Archive for March, 2008

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Recovery, Pending

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Man, it has been a busy week. I haven’t had a chance to read other blogs for a while now and I’m starting to miss it – but I also won’t get to do this for a little while as I have now reached a period in the year now known moving season. I’ll take pictures of the loft I’m moving into as soon as it’s done. More on that later.

Oh yeah, in other news, I have a new song:

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Posted in Life As A Nico, Musicianship | 3 Comments »

Roboroll'd

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

It has recently come to my (and Fred’s) attention that we have found a blatant ripoff of a song in a video game.

If any one of you have ever played Chrono Trigger for the SNES then:
1. You are truly a nerd. And I salute you!
2. You may remember this song from the game.

What you may not remember is how similarly Robo’s theme resembles the Rick Astley song, “Never Gonna Give You Up.” That’s right.

Don’t believe me? Let’s do a compare and contrast:

Robo’s Theme

 Rick Astley’s Theme

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Posted in Internet, Random | 7 Comments »

Tagged! And the Late Response Thereof

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Tin Ma’am tagged me with a meme back in February that I completely overlooked until I was doing research on Technorati and it came up on my user profile (hooray for connectivity!). So I guess I have to present 7 random facts about myself. Here goes:

  • I can’t grow a mustache or a beard. So I’m usually pretty clean-shaven. Usually.
  • I don’t flirt. Ever. I mean what I say, and I say what I mean – no loaded meanings.
  • When I start coding, it is very difficult for me to stop.
  • When I start writing music, it is very difficult for me to stop.
  • I always let people bum cigarettes off of me. I’ve never denied someone a smoke.
  • Because I feel I have a good outlook on life, I am rarely sad or depressed. I am pragmatic with this optimism, however. I’m not chipper, just not sad. It annoys some people that I rarely feel anger or sadness, but I am a ray of fucking sunshine, dude. Can’t do anything about it.
  • I tend to employ polysyllabic words more frequently when I drink a lot, in an attempt to not seem drunk. I guess now the cat’s out of the bag.

And there we go. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

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Posted in Internet, Random | 1 Comment »

How Many Are You? (Plug-In Post to a post by d)

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

d posted a great question, and as many bloggers are into the whole self-awareness thing, I myself have come upon a discovery.

I am many, indeed. But I didn’t know I was this many!
(more…)

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Posted in Life As A Nico | 1 Comment »

Another Weekend Behind Me

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

In chronological order:

Friday can mostly be attributed to musical at the Pasadena Playhouse that Stuart treated us (us = Fred, Evan, me) to see called Mask, which was originally a 1985 movie. Would I recommend it? Meh. No complex conflicts between any characters or ideas, over-the-top and grandiose songs written exclusively in the major scale, and more so than anything else: cheezy cheezy cheezy. I particularly enjoyed Stuart’s later described train of thought during the opening number: Oh crap. My friends are going to kill me. All in all it was enjoyable escapism, but nothing as intellectually or even emotionally stimulating as what Stuart usually takes us to see at the Playhouse.

Saturday gave me a night at work I’m going to remember for a while, because not only was the music my particular cup of tea, but was another night that helped to restore my faith in underground music in Los Angeles. When only one local band is able to support a bill almost entirely made up of touring acts, and is able to generate enough money at the door so that all five touring bands were able to take some gas money on their way out.

Men of the group Beware of Safety, I raise my goblet to the gods of rock that guide your path. May you slay many a dragon.

For those of you interested in the bands that played that night, or are even just interested in ENORMOUS crescendos, I recommend taking a listen to the following acts:

If it helps, all of the guys in these bands are nice people who are also good drinking company.

And yes, there were six bands in our tiny little bar on Saturday. That meant that after cleaning up after the show, dropping my brother off, and then driving back to my apartment, I got to bed around 5 AM. And I wonder how my circadian cycle is always messed up…

Sunday was spent mostly doing catch-up freelance and laundry. The only other thing of note was going out for sushi.

And now the work week is in mid-flight, and this week has been particularly intense. How do I have time to blog? Well, this what I do when I watch progress bars.

10%…. 30%…… 35%……………….

…38%……

…38.6%…

…

…

Screw this, I’m getting a coffee.

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Posted in LA Underground, Life As A Nico, Music Biz | No Comments »

Pain, Pain, Go Away

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Pill Bottle
That is so not even my type of pun. But it seems my everyday sense of judgment is clouded with a thick fog made out of stupid gas when I am affected by chemicals.

This reminds me how I always like to say that I get along with chemicals. I am easily affected. I smoke cigarettes, I drink coffee daily, I enjoy nursing a whiskey on the rocks, I have ingested more types of recreational drugs than I can count on my fingers. And oh, do I feel it.

As such, minor problems like headaches or sniffles simply disappear when I take over the counter medicines like ibuprofen / acetaminophen and dextromethorphan.

I should explain that I recently had a muscle spasm to the immediate right of my upper spine, which is making it very uncomfortable to stay asleep for long periods of time and to stare at a computer monitor at work. I can also tilt my head no further than about 60° in any given direction.

But the drugs are helping. And my roommates are also helping; they agreed to step on my back when I simply need the muscles to get smoothed out.

I think Stuart has taken a funny picture of Fred stepping on me. Maybe I should ask him for it so I can post it here.

A tendency towards chemical reactions. This means that if left alone, I am an unstable element. I bet that’s true in a less allegorical sense, too.

But what about you all? Who is chemical sensitive? I wonder if this is a common thing to be, or some kind of prelude to a mutant superpower.

