Slight Respite: A Misc Mix

Trekked into school today and put in the last couple of hours on a quick research project I was doing for Jason. 'Twas about some of the neuroscience aspects of using model organisms for research. Not my favorite topic, and I didn't do a bang-up job, but I got something down on paper, so there's a physical thing to build from. Always helpful. Given that he and everybody else are absent for the holidays, I'm going to work from home until at least after Christmas day. Wahoo.

(In other school-related news, I got my grades back from my papers today, and everything went swimmingly to the tune of a 4.12 GPA for my first semester. Wahoo Two. Before you get too excited, I am told everyone and their dogs get As in grad school, so all this really means is that I am mediocrely competent and didn't overtly offend anyone's academic senses. Go Team Nyet).

Good Sunday - got some reading done in the morning and played a solid couple of hours of Ultimate in the PM. I ended the day with a crazy back of the endzone full layout catch on a big huck from Vince; tres exciting Ultimate action to win the game. Much better than regular frisbee, indeed. More importantly, I talked to Aaron yesterday and he had a much better time at his Austin Ultimate league. He's getting back into the swing of things after a long break from bigger, whiter, floatier (BETTER) disc sports, and after a shocker of a first week, it sounds like he is back on track for glory. We'll be sure to get some intense training in over New Year's and turn him into an indomitable beast. A forehand flickin', chump-skyin', layout-Din' beast. Raw; scream.

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This is a quick interlude to allude to things TIP. For those of you who don't know, Mike NTPB and I attend the Duke Talent Identification Program during our wayward youth. It is best defined as nerd camp; we took college-esque classes like Film and Intro to Philosophy while hanging out with dorks of our own ilk and girls who would talk to us. Unbelievably formative, at least for me; among other things, this was where I picked up Ultimate and a penchant for dancing the Time Warp. I'll save a detailed rundown of it for a rainy day post, but the things you need to know are this: 1, we had this friend Franklin who apparently has used the powers of e-mail to dominate Hollywood. I can't even explain this; Franklin was a shy child genius who seemed destined for I.R. glory or something, and now he's a bedreadlocked big guy behind the scenes. Who knew. That link is probably wildly uninteresting to you, but... hmmmm, let's say that Mr. Rogers turning out to have fronted a punk band in the late seventies has about equal "WHAT???" value. Anyways, thing 2 that you should know is that every year ended with a talent show. Mike mentioned this as his most embarrassing moment the other day in the comments, and what is scary to me is that I have no recollection of this whatsoever: we played G'n'R's version of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," complete with Mike playing Axl and a call and response section. And apparently Mike couldn't hear himself or the audience or anything - no monitors at the TIP talent show, unshockingly - and so he essentially did a call and response sans response. Holding the mic out to the crowd and everything. Oh wow. This is just stupendous. And I can't believe I don't have it trapped between my ears somewhere. So next time you need to calm yourself down before speaking in public, just think to yourself, "as long as I don't warble "knock knock knockin' on heaven's dowowowowoorrr, hey hey yeah" and hold the mic out to a cricket crowd, I am okay." Yikes. Serious bonus points to Mike for surviving that.
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We capped Friday with dinner with D&C for the first time in a while - hit up a place called Ticoz which had some reasonably tasty southwest fare and some OH TRES CHIC attitude as well. Another one of those restaurants - maybe not as bad as Ra Sushi in this department - that made me feel like I wasn't anywhere near cool enough to be there. Fun times with D&C regardless, and we headed back to their place to watch the truly bizarre 2008 European MTV music awards despues. Why bizarre? Um, I had a dream once that Jared Leto crappily interviewed miscellaneous rock stars, Katy Perry¹ screamed her brains out to introduce acts called the Ting Tings, Kanye West dressed like Carlton from the Fresh Prince circa 1991, Kid Rock ruled a place called the Irony Free Zone², a slew of wackos gave shoutouts to Liverpool, Bono verbally climaxed as he introduced Paul McCartney, and then Paul actually showed up to pump his fist in half-assed they paid me to be here triumph. But the dream WAS REAL. Yikes.

I can't remember past that. It was raining a lot last week, as I recall. Anyhoo, I'll try and get some posting done over the next few days. Hope everyone's having a great holiday. And a big happy birthday eve to the Dadster!

¹ Don't know Katy Perry, eh? Well, that's amazing, because her trite songs have been all over the place this year. You should know that she has a white-washed weak drunk girls night out lesbian experience song and another that perpetuates the use of the term gay as a mild derogative. Did I mention she's a former Christian rock artist turned pop-sex prostitutestarlett? You stay genuine, Katy. Let's just let the allmusic review of her album describe her relative place in the trash pop spectrum: "she sinks to crass, craven depths that turn One of the Boys into a grotesque emblem of all the wretched excesses of this decade."

² As dubbed by MC Dan. I don't think that's original*, but it quite aptly describes the fur wearing blues mangler ripping off Warren Zevon and Lynyrd Skynyrd simultaneously in his sad sack summer single. I like that the same show welcoming him as a legend follows up with Bono and PM. That's just great.

* - It has come to my attention that "Irony Free Zone" is a DFW-ism.