Damn, I wish someone actually read this blog. I haven't updated in quite some time. I have no good reason for that, it just happened.
I'm writing again because I'm going to college at the end of the summer. It's more cliched than I'm usually comfortable getting, but I think writing about it will make the adjustment easier.
Only a few days ago at the time of writing this, I sent in my deposit to the Oberlin College and Conservatory. They sent me a t-shit that says "Oberlin 2018" on it, which is ironic, because I'm doing a five year program, so I'm technically the class of 2019.
The college process has changed a lot since my parents were my age (according to them). My parents each only applied to three schools. I applied to eight. I knew a guy who knew a guy who applied to twenty in 2012. The worst part of the whole process was that I was very aware that I was being judged as a person. It was uncomfortable. The big schools really only cared about my grades, but the smaller ones (like Oberlin) asked really vague personal questions on their application.
So I was essentially laying my personality on the table, and eight different schools poked and prodded until they felt that I was worthy of joining their class of 2018, or 19.
That's why the best part of the college process is going to admitted students day. The roles are reversed. The school is trying to impress you. My dream for those days was to walk up to an admissions councilor, and demand that they write ME an essay about how their school demonstrates my core values in its daily life.
But I doubt that would be well recived.
What's really been on my mind for the past few days is far less of a joking matter. I've been accepted to a collage, and high school is winding down. In many ways, these are the last days of my childhood. I know how melodramatic that sounds, but its what I'm thinking, so deal.
This post was hastily written and ill-conceived. I'm currently working on another that's one big extended pee-joke. Stay tuned for some high class entertainment.
The Fretless Bass
I give my two cents on stuff. My mom says I'm funny.
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Sunday, April 27, 2014
Monday, June 10, 2013
Thank God for the NSA

First of all: It will put a stop to all those annoying people who criticize the government. Who will whine about the government when they know that someone who works for the government is listening? I'll tell you who: terrorists. Now instead of listening to how politics is becoming too partisan, we can get back to meaningful discussion topics like last week's episode of "Storage Wars," or the best season of "Dr. Who."
Second: It means all that data that you've been trying to find an easy way to store is already being stored for you! Those emails you were trying to organize by date? The NSA has them organized by frequency of the words, "jihad," "Obama," and "holy-war," which is almost as good.
Third: It will make politeness and email etiquette the norm. Now, instead of hastily typing out a request for an email to a friend, every email can be tagged with a polite "thank you" to the agent making sure the two fifteen year old band geeks aren't hiding bombs in their tuba cases.
The miscellaneous applications are also impressive. Phone conversations submitted as evidence in a court case will always be verified, you have an unbiased third party settle any argument you have over the phone, someone can always proofread your emails, and no snap-chat dick pick will go unappreciated.
What I'm trying to say is: keep an open mind. Sure, privacy is dead, but at least we're safe from all the couples arguing over who should hang up first.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Ignorence is not bliss
I haven't posted in a long time because I went to the orient to find myself.
Just kidding, I didn't feel like it, but I'm back now, here's why:
I've been interested in pursuing a career in communications/media for a long time, and if right now you're thinking, "but that's a dying industry," please shut your computer down, turn off all the lights in your house, and jump out of a second story window, I know it's a dying industry. I don't care.
Anyway, a family friend of mine, Kevin Dupont, invited me to come with him while he recorded some analysis shows with Comcast and Channel 7 News. I got to see how sports reporting worked, and while I'm not interested in sports, it was still pretty awesome. If you don't know who Kevin Dupont is, look him up, he's in the hockey hall of fame.
I got to ask some of the anchors how to get started in the industry, and they all told me the same thing: write a lot. So here I am, writing, about my visit to Comcast and 7 News, in case you hadn't picked up on that.
It was pretty confusing for me, actually. Mr. Dupont also brought a friend of mine along, Joe, who watches an average of an hour and a half of sports talk shows a day, and does interviews for the school radio station. I, on the other hand, have been known to call scoring in baseball "points" and have propably watched an average of an hour and a half of sports talk shows in my life. I'm a comedy guy, my radio show is a classic-rock/comedy hybrid, and when I write for the school newspaper, it's straight journalism. I was totally out of my element.
Here's where it gets embarrassing. I met Lou Merloni, only I had no idea who he was. For those of you as ignorant as I was, Lou Merloni was the second baseman for the Boston Red Sox from 1998-2003, and he now hosts a radio show, "Mutt and Merloni" on WEEI. He was hosting a segment about Rondo, who had just torn his ACL.
So I had no idea who this guy was, and Joe was freaking out. It may have worked in my favor though, I came off pretty cool, or maybe touched in the head. We'll see if I apply there some day.
