Andrew Speaks/Types

Today my friend asked me if I wanted to go see the new Indiana Jones at midnight with him. Of course, I told him I wanted to but I needed to call my parents and make sure I could. So I worked out this big plan to where I would go home and do my running and then go to his house after dinner and hang out there until it was time for the movie, then go home with him and sleep at his place. My parents would come get me in the morning and I would have a job interview the next day. I get all this worked out.

I text him and I say, “What time do you want me to come over,” and he replies, “For what?”

I say, “I thought I was coming over to hang out for a while before the movie?” and he says,

“Wow, you’re stupid, it comes out next Wednesday.”

I had two friends come over yesterday (that’s why I forgot to blog), and at about 1 in the morning, after playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl for hours, we made out own way to play. Two people will be using Gamecube controllers, and one will be using a Wii Remote & Nunchuck (or whatever controller he’s worst with), and then you’ll have one computer player. You’re going to need to make 3 new “profiles,” or names for this Brawl.

Make a new name called “Blind,” one called “Foot,” and one called “Screw.” Whoever is “Blind,” is always Sonic, whoever is “Screw,” is always Ice-Climbers, and whoever is Foot is always Olimar. In this mode, the 3 players will take turns being Screw, Foot, and Blind.

Whoever is Blind/Sonic, has to use a Wavebird Controller or a Gamecube controller with an extension cord, and has to play the game while facing away from the television, using only his ears to tell where he is and if he’s hitting anyone.

Whoever is Foot/Olimar, obviously sits the Gamecube controller in front of him and plays only with his feet.

But Screw/Ice-Climbers is the fun character. Whoever is going to be Screw has to leave the room, while the other players go into “Options,” and change his control scheme to whatever they think would screw him up the most. He cane come back in the room when they’re done, and then it’s almost time to Brawl.

Now, set up a computer character, who is always Mr. Game & Watch, always on level 1. Set the rules on a 2-minute time match. Let Screw and Foot agree on what stage to play at, and do not tell Blind where it is. After the Brawl is over, save the video to your Wii and let Blind and the rest of the players watch it back. I can almost guarantee that it’ll be a riot.

This mode will probably be funniest if played past midnight, when everything’s funny, though.

Today was a fun day, because today is the day that me and my friend Travis made our own recording studio in a very small bathroom and actually wrote and recorded some decent songs.

The first song was all me, and it was called “Witch Doctor.” Technically, this song wasn’t recorded in Washroom Studios because I wasn’t exactly in the bathroom when I recorded it, but it was before we had the idea. But still, I wrote and recorded the song all sitting in one place, holding a guitar, having a keyboard in front of me, and a laptop to the side. (And relatively close to the bathroom) The song has a exotic sounding piano part going on in the background that’s all focused around one chord with some variations here and there, then some conga-esque drums kick in to give the song some rhythm. The solos that are over this background part are flute, keyboard-clav, and wah-wah guitar. (Everything but the guitar was made from the keyboard) It was only like a minute and a half, maybe two minutes, but it was fun to make and fun to play. Though I probably couldn’t play it again if I tried. These are always spur of the moment type of things.

Then, Travis came up with the “let’s make a recording studio in the bathroom” idea, so we got excited. The next song was supposed to be an all-Travis song, but we ended up collabo-ing because he needed some help and I wanted in on it. We decided to call the song “Faucetto” because of the environment we we’re in and because of some of the instruments we used. First, we made a drum loop and played that for about a minute and recorded it. This probably wasn’t a good idea because it was hard to work with anything else after recording the drums first. (In my opinion, you should record drums WHILE recording the main instrument, like I did with “Witch Doctor.” I recorded the piano and the drums at the same time.) Travis wanted to put some weird vocals like I did with my ambient Ben-collabo song (you’ll hear about this later), “Distended Tendencies.” So we were trying to make the wierdest vocal effects ever and found some amazing effects on his pedal board that made his beat-boxing sound like a nuclear bomb. It was awesome, so we ran with it. We ended up using tongue clicks over the drums and it sounded like a mad dripping faucet or something. We used the same effects on a running faucet in Travis’ bathtub to increase the effect; it sounded amazing. The coolest thing we recorded, though, was when Travis put effects on the microphone and rubbed the mic against his jeans and it sounded like a turntable scratch. Awesome. The, one thing remained: actual music. The first half of the song was all piano over all those effects that I told you about. Then, after all the effects ended, there was a keyboard rhythm part that went on for a bit by itself, and then guitar and drums kicked in and made a great coda to end the song with. Pretty sweet.

