Not all prisons have bars

Let's talk about work.

I'm 26 (holy shit, I'm 26).  I've done very little with my life in terms of those things that people consider "experiences."  I haven't gone on any vision quests, I haven't seen the world.  I haven't jumped out of any airplanes, and I haven't gone backpacking through Europe.  I spent my entire youth living out a plan that was set in front of me by my cultural sense of obligation from the time I was fourteen.

Get good grades in school.  Learn, so that you're prepared for the next step.  Get into a good school.  Get good grades, so you'll be prepared for the next step.  Get a good job.  Get yourself a girl.  Start a family.  Go to work every day and work hard, so you'll be successful.  Get that promotion so you can get more money to buy more things.  He who dies with the most shit, wins.

I've been questioning that path in the back of my mind for the last decade, and I'm far too much of a coward to actually stray from it.  The ramifications of that are staggering.  If I don't have a job, I can't afford to live.  I've too much responsibility to be able to just cut and run.  So here I am, in an 8 by 8 cell, working every day to assure that the money I earn lines someone else's pockets.

I make a good wage.  I went to a highly reputable school, and got a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering.  I spend my days working for the Electrical Utility doing High Voltage System planning.  That sounds pretty awesome, right?  At the least, it sounds like I have a real technical job that keeps me on my toes, since I'm responsible for keeping the lights on.  In reality, I play on the internet most of the day, when I'm not in a meeting or my boss isn't looking, and then cram as much work as possible in at the last possible moment.  It's a fucking HARD job to look busy all day.  It's slowly burning me out, and I'm genuinely concerned that if I keep at it for the next twenty years, I'll go insane.  Part of me thinks in the back of my mind that if I sap this place for all I can, I can get to the point where I can escape into another job, or another profession, or what have you.  But that isn't how the system works.

By the time I graduated from college, I managed to rack up about 75 THOUSAND dollars in student loans.  The collegiate process is such a racket in this country that I feel like I've been robbed over and over again, and will continue to get robbed until well into my 30s.  Even having the reliable and generous income I do, I still feel broke every week.  I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I pay more out in student loan payments than anyone I know pays in rent, or car payments, or insurance.  Many of them combined.  It's absurd.  Once I miraculously dig myself out from under that mountain of debt, I'll still be left with the reality of a family.  The ten year payment plan seems fine before you start paying it, because once you're done, you're rich, right?  Wrong.  What you don't understand as an 18 year old is that you're likely to be about the right age to start dealing with kids when you finally get them paid off.  Wonderful.

I'm scared as hell that I'm stuck.  Every day I wake up thinking that there's no end in sight.  All I really want to do is drop everything, and see the frigging world.  There's so much out there that people don't get the opportunity to see.  There's so much that people don't get to experience because they, like me, are stuck as mice in a maze, looking for that piece of cheese.  Except there is no cheese, and the reality of the situation is that you're just smelling cheese essence that the fucking lab coats have pumped into the maze to get your ass in gear.

It's not like there are no options.  As I said, I have to keep thinking that at some point, I'll break out of the cage.  And by no means does my life completely suck.  I have the fortune (and misfortune) of bearing witness to the steady decline of my friends due to their lives crumbling in front of them.  I still have a job.  I still have my health.  I have an amazing girlfriend and a great relationship with her.  My family is still together, and my friends are always there when I need them.  So I grind it out - as much for all of them as for myself.

Recently my friend Alex posted a picture on facebook with descriptive squares, which you're supposed to tag with friends' names.  Most likely to get you drunk, most likely to be arrested, etc.  I was blown away when he tagged me as "Most Likely to Bail You Out."  The picture associated with the square was the Superman Shield.  It's amazing to me that even when I think my world is upside down, and I have no idea how I'll be able to stand another day in my self-imposed cage, that my friends still look to me as the stable one, the one they can depend on.  And if that's my lot in life, then I guess I'm alright with it.  It could be a lot worse.

