Monday, July 23, 2007

A Weekend Update

I went to Baltimore on Saturday for Whartscape with Adam. We met up with Tara and saw some interesting bands to put it mildly. The best one that wasn't Beach House was this three-piece called Blood Baby. They were totally amazing and the lead singer has a Fu Manchu. There were some other good bands, but I can't remember their names. I should also clarify that Beach House wasn't the best band on this day, but they were the band that I wanted to see most out of all the bands. They were very good, but more in a serene sort of way. I would have liked to seen them play at like 9 pm or something while the sun is setting. But, I can't really complain about something like that since I got to see a band that I've wanted to see for free.

The night before this, I watched The O'Reilly Factor for the first time in years. I usually don't watch Bill O'Reilly because he makes me die a bit inside because of the way that he is destroying the nature of political discourse in the country. But, I had to watch this edition because it was fellow alumna of Oberlin College Michelle Malkin talking about something that is in her wheelhouse as a Filipino-American: Racial Profiling. She was trying to defend a bill that would keep people who made accusations against people who they thought were terrorists from being hit for racial profiling suits. As almost anyone with a sense of liberty would understand, this is a patently ridiculous idea that would open the doors to a lot of different forms of harassment pointed towards minority communities in America, which would be something that a minority like Malkin should not want. But, then I also realized that I was watching Fox News Channel. I'm not sure what their aim is, but if it is to scare the crap out of viewers, they fully succeed in their goal. Well, that and completely misinforming the audience.

But, even before I thought about this, I had to drive through the suburbs of Washington, D.C. D.C. is a top five congestion area in the nation. Even on late Friday night, I ran into traffic jams and other forms of misery including people who were cruising around without their lights on in the dark and going 35 in a zone where the routine speed is 70. As I got cut off a few times and ran into the weird traffic, I understood why people got shot at now while on the roads of D.C.

So, that was the weekend of this guy. Pretty sweet overall, but it definitely had its low points.