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Posted in Life As A Nico | 7 Comments »

Getting Kicked In the Nuts

Monday, March 10th, 2008

If you’ve ever had a group conversation that involves both genders, and even if you’ve got some well-read feminists and those who had taken gender studies classes, you might end up in this argument: Men/Women have it worse than [respective foil].

Of course, this discussion is never going to have a definitive ending, but it always ends up going this route:

  • [Gender] has it worse than [opposite gender]
    • Women: Have periods, more surface area to shave, painful footwear, stereotypes, social constructs, social rules for being appealing.
    • Men: Have these embarrassing things called erections, must be chivalrous and sensitive, too many douchebags in existence to bring down the rest of the gender, stereotypes, social constructs, social rules for being appealing.
  • Women bear children, and men will never know that pain.
  • Men can get kicked in the nuts, and women will never know that pain.

Since there’s no way to live two entire lives of both genders, nobody can gauge the argument, especially since it’s largely just a qualitative and relative argument. Women usually “win” this argument though, since women usually win arguments as a default.

But in the end, inevitably someone talks about kicking or getting kicked in the nuts.

Try this conversation sometime. No matter how heated it gets, I stand by my hypothesis.

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Posted in Random | 9 Comments »

ow ow ow ow ow ow

Monday, March 10th, 2008

My neck is really sore, and I don’t have any idea how it got that way. I can barely look down. This is very strange.

Posted in Life As A Nico, Random | 3 Comments »

The Inevitable and The Invincible / Cupcake, I'm in Love

Thursday, March 6th, 2008
We were discussing how a coworker’s lunch here at work was entirely comprised of a cupcake, and were joking about how “Oh, I think that’s a song!” and then for some reason, came up with the idea that the Cure wrote a song about cupcakes. So, during a cigarette break, I had “Friday, I’m In Love” running through my head but had wondered how it would sound if I replaced every day of the week with “cupcake.” The results are quite silly:

I don’t care if cupcake’s blue
cupcake’s grey and cupcake too
cupcake, I don’t care about you
It’s cupcake, I’m in love

cupcake you can fall apart
cupcake, cupcake break my heart
Oh, cupcake doesn’t even start
It’s cupcake I’m in love

cupcake, wait
And cupcake always comes too late
But cupcake, never hesitate…

I don’t care if cupcake’s black
cupcake, cupcake – heart attack
cupcake, never looking back
It’s cupcake, I’m in love

cupcake, you can hold your head
cupcake, cupcake stay in bed
Or cupcake – watch the walls instead
It’s cupcake, I’m in love

cupcake, wait
And cupcake always comes too late
But cupcake, never hesitate…

Dressed up to the eyes
It’s a wonderful surprise
To see your shoes and your spirits rise
Throwing out your frown
And just smiling at the sound
And as sleek as a shriek
Spinning round and round
Always take a big bite
It’s such a gorgeous sight
To see you eat in the middle of the night
You can never get enough
Enough of this stuff
It’s cupcake, I’m in love

Well, if you’re single, this post from Chelsea (Who’s a Chelsea fan? I am. Like, religiously.) can seriously flush your dopamine levels, make you hang your head, and then sigh deeply.

In less words less dressed up: It can make you lonely.

As effective as she is as a blogger, and as much as that sense of longing is kind of painful to experience in the same way that starving is to eating, I find this sensation to be a great instigator to creativity. This may mean that I’m not so frustrated with it as much as others who let it eat away at their respective cores. Maybe I like my core getting eaten.

…

Okay let me paraphrase that: I like this feeling because I believe pain makes great art. I mean, GREAT art. I think that experiencing and knowing this feeling enough to be able to communicate it is particularly useful for artists. There’s a kind of invincibility that comes with being able to express these kinds of thoughts in creative mediums. Further, it’s an art that will never get old because people will inevitably feel this but may not ever admit it so openly. In artistic endeavors, admitting it is half of the challenge. When you let your guard down and spill your aching onto melodies; when your written or spoken words are laced with a youthfully anxious unrest and you can wring sour desolation from them; when you crack open your heart and smear its entrails onto a canvas … you can really create something good.

I think that because I believe this firmly, it explains my inclination to push relationships away from me because I feel like I need to be lonely* in order to be myself.

Maybe I’m perversely a masochist, but I hope to know this feeling of loneliness for a long time to come.

After all, there’s art to be made.

*Wherever you are, I’m sorry, Kelly. You were better off with someone else, anyway.

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Posted in Life As A Nico, Musicianship | 4 Comments »

Airplanes

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Okay! Thanks to some really rly rly good criticism based on what Fred and Karmen said about the original draft, here’s the full instrumentals for the newest draft of the song from last month, airplanes:

    Liner Notes

  • I still need lyrics. I wonder what this song will be about? Since I named the save file as “airplanes” I can only assume it will be about exactly that… but what to say about them? Lyrical content ideas encouraged; ideas for melodies gladly accepted into consideration.
  • Quiet (verse?) part extended
  • A real drum set added! Okay, well the samples are from a real drum set, but I think it sounds close to a real drummer.
  • Rhythm guitar and real bass added, for fleshing out the bottom end
  • In lieu of a piano, I used a clean guitar for twinkle-y sounds. Not too overbearing, I think. Maybe one day I’ll get a hold of a real piano – but I can’t stand not using a Grand (or even a baby grand) because that’s the only piano tone I really really like. So possibly that will be in the next revision.
  • Ditched! The song ends the same way it did before, only with a lot more thrown in to it before it all cuts off. Now, with even more ditching.

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Posted in Music Biz | 4 Comments »

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