Google Reader says I first read about Brooklyn duo This Is Ivy League 19 days ago. Since then, everyone seems to have been mentioning them and I already feel late writing about them. But in case you have not yet listened to their songs in general, and to The Richest Kids In Town in particular: you should. You oh-so-very-much should. Because if ‘brilliant’ had not been overused on blogs so much, then This Is Ivy League would be brilliant.
This Is Ivy League — The Richest Kids In Town
More songs at theirspace.
Rather high on the list of ‘why didn’t I?’-moments in my life is the summer of 2001. My life as a fifth year’s student of mathematics had become as aimless as a John Terry penalty and as dull as a Geoff Hurst anecdote; hence in my eternal wisdom I decided not to go abroad for a some time, but rather spend at least another four years doing almost the same. I am still grateful for the job I had been given, mind you, and I did mostly have an enjoyable time but, when a few years later I found myself at a point in life when I did need to focus, I found myself incapable of doing so. As a side-effect of all that, I still have not finished that damn thesis.
Which in turn helped me find a goal today, which was a bank holiday, and which I would have spent in an aimless haze otherwise. Instead, disregarding any ‘should I not have done this earlier?’-feelings, I am suddenly feeling rather happy with myself. When I am done with the thesis —note how the if has become a when again— I might even start missing it.
Tulips
Since you asked, Exeter City beat Cambridge by one goal to nil last week and thus reclaimed their place in The Football League. Which is great, firstly because they are my favourite team, secondly and thirdly because of that too, but also because in the past years, the club has gotten rid of their debts and, while at it, of the crooks who caused those debts too. Now it is a healthy club, run by its fans, strongly embedded into the local community and with players who don’t get paid ridiculous amounts of money. It is good to like a likeable club.
If you don’t care about such things when choosing a team to support, you might be delighted about the sixteen unlikeable teams who will contest the European Championships starting next week. (Mind you, I would lie if I said I’m not going to follow it at all. In fact, watching Portugal beat the Netherlands in KlaipÄ—da four years ago, with all the players’ names being Lithuanianised —Japas Stamas, Vandersaras— is one of my personal football highlights.) For lack of participating team from the British Isles, you might even consider supporting ‘Holland’, as the Dutch national team is generally known as. In today’s Guardian, one Geoff Hurst gave five reasons for doing so. The Dutch, for example, play really good football. Also they have really good players. These players, furthermore, play football really well and some of these players are even better than others. Finally, there are loads of tulips in the country. Which, if you asked me, are rather sad reasons for supporting a team, are they not? Unless, of course, you are really into tulips.
(Geoff Hurst was a footballer who played for Stoke City and West Ham United and now spends his days telling tedious anecdotes involving tulips.)
With my sincere apologies to, among others, Elenette, whose Autenticitet EP on Cosy Den may well be the best Swedish language pop I have ever heard; to New Zealand’s The Puddle, whose No Love, No Hate was a fine listen of Go-Betweens-y garage pop for the past few months; to the half-Scottish Social Services, whose The Baltic Sea should become Sweden’s national Anthem; and to London’s Still Corners, whom I am definitely going to see at Indietracks this summer, if only they play History of Love. But you can’t really keep emails in your inbox for over three months, just because one fine day, you might find the inspiration to write comprehensive reviews of the music advertised in them.
While I’m officially still employed as just a web developer, my job has become an interesting mix of things among which ‘computer security journalist’. In that role, I occasionally warn people to keep their web software up-to-date, because tools like WordPress are known to have bugs discovered in them occasionally; not updating them would make it fairly easy for anyone with evil intentions to turn your blog into one that serves malware to anyone visiting your site. Which is probably the internet-equivalent to carrying a very contagious virus while welcoming people in your shop.
When I’m just another WordPress-blogger though, like most people I tend to be lazy; hence I too had not upgraded WordPress in donkeys’ years. I have now. Luckily, upgrading WordPress has become a piece of cake, not in the least because of the automatic upgrade plugin. I even like the new dashboard layout. And I excitedly discovered it tells you which of your plugins have a newer version and lets you upgrade them with one click as well.
Unfortunately, I was a bit too excited about that. Not until I had upgraded all my plugins, did I remember that I had tweaked the last.fm plugin a fair bit. Of course, all my changes were made undone by upgrading and I had forgotten to make a backup-copy of the plugin. So it suddenly shows me a few dozen songs I have listened to today, rather than just the five most recent. I can live with that, I suppose.
Spring
It is spring. Months of februariness and only last weekend I was still wearing my winter coat because it was cold enough for that and now, all of a sudden, it is uncomfortably hot even wearing a summer coat. Arriving at Reading station yesterday around noon made me feel like the world had retreated for a siesta. So was it weeks of dull and grey weather that made April go by in a daze?
If it wasn’t for last.fm I would have believed I hadn’t listened to music for weeks. But even last.fm shows I did not play many songs and those I played were mostly by bands I have known for years. Easy listening: new music does not manage to excite me these days and I even can’t be bothered to even give things a try. Which is quite alright really: there is no have to any more when it comes to music and good songs will be good songs tomorrow too. Or next week. Sometimes one needs to take time to recharge one’s batteries, to get oneself together and re-focus on whatever things in life needs focussing. Which are quite a lot of things if you ask me and if you are me.
Funnily enough, football manages to excite me a lot more than music at the moment. Exeter’s current form — which, after coming back from 1-3 down on aggregate to local rivals Torquay and turning it into a 5-3 win, will take them to Wembley again Sunday next week — certainly helped the excitement, but can not be the sole reason. Football is nice and easy to follow: you just hope your team wins and if they don’t, you’re a bit sad and you think about all those people all around the world, though mostly around Exeter of course, being a bit sad too and that makes you happy again. Tim asked if I had been to any of the play-off matches, which I took as ‘why didn’t you go’, for that is what he should have asked, as no, I did not because I’m shy and tend to prefer staying in above almost anything. And I don’t like to spend money. But next season. Next season we will live in Exeter and I can go to the park more often. Regardless of next week’s result, I should. And I will.
And it is way past seven and the sun is still shining and there are ducklings in the pond and if it wasn’t for them I would have believed it is July already. And life is good.
Tonight.
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