This video perfectly personifies why I love Frightened Rabbit. The intimacy of their shows. The crowd singing along so much that Scott Hutchison gives in and lets them take the lead. I miss hearing “Keep Yourself Warm” at shows and clearly their fans do too.
Frabbit’s breakthrough album Midnight Organ Fight is being re-released on vinyl and the first time it is available in the US. It’s is available May 7, but you can preorder now. (It would make an awesome housewarming present, no?)
So it has been a little quiet around here lately. That is because I’ve been preoccupied with non library related stuff like…
I bought a house.
I wanted to title this post HOLY SHITBALLS I’M A GROWNUP* because I’ve said that a lot lately.
It took me 35 years to get there, but I’m finally feeling like an adult. An adult who gets carded for alcohol still and rocks fun socks with her Mary Janes but an adult nonetheless.
The truth is, it’s about time. I moved here for library school but I adamantly declared my disdain for the city. It was not Chicago. It was not home. Add in a job I loathed and I became quite the sour librarian to be around. I was always mocking its feeble attempts to be like a big city.
But after getting a new job that I love and feeling more secure financially, I decided it was time to own the city I’ve lived in for the past eight years.
Eight years.
For eight years I’ve complained about living here. No music scene. No public transportation to speak of. No people who get me or my interest. I was a big city mouse trying to make it in this country place.
But it turns out that in those eight years I refused to see what was going on around me. I live in a city that ranks in the top 15 biggest cities in the country. It’s not as small as I like to make it. The music scene has increased exponentially thanks to Craig at MOKB. And turns out there’s way more things to do that interest me but I just had to meet the right people to expose me to it.
So the only thing left was finally to accept this city isn’t half bad and worth putting down roots in.
That’s the grown up thing to do, right?
* instead I gave you an Everclear one. I’m sorry about that.
I’ve been having a lot of moments lately where I thought “If I ran the world, things would be different.” Sometimes it’s on a global scale, but mostly it’s things that happen day in and day out at the univeresity. Things that should only take a few moments to do end up taking a few days to accomplish. There seems like such an easy solution yet it never goes that way it should. And I find myself shaking my fist in frustration and saying “If only I ruled the world!”
While I obviously can’t fix things everything, the beauty of my job is that in many instances I can fix things. Or at least I am given the opportunity to try.
I took over managing student workers this semester. With that comes the unique opportunity to create a space in our learning management system that will provide a training opportunity for workers. With the assistance of academic technology, we are working to create a one hour class that will educate our prospective workers, test them on what they learned and provide a space for them to refer to the information if they need it in the future.
The idea for the online class evolved after I discovered there was no manual for students on how to do their jobs. How could we expect them to do certain things if we did not define what our expectations were? It has made me realize the breadth of knowledge we require of our workers. While they make look like they are doing nothing at the circulation desk, we make sure they are prepared for a wide variety of scenarios so they can assist patrons in the best way.
I like the idea we are the originators with this space. We are setting the rules. We are, for all intents and purposes, running the (student worker’s) world. I admit that I am not perfect and I am sure this space will need tweaks and adjustments as time goes on. But instead of being frustrated with it, I like to think I am just provided someone else an opportunity to feel superior, shake their fist at me and say “If I ran the world…”
Photo by Tim Richmond
Frightened Rabbit have a new album out next month and The Guardian is streaming it right now. Where as Winter of Mixed Drinks really took me awhile to get in to, I’m immediately loving Pedestrian Verse. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to “Holy” and “The Woodpile.” The Skinny has a great song-by-song breakdown by lead singer Scott Hutchison.
I’ve got tickets to two of their shows on the US tour but I’m thinking long and crazy about attempting to follow them on my spring break. You can see why I love these guys so much (and check out the kilt on Grant). So great.
As a staff member at a university, I am afforded the opportunity to serve as faculty adviser for a school sponsored organizations. Somehow I got talked in to being the adviser for the anime club. Disclaimer: I don’t like anime and I don’t read manga. So I’m not sure why the students thought I would be a good match. But hey, I’m pretty open minded so that might be part of it.
This past weekend I chaperoned them to Ohayocon, an anime convention in Columbus, OH. I was intrigued to see the enthusiasm by everyone attending and the dedication to their costumes. I sat through panels on how to be a Japanese translator and get super awesome jobs at places like Funimation. I overheard crazy phrases like “did you hug enough today” and “do you know where they are screening the new My Little Pony episode”. I watched groups of kids play a game called Ninja. I scratched my head at people cosplaying characters with what looked like candy corns on their heads. I discovered I have a serious fear of furries.
I will admit, I simply don’t get the appeal of most of it. Maybe I’m too old and therefore not the demographic. Maybe this was just never my scene. My kids, however, had a blast and were in their element. So who am I question their interest?
Other people may put out the best of lists for the year, here’s my year end wrap up:
TOTAL BOOKS READ: 33
This was the least amount of books I’ve read since I started my 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. I’m not even sure what caused it, but I’d like to correct it.
TOTAL PAGES READ: 8134
Not only did I not read as many books, I read smaller books (*cough* children’s books *cough*). I’m changing this in 2013, too.
TOTAL NUMBER OF SHOWS SEEN: 11
BAND I’VE SEEN THE MOST: weirdly enough I did not see the same band twice. A rarity for me.
TOP 10 BANDS I’VE LISTENED TO THIS YEAR:
I think it’s interesting to note I listened to a lot of audiobooks by Sarah Vowell this year. This was the year I really embraced the audiobook (took me long enough).
SONGS I’VE LISTENED TO THE MOST:
Tie between The Head and the Heart’s “Lost in My Mind” and “Down in the Valley”. What an odd year when Frightened Rabbit didn’t make the top artist or song.
Theme of the new year is more – more reading, more music, more, more, moar.
Librarians in every school. #nra First things first.
— American Libraries (@amlibraries) December 21, 2012
I’ve tried to stay out of the discussions/debates/arguments that have evolved since the shooting at Sandy Hook last week. However, after today’s press conference from the NRA stating the only way to combat guns in schools is to put an armed guard in schools, I feel our priorities as a country are really out of control. This line of argument reminds me a lot of teaching people how not to get raped versus teaching people not to rape. Putting armed police in a school is a band aid to the situation. We need to figure out how to encourage people to not use gun violence as a means of solving their problems. I’m with American Libraries in saying that maybe we start with putting our money in educating our youth versus arming them.
