May 16th, 2005

Why didn't anyone tell me how DREADFUL the Cardigans' Long Before Daylight is?!? The other two Cardigans records I have are SO good. It would figure this one would be at least kind of good, but no. What happened to Nina Persson? She got tired of being hot so she dyed her hair brown and started writing boring songs about ex-boyfriends. I swear to Dreamworks, she is is clumsier at writing about love than I am! How can that be?!

No matter what happens, people, please don't let me turn into a sad case. Friends don't let friends release horrendous break-up records/books etc. Friends buy friends beer, and then steal the master tapes/final drafts. The sad cases are going to plead that creating is "helping them work through it" but ten years later they're gonna feel worse about a crappy album/book than some break-up. Seriously, friend, do the right thing.

I step away from my phone for an hour or three and this is what happened:

"Hey. Coldplay's manager won't IM me back or return my e-mails. Should I try his cell phone? I want your advice. Call me."
(A voicemail from a shy industry-type friend received at 4:33 p.m.)

"Wanna spoon later?"
(A text message from my twink who just moved to Brooklyn from Jersey, received at 5:42 p.m.)

"Hey friend I haven't seen in two years, I'm in the city! I'm with my mom and my sister and they want to head over to Serendipity, but, uh...I don't know. Call me back."
(Voicemail I somehow missed yesterday at 7:15 p.m. from a friend I probably won't see for another two years).

This is gonna hurt me more than it will hurt you: last night I stayed up until 2 a.m. listening to Nobel Prize in Literature speeches. This wasn't a case of a little kid studying the mechanics of Hank Aaron's homerun swing so that he might some day get a crack at the Major Leagues: I was just fascinated by hearing the crackling voices of famous old writers!

Faulkner sounds just like a character in one of his novels, with kind of a lazy drawl and a real crush for his own humor. Steinbeck is about an ounce as intimidating in person as he is on the page, T.S. Eliot rambles on about poetry being fracturous, and Hemingway hated himself too much to attend the ceremony.

Listening to these guys was more fun than that time a big group of us had a slumber party and I went to bed early because I was tired and then the rest of the gang played an ugly game of "Survivor" in the kitchen to vote on a person to send to bed every fifteen minutes. Seriously, it's a kick.

Some of you might remember I attempted to do 20,000 sit-ups the other night, and failed miserably. I then realized just how many zeros are in 20,000, and bet myself I couldn't do that many in 100 days. (The great thing about betting yourself something is that no matter what, you win.)

To achieve my goal, I'd have to do 200 sit-ups a day for 100 days in a row--which seems ludicrous. So my plan is to do 1,000 a day for the rest of the month. The only problem is: I struggled to do 200 on Friday, 225 Saturday, and 250 yesterday. Can anyone out there remind me of that math equation to determine when I'll hit 20K overall if I began at 200 and plan to increase by 25 every day? I know there is a big fat sigma involved. Can google handle something like this?

Update! I think the formula kind of looks like this (pretend the E is a sigma):

x
E k=20,000
k=200

I didn't have the dumbest idea what to do with that, so I did a little addition on my cell phone's calculator and I think it'll take me about 34 days and on day 34 I'll be up to 1,000 sit-ups. Anyone wanna take bets on how long I'll be able to maintain this pace? We could do, like, Super Bowl squares!

A dear angel sent me a gift certificate to iTunes over the weekend, so this morning I stumbled into the fruity online music store for the first time ever with 10 big ones in my pocket. I don't know how you people set foot in that place and still manage to have productive days at work. Back when napster first broke my freshman year in college, I was lucky to make it to class. Ever. I guess the pay for play aspect puts the kibosh on the fun after awhile, but I was in there for a good hour and I still have $5 left! Here's what my playlist looks like:

"Hollaback Girl"- Gwen Stefani. When I got this record in November, I hated it so much I sold it back to Academy for $3 after the first listen. It wasn't until six months later I discovered this guilty pleasure of a ditty on a road trip with friends somewhere between Missouri and Arkansas. As any five-year-old will tell you, there's a fine line between annoying and endearing; bananas and tomatoes. Luckily for Gwen, it's obvs. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

"For Once in My Life"-Stevie Wonder. Because sometimes you crave a singer with perfect pitch and such astounding vocal control it makes your goosebumps blush. American Idol probably exists because of Stevie and Aretha--which makes it even more embarrassing when the contestants hack their songs to pieces with their un-impressive vocal runs and musak-y interpretations. Sigh.

"Meet Za Monsta"- PJ Harvey. Gotta love Peej and her commitment to rock. But this song is already proving to be a bad choice since the bass doesn't agree with my mono headphones, and sometimes I forget to bring my regular earphones to work.

"You Got It"- Roy Orbison. Perfect song performed by another perfect voice. No bat-shit insane vocal runs necessary; his tone makes me weep.

"Hurt"- Johnny Cash. I think I see a pattern forming. I gave a power point presentation on suicide in some adolescent development seminar during my senior year at Stanford, and I used Trent's version of the song. None of my fellow dolts classmates knew what it was, but I imagine if I'd used Cash's version (which wasn't yet recorded. bah) their faces would have lit up with faint recognition of something they might have heard of.. (like a "B" letter grade).

"Wild Horses"- The Rolling Stones. Because it reminds me of riding through the dusty hills of Nothern California at sundown in the summertime with the overwhelming feeling that the person in the driver's seat will always be in my life.