More Bacon than the Pan Can Handle

Yes, although I was writing out each day of my vacation, and how awesome they were, I quickly tired of the play-by-play, so I bailed on it.  Deal.

The rest of the vacation was a great time.  Although the weather was uncooperative, we found plenty to do to occupy our time, and made the best of what we could.  There were a few breaks in the rain to catch some sun, and I managed to get a bit of color even without the beach days I was hoping for.  I also got to rock some killer sushi, so that worked out as well.

While riding out the increment weather, I decided to take a trip to Seminole, and check out the new Terminator joint.  For those of you completely in the dark, it's the one that came out last weekend, and although it hefted a fair margin of the box office, it still got crushed by Night at the Museum 2.  I'm telling you guys, never underestimate the draw of American history at the box office.  People LOVE stuff like this, and kids absolutely lap it up.  I'm in the same boat, these movies are all gold in my book, but I wanted to wait on NatM2 until I can see it in IMAX.

Brief aside - Syracuse is home to the MOST (Museum of Science and Technology), which is in turn home to the Bristol Omnitheater.  This is one of the first IMAX movie theaters in the region, which is great for the museum.  Unfortunately, as its an older projector, it lacks the equipment needed to show feature-length films, so it's uncommon for the theater to show the big blockbuster movies.  At the same time, it's unlikely they would be willing to pay for the reels to do so anyway, especially for movies like Spiderman or what have you, since they have no real educational value.  It is a museum, after all.  Still, they are proud to be showing NatM2 in IMAX, which is a great step in the right direction.  I think should they open the gates to more of these kid-friendly movies, there could be real interest in it here, as the nearest feature IMAX theater is hours away.  In a time when the museum needs the attention the most (no pun intended), they could really benefit from the draw these films could provide.

Anyway, on Terminator: Salvation, I've this to say - it was a movie.  And really, that's the best I can do for it.  While I did enjoy the film, it wasn't as revolutionary as T2, but it wasn't the trash heap that T3 was, either.  I'm glad they've breathed new life into the franchise, and Christian Bale is easily the best John Connor we've seen, but there wasn't a lot to cling on to in the movie.

First of all, I went into Terminator with relatively high expectations for the cast, but pretty low expectations of the director and effects.  I'll make no apologies about the fact that I have literally no respect for the directorial prowess of McG - and it only has a bit to do with the ridiculous moniker he's labelled himself with.  Seriously, man.  You're a professional.  At least pretend you have some credibility.  You're resume certainly isn't doing that for you, Mr. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.  At least Demi Moore looked hot in it.  So, I went in expecting a weakly driven plot and some mediocre special effects, but looked to Bale et al to make up for it with badassery.  What I got was a contrived story, with extremely cliched plot points, filled with really well done effects and direction, and mediocre performances.

Wait, what?  Yes, I said it, McG actually has a worthwhile credit to his account after T:S.  The movie looked great, with the exception of a few small CGI flaws here and there, but they were easily overlooked as the rest of the film was excellently shot, rendered, and toned.  The actors' performances overall were fine, although there were plenty of "Batman Voice" moments for Bale, and there was a real slippage of accents for Sam Worthington (who played the actual lead role of Marcus Wright).  It was quite obvious that while Bale has a mastery of dialect - I've seen him do a variety of accurate accents in other films - that Worthington hasn't quite gotten his American down yet.  The Australian slips back through.

These quibbles aside, the real sticking point of the movie for me was the absolute deluge of cliches in the movie.  It was near impossible for me to overlook the obvious foreshadowing points along the way (Your heart is sooo stroooong), and the characters' motivation - aside from survival - was completely absurd.  Moon Bloodgood's character in particular left me wondering "why would she even care?" about a hundred times.  By the end of the movie, I was simply no longer capable of believing that the characters gave a shit about each other at all, with the exception of John Connor trying to save Kyle Reese, in order to assure his own survival in the past-future(?).  I'll leave the time travel paradoxes out of the issue, since it's always been a problem with the franchise, and if you really want to complain about that, you probably shouldn't be watching the movies.

