Starting things and then forgetting about them.

If we had followed up with everything we started over the past four years, we'd be master beer brewers, leaders of a semi-exclusive Final Club, local hip-hop stars, country musicians, authors of a definitive guide on music we enjoy, novelists, reggaeton artists, sitcom stars, intense Christmas party hosts, and maybe even owners of a coffee shop.

But we're not. We're the DeWolfePack, and we're almost done here.

Outdoor Activites in the Not-So-Great Outdoors

I'm not really one for camping. Sleeping under the stars is scary. Too close to God. The great outdoors are kind of too great to deal with.

I do like outdoor activities. The ones I like include walking, jogging, walking through parks, and tennis. Each of these are easily accomplished in an urban environment, where one tends to spend so much time indoors that going outside is just kind of a treat.

But only if it's nice out.

The 2009 Academy Awards

Slumdog Millionaire, a.k.a. the greatest escapist feature I've seen in several years, a film that made me feel magically transported to another world for a few hours in a way that no movie has done since the Disney films of my childhood, picks up the big awards.

Sean Penn, for whom I opened the door once at the orthodontist, picks up Best Actor for a truly phenomenal turn as Harvey Milk. I haven't seen The Wrestler yet, so maybe Mickey Rourke should have won, but Penn was convincing and inspiring as Milk. Plus, I totally almost met him that one time.

Hugh Jackman's song-and-dance through the Best Picture nominees (and Batman) at the beginning was enormously entertaining. I like hosts who try not to make Jack Black and Jennifer Anistons of themselves.

Zac Efron is a douche.

What the fuck was with that Best Animated Short guy saying, "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto," at the end of his speech? Americans don't need to be racistly hilarious toward Asians anymore. They can do it themselves, thank you very much.

Danny Boyle looks like a man who could do awesome magic tricks and should open a candy factory. Also, has he ever made a bad movie?

Yeah. Fun stuff.

"Party In Your Bedroom," by Cash Cash

It's difficult for me to face the fact that I'm an old man. The pop-punk and emo scene of my youth - all guitar pick slides and double-time drums and sweaty shows at the youth center (we don't have basements on the West Coast) -  has been replaced by a scene of time-intensive haircuts, Garageband drum loops, and a color scheme last seen on your older sister's bicycle shorts in 1993. So while I lament the fall of Fenix TX and reminisce over Taking Back Sunday's old lineup, toolbags like these guys are touring the country and having sex with middle schoolers. 

It's enough to drive a man to hip-hop, or at least to convince him to take out the earrings and start wearing collared shirts. Maybe it's because I'm desperate, then, that I seem to latch on obsessively to anything posted on Absolutepunk these days that seems halfway decent. Maybe this is why, despite my preference for all-black Atticus over hilighter vomit Glamour Kills, Cash Cash's "Party in Your Bedroom" has become one of my favorite songs of the year.

If autotuned, dance-beat emotronic (seriously, Myspace?) were a medical disorder, Cash Cash would be the textbook cases that all med students studied so they could save patients someday. The band's Myspace page features two band members in yellow pants and a logo written in rainbow animal print. They've got matching throwback Reebok Pumps and about fifty different pieces of merch, each garish enough to burn the eyes of unaccustomed adults. They're shameless, but where 30h!3 try to be clever and Forever the Sickest Kids are just pandering douchebags, Cash Cash have given themselves in completely to the neon scene aesthetic. There's something refreshing in a band that has the balls not just to wear ugly yellow shirts, but to wear ugly yellow pants. You can't make fun of shit like that. It's too awesome.

And how's the music? Here's where this blog post starts making sense. Most of their stuff is tootache-inducing mall pop, with tinny dance beats and massive harmonies and nonsensical lyrics about raising your hands to the air like you're flying, with like electric hearts, whatever that means. Again, so entirely devoid of substance and so enthusiastic that it's baller again.

"Party in Your Bedroom" is a whole other story. The song was a minor New York club hit (so I'm told) before Cash Cash was even a full band, and for good reason. From the autotuned, chopped up opening chorus to the vintage synth squiggles that accent the verses, the song is a nonstop dance juggernaut.

Exhibit A: that fucking chorus. It will never leave your head, and in a totally good way. I have this theory that all of us are secretly twelve year-old girls inside, insecure about our bodies and our social standing, and all of us need to dance around in bedrooms sometimes. Cash Cash understands this (that's a little creepy, but I'll get to that), so they've given us a big, sweet chorus about dancing around in our bedrooms to help us do that. Soooo perfect.

Exhibit B: the white-boy funk guitar in the second half of each verse. Actually, it's barely even white-boy funk. It's more funk distilled into white-boy funk distilled into Disney Channel barely funk-inspired pop. Which is awesome.

Exhibit C: How is every part of this song catchy? What happened to the whining verses that lead into the chorus you remember? Here, the verse is catchy, then the second part of the verse is catchy, and by the time he sings "the roof is on fire, you're losing control," you're about to break into the Running Man. Then the chorus comes in, and then that part at the end of the chorus about "lips sealed tight, don't say goodnight" gets you all excited, and then...

Exhibit D: The bridge! Yeah, it totally sounds like he says, "It's no TV," but that's okay. More minimally funky guitar! Chunky-ass harmonies! There's no way they wrote this. I refuse to believe that they put this entire song together without the help of some 40 year-old Swedish pop genius.

Exhibit E: The last chorus. Disco strings???!?!?!?!? The high harmony on "a lot of talk about youuuuu?!?!?!?!?!?" Ending on that last "don't say goodnight?!?!??!?!" Yeah, this.

So those lyrics: this song is either about a twelve year-old girl who's shy at school and then displays a serious lack of caution as she posts pictures of herself on popular social networking sites, or it's about a webcam porn site. I'm not sure which one is creepier to hear the dude singing about, but the first one strikes me as far more likely. So here's my thought: even though a lot of these neon emo-men are seriously creepsters, none of them would be transparently pedophilic enough to sing about it directly, right? This just leads me to believe that, once again, Cash Cash has transcended any traditional notions of seriousness or personal expression in their lyrics and have created a song that is truly meant to exist outside of them, for the sole benefit of the twelve year-old girls (and non-twelve year-old girls) who need it. 

Once again, that makes them awesome.

Lost

This might be obvious, in fact it most definitely is. Lost is a tremendous show. Often my flags have flown elsewhere, but then I consider the conditions:

This is a show running serially—not just week to week but also season by season. Watching them box after box in a week will be phenomenal (the way I once watched), but for now there is a different appreciation in the spacing: We the viewers are immersed in the drama of the show—the paces of our own lives and the characters' converge.

I also feel that I must make an apology. The confusion is mine and not the writing's. My scattered weeks have been tossing me farther from pointed pursuits. I have prioritized. Forgive me, Lost. Forgive me. There is no point in talking about the reasons why the plot in the show is so great or why its discussion of memory and consciousness is blindingly expansive. Why not just watch it—the real thing, not some less-good banter.

This banter is about something else. It's mostly just about myself and my opinions, which are two other things tha t I think are just great.
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Getting all prematurely domestic and shit

3 members of the DeWolfePack went to New York City this weekend on an impromptu mini-vacation. We were bored and nearly sober at 12:30 on a Friday night when one of us suggested, as an expensive, lengthy, and somewhat absurd alternative to finding a new favorite bar, that we instead board the 2am Fung Wah to New York. One race-against-the-clock cab ride and one even more breakneck (breakneck-er?) bus passage later, we woke up to a night-scene Manhattan and began a thoroughly enjoyable (still expensive) twelve and a half hours in the city that (almost) never sleeps.

By Saturday night we were back home, our very Cantabrigian calendars once again burying our lives - and perhaps spirits - under piles of literature, approaching deadlines, and unpleasant intellectual engagements. To overshare, the last of New York City probably passed through us when we shat out our overpriced, defiantly un-cosmopolitan diner food Sunday morning. And with that, New York was behind us and we locked ourselves back up in the Ivory Tower, probably not to emerge until spring break.

Except, see, that I applied for some jobs in New York, and since I got back I've spent about a third of my waking time checking apartment listings on Craigslist. And Google-mapping all the locations. And street-viewing them to scope out the neighborhoods myself. And finding the best nearby restaurants and laundromats. And learning about New York's most popular supermarket chains. And Wikipedia-ing all the neighborhoods in Manhattan, and after finding that almost all of them are out of my price range, doing the same thing with Brooklyn. And imagining how wonderful it would be to take the subway to work and take it back afterward to my place and cook dinner and watch a movie on my laptop in my apartment and be a totally hip young New Yorker. And how cool it would be to have a dog and take it on walks in Central Park on Saturday mornings because so many people have beautiful dogs there. And actually visiting the New York Humane Society website to look at dogs I could adopt. Did I mention I don't even fucking like dogs?

The previous paragraph illustrates several things about me. First, my use of modern technology is casual and thoughtless (if, to my benefit, generally comfortable), and I'm apparently not one to frown at a little website-name anthimeria. Second, I'm easily enchanted by places that I visit, as evidenced by my one-time plans to settle down in Colorado, Los Angeles (where nobody should live), Seattle, Boston, Montreal, and pretty much anywhere I've ever been.

Third, though, it illustrates how I've recently become both irrational and boring. The next year of my life is heavily dependent on employment, which I don't yet have. But even if there's no paycheck or desk waiting for me in New York City yet (or ever), I can't help but imagine my life there. After all, this is Senior Spring, a time reserved partly for trying to enjoy everything that'll be over in a few months and partly for trying to figure out what's going to replace it. And yes, I would look really awesome living in a cramped apartment in Harlem or one of the less desirable Brooklyn neighborhoods, riding the subway or my bicycle all over America's largest and most overpriced city. I would look awesome shopping for groceries and making myself dinner and doing crazy, New York kind of stuff, or maybe just going to sleep early in my cramped apartment. I'll have a bed that's larger than a twin for once. And I'll look awesome showing up at work in my work clothes with my coffee and my super-intense work face and totally casual but businesslike demeanor, and then I'll look really awesome when I start getting work done and everyone is impressed with my total competence and says, "damn, he probably shops and cooks dinner really well too." And so on. I'll find a bakery that I like, and my girfriend and I will go there on the weekends, maybe with the dog that eventually I'll totally have.

I guess it doesn't matter what I actually end up doing for a living, or how that's going to effect my living conditions or the very way I spend most of my time over the next several years. I'm thinking big picture, Hollywood-style life here, and if I can eventually become cinematically boring, I'll have brought myself to a good place.

Stuff DeWolfePeople Like: Livejournal-y blog entries. Check and mate.

Starbuck's Hot Chocolate

I like hot chocolate. I don't really know anyone who doesn't. There are different kinds, right, but most are pretty delicious. You've got the Swiss-Miss-water/milk-debate-and-that-whole-taste thing, and then you've got the Burdick's-melted-chocolate-bar in-your-face kind.

Then there's Starbuck's hot chocolate.

Not gourmet, not ridiculous, and not scary, the (admittedly over-priced at $3 something for a tall) Starbuck's standard HC is novel. It tastes exactly like Breyer's chocolate ice cream melted down and then heated to warm.

I mean, nothing wrong with that.

<3
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