Where The Bright Light Broke Through

And, it’s after midnight, so happy birthday, Taylor!

According to blog posts here, here, and here, Taylor is rumored to be taking part in a band called Tinted Windows along with James Iha of A Perfect Circle, Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, and Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick.

On one hand, James Iha’s MySpace DOES mention some kind of project with friends due out this year. On the other, he hasn’t been in the Smashing Pumpkins since they broke up, and two of the three articles are using twelve-year-old pictures of Taylor. Things like that which can be resolved by spending five minutes on Google searches make me question the veracity of the whole thing, you know?

RSVPing began about thirty minutes ago for the Members Only Event in Tulsa on May 16th. And Hanson.net kind of seems to have died under the onslaught. I already sent mine; I’m going to the 7:00 3:00 show. The guys also posted a From Us to You earlier mentioning that the member kit is almost done.
They also posted a FUTY for Valentine’s Day titled “All That Love Crap.” Someone asked Zac awhile back to write a song with this title, and he finally got around to it. And again, it’s a prime example of why I love this band — because they will never do a video like this and actually mean it. Taylor Hanson trying to be sexy with chocolate is such an epic fail that I had to break away from typing this post to cover my face with my hands, giggling and shuddering as I thought about it. And after seeing Zac with all that chocolate on his face, the next morning I took one glance at my Valentine’s Day chocolates from my boyfriend, shuddered, and just stuck with coffee.

Edit, 4:10 P.M. MST: The 7:00 show is already full! It’s only been an hour!

Edit #2, 5:40 P.M. MST: BOTH sessions are already full. They’re working on adding a third.

Edit #3, 10:20 P.M. MST: This is turning into a regular liveblogging session. (Maybe saying so will stop things for the day?) Hanson.net seems to have been bogged down and erroring out most of the evening — and then about half an hour ago, Zac showed up in the members online list on the forums. I have this feeling like any minute I’m going to start getting nothing but “We’re sorry but something went wrong” messages.

Why do people have to be such assholes? I’ve had way more experience with this subject than I’d like, but a case in point came Thursday. I didn’t have to be in class, but I went over to campus anyway to take care of some things. I was wearing my black hoodie, the one with the green walk guy on the front, and I thought nothing of it until I was passing the Student Union Building and heard this really horrible rendition of MMMBop from the patio on my right, the kind of rendition of MMMBop that Isaac was talking about when he said he still runs into people who can’t say it right.
This isn’t new in a lot of ways; I went to high school with people who hated the band. My journals from the time are peppered with choice comments that popped up on the subject (this was ‘97-99ish when Hanson were a lot more in the spotlight than they are now). I picked those people’s comments apart in private (it was good practice for debate), and then dismissed them. Those people didn’t know I liked Hanson all that much, so it wasn’t a directed dig. Over the years, I’ve seen or heard people pointing and laughing or singing prompted by my license plate, my t-shirts, had people drive by the concert line and ask, “No, really, who’s playing?” when we told them we were waiting to see Hanson, you get the idea. And I’ve been given a hard time over so many asinine things over the years starting even before Hanson that I’ve A) pretty much given up arguing with anyone about anything, and B) try to avoid bringing it on myself. I can’t stop being white or suddenly get rich, but I can try not to make an ass of myself, at least. And so, after all those years of practice, it was pretty easy to keep a straight face as I pulled on my headphones and turned on my iPod to block the girls at school out.
Afterward, I got to thinking about it (and by “thinking about” I mean “overanalyzing”); what’s the point? Obviously, they’re trying to take the piss out of me, but to what purpose? In retrospect, I’d have liked to go sit down with them and ask. At best it would have confused them and at worst, they might have thought me weird or been disappointed that they didn’t get a rise out of me. I don’t believe I’d have gotten any kind of useful answer beyond that they didn’t have any point. Or maybe they think they’re cooler than me because they can butcher the lyrics to a song my favorite band released twelve years ago? It wasn’t like I was going through the mall shouting about it; I was just passing by. Does that make them feel so much better about their lives because they mocked something that some girl that they don’t know likes?