And yet, even with all these issues, I did enjoy Terminator, in the sense that I was entertained for 130 minutes.  After leaving the theater, I realized that I would have a difficult time really describing my opinion on the movie, since there wasn't much to it.  It's another of those franchise films that feels like a plot mover - it's a means to facilitate the next sequel.  Frankly, I've had enough of those movies at this point, and I'd like to get to some real story.  There's no money in real endings, though, so I don't know why I would expect to see one.

All in all, it was a fine movie.  As summer approaches, I wonder how many more "I liked it because I shut my head off" movies I'll be able to take.  Hopefully just enough to get me through September, and into Oscar season.

This week, I'm hoping to catch Night at the Museum, and when it hits this weekend, Pixar's new one, Up.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Sea Oats Obamacation - Day 2

Much less to say about Sunday, because, well, we didn't really do a lot. After waking up around 9, I walked over to the other condo for coffee and the morning buzz, which was mostly about Steph's birthday. She's had a birthday every year we've been here, so it kind of goes hand in hand with the beginning of the week. When she and Weston went to explore a thrift store, Jack and Sandie walked to the Circle K across the street, and picked up decorations and such. They returned with a bag of water balloons and an inflatable whale. I don't get it either. We all hurt ourselves blowing them all up, and waited to get things started on Steph's return. When she got back, we sang Happy B'Day, and laughed about the decor.

We were visited by a group of local friends thereafter - Chris Olds, whom Jack went to high school with, and his wife, newborn son, and another friend of theirs, Andrea. We all spent a while lounging poolside, where I picked up a solid start on sunburn. I managed to put sunblock on the back of my neck and shoulders, but there's a line on my chest where the sunblock ended, and the sunburn starts. I've gotta keep an eye on it this week so it doesn't get any worse. The intention is to turn it into a tan, which is usually easy on my arms and legs and face, but my chest and back don't get enough sun to make that as easy a prospect. Sometimes I wish I had my Dad's complexion, because every summer he turns to leather.

Once we got sick of the pool, Brett and I came upstairs for some drinks and watched game 1 of the NHL Western Conference Finals, and saw the Redwings beat the Blackhawks 5-2. Both of us are Wings fans, so it was a happy afternoon. Once the game was over, we started considering dinner, which was BBQ again. After dinner, we all came back up for cake and Ice cream, which I chose to abstain from, and we all watched the new Dane Cook special. I'm not a big Dane Cook fan, but I think I only heard like 2 jokes I'm pretty sure he stole from other comedians, so it's a halfway decent special I guess.

After cake, Brett, Laura and I went for a night swim, and then came upstairs and crashed. A mellow day, certainly, but overall the exact day we're looking for here. Plenty of relaxation, plenty of sun, and no stress to be seen. Vacation.

Sea Oats Obamacation - Day 1

Waking up at 4am is not fun. Even if you know you're planning to get on a plane to head to Tampa, Florida, you still hate the alarm clock with every ounce of your effort - which, on the tired side of 4am, isn't much. Still, you roll your ass out of bed and get your stuff ready so you can be sure you don't miss your flight. Unfortunately for Jen, she was my ride to the airport. She's even less excited at the prospect, since she won't be joining me. She's got all the bad parts, and none of the anticipation. Still, she's a great girlfriend, so she sucked it up and helped me out.

Flight 1 was uneventful. Slept the whole way to NYC. It was too early for me to even consider anything else. I did wake up for the landing, though, and it was awesome, since the entire airport was covered in a thick fog. I didn't see the ground until we hit it. It's landings like that that make you appreciate how good your pilots must be at their jobs, and how much technology there must be helping them out.

Once I got to New York, I really didn't have enough time to do or see anything, so I headed to see if any bars were serving yet. As it was only 7:30, they were not. Lame. So I boarded flight 2 to Tampa, and watched Travel Channel the whole way down. Jet Blue, baby. If I can manage it, I try to fly them everywhere. They really do have more leg room, and the TVs make the flights go so much smoother. Consider me a loyal customer.

