Crazy Work Story

This is a blog I posted on myspace the other day. It occurred to me that this is the kind of story Schrowe would have ended up in, so I thought I'd post it here.

So last night I got drunk at work.

Wasted. Crunked.

My last install (where i go be a dork and set up credit card machines... which is actually more complicated than it sounds) of the day was at this total dive, and the kind of dive where everybody at the bar has their own stool and a bartender who's kind of like sam malone except punk rock and with boobs serves up all the booze.

So as soon as i get there, the bartender introduces herself. "hi, i'm sherri. i just broke up w/ my boyfriend, so you're going to do a shot with me."

it was an offer i couldn't refuse, except when i fast forwarded to my boss getting a complaint about me getting drunk on an install.

so i said let's raincheck until i'm done playing with electrical cords and then drink up.

so as soon as i get finished, she puts a shot in my face, and i'm much more receptive.

now, i'm supposed to train her, but she has so much shit going on that i can't really pin her down.

so as i'm waiting she pours some weird vodka drink w/ curdled bailey's that she'd made up. it was actually pretty good.

keep in mind i'm not paying for any of this.

she pours another, and another, and i think at least 2 more, and by that point i'm drunk. wasted. she's telling me about "tits off tuesday" where exhibitionists apparently start showing up around midnight and dropping trow and humping on the pool table. i imagine most of these people are 50 year old alcoholic dudes with liver spots all over their gorilla-esque bodies. i imagine that now, but then imagined a roomful of pornstars, in my drunken haze.

and i've somehow become both her "husband" and her barback AND i'm pouring drinks.

i don't know how this all happened, but there i was flipping drinks like cruise on cocktail. okay, not really like that. i actually had trouble pouring beers that weren't half foam. but anyway.

so after sanitizing the second load of dishes, my glasses totally fogged up in the steam, and it was like i finally wised up... and called my roommate and told him he had to come down immediately for free tits and free beer.

so for some reason i drove home wasted, and then we drove back (him behind the wheel).

we spent the next few hours drinking more free booze and chatting with the bartender who i think was using me to make her ex boyfriend jealous.

after my roommate got sloshed he convinced me to leave, i think concerned that i was going to try to hump sherri.

we went to wendys to grease out the ole plumbing for hangover protection.

it was the second time i ate wendy's yesterday by the way.

awesome.

Tokyo Police Club

I don't know if I intend on turning middleCoast into a music blog or not, but since no one else has posted anything in awhile...

This is Tokyo Police Club and I can't get enough of them. This was the last band that Schrowe turned me on to. Actually, and this is really odd to say, but he turned me on to these guys posthumously (really fucked up to say that about a friend instead of a medal of honor recipient or something). He mentioned them in a comment to Jared on Show Me Music (showmemusic.wordpress.com) as being better than The Killers. Just don't tell Brandon Flowers.

Anyway, the video is great too. Looks like something I would have made in high school. Assuming that in high school I had actually been cool. Or talented. Or not so paralyzed with angst that I'd actually left my bedroom. Enjoy.




-JasonToo

Best Albums of 2006

Well it's about the time of year for middleCoast to share with all its loyal readers our list of the Top 10 Best Albums of 2006. This would have led to a most heated debate between OtherJason and JasonToo, to be sure, but middleCoast is quite certain that an agreement would have been made on the following:


1. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Just a brilliant display of musical talent from the NYC art rockers. Reminiscent of Kid A, from our anti-rock critic's point of view.

2. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Pop music as pop music should be. Here's hoping that DangerMouse's ADD can subside long enough to put together 14 more jams with Cee Lo.

3. My Morning Jacket - Okonokos
We realize that live albums shouldn't technically make album-of-the-year lists, but live MMJ is the best thing ever. Enjoy your rock bubble.

4. The Roots - Game Theory
Rap music is a bland and jaded commercial enterprise. Hip Hop is an art form mastered by The Roots. Game Theory is one of their most creative and enjoyable pieces yet.

5. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
The soul of the New Pornographers gets to the heart of great singer/songwriter albums: that bittersweet ache actually feels good.

6. The Flaming Lips - At War With the Mystics
It's no Soft Bulletin, but who says it has to be? Wayne and the boys still make the best music for dying from a heroin overdose.

7. Wolfmother - Wolfmother
Stealing other bands' sounds has been the root of all rock music, so suspend your disbelief and rock your socks off.

8. The Black Angels - Passover
Texas psych-rockers make The Doors sound like The Beach Boys. Proof that drugs are way better today than they were when your parents were freakin out.

