Okay! So! My last post about this was in May for a festival that happened in April? Who cares! I still have pictures and videos and reflections, not to mention major nostalgia about the event and ANTICIPATION for next year. Seriously - I'm not missing another Coachella in my life until I die.
Anyway, Sunday started off pretty chill - we needed to relax after the epic-ness of Saturday. I started off the day back at the Sahara tent - where else? - to see Rusko. It's interesting now to remember his set, because since then he's released his first solo production album, O.M.G. (see the reviews? they're mixed. that's because this album is, er, mixed in terms of quality,) which was in some ways a lot like how he plays a set and in other ways not at all like how he plays a set. Basically, Rusko's main genre is dubstep. But, when he plays live, he doesn't just play all wobble dubstep. He mixes in d'n'b, some reggae-inspired dub, basically just big beats. That's what the Coachella set was like: insanely danceable for a genre that can be syncopated and even arrhythmic.
Much like the Bassnectar set from the night before, the bass blasted out of the speakers with all of the subtlety of one of those magic hammers from Super Smash Brothers (N64 edition, obviously.) And it was delicious. The album is mixed in a different way, a bad way in my opinion, but this isn't about that, so I'll move on. The set was awesome.
Next we mosied over to the Gobi tent for Florence + the Machine. I don't have any pictures of her, but she was one of my most anticipated acts before the festival, and I was not disappointed. Watching her live recalled some of the performances I've seen from veteran rock goddesses on VH1 Classic - a little bit insane, but overall demonstrating powerful showmanship. Not to mention that VOICE. Miss Florence has got some pipes on her, that's for sure - and not in that kind of generic heady pop voice way that we hear so much of these days; rather it's a solid, earthy, grounded voice that I feel like would be equally great for summoning pagan gods during a cultish ritual and for entertaining a crowd. Bottom line, she's great, buy her album, she deserves to have more people know about her. (And she was recently featured on So You Think You Can Dance, which probably means more publicity for her - yay!)
I next romped back over to Sahara for Infected Mushroom, followed by Orbital. Infected Mushroom played a live set rather than a DJ set, which was very interesting because detractors of electronica will typically bring up the point that there are no instruments so it's not like, real music man, but that's what makes their live sets so engaging: there are instruments. They're actually playing their whacked-out sound live. I'm frankly not sure what to call Infected Mushroom anymore - they used to be known for their wicked psy-goa trance sound (which regrettably has fallen almost completely out of style with trance today, but it was awesome) and they've understandably evolved since then since it's kind of dated sounding now. Nevertheless, they're still making their dark beats relevant, and performing them fantastically well live. A very fun set.
Orbital are just mind-blowing to watch, partly because you have to appreciate how much they've done for the genre, and partly because they've still got it. Their sound is distinctly Orbital, but updated, and allegedly they're putting together some new stuff? I can't wait to hear it. It was in the middle of this set that my camera died, partly because it was spent from the weekend, but also partly because I was trying and failing to get a million good shots during this set of the spectacle of lasers they had going on all over the place. Much like their music, the lights lacked the obvious punch of many sets before them in the Sahara, but instead the visuals opted for a darker ambiance with finessed projections of colors across the top of the tent. Some faceless guys along the side of the stage kept tossing out bucketfulls of multi-colored glowsticks, so that by the middle of the set the front half of the audience participated in the overall lighting effect - lots of colors in lots of thin straight lines. It was rather minimalist, and it was very complementary with the music.
So yeah, I'm glad I got to see them.
Finally, we headed over to Thom Yorke. I had no expectations for this - I had no idea what his solo material was like and half went in the hopes that Radiohead would make a surprise appearance. To my pleasant surprise, I found that I rather liked the stuff he was playing (and he even played a few Radiohead songs, though the band did not join him.) Unfortunately by this point my body began reminding me that I'm no longer a spritely youth that can subsist on about 8 hours of sleep in three days, so I was kinda unable to fully enjoy the set. But I was prompted to check out some of Thom's solo material when I got home, so I guess marketing-wise (if not experience-wise) at least his set was a success.