Once arriving in Tampa and meeting everyone, we piled nine of us - Brett Gobe, Jack Collier and his wife Steph, her sister Sandie, Sarah Labombard, Chris Page, Laura Kroening, Weston Ruthven, and myself - into a seven passenger van and took off. First stop, as always, was this interesting Chinese food place called the Palace of the Orient (we just learned the name, although some of us have been going there for five years). They have passable food, but its a solid choice after a few hours in the air. We eat some MSG and drink some TsingTao beer, and head on to Sea Oats.

The place we stay is a condo complex literally on the beach in Reddington Shores, FL. We have two condos, which have between two and three bedrooms, and two bathrooms. They have balconies which are overlooking the Gulf, with an absolutely stunning view. There's a beachfront pool, and lots of space for BBQ. It's an excellent place for a vacation, but it's a little too tourist-y for my tastes, living there -wise.

Most days, we try to eat from groceries we purchase, because it's much cheaper than dinner out for a week. Brett and I were on shopping patrol for the first day, and we headed to Winn Dixie, where we picked up all the staples - lots of BBQ food, and a shit-ton of alcohol. There's a liquor store right next to the Winn Dixie, and I was responsible for buying the $100+ of liquor for day 1. We brought it all back to the Oats, and took in some sun before putting dinner together. By this time, we're all a little on the tipsy side, and exhausted from a long day. We came upstairs to play some Beirut (beer pong with quarters instead of balls, basically), and relaxed before finally making dinner around seven thirty. After dinner, I was pretty much drunk and spent, so I volunteered to be the puss and crash first. I passed out around 9, and was dead to the world until this morning, when I woke at 9am. The best part about going to bed at 9 is that when you sleep for 12 hours, you still wake up at a reasonable time.

Stay tuned for more highlights from the trip!

LOST finale - season 5

I've been watching Lost since day one.  It's been a pain in the ass every step of the way.  I've never before experienced a television show that gave me so much to think about, and so much to be frustrated about.  It's pretty annoying to be posed with a multitude of questions every week (well, like, once every three weeks - stupid-ass schedule) and then rather than be given the answers, we're just left with more questions.When the show was in its second season, that was the year I started working at my current job.  I'd post pictures and clues from the lost fansites outside my cubicle, and people who were also fans would look to me for information on the goings-on in the show.

Then the writers' strike happened.

Lost was hit hard by that event.  It's too bad, really, because it had a lot going for it before they pretty much trashed all of that momentum and destroyed much of their base of followers.  People got real frustrated with the direction of the show, the characters they loved taking a back seat to characters they felt were irrelevant and distracting, and the endless stream of unanswered questions that were thrown at them every episode.

I think the producers of the show have done a remarkable job in taking all of that dissatisfaction and turning it into constructive criticism - allowing them to make changes to the show which brought the overall opinion of the show back into the black.  Even if they continue to ask questions relentlessly, they've given us enough information to work with, and to form some hypotheses on where the show will be going.  I truly believe JJ Abrams has demonstrated that he is a powerhouse - even when his show is in the death throes he manages to take what his audience is looking for, and reinvent his show to become a success once more.  There aren't many people who have that ability.

So, as the seasons progressed, they got bad, then began the ascent into greatness again.  This whole season has been excellent, and the finale had been hailed as a return to the greatness of season two's final episode.  I went in cautiously optimistic.  I was glad I didn't heighten my anticipation too much, I fear I would have been pretty disappointed.

