I can't concern myself with ordinary tripe
After dinner we wandered about looking for a new bar, and I suggested the Vid, which is supposedly where the locals and hipsters (what small number of them are here, at least) like to hang out. Unafraid of any �scene�, these guys march right up the stairs past the unmarked door and got some beers.
Here's where my life expands: the three first-year physicists run into a gaggle of upperclassmen physicists and just like that I'm both the only girl and the only otherly-disciplined one in the group.
We bought beers and shot pool and I fielded questions from different combinations of the five-or-so new fellas.
From a distance I would have had each of these guys prejudged based on how they were dressed. Their style ranged from nondescript to blatantly nerdy (i.e. shirts tucked in to shorts), and none of them sang along with any songs from the Paul's Boutique album which was playing.
But face-to-face I try not to pre-judge, and rather evaluate a person based on how they treat me. I found all these guys to be well-defined people, kind, sincere, funny, and happy with themselves and what they do.
They are the enigma of dorks who are secure.
But one was different. He was hot, and stylish, and English, and speaking of English, he shot pool like a rock-star.
The interesting thing about him is that we quickly established our common interest for story-writing and music-listening. He, apparently, is a singer/songwriter himself. He had somewhere to be, though, and left shortly after slaughtering everyone else in pool.
I have to admit that it's very sexy to meet a cute British fellow in his fourth year of physics grad-studies who likes to write stories and play music and can also shoot mad billiards while smoking, drinking, and socializing. I mean, duh.
After two beers I was tired of bars, so I asked Jason - who I had hung out with Friday night - to drive me home. We both agreed that too much bar-environment was poor for conversation, so I invited him up for a beer and we chatted. He�s a nice little fellow, from Iowa, and an entertaining conversation companion.
Believe it or not: physicists managed to keep me up till three a.m. two nights in a row. Unbelievable.
Today I did not go to any church. It�s really difficult for me, for some reason, to walk into a church alone. Mainly because I usually don�t like them, and I feel badly after the service when people greet me and welcome me, because I know they�re never going to see me again and all their kindness is for naught.
(No act of kindness is for naught, but you know what I mean.)
The physicists are all Christian, but two are Lutheran and one is Catholic, so I�m really at a loss there. Liturgies and Eucharists are not my style.
Something will arise, though, I am confident of that.
I missed the VMA�s this year, which disappoints me (even though I have no idea really what would have been presented there), but Mama told me she watched them. In her opinion human development is regressed generations because of MTV and have returned to the hedonism of arena-sports and gladiators. That being said, she said there was one band she really enjoyed.
She described a man at a piano singing some song about wanting to be haunted by someone , and wanting to be taken back to the beginning...
I hummed, nobody said it was easy... She was describing Coldplay, of course, The Scientist.
The other band she said she liked right now was a guy she saw on VH1, and his last name was Rice...
Yeah, so my mom digs Damien Rice and Coldplay, which tickled me. She expressed the sentiment of most of my friends: I hate popular music, and I know there has to be somebody somewhere making tunes that don�t suck, but how do I find them?
I told her it was tricky and required a lot of concert-going, internet-searching, and peer-discourse to figure things out. I told her it�s time consuming and easy to slip behind. Like following baseball�s boxscores and acquisitions.
So Mama�s going to get a compilation soon.
She made one for me, too, with ABBA, Leon Russell, bluegrass, Brak (yes, from Spaceghost), some cowboy songs, Blues Brothers� Ghost Riders, Sonny & Cher, Wallflowers, Ricky Skaggs, Abbot and Costello, and Funkadellic on it. It�s a great cd, really, and I must make one for her.
I�m also going to make a cd for Tylere�s roommate, to show him the combination of rock�n�roll that has good music and killer lyrics as well. He�s not a lyric person.
My Sam Cooke was left in NY, and I�m irritated.
