Playlist for 3-21-2011

Type O Negative – My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend
Prodigy – Medusa’s Path
Depeche Mode – Precious
Covenant – Dead Stars
Vigilante – Answers
Shiny Toy Guns – Ritz
Freezepop – Jem
Crystal Castles – Pap Smear
Apoptygma Berzerk – Starsign
The Birthday Massacre – Looking Glass
Lords of Acid – Most Wonderful Girl
Goldfrapp – Alive
Human League – Don’t You Want Me
Peter Schilling – Major Tom (Voellig Losgeloest)

Playlist for 3-14-2011

Revolting Cocks – Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?
Kill Hannah – Kennedy
She Wants Revenge – Tear You Apart
Michael Jackson – Beat It (Short Circuit Remix)
Depeche Mode – Wrong
Prodigy – Breathe
Beborn Beton – Lost Little Robot
The Cure – Burn
Flock of Seagulls – I Ran
Eric Prydz Vs. Floyd – Proper Education
The Birthday Massacre – Shallow Grave
Collide – White Rabbit
Red Peters – Blow Me

Playlist for 3-07-2011

Funker Vogt – Gunman
Ladytron – Ace of Hz (request)
Talk Talk – It’s My Life
The Birthday Massacre – In The Dark
KMFDM – Juke Joint Jezebel
Apoptygma Berzerk – Until The End Of The World
Freezepop – Frontload
Iris – Annie, Would I Lie To You
After the Fire – Der Kommisar (request)
Disturbed – Stupify Remix (request)
M&H Band – Pop Corn
Assemblage 23 – Disappoint (Funker Vogt Remix)
Zeromancer – Dr. Online

Playlist for 2-28-2011

Ladytron – Destroy Everything you Touch
Covenant – Bullet
Cruxshadows – Marilyn, My Bitterness
Shiny Toy Guns – Major Tom 
Robert Smith & Crystal Castles – Not in Love
The Birthday Massacre – Midnight
The Last Dance – December
Dead or Alive – You Spin Me ‘Round
Crystal Castles – Intimate
KMFDM – Professional Killer
VNV Nation – Rubicon
Soft Cell – Tainted Love
Beborn Beton – Life is a Distance
Faith No More – Epic

Tracing back steps in my life…

It occurred to me, just now, how funny life is. I actually haven’t fully formed this thought (or series of events) in my head yet, but I know where it is going, so I thought I would just start writing.

In 2004, I was in a weird spot in my life. I had just gone through a series of rapid changes. I finished my 2 year degree at BMCC, broke ties with a girlfriend, lost my childhood pet and moved out on my own. I was working as a marketing assistant at the Tribeca Performing Arts center and to say I was feeling a bit of depression would probably be a fair statement. So there I was, sleeping in a bedroom full of unpacked boxes, with my computer on the floor. I’d come home from work, and just veg out – really not sure what was next. It was around this time (before the ties severed with the aforementioned girlfriend) that she told me I could watch Sifl & Olly on Winamp. I discovered Winamp streamed many television shows/channels and came across TechTV Canada. I realized I hadn’t tuned into TechTV much (plus it was taken off of Time Warner for a while). I decided to give it a try. The streamer had a playlist of Call for Help with Leo LaPorte (a show that no longer broadcasted in the US when TechTV finally returned to Time Warner). I was hooked. The show was so informative and helpful when it came to technology. I grew more and more curious. It wasn’t just computers, it was cell phones, audio/video, mp3 players, you name it!

