gerritt.net/classic: May 2004

SPLAT
May 26, 2004. 10:15 PM

My weekend in Galax was way fun. I've officially coined the term 'ej' to describe someone like me who plays music on his computer at weddings and such. I played all the favorites, and hope that everyone had a good time at the reception. I guess the fact that there wasn't much dancing doesn't necessarily reflect on the quality of the dj, right?

I have never experienced bugs like this. About an inch long, red eyes, gold wings, and a black body, the cicada is the most loud, annoying insect to live underground for 17 years at a time. I've been scraping their carcases off of my windshield all week. So far, I have heard about a thousand different anecdotes about these crazy flying pests currently occupying the Maryland suburbs. I'll let you try to decide which of these is true, because I'm not really sure. Here's my list so far:

- They live underground, and there are flocks of them every year, but the 17th year is always the biggest.
- Cicadas produce their terrifyingly loud noise through their ears.
- Each one can produce up to 90 decibels of noise, equivalent to a lawnmower or a tractor trailor.
- A cicada is edible, especially delicious dipped in chocolate.
- Male cicadas mate and then die, usually within 10 days of crawling out of the ground.
- The females lay their eggs in the small branches of trees, which does not kill the tree.
- Cicadas die when they turn on their backs because they cannot get up.
- There can be up to 2 million cicadas per acre of land.
- Dogs will get sick if they eat a live cicada, not sure about llamas though.

SMOOTH MOVE, GALAX
May 21, 2004. 11:05 AM

Today I'm headed to Galax, VA, home of the annual fiddlers convention. Mandy and Steve, friends from school, are getting married down in Mandy's home town, and I'm helping out by playing dj during their reception. This is my first gig where I get to pick out the music, but I have so much of it that I'll even be able to take requests. Its a small-town church, and the reception is in the basement, so if I screw up something I'm sure it won't be held against me.

In other news, my short search for apartments in Rockville turned out to be easier than I thought. My first-choice place offered, and I'll be moving in as soon as next week. Sometimes I'm just lucky like that.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN
May 19, 2004. 10:50 AM

I spent the day yesterday driving around Rockville and the surrounding area in search of an apartment. I have two good leads, and hopefully one of them will work out. Radio is so very different here in the DC area compared to my last address in Blacksburg. Here the djs take calls and requests all day, talk about all sorts of stuff in between songs, and play a lot of commercials. The three things to talk about yesterday all had a big impact on my day as a whole: traffic, cicadas, and gas prices. First, a big accident on I-95 and construction on the beltway made my predicted 45 minute drive into almost two hours. Second, that morning at my eye doctor appointment I was the bringer of bad news to the secretaries when I told them I saw some squished cicadas on the road outside the office. It was as if they weren't convinced that there actually is a huge cicada swarm engulfing our area this year until I made it clear that "they're headed this way". (In actuality they're always here, living underground. Locusts are the well-known noisy migratory insect that is so often confused with the cicada and that devastates crops.) Thirdly, how many things can you think of that have doubled in cost in the last ten years? The two I have been most affected by are movie tickets and gasoline. It now costs nearly $10 to see a movie here, up from $5 when I was a kid, and I can remember buying gas for 99 cents a gallon when I first started driving. In Potomac, a wealthy suburb of DC, I passed a station advertising $2.22 per gallon for regular unleaded. Geesh. We should all switch to kerosene-driven cars: $1.67 a gallon.

GRADUATION!!
May 16, 2004. 10:00 PM

WHAT'S UP WITH GERRITT?
May 13, 2004. 3:20 PM

Boy I've been busy! With graduation only one day away, I have a lot to take care of beforehand. Plus I've been spending as much time as I can with friends that I won't be seeing for quite awhile. Daryl lands here tonight, and the rest of my immediate family follows tomorrow afternoon. Then I get to hang out in the stadium for the big graduation ceremony tomorrow night, and in the Colisseum for my department's graduation. Then I set about on my quest for a new apartment up in Maryland, plus two weddings, a regatta, and only a few short weeks before I start working. Oh, but I am excited. Sentimental, yes, but joyous at such opporunities afforded to me. This should be a great couple of weeks and a celebration of new beginnings this summer.

Ever wonder about the mating habits of the world's largest octupus?

JUST WATCH ME
May 7, 2004. 5:50 PM

I watched the last episode of Friends last night. Not because I'm all that fond of the show but because it is TV history, the 90s most popular comedy, and there are no more new episodes to be seen. Of course, it'll be in syndication for years to come, and the spin-off show based around the title character Joey will debut next season. The writers of Friends had perfected the sexy young New Yorker sitcom, and their final episode was well received. Each 30 seconds of commercial airing during the broadcast cost $2 million, slightly less than the Super Bowl, which made us all wonder about why a company would pay four million dollars to advertise a medicine for acid reflux disease. But I guess we're just not their target audience.

If you were in a sitcom, what kind of character would you be? Would you have a wacky catch phrase that gets way overused? Would you be half of a tragic romance, the stupid funny guy, an annoying neighbor, or maybe one of the parents? I think I'd have all those things, but that my time in each episode would be so short that I'd have to deliver it all at once. Then I could leave and show up the next week to do it all again. Oh, and my name would be something really suave yet really sharp, like Eduardo Toupae, and everyone would scream whenever I came on set to deliver my classic catch phrase and get into some tangle with my love interest/neighbors/children. And then I would leave the show when I was unable to agree on salary arrangments and they'd kill off my character in the sweeps-week tear jerker episode. Man, I would be huge.

FINISHING SCHOOL
May 4, 2004. 9:30 PM

Today was my last day of class here at Tech. Ever. It doesn't feel all that different, I guess, except that I don't have to worry about whether I've printed out the notes for today's lecture or whether I have an assignment due. I still have a few more things to do for my senior design project, and finals of course, but the only reason I have for trying hard on them is the pride of getting an A instead of a C. Either way I pass, graduate, get a degree, and start a new job.

I got Roasted Sunday night at Wesley's annual Senior Roast, and the pictures and stories they had were lots of fun. Only seven of us were roasted, which gave plenty of time to cover all the embarrassing stuff and do a nice picture slide show. It was neat, and the juniors did a good job in sending us off. We also elected the officers for next year, and we have a very strong base for the leadership. I wish I would be here to see it.

BEN FOLDS, GERRITT LISTENS
May 1, 2004. 1:30 AM

I just got home from my final college concert roadtrip, this one to Davidson, NC to see Ben Folds. Davidson is just north of Charlotte, about two and a half hours from here, and revolves mainly around the large Davidson College, a liberal arts and sciences school. In Davidson we found a surprising number of libraries, and lots of red brick buildings including a performing arts center shaped remarkably like NASA's huge vehicle assembly building. Ben Folds had an opening act, David Berkeley, who somehow managed to mention the name of a city or a place in all but one of his eight or so songs (Pennsylvania, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, North Carolina, The Moon. . .). Mostly he mentioned places on the east part of this country, but it got to the point where we were listening to his lyrics just to catch where he was sending a shout-out to. He did have a mandolin and an upright bass player to accompany his acoustic guitar, and his songs were quick and to the point, so I liked him.

After Ben took the stage, we forgot completely about having to wait through the opening act (the sign of a great performer). If you're interested in piano rock at all, then the solo Ben Folds act will knock you off your feet. His artistry, wit, and musical ability is unsurpassed. I enjoyed his show so much that I left wishing he'd played even more. He must have his pianos reinforced or something, too, because he spends a lot of his time pounding the keys, thrashing down on the pedals, kicking it to the beat, and even standing up on the closed lid to direct the audience in a chorus of one of his songs. It was like nothing I've ever seen, a very thrilling, large-crowd show but with a small-crowd feel, and some really well-written and well-performed music. There were a lot of cameras filming the show, so we're hoping maybe it'll be released as a DVD. That would be cool.

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