スカンクツロニクス

(Update: iTunes updated yet again and all of my problems are gone. I must have not been the only one.)

Thanks to the iTunes update I'm now incapable of plugging in my iPod or putting a CD in without my computer freezing. This led me to my old CD cases and the millions of burned discs with pink bubbly teenage letters all over them. I feel like I'll be telling my grandkids one day, "One time there was this thing called Napster and you could get whatever you wanted on the Internets for free and then we put the stuff on CD and called it burning!" Because of all of the free time I had back then (oh, those teenage years) and all of the crappy punk rock I listened to (everything imaginable), I have about 5 versions of every song ever written by bands such as, Yellowcard, Thursday, The Early November, and of course Blink-182. I'm super weird about demos and usually like them tons more than the real thing. Lo-fi non-polished music is just a lot easier for my ears to adore.

Anyways, along this nostalgic journey I ran across some local stuff from when I was in middle school and early high school. It's hard for me to even fathom all of those bands and let alone shows that were around the area back then. So I put the CD's into my record player and listened to a lot of shitty stuff but stuff that makes you want to smile, dance and get rowdy. Rubber Cement, Howaboutno, Imperfect, Katty Whompus... Anyways, to make a long story short I ended up listening to the whole Skanktronics album and then remembering their video for Circuit to the Sun. Low and behold, I find the thing on youtube. It's a real masterpiece, let me tell you. So here it is:

ラジオですか？ はい！

I'm back on air this semester at WJCU, this time with my fellow friend in music Mark. Angsty, unprofessional and nostalgic banter, ticket giveaways, and mostly music of the Indie genre, or so we're told (and the occasional pop/punk slip up). If you were uninformed, here's the info:

Something to Write Home About
Wednesday nights
8-10pm (with possible interruptions by John Carroll basketball, but I won't go into that now)
88.7fm Cleveland/Streaming @ WJCU.org

Also, our playlists are available here at radioactivity.fm.

小のイタリア

I've always had sort of a love/hate relationship with Cleveland. Throughout my younger years I lived miles and miles away in the secluded Fairport Harbor where it was painful just to venture across the dirty river into Painesville. (I don't think I ever came into direct contact with the water, and how disgusting to think that it flows into the lake.) Going back to these places now is like some strange time warp. Everything looks strange, skewed, and just plain filthy. I've always been frolicking about the Heights for as long as I can remember, especially after I triumphantly escaped Fairport in mere hours back in the summer of '02 (throwing every personal belonging into garbage bags and out of a second story window into a truck bed.*). Around the age of fourteen I was damning the renovation of Coventry along with the abolishment of the Green Tomato and blaming it on the Bush administration. Out of it all though, the biggest part of this love/hate relationship was showcased in my tour of Little Italy.

When I entered college I found myself spending nearly all of my time in an apartment above Corbo's bakery. This place was infested with anime wall hangings, dirty dishes (so dirty they were moldy), and ferrets of all things. The place more or less reminded me of the song "I love living in the city" by Fear (watch SLC Punk). I think that's what did it for me at first. Somewhat of a dream was fulfilled by that place that had always been in my mind even in my Fairport-locked youth. After a short time the euphoria suddenly vanished after it too began to look filthy and strange.

I can remember a specific night when I lay awake at around two in the morning singing along to the Dean Martin songs playing outside. I had memorized all of the words subconsciously and probably in my sleep. I'm sure no one would believe that the music at Patrizia's plays full blast throughout the night. It was demented, and after this night it was all down hill. I got sick of the same men sitting across the street at the unnamed bar obviously not letting any outsiders in. They stopped selling Orangina at Presti's. I made a movie called "The Real World Cleveland Season 173 'The Last Resort'" and submitted it to one of my Freshman English classes. Although my character is nothing like myself ("If prayers were pudding, would you eat well?"), I now see that I also had somewhat of a struggle and eventually "left the house" just as she did.



*I took a test on poverty in one of my Education classes last semester (constructed by Ruby Payne, I believe) and one of the point boosters was knowing how to move out of a house in an hour, as well as other things I learned back then and wouldn't have attributed to being impoverished if not for this test.



