#184 I appear to be trapped in my shirt

Oddly enough this shows off the shirt better than most of my other "proper" photos. I should really just take photos of the shirts or don a mask for these things. Goodness.

I'm going to try my best to recall all that I wrote the first time I attempted to write this post. Originally there was a very lengthy and heartfelt post about my various big memories about the band Saves the Day, but we'll see if I have the patience to attempt to recreate what was no-doubt a literary masterpiece.

I still remember the first time I heard one of their songs. I was getting a ride home from my high school section leader when the opening notes to "At Your Funeral" started ringing through the radio. As soon as it hit the first verse I started bugging him about if he knew who the song was by and what the title was, making sure to note it in the little reporters notebook I used to keep in my pocket at all times. Probably within the week I made a trek out to Tower Records to pick up their album.

It was unlike anything I'd really heard at the time. Not really groundbreaking, but certainly different than the sort of popular rock bands that flooded the airwaves. This was a time in which I was still mainly using the radio to inform my music listening habits (which kind of blows my mind to think of). I want to say that buying that Saves the Day album marked a turning point in my musical education. After that I really started to turn more to the internet and music sites like AbsolutePunk.net (yeah I thought I was a cool little punk rock kid with my Hot Topic bracelets and random pins on my black backpack. yeesh) to get recommendations about which bands to check out and what shows to see.

Saves the Day was the first concert I ever went to see and I've even got the shirt to prove it. I remember I wasn't familiar with the other albums that they had released before their most recent one so I was left kind of mumbling along or swaying absentmindedly when they played those songs.

This shirt is from one of the other handful of times that I went to see them, and this was from one of my more memorable concert experiences. It was held at the teen center at my town and they got a few songs in before I started to notice that it smelled a lot like gas...

...they ended up stopping in the middle of their set because they had to evacuate the building due to the quite obvious gas leak. The lead singer was kind enough to set up for an impromptu acoustic set in the park adjacent to the concert venue. Then afterward he hung around and singed autographs and took photos with people. I actually had him record my outgoing message, which was probably just confusing for people trying to reach me and only cool to maybe one or two of my friends.

I listened to their "Stay What You Are" to get me in the right mindset as I was composing this post. I've got to say it still holds up fairly well. I'm still a big fan of their bass grooves and there's some good guitar work in there too. Further listening: Tracks 1, 4, 8, and 10

#183 Pa-pa--paparazzi

I've come to regret the decision to include my face in these picture posts.

Anywho, I got this shirt from Stacy. I believe it was part of some skit she had to do for German class in high school. Apparently that's all they did in her German class because one of the other big stories I've gotten from her also involves a skit in German class (if you haven't heard it before, the punchline is that Stacy had to play the ugly one). Kind of a meh shirt. I pretty much just wore it as a black undershirt.

Instead of talking about the shirt, I'll relate how I spent last Monday. I perhaps foolishly spent the day at Disneyland in the rain. However, unlike last year I was infinitely more prepared this time around (and the rain actually let up in the late afternoon). Highlights included singing along to "Part of Your World" with Nuno for no apparent reason and going with it anyway, riding on the swinging ferris wheel cars with people that are terrified of it, and riding the roller coaster twice with the rain whipping us in the face (I'm pretty sure it was also raining the hardest while we were on it too).