The Violent Femmes concert was great.

Eugene Chadbourne opened. He is a heavy distortion/bluegrass/nerd rocker who looks like Albert Einstein. He played a cover of TLC’s “Waterfalls,” and he had some of his own stuff. The lyrics were quite funny, and his fretboard skills were wonderful. At one point he had a jam session with him on the banjo and his accompaniment on the ukulele. Very nice.

Violent Femmes headlined. That was like nothing I have ever seen before. Brian Ritchie, the bassist/whatever-he-can-get-his- hands-on, is a freakin musical genius. He played three different kinds of bass guitars, two different types of wooden flutes, a one string guitar, a broomstick with some strings (At least, that’s what it looked like. I have no idea what he calls it), the xylophones (4 sticks, 2 hands, ladies and gentlemen), and a conch shell. Victor De Lorenzo, the drummer, played on a simple snare/cymbal/tom set. But sometimes he played with hangers, and during one song he played on a wooden box. Gordon Gano, the lead singer, played on an electric guitar, but he whipped out a violin for a couple songs. Eugene and his accompaniment joined them on the banjo and ukulele. Then there were the four different types of background horns. It was amazing to watch all of those musicians play together, not only on the rehearsed music, but when they would have a little jam out session. They each did their own thing, but it was all in harmony. Even though they’ve been playing together for 25 years now, it’s still amazing.

Eugene with a square guitar. I wonder if he made it, or had it custom made. Distortion pedal? Heck no! Distortion switch? Heck yes!

The Violent Femmes, all together.

Gordon, on the violin.

Brian playing the one stringed bass.

“It may appear that we are having an arguement about guitar tuning. But, in fact, we are not. All of our guitars are out of tune, so it doesn’t matter!”

Violent Femmes - Blister in the Sun

Have you ever been to Ikea? Good furniture, good decorating ideas, extremely good manipulation tactics.

So when you walk in the front doors of a certain Ikea store located in Tempe, there is food, a free child care center, and a box of maps. Ride the escalator upstairs and you come to more food and a trail with arrows directing you through the store. Now, after about the 15i (is the imaginary number acceptable in this position?) time of walking through the whole entire store, I began to catch onto those Swedes. Those clever, tricky Swedes.

Trick 1: The child care center not only takes care of your whiney kids while you’re trying to shop, but it also programs them to be future Ikea consumers. Those Swedes are reminding me of someone….*

Trick 2: Food! Everyone loves food! Who can resist a Swedish hot dog, cup of coffee, cinnamon roll, and a bag of potato chips? These food distribution spots come in handy later on. Keep reading, and you’ll understand what I mean.

Trick 3: The map conveniently puts walls where there should be an opening to the exit doors. You can’t leave if you don’t know where the doors are.

Trick 4: The arrows on the floor lead you around the whole store. They point the way to the exit, but in all actuality they just lead you around in a circle. This makes you think that you are stupid and blind, because you can’t figure out what the map is saying and you can’t see the exit doors.

Trick 5: Sappy sales people. They’re saps who don’t know what they’re talking about, but they look professional, so they must be professional**. And they are trained well. Like a true Swede, they appear passive, until they realize that you realize that the only way out is to not follow the map or the arrows. I went the opposite direction of the arrows, and all the sudden all these sales people came up, waved their arms, and forced me to follow the arrows. When I tried to escape using the entrance doors, a bunch of carts were shoved in front of me and blocked the doors.***

Trick 6: You finally see the exit doors, you run past the checkout line, and out into the fresh air! Yay! Oh no. The kid is still in the child care center. Shopping carts won’t allow you in the exit doors. You must go in the entrance doors. Good luck finding your way out.

*The Commies!
**Right?!?
***Truman, I feel for ya, buddy.

The Strokes - Last Night

Many moons ago, me and my friend Andrewlini hatched a plan to take over the world. We thought about starting with Canada. But then we realized that we need to start somewhat smaller. Plus, those canucks have hockey sticks and they aren’t afraid to use them. We Arizonians know nothing about hockey, or ice, or anything that has to do with cold.

So then we thought to take over Montana. If you think about it, there’s really nothing there but a bunch of mooses*. The only problem about taking over Montana is that the Mooses could revolt, and everyone knows that a revolting moose is one of the worse things that you could possibly come across.

Now, either as a gesture of good will, a plot to take over Arizona, or a random act of kindness, a certain person who refers to himself as _mase sent me Seinfeld Seasons 1 & 2. Maybe he is the spokes person for the Mooses and they want to make it known that they are friendly and not planning a revolt. Maybe it is part of the Mooses plot to take over Arizona and this is just a small piece of a huge puzzle. Or maybe _mase is just an extrememly nice person. Whatever the case may be, I was thrilled to open a package right as I was buried in math equations**. Thank you, very much.

I asked Andrewlini for permission to make our plot known to the world. I was feeling bad for planning the destruction of Montana after one of its residents sent me a lovely gift.

Andrewlini said, “Alitler (that’s me), that is kind of scary. I abandon the plot and you are free to make it known to the general public. This is a bad sign already. Why don’t we just take over a different place where we won’t have to worry about Mooses revolting, or people sending us nice things?”

I said, “Andrewlini, you’re extrememly right. Let’s concentrate our efforts on Rhode Island.”

