Posts (page 2)

Exciting news: I bought a new car! Like, a brand new car. The official odometer reading in all my official paperwork says "18 miles." Eighteen!  Eeep! It's a 2008 Toyota Corolla S in phantom pearl and it has a spoiler and sunroof. Ow! Ow!

Say hello to "Betty":

Well, Carm and Tone got shut out of the "best actor/actress" Emmy's tonight, but Sopranos took home the Best Drama Series award. Thank goodness. I mean, come on. Swan Song. Hello!

Regardless. I'm pretty pleased this show won (yes, even over Grey's Anatomy). Regardless of a few stumbles (c'mon, who doesn't make a mistake or two over 10 years?), it was a brilliant show, if you ask me. Those characters will be (and are) missed.

OK, I am officially nervous for tonight's game against USC. It's in Lincoln. ESPN GameDay spent the morning there. Brent Must-bucket and Kirk "whiney little girl" Herbstreit are calling the game. Ugh.

We're not supposed to win, so if we don't, it won't be devastating. But I know in my heart of hearts (yeah, I said it) that we can. So the game better be close. Seriously. Close.

My new favorite blog, Fire Mark May dot com, has the venerable Trev Albers saying exactly what a lot of Nebraskans are thinking: "Bill Callahan, don't effing chicken out."

Nebraska (+9.5) over Southern Cal (800et ABC)
I want to speak directly to Callahan, again, for just a few moments. CALLAHAN! If you play this game close to the vest, I will end you, and that is for serious. I'll get me one of them LSU werewolf chainsaws, hitchhike to Lincoln using only my wits, a tin of beans, and my chainsaw member, and I will cut your desk in half! You've got Southern Cal, you've got a good team, you've got them at home, at night, in front of hordes of Americans for Nebraska! Open it up! Punch that Poodle right in his smug mouth and never let him up! Of course....this falls on deaf ears, and the Trojans will narrowly escape a worthy death.

Trev's pick: Nebraska to cover, Southern Cal to win

I am hoping his last line isn't true, but I fully support the rest of the sentiment.

HUSKER! POWER!

I saw "An Evening With Damien Rice" at the Allen Theater at Playhouse Square Center last night.

Ho.Ly.Crap.

It was really, really, really amazing. I'm not sure if I can even describe it (some music writer, huh). But it was really great. Intense and beautiful and unplugged and emotional. He played a ton from his first album, O, and the really good ones from his second album, 9.

It was definitely the right concert to pick as the first one I paid for since moving to Cleveland... :)

At the end of my last post, I may have implied that I disliked Lee Corso more than Mark May. This is, in fact, not true. I actually get a kick out of Lee Corso, and I am extremely stoked that ESPN's College GameDay will take place in Lincoln next Saturday when #14 Huskers host #1 USC.

To be fair, Corso often picks against the Huskers, and has openly admitted he doesn't like the team. My first real recollection of this is when he picked Florida to beat Nebraska in the 1995 Fiesta Bowl. Unfortunately for Corso, the Huskers blew the Steve Spurrier-(ugh)-led Gators out of the water, in one of the most lopsided (62-24) National Championship games ever, picking up consecutive win #27 and back-to-back national titles. 

Corso picked Oklahoma over Nebraska in 2001 during GameDay (which also happened to be in Lincoln), and promised to ride a mechanical bull at a local bar is the Huskers overcame the Sooners. Well, Lee, I hope you enjoyed that ride, because a flea-flicker later, #2 Nebraska upset #1 Oklahoma. Boo-yah!

However, I do believe Corso has a good sense of humor (supposedly he did take that bull ride, but I couldn't find any photographic evidence--please feel free to submit some in the comments if you find it). And I thoroughly enjoyed this cryptic commercial for ESPN a couple seasons ago:

So who, you ask, do a I dislike more than Kirk Herbstreit and Mark May? That's easy: Brent Musburger. Perhaps I will take solace in the fact that Musburger is doing play-by-play while Herbstreit is providing color commentary at the UNL v. USC game by playing the Brent Musburger Drinking Game.  Hopefully, Musburger himself will lay off the booze (if Bud qualifies as that) and avoid a ticket for an open container. This year.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "Geez, Rachel. Do you dislike all ESPN college football commentators?" The answer is no, of course not. I do get a kick out of how senile Lou Holtz can be (though he remembers the Husker glory days of the 70s, so I heart him for that). But my favorite commentator, unfortunately, no longer works at ESPN. Former Husker great and winner of the prestigious Butkus Award, Trev Albers got sick of Kirk and Mark's shit and moved on to bigger and better things. Namely his blog: FireMarkMay.com. Priceless.

