i'm a pixel here, myself

So popoffacork authors are live, and I can reveal that I wrote [the thin line between "maybe" and "yes"] (Jon/Spencer, It's not a fall so much as a headlong stumble) for afterthefair.

I was actually reallynervous when I saw I got Cristen because ack, someone I know! Who may think the story I write is crap! But her prompt was basically "I like Jon/Spencer and I like fluff" which is... not the hardest prompt she could have given. This is not 100% fluff, but it's nearly that, and I really, really like these two together. A lot.

It's three fifteen in the afternoon, so there's nothing good on TV, but Jon's lying on the couch anyway, remote in hand, flipping channels in a scanning pattern. Spencer wonders if his brain is even processing the images as they flicker past. "We're... whatever, right?"

"What?" Jon doesn't stop with the remote, but the pace of channel-changing gets slower.

"We're. I moved your flip-flops out of the way."

Now I can go reply to the comments on the story! Or... I will do that tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. Now zzzzzzzz.

between_names, I got your card today. Thank you!

---

I am seriously counting the days until I fly back east. Every year, I'm all "oh, this year will be different; I won't end up super-over-committed" and then... I end up super-over-committed. SURPRISE.

W10: work, help A+J move
Th11: work, dress rehearsal
F12: work, concert
Sa13: help other!J move, 2 concerts
Su14: climbing, concert, caroling
M15: work, cookie-baking party
T16: work, maybe climbing
W17: work, gym
Th18: work, holiday party for work
F19: work from home, holiday party for friends
Sa20: last-minute shopping, breathe?
Su21: fly back east

I'm also wishing I could rant about some work stuff, but, you know, nondisclosure and whatnot. Sigh. Suffice it to say, my boss and her boss are being incredibly stupid about some things lately and it comes from not knowing our systems or the data nearly well enough, in addition to not understanding where my time goes. I feel like I keep, for lack of a better term, whining about work *at* work, and that's not the best recipe for success :-|

---

The weird thing, for me, about Folie À Deux is that it is immediately recognizable as a Fall Out Boy record. And part of that has to do with it being a lot like Infinity On High, but IOH wasn't all that much like From Under the Cork Tree, so, you know. I have only listened to the first half of FÀD, but I already knew Patrick's vocal tics and where he would take the melodies even before he got there. This is kind of weird, but also kind of comforting, like a really old comfortable t-shirt. Maybe some of the orchestration is new and different, but this is not a New And Different Fall Out Boy Record the way IOH was. Am I wrong?

---

Now is the time on Sprockets when we write yuletide.

Come on, Wentz. It's been a few hours already and no baby photos? Jeez.

Kidding. KIDDING. God, you people. Also, "Bronx Mowgli"? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA FOREVER.

ALSO. Is anyone available to beta for my popoffacork fic? (it's not quite done the first pass...) It has been so long since I have written anything, you guys. I feel ruuuuuuusty.

a. Dear Bay Area Cabal: I love you all and your drunken (and not-drunken) LJ posts from the TAI show.

b. I had a real date with a real boy. Two, actually -- one Friday night ("hi, I'm Drew...") and one Saturday night ("Drew, meet my housemates"). Boy is uber-geeky and has a bit of that whole "genius but no social skills" thing going on, so I'm not sure how much longer this will go on, but we will see. Amusingly, Boy has virtually zero knowledge of non-sci-fi pop culture. I'm quite sure that if I mentioned any of bandom to him he would raise his eyebrow and say something like "is that pop music?" Yeah. And now I've made him sound like a total asshole, but he's actually kind of sweet once you get past the whole "I know way the hell more than you and will continue to speak like that" front. The question now is: is that a front that can be worn down? i.e., can I tell him to lighten the fuck up? Whatevs, I haven't had a date in over a year, so. Also, makeout session on Friday night -- I really like kissing. And it has been way the fuck too long.

edit: Boy, over IM just now, said "love you". WHAT. ::facepalm:: Do I have a sign on my back that says "yes, I really like the clingy ones"?

c. I have been rock climbing for quite some time now, but today I climbed two routes of higher difficulty than I'd ever climbed before. \o/!

d. My stomach has been greatly upset since Friday morning. NOT COOL, stomach.

e. Fuuuuuck, I do not want to go to work tomorrow.

Too many fangirls to name - and all of them awesome.

The show was good. The Cab were good, despite Singer's bronchitis. Plain White Ts have a really cute guitar tech and a really hot guitarist. Dashboard Confessional bored me to tears. Panic was pretty awesome - emoting Ryan! manic Brendon! Jon-like Jon! awesome Spencer! - and most of my music-related objections from HCT have disappeared.

What was decidedly NOT awesome were the bitches surrounding me in the pit - when I first got in, I should have snagged the open barricade spot stage left, but decided to stick with the LJ crowd, which was (sadly) a mistake. Ugh. Unless I can guarantee barricade, I think I'll be doing seats from now on. :-|

Fangathering at lovelypoet's tonight: I MET MY ADORABLE thelionforreal FINALLY AFTER SEVEN YEARS.