So I haven't written since my Coachella posts, and I didn't even exactly finish that! I'll try to get the Sunday recap up tonight (maybe?) so that even if everyone else stopped caring by now, I'll at least have it on record for myself :D
Anyway, what really brought me back was this post by Tiffany - the 30 Day Blogging Challenge. I know it's going to be a lot to go from nothing in several months to um, a post every day for 30 days, but I'm sure as heck going to try. This ought to be good especially since Week 1 promises to be particularly difficult - I'm hesitant to ever profess anything to ever be my 'favorite' of any category.
Day 01 — Your favorite song
Day 02 — Your favorite movie
Day 03 — Your favorite television program
Day 04 — Your favorite book
Day 05 — Your favorite quote
Day 06 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 — A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 — A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 — A photo you took
Day 10 — A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 — A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 — A fictional book
Day 14 — A non-fictional book
Day 15 — A fanfic
Day 16 — A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 — An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 — A talent of yours
Day 20 — A hobby of yours
Day 21 — A recipe
Day 22 — A website
Day 23 — A YouTube video
Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 — Your day, in great detail
Day 26 — Your week, in great detail
Day 27 — This month, in great detail
Day 28 — This year, in great detail
Day 29 — Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 — Whatever tickles your fancy
All right! So Day 2 started off with a cleanliness dilemma - the campground actually did have portable shower trucks (which I'd never seen the likes of before), however, the line to use a shower was over 2 hours long. I had opted to take a shower the night before while the rest of the festival-goers were pre-occupied with Jay-Z and Deadmau5, but after surveying the line that morning, my companions Marie and Jamaica had a better idea:
Why not, right? When it's as hot as it was out there (though fortunately, all reports say that this was one of the milder weekends, temperature-wise, in Coachella history) a cold shower doesn't seem half-bad. After we were all done and hair washed and cleaned, I lathered up my SPF 70 and got out one of two new, white, lightweight tunic tops that I purchased for the occasion to keep the sun off of my delicate vampiric skin.
After a lazy early afternoon involving naps and lots of beer, we headed out to Coachella stage to see White Rabbits. I found myself thinking that I liked the music, but the vocals were really generic. The singer sounded exactly like every other twee indie band singer and I kind of wished that weren't the case because I felt that if he developed his own style they might have something special. As it was, the set, though pleasant and fun enough, settled into background noise while I laid back on the grass and people watched.
I next wandered over to the Sahara tent for Dirty South. It was a decent enough set from them but admittedly not one of the standouts of the weekend for me. In general I wouldn't say that I'm the most devoted Dirty South fan though - I have a few remixes of theirs that I really enjoy, but for the most part their sound doesn't do it for me.
Next up for me was Bassnectar, and, whoa guys, whoa.
This was up there with Imogen in the "Holy crap" category. I originally wasn't really planning on catching this set because Saturday was definitely the day that I was planning on running around and trying to cram in a ton of people that were playing the same time on different stages. In fact, while Bassnectar was on, I'd originally planned on going over and checking out The xx on the Outdoor stage. However, right from the beginning of the set I was hooked and I did not want to leave. I'd been getting into dubstep for awhile and knew of Bassnectar, but I wasn't intimately familiar with either his studio work or his DJ style. So suffice it to say this rocked my world. For one thing, okay, I don't have the best stereo at home so I've not ever had a super celestial experience with my at-home listening in terms of being completely enveloped in music the way one can be at a concert. And that's one of the really fun things about going to concerts, is getting your ears blown out with the wicked huge soundsystem and reverberating bass. But with dubstep, it's just a whole different ballgame. It vibrates in your soul. The bass hits you in your solar plexus and knocks you into another world. I'm saying this, mind you, as someone who is completely sober now and who was, in fact, completely sober at the time that I was at this set. It just blew my mind. The song selection was top notch and everyone in that tent just got down. It was freaking magical.
I recorded this because a) "Where is My Mind" is a wicked awesome song and b) THIS WAS A WICKED AWESOME REMIX. My camera does not do it justice but it is songs like this alone that have me wanting to upgrade my stereo system in my car, just so that I can get that bass tickle all over my skin back like I had at this show.
Following up Bassnectar was Kaskade, who I have been dying to see but kept missing at other shows for whatever reason. I'm so stoked I finally caught him. His set was also epic. Right at the beginning, they released these floaty white balls down onto the audience, which were bouncing all around throughout the entire thing and adding some fun to the atmosphere. What's more fun than dancing like a fool? Right - dancing like a fool and also swatting at huge floaty balls.
That's not my video, because this song was such a huge moment for me that I totally forgot to pull out my camera. I'd never heard this mashup before, but Casper can attest to the fact that I love "Feels Like Home" by Meck, and "Like a Prayer" is actually probably in my top 3 favorite Madonna songs. So this came on and I was basically losing my mind dancing and singing and acting a fool. Kaskade really brought it with the mashups. In addition to the one above, he also played a bootleg mashup of his song "Be Still" with Benny Benassi's "Satisfaction" which I can't find anywhere, probably because it's just going to be one of those things he keeps in his pocket to play at live events.
Ugh, the sound quality of these videos kills me! But anyway, here's one I did take, of something obvious:
This was a no-brainer to play and it brought the house down. I didn't record the whole song because I wanted to dance too, and I didn't want to take a shaky video :] But thanks Kaskade, for not letting me down from the high I felt after Bassnectar.
After Kaskade, I had a tough decision to make. Should I stick it out in the Sahara for David Guetta? Should I roll over to Outdoor for MGMT? Or should I take a breather for 20 mins and then stake out a good spot for Major Lazer? Well, as someone who has read my last few blog posts might suspect, I opted to check out the newcomers Major Lazer. David Guetta's recent work wasn't really grabbing me, and from what I knew about MGMT's most recent album Congratulations, it didn't seem like the type of music that would really translate to an energetic festival performance. (And I turned out to be right - I was able to hear the one song I would have truly cared to hear, "Electric Feel," and while the sound of the crowd indicated excitement to hear that song, I heard later that they played mostly songs from the new album and people didn't really get into it at all. They didn't even play "Kids!")
All that said, while Major Lazer was fun and got me dancing, I was actually a little disappointed. A little background - when I said "newcomers," what I meant was that this was a new collaboration; however, Major Lazer's core members are actually Switch and Diplo, veteran producers and DJs. So knowing that, I should have anticipated the possibility that they'd actually play a DJ set rather than just performing tracks from the album. Which is what they did - the set included bits from several of the songs on the album, but it was otherwise a set of songs that had a sound similar to the Major Lazer sound. And don't get me wrong - it was a solid set. I just had hoped to hear more of their actual songs in full-length.
After Major Lazer, I sprinted over to catch the last hour of Muse. These guys definitely know how to put on a show. I wasn't able to get any pictures because the crowd was packed and I was surrounded by a bunch of giants, but if it's one thing Muse embraces it's bombast, and that makes for a great concert. Highlights for me were "The Uprising," which was played during the encore, "Knights of Cydonia," and "Time is Running Out." I would have liked to her "New Born," as it's one of my favorite Muse songs, but I can't say for sure that they didn't play it during the hour that I missed while I was at Major Lazer.
After Muse, I regrettably missed the end of Flying Lotus's set to push closer to the stage for Tiesto, someone else who I somehow had never seen despite him being one of the top DJs in the world. I was rewarded!
So I was kinda off to the right, but I was probably only about 10 rows back, and if you knew how HUGE the crowd was during this set, you'd understand that being so close was a massive accomplishment. There were allegedly some 75,000 people in attendance at Coachella, and it seriously felt like there were 50,000 of them crowded around the Coachella stage. I had honestly never seen such a never-ending mass of heads before - not at any of the massives I've attended, nor at any other large gathering of people. This was truly a packed, shoulder-to-shoulder sea of people the likes of which was astounding.
I took a short video of what we joked later could be our theme song for the evening, "In the Dark." We had all been separated and somehow managed to find each other again among the mass of people before Tiesto's set at the stage. So this particular song would be the theme song why? Well, the lyrics in part are something like "Cause I will be there/And you will be there/And we'll find each other in the dark." Which is what somehow happened! We found each other in the dark. (Thank goodness.)