9. Band of Horses - Everything All of the Time
Shoegazers that power-pop with the best of them. Great melodies and great lyrics that can just as easily be great background music.

10. Silversun Pickups - Carnavas
From the quiet noise school invoking My Bloody Valentine, Pavement, and Smashing Pumpkins all at once, keeping it interesting upon every listen.


So we at middleCoast are well aware of the fact that we left off some albums that just as easily could've been ranked number one, or at least should all be number eleven: The Decemberists, Tokyo Police Club, The Changes, +/- (Plus/Minus), and Arctic Monkeys are all solid Honorable Mentions.

Also key to this list is the fact that, fortunately or unfortunately, mC is not a professional rock critic, and therefore does not receive every album ever released for free. We at mC have to actually purchase our music, so a number of potential Best of 2006 albums have not even been heard. Albums like the latest from Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and Yo La Tengo may happen to be much better than the 10 listed above, but alas, we spent the money on beer instead.

That said, any artist or record company is more than welcome to supply middleCoast with free records for review. Most likely, they will immediately jump to the Number 1 album of the year.

-mC

I thought I would try this.....

Here I am, sitting at work, trying to get through another day. It's been 23 days since I received the most devastating, shocking, unbelieveable news of my life. My brother is gone. And here I sit, at work. WHAT? What am I doing here? I know, I know, I keep hearing "you have to go on with your life" and "life goes on" and "Jason wouldn't have wanted you to fall apart" Blah, blah, blah. I hear people around me as I write this laughing, talking, working and I just want to scream "HOW CAN EVERYONE JUST BE SO....NORMAL?!?!?" Who cares about the holiday party and what food to bring? Who cares about the fucking weather? Who cares about any of it?

I miss him so much. That seems so trite to say. I don't know what else to say. No words can ever express how much he means to me. I am so screwed up about a lot of things right now. I don't know what to think. I feel like he is with me, and I feel like I have received signs from him but maybe I'm just reaching and hoping for that. I hope I'm wrong about a lot of things. I hope he knows how much I love him. And I hope with all of my being that I will see him again. I visit Jas almost every day and I talk to him a lot. I hope he can hear me. JasonToo - I know what you mean. I feel very much like you wrote down some of my thoughts.

I feel like he made me a better person. Although I am the older sister, I feel like he taught me so much. I felt more like twins, or even that he was older than me. He's so fucking witty and smart and awesome. ( I know he is totally digging this) I want to read every book he read, watch every movie, go to every website he went to, see every band he loved. He always made me a little bit cooler. He'd be like "Hey Jenn, there's this awesome new band - let's go see them" We would go, or at the very least he would burn me the CD. I would always love the band, and then 6 months later the band would be huge. How did he do that?!?! He was always ahead of his time. I fucking love that about him.

I feel that I have rambled a bit, but I thought I would try this to see if it helped me at all. Maybe it will at some point, maybe I'll feel better as soon as I post this. Who knows?
Long Live the middleCoast
Bye for now.
Schrowe

Some Thoughts & Feelings, Part I

I feel like I need to write this. I don't know why. It's all dramatic and personal and I'm rarely the type to want to let everyone with internet access read this, but for some reason this feels necessary. I've had a few conversations recently that keep me thinking along these lines (a good talk this morning with a new good friend) and I want to put this out there...

Jason's gone. He has passed away. And I have to figure out what that means. To me anyway. He was my friend. He was my business partner. He was the guy that would go to a rock concert with me on a Tuesday night. He was my tour guide in my own city, pointing out what I've come to learn are called Schrowe Facts. He was my IT help. He was my drinking buddy. He was the only person on the planet that shared so many memories of Europe with me. He was my traveling companion. He was a part of my life, and as the routine of each day moves along I realize more and more what a large part of that daily life he was. And what is he now?

Man, this is harder to write than I thought it was going to be...

When a loved one dies, I immediately resort back to the inner Catholic schoolboy in me - 12 years of Catholic school ingrains in you that you go to heaven or you go to hell, right? Not so easy when you start trying to figure it out on your own, though. In the past 10 years I've had plenty of time to determine where I stand on the big issues. Whether or not there is an afterlife is a pretty big issue. I wish I'd had enough time to figure that one out. I have a hard time believing in the sort of standard view of what heaven is - harps and clouds and robes and boring shit that Jason would not have preferred. I will say this: I do believe in an afterlife. I do. I alternate depending on days as to what it is like, but at my most cynical and scientific I believe that when a person dies the human body releases an energy. Whether or not that energy is a soul with a conscience, or just carbon and oxygen and hydrogen atoms, I don't know. But that released energy has to go somewhere, right?

