Gremlins And Ghouls

Oh how I love Halloween.

Spooks and spirits come out to play. There are candy bowls overflowing at the AP skyscraper and on my kitchen counter. And for one day a year, being ghostly pale is something everyone else in the world strives for. It just makes my little heart pitter-patter.

I may not have decided on my costume yet for this year (it's only a day away, I know!) but my favorite little monster has: He's a Jack-o-latern!

So from all of us to all of you, Happy Halloween!

I Blame AC/DC

Finally, an explanation that makes sense!

It wasn't those risky side-bets on the mortgages, nor was it corporate greed and unprecedented deregulation! The floundering British economy is not at all related to our own financial epic fail. Nay, it can only be blamed on one thing...

AC/DC.

Apparently there is a comic link between the success of AC/DC and economic recessions across the pond. Somehow I'm comforted by this.

According to an Australian news site, AC/DC formed in 1973, right at the start of the oil crisis.

When the band released Back In Black in 1980, the rapidly rising inflation rates could only be rivaled by the rising unemployment rates. The comparisons go on and on...

So now that we have the U.K. diagnosed, are there any future economists out there who know who America's proverbial "AC/DC"?

How I spent my fall vacation

Okay, so it wasn't a vacation per se, in that I didn't go anywhere and I didn't take any time off work and I have not accumulated sunburns or sea shells. So true, there was no vacation. But the "How I spent my..." were always my favorite writing assignments in school because it gave us all the chance to pathologically lie and fabricate all of these outlandish tales only to outdo each other and further traumatize our fragile psyches... those were the days...

So it's not a sea shell or sun, but as evidenced above, I finally got my iPhone e-mail to work (my brother got my iPhone e-mail to work) and I was able to retrieve my pictures - yay! And share them with you - double yay!

So Family Force 5 was last friday. This friday was Magnetic Morning, also at the Grog Shop. Surprisingly, there was a much smaller turnout this week. Granted it was rainy and cold and a bunch of kids probably were collecting sunburns and sea shells on their exotic fall break trips (?). Maybe.

So Robb and I were standing outside the venue in between sets when a gentleman in a snow cap, whom we did not know, came up and was like, "Hey, you stole my woman!" Robb and I looked around, thinking the stranger was obviously not talking to us. But lo and behold, that was his "funny" way of starting a conversation that ended with him in tears begging us for food. But before he started drunkenly crying, he was still all smiles when he held out his hand and introduced himself as Antwon Robinson (I highly doubt that is his real name). And then he asked for our names. We tried to get away with just telling him out first names, but he wasn't having it. So I told him my name was Mary Clark. Robb, being the honest soul he is, actually told this crazy panhandler his real name. But then Antwon just cried for awhile, then ran away smiling toward the next group, shouting "Hey, you stole my woman!" Oh, city life.

If you've gone to a show in a big city, or were in a city for any reason, I'm sure you've had your own Antwon Robinsons. I know I shouldn't, but I always feel kind of guilty when I don't give them money. I mean, at the time, of course, I just want them to go away and not sing or try to rob me, but then I feel kind of bad. I guess that's what they call a moral dilemma. 

Good News

I heart weekends for many reasons: Sleeping in (okay, I start work at 10 and pretty much sleep in everyday), running to the grocery store and Target (which I believe we've already established as two of my favorite pastimes), NFL games, and so much more.

But this weekend? THIS weekend just got even better, dear bloglings:

On Saturday, Snow Patrol released their entire new album, A Hundred Million Stars, on their MySpace (for free!) before the album arrives on store shelves.

I love Snow Patrol (and not just because they have "snow" in their name and I love snow). Their 2004 album Final Straw and 2006's Eyes Open were both great. "Chasing Cars" was blown out of proportion a bit, but it's a quality song nonetheless.

Am I gushing? I'm gushing. Okay, I'll stop. So what do I think of the new songs? I'll give you a chance to take a listen, and then I'll share.

Berries, Goji

You know how sometimes your work life spills over into the rest of your life? Like on the Office episode where Pam is like, "Sometimes I answer my home phone, 'Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam.'" I had one of those moments last night.

After watching all of my Thursday night TV shows that make the rest of the week worth living, I was sitting at my kitchen table drinking some Goji berry green tea (I'll get to why that's important later), working on some long overdue thank-you notes for wedding gifts. (To anyone reading this who gave us a present: We really do appreciate it, we've just been so busy! The letter is in the mail now, I promise.) Anyway, so I was sitting there, addressing envelopes and writing the best belated notes I could think of, when all of a sudden I forgot a comma (gasp!). Instead of just adding in a comma like any other sane person would do, I put in the copy-edit mark for a comma.