♪I reflected on all of this when I ventured to the Heights City Hall last Monday to pay off my pile of parking tickets. I guess that was my New Years Resolution. No more parking tickets! Hint to anyone paying parking tickets in the Heights: they hand out so many they don't even record some of them so go to city hall, give them your license plate number and be as surprised as I was. $65 poorer, I cursed Severance for well, being Severance, and cursed my car for being yet another medium for this love/hate relationship.

休暇の夢

I went back to Cold Stone Creamery to work. A job I had throughout my Junior and Senior years in high school*. Making waffle cones was once my specialty. Burning the tips of my fingers and ignoring incoming customers all to get the perfect fold (and to make sure there was no hole in the bottom of the cone. I don't think my coworkers were as considerate). This day, though, things were different. The wife of my old boss stood on guard training the new employees how to master the stone and her glare constantly flashed my way. My waffle cones looked like waffle bowls instead; lopsided and sad.

Somehow, as the day progressed I began making cheese and bean quesadillas on the machine. They, too turned out less than perfect as they were soggy and downright inedible, but I was told that this is what the people wanted and that they were fine. Taco sauce splashed everywhere and the day was foggy. "For only thirty cents more you can get almost twice the ice cream with the Love it Size," I heard my new coworkers repeat constantly. My schedule showed three and four hour shifts scattered throughout the weeks to come, but I already had blisters on my fingers.



*Not counting the one night I got fired and rehired via telephone, but that's another story.



♪One of the wonderfully ridiculous dreams I had on my vacation last week as the weather got colder and colder and I slept more and more.

ベーシェヅ

Two girls, sick and passed out in the back seat, were unable to go on. Earlier they had smoked something out of a plastic bottle and so they decided to end the night there. They made the escape the rest should have. The escape they should have all made months before when this Sunday tradition started. A couple girls and a boy were the few that remained, and at this point there was no turning back. They snorted a Vicodin in one of the stalls of the girls bathroom. Boys in the girls bathroom were the norm, as they often borrowed eye liner from girls who wore far too much of it. While fixing their hair with one hand in front of the large filthy mirror, they struggled to keep their cigarette stable in the other. Girls in the boys bathroom was the norm too, of course. They were pushed up against the wall by boys in torn up jeans and whatever else would follow they would quickly regret the next morning, even though they could barely remember anything. Maybe they would say it was rape and stick to their story after even they realized it was a lie.

One of the girls had a hand stamp that was still wet from the door where she got through as 21 with her fake ID regardless of her french braid pigtails and lack of makeup. She pressed it up against the others after they washed the thick black X's off. They all went to the bar and started double fisting PBR and Sparks tallboy's, sharing drinks, kissing each other, and big red hickeys that wouldn't fully blacken until they had to attend class early the next morning... early being 10am, of course. The rest of the night would be a blur as it always was. A few girls would scream "mozoltov" and break light bulbs in the middle of the dance floor. Glass shards would embed themselves into soles of Chuck Taylors where they would stay for years; a reminder of the mess they were once in. Lights, dancing, music, tongues, hearts, fists pumping, some chick trying to sell everyone cocaine, all right there, all so routine by then. Every week, every single sunday, all night long. Yelling "I wish i could buy back the woman you stole," they would all fall into each other's arms, completely oblivious to anything else. The music stopped at 2am and yet they wouldn't leave.

None of them knew who they were.

六月十五日、二千七

June 15, 2007.
I woke up early by the sound of an alarm, equipped with puffy eyes from crying silently the night before as you were sleeping. I was purposely trying to wake you up actually, but even if you had, you didn't say anything. At this point we were separated by pillows. I gave in to what had become more of a chore than anything. I can't remember one detail from it, just that you were behind me. A mumble of a "bye" got no reply and I tried to go back to sleep.

I don't know what went through my head at this point, but there was some kind of revelation. I got up and started rummaging through piles of clothes and things to find everything that was mine. For the month or so before this I had slowly been collecting things around that were mine in hopes of this very moment, so I was probably a little ahead of my game. I began stuffing things into my huge tote bag. Miscellaneous socks, underwear, shirts, and even a sake set and a stuffed animal. I left the stuffed animal behind with a drawing and a note. "Take care of me," it said. Is that symbolic? I happen to think so.