While the episode (and I don't count the recap hour as part of the episode, btw) began strong, I feel it kind of petered off into nonsense before culminating in the traditional cliffhanger.  I'm not convinced the writers really knew where they were going with things when they began to close out the season.  I can't help but object to the constant stream of "We should blow the bomb... well, maybe not.  NO!  WE CAN'T!  OK, let's do it."  It's extremely wish-washy, and basically every character involved does it.  I understand the moral dilemma present in the idea of detonating an H-Bomb, but let's decide what to do and then do it.  The same is true for the relationships in the show.  Let's assume Sawyer and Juliet have been together since a year after they got stuck in the 70s.  That's a relationship of 2 years, dropped without a single tear.  It's annoying to me that they would both be so complacent about that loss.  Not to mention the fact that Kate's role in the show is strictly to piss me off and make trouble.  I can't believe no one has killed that bitch yet.  Especially Radzinsky, who seems to be willing to go to Machiavellian levels to get the Swan operable.

The whole John Locke question is one that I take particular disinterest in.  I'm not excited at the prospect of him being "possessed" for the whole season, or that he's actually dead.  From day one, he's been the most interesting character on the show, and I don't like the idea of him being controlled by some evil superbeing, at odds with the true controller of the island.  Although I do like the concept of the "Clash of the Titans" style god-war, I'm not really into the idea of them acting in direct contact with the humans in order to manipulate their game.

The final shot of the episode - which I won't spoil - leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.  I'm not happy with the ramifications of the event, and I think it means one of two things.

1. The attempt is successful.  This means that no one has ever gone to the island, no one meets each other, and the entire show is completely invalidated.  Why would they do this?  There's no reason for them to hit a reset button with a year of the show left.  It also completely invalidates the "present" timeline that has been running parallel to the "past" timeline in season 5.  What difference does it make if Jacob is dead or not if you're resetting the time line from the 70s forward?
2. The attempt fails.  What the hell was the point of dragging them through the should I/shouldn't I playground for the last few months?  If the attempt fails, Faraday died in vain, and the crew is stuck in the past indefinitely.  I can't see this being the case either, since there has to be a neat bow to wrap this show up in the end.  It's unlikely that they would leave these characters stranded in the past, forced to relive the history of the island over again, or die in the gassing of the Dharma Initiative.

As neither of these seem likely, we can only surmise that the resolution of the event will be the failure to destroy the island, the failure to prevent the "incident," and the successful return of the stranded crew back to the present year.  This would obviously be the "they" that are coming.  I don't swallow that as easily as most people probably will.  It's too contrived for this show.  However, it's ultimately not my decision, and fortunately perhaps, the strike frustrated the conjecture out of me when it comes to the storyline of Lost.  While I do enjoy predicting the next steps in the story, I certainly don't presume to guess where the ultimate direction of the show will go.  So, even with my apathy on the finale this season, I'll be watching along with the rest of America in 2010 to find out what happens to our survivors of Oceanic Flight 815.

Family and Reboots

Sunday was Mother's Day, which means a few things in my world.

1. I would be spending some amount of time with my family, which can be a good thing, or a not so good thing, depending on the mood of the players involved at the time, and what's going on in their lives.  More on this in a moment.  This time, it meant brunch at my Uncle's.
2. I would be spending some amount of time with my girlfriend's family, around dinner time.  This is nice, as it allows me to interact with her on a level that is reserved for those we feel most comfortable with.  I'm not completely at ease around them yet, as I've only been to a couple holiday events, but it's getting there.  Consider it a work in progress.
3. I have about three hours to kill after leaving ma familia and before heading to Jen's.  Jen is my girlfriend, by the way.

Before I get into the events of the day, let me give you some background on my family.  We're an Italian family, straight out of the 1950s.  My parents are still happily married after 35 years, as are my father's parents, who are both in their mid 80s.  It's a picture straight out of Pleasantville, which made it an incredibly warm and welcoming environment to grow up in.  Unless it wasn't.  Like any family, there are times when we just do not get along.  Most of these have to do with one of three things:

• My Aunt being neurotic, and the rest of us calling her on it.
• My father and his brother being on opposite sides of an argument
• My brother.  Period.

As much as I love my brother, he's the epitome of the black sheep.  Covered head to toe in tattoos (not that I'm against that, being only slightly behind him on that road), living in a perpetual state of summer vacation.  Still, he is one of the most compassionate people I know, when he can get out of his own way.  He's seeing a girl now who brings that out of him, which I like a lot, so it's a bit easier for me to handle him for more than a few minutes at a time.

You've got to understand, we spent our childhood hating each other.  Not disliking, HATING.  We were frequently in need of forcible restraint to keep us from hurting each other physically.  It was out of control, and I honestly don't understand how our parents dealt with it.  It must have been exhausting for them to work all day and come home to deal with us.  But, as we both got older, we managed to find some common ground, and now I can happily say that while we don't always see eye to eye, we've managed to find ways to accept each other.  Sappy, I know.

The point is, Sunday was a good day.  We all had brunch at my uncle's, and then sat and talked for a bit, before heading our separate ways.

Tony (my brother) and I decided to check out a matinee of the new Star Trek movie in the three hour window, while Jen went home and caught up on sleep.  Apparently, girls aren't that interested in Star Trek.  Who knew?

There's obviously been a lot said about the movie already, since we're days past the opening weekend.  The word of mouth is overwhelmingly positive, some critics calling it "This year's Iron Man."  I'm not sure what they mean by that - whether it means it's this year's "Geek Movie" to make a bunch of money, or if it means its the genre film that actually turns out to be good, who can tell?  I know this much - I enjoyed it very much.  While the film starts off slow, with the campy dialogue that we're all so familiar with from the original series and first few films, it quickly picks up steam.  Once the plot really started moving, as Kirk begins his schooling at Star Fleet, the film won me over.  I was hooked, and along for the ride.  There were only a few complaints I had, and contrary to popular opinion, the lens flares weren't it.

• I was disappointed by the "Three Years Later" that immediately followed Kirk's first meeting with Bones.  I turned to my brother and said "I want to see the movie we just skipped."  I'm concerned that now, since we've established these characters and the actors playing them, that the story in any subsequent movies will be forced to move forward, and we've lost the opportunity to show Kirk at Star Fleet Academy.  It's too bad, because it has a real Ender's Game quality that has a lot of potential.
• Eric Bana's character, Nero, doesn't really fit the mold of the dangerous villain.  He's the captain of a mining ship, certainly, but even being pissed about his situation (no spoilers), it seems like he's harboring far more resentment than he really should be.  He holds Spock responsible, but that just seems short sighted to me - it's not like he had any real control over the situation that caused his resentment.  His anger seems misplaced.  Maybe it's just Bana's acting that's the problem.

I don't want to nitpick too much though, because I really did like the film.  I'm by no means a trekkie, really I've only seen some syndicated episodes of TNG and Voyager, along with watching the movies, more out of a sense of geek obligation than any real love for the material, but I think this cast, with JJ Abrams at the helm, could reasonably put out a number of movies and I'd be in line to see all of them.  They've got a great chemistry, and I'd love to see more.

A little background (Part 2)

Part 1

So there I was, in college, knee deep in other people's cultures for the first time.  It was, for the second time, a right turn on the path of my musical life.

I was introduced to Thursday and Poison the Well early in my freshman year by some friends I made in the Pep Band.  As fellow music geeks, they had taken a dissimilar but parallel path to mine throughout their musical taste progression.  These two bands served as an inlet into the scene known by most as Hardcore, and it was there I truly bloomed as a musical being.

The hardcore scene allowed me to find a home in music, in a subgenre which rewarded obscurity, and which more or less resembled the tastes I had developed for myself prior to my introduction to the scene.  It helped that at the time, my older brother had also discovered the genre, and had served as a liaison to meet many of the people in Syracuse (the closest "big" city to my hometown).  Syracuse has been called home to many bands which have gone on to influence the Hardcore culture, which was another boon to the development of my interest in the scene.  For all of college, and a few years after, I immersed myself in the music of this genre and allowed it to dictate my morals and my lifestyle, which was, on the whole, a very positive thing.  However, after graduating, and getting the rest of my life underway, I found myself outgrowing Hardcore music, and generally losing interest in what its bands had to say.  Most of this can be attributed to my change in lifestyle from the poor college kid, into the adult firmly implanted in the business world, with all the weights and responsibilities thereof.  Its not that hardcore changed, as much as I changed, and hardcore stayed the same.  Unfortunately, that meant that hardcore wasn't what I needed it to be anymore, and with that, I left much of that life behind.  Even more unfortunately, that meant I left many of the friends I had made along with it behind, as well.

