adrian is rad

Just a quick reminder that the the cover for covers contest #11, continuous hit music is due next Monday at midnight.

Get yours done now, or get psyched to hear a new set of covers.

I’m going to do a radio show of good Christmas music for my last show before Christmas, December 22, 6-9am.

I’m looking for suggestions for songs or albums. Requirements: Christmas songs, mentions Christmas, otherwise appropriately themed. Genre’s not as important, but it’ll mostly be rock.

So far, my list looks something like:

• “Christmas Card” Jimmy Eat World
• Sufjan Steven Christmas EPs
• the Motown Christmas album
• the Phil Spector Christmas Album
• the Low Christmas EP
• the Pedro the Lion Christmas 7″‘s (I have one and I’ll hopefully get the new one at the David Bazan concert on Sunday)
• “Brick” by Ben Folds Five
• “Happy Xmas (The War is Over)” Polyphonic Spree version
• Alfred Reed’s Russian Christmas Music (likely the recording by USC HS, ha!)
• “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Death Cab for Cutie
• “Christmas Song” by Mogwai
• the Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown Christmas Music (like just “Skating”)
• “Run Away with Me” Jens Lekman

Any other suggestions? In this case it’s equally important that it be “good” and “Christmas.”

I did an awesome Thanksgiving day show with my mom. The playlist had a ton of Motown and oldies music and we talked about our thanksgiving and read some of our recipes that we always use.

This week I’m back to normal—the Lunch Special with a guest (George Houle from the Music Dept.) Tuesday noon-1 and indie rock on Thursday morning.

[Update:] Jesse‘s nice and has offered to host the mp3 of the Thanksgiving show. It is here. I’ll only leave it up for about a week or two. It’s a big file, approx 218 MB.

So I changed the theme around a bit so now it has a picture I took and says “adrian is rad” now.

I’m going to change the stuff around on the left side to be more user-friendly and sometime when I have time I might make it so that the “polaroid” is different every time you load the page.

Yeah, so I upgraded to wordpress version 1.5.x today. Turns out that my nice fence stylesheet thing doesn’t immediately work with the new ‘theme’ thing WP has and my attempts to convert it have thusfar failed.

So I have this theme that I like in general but of course the specifics won’t work at all. I’ll probably be changing and redoing it over the next few days. Does it totally suck?

In other news, users of WP 1.5, what are good/ necessary plug ins?

In Pittsburgh, Eat ‘n Park is a family restaurant chain. They have and are well-known for their Smiley Cookies. These things have been around for years and years. People will quite often buy them to go or get one after they finish their meal.

My friend Dave was at another Pittsburgh family restaurant chain, King’s and he tells me they’ve introduced the Frownie which you may guess is a brownie with a frowning face on it.

He also tells me that they have Frownie shirts for sale. I am definitely going to have to pick one of those up while I’m in Pittsburgh because that item is so very Pittsburgh it’s rediculous. People are going to ask what the shirt is about and it’s going to take 10 minutes for me to explain!

I went amish style for a bit. I shaved shortly after taking this picture last night:

That is all.

There was this girl I had a crush on for most of Spring 2003. We went to concerts together. I made her a mixtape, because we all know that mixtape=love (these guys think so too).

I found a copy I’d made yesterday while organizing my CDs. I’d forgotten about it completely but now I’m listening to it at work. I probably made this early May 2003.

The tracklist:

1. Lion’s Mane – Iron and Wine
2. Ohio – Damien Jurado
3. New Partner – Palace Brothers
4. Accident – Clem Snide
5. I See a Darkness – Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
6. Most of October, All of November – P:ano
7. Silvery Light of a Dream, Pt II – the Apples in stereo
8. If We Can Land a Man on the Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart – Beulah
9. Hideaway – Olivia Tremor Control
10. A Duel Will Settle This – Mates of State
11. Sleep the Clock Around – Belle & Sebastian
12. Summer is Coming – Matt Pond PA
13. Away, Into the Light – One AM Radio
14. Who Am I? – Seldom
15. Bad Diary Days – Pedro the Lion
16. No Solid Ground – ms. john soda
17. This Place is a Prison – The Postal Service
18. Consequence – The Notwist
19. Ruby’s Wishes – Unwed Sailor
20. Stanley Kubrick – Mogwai

It’s a nice mix of songs. I still listen to and like most of these songs and bands quite a bit.

I made it on a friend’s computer because I didn’t have a laptop yet so I copied all the songs to the computer individually and then made the CD from that. She loved it; she bought three CDs of bands on the CD within a week because she liked them so much.

She was not smitten with me, though.

I watched Raging Bull from Netflix on Friday and Jarhead yesterday.

I don’t quite remember why I put Raging Bull on my netflix queue. It’s apparently one of the best sports movies and best all around movies ever. Robert De Niro plays real life boxer Jack La Motta and Martin Scorsese directs. It was well-acted and directed well, but it just never engaged me.

Jarhead, on the other hand, I found engaging from just about minute one. It’s about a kid of 20, “Swoff”, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who has entered the Marine, trains as a sniper and goes to the Middle East in the first Gulf War conflict. There’s something about the characters that one can relate to.* In a way it’s not that political, echoing what one character says: “Fuck politics. We’re here [at war]. All the rest is bullshit.” It’s not the best movie ever, but I thought the direction (by Sam Mendes, who did American Beauty and Road to Perdition) was good, some great visuals. The acting by the principles was solid across the board and Peter Sargaard, I thought, put in a stand out perforamance as the guy who takes Jake’s character under his wing. Some war movies are all about the plot, the mission (the Great Escape, Saving Private Ryan), and some more about the psyche and the aftermath of war (Apocalyspe Now, for example). This one was more toward the later, but had enough of the former that it kept moving.

*I should note that I’ve always had a slight thing for the military. I even briefly thought about going to the Naval Academy… I certainly don’t like all or even most war movies, though.

I still buy lots of CDs, despite the fact that it’s soooo 90s. I bought one of those 128 CD cases today and transfered all the CDs I’ve bought since I moved out here into it (plus a couple from before when I moved). Turns out it almostly exactly filled the booklet.

There were a number of CDs I’d forgotten that I had and at least a few that I know I have but can’t find:

• Ghost of Great Highway by Sun Kil Moon found it!
• Emblems by Matt Pond PA
• Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens (the case is here but the CD is not!)

Can anyone take a picture or tell me what is on the CD itself for Seven Swans?

Steelers lost to the 2-7 Ravens to drop to 7-3 (which is still tied for lead in their division).

Interestingly, all of their losses have come in overtime.

Maddox, their 3rd string QB, actually did okay—for a while there he seemed to missing every receiver he threw to, but he and the team seemed to refocus in the 4th quarter to tie the game.

I have a little bit of a pit in my stomach when I think about the Colts (10-0) game next week on Monday Night Football. The Steelers haven’t really come up big in the tough games since last year’s regular season victory over the Patriots.

sunday to saturday:

• 1x 2.6 mile run
• 2x 2.1 mile run
• 2x 1.9 mile walks (to, from work)
• 2x 0.5 mile swim

also: lots of heavy lifting and moving at work.