The list doesn't stop there, though. Throughout the course of the evening, I met Cedric Maxwell, Joe Amorosino, Janet Wu, and Jackie MacMullen. I had no idea. None. I just walked up to them, and shook their hands, while Joe stood behind me practically dying. If you don't know who these people are either, look them up on Wikipedia, and try to imagine the shame I now feel.
This is definitely a hyperbolic perception, but they probably think I'm an ignorant plebeian.
In hindsight, I should have watched a lot of sports shows before I went out with Mr. Dupont. It would have made it a lot less awkward when I got into a fight with Dan Shaughnessy (that's a joke, I actually fought Maxwell).
Just kidding, I didn't feel like it, but I'm back now, here's why:
I've been interested in pursuing a career in communications/media for a long time, and if right now you're thinking, "but that's a dying industry," please shut your computer down, turn off all the lights in your house, and jump out of a second story window, I know it's a dying industry. I don't care.
Anyway, a family friend of mine, Kevin Dupont, invited me to come with him while he recorded some analysis shows with Comcast and Channel 7 News. I got to see how sports reporting worked, and while I'm not interested in sports, it was still pretty awesome. If you don't know who Kevin Dupont is, look him up, he's in the hockey hall of fame.
I got to ask some of the anchors how to get started in the industry, and they all told me the same thing: write a lot. So here I am, writing, about my visit to Comcast and 7 News, in case you hadn't picked up on that.
It was pretty confusing for me, actually. Mr. Dupont also brought a friend of mine along, Joe, who watches an average of an hour and a half of sports talk shows a day, and does interviews for the school radio station. I, on the other hand, have been known to call scoring in baseball "points" and have propably watched an average of an hour and a half of sports talk shows in my life. I'm a comedy guy, my radio show is a classic-rock/comedy hybrid, and when I write for the school newspaper, it's straight journalism. I was totally out of my element.
Here's where it gets embarrassing. I met Lou Merloni, only I had no idea who he was. For those of you as ignorant as I was, Lou Merloni was the second baseman for the Boston Red Sox from 1998-2003, and he now hosts a radio show, "Mutt and Merloni" on WEEI. He was hosting a segment about Rondo, who had just torn his ACL.
So I had no idea who this guy was, and Joe was freaking out. It may have worked in my favor though, I came off pretty cool, or maybe touched in the head. We'll see if I apply there some day.
The list doesn't stop there, though. Throughout the course of the evening, I met Cedric Maxwell, Joe Amorosino, Janet Wu, and Jackie MacMullen. I had no idea. None. I just walked up to them, and shook their hands, while Joe stood behind me practically dying. If you don't know who these people are either, look them up on Wikipedia, and try to imagine the shame I now feel.
This is definitely a hyperbolic perception, but they probably think I'm an ignorant plebeian.
In hindsight, I should have watched a lot of sports shows before I went out with Mr. Dupont. It would have made it a lot less awkward when I got into a fight with Dan Shaughnessy (that's a joke, I actually fought Maxwell).
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
The Fretless Bass Reviews: The Dark Knight Rieses
...Wow, time sure got the better of me over the past few months. If anyone had asked me why I wasn't blogging, I might have said I didn't have time, but that's not true, so I guess I was just lazy.
I wanted to write again, and I couldn't think of a better way to get back into the game than with the new Batman movie. Now, I know that the Colorado shooting may taint the subject, but I don't want to get into that, if you want to talk about it in person, I do have strong opinions on the subject. However, for this review, I will criticize the movie the way I saw it, untainted by the horrible events in Colorado, because I saw TDKR at 7:30 on the night before it officially opened, as part of a BU alumni program. (My dad went there.)
Where to start? I liked the movie a lot, and there are a lot of things they did right, but they also did a few things incredibly wrong, and those are the things I'm going to articulate better.
First of all, TDKR did a very good job at building anxiety, it isn't until about a half hour into the movie that Bruce Wayne dons the cowl and does some serious violence. During the interlude before, we are introduced to an organized-crime free Gotham, but for some reason, everyone thinks "there's a storm coming." When I heard that, the first thing I thought was, "how could you tell?" Phrases like "there's a storm coming" piss me off, because they're a cop-out method of introducing anticipation. Commissioner Gordon and Selina Kyle seem sure that the $#!^ is going to hit the fan, but looking back, I can't see how they could be so sure, given that there hadn't been a violent crime in Gotham in 8 years.
Next, a guy named Bane shows up and starts raising an army in the Gotham Sewers. Bane himself is really cool, and about as faithful as cinema can be to the original character, he's strong, evil, and a brilliant strategist. To top it all off, he has a mysterious background.
