cuckooRUDEthe sickest

Friday night in downtown Hendersonville, NC – 18, originally uploaded by katiejohnston.

I wish this could be my professional photo for work stuff.

Uncle Eddie’s birthday party – 29, originally uploaded by katiejohnston.

My uncle turned 60 last weekend and our family met in Hendersonville, NC to celebrate. Sarah flew in from LA to surprise Eddie. Mission accomplished!

Coolpix, Ball!, originally uploaded by katiejohnston.

Hey, I got a new camera, Ball! Let’s take some photos! You look really nice, buddy.

He’s watching you.

I am going to Chicago in a couple of weeks! Woo! Besides the obvious fun of being in a big city (and working, of course!), I have purchased a ticket to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma) Op. 36. Elgar created Enigma Variations (as it is commonly known, I guess) as a tribute to his wife, friends, and fellow musicians. That sounds like a terribly nice thing to do for your friends and family, so, yes, I would like to see that very much! I’m not incredibly familiar with this particular Elgar work, but I purchased a recording of it today to prepare. (I am most familiar with Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85, specifically through Jacqueline du Pré’s stunning interpretation with conductor Sir John Barbirolli and the London Symphony Orchestra. While we’re off topic, if you want to watch a sad little documentary about a cellist, I highly recommend Jacqueline Du Pre: In Portrait. Spoiler alert! She has MS and dies young! GAH.) Anyway, if you have attended or participated in a graduation ceremony, you’re down with Elgar. His Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D includes the Elgar-Benson joint Land of Hope and Glory which is probably what we all know as the graduation march.

Holy cow, you guys! The CSO is probably the finest orchestra in North America. I can’t believe that I will leave work, grab dinner, and stroll down the block to see some of the world’s best musicians! I’ll have my glasses by then, so I should be able to see the enormously talented string section from my gallery seat!

Little Corn Island, Nicaragua, originally uploaded by katiejohnston.

I’m bored, so I’m finally sorting out the hundreds of photos that I have on various drives and memory cards.

I was clearing photos from my phone this morning and found a couple of pictures from my trip to LA last Thanksgiving. During that trip, SJ’s firm was in the process of moving to a new building. We went into her new office that weekend to unpack a few things because she needed to be in court on Monday morning. It would have been a drag to have started the week in a disorganized office.

As a guest in the building, I needed to present my driver’s license to security. I received this ticket which admitted me past the turnstiles to the elevator bank. Then we went to floor 15 and had a fine time unpacking and visiting with other people who were trying to get a jump on the week, too.

When I returned home, I put the ticket in a box where I keep other pieces of ephemera. One day, I’ll look at the ticket again and think about how cold and windy it was that day. Or how SJ’s coworkers seemed really nice. And then I’ll remember that we had great ramen a little later. Maybe that’s a bit odd, but I like making a place for seemingly unimportant events. I like the story that is being told through those small moments. They make a life along with the weddings and babies and promotions and graduations and Thanksgiving turkeys.

This is the view from SJ’s office in downtown LA. I think that it is a pretty nice view.

+Why couldn’t the American bear get a job in Austrailia?

+Because he wasn’t koala-fied!

Oh, boy. I really wanted Girl Talk to be amazing. I spent most of Saturday predicting the points at which I was sure my face would actually melt off (Bounce That, Make Me Wanna, anything with Gucci Mane FOR SURE). I even made a preemptive apology to my +1 because I thought I was probably going to lose my mind a little bit. Unfortunately, an obnoxious crowd, sparse album play, and my own grandiose expectations of what I thought the show would be collided for a pretty meh experience. Rats! RATS!

Highlights/lowlights

-Penguin Prison is the jam! If you have tickets to Girl Talk in another city, you should arrive at doors to see them open. I look forward to seeing Penguin Prison (the cutest and iciest of all prisons!) at a later date.

-The first 10 minutes of Girl Talk’s act was pretty rad. Gillis does a nice job of getting everyone pumped up and I liked the slow build to “Girl Talk! Girl Talk! Girl Talk! GIRL TALK! GIRL TALK!”. I think Oh No (Black Sabbath/Ludacris) opens most every show on this tour and it’s great. Overall, watching him work is unbelievable. Physically, he’s a mad man behind the MacBooks and awfully good looking. I mean, really. Gregg Gillis is dreamy as shit.

-For the most part, Gillis does not play his albums. I knew this going in, but I didn’t believe it. In fact, I figured most of the “I don’t just press play on my MacBook” talk was, um, just talk to satisfy skeptics who assumed that pressing play would make a live show less than live. Nope! It’s true. He doesn’t press play. All of the sweet tracks you’ve come to know and love on the albums are replicated in very small and unsatisfying ways during the live show. At best, I felt like I heard :30-1:30 intervals of recognizable material slammed into some other shit that was beat-matched, but nonsensical (Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On A Prayer was presented unaltered where Black Rob should have been, for example). Or I’d hear Missy Elliot’s Gossip Folks for 2:00 *without* any Daft Punk (around the 4:20 mark from All Day’s Get It, Get It). I mean, it was fine, I guess. I wish I could tell you that the crowd popped off when Cyndi Lauper, Ghost Town DJ’s, and Young Dro/Gucci Mane hit, but it didn’t happen because we didn’t get to hear it. I heard a lot of big jams from All Day, but not necessarily in any recognizable order or in their mashed-up manifestations.

I didn’t know how invested I was in the craft of the album until I didn’t get to hear much of it. I have spoken to other folks who are certain that Girl Talk is one of the best live shows they’ve ever seen. I think wanting to hear more straight takes from the albums puts me in the minority. It seems like an uncool thing to want. Oh well.

-OLD ALERT! My +1 and I left after the first hour because neither of us wanted to spend our evenings at what ended up being a terrible frat party. Seriously, it was gross. This brings me to the general malaise of Charleston’s roaming packs of 18-24 year olds who attend the College of Charleston.  They’re horribly spoiled, redneck brats who behave as if they’ve never been anywhere before. At every opportunity, they act like clowns. All of them. No exceptions. The venue happened to be within walking distance of C of C. Blerg.

Misc.

-OLD ALERT, pt II/PSA: I forgot my ETYPlugs and am now experiencing what is definitely the worst case of temporary hearing loss that I have ever had. This is the first time I have felt like I may have done serious damage to my hearing. I’m sure everything is fine, but the temporary loss freaks me out. Spend $11 to take care of your ears. You’re not getting any younger.

-I enjoyed the strobes and fun lasers and I really liked the confetti cannon! It snowed confetti! I loved looking up and seeing it floating down through the fake fog and lights. I wish I had a picture of it. My good seats paid off in confetti snow.

:-/

So. Once I got right with dreamy Gregg Gillis not playing his records, I was left with an incredibly loud, mediocre dance club filled with douchey greeks doing coke out of Ziploc bags (true story!). I can’t make that more than just okay. 2.5/5 stars.

Here are some pictures! Aren’t the colors pretty?

I have been spending an hour or two a day working on my one big goal for 2011: relocating to a big city. My guess is that this will take most of the year. I have no doubt that it will happen, but it is going to take a while.

Relocation is much harder work than I anticipated and it means that other things (like mixtapes) are on hold until I feel confident that I am doing everything I can do to meet my bigger goal. I realized over Christmas holiday that I concoct little art projects, take lessons (cello! sailing!), or go on rad ski vacations to distract myself from bigger projects/problems.

I guess what I’m really saying is that I’m going to be super boring while I focus all of my energies on relocation.