In an excited frenzy from a day off from work and alone time for music news binging, I spent an easy fifteen dollars to see the latest so-hipster-you-could-puke band Best Coast at Georgetown, an exclusive DC event. Being put on by Georgetown Radio, even better. I thought I could befriend the students and get back on air (something I’ve begun to miss deeply.) Tuesday I buy my ticket, Saturday night I attend the show alone. With immense directions on how to get there, I follow the print out signs once I find the building on campus. Only to discover I’m attending a show in a less-lounge-like-lounge in their ‘campus center.’ Lingering for forty minutes or so with no friends in the area, I wait around and make notes to myself about the make shift surroundings. The cinder block wall turned chalk board matched the slung xmas lights, lo-fi meets lo-fi. I checked out their set up and it looked surprisingly efficient. It wasn’t until the music started that I realized I wasn’t in Ithaca anymore.
The first band, a local duo, Long Walks On The Beach, was fun yet incredibly underdeveloped musically and lyrically. The few students who showed up by this point, still early at 9:30, were toe to toe hipsters dancing around in a sea of flannels and leggings to boot. Cults, the second band went through a half hour set up with only 25 minutes of play time. Their dirt lip mustaches and long stringy black hair fell to the wayside when they knew every detail up of set up for their equipment. But when their vocals were drowned out I could feel their frustrations with the student engineers. By their 10:10 start time I realized I was one of six non students out of the 100 that were beginning to fill the room. My lack of alcohol intake, on a STRONGLY noted alcohol-free event (aren’t they all), didn’t help much in dealing with the overall atmosphere. I’m surprised the band wasn’t distracted by all the students screaming conversations over their music. Drunken Georgetown sophomores with no one to make fun of them with proved to be a lot less fun when you’re getting elbowed and shoved out of a place you’ve been holding for yourself. With no record out, where would they go from here? Meanwhile, the crowd was restless and getting worse and worse.
I befriended a shorter-than-thou grad student who at first seemed to be the only other person annoyed at, or noticing, the crowd’s behavior. Even drunk Ithaca hippies were never this rude. I felt myself longing for a complacent crowd at the State Street Theater. The silent crowd at the Sufan show at Castaways, or the old Lost Dog lounge where I saw Beach Fossils. But after being what felt like millions of miles from the comfort of Ithaca shows all I could do was make conversation. Best Coast is a sound-the-same band, I began to tell my nameless friend. Their lo-fi sound is incredibly well produced but their day by day lyrics distracted me from enjoying any further. He began to tell me that lyrics meant nothing to him. If he wanted poetry he would go read (name drop obscurity here.) I rolled my eyes and when he mentioned the last great lyricists (or only great) were the Beatles, I lost interest and laughed at everything else he said, without looking him in the eye.
frontwoman bethany cosentino
Best Coast was drunk. I was happy to see her playing guitar after expecting just another helpless female lead vocalist. I saw that her up and down slide of the same bar chord helped her sounds stay the same. She was smiley and making friends with the crowd, only two feet above her hipster minions on fold out platforms. After stripping off the outer layer of her own band’s tee shirt, she apologized to those of us who paid to see them. (I learned students only paid $5 after the school subsidized their performance.) She said they’d be returning with Weezer in January. It was then that I decided I no longer needed to stay to hear the same song over and over again, purely empty music. All I could think about was the coming soon to DC Weezer “Memories” tour, back to back nights of full album run-throughs of Pinkerton and The Blue Album.
I went there with a mind to write something substantial about the night. The take over of lo-fi pop, how so many new bands sound the same: Girls, Wavves, Black Lips, the Smith Westerns, Crystal Castles (and the fact that we so easily embrace this.) I want to question why in the height of known technology that the most popular recording styles are on few channels with some reverb on the vocals. Anything but flashy, with thrift store frames and hand me down hats, the drunken crowd that was there just to play along with fame got the better of me. I wanted to ask them why they liked this band, who else they listened to. Is the popular musical simplicity present to balance our complex world? (Ironic that musical recordings are so stingy while release methods and coverage are generous in their efforts.) With environment meaning everything to impressions, I was overexposing my brain and couldn’t shut it off. Clearly I still can’t. Thank god for that-
For the first time since August the fountains at Dillingham are filled with water.
I’m sure I’m not the first to say that they should have been filled weeks ago. We’re still waiting on the anchored fountains to spray the water in the air to achieve the postcard look, but we’ll take what we can get.
finally full
I can’t wait to hear about how many kids get written up for trespassing and swimming into the fountains before Senior Week. But I also heard that since Judicial Referrals are more paperwork than they’re worth, that the school has done away with that punitive measure – jump on in Seniors!
Don’t let me come off as bitter, even though I am. Take a look at your beautiful Ithaca College ID. There’s picture of a lush, wet fountain on it. Now think back to orientation. A lush, wet fountain was the centerpiece of the campus. It’s April 21st, almost April 22nd. Now look at the fountain. How ‘bout that gray concrete?
how they OUGHT to look
What’s up with that? It’s been warm enough recently, and I bet the following weeks will only get better! Slut Day has come and gone, which is usually a solid indicator of Ithaca’s weather. On the other hand, despite the sun and temperatures not in the 30s, Ithaca College will not pump those fountains full of water until all the mothers and fathers enter the campus for either prospective students or to see their dumb kids graduate. Yeah that’s right. The money walks on campus and all of a sudden the fountains are alive again.