Before I completely concede, though, I ask all Corso/Kirk/Mark/Brent fans to tune in to ABC on Saturday, 8 p.m. EST for the game. Depending on the outcome, they'll all either be displaying obvious glee at Nebraska's loss in front of the home crowd, or they'll be making excuses for USC's fall from the top, bumbling in their confusion over how Nebraska possibly won, finding ways to still make Nebraska seem the lesser of the team, getting a lucky break, fluke, etc... Just watch. I guarantee it will not be unbiased coverage.

So, a couple things are pretty darn exciting for me right about now. First, I went home for Labor Day because my cousin was getting married. It was really great being home (I took a couple extra days off work so I had some actual "relaxation/vacation" time) and my cousin's wedding was really nice--very Nebraska as it was at my aunt and uncle's farm and the groom and the groomsmen all wore black Wranglers. Fortunately, I got way fewer "So when are you getting married?"/"You're next!" comments than I thought I would, considering my cousin and I are the same age and the next one in the family is 19... Whew.

Anyway, while I was home, my brother loaned me his Wii to bring back to Ohio! He started classes at his new college last week, and he decided he was going to be too busy and needed to focus on writing his screenplays, so he wouldn't miss the Wii too much (that, and he just got an Xbox 360...). I gladly took the Wii off his hands... It's the first time I've had my own video game system since my Game Boy from like 1995. Seriously. Little brother was even nice enough to download some old school SNES game (Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong 2, Zelda, Metroid) for my enjoyment with the classic controller he sent along, too. Needless to say, the Wii has taken up a substantial part of my evenings since bringing it home. It's so so so much fun, though. Another good reason to forgo cable a bit longer, too...

Second, it's HUSKER SEASON! Few things make me happier than college football, and I spent all day yesterday watching games. Woot! The Big Red (2-0) didn't look too great against Wake Forest, though we eked out a win at the end. Hopefully, this is the one out-of-synch/nervous-jitters game they'll have, and everyone's heads will be in it next week when USC comes to town. It's gonna be a tough game, and I'm not sure what's going to happen. We're hard to beat at home, but USC is (fairly or not) the #1 team in the country. Of course, they had yesterday off, which may be a hindrance or a help. Time will tell. Regardless of what happens next week, I think the Huskers are going to have a great season (better than Michigan's, anyway, mwahahahaha), and we'll improve on our five-loss season from last year, for sure. Also, Nate and Tessa and I decided we are going to start our Bowl Game Trip tradition this season, so hopefully they'll end up going somewhere nice and warm this January. Yeah, I said January. :)

Of course, the downside to the recent trip home and the start of the Husker football season coinciding is my tendency to get a bit homesick. Husker games are always better when surrounded by other Husker fans (even if you're just watching the game in your basement living room), and Nebraska is truly beautiful in the summer. Being home (and watching the Nebraska v. Nevada game) makes me remember how much I really do like the state and that I would like to be closer to my family. If only I could transfer my current job to Omaha...  Ah well. Watching the games are always a good connection to "back home," so it's another reason to be excited for the upcoming season.

In honor of a new college football season, I'm leaving you with a video from ESPN entitled  "Kirk Herbstreit is a whining little girl." It's from last year's ESPN special where viewers voted on the best college football teams of all-time. Not surprisingly, the #1 and #2 teams happened to be the '95 Huskers and the '71 Huskers. Boo-yah!

Coming next... Why Mark May is the biggest A-Hole ever. After Lee Corso.

AKA: The Curse Of Barbie Rears Its Ugly Head

This is my car minus the hood H

OK. Before I can write about the latest pickle in which I've found myself, I need to present some context. Bear with me. It's a good(?) story.

Just over a year ago, I moved from Boston to Cleveland. In Boston there are subways. In Cleveland, there are not. (Okay, technically there is. But it doesn't go anywhere I need to go on a daily basis.) Thus, I needed to buy a car. I had five days to find an apartment, unload my moving truck, find and purchase a car and get a drivers license in an unfamiliar city. I wanted to buy my car while at least one of my parents were in town, so that narrowed the time frame considerably. Needless to say, the few car lots that my dad and I were able to navigate (keep in mind we're still driving the Budget truck because I don't have an apartment yet) were entirely unhelpful and I couldn't find anything in my price range. There was one day when both my mom and dad were in town, and lo and behold I found a 2000 Honda Accord in my neighborhood (and in my price range!) on Autotrader.com.

My parents and I see this as a sign, and head off to see the car. It's in really good shape (except the "H" on the front hood was missing), the inside has been detailed, it's low mileage, and it appears to drive really well. On top of that, the sellers were young newlyweds (the wife's name was Barbie, of all things) who were super nice. After test-driving the car and getting them to come down in their price a bit, I gave them a "definitely-maybe" and told them I wanted a night to think about it.