Then five minutes after you see him for the first time, Alfred casually mentions that Bane used to be a member of the League of Shadows. (The organization that Ra's Al Gul headed in Batman Begins.) This upset me, they took an opportunity to make a giant plot twist, and made it about as important as Alfred telling Bruce that Bane's favorite color is Beige.
Then Bane takes over the city and what not, I don't want to go into details, because it's actually pretty awesome. The Cops, (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman) lead a resistance against the freed criminals while desperately awaiting Batman's return.
That's as far as I want to go with the plot, a lot more happens, but it's too exciting to ruin while reading some guy's blog.
Of the new characters that were introduced, I liked both of them, Anne Hathaway is always good, and her character was layered and interesting, the only problem with Catwoman was that she only did one thing to advance the plot, and then she's just kinda hanging around, showing off her butt, until the end when she does a few more things. However, Hathaway did a fabulous job with the part. Overall, very good.
Officer John Blake is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I like to call, "the franchise expander," and I'm not going to explain that, because it would spoil the movie, just go see it, I hear it's good.
Blake overall does more to advance the plot than Catwoman, and succeeds in being very interesting, this combined with the fact that Joseph Gordon-Levitt could desecrate the Wonder Woman movie franchise's grave and I'd still love him, gives the character Mickey's seal of approval.
Now for the fundamental problems, before I dive into the sea of foaming-mouth-loathing-from-the-bad-side-of-the-river-styx-even-for-Hades, I would like to assure people that I recommend TDKR, and it did more things right than it did wrong. In fact, the only things keeping it from being the best movie of the summer, are below.
First, the twist was terrible, I don't want to get into details, (because it's the friggin' twist) but it made Bane seem infinitely less cool.
Then, they killed Bane, oh don't give me that, you could have predicted that the bad guy would die at the end of a gritty super-hero movie, but don't read the next two paragraphs if you don't want some spoilers that couldn't be avoided.
It's not that Bane dies that I hate, it's how they killed him, he died in a bafflingly anti-climactic way, he just gets shot, and they even try to make it comedic, which only made it worse. Later in the movie, I found myself thinking, "hey, what happened to Bane?.... oh yeah," which is a terrible thought to have during a movie. Also take in mind that this is after the plot twist made Bane the president of Wussconsin, the wussiest place to ever have a total wuss as a president.
Bane should have died by getting his mask ripped off or getting kicked into a vat of boiling something.
Anyway, if it weren't for those two major flaws, I would have actually rated TDKR above the Avengers, but it made those mistakes. Also, while i'm on the subject, hey interwebz! The Avengers and TDKR are both good, so shut up, because you, and the guy you met in a Reddit chat-room are both right.
Also, we know why most people wanted to see the movie anyway,

Just sayin'
I wanted to write again, and I couldn't think of a better way to get back into the game than with the new Batman movie. Now, I know that the Colorado shooting may taint the subject, but I don't want to get into that, if you want to talk about it in person, I do have strong opinions on the subject. However, for this review, I will criticize the movie the way I saw it, untainted by the horrible events in Colorado, because I saw TDKR at 7:30 on the night before it officially opened, as part of a BU alumni program. (My dad went there.)
Where to start? I liked the movie a lot, and there are a lot of things they did right, but they also did a few things incredibly wrong, and those are the things I'm going to articulate better.
First of all, TDKR did a very good job at building anxiety, it isn't until about a half hour into the movie that Bruce Wayne dons the cowl and does some serious violence. During the interlude before, we are introduced to an organized-crime free Gotham, but for some reason, everyone thinks "there's a storm coming." When I heard that, the first thing I thought was, "how could you tell?" Phrases like "there's a storm coming" piss me off, because they're a cop-out method of introducing anticipation. Commissioner Gordon and Selina Kyle seem sure that the $#!^ is going to hit the fan, but looking back, I can't see how they could be so sure, given that there hadn't been a violent crime in Gotham in 8 years.
Next, a guy named Bane shows up and starts raising an army in the Gotham Sewers. Bane himself is really cool, and about as faithful as cinema can be to the original character, he's strong, evil, and a brilliant strategist. To top it all off, he has a mysterious background.
Then five minutes after you see him for the first time, Alfred casually mentions that Bane used to be a member of the League of Shadows. (The organization that Ra's Al Gul headed in Batman Begins.) This upset me, they took an opportunity to make a giant plot twist, and made it about as important as Alfred telling Bruce that Bane's favorite color is Beige.
Then Bane takes over the city and what not, I don't want to go into details, because it's actually pretty awesome. The Cops, (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman) lead a resistance against the freed criminals while desperately awaiting Batman's return.
That's as far as I want to go with the plot, a lot more happens, but it's too exciting to ruin while reading some guy's blog.