I thought about it for a minute--because I really didn't want to waste the card--and I was relatively positive that the intended recipient wouldn't notice much less care about the addition of a comma or copy-edit mark. But I rewrote it anyway.

This isn't the first time this has happened. For the wedding programs, as another example, I maniacally read them over and over checking for errors. I was dangerously close to making a project folder for them like we do here at the AP skyscraper, but I resisted.

Back to last night. So I kept drinking tea...  Goji berry tea... which is delicious and also apparently extremely potent for me. So I was wide-awake until 2 a.m. I wrote lots and lots of thank-yous, paid all my bills, organizing at least two notebooks and finally made myself try to fall asleep. I went to bed thinking, "Good, I've got so much under control now. I'll just get up in the morning at my usual time and get more done so I can enjoy the weekend."

And then I overslept this morning. I blame the Goji berries.

Whoa-oh, It's Magic

It's really no secret that technology and I have a somewhat troubled relationship, and although iPhone and I were committed to making this work, things have been even more rocky lately.


On Friday night, I went to the Family Force 5 show at the Grog Shop, took pictures with my iPhone and planned on sharing them with the world. iPhone had other plans however, such as to somehow screw up my mail settings and make it physically and emotionally impossible to email photos. The show was great -- people were hanging from the ceiling, the whole place was shaking like San Francisco during an earthquake on account of all the jumping, the music was 100 percent danceable and there was a sighting of bigfoot. I would insert some blurry, red-lighted pictures here to prove all of these claims, but you know the story... you'll just have to trust me on this one.


And for those of you keeping score at home, I finally got my heat turned on. I know, it's big news. It was so warm the other day that Jack actually wiggled out of his sweater. He will henceforth be known as Houdini-dog. (I tried calling him Jack Angel: Dog Freak, but he didn't take too well to that one.)

Sink Or Swim

Having happily discovered that the connecting-cable-thing for my satellite radio will also work to play songs from my iPhone on my car stereo, I was thoroughly excited. Let's from now on refer to it as the connector-cable of joy.

So what have I been rocking on my way to work every morning since this blissful discovery? Yep, the Gaslight Anthem's pre-'59 Sound disc, Sink Or Swim. It's perfect for chilly fall drives through downtown when you can't take the I-90 inner belt because there's a very real possibility that one extra car could make it collapse quicker than our economy. But listening to Sink Or Swim makes you not care about the bridge beneath you collapsing, nay, it makes you want to dance in the moonlight in 1930 with faith and a switchblade tucked beneath your coat (all phrases borrowed from Sink Or Swim songs on that one).

All of this makes me increasingly disappointed that I missed the Gaslight Anthem when they were in town a few weeks ago. Even the connector-cable of joy is powerless to fix that.

(P.S. What I just overheard in the hallway: "What? You don't want to make out with some boney, pasty-ass British guy?" (I think it was British, maybe Scottish. I'm a bad eavesdropper) But see, it's like you're here...)

In A Perfect World

After unsuccessful attempts to get last minute tickets to the Browns game Monday night (a game that defied logic in the most amazing ways!), my husband and I decided to just watch the game at home. After talking about how much money we almost paid for really crappy seats, we then realized how awesome it would be if people paid hundreds of dollars just to watch us to our jobs in the same way that we often do for professional athletes and bands. What a world that would be, right?

Let's imagine...

People would line up outside of the AP skyscraper hours before the workday started, their faces all painted with punctuation marks and they'd be all trying to wave in the background as the announcers went over the pre-workday stats:

Announcer 1: Well, this season they've really struggled with the misplaced modifiers, and that could really come back to haunt them on this issue.

Announcer 2: You're right, Jim. But if they can keep the extraneous commas to a minimum, they might pull this one off. The fact-checking has been really tight, probably the best in the league.

Whenever I caught a really big, potentially disastrous error, there would of course be an instant reply and the crowd would go wild...

Crowd cheer: Gram-mar! Gram-mar! Whoooo!!!