When I got back to the hotel (which is the only place we had internet) I decided to go back to the posting on Autotrader and look up the CarFax report. Guess what? The link to the report had been taken down and I didn't have the VIN handy. Rather than pursuing the VIN from the owners, my parents and I (stupidly) decided that we trusted the young couple. After all, we asked them point-blank if the car had ever been in an accident or had any other body repairs, and they had said no. Turns out, the car I bought was a Rebuilt/Salvage, and I didn't even know until I was taking the Title to the BMV to have it transfered to my name.

Oh, Barbie knew all right, and Barbie lied.  

What's transpired between then and now doesn't particularly matter, other than I've replaced all four tires and the brake pads (routine maintenance) and plopped down $600 to fix the AC (major suckage). However, lately it's been lurching as it's shifts from first to second, and an hour-and-a-half inspection with the transmission specialist indicates that I need to have my transmission rebuilt ($1,800-$2,000) and have my timing belt replaced ($900). Not the best news, but this car has a lot of life left, right? After all, it's a Honda! It's only seven years old and has just shy of 75,000 miles. I'll suck it up and pay for the repairs. Right? Right?

Wrong.

Turns out in Ohio, it's reeeeeal difficult to trade in a Rebuilt/Salvage title at a car lot. So difficult in fact, that four dealerships I spoke with told me they'd give me about $100 for it. Seriously. A Honda/Toyota dealership that my parents use back in Nebraska said they'd give me about  $3,000 for a trade in, and I figure I can get maybe $4,000 for selling it privately. But that's the absolute most. (Because I, unlike precious Barbie, couldn't live with myself if I didn't disclose the title info.) After that, my car's only going to depreciate with every year.

So. Do I put more money than the car's worth into repairs? Or do I get as much as I can out of a trade-in or private sale and get a newer car that I (hopefully) won't have to put a bunch of money into for a long time?

Yeah. I don't know either.

Moral of this long story? Always, always, always check the CarFax report. No matter how nice and Midwestern and down-home and young and just-married and cute and friendly and earnest and honest and reliable and trustworthy the sellers seem. No matter if your parents brush off the CarFax report, too. (Though, it's really not their faults. I should have insisted.) And no matter how tired and stressed out and anxious you are about starting a new life in a new city with entirely new people without a car or an apartment, ALWAYS check the CarFax report.

* * * * * * * * *
Epilogue: To add insult to injury, Honda knows they had a shitty transmission in 2000 Accords, and thus have issued an extended warranty on that model for all transmission problems. Of course, when I called in my VIN to check, I didn't qualify because of that teeny little Rebuilt/Salvage thing. I'm really not liking whoever in Pennsylvania totaled my car in 2002. (Oh, yeah, I paid for the CarFax report after I bought the car. Yeah. Awesome.)
  

Not really.

However, I saw Modest Mouse this evening at Tower City, and new member Johnny Marr was looking really great. I thought he was going to look all old and busted, but (at least from my vantage point) he looked way younger than Isaac Brock and he still totally smokes on guitar.

Jmarr

Plus, he's super smart. I mean, seriously. What has he been doing since the Smiths? Collecting royalty checks? Whew, that's hard work. He could have started a new (probably semi-shitty) band and forever faced comparisons to his old outfit and ex-cohort Morrissey. However, he waited around until a popular and established band needed a guitarist, then jumped in, looking uber-hip with the younger crowd who doesn't realize Modest Mouse released their first album 10 years ago, while placating Smiths geeks frustrated with Morrissey's erratic touring schedule at the same time. Genius.

On a related note, when the hell did Modest Mouse turn into a jam band? There were multiple 10-minute-plus songs, and I would have felt more at home in an old pair of Teva's and my favorite hemp necklace. Or in a T-shirt with Greek letters. Seriously? Seriously.

Sounds like a date, huh? Well. It's not. Sorry to disappoint. However, they will both be topics of discussion in this post.

Earlier this week I watched a screener copy of a new movie, Broken English, with Parker Posey. The movie was really pretty good, though it reminded me a lot of Before Sunrise, which I much prefer. However, that's beside the point. I realized that it was the first time I'd watched a movie at home in a really long time. I can't even remember the last movie I've watched on DVD, and I've had the same Netflix rental (Good Morning, Vietnam) since my last apartment.

So, have I been watching a lot of cable or reading a lot of books, you ask? Well, I still don't have real cable (I rock my 13 channels with the best of 'em) and the only book I've read lately (sheepishly, I admit) is Harry Potter. Instead, I've been watching multiple series of TV-on-DVD. Grey's Anatomy Season 3, Freaks And Geeks, Arrested Development Season 2. They're all so good. And a TV show is such a perfect amount of time: 22 or 42ish minutes of uncommercialized awesomeness.