Of the new characters that were introduced, I liked both of them, Anne Hathaway is always good, and her character was layered and interesting, the only problem with Catwoman was that she only did one thing to advance the plot, and then she's just kinda hanging around, showing off her butt, until the end when she does a few more things. However, Hathaway did a fabulous job with the part. Overall, very good.
Officer John Blake is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I like to call, "the franchise expander," and I'm not going to explain that, because it would spoil the movie, just go see it, I hear it's good.
Blake overall does more to advance the plot than Catwoman, and succeeds in being very interesting, this combined with the fact that Joseph Gordon-Levitt could desecrate the Wonder Woman movie franchise's grave and I'd still love him, gives the character Mickey's seal of approval.
Now for the fundamental problems, before I dive into the sea of foaming-mouth-loathing-from-the-bad-side-of-the-river-styx-even-for-Hades, I would like to assure people that I recommend TDKR, and it did more things right than it did wrong. In fact, the only things keeping it from being the best movie of the summer, are below.
First, the twist was terrible, I don't want to get into details, (because it's the friggin' twist) but it made Bane seem infinitely less cool.
Then, they killed Bane, oh don't give me that, you could have predicted that the bad guy would die at the end of a gritty super-hero movie, but don't read the next two paragraphs if you don't want some spoilers that couldn't be avoided.
It's not that Bane dies that I hate, it's how they killed him, he died in a bafflingly anti-climactic way, he just gets shot, and they even try to make it comedic, which only made it worse. Later in the movie, I found myself thinking, "hey, what happened to Bane?.... oh yeah," which is a terrible thought to have during a movie. Also take in mind that this is after the plot twist made Bane the president of Wussconsin, the wussiest place to ever have a total wuss as a president.
Bane should have died by getting his mask ripped off or getting kicked into a vat of boiling something.
Anyway, if it weren't for those two major flaws, I would have actually rated TDKR above the Avengers, but it made those mistakes. Also, while i'm on the subject, hey interwebz! The Avengers and TDKR are both good, so shut up, because you, and the guy you met in a Reddit chat-room are both right.
Also, we know why most people wanted to see the movie anyway,

Just sayin'
Monday, January 16, 2012
Sneak peaks suck
Today, I watched the sneak peak of the next half of The Walking Dead: season 2. In said clip, two male characters walk into a bar occupied by Rick and Hershel , and say, "Goddamn, you're alive." Rick and Hershel then look at each other like they've seen a ghost.
The obvious implication is that the new guys are from Rick or Hershel's past, and that they are characters we think to be dead. I'm here to argue that this isn't so.
I've read the graphic novels which the series was based on, and new characters are introduced out of nowhere all the time, so my guess is that these two new guys walking into the bar aren't old fan favorites back from the dead, but entirely new characters, and by "goddamn, you're alive," they actually meant, "They're not zombies, but regular people."
This of course means that the sneak peak was intensionally misleading.
Which is why they suck
I'm not saying that the next half of season 2 isn't going to be amazing, I just wish they would be honest with us.
For good measure, here's the link.
....
I couldn't find it...
Friday, January 6, 2012
the fretless bass reviews: El Camino by The Black Keys

Over vacation, my brother gave me the Black Keys album: Attack And Release. It's awesome, but that's a different article. Because I enjoyed my present so much, I bought their latest album, El Camino, and it's review worthy.
El Camino is the Black Keys seventh studio album, and it is alternative at its best. The Black Keys are famous for their blues-rock fusion that they do so well, but I feel like this is the first album where the style reached it's full potential. The first song that serves as evidence for this claim is the first on the album, "Lonely Boy," which starts out with a hard rock guitar riff, and balances itself out with a pop oriented anthem. The next song on the album is "Gold on the Ceiling." This song exhibits the Black Key's classic repeated guitar riff style similar to a previous hit, "Holwin' for You." And finally, one of my personal favorites, "Run Right Back," which has an almost childish guitar anthem to start, but finishes with a great bluesy feel.
Interestingly enough, the car on the cover of the album isn't the "El Camino" Ford model, which sums up the album nicely, it's not what you expect from the Black Keys, it's better. They took their iconic style and milked it for everything it was worth, and it's worth about 10.99 on I-tunes.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Vlog #1 The Lion In winter
So, you just witnessed me, in a bathrobe, yelling about how cool I am for one minute and thirty three seconds. you will undoubtably want to know more than what I was able to sputter out through movie maker, so here's the link to where you buy tickets!
http://www.ccpops.org/tickets.html
Show dates:
12/2/11 7:00 pm at Concord Carlisle High School
12/3/11 7:00 pm
12/9/11 7:00 pm
12/10/11 7:00 pm
12/11/11 2:00 pm
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