Mass Adulation - Not So Funny?

I apologize for neglecting our precious blog for too long! I really have no excuse other than that I wasn't in the mood for writing. I had a few days off from work and my room desperately needed my attention, so at the prodding of my blogger, I cleaned it out. Completely.

Like really.

During this successful attempt at being organized (about time, too), I made the decision to frame all of the photos that Steph took at the concert and put them up on my wall. I knew that this could either turn out to be something that I loved looking at everyday OR a constant reminder of what could have been. The good news? It's surprisingly not the latter.


My mom kindly agreed to accompany me to our Wal-Mart (classy) after I picked her up from work one day to buy my picture frame. I didn't want my seven favorite pictures to hang separately, because both I AND good ol' Ben Franklin know that things just don't work best that way. I opted for a lovely wooden frame that holds eight pictures for the everyday low price of $12. I then went home to eagerly install both the pictures and my lovely House of Blues brochure with sweet little Ben Goldwasser's signature on it (thanks, Steph!) Do I really even need to explain further? It adds an unmeasurable amount of character to my room.




Please excuse the flash delirium, I'm not too skilled with the camera.

Look Down From Your Temple

For reasons known only by the blessed gods of music and the cosmic fates, I stumbled across MGMT early on, just as they were on the cusp of mainstream success. I had heard some of their songs surprisingly enough through YouTube and thought I would buy their debut album on a whim. It also didn't hurt that Andrew (ever so) slightly resembled another obessesion of mine: Joseph Gordon-Levitt; at least on the "Oracular Spectacular" cover. And of course we know this blog became a product of that 'whim' approximately two and a half years later.

Maybe it's because we ourselves don't possess an inkling of musical talent ( I'm speaking for both my comrade and I, but she could be hiding an operatic voice from me) that we treasure music as dearly as we do. We are as possessive of our favorite bands as we are possessed by their sweet sounds. And as of late, this possession has become ever more prominent (like sweet little Ezra's nose; thanks crack cocaine!) and developed into the dreaded seventh sin : SNOBBERY. It might be the seventeenth, I wouldn't know because my Bible is in Spanish.

While reminiscing tonight over past farewells in old autograph books and successfully avoiding any real contact with the outside world on a Saturday afternoon, my fellow good time girl and I found lyrics we had written in the margins and almost religiously over any blank space. They included some good ol' RedHotChiliPeppers and Arcade Fire tunes, but also words from "Time to Pretend" and "Electric Feel". This was in 2008. We were 14. I don't want to toot our own horns (partially because I played the flute) , but if we have grown to cherish other MGMT songs of more substance (not to say that we DON'T cherish the hits!), I'm not exactly going to bond with your stripper ass over these TWO(techincally SIX) YEAR OLD songs that you just learned the words to. Or commend your taste in music when you reccommend 'Kids' to me. Or smile endearingly at your tye-dye headband. SORRY. You're a little late in this game already and you don't even have the decency to listen to "Congratulations"? My lip can't curl in disgust fast enough at the thought of it. Do you know what SHAME is?

It was these recent occurences that left a dead weight in my stomach and I came to realize that after I left my cocoon of music-sharing bliss with a few selected souls, I have emerged a secret, sinister snob. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain I'm one of the kids that other snobs look down upon because I don't listen to their precious OBSCURE and INDIE bands, much less call bands 'INDIE'; which MGMT is NOT. That's just poor anti-hipster taste. But now I'm just rambling.

P.(M).S - ETERNAL thanks to all three followers who are reading. Please don't think I survive off of a haterade liquid diet; I actually love food(sorry hipstahs), especially that of the dessert variety and I do have love and appreciation deep within me that I will share in a later post, SOON.

Endless Form, Endless Time

Sadly, this blog has helped me realize a lot about myself. I don't want you readers to think that we overuse the word "obsession" for lack of a better, less intense synonym; when I say obsession, dictionary.com's definition does a really swell job of capturing our state of being:

"Obsession- n. The domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc."

Persistent desire? I could think of quite a few, but I'll, well...spare you. But don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. (Kathryn Bielamowicz?) If you've seen Andrew or Ben (my two personal faves), you'll understand exactly where I'm coming from.

Like all good things in my life, I can pretty much trace most of my memorable middle and high school happenings to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They were my very first obsession, and thank God they came my way by chance: six months prior, I was stuck with mixes that I had made that included artists like the Black Eyed Peas, Chamillionaire, and A.F.I. Yes, all on the same CD. It was by a stroke of luck that led me to discover both them and my co-blogger; we had known each other for almost two years but had rarely spoken until we found out that we had both freshly fallen in love with RHCP. Instead of spending the summers of our youth outside playing on playgrounds, with animals or digging up worms, we were passing by humid Texas days in the comfort of our air-conditioned rooms firing links back and forth on AIM with "RARE RHCP INTERVIEW CIRCA 1985" in the title bar. (Thanks to AIM, we're great typists and have a decent command of English grammar. We even know the difference between the English and French spelling of center). I assure you, either of us could tell you almost anything you ever wanted to know about RHCP, and where one of us lacks, the other picks up the slack. (Slack and lacks have the same 5 letters! Who KNEW?) I just finished Anthony Kiedis's autobiography poignantly entitled "Scar Tissue" for the 6th time on the way back from L.A., and I'm sure Ms. Estephanie's read count is up there, too. So okay, maybe we have obsessive personalities, but I really don't think that they've adversely affected our lives; our grades haven't suffered (although our social lives most definitely have), and I feel like because of them, we have a widened musical knowledge and an appreciation for different artists.

Going to L.A. was an absolute dream come true. It was my equivalent of a kid going to Disneyland for the first time (I did happen to go; they have amazing ice cream, and I even saw Ariel!). There has to be something to a city that continues to be the focal point of so many songs and movies and still stands strong as the quintessential representation of 21st century Americana. I did the expected: I walked down Hollywood Boulevard and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, I walked, but didn't shop, on Rodeo Drive, visited Sunset Boulevard, and went to Venice Beach. I had previously made a list of all of the seemingly pointless places that only a dedicated RHCP fan would understand the significance behind, and was lucky enough to find most of them.

Before I left, I asked Ms. Co-Blogger here if she had any special places that she was yearning for me to visit for her. After pulling her beloved copy of "Scar Tissue" out of the cozy sweater that it lays dormant in when it's not being read, she told me that she wanted me to visit both Echo Park and the Greek Theatre. Echo Park has a RHCP significance as does the Greek Theatre, but the latter now more closely relates to our blog. MGMT will be playing there in a few weeks, and she wanted me to see if a poster or some other type of memorabilia was there for the taking. There wasn't, but here's what I did find, Steph:





The Red Hot Chili Peppers played here on their rise to fame, and now MGMT will be playing here on July 16. Our two favorite bands, just a few years apart. I'd say we've come full circle.