Filed under: Uncategorized
Well, not yet, but they will be and that’s a pain in the ass.
So I’ve been looking for a replacement pair of kicks for the last little while, and anyone who knows me knows a few things about my taste. One is that I like to wear mainly black and white shoes, that’s just my thing. I used to wear authentic chuck taylors, but since the company was bought out by nike, I can’t bring myself to purchase them. That brings us to my second shoe-point; I hate Nike and love Adidas. Why? I’m not too sure. It might be a combination of my latent punk past, what with my disdain for all things large coporate (namely nike), and my Hispanic heritage that embracess Adidas and all it stands for. To a latin, Adidas IS soccer, and Adidas IS sport.
The perfect pair of Adidas are hard to find. For the last year or so I’ve been rocking these white leather Campus Adidas that don’t look too unlike Creepers, so they’ve got a nice rockabilly flair to them. But they’ve been loved a little too much and the leather is starting to crack.
What I’ve always had my heart set on, since I’ve started buying shell-toes, is a pair that has the chuck taylor coloring. Black sides, white toes. Pretty simple right? Well, I thought so until I actually starting trying to find them in earnest. It turnes out finding a pair of Super Stars with those exact hues is hard to come across than procuring a piece of the true cross. They might as well be made of safron and dodo eggs, given how rare they are.
But the other day Doozy and I found them perched on the wall of out local sporting equipment outfitters, begging to be bought, and seeing as how my 25th was still a week away, she got them for me. The day is saved! Right? Well, not quite. You see, my size was out of stock (10) and they had to order it in (7-10 business days) so I’d have to wait of my shoe salvation to come in the mail.
I figured that it wouldn’t be to hard, considering how full my plate was at the time, the days would fly past.
Fast forward to yesterday. While checking the mail, I noticed a stange post card from UPS. It’s relayed that they tried to deliver a package to me a week ago but they didn’t know what to do, so they’d be send my package back to the main depot in Ontario by the 28th unless I go down to Richmond to pick it up. Welp, yesterday was the 28 and there was no way in hell that I’d be able to make it to the next city over before the sent my dear kicks to London. So I called the toll-free and they told me that the shoes hadn’t left yet and that I could get them sent to a UPS store nearby. Only thing is that I’d have to find that store, call the manager there and get premission and then call back the toll-free to give them the details.
Fine, simple enough.
After tracking down a spot a block away from the building and pleading my case to three people on staff there (it’s going to cost 10 bucks just to pick it up) I called back the toll-free and gave them the info. Great, grand, wheels are in motion and I should have my shoes sometime on the 29th.
About 10 minutes later I get a call from London, Ontario. It’s the UPS people over there. Apparently my request for transfer has been ordered incorrectly and the shoes are still going to London, only now instead of my apartment being the intended destination, the address has been changed to that of the UPS store I wanted it sent to. So I had to call the toll-free number again to have them straighten this out, but by this point I was talking to maybe a third representative who seemed about as interested in my case as a vegetarian at a steakhouse. She said that the order was fine and that it should be at the UPS store on the 29th as intended, but if it were to be shipped to London, it’d have to call tomorrow to see where it had been sent.
So after 5 phone conversations, I still don’t know where my shoes are and I probably won’t know until the end of the day.
It turns out UPS stands for Unhelpful Personal Service.
Or maybe Ugly Pelvic Scenes.
Urban Parachute Snakes?
Filed under: vancouver, work sucks | Tags: Crystal Castles, Finding a Job, Paper Planes, screw shaw, Thor
Right now the electro bleeps and bloops of Crystal Castle are dancing in my ears and my thoughts are wandering from the serious to the serene. I have a job interview this afternoon as an ad sales rep for a magazine chain, and I’m doing my homework before I grace the halls of my potential future employer.
I’ve finally downloaded (like anyone buys music anymore) the Crystal Castles self-titled and I’ve totally digging it. It’s upbeat enough to keep me interested, mellow enough to allow me to concentrate on some of the other tasks at hand. If I come across some sort of financial windfall in in the near future, intend to purchase some reliable equipment and start producing electronic music in hopes of achieving BMP beauty that these cats are jammin’.