I became a pretty avid hobbyist. I built several computers for my friends and myself, and figured out various ways to hack and integrate multiple instruments together. I wanted to be around this stuff more. I applied to and got a job at J&R Music and Computer World. In addition, I began taking A+ Certification classes and after getting certified, took a while, but ended up getting a job working at Doshi Diagnostic. Although, this endeavor did not work out according to plan, I ended up collecting unemployment and suddenly found myself with a good deal of free time. Because of the wild unemployment in the country, the government kept extending the deadline, and I decided to take a chance and go back to school to complete my 4 year degree. So now, about 7 years down the road from tuning into Winamp TV, I’m about a semester and a half away from obtaining a degree in Media Studies from Hunter College – having made some short movies now and being a DJ at the school’s radio station. It’s crazy to me – having to wonder, which link in the chain of events, if not all of them, was/were the most influential. At the risk of sounding extremely sappy, I feel like I owe a TON of inspiration credit to Leo LaPorte. Sometimes that journey of 1000 miles that they always tell you starts with a first step is actually a journey you started and didn’t even realize.

The Closet Doll

Ana and I are watching TV/movies at my place. I stop at the closet in front of the bathroom to look for something, but hanging on the door is a doll of a blond girl with blue eyes, a doll which I have not seen before. I brush the oddity off and chalk it up to me just not noticing. I step into the bathroom for a second and when I come out, now standing in the place of this doll is a life-sized doll, or taxidermied girl, or something. She was a very sterile looking person, although had the characteristics of a person, lifeless. She had log straight blond hair with bangs, blue eyes, and a dress on. Her eyes were big and I don’t recall her blinking. She looked kind of like a Real Doll:

Ana remarked that it was freaky, but I seemed to want to ignore her and continue watching TV. The doll began to speak. Ana was scared, I was scared, but for some reason, let my need to be a jerk get the best of me, and began immediately mouthing off to the doll. I introduced myself to the doll as “Dolph Ziggler,” exactly in the fashion which the wrestler of the same name used to. The doll continued saying something, but I was caught up in the moment. With my adrenaline pumping and need for some kind of logic, I grabbed the doll by the back of the throat. “It’s probably got batteries which is how it can talk or something,” I said to Ana. I reached into its mouth while it was still talking and it started gagging. I pulled out two 9 volt batteries and showed them to Ana triumphantly. I then leaned the doll up against the door and said to Ana, “Now it’ll probably keep talking like in every horror movie where there’s an electronic device that gets unplugged. Then the doll started talking again. 2 points for me. It began slowly walking towards us. Ana kept begging me to just get out of there with her, but for some reason, I didn’t want to. I shoved the doll into the closet and and slammed the door. “There, problem solved.” I heard sounds coming from other closets in the apartment, when I opened the doors, the doll would be there. I decided to just keep all the doors closed and that would solve the problem for now, but then the doll managed to creep out of the shadows and quickly slip back in. Finally, I said, “Alright already, what do you want.” The doll emerged from under my futon and started changing form. It became a black guy for some reason, looked to be about his mid-twenties. Short hair, dressed in what looked like a down jacket and had something on his back, either a backpack or some kind of object he was carrying. He asked, “Alright, can we talk sensibly without you being a wise-ass or making any ethnic jokes?” “Fine,” I said, and then I woke up.

That isn’t HD and I Love My Hoodie!

This dream was relatively uneventful, but in this dream, I had this Hulkamania hoodie, it looked like the regular Hulkamania shirt, but it was a hoodie… Why do I not have this in real life? It doesn’t exist! Why does it not exist? This world is incomplete. It would look something like this:

…but this is a bootleg off some shady website, never did this exist as official merch. Also, in my dream, there was a zipper down the middle. Nextly, I was in a room with people, watching a standard def TV. They told me it was HD. I told them it was not. The argument got heated. They said things to me like, “Look at how nice the picture is. It has to be HD!” I checked how it was connected, it was connected using composite RCAs, these:

…this kind of connection doesn’t carry HD. I tried explaining this to the masses, but to no avail. Clearly, the lessons I have interpreted to take away from this dream are as follows: I am great at coming up with merchandise and should work for a big company and be paid lots of money for my ideas, and everyone should always listen to me, because no matter how many people disagree with me, I am always right.