And so we talked and called it quits after nearly 4 years, or at least I did. Sooner or later you would agree. Of course, we couldn't talk face to face or even with spoken words so it was nothing but little fragments of text messages we sent back and forth. I filled my car with things and ran into Mike on the way out. "Hey, do you know where my DVD is?," I asked and he just said "Uhoh." But we laughed and I was so excited. I cried after I left, turning onto Clark, looking at the graffiti that wasn't so fresh anymore. I cried up until dead man's curve, then that was it. I put on Dude Ranch and turned over a new leaf. I wrote down in words that filled an entire page, "Constants aren't so constant anymore."

Work started at 5pm and I told everyone what had happened and they all congratulated me. For the past few months Holly, Anthony, and just about everyone else I worked with had listened to my fairly hidden complaints and had given me advice that I finally followed. The puffiness went down, I got invited to a party after work*, I drank my first official single beer ever, and it was all scary and new and even though I had lost the majority of my "friends" in a single day, I had made new ones just then. I drove home at 2 or 3am and listened to the play list "home."



*...by Ryan, whom I've been dating now for a while.



♪ I just felt like getting this all down as my life has completely flipped around since this day and is now completely wonderful and pretty much amazing, to tell you the truth. Also, this is a very old picture of my feet. Looks like a corpse.

ミュジクのヅレクター

In my first week of being Music Director at 88.7fm WJCU, I've been confronted by promoters asking "Have you listened to this CD yet? What did you think?". As I dig through the pile, I hope it is a CD with a description of the front that blatantly says, "Sounds like Sufjan Stevens!," or "RIYL: Belle & Sebastian or The Beach Boys!". Sadly, it's the one with a snake on the front, by a band on no label. I lie and they tell me to put it for adds.

Then they ask me what my favorite bands are. (Just a few minutes ago I was screaming Brand New lyrics into my steering wheel with my left foot pounding on the floor and my right fist in the air.) I politely say, The Shins, Belle & Sebastian, The Decemberists, Mates of State, and Death Cab for Cutie.

The thing is, I have this problem with being ridiculously obsessed with music that is nostalgic to me. It's somewhat embarrassing and I'm sure if it was music just coming out now, I would absolutely hate it. Still, lyrics like, "A freight train to the right, feeling that sting of pride, it's fucking with me, it's fucking with you" and "I've seen more spine in jellyfish, I've seen more guts in eleven year old kids," could never be replaced by anything I've listened to in recent years. I could sing every Saves the Day song in my sleep. I can't count the number of times Brand New and Taking Back Sunday lyrics have shown up in texts/IMs sent and received over the past 5 years of my life. Me and Erik used to constantly send them back and forth. Cheshire Cat is the only CD I listened to for like, a year, and the song m+m's still makes me super happy. And of course, "Well I guess it all depends, undergarments."

So, even though I may tell you these are my favorite bands, just know that I can't break away from ridiculous pop/punk/emo/whatever you call it, and that on any given day you can find me in The Heights driving around screaming along to The Get Up Kids. I absolutely love it and I can't stop!



♪ My new job is extremely amazing. I get to talk to people about music all day, get all the new CD's I want along with buttons and posters and shtuff, learn about new, amazing bands, and the list goes on.

海遊館

The sky shone blacker than it ever had before, and so in turn the lake did too. Not one thing sat around for it to try to reflect, so it just decided to give in to the nothingness. The rain fell so hard that the tops of the waves blended into the whole mess of the night making it impossible to make sense of much. Feeling safe in a car equipped with fake grapes hanging from the mirror and birds velcroed to the ceiling, I shivered with a chill, and yet the armpits of my sweater seeped with sweat. Treble, muffled tones from The Forbidden Love EP remained somewhere hidden beneath the pounding of the rain. Staring into the nothingness of the night, we waited for a fish, a log, or something to come along with one of the waves, as that dent would have told the story forever. But alas, no picture would turn out, nor a dent, but the waves quickly began to overtake the break wall, and then the car. We were but fish in a tank, and the waves nothing more than the kid at the aquarium who bangs on the glass.

We are always taught that tapping on the glass is not friendly, but in reality maybe it is all the buzz in the tank. You know, it starts a bit of gossip and excitement. Shakes things up a little. Without a little smack, tap, and shake or two of the tank every once and a while, maybe the creatures inside would get so bored, and then so depressed, that something bad would happen. I don't know what, but maybe they would just give up on life or something. Anyways, everyone complains about Ohio weather, but in all reality, what would we do without a tap of the tank every now and then? Maybe I'm a crazy fish, but I think I need it to stay sane in this town.