Without a real musical identity, I spent about a year completely devoid of musical interest.  I went to no shows, I found no new music.  However, I spent a lot of that year doing some real searching into the person I wanted to be - who I was as a person, without the influences of others to rely on.  In doing so, I managed to realize that it wasn't any single one of these styles or genres which defined my musical taste, but rather they all combined, along with some smatterings of other phases I'd gone through on the way (ska, post rock, hippy, etc) which really defined my musical preference.  It was possible for me to enjoy a wide array of music, if I simply refused to identify myself with a particular group of listeners.  If I intentionally live my life outside the scope of any of the musical scenes, I can float at the edge of all of them.

In an attempt to reach out to those friends which I had set aside when I dropped out of the hardcore lifestyle (for all intents and purposes), I began to go to shows again, but quickly realized that I wasn't interested in the same type of show.  On suggestions from a close friend, I checked out some bands like Baroness, Torche, Isis, Mastodon, etc.  I fell in love.  I realized that the combination of the ambiance of post rock bands like Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, etc, combined with the heavier presence I had come to enjoy through my youth combined to make something wonderful.  I needed more.  And this, my loyal readers, is where the Internet finally came into play.  I dug.  And dug.  And found a multitude of bands I enjoyed.  Then I used their styles to find more bands I enjoyed.  And the blogs rolled in, and RapidShare and MediaFire worked their asses off.  I discovered a world of music once again that I had no idea existed, and I loved it.  But this time, I was a little more hesitant.  I refused to become another cliche, and let the music I enjoy define me.  I've become engrossed in the Doom/Drone/Stoner metal genres, and I feel like I've reached the culmination of a multitude of influences which have set me on the path to this style.  I've narrowed my tastes to a point where I can see myself staying forever, but at the same time, I've left myself open to enjoy other forms of musical art.  I've thrown a door wide open, but this time, left the other doors open as well.  And it's a gratifying feeling - to know you've found a music you're passionate about in the same way as you saw your parents were in their youth.  Something you'll be proud to pass on to your children to help them develop their own love of music.  Maybe they'll learn to appreciate the music I listen to as a stepping stone to their own passion, much the way I believe I did with my parents.  And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.  Take the psychedelia from Floyd, mix it up with the sludgy riffage from Sabbath, and what you get sounds an awful lot like Mastodon.  Much in the same way that I resemble an amalgamation of my parents, my taste represents the same mix of theirs.

Thank god my mom waited until after my impressionable youth to turn on American Idol.

A little background

When I was a kid, growing up in the middle of upstate New York, it was the pre-internet boom.  Sure, we had the beginnings of the net back then, but two things were essential to keep in mind:

1. I was much too young to actually understand the intricacies of the net, especially back then when it was much less user friendly, and
2. Dial up.  That's right, LOW speed internet, with a shoddy connectivity.  No streaming anything back then.

So that left me in the dark, as compared to today, when it came to musical interests.

From early on, I loved music in general, and it's been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember.  From the beginning, I absorbed as much as I could, starting with the music my parents loved, and branching out from there.  My dad was a classic rocker back in the 60's and70's, although he may not see it quite that way.  He was big into bands like Zeppelin, Sabbath, and the like, with branching taste into more mainstream music like Boston and even the Beatles (although he insists he only liked them once they hit their psychedelic phase, around the White Album).  My mother, on the other hand, was a huge Pink Floyd fan, and was the first person to introduce me to bands like Heart - which makes a lot of sense to me.  Nowadays, she's just as likely to be listening to Clay Aiken, which breaks my heart, but what can you do?  The point is, basically from the cradle, I've had parents who took their music seriously, and have (or, at least once had) a real passion for the art.  I was fortunate to have their influence to prevent me from becoming a mindless acceptor, who allows the top 40 hits to dictate their musical tastes.