Oh yeah, Doozy and I saw Forgetting Sarah Marshal on my birthday and it was a seriously funny movie. See it when you have the chance. Two big toes up. One of the trailers before the flick was for the upcoming Apatow pic, Pineapple Express. I’m going to go into detail about what it was about, because I’m fairly certain that you can google the info yourself, and if you’re an Judd Apatow fan, you’ve probably already caught wind of the flick by now anyway. What I want to get into was the fact that they used Paper Planes, the M.I.A. song, for the sound track of the preview. Man, I’ve never given that chick a chance before, namely because a friend of mine play her first album non-stop on a road trip down to Coachella a few years back and I’ve been a bit adverse to giving the new album a shot. But, DAMN, the track is HOT. I played it for the lady and she thought it was a bit jarring at first, but after one listen, we’re both hooked I’ve been scouring the interwebs to find an upload .rar or .zip file of Kala that I can sink my teeth into, but to no avail. So if anyone other there has a link the want to send me, post in the comments and I’ll send you a Pizza Trophy.
The weather on the coast has been mild as of late. The morning are cool and humid and the air is sweet with essence of budding plants. Green is starting to cover everything, and it’s starting to feel like the tropics again. Like home. I love living here. If only the work front was as forgiving as the climate. My temp contract with Shaw has abruptly ended and I’m now relegated to the task for finding gainful employment as a full-time vocation. Although the interview looks promising, I’ve an uphill battle ahead of me.
Send your prayers to your higher-power of choice and let them know I could use a hand up.
If Thor answers, tell him I want my hammer back.
Filed under: Indie Music, hipsters | Tags: Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket, Review
I found a leaked copy of the new My Morning Jacket (mmj) album on a message board the other day and I was super stoked to give it a listen, so much so, that I didn’t even wait to go the coffee shop (where I am right now) to download the sucker. Instead, I logged onto an open network and used that saps licky-split wifi and grabbed the sucker as soon as I could. Now, I usually don’t like to jump onto strange networks, mainly because I kind fell like a jerk stealing band width or something, but this was an emergency. We’re talking about mmj, here. I’m sure they’d understand.
My first impression was something of a let down. Honestly, I was kinda pissed off. I was distugsted at the foreign nature of the music I was experiencing. It was like nothing mmj had released before. The songs, at first, seemed phoned in, the song writing rudementary and over-simplistic. Gone where the atmospheric tones and nuanced subletee that had made the band stick out in the first place. After only one listen, I was convince that this has to be some sort of joke by James and the boys. Like a big flip off to all the down-loaders ripping the album before the set release date (sometime in July, I think… June?) kinda like when Madonna dropped her single online before it was set to come out and it was only a 3 minute audio file of her swearing at the audience for trying to steal her shit. She sucks, but that’s neither here nor there.
ANYWAY, I decided to give the album a fair chance. I was in a crappy mood when I was listening to it and I went in with a whole heap load of preconcieved notions and lofty expectations. That and I had just celebrated my 25th and I was feeling a bit quater-lifey, and I was right in the middle of some sort of exetensial crisis.
Upon further listen, the album isn’t as bad as I had set it out the be. In fact, I’d say it’s something of a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant room of stale music. With so many bads out there now aping the style that mmj made famous (Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, and so on) they decided to take more of an extremist pathway with this venture. Before where they’d be kinda country, they’re now very twangy. Where they were once drifting into the high pitch, they’re now diving into the falsetto.
Touch Me I’m Going to Scream, stands out at the dominant track, encapsulating all the appealing features of Evil Urges, but the most catchy, and polarizing, song would have to be Highly Suspicious, a song that sounds like Prince backed up by Bear Force One. Although it may have one of the stupidest hook lines (peeeeEEEEanut butter puddin’), it’s destine to become the song you catch yourself singing in the elevator, to the delight of your subconscious and to the chagrin of your rational waking, tasteful, mind.
So if you’re hopping to find Z part two, or even an At Dawn sound-alike, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. But if you go in with an open mind, and a sense of humour, this might make it onto your top ten list at the end of the year.
So, I’ve been working 7 says a week for the better part of a month now while trying to freelance, find a better job, and be a steadfast cowboy for my prarie rose back at the homestead, so I’ve been a bit too busy to come up with any pithy writing for this hear blog in a little while. I’m amazed if anyone even reads this still. Save for Dan. Dan I know reads this. Hi Dan
Sorry ’bout the lapse, gang. I’m not going to promise that the is going to be the same amount of writing as I have been posting in the past, but I’ll see if I can’t get a couple of posts up a week.
Anyway, how about that band The Management MGMT? Not too shabby eh?
Seriously heady, wall of soundy, room filling shimmer pop. I’m only about 3 track into Oracular Spectacular and I’m sold.
Pick this up.
Or, if you’re poor and go to the local coffee shop to use the high speed internet because the Rogers Wireless Internet sucks emu butts, try going over to the google and type:
“MGMT” + site:Megaupload.com
you might find something you like.
But srsly try that with any band / album you’re looking for. It works like a charmsky. I found all of the Board of Canada back catalog that way.
Welp, back to the grind.
