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My friends in A Great Big Pile of Leaves released their second album today last week, and much like their first, it's brilliant. You're Always On My Mind is a summer fun album and I hope you listen and enjoy because only awesome people will, and I trust that anybody reading here is awesome.
I'm glad such a great group of guys actually makes good music; it would be sad to tell you about crappy music. Instead, I feel very altruistic in my promotion of them to you. You're welcome!
Also, Pitchfork posted about them. As Ty Ty, friend and AGBPOL drummer would say, "BOOM!"
iTunes / Amazon / Sweet Topshelf Vinyl Package!!!!
1. It's two whole months of him gone!
2. You've been to a music festival, right? Does your phone ever work/get a good signal?
3. It's in the summer, in what some might consider unbearable heat. (Las Vegas date of Warped this year had an asphalt temperature that was reportedly 154 degrees, just saying.) Please pair this condition with lack of regular showers.
I'm glad such a great group of guys actually makes good music; it would be sad to tell you about crappy music. Instead, I feel very altruistic in my promotion of them to you. You're welcome!
Also, Pitchfork posted about them. As Ty Ty, friend and AGBPOL drummer would say, "BOOM!"
iTunes / Amazon / Sweet Topshelf Vinyl Package!!!!
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When Jesse first told me his band would be on the entire Warped Tour, I probably just said something like "ohhhhh really? That's...interesting..." and looked down at a thread on my jeans intently or stared at a fly buzzing around like I've seen Pee Wee do or laughed and skipped out of the room. Sometimes it's hard for me to hide my emotions. Honestly, it's a great festival, and I went to a few of them a decade or so ago (OLD), but here's what sucks about having a husband on the Warped Tour, since I'm asked a lot:
1. It's two whole months of him gone!
2. You've been to a music festival, right? Does your phone ever work/get a good signal?
3. It's in the summer, in what some might consider unbearable heat. (Las Vegas date of Warped this year had an asphalt temperature that was reportedly 154 degrees, just saying.) Please pair this condition with lack of regular showers.
Take all that together and then you've got Jesse and I trying to talk every day like we do, but sometimes he's frustrated because the tour bus' AC just broke and sometimes I'm frustrated because I just got eight texts from him five hours after he'd sent them. Our phone calls don't work. The e-mails get to each other late. We're shouting "What!?" into our phones from hundreds of miles away.
And it just makes me sigh. You have now seen the window into my frustrations!
However, just as much as it can be infuriating, it's on-another-level-awesome when we DO get a clear signal and/or when he has a day off and we can videochat. [Sidenote: sometimes we'll be videochatting and I'll be talking about things people talk about and then he'll say something to someone across the room when you thought you were only talking to him and he was the only one that could hear you. Then he turns the computer around and the whole band is lounging in the hotel room, maybe they had been listening. Mortification sets in.]
Jesse also enjoys the fun of being on stage, always. I know he's had a great Warped experience as far as the music and the fans and the signings go! And the evening poker games...
And also, sometimes, he takes a plane from Warped Tour to show up for our best friends' rehearsal dinner and wedding! At the rehearsal dinner:
I may...or may not be...excited...?
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But first! There was the ceremony, and then dinner. Throughout I was intensely nervous about the speech I would be giving as the co-maid of honor. I'd barely had time to practice in the past couple of days with everything going on, and I had no idea when the emcee would be calling my name. Luckily, I had this chap next to me keeping me calm:
That's my "I'm nervous but hiding it with slight open mouth smile because I actually want to kind of scream" face. Luckily, the speech went well, people clapped, we toasted, I melted into a puddle of relief in the middle of the floor, per usual. And then I could let loose. Like so:
My sense of balance in the photo looks great and also a misleading depiction of my abilities. I probably fell over in the next frame. My legs still hurt, my voice was slightly hoarse. I may be dehydrated. I don't know. The symptoms of having too much fun vary.
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Remember when I wrote about the chocolate mousse exercise? I'll have you know that my cooking is still going strong, and I especially liked having a feast ready for Jesse when he came home last week. My cooking has been so consistent, in fact, that I invested in the above apron. The weekend at home may have kickstarted my cooking streak, but probably also Hannibal. Anyway, I wrote up the recipe for my friend Kelly's lifestyle blog! CHECK IT OUT HERE! And...always check her blog out, it's so cute. [There's even a photo of the finished product.]
I also have the second part of Jessica Thinks She Can Cook ready to go in my head. Thumbs up for my un-suaveness in the kitchen, am I right?!
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You know what? I cry a lot. Mainly at movies, music, tv, etc. I cry when a huge group of people come together for one reason. I may or may not have been known to cry walking down the aisle for my two best friends. I cried walking down my own aisle. So, here's my cry story from a couple of weeks ago.
I was watching this movie that was somewhat relatable culturally, so I was thinking of my family and loved ones a lot while watching it. There were a lot of heartstrings being pulled. Strings that made me bawl alone on my couch, clutching to my cat. It's based on one of my favorite books, so I knew what was going to happen, and everything that made me cry in the book made me cry in the movie. I don't want to give the name of the movie currently because I might be spoiling it by my next description...
In the film, a husband and wife have moved to the U.S. from another country. Many years pass and they have two kids who have moved out and graduated college. The husband has to go to another state for a business trip that will take a few months. While there, he goes to the hospital for a stomach ache, and calls his wife to let her know. She expects a call later when he gets back to his apartment, but she receives no call. She calls the hospital and is trying to spell out her foreign last name to various hospital workers in order to get some information. Someone figures out who she's looking for and without ceremony tells her that her husband died a few hours ago. She cannot comprehend the news. She has nobody to talk to, she doesn't know what to do. She's alone in the house and she walks from room to room and finally just goes outside to the front lawn in the middle of the freezing night and lays down and screams.
I did the puddle trick again on my couch. This time it was a puddle of grief. But I like crying. I enjoy catharsis. I went to bed smiling after talking to Jesse, my parents, and holding on to Pee Wee. Sad crying usually lets me know that there are things I should be happy and grateful about; it's a reminder. Happy crying just makes me believe in humanity and love and all those good things. I think I happy cry a lot more than sad cry.
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And now for something completely different. Oddly enough I've been listening to Kanye West's new album Yeezus the past few weeks. Yes, surprising. I don't much listen to rap and I've never been fond of West's personality. However, this album... it grabbed me from the start. I liked the sounds. The groom from earlier, David Galea, liked the sounds too but he was more eloquent about it for this piece in a New York street culture blog called Fourth and Sixth. You should check it out.
Any opinions on Yeezus? I often find myself bopping my head going "I just talked to Jesus / He said 'What up Yeezus?'" and laugh. Just laaaaauuuuugh.
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I have this friend from middle school, Jon Davis...I don't think I've seen him since 8th grade, both of us being military kids and all and moving every couple of years. However, social media had the ability to keep us in touch and now he's a filmmaker, so we have common interests. He posted this short he directed and wrote called Vows. It's embedded above. It's part of an interesting web series about the end of the world. There's not really any need to watch the first five episodes of the series, this being the sixth of Withered World, since they are all capsule episodes. I liked it a lot.
To be honest, I wondered at the end if I was feeling like a happy cry or a sad cry reaction. Maybe both.
, 
, 
! The band 
- great, sometimes emotional, but always eye-opening reads