That + everything about Ray Toro and Bob Bryar in "Life on the Murder Scene" = my life is complete.

<3333333333333

bexone, clumsygyrl, lovelypoet: Hush Sound show (with The Cab) on August 4 (yeah, it's a Monday, which sucks, but whatever)?

[Tickets are only $17 including the fee.]

1.

Ick, ick, ick.

2. At work we've started planning for FY09 (yeah, next fiscal year. yeah, it doesn't start until October.) and our finance controller decided to change some of our fundamental assumptions less than four hours before he wanted our base plan submitted. Needless to say, that's not happening. We have until noon tomorrow, which is still less than 24 hours to turn this around. If I go silent for a long stretch of time? It's because I've been driven insane by how fast they expect us to make revisions when they change our bedrock assumptions. FUN TIMES.

3. Auditions I have this week:
Thursday - SFS Chorus for Mahler 8
Saturday - Into the Woods
Sunday - Altar Boyz

In summary, Bob Bryar, how so hot?

So as to my [previous post on the topic], I think I've finally figured out *some* of what's going on with my seeming inability to match pitch/tuning with bandom bands: autotune. Because I'm not in any situations where it's used, I always forget about it, but it turns out that after a little Googling and some careful listening, I can definitely pick out autotune artifacts on... well, just about everything. It's a lot easier to go for a note when you know the computer is going to fix it in post-production if you don't nail it right on. And I'd be willing to bet a nontrivial amount of money that these bands are all traveling with at least one autotuner for their live shows -- yes, pitch correction can be done live, on-the-fly. I would love to hear the difference between a very early live performance by any of these singers (back when they were dirt-poor and couldn't afford things like autotuners) and their current live shows, which are more technical and polished. Of course, part of that is the intervening time they've had to just get better at what they do, but I suspect autotune is involved.

It doesn't mean I respect them any less: if I were going to put out an album in the current market, I would want my stuff to all be pitch-perfect because everyone else's records are, too. And for live shows, well, it's damn hard to be "on" all the time, you know? Especially with the insane amount of energy onstage -- the tendency is to go sharp all over the place, or reach for notes you wouldn't normally go for and fall a bit short. There are a zillion YouTube clips from the recorded Panic show in Denver (while touring for AFYCSO), and I can hear autotune in every single one. It's harder for MCR to get away with it live, I'd guess, because the harshness of the voice during a scream is hard to tune, but since live it's all on-the-fly anyway, I'd bet there's at least some of that going on. And I know I've heard autotune in FOB music, even though Patrick has one of the best voices out there; it's all a matter of making sure you're perfect before you go to market.

Ahh, the music biz.

One of the best things about being an adult is that if you find yourself wanting ice cream for dinner, you can have it. Yeah, you'll be working it off for the next week, but you can have it. AND I DID. (yum)

In other news, I have been reading stuff *voraciously*, to the point where I'll click a link and can't always remember whether or not I've read it. bandom_recs, I loooooove you. And you know, I keep thinking about these groups and how in most good stories I end up envying whomever winds up together at the end -- not just because they're together and I'm single, but also because they're *professional musicians* and they're doing what they love and making good money from it and, you know, having a damn good time (uh, mostly). And I have to remind myself every once in a while that I made a choice not to go to grad school for voice, not to make music my profession. It's easy to look at successful groups and get envious of them, but for most of them (I think Panic is the outlier here -- not that they didn't work for it, but they got signed and on a pretty big tour almost right out of the gate, IIRC), getting where they got took a fuck of a lot of work, lots of sleeping in vans and playing for audiences that were probably super-tiny at the beginning, and that's all stuff I'm just not willing to do. I like knowing where my next paycheck is coming from, having health insurance, having a bed and a shower and clean clothes every day. And while the whole "touring in vans" thing doesn't really apply in classical music, if I really tried I could probably get cast as a bit part in a national tour of some musical and there would be similarities. But it's a choice I made. And remembering that only a very small percentage of artists actually achieve the success of the groups we read and write about is something that I don't know if we are very good at -- I know I'm not.

So congrats, boys and girls, for making it where you have. I'll never be there, but it's fun to read about what we think might be going through your heads while you're at the top.

(as a tangential addendum: why the FUCK do I have rehearsal in the middle of nowhere on my BIRTHDAY?! this is NOT ON, world. grr.)

Other singer-type people: I have a question!

Background: my singing voice is pretty high. Often referred to as "freakishly high" or "my god, that's high" or any of a number of other things. And yet... I have trouble singing along with much of the stuff coming out of popular bands (including FOB, MCR, Panic, etc.) lately. Is it something in the water? I've checked pitches and it turns out these guys (I'm looking at Patrick and Gerard here, but Brendon too, to some extent) are wailing away on Bs and B-flats seemingly without any trouble at all. Now, most of the singing along I do is done in the car, where I know it's hard to have proper breath support, but I have seen video of these guys singing, and they do it in all sorts of weird positions -- Patrick appears to like singing *up* into the mic, Gerard will bend way over when singing, and Brendon's a spazz monkey -- so that can't be *all* of it. Based on the tone color these guys have, plus their speaking voices and what sounds like their natural tessitura, they're WAY out of their comfort zone on virtually every song.