I used to love movies. What's my deal? I'm worried that it's a sad commentary on my attention span. I can't sit still for a movie, but I can watch TV episodes one or four at a time? Where did my patience go? Everything moves so fast all the time... you'd think I would jump at the chance to focus on one film for two hours. I'm addicted to the non-commercial TV though. As soon as I can afford real cable or satellite, I have a feeling I will be a picture-perfect TiVo/DVR customer.

On to the sushi portion...

Sushi had never won me over. I'd tried it on four separate occasions, everywhere from raw squid in Brazil to a tuna roll at Sukara. I just never cared for it. It almost became a thing with me: I'd given it a fair shot, I didn't like it, and at least I knew I wasn't eating it just because it was the "trendy" thing to do.

However. Yesterday two of our business associates from New York were in town, so we went out to eat. The last few times we'd been out to eat for work, it had been to more steak- and pasta-leaning places, so some of the editorial staff requested sushi. We found ourselves at Cleveland's famous Sushi Rock restaurant with more sushi to split between 7 people than I've ever though possible. Turns out, I'd just never tasted sushi with the right people or in the right places or the right pieces. I really, really like sashimi. Who knew? Not me. Especially the white tuna, yellow tail and mackerel. I was also brave and tried the clam, sweet shrimp and salmon eggs. I also decided that I really like the California rolls with crab in them. I think that maybe I'm just not so into the whole seaweed thing. And that's OK. So yeah. I guess I'm now in the official "I heart sushi" club.

The unfiltered saki didn't hurt, either.  

Well, I'm back from Warped Tour. Man. Where do I even start? This was by far one of the coolest things I've ever done, and I really wasn't looking forward to coming back to the office. Aside from missing my cat and my queen-sized bed, I could have definitely stayed on the road a bit longer. I think that it would be really rad to do the tour for an entire summer, just once. (Which is why I already pitched an idea for next year.)

As far as the tour went, I didn't get to see a whole lot of bands perform during the day. AP has a tent where they sell subscriptions and host signings, so that consumed most of my time. We have two people hired to be in the tent full-time (and street-teamers at select locations), but it's still a decent amount of work, particularly at take-down and set-up (or during any big-name signings--you wouldn't believe some of the crowd control we needed to implement for these bands. What you may believe are the  people I had the most trouble with were parents trying to "get an autograph for their kid, after driving three hours" blah blah blah. I heard it all. People.There's a line for a reason. No shoving.)

Anyway, most of the bands on Warped Tour aren't of the variety that cause me to, shall we say, "geek out." This was probably a good thing since you're around the band peeps fairly constantly. However, it was really cool to feel like part of a community every day. The production and sponsorship people working in the tents and keeping the event running were really great. It was definitely interesting being on a bus with 17 other people from all over the country, waking up in a new city (if not state) every morning. My bus, # 15, happened to have the youngest guy in production. He turned 19 while I was on tour and he grew up in Manhattan. He had never seen a Wal-Mart until this tour. My mind didn't know whether it should be blown or jealous. I guess if you grew up in NYC and started taking the subway alone at 12, you wouldn't really be missing out with Wal-Mart absent from your life. Still. It's a weird concept. Not that I endorse Wal-Mart, but it's just always been there as far as my experience goes.

If you want specific details about my Warped experience, you should check out the AP blog (link is in the previous entry). As far as general observations, I think these were my two biggest:

1. It's really cool to meet our readers
In light of everything that's going on in this world (and my newspaper background), sometimes I have serious doubts about where I'm placing my energies. I mean, how much does a music magazine matter in the grand scheme of things? Very little. Who cares what we think about Band X's album compared to Band Y's?  However, it was really cool to meet so many of our dedicated subscribers and hear about how much AP means to them and how much they love what we do. I think I needed to be exposed to readers in big batches like that, since most of my friends hadn't even heard of the magazine when I got the job. Even if we're not changing politics or improving neighborhoods, we are making a product that brings some people joy. Even if it's on a superficial level, I can still be down with that.

2. I really wish I was a tattoo person
I've never thought I would get one/wouldn't know what to get/am afraid of the needle gun thingy, but. I saw some suh-weet tattoos out on tour, and Oliver Peck (famous tattoo artist and ex-husband of Kat Von D if you watch Miami Ink) is the resident Warped tattooer. He travels around with Warped with his mobile studio and inks the bands and production people. I couldn't bring myself to get one, so I bought a pair of the special edition Vans slip-ons he designed. But in a different life, I'm definitely a girl with a sleeve.

So yeah, here are a few Warped pics: