Being Amber Rhea

The University of Georgia is now safe from ninjas. Thank God!

Actually, don’t thank God. Thank the ATF, who apprehended a student who’d been attending the Wesley Foundation’s “pirate vs. ninja” event. (The Wesley Foundation is a Christian group… I don’t know what pirates and ninjas have to do with Jesus, but hey, cool.)

The money quote (emphasis mine):

“Agents noticed someone wearing a bandanna across the face and acting in a somewhat suspicious manner, peeping around the corner,” said ATF special agent in charge Vanessa McLemore.

(h/t Adrian)

So, the Of Montreal show last night (in Athens, at the 40 Watt) totally rocked my socks. If you’ve never heard their music, you need to go take care of that right now.

I’ll say this, though… when I was a college student, it was amusing, even endearing, to know that basically all shows were on “Athens time” - so if it was advertised to start at 10, you knew it would be at least midnight before whoever you came to see went on. Now that I’m an old person living in Atlanta, it gets on my damn nerves a little. It was a kickass show, but it would’ve been just as kickass four hours earlier. But hey, what’re you gonna do? Nobody likes a curmudgeon, so I’ll shut my filthy mouth and quit my complaining.

Of Montreal rocks your ass all over the place, leaving you feeling excited but content at the same time. -Oh, what the hell do I know, I’m no Flagpole music writer. Anyway, the point is, the show fucking ROCKED.

Off-topic: Last night downtown Athens had a disturbing overabundance of cockroaches. Not fun.

[Cross-posted at Athens World]

This post from Patrick made me miss Athens:

Some guy just ran through downtown wearing a saddam hussein mask and a “Fuck Bush” sticker over his otherwise naked ass. My wife called to tell me.

Then I found out that David was quoted (well, more like interviewed) in the Red and Black. Then I got nostalgic looking at pictures on Athens World - including pictures of the fiberglass bulldog statues in my own Athens World gallery. It’s apparent to me now, almost 2¼ years later, that in this picture and this one, I look like I am humping the bulldogs. Tony said my form needs work, and I concede; this is a stellar example of insincere humping. (You will also notice, if you know me IRL and pay any attention to this sort of thing, that my wardrobe hasn’t changed much in 2 years.)

So, I’m back in the ATL. And after a 3-hour nap, I have uploaded all my AthFest photos and am ready to write my obligatory recap post.

This was, easily, the best AthFest I’ve been to (I think I’ve been to four total).

After lunch at Five Points Deli, we checked into our respective hotels (Cari’s two friends had to stay at the Howard Johnson because the Holiday Inn Express didn’t have any vacancies [we had a reservation]), and then headed downtown to meet David a.k.a. eponymous at Flicker. The bar was deserted when we arrived, and the area around the mainstage on Washington St. was looking pretty empty as well. It was 4:30 PM; AthFest would kick off at 5:00.

We sat outside Flicker, talking but not too much, because the heat was of the sort that makes you not want to move a whole lot. Mostly we people-watched. One cool (but sometimes disturbing) thing about Athens is that you’re always seeing people who you either know, or at least recognize. Often you can’t place where you recognize them from. Maybe you had a class with them once, maybe they worked somewhere… it’s hard to say. But there are definitely a lot of recycled faces. I spotted Dr. Dan and he came over to chill with us for a few minutes.

Tangent: Neither Cari nor I had been to Athens in a while, and you know what we realized? Stuff is fucking cheap there. I mean, obviously we knew this already; but after living in Atlanta for over a year and getting used to things here, it really smacked us in the face upon our return. I mean, yeah, I lived there for 3½ years, but I was a broke college student - now that I have graduated to the actual “middle class”, the contrast between Athens and Atlanta is even greater. Two drinks cost as much as one in Atlanta. 25 cents gets you an hour on the downtown parking meters. A good meal for two can be had for under $10.

The first band to go on was a band from Chapel Hill called SNMNMNM. I thought they were really good - and they had a tuba, so that’s pretty cool already. I didn’t have my camera with me at that point so I don’t have a picture of them.

At around 6:30 Cari and I went to dinner at the Grit. It was time for me to have the fateful first grilled cheese sandwich. I have photographic evidence of the event (before, during, after). We originally took a picture of me actually taking a bite, but it looked obscene, so we had to delete it. So you’ll just have to take my word for it that I actually ate it. You know what? It wasn’t half bad!

