I mean, lyricists are writers too

As you may or may not be aware, Dear Reader, I've embarked on a second blog experiment. The other blog -- let's think of it as a mistress, really, because I loved you first -- is dedicated to celebrating "quality" music, where "quality" music is defined as "that which sounds as good if not better performed live" (as opposed to in a studio, within arm's reach of the auto-tune button).

Inspired by Friday Jams, the blog is called Dai(ly) Jams and (shockingly) it features one live music video per day. I encourage you to check it out, because so far I'm pretty much just talking to myself. Which, you know, isn't new, but it gets boring after awhile. I'd especially love video suggestions!

In writing Dai(ly) Jams, I've realized something of a paradox: Despite my intrepid insistence that I'm a writer, I actually spend very little time listening to song lyrics. I'm terrible at memorizing lyrics -- an ailment my band meets with bemused frustration, no doubt -- and I almost never fall in love with a song because of the words.

It might have something to do with my childish ignorance of and aversion to poetry. I tend to recoil from things that I need to interpret -- foreign languages, Wall Street jargon, Edgar Allen Poe, to name a few. And a lot of songs tend to be veiled homages to...whatever. Their long lost lovers' boyfriends' dog. Or something. But some poetry -- for example, this piece by Carolyn Forché -- is undeniably incredible. The writing is exquisite, the execution damn near perfect.

Maybe my problem with poetry -- like that of romance novels -- is that most of what I've read is bad. In that spirit, and assuming that my formal poetry education began and ended with Dr. Seuss, I'm taking suggestions for must-read poetry. Fire away.

Generation Tattoo

Today marks the beginning of my fourth (of six!) quarter of graduate school at DePaul. In celebration, and because one of my classes this spring will be focused solely on revision of previously written pieces, I present to you a profile I worked on last spring. Thanks to a scheduling glitch, I had to interview my subject, Caroline Moody, the day after my own wisdom teeth extraction surgery. Considering the amount of vicodin in my system at the time, the subsequent write-up went pretty well, but I'm looking forward to working on more it this quarter. Maybe I'll have a new and improved version to post for you in the coming weeks. Until then, enjoy.

May 2010: Tattoo artist Caroline Moody works on a back tattoo for a client. Photograph by Brittany Petersen.

Caroline Moody is preparing to inflict wounds. She lays out her materials: gloves, needles, paper towels, razor, ink, tattoo machine. Her client, Michael Curcio, is nervous. This is his first tattoo. He had a few beers with friends before making a walk-in appointment at Infamous Ink on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Moody patiently comforts him as she readies her station.

“I get nervous every time I get tattooed,” she tells him. “Once you start it, you’re like, ‘I can handle it, I’m fine.’” But Curcio is pacing as he tries to distract himself from the impending hour-long pain session. “Do you have gum?” he asks his friend. He doesn’t, but Moody does. “I will not get tattooed without gum,” she says as she hands him a piece of fruity Orbit. “It helps. It’s something else to think about. You have to shut off that part of your body.”

They talk about the tattoo design; Curcio worries that a drawing for the six-inch cross he envisions on the back of his right shoulder doesn’t look quite right yet. He asks for Moody’s opinion. She hesitates before laying it on the line: “It’s douchy. I’m sorry,” she says. He laughs. “No. Be honest, by all means.” On the rare occasion a client asks her opinion, Moody tells the truth, and the exchange often leads to a better tattoo. “You’re going to get the best work if you tell your artist to do what they want,” she explains. “Like, give them an idea and give the artist freedom, and that’s how you’re going to get the best work.”

Moody and Curcio rework the cross to remove the tribal elements, which Moody identifies as the source of the obnoxiousness, and both seem happier. Moody makes a stencil of the design and applies it to Curcio’s shoulder, leading him to a mirror to scrutinize the placement. After he sends a cell phone picture to his mom for final approval, he lies down on the tattoo table and lets Moody gets to work.

As her needle digs into Curcio’s flesh, Moody’s face wears a look of quiet concentration. The tattoo machine buzzes and the tattoo shop manager turns on loud heavy metal as other artists work on their own clients. Customers in various stages of tattoo coverage wander the shop, flipping through the panel of tattoo designs that lines the west wall. Moody is one of five artists working out of Infamous Ink, which is one of at least a dozen tattoo parlors in the eclectic and trendy Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. But Moody’s presence in the testosterone-fueled flash shop is different for one simple reason: She’s a woman.

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No official statistics are available, but it’s generally understood that women are scarce in the tattoo industry. Bill Johnson, the vice president of the National Tattoo Association, says that the number has increased in the last 20 years, but the ratio is far from 50-50. “Tattoo artists are judged on their ability, not their sex,” Johnson says. “[Gender] really doesn't matter.” But while the popularity of shows like TLC’s LA Ink, which stars not one, but three, female tattoo artists, has raised the profile of lady tattoo artists everywhere, there is still an intimidating imbalance. Even with another woman working at Infamous, Moody is clearly in the minority.

“Some people will walk in and think I’m the desk girl and that sort of thing, just because I’m a girl,” Moody says. She has to work even harder to earn their respect, and not just from her customers. “To be taken seriously, I’ve had to take on a lot of mannish concepts,” she says. “I’ve had to be more like one of the boys. Down to how I dress and how I talk, I’m taken more seriously if I’m not emotional or if I’m not overly girly or if I’m talking smack to these guys like they talk smack to me.”

Moody certainly looks the part of a professional tattoo artist. Her ears tote at least half a dozen piercings, including one-inch black gauges. Piercing, it turns out, was her gateway into the body modification culture. And of course, there are the tattoos: Ink covers her back, left forearm and right arm from elbow to shoulder. Eventually, she says, her whole body will be covered. Her favorite tattoos are those that are a little ridiculous, but well-executed – an eyeball with wings occupies prime real estate on her upper arm. Up next: a picture of Yoda playing a banjo on one of her legs, both of which are currently ink-free. Why? “I like Yoda and I like banjo music, and that’s about it,” she says with a shrug. A black t-shirt and the mouth of a sailor complete the ensemble.

“It’s like wearing your portfolio,” she says. “The more body modification, the more professional I look. Spending money on hair I consider to be part of my business. Dropping money on nice tattoo work, that’s part of my job. That’s building my career.” After all, she says, “If I didn’t want to be looked at, I wouldn’t have all this stuff.” Being one of the boys is just part of the business, and in the end she says she’d rather be respected than cherished. “I don’t think you can be respected as an equal and be treated like a lady, you know?” she asks. “I like having the door opened for me. But I know I can do it myself.”

Beyond being a woman, Moody is a member of a generation that sees tattoos drastically different than their parents. While tattoos were formerly the domain of bikers, gang members, and other fringe members of society, today at least 45 million Americans admit to having at least one tattoo. The percentage is even higher among younger brackets: Nearly two in five Generation Y’ers report having at least one tattoo. This is a promising trend for Moody, who, at 26, is just beginning her professional tattoo career.

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Born and raised to a “very Republican, Christian” family in Louisville, Kentucky, Moody was introduced to art by her mother, who taught print-making at the local university. “Art materials were always around,” Moody says. “I would go with [my mom] to the park and we would draw together. I loved my mom so much, I wanted to do what she was doing.” Moody attended Louisville’s DuPont Manual High School, a magnet school for visual arts, and developed a skill for painting, particularly portraits. She graduated in 2002 and went straight to art school, enrolling in the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. Before she left home, she and her sister designed an abstract, “little whirly” tattoo (Moody had to redraw it eight times before her sister was satisfied), and they went together to a shop in Louisville to get inked for the first time. “I was just kind of fascinated by the medium,” she says. Even so, a career in tattoo art didn’t cross her mind, and she went away to art school with dreams of being a professional painter.

She didn’t finish her first semester at MICA before dropping out. “I was too young,” she says. “I was a pretty sheltered teen, so I was just not really ready to be thrown out in the world.” She moved back home and completed a semester at the University of Louisville before dropping out again. Unsure of what to do next, Moody took a job waiting tables. That’s when she became interested in tattoo culture.

“It was really pretty odd,” she says. “I went from T.G.I. Friday’s to a local Mediterranean place. The more people I saw with tattoos – I would talk to them about it, compliment them.” One day she met an apprentice who told her their shop was looking for a second apprentice. Moody went in armed with a portfolio of her painting work and was hired. She was in.

