Buzz The Bridge

Breakin' A Sweat

Ended up out at a taxi app launch party last night with a few people before hitting up a few bars in the area. Not sure if London really needs yet another cab finder but the place was chill enough.

Good times, the geek/chic Book Club ended up being rewarding tho I stood out without the uniform of skinny jeans and torn t-shirt. This tune stuck in the head the whole time. Nice to see The Doors are back and actually listenable. 

 

 

 

Think You Can Wait

Another great song, this one a single The National wrote for indie film "Win Win", a small movie about a wrestling coach and a kid he ends up having to take care of that looks... actually pretty good.

Yes. I'm procrastinating for exams.

K. Shower and back to it.

A Little Deutcheland For The Weekend

Friday morning myself and three other classmates all leave Marketing during the break and head to the airport to fly to Hannover, Germany.

The annual "Rolling Stone Weekender" music festival had happened at the Weissenhauser Strand in Germany, and after seeing the prices and list of bands playing we were on it. Two-hour flight, learn a little about "operational levage and its relationship to Return On Assets and Common Equity" and we're circling to land. Get a mietwagon at the airport and we... are headed north.

We go around Hamburg, out Autobahn 1, and by 9pm we're pulling into our bungalow at the Weissenhauser Strand resort on the Baltic Sea about an hour east of Kiel, pitch black with Kiel's familiar freezing horizontal rain blowing up into our souls. But pumped for the music. The National (a band I've mentioned before) is playing in the largest tent, as are both of the Black Keys and a few others.

 

Yeah, that's my voice cracking at 3:18, not his.

Matt getting his drunk on during Mr. November offstage

Turns out the bands are spectacular, the location beautiful in a "summer resort in November" kinda way, the people fun but older than we expected (mostly 40-something local farmers), but we make a good two days out of it anyway. A few walks to the beach, much Erdinger, much music, and suddenly it's Sunday morning and we're racing back to Hannover for our flight.

Die Drei Herrengedecken

We end up 30 minutes behind schedule after taking a wrong turn pulling out of the resort, and with our time to get to the plane already tight, Jared floors our worthless little Ford Fiesta for all two hours south.

Half of us have a team presentation for our Business Valuation class the next day worth 40% of our grade. I'm already picturing having to take a 14-hour train from Hamburg to Barcelona. I swear to myself I'll always leave an hour extra early from now on if we just somehow make this flight.

Ran up and down this at least eight times in five minutes looking for Jared

We pull into the Hannover airport at 12:15pm for the 12:35pm flight and I sprint inside. Remembering the assholes in France in 2007, I'm sure that since we're not there an hour ahead of time they're going to say "Sorry, you're out of luck, the next flight ist morgen."

But the older Frau at the Germanwings counter just dryly asks me for my passport, takes it, prints out my ticket and hands it back to me. We made it. I look at her in the eyes and say with total seriousness "I love you more than any woman in the world right now."

She looks back at me sternly with her arm pointing off to the left and replies "The gates are THAT way." Her mouth says one thing. Her eyes say another.

We get back to Barcelona at 3:30pm. I head over to a study session with my group at Carl's place, we stay up until 1am finishing our report, and Monday morning our investment recommendation to the class regarding the Washington Post's excess cashflows goes smoothly. Life is good.

Plans To Get Stranded

Been trying for the past few weeks to figure out whether I can make it in terms of time and money to any of the shows on The National's current European tour. They're not coming to Spain and was thinking maybe Milan might make sense.

Belchica: kinda like a well-let basement but with really, really good beer

But last night at a Belgian bar downtown, Jared here convinced me we needed to just suck it up and do the weekend Rolling Stone Weekender festival in Weissenhäuser, Germany. Apparently there's a vacation area up on the Baltic Sea near Kiel (ah, Kiel...) where they have an annual event.

Tickets include:

• Two-day pass to all the shows
• Two nights' lodging
• Access to a huge "tropical" pool with waterslides

This weekend: get two more people to come so we can rent our own bungalow. Next three weekends: focus on Accounting, Marketing and Business Valuation so attendance can happen without remorse.

Insanity Inspires

With the rare of exception of individuals such as Martin Luther, never in the past have single ideas inspired such worldwide sea change (or waste of productivity) as is provided by the massive connectivity of the internet today.

Without trying to sound as sober as Video #1 below, I'm curious at what point the instant, global networking of human information sharing will come to so perfectly resemble the rapid, synaptic firings of the human brain that the globe itself begins to have some kind of consciousness of its own? Is it happening already?

Jumping back to specifics, two days ago JayLo sent out this rather baffling video of a man known only as Yosemitebear, clearly on something I need to never try, viewing the rare double rainbow:

This guy may might want to avoid ever actually trying sex

At which point a four-child family known as The Gregory Brothers (includes one sister) was inspired to respond with this tune, which, once heard, proves tough to unhear:

Terrible Love

Pitchfork has produced a first video from The National of their first track off new album High Violet. Still not sure I'm fully on board with the video's "Berkshires nature documentary" vibe, but the tune does a more than adequate job of teeing off the densely woolen mood of the album.

Amazing how you can already see -- hear --  the band aging.

Thanks to Victoria Erickson for sending this on