You can listen to “Witch Doctor” and “Faucetto” at my myspace music page, along with some old songs I made called “Real Grace,” “Retrogressive,” and a remake of a The Mars Volta song, which was once called “Cicatriz E.S.P.,” that I renamed as my own to “Cicatrix. Check them all out here:

http://www.myspace.com/andrewinlatin

Good night.

P.S.: I just watched Cloverfield again, and I stand by my score of 3.8 out of 4. Awesome movie.

Today was the second real practice of my church’s praise band, I think it’s going really good. Our drummer and bass player have both only been playing their instruments for about a week, but they can both play pretty well already. So promising. I’m really stoked for finished products of our songs. I have some videos of us playing today, I might put them up, I might not, I’ll have to think about it.

But anyways. Today is sunday and tomorrow is MLK day, so I won’t be going to school until tuesday. But this is a special week because my parents are on vacation. So today and tomorrow I’m at my granny’s house just chilling and surfin’ the net and playing guitar and stuff. Then on tuesday I’m going to school and going home with my best friend Travis and staying with him until thursday and I’m dropping all my stuff off at his house tomorrow.  Stuff = guitar, laptop, camera, etc. And we’re gonna jam and learn some two-man songs. Maybe try and get some kind of music project going. I dunno. I’ll let you know what turns out.

So, I’m really sorry for not blogging yesterday. I guess I broke my all year streak that I was going for. But it really wasn’t my fault. My mom took my computer out of my room before I got a chance to write it, and it turned midnight before I got it back. So, no breaks. That kind of sucks. I’m gonna try and make this an every day thing, though, no exceptions.

Since I didn’t get to blog yesterday, I’ll make it up to you by sharing something more personal. This is probably a bad example to show my writing with, because this is the first time I’ve ever wrote something like this. It’s less poetry and more prose, but not 100% prose. Also, it won’t mean anything to you or translate over to other people well.. Just so you know, don’t try and figure out what it’s about, because it will only make sense to me. I promise. There’s some parts that might apply to life, but for the most part it’s just things that connected in my head at the time. I wrote this without thinking, really. Anyways, this “poem” is called Non-Stop Congeniality, and it’s about a touchy subject for me, I wrote it last night. That’s all you get.

Before I share my “poem,” though, I’m gonna go ahead and tell you what I’ll be writing either today or tomorrow. I went to my friend Michael’s birthday party, and someone brought rock band. (Sweet!) No drums, which was what I wanted, and I wasn’t gonna try guitar cause I suck at all guitar-based games even though I’m a pretty good guitar player, so I sang. It had “Go With The Flow” by Queens Of The Stone Age, one of my favorite bands, ever. They’re really great. But, anyway. I think I did a good job. We got a video of it, although it’s all of the screen. You can still hear me, though. I’m converting the video into a format that youTube will understand right now. So expect that soon. Here you go for today.

NON-STOP CONGENIALITY
by Andrew

I had misplaced my options and became
stuck with this road
I’ve said it before a hundred
times too low
the number written on my arm
will be giving me ghosts
as the red 3 a.m. throws it’s
off-white glow
all the notes that had broke
this promise switch to anew
a greatest miss, a greatest hit
a figure of you
my pen could never erase your
badly-drawn other half of self-portriat
currents run, though my shining
hint lays away from the flow
a water molecule to drench my head in
to break my bed in, to break my bread in
it’s such a long story to be told
through my glass of the future and the present
your arm by your side mocks
the boat doesn’t rock
the paper doesn’t fold, just contrasts
more bold ink down
down down down to the other side
of that perspective shot of
a guitar that I used to write our baby
a lullaby before it became yours
if I’m ranting I’ll stop
if it’s falling I’ll drop
anything for love
oh, anything, anything for love
I have watched the way that it has
gone for years
the feet fear to take
another feat of nature
beast of nature, a kind of lord of the flies
type of nature
carpet cold, story old
story told to your son to your son and your son
the eyes go plop when they chase the
vault, to those who drop
I’m sorry for wasting this page
but now the goldest of ages is dead
a cable cord to plug my voice in
a dead weight to close the empty space
in my arms with
would that risk losing you
untrue, a glow of interactivity
system for your pleasure
pick up the weather
move it someplace else because my
scribble scrabble dibble dabbles
all the way down the
punctured scary evidence
scary slash sad and a thank you
a hello a goodbye an adieu
a french word for tough luck chump
lucky cussing tongue for a few seconds
I’ll take it back and get a refund
when I’m done, oh how I’d refund
anything or love
oh, anything, anything for love
and it’s red
maybe blue
I love

