Category: Jon Brasfield and Amanda Richardson

October 25, 2002 /

Ben Folds was stunning, again, this time even more so because he was playing solo–just him and the piano (which I think is still the name of the tour)–and it didn’t feel like anything was missing. He got an almost unfair amount of music out of it: stomping the pedals like a kick drum, tapping on the mike in lieu of toms, and of course conducting the audience in place of strings or trumpets or whatever.

And that might be the best part. I went in planning to scream for Where’s Summer B.?, easily my favorite BF5 song and one I didn’t really expect to hear even upon request. And he DID play it! Without provocation, as like the fourth song! And we got to sing the best background vocals in any song ever!

So that was good. And then! Not only did I finally meet Jon’s friend Ana, who is unspeakably cool, but we met a bunch of UK friends at the Tolly Ho afterwards. These included my old friend Audrey, whom I hadn’t seen since spring (and before that not for probably two years), and her roommate Alden, whom I’d never met. It was a great time.

And then, the next day, Audrey and I were commenting (via email) about how much fun the whole thing was, and that we should hang out more often, and I asked her to the Centre fall dance and she totally said yeah!

The (large) part of me that is still a sophomore in high school is dancing for joy right now.

Anyway, the week has been work work rehearse rehearse other than that. This weekend’s Centre homecoming, and though it can’t possibly match my own for nostalgia, I’m sure it will surpass it in quantity of graduated friends. Or you could take Lisa’s hunch and predict that it’s going to be “mad drama.” Whatever. I’m just looking forward to sleeping in.

so she won’t sleep better alone
and they won’t feel better alone

October 4, 2002 /

There’s a part in The Perks of Being A Wallflower that describes riding in a truck at night with people you love, watching traffic lights and listening to “Asleep” by the Smiths. The narrator calls it feeling infinite.

Coming back from dinner and the music store tonight, we took the back way around Danville. Jon had just bought the new Flaming Lips album, and it was playing, and he and Amanda were silhouetted by red and white lights and I was in the back and for a few minutes everything was right with the world.

It’s a good feeling.

Idon’t know where the sunbeams end
and the starlight begins

September 14, 2002 /

Amanda and Jon got me a betta! Like the fish! They just about made my year. I haven’t decided what to name it yet. They inform me it’s a boy, but I think it’s going to get some kind of proper noun anyway, so that may not matter. (Does it ever, with fish?)

I’ll put up pictures soon, but right now I’m enjoying Amanda’s mullet too much. After that I think the fish may just take over everything.

“The Fish Take Over Everything” is a great name for a band.

Update 1614 hrs: Idaho! (is the name of the fish!)

March 5, 2002 /

I’m going to be on a plane very soon. This hasn’t quite settled in my brain yet. I love flying, probably because I get to do it so rarely–the last time I was in a plane was on my way back from Brazil, summer after senior year, when I was exhausted and homesick and weighing 120 pounds. That wasn’t the best flight, actually. But the way down, six weeks earlier, well… of the roughly fourteen hours we spent over ocean and rainforest and cloud, I’d say I spent at least thirteen just looking out the window.

I’m going to be crazy far behind in my classes when we get back late Sunday night, and I’m probably going to be bored once the sound and fury have settled down, and most everyone but Ian and I are going to be drinking heavily at night, and I’m going to miss the chance to copy edit for the paper this week (for which transgression someone has already beaten me severely). Even so, I’m looking forward to this. I keep getting asked if it’s a competition, but if it were I doubt I’d be going. We’re going to be half-killing ourselves just because it’s never been done before, and that gives me kind of shivers I imagine mountain climbers must get.

I need to figure out what books to bring, and also how the hell I’m going to get to the airport. Wish me luck.

they saythe more you fly the more you risk
your life

February 14, 2002 /

She cometh!

Update 0757 hrs: In response to any questions you may have about the show, the answer is “yes.” Whoo.

Three entries in three days is almost unprecedented. Maybe I’m trying to make up for the fact that I’m heading home for the weekend–again–and when I get back I’ll commence trying hastily to ink this week’s toon. Ah, the jet-setting life of an unpaid cartoonist! Ha ha! See you Sunday.

Update 1353 hrs: But before I go, I feel I should mention that my roommate has purchased his very first professional team from Yahoo! Shopping. I mean, with prices like these, who can refuse?

I loves me some screen cap

February 11, 2002 /

I am a seamster, which does not, as you might expect, refer to my actively seaming, so much as it does to my cosmic, astonishing ability to sew. I can sew things. I am in fact “the man” at sewing things. I sew like the proverbial Stygian bat.

Actually I’m fairly awful at it by anyone’s standards but my own, but the fact remains that not only did I successfully fix up three years-old rips in my favorite coat, I also made repairs on another shirt entirely. That’s four (count ’em) different seams in two articles of clothing, for an average of two seams per article. At least three of those consisted of itsy bitsy stitches, and two of those I actually did inside out for that nifty hidden-seam effect.

Too many italics. Next topic. My roommates got me a pirate monkey! Or possibly a monkey pirate! Either way I’m going to marry them. Also, go hang loose in the new forums right now. They taste of delicate butters.

one look in her eyes
and I feel undressed

February 9, 2002 /

Less than a week until Anne makes her presence known on the Centre campus. It’s an event we’ve been looking forward to all year. Ken stuck a little portrait of Ms. Murray on our markerboard in August, and it’s been saying horrible and profane things daily ever since; now that the countdown has begun, she’s taken on positively demonic aspects. It’s only a matter of time until we see her in concert, and I fully expect some kind of pyrotechnic battle between good and evil when the curtain opens. Ph34r!

Heading home for the weekend. This has disadvantages, such as the fact that I won’t be able to hang out or play videogames; it also has advantages, in that I will miss at least a day and a half of Rush Week. Ah, those crazy fraternity boys!

and if I had a gun
there’d be no tomorrow

November 6, 2001 /

I am my mother’s son. Cleaning isn’t something I do often–my work area is a complex system (or lack thereof) of piles, bins and bags. But I’m starting to realize that when I do it, it’s a way of centering myself, restoring emotional balance.

It was a good day. Shouldn’t have been, really, as I’ve spent it running, being tired and thinking about the impending doom of tomorrow’s Calc and Theatre History tests. I’m getting nowhere with my novel and Jon’s finally made the decision to take the semester off from Short Story. And of course there’s a dead end at… well, nevermind.

But I wrote my play. It’s hasty, overdone and generally awful with a near-complete lack of plot. I’m proud of it all the same.

I want to cast Will and Melinda in it, but grapevine says they won’t work together. Actors! Ishould boil the whole lot of them.

the drummer from Def Leppard’s only got one arm!
the drummer from Def Leppard’s only got one arm!