Tangent #2: We did a lot of walking, and realized that the distances seemed a lot shorter than when we lived there. We attributed that to living in Atlanta as well. But I mean, really… the Holiday Inn Express is really only 3 blocks from the 40 Watt. Prince Ave. is not that far from Broad St. I don’t know why it seemed like a much bigger deal when I lived there.

We got back from dinner just in time to see Elf Power. David was still camped out in front of Flicker, but the crowd was much more substantial. Elf Power played for 40 minutes and they totally rocked. Actually I think this was the first time I’d ever seen them live.

The crowd got thicker as 9:00 approached, which was when Pylon was scheduled to go on. At around 8:45, some girls emerged from the 40 Watt carrying scores upon scores of pink balloons. The balloons had “Pylon” printed on them, and just about everyone in the crowd got one. Washington St. was soon a sea of pink balloons.

Pylon took the stage right on time. What can I say? They put on a freaking awesome show. Pylon is one of the few bands that make me want to dance; and not just make me want to dance, but they make me get up off my ass and actually dance. After 25 years they’ve still got it going on. They rocked out for about an hour, and then did an encore.

This is now getting long to the point where I wouldn’t read the whole thing if it were on someone else’s blog. So I’ll go ahead and bring it to a close. In summation: I had an awesome time, and am looking forward to AthFest 2006!

(Cross-posted, with edits, at Athens World.)

Yep, I’m in Athens. Sittin’ here in my hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express, getting ready to go to bed like an old person. I am exhausted - but it was an awesome day, with more awesomeness to come tomorrow, surely. Pylon ROCKED. This is a band that has been around as long as I’ve been freaking alive, and they rocked tonight on the AthFest main stage as much as they did in Athens, GA: Inside/Out (1986).

Anyway, I’m going to bed now; no Club Crawl for me. I had a great time today and took lots of pictures - and I even ate a grilled cheese sandwich! Expect more blogging tomorrow; for now, I’ll leave you with this and this, which should give you a sense of how I feel about AthFest thus far.

I can’t sleep. I’m tired, yet I also feel kind of wired (sorry for the unintentional rhyme). I can’t remember the last time I’ve been up this late. <sarcasm> Guess my age is showing…! </sarcasm>

Had a good time tonight. Rolled into Commerce around 6:30; Amy (I did not know she had a blog!), Adrian, and I went to pick up Amy’s friend Marie and then headed to Hilltop Grille for dinner. I’d never been there before; the food was great. The hostess told us we would have to wait an hour, even though we wanted to sit on the patio (it was not cold at all), but we ended up not having to wait long at all. We had a good time there, left about 9:30, and headed downtown to observe “the scene” and make snide comments about said scene. Called David (and then passed him staring into the window of an old black Cadillac on Clayton Street) and he told us he was going to be at Allgood if we wanted to join him. At first we thought we would, but we promptly became disgusted with the majority of the crowd downtown (it’s nothing against you, Dave; it’s all the other people that bothered us) so we decided to head back to Amy and Adrian’s place. Marie made hot toddies (I was going to link to a recipe, but all the recipes I found are very different from what we had, which involved spiced apple cider and some kind of obscure liquer, the name of which I’ve forgotten), and we watched the ball drop, toasted the new year and talked about how we feel good about 2005, are glad to close out 2004, and are looking forward to a fresh start and all that stuff. Then we watched Napoleon Dynamite. :) It was a good New Year’s. I’m glad I came to Commerce. Will post a picture or two tomorrow. I better try to get some sleep now, since it’s after 3:30 AM. Gah! And yes, I’ll fix the blog problem tomorrow.

Something I posted on AthensWorld a few days ago ended up in Flagpole this week! (More importantly, AthensWorld finally got its due and got mentioned in Flagpole.) I’m famous, beeatch! Kind of funny and ironic… I’ve had some choice things to say about Mr. Emerson Dameron in the past (and of course he doesn’t know me) but I guess he really liked what I had to say about drunken frat boys. Anyway… w00t!

Chris and I went to Athens yesterday and had a pleasant game of Scrabble with Adrian and Amy at Hot Corner Coffee. Words I was almost able to spell, until someone obscured my target area: latex; rosary; queasy; exams (over a ‘triple word’ square); jury; screw. Word that would’ve won Amy the game, probably, had she actually been able to use it: zen (over 2 ‘double letter’ squares).