So what gives? Are they just blowing out their voices while young? It doesn't *sound* that way. They can't be singing everything from their throats, or they'd have been shredded long ago. Do they really have voices that are that much higher than mine? I really, really doubt it. I'm guessing that there's some rock-y technique that my classical training is causing me to discount or ignore -- any thoughts? For live shows, I'm willing to buy that adrenaline does a lot of it -- I've been there; I know you get an extra whole step or minor third on top of your regular range when you've got an audience feeding energy back at you -- but to hang out in the high-F-to-high-C range all night is still pretty damn difficult. And what about when they're in the studio? Even though you can do it over and over and over again, if you don't have the notes, you don't have the notes.

Did my generation's voices just jump a third or a fifth or something? The only people I can think of who are comparable, range-wise, in prior years are Bryan Adams and Steve Perry.

OH! Also, one other thing from last night's concert.

( Jon Walker, I love youuuuuu! )

So yes, I am as surprised as you all: I ended up at the Warfield tonight. Basically, the story goes like this -- work blows all week, I see lovelypoet make a post today about last night's HCT show and in the comments she mentions Jon Walker in a pearl necklace. This makes me go "bzuh?!" and in comments back and forth it comes out that she has another ticket for tonight, with clumsygyrl up in the balcony. As Friday continues to suck at work, I agree to go. Duck out of work at 4pm, stop at home for earplugs and water and cash, then make my way to the city. Somewhere in there is the realization that HCT is not *just* Panic, but also the Hushies, which makes my *GLEE* rise about a million percent.

Text thelionforreal to ask if she wants concert calls. She texts back something to the effect of "I thought you hated Panic?" Run into bexone seated about 10 seats down from me. She posts [this]. Apparently writing [this] as a review now counts as "hating" a band. I will admit that I am not the world's biggest fan of AFYCSO as an album, but I *liked* Pretty. Odd., people. It's just an inconsistent album. And they played most of the songs I like on the album, and only played a couple of what I thought were the weaker ones, so maybe they share my assessment? Or maybe they're saving up material for another tour after this one; who knows? Also at the show: schuyler and lovelypoet, who I hadn't seen in FOREVER, as well as lesasoja and Cristen, whose LJ name I do not know, but who is awesome and took orgasm-face pictures of Jon Walker. \o/

ANYWAY. The show. Um. It's a good show! ( spoilers! )

For the tl;dr crowd: bandslash makes me feel sixteen again; pretty pictures!; thinky thoughts on my relationship with LJ and LJ's role as enabler/inhibitor.

Lately, I've been reading a lot of bandslash and not much else. I've been systematically going through del.icio.us and looking for things that are tagged with pairings I like and then kind of wandering around the LJs and sites of the authors I like best. It's kind of cool; I feel like a fandom baby all over again, just devouring all I can and picking up bits and pieces of canon along the way. I've also been listening to The Black Parade and enjoying it more than I did several months ago when I first had a listen -- apparently Gerard's voice grew on me in the interim. It's also surprisingly good for the gym; most power-rock (or whatever you'd call them?) is fairly midtempo, but the beats in most of their songs are fast, which is very good for chugging along when your body keeps saying "STOP, PLEASE!". Also: Bob/Frank is kind of a happy place for me, and Mikey got DAMN hot when he lost the glasses. Less cute, but way hotter.

I have also been playing with my new camera! I took these last night: ( cut to spare your browsers )

So, you know, life is speeding along. I miss you guys; in some ways I wish my life hadn't become so busy, but in others I'm kind of glad that it has. At times in the past, LJ had been the majority of my social interaction outside of work and a couple of close friends, but LJ is a space where things can be blown out of proportion very easily. For example, if someone who posts a lot doesn't respond to you almost immediately, that can feel like a slap, when in fact it probably has something to do with that person being busy (doing things like posting!); similarly, the friending tendencies of people can be fickle at times, and if you suddenly find yourself defriended -- even if it's for perfectly legitimate reasons, like diverging interests -- that almost never goes down without some kind of hurt feelings. So while I really miss the tightness of the LJ community and the magnification power groupthink has on my levels of happiness related to fandom, I'm glad to be spread thinner if it minimizes the magnification of seeming social rejection. Much as LJ encourages fannish behavior, it also punishes the casual fan, at least in my experience. Or, hmm. Maybe that's not entirely accurate. Perhaps what I mean is: LJ makes it easy to be involved at a high frequency of involvement. At a lower frequency of involvement, it can function as a barrier, making those infrequently involved actually have to work much harder. I wonder if anybody's done any research on this question in social networks. All that said, I doubt I will stop reading fanfiction anytime soon, you know?

All of which is to say I feel like I've moved, and started at a new school: I've made new friends, but I still find myself wanting to spend time with my old ones. Life being what it is, though, my time ends up spent more with the new kids because they're always around; then I try to keep in contact with my old friends only to find they have new inside jokes and new stories and they're doing just fine without me, you know? And it's HARD to keep up with all those old friends, what with having all these classes and all the activities I did at the old school, only with these new kids...