More Great News From the Awesome Front

Sorry to keep the random posting up. Ratatat is showing up at the Showbox SoDo, on March 29th. I know this may mean jack-schit [sic] to most of you, but I'm fckng [sic] excited about this whole thingy.

An Old Classic: Or What I've Been Up To Recently

Greetings. I hope that everyone is finding themselves in good order. Just keeping you posted with regards to life out West. First I have some advice for Jared's last post:

1. I don't know too much about comps, I'm running PT LE8 through a newer generation iMac that runs great and handles RTAS DSPs pretty well. For LE, I'd recommend a decent amount of RAM and a sizable duo-core. A refurbished Mac would suit well.

2. I don't recommend anything lower than an MBox 2 Pro, primarily for the sake of the firewire interface that the 2 Pro has. Lag becomes a huge issue when recording anything externally, especially during record/playback. The USB interfaces make it feel like you can be playing up to an 1/8 note behind the record playback, which sucks and means that you have to do more takes and quantize.

3. As far as mixing consoles are concerned, I'd look at the Yamaha MG124CX. It's affordable and comes with a 12-channel and 4-bus channel capabilities and has a built-in compression system. That or I'd look at the smaller Behringer Eurorack series, it's what I use and it's perfectly fine for a bedroom Pro Tools setup.

4. As for affordable cardiod mics, I'd personally recommend, the Beta 57a. It's a go-to for almost any instrument setup (sans drums obviously, vocals and acoustic guitar). If you're looking for a good, rich and most importantly, affordable condenser mic I'd recommend the KSM27. It's pretty cheap and good all around. I would recommend, that whatever mic(s) you go with to run a HPF somewhere around 75-90Hz to cut the room noise that you get in home recordings.

But I digress. Seattle's insane. School's amazing. I love showing up for class everyday, even though I wake up a few days a week at 6am to catch the 7:15 bus. My history degree was in vain. I'm still settling in, but I've adjusted to the city exceptionally. Some photos of the things I've been up to:




Dinner: Fettucini with fresh clams. Did you know that "Buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo Buffalo." is a complete sentence in the English language? Damn right!


Cribbage night at the Hop Vine Pub, up on Capitol Hill.


Cribbage and beer, hooray! Did you know that Cribbage is the only game that you can legally bet on in pubs in Britain? Brain food yo!


Bought a soprano melodica, it's fucking awesome sounding.


The studio in my bedroom. Clustered with homework and music theory books.

Mt. Rainier from my balcony. My view's insane, you really have to see it to believe it. This mountain may blow up and kill me one day but at least I'd have a great view of my impending demise.

Anyways, not much else is new. I'm going to see This Is A Process tomorrow at Chop Suey (that one's for you Ben) and I'm waiting for Tony to get up here soon so we can make some music.

Dios Mio!

ahem.
SO Dallas made me realize something...

(and this is a bit of a rant, but I consider it a healthy purging of feelings)

I'm not the only one who is going insane with boredom. No job, no friends, no money, no heat, and every day I wake up and wish it was tomorrow. And I've been doing this for two months.. I'm a prisoner in my own house, a microcosm of sleep and tea, and weed and wine, which would be fine if it wasn't just me all the time. It's just me in my head every goddamn day. I'm the annoying friend I can't avoid. Cabin fever is one that can't just be cured with more cowbell (at least I've still got that razor sharp wit, eh?). I think maybe I thought moving was going to fix everything. (Well to be fair I don't have any of my old problems...just a whole bunch of new ones.) Or maybe writing a blog including the few photos Ive taken in the last 2 months so that it looks like I'm living the big city life and I am out doing lots of exciting exciting things.

Did you guys see the Amityville Horror when Ryan Reynolds feels crappy when he's at home and then the second they leave he feels better? It's kind of like that, except with less wood splitting and six packs. But I digress.


Smash, bless her heart, works her ass off and and I do is sleep and curl my hair. We barely ever see eachother anymore. I've quite had enough of this, but getting a job has its share of hoops to jump through. I keep thinking that next week I'll be able to start working. But thats turned into two weeks. and then two turns into three.

If it wasn't for Tuna I might be out of my skull. I figure if I'm talking to an animal, it's better than talking to myself.


My only other friend here has thrown me under the bus and fed me to the wolves. After everything I've done for him and everything he preached to me it turns out I was worth nothing. Would a friend sell you out to make themselves look better? Would a friend rub your nose into something youve already apologized and admitted you fucked up about? And they told you not to worry about it? Fuck that. I don't deserve that.

So now I've got an extra murder city devils ticket I guess.

So FUCK IT. I'm going to paint and take walks and make new friends and even though I don't have any money I'm going to have A GOOD TIME. Because I'm sick of this, and sick of putting faith and trust into people who don't deserve to have me as a friend. Because I'm a GOOD PERSON. And I forgot that for a while.

Thanks for being my friends. Even though you are all far away and I can't hug anyone right now, I want everyone to know that I love all y'all.

And Dallas, I'm with you on this one. It won't be like this forever.

My Heart Belongs To PDX

Now that I've had some time to reflect, and have actually taken some photos, I wanted to share my wonderful world of Portland with you all.

I finally got to the zoo.

Dallas, that one's for you.


These two were unreal. It's crazy looking at an animal with a more distinct personality than some people I've met.

I know squirrels arent technically part of the zoo, but this one ran in front of us and then screamed. He was a keeper.


I grew some balls and tattooed myself. Shit sucked but the tattoo turned out great. I'll post a picture when it heals.


It was a practice round for tattooing my partner in crime, Justin.


Grandma polishing the rifle, something his sister drew for him.


He cooked me brunch to say thanks. Amazing.


Bakin' pies for dinner parties! Motherfucking Betty Crocker!


Cache's doppelganger on the left.

We all went to My Bloody Valentine in 3D afterwards. Its a fucking trip. Super cheesy flick but the 3D is totally b.a.n.a.n.a.s.

Speaking of Valentines Day...this is what I will be doing that night.


Top Ten Things I Love About Portland
1. Dinner parties
2. Good food everywhere. Missoula could take some notes.
3. Government aid system is amazing! Planned Parenthood gave me a years supply of the Pill plus about 40 condoms and 2 Plan B pills for FREE. And I qualify for Food Stamps so they give you almost $200 a month for food. Sometimes being unemployed for a bit isnt terrible. At least I know there's no way in hell I'll ever get knocked up and hungry.
4. There are about 8 bars that could be my regular bar.
5. The Mercury (weekly independent newspaper with a killer sense of humor)
6. Everytime I go out I always run into someone I know. Which is weird when you have never lived here.
7. Not having to pump my own gas. I've gotten used to it and it's kind of nice.
8. ART. EVERYWHERE.
9. MUSIC. EVERYWHERE.
10. Everyone I meet wants a tattoo. Thank Baby Jesus I'll be working at a shop soon.

Miss you guys. Hope you're all doing great in your respective cities.

top 10 reasons I love Chicago despite being ass cold and uber snowy

1.  Chicago Public Radio

2.  Being able to see any band that is on tour

3.  Riding the L to work, or home after drinking heavily

4.  Art Museums

5.  Reading Vice and the Onion for free, and not on the Web

6.  Restaurants of every variety, such as Peruvian and Pakistani, within blocks of my apartment.

7.  Thrift stores that are even more amazing than anywhere else in the country

8.  Record stores that drive me crazy how many good records they have

9.  Living three blocks away from Lake Michigan

10. Having choices and opportunities around every corner that just do not exist in towns with less than a million people.

which is to say, I'm glad I moved.  I never was a small town person in the first place.

(ps.  this is for Aaron Young, who wanted to know how everyone's new city was treating them.)