We had a good time socializing in Athens. Wish we could’ve stayed longer, but I started to feel pretty crappy. I spent most of last night in agonizing pain (one of those all-over headaches) and had a hard time sleeping. Fortunately, Chris was spending the night and was there to take care of me (THANK YOU!). I was reluctant to take any medication, after accidentally taking too much acetameniphen (sp?) Friday night, but finally I took some Sudafed PM, which helped a lot.

Also, the tooth I had to have refilled a few months ago is bothering me again. Or, maybe it’s the one next to it; I can’t tell. Either way, I don’t trust that dentist I’ve been going to. It’s time to find a new dentist. And hopefully I won’t have to have another root canal. :P

My plans for today include catching up on some email; wrapping some xmas presents; laundry; setting up my new Ionic Breeze; working on my new blog layout; and, most importantly, reveling in supreme laziness (which means those other things may or may not happen).

The other day I wrote a so-called “personal” blog entry, which I haven’t posted yet; I’m contemplating whether or not to post it. Last night, Amy and I were saying how we find the most interesting blogs to be the ones that are more personal. (Often the ones whose authors think to be “boring.”) Of course, because the Internet is public, there are some things I would never post on my blog. But there are other things that give me pause. Hmm.

I’m tired. It’s clear that I need to go to bed. Yet here I sit, munching Tootsie Rolls (it’s been a junk food day), and listening to the train pass by outside. And I will be tired when I wake up at 8:00 AM.

I deleted the [former] previous entry, the silly ‘A-to-Z Survey,’ because I ended up finding it too silly even for my taste. And that’s saying something.

Last night (well, I guess now technically I should say two nights ago) Chris and I went to a meeting in Athens, sponsored by the Athens Global Justice Collective, called “The Next Step.” (Patrick had a blog entry about it.) We got there about 45 minutes after the meeting had started, and I, for one, was amazed when I walked in the room, at how many people were there. I was pleasantly surprised. And the meeting ended up being a good one, too, not just a “meta-meeting” — people sitting around talking about the logistics of the meeting. Afterward, a bunch of us went to dinner at Transmetropolitan. So anyway, now I am all fired up (even moreso than I was to begin with, since last Wednesday) to get out and work for change, dammit! We can DO this! Get Out the Volunteer! (<– Thanks to Chris for that one.)

The Human Rights Campaign sent me a Word document a couple days ago, which I need to peruse and I assume fill out and send back… and I need to call and talk to them, since their next volunteer orientation isn’t until January. I also sent in an “I want to volunteer” postcard to the Sierra Club, which, like UNICEF, has its Southeastern headquarters on Peachtree between home and work.

Ok, that’s all for now, another rambling few paragraphs. Off to Bedfordshire. The next entry might be titled “Thoughts on Singletondom”, or somesuch. Or it might be about some newly discovered CSS quirk. Or it might be another entry about how excited I am about Abby and how I can’t wait to see her next weekend. :-)

I posted this in the comments section on AthensWorld, but subsequently thought it worth posting here.

Re: National Coming Out Day:
My first October at UGA, I found hilarious the right-wing students’ reaction to the “outlandishness” of National Coming Out Day. There were several complaining letters in the Red and Black, about how they didn’t want that gay shit all up in their face, and the Lambda Alliance students at the Tate Center were bombarding everybody with their gay agenda, and so on and so forth. Wow… I didn’t know that one sad little table with two stoic-looking students standing behind it and a Lambda Alliance banner hanging from the front could be so inciteful. I wished those fools could see National Coming Out Day at NYU… well, first of all, they don’t have National Coming Out Day, they have National Coming Out Month. And the whole month is replete with parades, film festivals, guest speakers, theme parties, and so on. Much of it consists of free condoms being thrown around. A fine time was had by all (the two times I was there for it).

Off to get Chick-Fil-A breakfast now…

Pictures from Athens: http://homepage.mac.com/amberlr/PhotoAlbum11.html. Enjoy.

Memorable quotes from a cartoonish drunk guy at David’s party:

• “I fuckin’ love… quartz, man”
• “What you gotta do is, you gotta find a local person who works for the mine or some shit, and just fuckin’, bribe the shit outta him.”
• (regarding Ken’s tattoo, which is in Arabic) “What is that, Sanskrit or some shit?”

Seems like there’s always a festival going on in Athens. At least, there has been the last 3 weekends that we’ve been there. :-) First there was the Twilight Criterium, then the Athens Human Rights Festival, and today it was some kind of Christian rock concert. (We were given a new addition to our Chick Tract collection.) Always something interesting. I love living in Atlanta, but I looove Athens too.