of the past year:

Theme of the Year:

Quote of the Year:

Biggest wish for 2010:

Anything to look forward to: