Trip to Idaho Falls 2: Electric Boogaloo:
this independence day weekend i went up to idaho falls with my roommate kelsy. i chronicled the trip via facebook status updates, which i will now chronicle here despite the fact that anyone that reads this is probably friends with me on facebook and therefore could have already read them:
•Trip to Idaho Falls 2: Electric Boogaloo (an Independence Day Weekend Adventure as told through status updates) - we have arrived.
• An enjoyable evening of conversation, memories and catching up by the Nickelodeon orange countertop.
• Bumpers are all that is saving me from extreme bowling embarrassment.
• Journey forth to purchase fireworks galore.
• Our heroes return with a cornucopia of fire sticks and bellies full of square ice cream.
• The ultimate sports disc flies free and picnics reign.
• Winner of most entertaining monkey two years in a row at the Tautphaus Park Zoo.
• The throngs wait with dogged anticipation for the sky to breathe fire.
• I have been sprinkled with ash and seen about a million things blow up. Celebration of freedom accomplished. Now to blow up more things at Kelsy's.
• It's surprising how much fun shooting/throwing bottle rockets into a canal can be.
• Adam Hochhalter is on the way home as the credits roll on Trip to Idaho Falls 2: Electric Boogaloo.
and now as a special bonus feature just for this blog, here are lists (without any sort of explanation or elaboration) of both the music we listened to and food we ate:
music:
the dear hunter
three inches of blood
tenacious d
some country song about a dude singing to his junk and his junk singing back
aesop rock
kenna
brother ali
depeche mode
the juan maclean
yeah yeah yeahs
atmosphere
cecil otter
sage francis
shad
michael jackson
food:
taco bell
jelly bellies
gummi worms
goldfish crackers
sit down pizza hut
square ice cream
huckleberry cordial
jack in the box
kfc, pasta salad, watermelon, jicama picnic
jimmy carinos
salt water taffy
poffertjes
there are a few photos that i put up on
my facebook if you'd like to take a gander.
employee spotlight:
so, i have been chosen as the employee spotlight at work for april. while trying to answer the spotlight questions i came to realize that i am not nearly clever enough/care enough to make it cool. so, instead they get this (along with various photos of me):
Tell us about you: (e.g. Where were you born? Where did you grow up? etc.)
I was born August 3, 1982 in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago. One of my earliest memories is finding my lost He-Man toy at the age of 3 when my family moved to Highland Park, a different northern suburb of Chicago, where I have lived a majority of my life. I have 3 older brothers (2 married, 1 with kids) and a younger sister (who is married), with whom I grew up loving cartoons, puppets, the Chicago Cubs, 80s synth pop, comics, role-playing games, reading, drawing and other nerdy things. Some of these loves have lasted, while some have fallen by the wayside. I graduated high school in 2000 and have attended college off and on since then; probably more off than on. I moved to Provo in the summer of 2002 and have been slowly figuring out what to do with myself since.
Interests: (What’s your favorite book? Favorite movie? Favorite song? Hobbies?)
I love music and art.
I probably spend at least 90% of any given day listening to music, whether it be in the background or as my sole focus. My favorite genres would be underground/indie hip-hop (like Atmosphere, El-P, Aesop Rock, P.O.S., etc.) and electronic/dance rock/pop (like LCD Soundsystem, Erasure, Depeche Mode, the Rapture, the Faint, etc.) but I also thoroughly enjoy lots of other kinds of music. Unfortunately, I am not very musically talented, so my love is much more in the appreciation vein than the creation one. I have drawn pictures for as long as I can remember, minus a short period of time during junior high when I gave it up because I was jealous of my brother's talent and felt I would never be as good as him. I currently like to design show posters for local bands (especially those that have Scott Shepard as a member). I would like to some day become more involved in graphic design/illustration work.
I also like reading and movies and all those other pop culture things that most people enjoy. Some of my favorite books are Falling Man by Don Delillo, Blankets by Craig Thompson, Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman, and Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. As for movies, some of my favorites are The Seventh Seal, Network, Donnie Darko, The Big Lebowski, and All the Real Girls.
What’s the most exciting thing that has happened to you?
Once I defeated a grizzly bear in a one-on-one, barehanded wrestling match. After I woke up from having that exciting dream I walked to work.
I'm not sure anything all that exciting ever happens to me. Probably the most exciting thing would be when I performed with one of my friend's bands at a Spring Fling event at BYU. There were a lot of people there. It was pretty cool (and I totally got the biggest cheer).
What would surprise us most to know about you?
I am actually a small mouse housed inside a giant human shaped robot. Also, I have no problem telling obvious lies.
What many people find surprising, and is actually true, is that I can rap. I am a rapper. This is the sole musical talent I have. I also can DJ a little bit. For some reason, this is generally considered an unexpected fact about me.
pieces to remember for fitting later:
you can spend years trying to get by and find a balance
just to find that the wobble is the mind's talent
embrace that drunken fist shuffle, flex the twitchy muscles
cause the balance is a callous that will pitch and buckle
----
once again the first verse of once again's the worst curse
----
the bright red right cheek's a tell tale
more clear than a bulbous line of swelled braille
two sides of a fragment coin:
change that boom bap to a click-clack boom blam
about two inches away from this fools glance
double barrel blast cannon, make sure it's syncopated
wanna go out to a beat shot that could end a nation
let a ringing fill the ears and not this dearth of mirth
fireworks created with the last red on earth
rest in pieces
rest in pieces
rest in featureless, feeblest, needed less pieces
rest in pieces
rest in pieces
rest the sleep of the white flag waving defeated
and let it rain again.
it's either the quiet or the loud moments
the middle ground between is the space where scholars find hope is
hidden under the everyday mumble haze of the out of focus
that's where the secret peace is called out by the locusts
28 days later
the skies opened up without a message as to why
it may not flood the world but my portions not dry
caught unawares by the force of the sky
the droughts of a decade erased as a reply
rainy day after rainy day, drops that smolder
the weight has finally crushed atlas' shoulders
so drop it. free fall all the boulders
and wait for the wings of isis to enfold us
after twenty eight days of claiming not quite bad
now is the time for waving that white flag
you can't scream phoenix when the drops have you gagged
so stop treading water and swallow the last
let the drops hit, let the rain come
let it soak to bone and make creeping veins numb
give in to master melancholy motives
drop the kick and end the opus
all apologies:
face to face screaming 'save me' from their fallen trees
the crazy cannot save the crazy. all apologies
the lucid aren't much better, all their prophecies
are nothing more than empty weather masked as homily
can't they see their soliloquies are nothing more than wind and breeze
the empty exhale filigree that seeps out from their lung sacks
their metaphors and similes, they cover up the simple themes
that life left to its own disease can't be held under thumb tacks
fractions:
gimme some mirrors to smash while i walk under ladders
i feel like tempting fate cause so far she's been a bastard
obliterate reflections, erase the self-same patterns
into a million pieces the old futures shatter
watch as splattered across the pavement
every reflective surface is left fractioned and faceless
so much destruction, it's anything but tasteless
now pick up a brick and build up what fate missed