“I think I fell into it because I really enjoyed getting piercings and stuff,” she says. “That got me hanging around tattoo shops, and these people seemed really cool to me. I liked that they were able to do their own thing. I’ve probably not always been real okay with authority, so being self-employed is a pretty good thing.” Her parents’ reaction to her newfound career? “As soon as they figured out I could pay for school with it, they were on board,” Moody says. “My mom is going to get a tattoo when I graduate from college. I’m really excited. Me and my sister, we’re all going to get flowers.”

But Moody wasn’t quite ready to go back to school. “When I was getting into tattooing, I was in a rebellious mindset of fuck school, I don’t need school, I don’t need it, I can be an artist and do all these things,” she says. Shelving art school, she worked as an apprentice for a year and a half in Louisville before beginning to tattoo full-time. The first person she ever tattooed was a friend, her roommate at the time, who gave her free reign to do what she wanted. “He was like, ‘Yeah sure whatever, do whatever the hell you want,’” she says. “So I just did these little sketches of beer cans and did that on his leg.” And, as expected, that first tattoo wasn’t very good, and neither were the many that followed. “It’s totally understood that it’s going to suck,” Moody says. “That’s just how it is. Your first year of tattoos [is] going to be terrible.”

The transition from canvas to skin wasn’t painless. “You’re working on something that moves, breathes, bleeds, sweats, talks back to you,” she says thoughtfully. “It’s just a picky medium. The human body is fighting you. It doesn’t want this wound to occur.” Not to mention tattooers draw even the finest marks with a bulky, vibrating machine. Even so, the painter persisted, and as she slowly got better, she began to see herself as part of this new world – and it didn’t take long for her to realize how rare women are in the industry.

“It’s not really a feminine sort of art form,” she says. “It’s a manly thing. You’re doing something extreme, and it’s painful. It’s not something you associate with estrogen.” Also, she says, there’s an institutional bias; men have always dominated the trade, and the only way to become a tattooer is to convince these guys to teach you, a dependence that carries its own complications.

“Every tattoo shop...I’ve encountered a sleazy guy trying to sleep with me,” she says. “When I was an apprentice, it was the guys that were teaching me. And it was shitty because at some point I was like, ‘Nope, not getting down with that.’ And this one guy stopped teaching me things. I wasn’t going to put out.” Moody decided she had to get out of Louisville. “I kind of was up to my eyeballs in douchebags,” she says. “I was like fuck this, I need something else, I need to get out of here.” Moody attended a tattoo convention in Chicago and was sold on the city before she even returned to Louisville. She moved in August of 2008 and spent six months unemployed before Infamous Ink offered her a job.

“This shop is not my ideal place,” she says quietly as she watches her colleagues work. Infamous Ink is considered a “flash” shop, which means the tattoos are less conceptual artwork and more simple and straightforward. “It’s still a day job in a lot of aspects,” she says. “It’s like, hey, I want this name*. I want this tribal. I want this heart. And I’m like okay, that’s fine. I’m okay with mindless. It pays the bills.” It’s also a good way to learn.
As Moody began fine-tuning her tattoo craftsmanship at Infamous, she also started classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). “She’s a wonderful student,” says adjunct associate professor Marion Kryczka. “She’s really good, very serious, very smart.” Kryczka says Moody possesses a virtue rarely found in art students – humility – and that she is respected by instructors and students alike. She also has a reputation within the school as a great tattoo artist; her draftsmanship and color sense translate directly into her tattoo skills. “That’s a great thing,” Kryczka says. “I have nothing but praise for her.”

While her tattoo style tends toward “neo-traditional” – bold black lines, heavy shading and lots of color – her paintings have remained focused on portraiture. “I’ve always liked to draw people,” Moody says. “I like to capture a character.” A self-described people person, Moody sees the cross-over between her two art forms as logical: To paint a portrait, she digs into her subject’s character so she can represent not only their appearance but also their nature. A recent subject – a man she describes as “a big sleazy guy,” but also “a teddy bear” – is a perfect example of capturing this duality. As a tattoo artist, she says she gets to meet a lot of people she wouldn’t otherwise, and that’s one of the best parts of the job.

And so Moody leads two intertwined lives: one as an up-and-coming painter, and one as an up-and-coming tattoo artist. “I thought for awhile I was only a painter,” she says. “But now I can’t separate the two. Even the craftsmanship of my paintings has changed quite a bit.” After all, tattoos leave no room for error: “None of your work can be throwaway.”

