Matt: September 2006 Archives

Those UNCR bastards teased me with an excellent first night on the job, I made almost a bill after tip outs, then they messed up on scheduling and so now I don't get to work again until Saturday. I fail to see how it's my fault that they didn't pay attention to my availability and scheduled me when I have school. Sigh.

I know you're heartbroken about this news. To console you, listen to the following songs.

The Small Group - Ear Sick
The Small Group - All White Family

One night in my senior year my old friend Brian called me up, he had free tickets to see Cat Power play at Pomona College. I hadn't even heard of her, it was a couple of years yet until You Are Free was to be released. It was incredibly intimate, held in the stuffy Little Bridges auditorium in front of an impressive looking pipe organ. Chan played a solo set. She had a cast on her right arm. I had a cold. We shared a bond through our maladies.

The opening group was The Western Expanse. An acquaintance of mine from church, Chris Smith, was the shy, retiring front man of The Western Expanse. I had no idea they were to be opening. I've spent the last half hour hunting for my TWE CD that I bought that night and I couldn't find it. The Small Group is just as good though, it's Chris' solo project.

Does anybody know what happened to Chris? Is he still playing music? He should be.

For that matter, what happened to Brian, the friend that brought me that night? That question I have a couple of answers to, but it's depressing how my list of people I used to know is growing.

I've got a new portfolio going at matthewripley.com. Check it out, let me know how you feel about it. Not all the sections are complete, notably the writing one. I'll finish that up over the next couple days/weeks/months.

Speaking of horrid schedules, school started today. And as long as a five hour break between classes sounds, it feels much, much longer. I don't care how long you think it sounds. You're wrong. So between 12:00 and 5:00 every Tuesday and Thursday I will be doing some combination of the following.

• Reading entire newspapers
• Sleeping
• Wandering
• Completing multi-volume compendiums about the Civil War in a single sitting
• Studying (jklol)
• More sleeping

Postscript: I am now an official server at UNCR. Huzzah. Also, if you're wondering why the below post about the UNCR showed up at the same time this one did, it's because I forgot to publish it at the time it was written. In other words, I'm dumb.

Wow, two whole weeks of silence. Makes that short burst of prolificacy seem almost sad in retrospect doesn't it?

I've started working at an unnamed corporate restaurant, and it's been a big adjustment for me. When I worked at Ziarita's it was a completely different atmosphere. For the servers, there was no pressure to be ridiculously outgoing and have a big phony smile on your face at all times, instead there was a satisfaction in providing low-key, competent service. But at UNCR they're all about making the sell so you really have to plaster that fake grin and push appetizers and drinks or they get on your case.

I'm not even done with training yet, so hopefully I'll get the hang of all this soon.

School starts on Thursday. I'm both dreading and looking forward to this. The last few weeks have been incredibly dull as I had no job and no school. Before that I had only a job, no school. Now I'm going to be slammed with both a brand new job where I'm still getting the hang of things, and a new quarter of upper division classes.

I guess I had a lot of caffeine today. "A lot" is probably relative though, since I've recently cut soda out of my diet almost entirely. So today after taking two Excedrin and drinking a cappucino I'm pretty well wired. I guess that's a small price to pay for cutting about 500-650 calories a day, not to mention I don't get headaches anymore when I haven't had a fix.

Connie thinks that's the reason for the two (now three) posts in one day. But me, I just think it's today's crippling boredom.

Agree to disagree.

On a related note, I'm on the worst schedule in the world right now. For example, I went to bed about 5:30am, woke up at 1:00, ate lunch at 3:00, ate dinner at 11:30 and I'll probably be up until 5:30 again, easily. I don't think my caffeine-induced mania is going to help things. I'm going to freaking die when work and school starts.

• I just finished my first listen of the new Joanna Newsom album, Ys. First impressions? Much more refined songwriting. The songs are excellent, but I'm not sure if that refinement is a plus or a minus yet, part of her charm was that whimsy and looseness, despite being a clasically trained harpist. Also she's got an orchestra backing her up this time around on most of the tracks (I think 4 out of 5). They add depth but ocassionally get a little too avant garde sounding, especially on "Emily," the first track. It's almost like she's afraid of sounding pretty because everytime the song starts to hit a high point it's undercut by the divebombing strings.

• I'm currently reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. It concerns a Georgian woman and her four daughters dragged off to the Congo by her bombastic and hardheaded preacher husband on a mission trip. I'm about 200 pages into it, and so far it's beautifully written and getting to be a strong indictment of Western interference in Africa. I can only hope it stays this good for the rest of the book.

• For the last several days I've been working on a new portfolio site. I'm even joining the Web 2.0 club (I shudder to even type that phrase) with a bit of AJAX. It will likely replace Homogenized altogether, since the name was hard to remember, hard to spell and when I had to spell it out loud for people I had to be careful how I grouped the letters so they didn't get the wrong idea about my sexuality. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

• I think the caption on the third photo from this Wikipedia entry is a bit of an understatement. Just a bit.

Two nights ago I poured two liters of perfectly good beer down the drain.

Wait. That's not really accurate. I should say I poured two liters of two-week-old, probably rotten beer down the drain. But that doesn't really make for as interesting a lead-in, does it?

For my birthday a couple of weeks ago Connie and I went down to San Diego. Part of our excursion was a tasting and a tour at the Stone Brewery, makers of all kinds of ultra-hoppy and incredibly strong brews. The tour itself was fascinating. For example, I never really got the whole "brew" part of making beer until our guide explained that the malts were actually cooked in heated water to release their sugars and flavors into the water. I don't know what was in my head before, probably more of a process like wine where the juices are squeezed out. But malted barley doesn't even have juices so I guess I was just being dumb.

Anywho, when the tour was done there was a free tasting. I sampled a couple of my favorites, like Arrogant Bastard and their IPA. But I also got to try a couple I probably wouldn't have picked up off the shelf like their Ruination IPA and Smoked Porter. The porter was either overly hopped or overly smoked—probably both—and to my (albeit unsophisticated) palate, just tasted bitter and burnt. There were none of the subtle chocolate or malt flavors I've come to expect from a good porter like Black Butte.

So back to our introductory story, Stone has a cool little program where you can buy a bottle for around $10 and fill it as many times as you like at a discounted price. I decided on the two liter not only because that's a lot of damn beer but it also looks really cool. It's one of those jugs with the one-finger handle on the side. Stone being fresh out of the Oaked Arrogant Bastard that was my first choice, I decided to fill it up with good ol' Arrogant Bastard. But that night when Connie and I drank some I discovered I just couldn't enjoy it anymore.

I think, sadly, that a couple nights of overdoing the Bastard had ruined my enjoyment of it, specifically last year's birthday at the Yard House when I drank pint after pint of it, mixed with several Patron shots and ended up driving the porcelain bus all night.

So why did it take me two weeks to dump the damn stuff out? Not because of any sentimental attachment. No, it's because I left my $15 jug o' brew in the back of Connie's car and both of us kept forgetting to get it out. And since the fine print recommends you chill and consume withing 24 hours of bottling, you can only imagine the ungodly smell of two liters of fermented sugar, sitting in the back of a hatchback in 100-degree heat for two solid weeks.

My biggest surprise of the day? Not that Steve Irwin died, but that his death certificate will have any other cause of death than EATEN BY CROCODILE. For what its worth, he probably survived longer than he should have, and at least he wasn't devoured by the animals he dedicated his life to. I guess for that alone we can consider him lucky.

R.I.P., mate.

Addendum: smallest surprise of the day? The YTMNDs are already being cranked out.