♪ I just came across all of these ridiculous pictures I used to take when I was in high school. About 100 were of sunsets and about another 100 were of nothing more than average trees or the view out of my apartment window. All very mediocre. I thought how strange it was that I had taken all of these pictures. Maybe they were just to validate my emoness? Whatever the case, the one above made me laugh and think back to the hours (upon hours upon hours) spent at the CEI break wall in Eastlake. In rain storms, ice storms, or just plain fishing season, I constantly found myself there staring into the lake.



*Japanese can only have a word like 海遊館, or かいゆかん, or kaiyukan. "Playing in the sea pavilion"

期末試験週

On the weekend before final exams, Seminar House IV was filled with open Genki books of all levels. Mine remained contently shut under my table on the dusty tatami mat floor. Boxes appeared in the hallway that I could not help but look at out of the corner of my eye. "Unwanted belongings". Each box was for a different type of item and solely existed because Otousan and Okaasan knew that with all the shopping bags we carried home every day, there was no way we were making it home with all of the things we arrived with. How naive we were upon our arrival, in the hundred-degree heat of KIX.

And so it was December, and like I said before, the weekend before final exams. I decided to hit up Misa on my keitai (with the few Yen I had left on it), get a haircut with her in Kyoto, and spend the rest of the weekend at her parents house in Uji (hometown of green tea ice cream). The haircut (and half of the odd experiences of that weekend, really) are part of many other stories, but the way I avoided studying for those ridiculous exams are of this one. Going to Misa's meant being in a total culture clash and language battle. Her denshi jishou was out, open, and on, right between us at all times. I have never used so many gestures in my life. It was to the point of exhaustion. More or less, the visit consisted of this: point, say a word, realize she doesn't understand, punch it into the denshi jishou and out comes the word, still, after countless hours of this she seemed somewhat confused and I would realize that there was no hope in understanding. I would find myself slipping into Engrish and almost slap myself in the face for it.* For some reason, I bonded more with her 24 year old fire fighting sister who had never taken an English class in her life, compared to Misa who had taken English for years. Like I said, culture clash/language battle, but still I packed up and went to Kyoto that weekend to escape the dreadful winding down of the Seminar House and the studying that everybody else was doing.

On Sunday I returned to the Seminar House and me and my best gaijin companion Drew decided to skip out of studying for a few hours, head out to find Heian Jingu, and more or less, take pictures of ourselves walking on rocks in ponds. This excursion resulted in us getting lost like never before. Sanjo, backwards to Shijo, Gojo, Shichijo, and God only knows where we were that day. I wore the weight of my spoken exam on my shoulders and especially on my tired legs as we walked for miles not knowing where we would arrive next. Did I mention that I also had some of the worst PMS ever? I dodged into a kimono store because Drew didn't seem to be taking action on finding reliable directions, and so I finally got the directions we needed; a map on the back of a reciept that consisted of a drawing of 2 roads and a huge torii. I had no doubt I could find the huge torii. I was determined. I had spent the last few months pining over each and every torii in Fushimi Inari Jinja. I was in the middle of a ten-page paper about the beloved torii. It was on. And so, miles upon miles later, we arrived at Heian Jingu with no idea how to get home. Hopping a bus that drove slowly through the streets and past familiar sights, we finally arrived at Kyoto station as it began to get dark out. We spent even more hours there admiring the scene from the roof and the strange Kyoto tower we had somehow never heard of. I knew that I would never have enough time or ambition to study. At that point it did not even matter. We rode the train home on a line we had never known existed, and gawked at the amazing pictures we had taken on our strange adventure.

Arriving back at the Seminar House late that night, I was finally satisfied with Japan. My eyes lit up with amazement as I looked at the pictures from the whole weekend and proceeded to feindishly post them to facebook and skype my friends back home about them. From strange beauty salons and depaato's to amazing Christmas lights and scolding hot takoyaki makers to witnessing a traditional wedding and new parts of the city, I was finally content with the "Unwanted belongings" boxes and proceeded to fill them accordingly. A clock radio, my teddy bear, and a few shirts were only the beginning of my stockpile of "Unwanted belongings".

A desk in CIE awaited me on Monday morning and my final grade for Spoken Japanese was determined: a triumphant D+.