I also, from the looks of the video, tried again to capture how massive the crowd was. I think I kind of failed. If you think it looks big from that video, multiply that by about 5 and that's probably closer to what the mass of people actually looked like. The last video I took was of my favorite Tiesto song, "Adagio for Strings."
Sadly, it must be said that Tiesto's set, though energetic and fun, actually reminded me why I've been kind of moving away from trance as of late. It really is the cheesiest and most cookie-cutter of all electronic music, something that I've known and accepted for awhile, but didn't care because it was still fun. But there just haven't been that many tracks released recently that really stand on their own as good songs. They really are meant to meld together and just become background sounds that e-tards jump up and down to. That's why I particularly enjoyed hearing "Adagio for Strings" - though still a later release than when trance was at its peak, it has a unique sound to it that I feel set it apart from every other tune that he played.
There's a part of me that wishes I checked out Devo and 2ManyDJs, both of whom were playing at the same time as Tiesto. But I guess that's the nature of the beast with these festivals - you win some, you lose some. And some stick in your mind and rock it with awesomeness.
And three cheers to perhaps the longest post I've ever written! I hope anyone reading is enjoying my recaps. Day 3 is still to come :D
Tori S. says: “One of the biology professors at my college breeds angora rabbits. She brings them in for the students to help socialize, so they’ll be nicer pets (don’t worry, they’re not for experiments!!!) It couldn’t be better timing than right now, what with finals coming up and everything. So, a bunch of us took picture of/with the bunnies.”
So let me quickly apologize to all two of my readers for not writing in awhile. I have been in kind of a slump emotionally and it wasn't really prompting me to write much. Most of the stuff I encounter these days on the internet seems really depressing and I wasn't (and still am not!) getting a lot of inspiration for writing about happy things.
However. I did for the first time go to Coachella this year and to say the least, it was incredible. I am so stoked I finally went, and kind of kicking myself for not having gone before. So we packed up my baby car (baby because it's young, and because I baby it since it's officially the most expensive part of my life) and on Thursday night drove out to the desert with the biggest tent I've ever seen, and all the beer we could get our hands on before Costco closed.
One thing that I was not prepared for was the four and a half hour wait to actually get onto the campground. They were searching every single car for contraband, particularly glass bottles and weaponry and things that could generally be used to kill people. Depending on how cranky the individual attendant was and how thorough s/he felt like being at the time, some people also had entire bags searched, which one could imagine probably ended up in a lot of weed being confiscated. So almost as soon as we got off the freeway and headed toward the Polo Club, we came across a line of cars that began about two miles away from the entrance to the Club. Then upon entry, the cars were separated into smaller lines on a field that led to the searching areas. It was like a huge parking lot at that point:
When we finally got onto the campsite, we then began our careful arranging of tent and car, since the tent was so huge and, to our dismay, the people directly behind us also had a larger-sized tent. After finally getting the tent set up (and having a couple of beers and meeting neighbors along the way) we finally got to bed at around 5AM.
Friday was a day of exploration. We walked around the endless campsites and around the festival arena itself, checking out the art pieces that were placed throughout the grounds:
There were two large outdoor stages. The main "Coachella" stage was immediately visible as soon as you entered the festival site, and the second "Outdoor" stage was to the right of the main stage. Then, in line with the Outdoor stage and extending toward the back of the grounds were three tents: Gobi, Mojave, and Sahara, each increasing in size from the last. These housed the smaller acts over the weekend, and the Sahara tent was nearly always dedicated to various electronica throughout the festival.
The first act our group wandered out to see was a bizarre collaboration between Perry Farrell, lead singer of Jane's Addiction, and Steve Porter, a house DJ and producer. From what I could tell, it seemed that the performance was possibly intended to be a mashup that laid Farrell's vocals, possibly from pre-existing solo tracks, over an electronic musical backing. Having been a fan of Farrell's vocal work both for Jane's Addiction and for various electronic tracks (he's no stranger to the scene) and of Steve Porter's live sets, I would have expected more of this performance. It just didn't seem to work. The vocals were incongruous with the electronic beat and were difficult to even hear - one of my concert pet peeves.
We next stopped by Yeasayer. I'd never heard of them but enjoyed their performance - a catchy and fun set full of indie dance poprock. Seeing this band so early on helped to remind me of something important about the value of a festival like Coachella - with such a packed schedule, it's easy to get caught up in trying to fit in all of the bands you know about and like. But it's equally if not more important to take advantage of the opportunity to hear groups that you haven't heard of, to discover and support new music. I picked up Yeasayer's album Odd Blood after Coachella and found it to not disappoint.
First up on the "must-see" list was Passion Pit, who were playing at the Outdoor stage. I have to say that though I enjoyed their set, I was underwhelmed by it in the context of the other shows I saw over the weekend. I felt that the lead singer was kind of weak when live, something that I feared might be the case just from listening to their studio songs. So many of the songs feature his high falsetto which, though it can be mostly tamed and perfected in a studio, is difficult to really nail live unless one is a really strong singer. Nonetheless, I went wild with the rest of the crowd when they performed what to me is obviously their best song, "Sleepyhead":
That was my video, but there are other more close-up ones on YouTube if you want to see what they were actually doing on stage... this one's pretty decent.
Next up was La Roux. This girl was a spitfire! She was canvassing the entire stage - it was really difficult to get a good shot of her. That was not to mention the fact that someone made the mistake of sticking her in the small Gobi tent. It was way too crowded in there. It's one thing to share the communal experience of being sweaty and packed in, jumping around as a unit to the beat; it's another thing to be jostled to the point of nearly falling over every time someone needs to scratch their nose behind you because there is that little room. La Roux herself was great and she really knew how to work the crowd. Also? I love her androgynous look:
She basically had her hair slicked up into a mohawk and she had a really sharp suit on. I think it's great to see a female pop performer that is as successful as she's growing to be, who doesn't perform practically naked.
Last on the list for me that evening was Imogen Heap. And wow. She blew me away. I had no idea that she did all of her own instruments on stage... it was nuts.
She had mics that she wore around her wrists such that she would play something on one instrument and it would record via the wrist mics, and then it would play back in a loop over the sound system. Then, she would move on to the next thing and do the same thing, until finally the whole background came together and she would begin singing or sit down at the piano and begin singing. She would even get up and play the drums at some points when the beat would come in with extra emphasis - this was especially powerful during "Headlock":
Not my video this time, but watch the whole thing! You'll see how she's always up and around messing with the different instruments she's got on stage. I also really appreciated her whimsy and quirkiness on stage - she was having sound issues because at one point one of her wrist mics stopped working, but she was joking around with the audience about it and getting really charmingly flustered, like she wasn't too cool to not care and she did really want to put on a good show for us. I also laughed when the audience started chanting "Hide and Seek! Hide and Seek!" and she responded with something like, "No, I can't play that just yet, because once you've all heard that you'll leave and I want to keep you here awhile longer." Ha! Anyway, I'd love to get the chance to see her again live, because her set was only an hour long and I love so many more of her songs than I got to hear. Hers was one of my favorite performances for the whole weekend.
The two big numbers after Imogen that I did not see were Jay-Z and Deadmau5. I decided to skip the former because I just personally had no interest in seeing him, but I'm really bummed that I didn't head over and see Deadmau5. At the time I was very paranoid about being split up and going off by myself, but seeing as how many times that happened throughout the rest of the weekend and I ended up just fine, in retrospect it was really sad that I missed it. I heard it was an insane set. Fortunately, I could actually hear parts of it from the tent, where I was - so I got to hear "Ghosts & Stuff," which sounded like a crowd-pleaser from where I was.
It's not exactly the case that I don't have a lot to write about. I've read a lot of interesting things in the past few weeks that I have a lot of thoughts on, but I do worry that at least one of those posts would be pretty heavy overall for the general tone of this blog. And then once I would start writing about some of the other stuff that's tangentially related, it would seem like a Pretty Heavy Week on Charming Wholesomeness. So I'll probably just send you off into the world with a link to the most important article, tell you it's feminism and sexual violence related, and you can decide for yourself if you care to read it. It's pretty well-written so honestly anything additional I'd write would probably be redundant. So, here's the pretty appalling story of Hannah, a sophomore at Howard University in Washington DC.
Outside of that, I've been gearing up for Coachella this weekend (STOKED!) and doing some heavy listening to choice artists that I know are going to be there and who I obviously want to see. One of said artists is Major Lazer, the collaboration between heavy-hitters Diplo and Switch. The inspiration behind the album?
Major Lazer is, according to the press release, “a Jamaican commando who lost his arm in the secret Zombie War of 1984”, and now, fitted with a lazer-shooter for an arm courtesy of the US military, is “a renegade soldier for a rogue government operating in secrecy underneath the watch of M5 and the CIA”. How does he achieve his stealthy objectives? By posing as the owner of a dancehall nightclub. (popmatters)
So obviously I was a huge fan right off the bat. Jamaican/reggae dance beats and... zombies? Sign me up!
The best-known song is probably the single "Pod de Floor," but I'm going to post two other bits off the album "Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do" (funny, right?) The first is what's definitely the most traditional reggae song that appears on the disc, but I just love its simplicity and the overall melody.
The second is actually just a short interlude between songs, but I'm posting it here because it's a quick sample of the obvious sense of humor that permeates the album. I crack up every time I hear it.
This is a different song o' the day because, well, for one thing, it's classical. But there is a story behind it that started by me having one of those "Argghh! Where do I know this from?" problems, and culminated in me having that satisfying revelation about where I remembered it from.
I was watching ice dancing at the Olympics (I know, more Olympics! Still miss it, still reminiscing) and one of the couples did their routine to this song. It immediately started driving me crazy because I knew the piece was deeply rooted in my childhood somehow, but I couldn't remember why.
I was thinking Fantasia, but I felt that was wrong. My mom offered that it sounded a lot like the scene from Beauty and the Beast when Belle is wandering through the castle unmonitored, and I decided at the time that she was right. It did seem like the kind of piece they would use for that part of the movie, but even so neither of us remembered what it was called or who it was by.
A week or so later, my mom remembered that it was from the Sant-Saens suite, "Carnival of the Animals." Taking that lead, I took to the internet - specifically, Amazon - to seek out the particular movement and discovered that it was "Aquarium." Then, because Amazon has its auto-playlists, it continued after "Aquarium" into the next several movements ("Personages with Long Ears," "The Cuckoo," and "Aviary") and I realized that I knew all of these, grouped together - and I remembered how I knew all of them.
They were all used in a particular show that the studio I danced with actually put on several times: Hansel & Gretel. The movements were all part of the performance when Hansel and Gretel get lost in the woods, meet a big scary crane and his flock, and then the flock kills the big scary crane and turn into happy chirpy birds. Twisted I know, but a lot of ballet is if you look at what the actual story is (see: Giselle, La Sylphide.)
Anyway, that's the story. I just love those epiphanies where something from your childhood comes back to you and you can suddenly remember it all very clearly.
So basically most people who have ever eaten with me know that I am obsessed with eggs.
At this point in time, I can't really say I've met an egg I didn't like. But (and Casper can attest to this, as I've recently asked him if he can remember it) I didn't always crave eggs. In fact, for most of my life, I didn't even really like eggs that much at all.
On Saturdays at home, my dad would cook scrambled eggs, and those were the only kind of eggs I ate. I quickly found that if I ever ordered them at a restaurant, they were almost always too dry for my taste. It also seemed like the longer the eggs were cooked, they also tasted different in addition to being dry. The long and the short of it was I only liked my dad's eggs - so those were the only eggs I ate.
My mom had an easy egg cooker that would do pseudo-poached eggs. I ate those from time to time and liked the runny yolks, but I never made them myself and it never occurred to me that I could order various runny-yolked eggs when I was out and about.
The first omelet I ever had was in the dorms, my freshman year at UCLA. It was delicious! I was totally converted. I soon came to find out from others that those weren't even *good* omelets (almost 5 years later, I can say that while I've had better omelets, the ones at the dorms really aren't bad. Really. Especially since they added spinach, bacon, tomato, and feta to the ingredient options. Seriously nommy, for reals.)
But even then, I had those omelets about once a week at brunch, and they were good, and I looked forward to them, but I didn't start having the egg *cravings* until I moved into GPhi. I thought it might be some kind of nutritional deficiency at first - kind of like how (allegedly) some people crave and eat dirt when they have iron deficiencies. (Another sidebar - when doctors thought I might be anemic freshman year, they asked me this very question - if I ever ate dirt for fun.) I'd always look at the hard-boiled eggs Kimmy put out and I'd want to take two to eat and another to put on my salad. It was out of control. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from.
3 years later, I can't say things have much changed. I'd be stoked to eat eggs for every meal. Every time I go to a restaurant and see eggs on the menu, I have to will myself away from the eggs section and look for something else. Even when I go to get sushi, I order salmon eggs - they frequently ask me if I'm sure that's what I want, like I guess that's hardcore or something. If I don't deliberately steer away from eggs, I end up like that time at Jar with Casper when I ordered the eggs 'n' sirloin which, while delicious, was basically a burger patty with an egg on top, and his steak was a legit gourmet feast. I vowed that when I go back I am going to get a real steak and not fall prey to the egg trap.
I wonder if I'll ever fall out of love with eggs as quickly as I fell in love with them. I don't know. But what I do know now is that I'm enjoying every egg I eat, and if one of my bizarre quirks basically boils down to me enjoying food *too much*, I can't say I'm doing too badly in life.
I've got a bit of a problem with this article, particularly the headline. I actually read a Cracked article earlier this week that discusses the exact phenomenon the NYTimes article engages in (scroll down to #4 on Cracked to see what I'm talking about.) That is, the headline makes it sound as if the focus of the article is that there is this great new Age of Genomics dawning, ripe with possibility (somewhat true) but that the bumbling consumers are too "slow" (see what they did there?) to accept it.
Page 1 - the "money" page, the page they expect most will actually read - extolls the woes of companies that offer to sequence DNA samples from customers and give assessments of individuals' increased or decreased risk for certain diseases based on their DNA. Their problem? No one's buying. The article offers the possibility that it's too expensive, and then finally this gem is revealed:
But the services face an even more fundamental problem: in most cases, the current level of DNA scanning technology and science is unable to offer meaningful predictions about the risk that a person will get a disease...
... what has become clear to geneticists only in the last year is that the genetic variations known so far can explain only a very small part of the risk of getting most diseases. The rest involves still unknown genetic factors or environmental ones, like a person’s diet. Experts say that, for now at least, in most cases there is little a person can do to act on the information from genome scans.
That quoted bit? That's the truth. That's the long and the short of it. There is no reason at this juncture for someone to spend the money these companies are asking for a full genome scan because we don't have enough information to actually give someone a definite measure of their likelihood for developing diseases with genetic and environmental components.
What's funny is that on Page 2, the article actually continues to reveal more truthiness, such as that identical samples sent to different sequencing companies came back with conflicting results. So by the end of the article, anyone who actually took the time to read it would probably understand why these companies are struggling: it costs too much for little to no benefit. So what's the deal with that headline blaming the public for not embracing our future? It kills me.
There's not much I really need to say about this. Basically, the author recalls talking to male friends about the scandal that broke this week, and the guys blamed Sandra Bullock for leaving him alone with his penis too long. Are these bitches for real? The article itself isn't a super strong rebuttal, but one of the commenters did a pretty good job of summing up what's wrong with that logic:
Lisa McLeod: Men who use a wife’s absence to justify cheating belong in the same category as people who sue McDonald’s for getting them fat.
Question for those men – What would you say if Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama hooked up with the white House kitchen help because hubby was distracted by his job and – whine whine- just wasn’t paying enough attention to his wife?
In other words? Suck it up! If you get married, you're making a commitment to someone who you supposedly love; in addition to that, you're making a commitment to be monogamous. If either of those commitments is something you think you can't keep, don't get married. End of story!
(NOT my closet... and you thought I had a problem...)