--

After an hour, Moody finishes Michael Curcio’s cross tattoo. He slowly stands up and walks over to a mirror to take a look. The skin is red and raw, but a six-inch cross, complete with fading (and no tribal douchiness) is permanently etched into his shoulder. “That’s cool,” he says, sounding relieved. Moody covers the tattoo in Vaseline and secures Saran Wrap over it with Scotch tape while relaying instructions on how to care for his new tattoo. Curcio seems shaky but happy.

“I figured at some point I’d put my kids’ birthdays or something around it. Something like that,” he says cheerfully. “If you’re going to put something on your body, I figure it should mean something.”

Cucio’s cross proved to be one of the last things Moody tattooed at Infamous Ink. The next day she went for an interview at another tattoo shop in Wicker Park and was offered a new job on the spot. As she takes a step out of the flash shop and toward more conceptual tattoo design, Moody couldn’t wait to mention the best part of the new shop:

“There’s a lot of ladies.”

* Tattoo artist tip: Never get the name of a significant other tattooed on your body. “To me that’s how you jinx things,” Moody says.

Laughing babies

Some days, you just need some laughing babies. It does the soul good.

I missed the memo somewhere about babies and their love of ripping paper. I now feel prepared for parenthood.

Baby Laughing at Ripping Paper - watch more funny videos

And, of course, there's the terror/joy of nose-blowing.

There, now don't you feel better about your life?

My New Happy Place

Riches Before Freelancing (Probably Not After)

So apparently the trick to becoming a gainful freelance writer is to win $2 million on Jeopardy! first.

Oh, well, if it's that easy...

Seriously though, Ken Jennings seems like a really cool guy. From computer programmer to Jeopardy! champion* to freelance writer...however you get there, just glad you arrived. Also happy to see he's using the money to enrich his life, as opposed to, you know, mansions and hookers and drugs.

Not that those things aren't similarly enriching.

* For those unfamiliar with Ken, he won 74 straight games of Jeopardy! in 2004 and holds the record for the most money won on American game shows. (He's appeared in others since his extended love affair with Alex Trebek.)

Alcohol + YouTube = Win

It's a holiday, which means two things:

1) People will be drinking heavily all across the nation this evening.
2) Time for a lazy YouTube post!

And luckily for you, we here at Context (meaning me and my cat) have found the perfect way to meld these two pillars of American tradition.

When you're out at the bars tonight, slinging green beers and claiming to be Irish (we know our own, so don't assume you're passing), try out some of these pick-up lines. At best you'll appear impressively cultured, and at worst you'll get beaten up by someone's history buff boyfriend.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

@MayorEmanuel's Twitter Picaresque

The story's a few weeks old now, but The Atlantic published the most complete and impressive piece on the @MayorEmanuel phenomenon of the last few months. They also happened to break the identity of the Twitter feed's owner -- Punk Planet founder Dan Sinker.

The entire article is worth the read, but what really sets it apart is the analysis of how Sinker used Twitter to create a whole new method of storytelling. Atlantic editor Alexis Madrigal compares the 1,942 tweets (about 30,000 words) to a real-time picaresque novel, noting how the immediacy of the content allowed the reader to experience the raw composing process: "Writing happens in fits and starts, so the finished product should look that way, too. And that's the thing, with a Twitter narrative, your lines come stamped with a time and the kind of software used to send the message. You can't conceal the process of writing, so you have to learn to love that transparency."

Twitter was the only place this could have happened. We'll talk about @MayorEmanuel for awhile, but those who didn't experience it first-hand, as it was unfolding, won't have the same visceral attachment. Madrigal again: "@MayorEmanuel is a new genre that is native to Twitter. When you try to turn his adventures into traditional short stories or poems, they lose the crucial element of time. The episode where the mayor gets stuck in the sewer pipes of City Hall just does not work when the 15 tweets aren't spaced out over 7 hours. It's all over too fast to be satisfying. There's no suspense." It was that real-time storyline that made @MayorEmanuel not just a funny side story to the election, but a revolutionary discovery in modern storytelling.

