nadsat

As I enter my last year at The Georgia Institue of Technology, I find myself in the midst of surprising triump over Tech’s typically evil registration process.

My schedule of classes for Fall 2006 (R = Thursday)

• Health (MW 2-3)
• History of Ancient Philosophers (MW 3-4:30)
• Philosophy of Science (TR 9:30-11)
• Reel History (TR 1:30-3)
• Thin Film Science (TR 12-1:30)
• Senior Design I (R 3-4)

A quick glance at my schedule reveals that I have no courses which meet on Friday. In other words, I have no class on Friday. Perhaps this is not a big deal at some schools (Georgia State has no Friday classes period) but at GT this is monumental. My attendance in Friday classes was never good… but this is a school sanctioned reason to enjoy every thirsty Thursday special the city has to offer!

The question is though, what should I do with my new found leisure time? I could devote that time to studying and further pad my GPA, but where’s the fun in that? After some careful thought I came up with these ideas:

• Learn to smoke a pipe and grow my own tobacco
• Become a cigar connoisseur
• Get really good at the banjo
• Pick a type of music and become an uber snob for that genre (something obscure)
• Expand my culinary skills
• Sit on my ass, waste my youth

As tempting as that last option sounds, I’m sure whatever I pursue will be a combination of several things from that list. Further cooking and banjo practicing are definitely in order and I have wanted to try to grow my own tobacco for some time after stumbling across this site.

Who knows what this fall semester has in store for me. I just hope I don’t lose my appreciation for the three-day weekend as a whole.

I want to work for Big Tobacco. I just finished browsing the RJ Reynolds website but alas no relevant looking jobs. They could use a Materials Engineer right? Cigarettes are nothing more than a combination of materials. Maybe I could invent some new sort of paper to wrap them in.

I don’t think I have an addictive personality but I do day dream and I’m probably borderline impressionable. I watch an old Clint Eastwood western and I want to be a cowboy; I watch Goodfellas and want to be a gangster. Maybe it’s just because those are cool things to do. I don’t watch Philadelphia and want to be gay.

Well the point of this post (I promise there is one) is that Thank You For Smoking is a seriously bad ass movie. It was the first time in recent memory where all the quotes from critics they put in the preview are actually true. It actually was the “funniest American comedy since The 40-year Old Virgin.” It has even displaced Junebug as my recommended movie.

The other half of the story is that this was mine and April’s first attempt at a long distance date. Crazy? Why yes, yes it is. I actually got that idea from that made for TV movie, “Pirates of Silicon Valley” about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Bill Gates apparently did it with his wife while they were apart. The concept is simple, you and your significant other are apart but still want to go out on a date, what do you do? You decide on a movie you both want to see, go see at about the same time and then call one another afterwards to talk about it, just like you were walking out of the theater together. Good enough for the richest man in the world, good enough for me.

I think this falls under the “hopelessly romantic” category, but others have described it as “cute” , “pathetic”, or just simply “weird.” I thought it worked out pretty well. But I’m curious to hear what my faithful yet always thoughtful, demanding readers have to say.

Saturday night in Richmond, Robert Earl Keen playing at The Canal Club, who wouldn’t want to go?

Well the first problem is how to get there. I went with Tom, a fellow indentured servant for Honeywell, and we both live in Chester, about 15 miles or more down I-95 from our destination. Since it was just the two of us and we both wanted to drink, we decided to suck it up and take a cab. $40 later we arrived at The Canal Club. Granted I live a ways from downtown but $40? It’s no wonder people drink and drive, no incentive to take a taxi and there is no public transport option.

After getting inside and shelling out $4 for a hospital piss cup full of icehouse, it hit us. Why the hell didn’t we pregame?! I attribute it to the fact that we are out of the college setting and Chester is just plain boring. I swear living here adds at least five years to you. With no other options we decided to just empty the wallets and get hammered (luckily bottles of bud/coors were only $3 so we enjoyed that for the rest of the night).

The opening acts were each one man shows. The first guy’s claim to fame was writing some song for Grey’s Anatomy. He closed with that and no one seemed to notice until he mentioned it. The real opening act was Jalan Crossland. A solo guy from Wyoming that played guitar, 5-string, and 4-string banjo. He was pretty talented and had a nice folk/bluegrass sound. It complimented the rest of the show pretty well.

I think it was after 11 before Robert Earl Keen and company hit the stage but the wait was well worth it. It was a nice, intimate venue; the perfect kind of setting for a show like that. Some of his best stuff is when he just gets up there and tells a story and it just flows into a song about that particular story.

If you’ve never heard any REK before, I highly recommend it. Probably his most famous songs are “The Road Goes on Forever” and “Merry Christmas from the Family”. But I’d also recommend “Corpus Christi Bay”, “The Front Porch Song”, “Everclear”, and “Copenhagen”. My favorite track is probably “Feeling Good Again”.

Anyway, after the show we wandered over to Wonderland. A semi-emo bar but still one of my favorites. It has free darts, $2.75 24oz PBR cans, and nice people. Besides, there is just something great about holding a giant can of PBR.

After last call (2am) I call the cab service that brought us up. I’m standing in the middle of downtown Richmond with people exiting bars all over the place and dispatcher has the nerve to tell me “I don’t have any cabs in the area, it’ll be 20-30 minutes”. After telling them what they could do with that taxi when it arrived, I hung up and proceeded to hail one of the many other taxis driving down the street.

I didn’t get rip, roaring drunk (hard to do that on just beer) but had a good time, drank beer, and heard some good music. In the words of Robert Earl Keen, “it feels so good, feeling good again.”

Maddox has a book.

That’s all that really needs to be said but humor me and keep reading.

Maddox is an internet pirate and author of “The Best Page in The Universe“. He’s probably best known for his all out ball stomping, in fact the book warns that it will in fact stomp your balls. He doesn’t update often but its usually well worth it when he does.

Just look at the cover to the book, it has goddamn He-Man punching a goddamn gorilla! That’s really all I need to know, this book will be in my collection come June.