Mike Burns's Mediocre Party

Some people showed up to my Spring Break Party, Part 1. Many, many more people will be at the sequel. There's also a party happening on June 18th. More details on both the Spring Break Party, Part 2 (The Allie Party) and Heidi's Birthday Party will appear later.

About 12 people showed up to tonight's party; not horrible, I suppose. It was a rockingly fun time, though. Good music was played, beer was drunk, pizza was eaten, and people socialized.

Food

Reheatable Prince pizzas were baked. At first (10PM) they weren't popular; by midnight they were gone. We had eight total, but there was demand for more.

Drink

Sunkist and Coca-Cola went. Root beer and Sprite didn't.

People were shocked to find that Sunkist has caffeine. That's why I drink it!

Music

I decided to play what I normally listen to, instead of typical party music. I took one request—Dead Kennedys.

• The 90 Day Men - 1975-1977-1998
• Big Black - Songs About Fucking
• Shellac - Terraform
• Rodan - Rusty
• Slint - Spiderland
• Slint - Tweez
• June of 44 - Four Great Points
• Darediablo - Feeding Frenzy
• Turing Machine - Zwei
• Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
• Turing Machine - A New Machine for Living
• Trans Am - Futureworld
• The Ventures - Walk Don't Run

Someone requested "party music", so I turned the volume up. That worked.

The End

The only couch-crasher was Nate. Jessoe drove three partiers back to Northeastern University (and Heidi home, down the street), and Mosier took care of Jim and Anne.

Slint's Mediocre Comeback

Slint is performing their first tour in 14 years. They invented what would later become post-rock and math rock. And yet, the concert wasn't great.

We'll start with the good things:

• It's Slint.
• 90% of the songs they played kicked ass.
• It was a fun, close audience with two generations of hipsters in it.
• Due to poor marketing, only non-trendy scenesters were there (give or take).
• They did not play an encore.

Okay, now the not so good:

• The opener needs to fire their vocalist. Of course, the opener was just a vocalist.
• It took unnecessarily long for Slint to set up.
• Two or more minutes of dead air between songs.
• The Roxy is a crappy venue. We had a tiny dance floor to stand on, or seats.
• 10% of their song choices didn't rock.
• The fog machine—can you get any more lame?

I do not regret giving Slint my money; I only wish the show was better.

Lazy Programmer

I've been a busy/lazy/bad programmer, in that I haven't done anything useful. Sure, I'm working with Pete on the Carcassonne project in Software Development, but on the weekends all I do is party.

Because of this I'm not going to finish guploadr. Maybe I'll write the GNOME organizr later. Probably not.

On the upside, I'm getting practice at Python and, in the process, learning that I wouldn't enjoy using it as a real-life language. PLT 300 should have GNOME libraries, so I'll just wait for that.

Party

Speaking of what I do on weekends, I'm throwing a party on the 25th of March (2005). It's a Spring Break Party, Part 1. This is a party in two parts, and only certain people are not invited to the initial screening. Other names for the first party are "Good Riddance Friday" and "The Anti-Allie Party". Everyone's invited to the second, yet-to-be-announced party, named "The Allie Party".

I expect to see you at both! (That is, unless you're one of the uninvited. Jerks.)