Ithaca College, you better step it up. Consider Slut Day the opening for the fountains. Not the green of parents’ cash and May’s pollen-ridden leaves.
take a whiff
There are a bunch of these trees blooming around campus. These, photographed above are near park, but there are also some near public safety and throughout town.
Slut Day welcomed in spring and the blooming of these warm-weather plants reassured us of the onset of the season.
My research leads me to believe that this is the Halesia diptera, more commonly known as the American snowdrop tree. Not to beat around the bush, (or to beat around the bush -or tree-) this tree smells like semen. It’s in the air, it’s all around us – it’s almost as bad as the water in Los Angeles.
But the forsythia are in bloom(there’s a great one behind Bogart) and those pink trees – whatever they are – are rampant. Check them out Hudson Street.
Spring has sprung and so have the buds on the American snowdrops.
There’s a great art museum on campus. Did you know that?
It’s in the basement level of the Library. I admit that until now, I’ve only been there for Open Readings hosted by the Writing Department – which, might I add are very entertaining and worth checking out. But the museum warrants a visit for the purpose of checking out the exhibitions.
Right now, “Voices – Contemporary Ceramic Art from Sweden” is on display. There are a ton of awesome pieces, and their medium is not limited to ceramic; light, glass, paint and glue are also employed in creating magnificent, thought-provoking works of art.
Renata Francescon
This piece, which resembles a glazed honeycomb, is at the rear of the gallery.
marten medbo
This creepy piece was created by Marten Medbo, also a Swede. The artist who sports thick-rimmed glasses and a five-o’clock shadow looks like he belongs in an indie-rock band. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that his piece featured in the Handwerker is reminiscent of the creatures crawling on the cover of Built to Spill’s 2006 album, You in Reverse.
Bottom Right
Am I wrong?
Moving on, there is also this:
fire bad!
In this depiction of an epic volcano, the lava is actually a funky bulb pluming out of the miniature mountain. This was created by Frida Fjellman – you guessed it, a Swede . (Born in 1971… kinda cute in a starving artist kind of way).
The first piece I saw upon entering is a piece that brought me back to my youth. It was the days I would read the back of the cereal box before heading to school. On certain mornings when my mom let me eat sugar cereal, I was enthralled with the back of the box of Apple Jacks. You remember, they had all kinds of mind-tricks and optical illusions, which gave you a headache only to complement the headache that would set in after consuming so much sugar that morning.
This piece, if I could assume, is an homage to those early mornings staring at the box.
Swede
(Eva Hild, “Loops”)
If you’re in the library, or got some time to kill while on campus, drop by the art gallery. For more info, check here – http://www.ithaca.edu/news/release.php?id=287.
Well, the day has come. Today was SLUT DAY! Thursday was a great prelude, but as the ground was too wet for it to be officially Slut Day, we all knew it was coming today.
There were plenty of games of frisbee, hookahs, lounging on blankets on the quad, and bikini-clad girls learning how to throw a football from their potential aggressor bro-friends.
It’ll be a beautiful weekend, with weather in the 80s, so keep your shades on and your eyes open!
Hip! Hip! _ _ _ _ _ _ !
And how am I so certain? Take a look:
right in the center there
Upon getting back from Spring Break, I noticed there was a “yield for pedestrians” sign in my oft-traveled crosswalk on Farm Road and Grant Egbert Boulevard. This is the same crosswalk that, months ago, after near collisions, I insisted was in need of one of these signs.
Where else was there public outcry? Who else has voiced the dangers of crosswalks lacking such signage? The Ithacan? The Ithaca Times, Journal. No, no and no.
‘Twas thacant.
ITS CRAZY. And it’s happening on our campus. Check this out. It’s certainly a what-the-hell moment.
I decided to take a new route from Friends to my noon class in Smiddy – why, I don’t know, nor does it matter – like it didn’t matter why Lewis and Clark trekked out to the West Coast. They made a discovery and so did I.
But instead of a new territory, I found a new bathroom, recently opened after the construction in the greener area of campus. But this bathroom is magnificent, luxurious, host to two rows of urinals!
Left side
To the right
This bathroom is so fresh, so new – I figured it just opened today – and that I, yes I, was among the first to use it. Upon closer inspection (note the trash bin) I wasn’t the first to use it. And if it did open today, the janitors haven’t been doing a good job emptying these paper towels.
Did I mention the stalls?! They are complete with the green handle for liquid or solid waste:
I am not an infant!
But, similar to the extremely short bubblers in the business school, these toilets are a foot off the ground! I almost expect to see one of those rings around it so children don’t fall in. I’m over six feet, dammit!
I remember, as a child, visiting historical sites from the 1800s. At these old houses, railings were at my father’s knees, people had to duck to get through doors, and, as the tour guide reminded us, Abe Lincoln was considered a giant at six foot three.
The construction workers and plumbers must have been under the impression that they were building a historical replica of a bathroom for such a house – not for a state-of-the-art green building.
Makes me sick.
halo-ed?
These three buggers were spotted at the Chanticleer.
what appears to be a frog
Spotted in the Park stairwell.
so low
Why is this bubbler (or water fountain, depending on where you’re from – a conversation in semantics I won’t get in to now) so low? Seriously – check it out in the new business building behind the coffee stand. It’s a foot off the ground!
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