When I saw this, all I did for a few minutes was laugh. Chocolate? Seriously? At $25 a dozen? Is this an April Fool’s prank? Then I realized it’s mid-January and every fucked up thing they’ve done that I thought was some kind of joke turned out to be serious, so I threw out that idea.
I thought, okay, maybe this is a test. People complained that the Take the Walk book was too expensive, but in the case of a fundraiser, it’s hard to say what’s too expensive and what’s not, since the money is going to charity. Also, I know it’s expensive to have books printed, especially big, thick-paged books full of color photographs. But they know that a lot of the time, they can charge anything they want and we’ll pay it, because we’ve been complaining that shirts and hoodies and stuff were too expensive since ‘03 or so. Maybe they decided to slap their logo on something that’s purely for profit and jack the price way up just to feel out where our limits are these days — and to get an estimate of how many diehards will still buy one of every single thing they ever release.
That’s is a pretty unkind theory, I admit it; it implies that they’re being deceptive and milking their fans for money and other such terrible things. But if we take this simply as, “Oh, hey, here’s something we released specially for Valentine’s Day for you guys,” I come up with a conclusion almost as bad — that they’re totally out of touch with what normal people can or will spend. No matter how good the chocolate is, it’s still consumable. I’ll pay $25 for a t-shirt (albeit a bit reluctantly; I’m not shopping much lately but I’m pretty sure plain t-shirts at the Gap are two for $25, which I guess says something about what all that screenprint ink and designer’s time and merch people’s time is worth in comparison to the shirt itself), the original silver logo necklace went for $25 ten years ago (adjusting for inflation, that only comes out to about $32 today, though I saw one go for upwards of $135 on eBay just the other day), and $25 is roughly the cost of the Middle of Nowhere Acoustic CD and DVD. $25 is worth a lot of stuff, stuff that can be worn or played repeatedly, and then kept for the memories that comes with them. It’s really hard to justify spending $25 on a dozen chocolates.
So, I’ve finally drawn the line. This is not something I will yank out my debit card to order on the spot at two a.m. a la the Take the Walk book, or put on my list to order after my next paycheck. If this is a test, boys, here’s the answer: I’m not exactly sure where the limit is, but it comes somewhere before $25 chocolate. And if this isn’t a test, well, maybe you need to consider doing a few.

Hope it’s a good one!

Halloween night, a drunk driver slammed into my boyfriend’s pickup (and then left; the cops caught him about a mile away). The pickup did a one-eighty, hit the curb, and rolled down a hill into a low-lying area. Nothing’s broken on me, but I’m in a lot of pain, and I’m absolutely pissed. I’d decided I’d rather go to Wichita instead of Denver, but it didn’t matter; I didn’t get to go to either one, and you know, that pisses me off more than anything about the whole situation: I’m in so much pain I couldn’t even consider making the drive to the concert. Caring about something this much is a double-edged sword. I feel bad for the people that don’t have this when things are going well, but right now, missing the concert on top of the wicked seasonal affective disorder that sinks in every fall, it’s all that much worse. I am Jack’s homicidal rage.
It really caught up with me on my drive back to Albuquerque. I was driving back with my left hand, right shoulder splitting, and since I kind of stupidly loaded up my top twenty-five most played on my iPod, of course it was going through all the new Hanson and Everybody Else I’ve been listening to lately, and I finally just cried. Like Rob in the first chapter of High Fidelity, I should have just put on something that I could ignore.

So, there’s this obnoxious video on TMZ where some asshole was asking the guys some questions bugging the fuck out of them, but it was worth it just for Zac’s reaction: “Do you normally talk like that, or do you have a problem today?”

Zac posted a FUTY asking why people bring instruments to shows. I replied and was like, “Yeah, I was saying the same thing four years ago.” So, I reposted a slightly updated version of the Seven Deadly Concertgoing Sins.

‘Cause, you know, Zac so actually reads my blog. Don’t you know I’m awesome like that?