Things continued well as I grew older, as I became involved in band as early as allowed, and became a proficient Saxophone player.  This gave me a new perspective on music, as it showed me what possibilities lie on the other side of the recording process.  However, I never took it very seriously, and never pushed myself to take it anywhere.  This would become a trend in my musical life, as I would go on to pick up a multitude of instruments, becoming passable at them all, but never truly mastering any of them.  Such is life.

In high school, I began to step away from the tastes of my parents, and begin to develop my own musical tastes.  Unfortunately, as I said earlier, I didn't have the methods available to me then that many kids do today, and was largely limited on the exposure I had to new music.  I was confined by the radio, as it were, and found obscurity as well as I could - even then, the music snob - but unbeknownst to me, the music I was delving into was mostly out of availability, rather than a true love of the genres.  I was listening to stuff like Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Static X, Mudvayne, etc.  It seems obvious now that that isn't what I really wanted to listen to, but to the 15 year old me, stuck in the middle of nowhere, it served as an ample soundtrack to my rebellion from my isolated and insular surroundings.  When I started to dig deeper into that type of music, I found my interests developing into bands like Sevendust and Tool - bands with a bit more layers than those which were considered the mainstream - or at least the comparative mainstream.

I consider the first day I heard Rage Against the Machine to be one of the major turning points of my life.  It was the first time I heard a band with something real to say.  Something more than "I am full of angst," someone making music today who had a real message, a real motivator for making their music other than sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll.  Sure, bands had come before with the same political fuel, but Rage managed to strike me at exactly the right time, with exactly the right sound.  They changed the way I looked at music, and in turn, the way I looked at myself.

I devoured everything they had to offer, and continued to do so until graduating from high school, and setting my sights on college.  It was there where I consider my eyes and ears to have been truly opened.

TBC...

Much more to come

I'll be tweaking and toying with the site for a while, trying to maximize the amount of awesome that I can cram into it.  If you see things bouncing around the page at all, that's probably why.  Personalization is key.  I want to feel like the site is mine (as much as one can on blogger), so I've got to get some work into it.

Also, if you decide you like the blog, and would like to share links, I'll probably be ok with doing that.  Just drop me a line, and we'll see what we can do to help each other out.

I'll also be linking to a few blogs I follow, most of which will be music "preview" sites.  Feel free to show them some love with some page impressions.  I'd be grateful if they did the same for me, but who the hell am I, you know?  Maybe someday, but not this day.

So it begins...

I want to write, a lot. Not in the sense that I have a lot I want to get out there, but there are a lot of times I find myself wishing I had an outlet for my thoughts, and I'm just egotistical enough that I believe others could benefit from reading them. I've had avenues for this discourse in the past, such as Livejournal, etc. but the truth is, I don't really want to pander to that crowd (no offense) in the same manner I did before. So what does that mean for this blog? Well, I'm not certain what I'll be focused on - in fact, I'd be more prepared for unfocused thoughts than any specific subject matter - but I'd say you can expect whatever subject happens to be on my mind at the moment.

It's going to be a bumpy ride, but hopefully I can make it worth your time.

Please, for those of you who know me through the world of geek culture, don't expect much about Magic: the Gathering here. I'll still be writing those experiences at Saltcitymagic.blogspot.com. This is more for my general interest discussion. Movies, music, and more, as it were. I hope that doesn't steer you away, as I'm sure if you like what I write on Magic, you'll feel the same of "the life and times of an AdamNightmare."

So, with that, let the blogging begin, and welcome to Nightmares and Blogscapes (thanks, Mr. King!).