My Promos!

I've also been laboring away in the production room at WMPG all semester. Our assignments included making a 45 minute DJ demo, and a 15 minute talk show demo. This might be a little bit confusing, but here are the promos that I made for the demos that I recorded. They are far from perfect, but feature music and shoutouts to some local bands. Sometimes when you're working on a project, be it a painting, an essay, a 50k word novel or a one minute radio promo, you need to stop tweaking and let it go.

Posting audio is something I'd like to do more often, but there have been a lack of recording opportunities lately. Oh right, and my iPhone 3 is so slow it might as well be dialing up to get the internet. (I might upgrade soon, I might downgrade... trying to prioritize wants vs. needs.)

The Mixtape Collective, my pretend show from 5-7 Saturdays on WMPG


The Student Standpoint, an actual podcast at iTunes U.

Sound Opinions

As most of you know, I've become the biggest public radio nerd ever. I know almost the entire Maine Public Broadcasting Network weekend schedule, by heart! Ask me what the difference between NPR, PRI and APM is... and prepare to get bored.

But in all seriousness, it's partially because of my job. For approximately an hour every day, I have this one task that involves some data entry, then mail merging that data, then stuffing envelopes. That hour goes by much faster when accompanied by an episode of This American Life or Weekend America, or some other hour long program. Next week is my two year anniversary at this job, so ah, I've sort of run out of shows to listen to. I was streaming New York City's public radio station, and then I was streaming Chicago's public radio station (the two best in the country) but in the morning they do a lot of local news... and it doesn't really apply.

Let me get to the point- I've been listening to this great show called SoundOpinions. As a person who has spent a lot of her life talking about music, it's been great to kick back and hear someone else do the talking. People I agree with, no less! The hosts of SoundOpinions, the only rock and roll talk show in the country, are both critics at newspapers in Chicago... the Sun and the Tribune. They are very, very aware of things going on in the world of music, and have some great opinions! They don't always agree, and they often take calls from listeners. I highly recommend checking it out at soundopinions.org, especially the episode they recap their SXSW trip.

If you are right now thinking to yourself, "I would never ever listen to that, Thanks for a waste of a blog entry, Aman-duh," do me a favor and mentally count the amount of times you've watched High Fidelity, then reconsider.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

WARNING!
I'm about to discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

After about 72 hours of intermittent long reading breaks, I finished the seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter series. This is important to note- I've been waiting for this conclusion for six years. Laura, Courtney and I once even had a birthday party for Harry (it was actually a creative excuse to eat cake.) We finally find out the secret to Severus Snape, and it's by far the best part of the book. "Will Harry defeat Lord Voldemort?" (who, to my pleasure, Josh refers to as Lord Baltimore) is a much easier question to answer with an educated guess than "is Snape totally evil or totally good?"


Which Harry Potter Kid Are You?

I just couldn't help myself! Asking the question which Harry Potter kid you think you're most like is sort of the same as asking which Sex and the City character you think you're most like. The answer that you want to say is always Carrie, but not everyone can be the star.

The short list of happenings in the last few days:

I ridiculed a coworker for writing a check for a sixty cent toll on the highway, then had to do the same thing myself after I unexpectedly had to take the highway.

Josh and I went to Rebecca's for a party, brought a sippy cup full of booze, and talked about bad dates and This American Life.
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Before I go any further, let me explain that the White Stripes used to be my favorite band. I was once even Meg White for Halloween (it would've been a much more clever costume if I had a Jack.) They played in town last weekend. Seeing them wasn't a priority, since I've already seen them twice, and tickets were way more than fifteen dollars. But get this. Jack White, being the incredibly ridiculous king of the hipsters, stopped by Bull Moose Music. Mandy, being Mandy was there. Jack White, after browsing the store for a few minutes, told her that he liked her dress. But that's not all. She inherited the dress when I moved out because I didn't care for it. She sure showed me I was wrong.

And lastly, Josh just had a story air on Weekend America, a syndicated radio show. He recounted to me what happened when his family called to tell him how great it was. His mom, dad, sister and sister's new boyfriend were all at home in New York. When Josh didn't answer the phone, they left a long, pass the phone around voicemail. Sometime later, while he was listening, Josh got so wrapped up in the praise they were showering him with, he forgot it was a message and started to talk back. It went something like this, "Josh, you're so great, we loved the story, you're the best son ever, blah blah blah." "Oh, thank you so much, I'm glad you guys enjoyed it." "Wait, here, let me give Dad the phone." And it wasn't until the message was over that he realized they were not actually there.