At the end of the article, Madrigal posts some of the "goodbye" tweets from @MayorEmanuel's many fans, and one expresses pity for those who weren't there to experience the phenomenon: "@ourmaninchicago: I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who didn't watch @MayorEmanuel unfold." The sentiment, no doubt, is widely shared, and indicative of the uncharted frontier we've found. The experience was surreal, a chance to watch (along with tens of thousands of others) a real-time fiction manifest itself in one Firefox tab, while the other tabs were tuned to reality. Everything was linked, everything was happening at once, and we all watched it together. I'd even go so far as to say that @MayorEmanuel had a positive influence on the Chicago mayoral election by focusing more attention on it, particularly in regards to young people. It was amusement, but it also served a public service.

Twitter can create a forum to watch a brand new, incredibly engaging form of storytelling -- a type of writing that is truly contained in the 21st century. It is a formula that can without doubt be recreated. Now the question is...who will write the next great Twitter picaresque?

Putting the fucksaw to bed

The most entertaining (and irrelevant) image to come up when Googling "fucksaw."

The best piece to come out of this fucksaw ordeal was published today in The Awl, written by a former student of Professor Bailey's. Beyond putting this whole stupid thing in perspective, author Joseph Bernstein illustrates why Professor Bailey is to be commended instead of punished.

In fact, my gut reaction to this controversy was to support the professor's decision -- in the name of openness and honesty, in the pursuit of learning -- and now I've pinpointed why: Professor Bailey engages with both his students and the material. He seems to value discovery, no matter the auxiliary (and less important) costs. I loved my time at Northwestern but I realized after I graduated that I spent a lot of time only half-listening, and therefore half-learning. I don't blame anyone -- myself, my professors -- but it's sad to realize that I may have lost opportunities to really transform myself. Graduate school has been a wake-up call in that regard, as I'm sure my increasingly impassioned posts on education in this forum have indicated.

Also, President Schapiro (that's Morty to you) released a nice statement today that happened to mention NUMBALUM President Samir Mayekar. And so this strange circuit, an unholy alliance of Human Sexuality and NUMB, comes full circle, and with a happy ending. (Guffaw.)

Now let's see how long it takes for "fucksaw" to get old. I'm putting my money on retirement around the same time as #tigerblood. At least, let's hope.

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UPDATE, March 8, 9:16 a.m. - Can't resist one final word from a sex journalist who interviewed the guest speakers at the center of the controversy.

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UPDATE, March 8, 1:52 p.m. - I mean. I just. I don't know.

Band camp jokes never anticipated this

What a lovely, wholesome photo!

This blog is called Context, and I chose that name deliberately. I think the key to writing, and therefore learning, is understanding the context of a situation. Often misjudgments, misunderstandings and mistakes can be attributed to a lack of contextual consideration.

This week's Northwestern "fucksaw" story is about as good an example as I can conjure.

The background: A much-loved but incredibly controversial large lecture class, Human Sexuality, draws students from all areas of Northwestern because of its promise of titillation mixed with education. It's one of the most candid forums on campus, and the class is intended to provide an environment for discussing even the most taboo sexual topics, from fetishes to the mechanics of an orgasm. I had friends that would discuss the material outside of class, and there was valid educational benefit in the many shocking in-class experiences. (And a lot of snickering.)

On Tuesday the Daily Northwestern reported that a few people were taken aback at a recent live demonstration of a female orgasm in an optional, after-class session. In the process of a Q&A, a guest speaker asked the professor if she might demonstrate, live and in full view, female ejaculation. The professor gave permission, the students were treated to an eyeful, and a woman got off. Other such sessions have featured Q&A's with sex workers and convicted sex offenders, and minutes prior the class watched a graphic video taken of the inside of a woman's vagina. So in context, the spectacle wasn't exactly out of left field.

The Daily's story was picked up by the national press -- notably Gawker (complete with follow-up) -- and the story spread like wildfire, quickly distorting into a story about how "a college professor in Chicago* brought in a woman to masturbate in front of his class." People are up in arms, and the story has made every major news outlet -- MSNBC, Fox News, HuffPo, even the AFP wires.

Hang on. Did you click that last one? Go ahead, I'll wait.

Riddle me this: What the fuck is a picture of the marching band doing next to a story about a sexually charged psychology class?

I can only guess that someone in the AFP wire office was looking for a file photo, and instead of going with a saw of some sort (as favored by Fox & HuffPo, among others) or, I don't know, a headshot of Professor Bailey, they chose a symbol of the university -- the Northwestern University Marching Band, to be precise -- and made a lame attempt at relevancy by citing a "live show" experience. The story with the associated NUMB picture has made it into a few nationwide stories, even reaching across the pond. (Note: It made me really, really happy to not find mention of this story on either CNN or the BBC.)

