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I was so tempted all week long to post this as a second song for the week, but somehow I had enough patience to wait until Sunday to post it. Erin gave me a link to this song on Monday and I think it’s a little bitty hint at how good the entire album will be once it is released in September. I am talking, of course, about Ben Kweller’s new CD. I was worried I might not like his new stuff because rumor has it his record company is trying to really push him into the mainstream market, which is proven with the title of the album: Ben Kweller. It makes it sound like it’s his debut album and with the success of indie music in recent years (Death Cab for Cutie, Snow Patrol, The Postal Service), there is a good chance Ben Kweller might be getting huge in the next year or two. I’ll never forget the first song I heard by Kweller, “Sha Sha.” It’s a great little song about being yourself and not caring what other people think of you. I loved it immediately and his voice and style was completely original and refreshing to me and his music helped push me into liking all the indie music I do now. Anyway, his new song is amazing. It’s called “Penny on the Train Track” it’s about taking risks and living on the edge, and while there are some slight mainstream additions to it, it only furthers how good of an artist he is. He still has his alt country sound and while some of his grunge rock has been replaced by pop rock, I still love it. So what are you waiting for? Download it! Listen to it! And then hit me back with some comments to let me know if you liked it or not.

Penny on the Train Track by Ben Kweller

I turned in the first three pages of my script yesterday and then we critiqued them in class. It was a very intense class because we read scripts aloud for three hours with only one 10-minute break. It was very nerve-wracking too because no one likes to have their work-in-progress thrown out there in the open. Any art/media/creative writing student would probably agree that being self-conscious about your work is one of the harder things to overcome in college. We had to cast people in our class to read the parts of each character. Mine was one of the last to be read. Agh! Anyway, it turned out good cause everyone laughed where I wanted them to laugh and everyone said I had great dialogue. The whole point of the critiques was to help us revise and through everyone’s feedback suggestions I decided to have two separate things happen at the same time (hitman gets an important phone call while finishing a hit), so I now have a double-hook of sorts and my professor thinks it’s great. Whew!

So I have three pages written so far. We have 15 pages due on Monday, revisions due on Tuesday, 30 pages due on Wednesday, and then final revisions due next Saturday. In other words, this weekend I’m gonna be a writing fool. On top of all this writing, I have my astronomy final to study for (it’s Monday night) and I have to work at the Moxie tonight and Saturday night. Only one more week of this insanity!

Some of you may have noticed the absence of my music player since I changed the theme of my blog. Well, it was just getting too annoying to have to upload new songs all the time and it also made me get sick of hearing some of my favorite songs. Not good! Well, I have decided to add a new element to my blog where each week (or so) I will upload a song that you all can listen to and/or download. Hopefully I will introduce some of you to new bands or else just remind you of a great song by a band you already know. I made a fancy graphic for it and everything ’cause I’m a geek like that. My first song is a relaxing little ditty by Gomez about seizing the day with a tone that reminds me of a warm summer evening like tonight. Oh, and please leave me some comments letting me know if you liked it or not!

See the World by Gomez

I finished my script treatment yesterday. I was having some major plot problems with the interaction between two of my characters and came up with a nice backstory connection that made them immediately feel connected/attracted to each other without having to come up with forced/cheesy dialogue lines to make them “fall in love.” My script is not really a love story, but there is definitely an important relationship that I wanted to develop in the midst of the story and so I made it more of an emotional connection between the two. I think it worked. This weekend all I have to work on for it is sequence cards, which are basically scene-by-scene layouts of each sequence of my script. I have about 8 or 9 sequences I think, so not much to do on that level. I do, however, have a big astronomy test on Monday night that I haven’t studied or prepared for in the least bit. I haven’t read any chapters, watched any lectures. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I think cramming on Sunday will get me a B though, which I’d be more than happy with. I just have a bad habit this month of turning into a total deadbeat on the weekends because my weeks wear me out so much between working, class, and writing gobs of script stuff. I have written over 20 pages of stuff for that class in only 2 weeks, and I still have a 30-page script to write by August 5.

Yesterday I did not leave my apartment at all. It was really nice, actually. After I finished my treatment and e-mailed it (around 4:00), I sat down to watch The Professional (love that movie) and ended up falling asleep. I woke up at 8:00 and finished watching it, then started watching Once Upon a Time in the West (another great movie) but alas I fell asleep again and woke up around 2:00am and it was still on (it’s a long movie). So my attempts at watching movies yesterday just ended in snores. I assume it’s because I barely slept on Thursday night.

Today I woke up and cleaned and did laundry and went to the grocery store for the essentials and came home and cut my hair. I have to be at work at 6:00 but it will probably be a short night, as Saturdays usually are. I might stay and watch District B13 but I just took an allergy pill so I should be getting pretty dazed in a couple of hours. I wish July was over already. I’m ready to be done with summer school and want start packing to move. I’m moving on August 25 and 26, which is the first weekend after school starts. I doubt I’ll have any major homework or projects but I’m in two production classes so you never know. I am so excited to start my fall classes and for this damn heat to GO AWAY. Bring on autumn!