Amazing how trying to write about the afterlife makes me fully realize how little I understand.

At my most optimistic, "heaven" is whatever you believe it is. Whatever you hope it is. I wonder what Jason hoped heaven was. I suppose I have a few ideas...

His presence here in this life is certainly with me. With us all, I'm sure. But even that idea is something that makes me feel like a child when I try and think about what that means. Is he in the room with me? Is he inside me? Does he know what I'm thinking? What I'm seeing and hearing? Or do I need to talk out loud to him? Am I talking loud enough? Is he here right now, or is he hanging out with his sister for awhile? I hope it'll be my turn soon.

Will I get to see Jason again? That's the question that keeps haunting me into delving into this subject more and more. The thought of never seeing him again is almost too much to bear. I've been listening to Radiohead a lot lately (which is rarely healthy when you're already depressed) and the last line from Motion Picture Soundtrack keeps resonating through my ears:

I will see you
In the next life

I hope so...

Man, he would've loved this...

So I stumbled upon this video the other day on someone else's blog, and immediately thought of Schrowe, of course. I can picture him laughing his ass off, and at the same time wishing he was playing the key-tar in the band...

Enjoy.

I'm Going to Try...

My friend Jason - the founding father of the middleCoast - has passed away. That is not easy to say, but slightly less difficult to write. I have no intention, though, of letting the middleCoast burn out or fade away. We originally attempted to make middleCoast the magazine, or at least middleCoast the zine, in a printed format. We never really got past trying to figure out how big the paper should be, or which one of us would pay hard-earned beer money to make the copies, so it turned into a blog. A blog we hoped would take over the proverbial blogosphere, no less. (Actually, I assumed Jason had made up that word until I read it somewhere else months later.) What it turned into was a place for Jason to make us laugh, mostly. And I'm forever grateful that it will exist for me to read for as long as I can maintain the blogspot thing. So I'm going to try, for the sake of all his loyal readers, to figure out how to do more than just post my rants. I'm going to try and make sure this spot stays around for us all to read his stories, like the one about finding a mouse in his apartment, for years to come.

I hope I can write more about my friend soon. And I hope I can do so without trivializing our friendship. And I hope he's somewhere, on some plane of existence keeping him at peace, away from this world that needs things like blogospheres to make our days worthwhile.

Good bye, friend. I love you.

-JasonToo

Soggy Boxers

I started off this week to find a load full of soggy laundry in the dryer. This is after running the dryer twice.

I had no clean boxers and I wasn't about to go to work boxer free.

I had to scramble to come up with a quick solution as I was running late and I was actually scheduled to be somewhere at like 8 in the morning.

I finally decided to bake my underwear. The only question was what was the right temperature? I wanted them evenly cooked through but not fried.

I went with 300 degrees. That seemed hot but not hot enough for them to go up in flames, which would have been cool as long as I'd gotten a picture or been able to tell a story about it (which would have been far superior to this story).

Anyway, I baked those cottony fuckers for 20 minutes at 250 degrees and they were STILL SOGGY.

I had to give up and put wet boxers on when it was fucking freezing out. I decided to bring an extra pair of pants so I could make an emergency change out in a gas station bath room if my entire crotch area visibly sogged up. That would have been very awkward to explain.

As it stands I arrive at work with a dry exterior but the boxers weren't completely dry until at least lunch.

The moral of the story is that global warming will not allow us the convenience of saving $1 on the clothes dryer... and also that when you bake your boxers you've got to go for at least 600 degrees and put that shit directly on the oven rack.

Me and My Irrational Fears, Part I

While I realize it's highly unlikely, I nevertheless feel an overwhelming sensation (on occasion) that my heart is simply going to explode inside of me. Perhaps this isn't a normal occurance, although I'm not ruling out the possibility that in the course of history it has never happened that someone's heart has simply exploded within them. I don't even know why someone would rule out that possibility. Now I'm not saying that it's probable that my heart will explode; I'm just saying that I have an irrational fear that my heart will simply explode as I walk down the street. I'll be walking down the street, most likely listening to some tragically hip band on my ipod, and I'll just collapse onto the sidewalk. Whether or not this will actually kill me, I haven't yet determined. At the very least, I'm sure to lose all control of my bodily functions and end up lying in a pool of vomit and urine and other unpleasantness.

