Ich bin Praktisch Perfekt.

Lately I have been avoiding work that I find stressful or extremely tedious like annotating a book I wanted to enjoy or thinking about getting ready for college (I am going to SUNY New Paltz if I didn't mention it before). This is not healthy in any way and I do not promote avoiding things like I have been. However, I have made the choice to instead doing nothing but scrolling through the internet or sleeping to avoid things that I will do things that are more productive and beneficial. In this I have been teaching myself more and more German on the iPhone app Duolingo. If you don't have Duolingo I would totally try it out because it is fun and easy and most importantly free (my favorite number) I own Rosetta Stone for a different language and I honestly think Duolingo is better for the price and you can take it on the go. I find myself able to grasp languages fairly well so teaching myself German makes me feel like I am doing some good, creating some ability that may come handy in the future. I have also been spending more time playing bass. I stopped for a little bit because I gave the bass I was mainly using back to my cousins so they can put it in their restaurant (The restaurant is Beatles themed and the bass looked like Paul's). I currently have my dad's bass from when he used to play back who know how long ago (definitely before I was alive). I really have to change the strings or I will rip my eyes out.

Auf Weidersehen!

Do the Macarena in the Devils Lair

But just don't sit down cause I've moved your chair

Don't Sit Down Cause I've Moved Your Chair- Arctic Monkeys

I had quite the adventure this week. I feel like have been all over the place in the span of about eight days. Last Friday I went snowboarding for the first time. I was better at it than I thought I would be but I also go wakeboarding in the summer. I think if you can balance your weight standing on a train you can snowboard. I have a deeper appreciation of the the snowboarders at the Winter Olympics this year. I'll get more into that later. 

I then went and saw Panic! at the Disco with Danielle (it was her first time seeing them)! Had a nice time and even got myself a pick from one of my favorite bassists Dallon Weekes

Then on Saturday I took Julian to the Neue Galerie during the day. Julian kind of asked me to explain things about art which made me come to the conclusion that talking about art is much harder than it seems. At least for me it is. For me it seems so natural or common I feel like saying "well you just paint it" or "just draw it" and I find it hard to point of key details that may help others with making art. Maybe this is why all those how to books about art go from two circles to the Mona Lisa in one step. Hopefully I spoke well enough about the art at Neue that Julian has a better understanding. That day felt like a "treat yo' self" kind of day and I bought myself a book on Schiele and some more Schiele post cards (I have two at home I put on my walls).

After Neue Julian and I then walked through Central Park because I have only been on the corners of it and never really infiltrated it. Clearly nobody thought to put any ice on the paths and I kept falling on my ass every two minutes. Julian never slipped and I don't know why.

Later that night after I departed with Julian I met up with Caitlin and went to see the Arctic Monkeys. It was my first time in Madison Square Garden which seems kind of weird since I have been to so many shows. To be honest I found that MSG was smaller than I thought it would be. The only arena I have been to was the Barclays Center which is huge! I also got seated tickets which I don't normally do but I was very close to the side of the stage. Who opened for Arctic Monkeys but none other than Deerhunter! Poor Bradford Cox had the flu but they still performed well (heard a few songs we did in Metamorphoses). HOLY COW the Arctic Monkeys are really something. After years of listening to all their songs I finally got the chance to see them live and boy they are worth seeing live. Their most recent album AM  in my opinion was probably the best album released last year. While some of the bands I listen too put out records I enjoyed I none of them I can really say were their best or just as amazing as the rest but AM is a really solid album and I recommend you all listen to it. They have both great music and lyrics that are clever and pretty snarky. Listen to a few of their songs and you'll know exactly what I mean. They even covered a Beatles song to honor 50 years since coming to America. I kind of think Alex Turner's speaking voice sounds like a Beatle, not just because they're English. Alex Turner always sings with a noticeable English accent so maybe I can consider singing along as practicing for the play (however I don't think I'll use an accent from Sheffield, England). Overall they put on a great show with excellent imagery. The whole imagery for this album is very cool from the album cover to this video (watch this, it gave me some cool ideas maybe it will give you some too. Gets interesting around a minute and a half):

One of my favorites off of AM:

Here is their cover of "All My Loving" by The Beatles

hope to see them again soon

Asking and Begging

So I was looking through my twitter and came across a reply Gerard Way made to Amanda Palmer. Looking for context of two very cool people conversing I looked at Amanda's original tweet that contained a blog post. After her TED talk (the one we watched in class) she said she had been contacted by a few publishers and she is now writing a book and "it’s definitely going to have a lot of ME in it, and presumably a lot of YOU."
So her first question was:


to which Gerard Way replied with

 

and I like that answer a lot.

Do you have an answer of your own?