Nutshell: December 2007

I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. School has taken a strangle hold on my life for the very last time this month. And it’s been quite a death knell. But here’s a list of all the things I can recall about these past few weeks.

Mystery Family: Cutting wax.

That’s right. The band headed out to record with Mark’s friend Mike in his basement studio in Bethlehem, PA. And we totally made it through without killing each other. The key to this, I believe was the fact that there were 9 cats and one dog living at Mike’s house. Whenever we were getting on each other’s nerves there was an adorable animal to sit on our laps and calm us down. Mark and I went through the house upon our arrival giving each one a unique Mystery Family name such as Albert, Truman and Calypso.

That and everyone got what they call “ripping high.”

But anyway, the actual recording process went surprisingly well. We’d been having pretty in-depth practices with the metronome before we went out there, so we were pretty tight. “Ducks in Flight” we just did without the metronome, and I think it sounds really sloppy, which sucks but everything else sounded pretty good. We’ll get the first “drafts” of the mixes this weekend. Exciting!

I am the City #1: Got a bad review.

So, I got a random email from some guy rambling about how he wrote a review of my zine and he hoped that I hadn’t read it because some things could potentially get misconstrued. He said that in reality he really liked it and he hoped that he could pick it up for his distro. Though he didn’t include a link to the review or even mention the name of his distro, I was able to Google him and find the review. Now, I know bad reviews happen, and I’m definitely happy to get any kind of review. This one basically said that my zine was “partisan” (because zines should be so non-partisan) and “half-baked,” and then kind of critiqued me for being a girl in her 20s living in NYC. Now, I’ll agree with him, the first issue of my zine was kind of half-baked. I think though the irritating thing about it is, how could you say that things might get misconstrued? Don’t fucking take shit back. Just say it.

Anyway, I just checked it out again and he updated with some sort of disclaimer, which I feel like is even more vaguely insulting. Check it out for yourself.

And I think he means “snarky for the sake of being clever.” Huh?

Also, in an announcement that he picked up Brainscan for the distro, he called Alex Wrekk the “Angelica Houston of zines,” which is both factually debatable and metaphorically confusing. Snarky? Clever? You decide.

Wednesday Night: Gonna Walk Around and Drink

This is it. I’m 85% sure that I’m going to be done with college. Wednesday night we had our final marathon class in Screenwriting, which I think has been my favorite class in my entire college career. Despite the fact that I was the only girl, I was treated with an inordinate amount of respect from both my professor and classmates, but I don’t know, everyone was also super casual and fun. I have this feeling like that class has changed the direction of my life in certain ways. I’m leaving it with a feature-length screenplay that I’ve gotten a really great response to, and the courage to kind of pursue getting it made. And even if it doesn’t get made, I wrote a feature-length screenplay! That’s fucking fantastic.

Oh there’s been lots of other stuff too. Stuff that happened at the beginning of the month that I barely remember. There’s been a lot of holiday parties and seeing movies and it’s snowing already and I had this drink called Nog-a-sake (like eggnog and sake) and I’m going to Ohio and then Elaine and Evan are coming. And I’m writing papers on Christian theology and I’ve decided to do a monthly Podcast. And Jesse’s helping me design a website and I’ve been too loud and drunk lately.

But, I guess that’s just December.