Well, the first two days of school have come and passed, and let me tell you, those were some relaxing two days. In my first class, Spanish 2, all of our work is in-class. Sometimes it gets tough, but at least after 1 and a half hours it’s over and you don’t have to worry about it. (I know this because I had the same teacher for Spanish 1 last semester) My second class is photography, and I don’t know a whole lot about it. But what I’ve heard is that there’s not much work there either (I haven’t had any so far), and aside from that, photography is something that I really really like so if I ever do end up getting a lot to do in there, it’ll be great actually. Third period is Advanced Choir, which I recently got moved to being a bass from originally being a tenor. I’m a little upset because of that.. I CAN sing bass a lot better than I can sing tenor, basically because it’s just a lower tenor. There’s no “On Moonlight Bay” low croaking notes to sing. It’s just tenor that doesn’t strain your voice. On the other hand I can also sing tenor pretty well,  but I like the minor challenge, and I like the idea of singing tenor more than bass. You don’t see many bass singers in rock bands, right? Also, I have more friends in the tenor section, and one guy in the basses just gets no my nerves a lot…jeez. Oh, well. I’m ranting. Great story about my fourth block class. Here goes.

Last semester I had Algebra 2, which wouldn’t have been nearly as hard if it wouldn’t have been for the teacher. Ms. Thompson is about 5 feet tall, has a heavy phillipino accent, can barely ever get her subject/verb agreement right (making her impossible to talk to) and has absolutely no respect for anyone else. No exaggerating. I promise. Anyway, one day I told her that my mom checked my homework for me, and that my homework was definitely right because my mom used to teach college-level calculus. She took that info to heart and for the rest of the year she thought my mom DID all my homework for me, and wasn’t afraid to let the class know her thoughts. Don’t get any ideas, my mom wouldn’t do my homework for me if I begged. All she did was explain the concept if I didn’t understand anything that Thompson said that day, and check it after I did everything else myself. I actually stood up to Ms. Thompson once, after her really ticking me off, but that’s another story.

But the thing was, everyone in her Algebra 2 class also had her for Honors Geometry next semester. Ouch. So, about half the class dropped out of that one. Their excuse on their class change form was “I don’t understand Ms. Thompson” or something like that, so the school board had to do something. What they did was switch Ms. Thompson to teaching regular Geometry and make the regular Geometry teacher teach Honors Geometry. Soooo… Anyone who had already dropped out of Honors to switch into regular Geometry to avoid Thompson was stuck with her again for another semester, in a class that will give you a lesser credit, and everyone who stayed got an easy teacher and an Honors class. Good deal, I say. I’m in Honors. I still laugh a little just thinking about the look on those kids faces when they saw their new schedule, though.

Oh, and my friends and I have a theory that our new Geometry teacher is a child molester. He just looks the type. Dunno.

I’ll talk about yesterday’s strange sickness sometime, I promise.

Last night, my friend Ben, his friend Seb, and I had a listening party for the band The Mars Volta, and we listened to almost all of their discography. Trying to describe The Mars Volta is really pointless and won’t convince anyone about their sound, so I’m not going to try. So, here’s my plug: listen to The Mars Volta.Anyway, back to the listening party. What we did was we all got into a group conversation in MSN messenger, then made identical playlists, and started them all at the same time, and listened all the way through, discussing throughout. Now, this playlist was massive. If you want to know how massive, check this out. 

 So that’s our playlist. 37 tracks, 4 hours, 52 minutes, and 1 second long. We started at 9:30 PM on 03/01/08, and ended roughly at 2:22 AM on 04/01/08. Epic. Very epic. But now I’ve promised myself not to listen to any more Volta until 01/29/08, the day their new album gets released, to get myself stoked for it. I just hope I can make it…Remember how I said this party was with me, Ben, and Seb? Well, Seb is in a band himself, called Fallen Justice, and they’re in Ontario, and he convinced me to put a plug to them in this blog too. Here’s their youTube video of them covering Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Take it away, boys.One more goody for you. Here’s a track off of The Mars Volta’s upcoming album, The Bedlam In Goliath. The sound quality leaves much to be desired because this is a rip of a music video, but it still really kicks butt. The song is called “Goliath.” Enjoy.