You may still be saying, "My god, this guy is neurotic as Woody Allen". And I'm responding that I don't necessarily disagree with you on that. However, consider this: I'm not talking about my shoulder randomly exploding, or my foot, or even my head like in Scanners; I'm speaking specifically of an internal organ. Your appendix can explode, can it not? Aha, exactly! So why, my comrade-in-skepticism, would it be so difficult to imagine a fellow internal organ - specifically my heart - also exploding? Hmmm? How do you answer that, Mr Science Man?

Now for me personally, this fear only smacks me in the face while walking down the street (and sometimes while driving a car (and sometimes while trying to fall asleep at night in bed)), so it's not completely overwhelming, just partially. So that is good. For most fears you can overcome them by attacking it and learning from experience. Afraid of heights? Climb up a tall building. Afraid of spiders? Let one crawl on your hand. However, one can't simply experience their own heart exploding, as much as I've tried. So that leaves me in a difficult position, nevertheless. I'm not sure confrontation would cure me of this fear anyway, and adding my irrational fear of confrontation into the mix probably wouldn't help things either.

For what it's worth, this is not an irrational fear of having a heart attack that I am feeling - oh no. Heart attacks can be avoided by eating right and exercise. When the 400-pound diabetic with a penchant for chocolate truffle cheesecake keels over from a heart attack, one thinks, hmm, perhaps he shouldn't have had that seventh slice. One can't do anything to prevent one's heart simply exploding inside of them, though. It just happens. Heart attacks just happen, but usually they're not all that surprising. My fear of heart attacks is quite rational.

So I suppose I'll just have to embrace my fear. Hug it, and squeeze it, and love it, and call it George. Then again, George may take my heart in his fat paw and squish it like a grape. Thanks a lot, George.

I just have one thing to say to all you pitchfork-reading rock snobs

I just have one thing to say to all you pitchfork-reading rock snobs. You think you're so fucking cool because you wrote in your blog all about how shitty Radiohead has become or how awful Beck's last album was or how disappointing At War with the Mystics is. Fuckin fuck off with your fuckin shit. Seriously. How are you gonna sit there and disrespect Radiohead when assholes like Kevin Federline are out there producing so-called music? Why are you so fucking myopic, you fucking rock snob? I mean really, that's like if your mom gave you a kickass 10-speed for Christmas, but then because she also gave you some lame-ass sweater now you don't like the sweater or the 10-speed. Fucking brat. Radiohead gave us one of the all-time greatest musical gifts in the history of the planet in the form of Kid A. And just because Hail to the Thief wasn't up to its impossible standard now Radiohead sucks? Seriously? That's the fucking logic? Fuck you. Radiohead is and always will be great BECAUSE of Kid A, not despite Kid A. After Kid A it doesn't fucking matter what else they do. They can fart in a can for 50 minutes and call it an album and it's still great. You know why? Because Kid A was THAT FUCKING GOOD. Have some damn respect.

What happened to being a fan of music? What's so wrong with just being a fan and enjoying music? Why do you have to be a critic? There are enough fucking critics out there and they're all assholes. So don't be a critic. There is nothing good about being a critic. Aren't you fucking cynical enough, you need to be critical too? Let me tell you about critics - professional critics, that is. Critics hate themselves. That's the only explanation for how they could hate everything else. So if you hate yourself, step right up and be the next critic. Otherwise, would you please shut the fuck up and listen to the music?

Music is so fucking good. Seriously. And I know there is a lot of horrendous shit out there, but good music is so fucking good. Have you heard My Morning Jacket perform Run Thru live on Okonokos? I mean, if that doesn't do anything for you then you're an asshole and you should punch yourself. Maybe I missed my time in the free lovin bullshit of the 60s, but doesn't anyone still enjoy the power of music? The sheer joy and passion that can come across in the art form? The fucking reason you started listening to music in the first place? If not, if you're too cool, too much of a hipster to remember how joyous music is, then I do feel sorry for you.

For what it's worth, I'm still an unashamed fan of music, specifically of these - the greatest bands on the planet currently making music (in no particular order) - and I only list a few because perhaps if you've forgotten how to enjoy music, listening to them will help:

My Morning Jacket
Wilco
The Flaming Lips
The Roots
TV on the Radio
Radiohead

In the words of Jim James:
Why does my mind blow to bits every time they play that song?
It's just the way that he sings,
not the words that he says, or the band.
I'm in love with this soul, it's a meaning that I understand.

-JasonToo

It took about 2 months

...for me to figure out how to log into blogger. This is sad. I'm not worthy.

It's a long story, and it involves lots of cocaine and cheap whiskey and a lobotomy, electroshock therapy, a whore, a fat man in a halter top... and a crack smoking midget.