*I brought this home with me too. I somehow began to mix my L's and my R's and using small, fragments of sentences. This was the one thing that seemed to almost work! Surely this had to reflect upon my final papers I wrote for my classes in Japan and how I couldn't bear to watch American Television when I got home.



♪ Due to my current laziness and distraction from schoolwork from mono and tonsillitis, I seem to be falling into this same study mode. I have though, gotten a ridiculous amount of useless reading done.

クリブランドが大好き！

waking up at 9am by the obnoxious sound of a cell phone alarm clock, slightly hung over, i realized that the night before verified a prediction i have held in my mind for years now: cleveland is amazing in every aspect if and only if one is not even close to being sober.
also,
time: midnight-5am
place: the shoreway.
if anyone else has been in the passenger seat, preferably listening to wonderful music, in these conditions, you know what i mean. otherwise, get on this asap. you're missing out on one of the few great things to do in this city.
ever since i can remember, i've been venturing out to cleveland for some reason or another. when i was little my mom and i would skip school and work and she would take me to coventry where she (no doubt) blew through my child support in the green tomato and the old, cluttered, but amazing big fun. when i was in middle school it was my obsession with the local scene that took me out to cleveland. the skanktronics, rubber cement, so ricki, one short a dozen, etc. sneaking out to go to shows at the pit cleveland and knowing, in one way or another, just about everyone there. spending way too much time just to put on the blue dickies, orange get up kids shirt, rainbow belt, and black chucks that i could never seem to get off. although the scene died out ridiculously fast, high school came and so did fall out boy, the rxbandits, and a bunch of other bands i saw more times than i can remember. the grog shop moved after one of the most memorable (and sweaty) nights of my life, and coventry took on a transformation that would not only repave the sidewalks and street, but my perception and love of cleveland as well.
even though i still venture out to cleveland for shows (battle of the bands, minus the bear, and regina spektor within the last week), it will never be the same as it was when i was younger. i go to school, work and have just about a million other reasons to be in cleveland nowadays, but for some reason i am tied to the suburbs! (probably the worst of them all, at that. our downtown? the mall.) this brings me to next summer and my plan to rough it on my own for the first time in my life!* in the end, i can only hope that my friends will never cease in filling my gut with liquor so that i'll be able to see cleveland in the light where i can see it best.


*aside from japan, of course, where i was shoveled money by not only my john carroll tuition (mostly via loans), but also my family and who knows where else i got those thousands of dollars from exactly. this is a whole other story. i have no idea where that money went other than the most part had to of been blown on 1. alcohol 2. transportation 3. food... in that order, of course.


♪ a smattering of thoughts thanks to last week

大きい車輪の経験

there is a city where ferris wheels are open pretty late. maybe it's a whole country, or i'm just coming upon yet another way in which america sucks, but i haven't encountered this elsewhere. they're open late enough though, that i can't imagine them closing later anywhere else.
climbing curiously into the little pod, i landed in seat #4. #1 was filled with a chinese american from chinatown, new york, #2 was filled with a definite momma's boy from amish country, pennsylvania, and #3 was filled with an eccentric, but typical, 21 year old college boy from pensacola, florida. after ¥1500 was happily handed over to the woman 6 floors down, i felt like a child again climbing colorful steep stairs to get to the "big wheel". at that time nothing else existed but that particular moment. i was oblivious to it all.* the bar came up to my legs, the operator mumbled something foreign and took a picture i would have to refuse to spend ¥1000 on, the seats flipped around 180 degrees, and my eyes were isntantly placed on millions and millions of lights, illegible signs, billboards, white lights, ads, red flashing lights... "if i lived here my whole life i might not know about the existence of stars."
i wished i could see some end to the whole mess, but then comes the realization that there is no end to that civilization that somehow managed to rebuild itself in just the past fifty years. the simple fact that i was so foreign to every little lightbulb, every meaningless building, every grain of rice, every マクドハムバーガー being sold to every ガングロ girl, was all that mattered. i wished that it felt this way every minute for the rest of my existence, and that everything was as far away as it was right then. as the pod kept going higher i could see further, further, and further, but never could quite see the ocean. the boy in seat #3 said "i know she'll kiss me" and of course i agreed because it didn't matter much, and in all, it was too much of a moment to say no.


*i have a lot of moments like this. i'm almost sure i'll have alzheimer's someday, or just end up as looney as my grandma.


♪ only one of my four accounts with ferris wheels in japan.