Hazards Of The Job

It's not like I'm fishing for crab on the Northwestern for 72 sleepless hours in the Bering Strait like on Deadliest Catch (which my dad loves.) But last night we were all burning the midnight oil at the AP skyscraper (okay, so it wasn't that late) and when I get tired, I have a bad habit of leaning my face on my right hand while I'm proofing pages that smell not unlike sharpies. Being right-handed, I often I have my trusty red pen in my right hand and when said pen isn't capped, it tends to create a lovely abstract artwork that looks like a bad tattoo of a red spider web on the right side of my face. Hopefully I'll make it through today's round of pages without turning myself into a human ink project or fall off the bow into sub-zero waters, which is a real hazard in my living room these days.

My right hand, however, is already very conspicuously covered in red ink. I don't know how it happened, or how I managed to forget the delicious tofu stir-fry, that I was planning to enjoy for lunch at home, this morning. My growling stomach has been chastising me for it all day. I did have peanut M&Ms, but that does not a satisfying lunch make.

And while I'm telling you about all the things that went wrong today, I was driving down the lovely Carnegie Avenue this morning in the pouring rain, already a good ten minutes behind schedule, when I decided that at a red light somewhere between my place and the Q was a good place to trade my tan hoodie for my black fleece. I had one arm in the sleeve of the fleece when the light decided that then was a good time to turn green. In an effort to not become another road rage statistic, I started moving while trying to get my other arm into the sleeve and completely pulled whatever muscle connects my neck to my left shoulder. The other drivers were not sympathetic to my plight and honked anyway.

Know Your Rights

Propelled by hypothermia, justice and Rise Against lyrics, I decided the other night to look up what my rights are as a tenant. Thankfully, the Cleveland Tenants Organization website was all kinds of helpful. According to the Ohio Revised Code, in situations like mine it's the landlord's responsibility to provide reasonable heat. So I realize that "reasonable" is sufficiently vague and open to interpretation, but when my poor dog is shivering all day and I can see my breath in my living room, there's a problem.

But this also reenforced to me how important it is to know my rights. My landlord sure isn't going to be all, "Well, Jennifer, according to the Ohio Revised Code, you're entitled to not freeze to death in your apartment." Because obviously it's in his best interest if I remain clueless. The less I know, the more other people can influence what I see as true and fair. It goes without saying that the same goes for government: The ignorant are easier to control. And I don't know how you feel about the subject, but I don't want to be pushed through life like cattle to the slaughter. I also don't believe in slaughtering cattle, but that's another issue entirely...

Arctic Monkey

I'm not saying I don't believe in global climate change (I've tried to cut back on my bottled water consumption), but it's gotten real cold here as of late. Colder especially since my wonderful landlord has decided not to turn on the heat at our house and says he won't do so until the end of October. At the earliest.

Needless to say, this has become a problem, especially since only some of our windows have storm screens and some are painted open (I'm still not sure what kind of design genius actually managed that.) We even had to buy Jack some sweaters.

So we've been trying to stay in warm places (aka anywhere other than our house), hence my blogging has been sparse. Please accept my frigid apologies. 

Rock Against

Despite the fact that it was at least -30 degrees and a school night, the Gaslight Anthem, Thrice, Alkaline Trio and Rise Against rocked the Time Warner Cable Amphitheater in Cleveland last night as the first stop in their fall tour.

I know my photography skills leave a little something to be desired, but in all fairness I was taking the pictures with my iPhone while simultaneously trying not to get frostbite or sucked into a mosh pit.

But don't let my bleak future in photojournalism get you down, instead let's focus on the fierce performance everyone's favorite Trio delivered last night. They did say that their second-to-last song, "This Could Be Love" was for Cleveland, but, oh, I bet they say that to all the cities.

I also have a penchant for taking pictures when the lights are red. I'm not sure what this says about me as a person, other than the fact that it had been far too long since I'd seen Rise Against. Their latest offering, Appeal To Reason, will be coming to a store shelf or iTunes store near you on October 7. Mark your iCals, my dears, because this is not one to be missed.

You'll notice that the photos of Thrice and Gaslight are missing, which is sad. The story behind why they are missing is also sad. I thought I would have time to catch dinner and not miss the show, I thought wrong. I thought I knew my way around the labyrinth that is the Flats, again I thought wrong. So I was super bummed that I missed Gaslight entirely and only caught the last half of the Thrice set.

Rainsoaked and with a sore throat, I made it home and watched the Vice Presidential debate that I'd DVRed. Do I think Joe Biden (or Obiden as Palin likes to say) completely schooled Alaska's favorite wolf killer/beauty queen? Darn right, you betcha, I do. ::wink, wink::

In other exciting news, I'm learning how to appropriately use the phrase "jump the shark." It's complicated but this presidential race is helping.