In other words, it's pretty boring, so I'll spare the details. But you can see how I got distracted.

But I'm here and it feels good.

But my ass itches so I think it's time to take a shower. I'm really going to start classing down this blog.

Who's the Line Leader Bitch?

First off, check out the book I read to the kids today. I need to holla at C. Monster to get a hold of cookie flavored Jim Hats. Anyway...according to the state of Illinois, I have Basic Skills. These are the skills Big Brother aka Mr. Government says you must possess in order to educate the youth in this state. My basic skills consist of procrastinating, verbally clowning adolescents, reeking of alcohol (students tell me "You smell like daddy") and having the quickest clockout hand in all schools east of the Mississippi. In short, I teach. 5th grade. Actually, I am 50% teacher, 50% Gunnery Sgt. Hartmen (for all you Kubrick fans out there). One of the great perks of being a teacher is half days. Especially in this state. We get days such as...Pulaski Day, Lincoln's B-day, Rod Blagojevich Hair Day, Daddy's Home From Mistress/Jail Day, Richard M. Daley 'Basically' I'm Drunk Day, and a wide assortment of other days off. Today was a half day...you know one of those "Teacher Professional Development Days" when slightly to grossly overweight teachers get together, shove fried food, doughnuts, and coffee down their gullets and trade stories about the kids in their class who in the future will wind up in a correctional facility, working at a Chicagoland tow yard, or cooking crank in an abandon farmhouse somewhere south of Terre Haute, IN. Yeah, one of those days. Awesome.
At the end of the day, while waiting to dismiss the kids in the hall, I hear a youngster in the back of the line YELL..."You ain't the line leader BITCH!" As the entire class (in unison) is going "OOOOOOHHHHH," I'm holding back laughter and saying to myself, damn! Dude just got punked like a lil bitch. But just as I want to laugh and incite violence between children, my Basic Skills take over. As I'm walking over to the two gentlemen who by the way, are in an argument over who gets to walk out 3.5 feet before the other one, Student A decides to take Student B's head and push it directly into a wall. Wow. Nice prison move, straight for the throat, quick, possibly deadly. I like it. Especially from an 11 year old. At this point, basic skills have absolutely no worth whatsoever. The only thing i could do is react...so...I grab Student A by the back pack, pick him up off his feet and toss him aside, all while saying, "poor choice young man, very poor choice." After I got them separated, I had a discussion/clowning session with the 2 gents about the 'special relationship' the boys must have because they just love putting their hands on each other. This makes 5th graders angry. Gay is NOT cool in 5th grade. In the end, they both got in school suspension for 1 day. Just another day at the ol' office. Can't wait to go back tomorrie.

we're not getting over it

www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/index.html

we should all be revolting.

I'm a Lollapaloozer

So I need to document this because my fleeting memory is..well, fleeting. The three days of lollapalooza in Chicago was quite the collection of quality music. I'm still reeling from the rocking. Here's who I saw:

Friday
eels
Stars
Ryan Adams
Lady Sovereign
My Morning Jacket (the greatest rock n roll band on the planet)
Sleater-Kinney

Saturday
The Go! Team
Wolfmother
Gnarls Barkley
The Flaming Lips
The New Pornographers
Kanye West

Sunday
Andrew Bird
The Shins
Wilco
Broken Social Scene
Red Hot Chili Peppers

Dang.

cover art v1.0

Schrizza - how do we get this into the header?

things otherJason has done this month to get laid

Learn to play guitar

Switch to boxer briefs

Date Tara Reid'’s long lost cousin

Trimmed and/or shaved traditionally hairy body parts

Pretended to love a Pomeranian, cats

Feigned an interest in celebrities/celebrity relationships/celebrity weight loss

Bought Teen Wolf t-shirt

Returned Teen Wolf t-shirt

Claimed friendship with Vince Vaughn

Started a blog

The Face of Education

This is our friend Ryan. He goes by the moniker, Sweet Eggz, aka Senor Juevos. He is responsible for the youth of America. God help us.

middleCoast misSion statEment

and so this is a journal. an online journal, but a journal nevertheless. in the hopes of becoming journalists, we publish a journal. not like some lame journal either. no! this will be the best journal ever. this journal will contain the guts, the fluid, the juice of youth. breathing, burning, churning, bubbling youth. can you feel it? it burns, doesn't it? you can't take tums for this shit. you gotta work harder than that. you have to release it. you have to let the fire breath or else the smoke is going to choke you. so open the flue and let it flow. left and right. east and west. but from the middle. always from the middle. deep inside the diaphragm. from within to without. me to you. us to them. let us begin.