*Yeah, I know that it’s spelled incorrectly. It’s supposed to be for added humor.
**I was most deffinately buried. Two text books, a stack of paper, two folders, and a binder surrounded me. Where was my calculator, I haven’t the slightest idea.

Radiohead - Karma Police

I’ve been looking for scholarships for a couple years now. It’s not an easy task, and it takes a lot more work than lifeguarding ever is. I’ve used FastWeb. I will describe how that website works. They ask you to fill out their pages and pages of forms. You tell them your age, grade, address, interests, colleges you want to attend, what you want to be when you grow up, income level, and the name of your grandma’s dead dog. I swear it’s the biggest headache.

They take that information and generate a satellite signal that interferes with your dreams. Your dreams become distorted and I had a nightmare about answering those endless questions.

The other thing they do with that information is search their database for scholarships that might pertain to you. So after a very confusing process of trying to find where my results were, they gave me this message:

CONGRATULATIONS! FastWeb was a very good servant and found 392 scholarships especially for you! You should have no problem paying for everything that you need to pay for. In fact, you can give all that remaining money to this poor illegal Chinese kid that is about to be given back to the clutches of the COMMIES*!

I was like, “Yes! Ha I’m way ahead of all those poor suckers that don’t know where to get a scholarship and have to pay for college.” So then I looked through every single one of those scholarships. It’s like a big joke for I don’t know who**. Some one, some where, is laughing at all of us poor students who thought that they had free college tuition by just filling out some forms.

Every single one of those scholarships has impossible standards for an average white girl.

*What the freak is this? The only thing that downloading free mp3’s and communism have in common is the fact that they are both being used as propaganda on this poster.
**Probably the COMMIES

*** They obviously updated the word count standard since then

Relient K - College Kids

It’s always a fun day at the pool. heh heh.

So we get there and me, Madeline, and Jack all look at the pool and say “There’s something wrong with the pool.” Laura (my coach) gives us the great-you-guys-because-you-said-that-something-is- going-to-be-wrong-with-the-pool look.

I wasn’t to keen on getting in the water for warmup. Something looked seriously wrong. I watched a bee die in 30 seconds. Usually it takes 3 minutes before they die in the water. But because I always have to be the first one in (another strange pool tradition), I got in.

The water was super cloudy and green. I popped up and said, “Something’s wrong with the water and I think there’s too much chlorine.” Madeline popped up and said “I agree.”

Laura was already mad at us for jinxing the pool and she said, “If you guys are going to complain the whole time, then why don’t you go check the chemicals.” So after 15 seconds of consideration I got out and ran to the guard shack for the testing kit. Laura wandered over and made sure I did everything right. I knew how to do everything, but I pretended that I didn’t so if something got messed up I wouldn’t look stupid (Laura would because she walked me through it).
I rinsed the little vile.
I filled it up halfway with water that was drawn from elbow deepness.
I added two scoops of that little powder bottle.
I swirled it around.
The water turned hot pink. That signifies that there is chlorine present.
I got out the brown bottle with the yellow lid that says W0871 (or whatever it says, but it was the right bottle I promise. Laura verified that).
I added one drop and swirled. Now you swirl after each drop and count to see how many drops it takes before the water turns white (insert Michael Jackson joke here). Then you divide that number by 3 and it gives you the chlorine level.

Alisa’s Handy-Dandy Guide to Chlorine Levels
———————————————-
0= put fish in the pool and call it a pond
1= extremely low. add some chemicals and you’ll be alright.
2= no one better pee in the pool
3= normal. this number is good. aim for it.
4= high. if you have sensitive skin, don’t swim
5= illegal to swim in
6= yeah, 4 is the limit, remember?
7= if you swim in this you will have strange side effects
8= start thinking about your life as a mutant-outcast-weirdo
9= you’ll look like a cancer patient (the ones without hair)
10+= you shouldn’t even be near this. go home.

After 19 drops, and the water not even close to turning white, I said “Laura, I don’t think people should be in the water.”
She said, “Yeah, you’re probably right. But I want you guys to swim. I’ll call Robbie (head guard) and see what he has to say. Then I’ll call Campus maintenance and see if they know what’s wrong.”

Robbie described what to do and Laura was like “Yeah we did that. The chlorine is way over 7.”

Then he asked who was guard on duty.

Laura was like “thereisnone.”
She didn’t want to rat off the guards, cause we have kind of a “speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil” unwritten rule, and we all got each other’s backs.

Robbie started screaming in his South-African accent*. Then he remembered that he should quiet down becuase the border patrol might hear him and ship him back to Africa.

So we called matainence and they never showed up (surprise, surprise). The only time they show up is to dump larg buckets of chlorine into the pool and mess up the chemicals right after we swimmers adjust all the pumps and filters and make everything perfect.
There’s always something wrong with that pool I tell ya**.

*At age 19 he suddenly remembered that he had an accent.
** This picture proves it. That orange stuff is toxic mold. It only grows on that lane line hook between lanes 3 and 4. Everyday we scrub it off and everynight it grows back. It will kill us all, if the chlorine levels don’t get to us first.

Modest Mouse - Float On

Am I the only one who thinks this whole Ariel Sharon deal is getting a little out of hand?

I guess no one has that much to say about it. Everyone knows what is going on, but no one bothers to stop it. Did you guys actually read the last line of that article from BBC? It says, “However, many people who have suffered less severe strokes are able to make a full recovery.” Huh. Imagine that.

Sublime - Santaria