Now, this probably doesn't bother most people, but as both a journalist and the VP-Publicity for the NUMBALUMS (the alumni club for the marching band), I can't help but feel frustrated. It's twofold: Not only does this represent shoddy, slap-it-together visual reporting, but the story itself has been treated as sensation instead of opening up a genuine dialogue about acceptability in classrooms and the value of experiential education. Maybe I'm being snobby or idealistic, but it'd be nice if my coworkers and even my doctor didn't greet me with a "What the hell is going on at Northwestern??" this morning. People see "sex in a classroom" and immediately (and it's to be expected, I suppose) don't bother to get much further into the story. They don't bother with the context because sex and vilification are more fun. I thought Professor Bailey's letter to the Daily was eloquent and stated his position well. That's the debate I'd like to have.

But all anyone can talk about is the fucksaw.

(By the way, did you know that there's a grindcore band called Fucksaw? Their song titles are delightfully themed. Thanks a million, Google search.)

* And despite our campaign to become "Chicago's Big Ten team," this is still incorrect.

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UPDATE, 4:58 p.m. - Not so much of an update as an "I should have mentioned" that Professor Bailey received "uniformly positive" feedback from the 100 students (out of the 600-person class) present for the demonstration. Morty, on the other hand, seems to be retracting yesterday's statement that the university stands firmly behind Professor Bailey's actions. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to guess he's getting pressure from donors. Stay strong, Morty! Also welcome to the party, WSJ.

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UPDATE, March 4, 1:51 p.m. - We made it on the BBC. Best write-up I've seen, actually.

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UPDATE, March 7, 11:30 a.m. - Read it here.

I lied.

I'm totally not over my Weezer crush yet. And it's Thursday! Sorry, Girl Talk.

Girl Talk: A New Live Music Frontier

I WANT TO BE THERE.

I come from a family of concert-goers. When I was a kid, my mom met my stepdad while following the Grateful Dead on tour. As a pre-teen, I made a conscious decision to attend my first "real" concert at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City. And I have to tell you, the Backstreet Boys rocked my world that night. I was in 12-year-old heaven. There's nothing better than live music, even if it is pop and partially lip-synced.

(I saw the Backstreet Boys again last summer at Ravinia. Everyone there was female, aged 20 to 35. It was a joyous reunion of my original music community.)

But not many acts patronized Iowa City or Hilo, so it wasn't until I moved to Chicago for college that I had access to the good stuff. Mad Caddies, Pepper, The Decemberists, Reel Big Fish, Maroon 5, My Chemical Romance, Keller Williams, blues clubs -- my tastes cover the spectrum. I took a break from live shows after college; they're expensive, and a bunch of my concert buddies had moved away. My triumphant return was marked by my first Weezer show in January and a single weekend in February that featured both The Decemberists and Keller Williams. But this Friday I embark on a genuine first: I'm seeing Girl Talk.

If you're unfamiliar with Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, allow me to educate you:

The first track off "All Day," the most recent Girl Talk release (November 2010).

He's probably the most famous DJ* touring today, and his specialty is mashing up music -- everything from current pop to gangsta rap to Elton John to the Jackson 5. In performance, he mixes tracks live, so no two shows are the same. He's been called a lawsuit waiting to happen -- technically he doesn't have permission to use the copyrighted music clips -- but he releases his albums for free and asks people to pay whatever they want, citing fair use. And despite criticism, he's gotten away with it for 10 years, two EPs and five full-length albums. (Check them out here.)

What makes this guy amazing is the way he rehabilitates songs we've long since forgotten. For instance, if you never thought L'il Mama and Metallica made fit bedfellows, you've never listened to "Like This" off 2008's Feed the Animals:

Oh yeah, and Mya can come too.

One of my rare regrets from undergrad is skipping the show he played at our student center in 2008. I plan to set the universe right this Friday when my friend Christina and I see him live at the Congress. I expect nothing less than a life-changing experience.

When it comes to live shows, I'm all about preparation. Enjoy with me.

And just for fun: A list of all the artists and songs sampled in Girl Talk's Feed the Animals, courtesy of sjheil on Flickr:


* He's not a fan of the term, but "artist" and "musician" don't really convey a full understanding of how he makes music.