Andy Gapin

I’m sure that you can’t actually OD on Orajel, but if you could I’m probably about 10 minutes away. The package says that you can put it on up to four times a day, but I’ve been doing it hourly. The scab that’s formed on my lip from when I got road raged hurts like hell because it keeps rubbing against my gums and teeth. It’s pretty much just a constant, excruciating pain.

If I OD on Orajel everyone has the right to NEVER stop laughing at me.

In fact, I’m already laughing at me about it and it hasn’t even happened yet.

Yesterday, I was sitting here at work minding my own business when all of a sudden my boss was behind me. He says to me “what do you think about using some of Apple’s business development funds to get yourself an iPhone?” The business development funds are the money that Apple gives to my company to pay for pushing their products and to partially pay for my salary. He said the one catch was that I had to get in line then and wait for it. I asked if I would get paid for waiting in line and he said I would so I said “hey, if I’m getting paid for it, yeah, I’ll wait.”

Turns out he was just kidding, but I wouldn’t have complained about getting a free iPhone. 

I certainly wouldn’t buy one myself though. Too much money for a something that doesn’t even do half of what I would ask of it.  

Last night, about 5 seconds after I started a mic break in the middle of my radio show, the power at the radio station went out for a second. It was just enough to reboot the log computer that I was just about to read off of. It also caused the CD players to turn off and on. Luckily, everything else was protected by the UPS so we didn’t go off the air, but the webstreams did go down for a couple minutes since those computers aren’t on a UPS. 

It really messed me up when this happened. I was just about to start doing my readback and then all of a sudden, the computer is out and I don’t remember what I last played. I stalled for a few seconds by talking about how the power just went out and went on about the storm a little while I putzed around trying to get all the song names for what I played and cued up my next song again. I think I ended up pulling it off alright, but man, was that annoying. 

Something else that’s annoying? Having a busted lip. It’s scabbed over and dried out now so everytime I move my mouth, it stretches or contracts or has pressure put on it and it hurts like hell. Screw this…where’s the orajel?

Against Me’s new album, New Wave, finally leaked on the internet yesterday. I’ve been waiting for this thing for what seems like forever. I’ve been checking to see if it leaked everyday for months now and I know for a fact that some promos when out about a month ago since a friend of mine, who refused to share, got a copy.

I downloaded it last night and I’ve already listened to it four times. Definitely really awesome. Most of it isn’t a surprise since they played half of it the last time I saw them, but it’s still super good. This definitely fits with their style of constantly pushing forward with each new release instead of putting out the same record over and over though. This is one of my favorite things about them, you always get something fresh and interesting.

I’m not sure if I like it better than Searching For A Former Clarity yet, but I think it’s only a matter of time before I do. So far, my favorite song is “Up the Cuts.” It’s been stuck in my head since I first listened to it. I was a little weary of Tegan from Tegan and Sara doing a song with them, but I think that it worked out really well.

I’m not too huge on the production in some places, but it’s tolerable. I think that the songs are good enough that the production couldn’t ruin them.

I really think that with this album, the band is going to blow up. They’re going to get huge. They’ll have major label distribution with a solid record that has some catchy songs. And if that does happen, they totally deserve it.

Yay!

Yesterday, I was driving home from work on 287 and the most ridiculous crap happened to me…

I moved over to the deceleration lane for exit 9 (River Rd.) where I normally get off. There was a car broken down with some other cars stuck behind it that made it look like traffic was backed up, which happens there, but I quickly realized what was actually going on. I put my left turn signal on to move back into the right lane of the highway so I could go around, but there were tons of cars coming by. When I finally got my chance, I pulled out and gunned it to go around the guy. At the same time that I was doing this, another guy was in the middle lane and started to move into the right lane without a signal so I had no idea he was moving over until I already started to go. By the time I saw he was starting to move, I was already halfway over and couldn’t go back without hitting the cars stopped behind the broken down one. The guy hit the brakes and we didn’t hit each other, but he got behind me and was flipping out. After getting halfway up the ramp, traffic stopped and he pulled up next to me with his window down and started screaming at me about it. The guy was really flipping out for a solid 30 to 45 seconds. I couldn’t believe how pissed he was…especially since it was his fault. Finally, traffic started to move again and I let him go in front of me. We got up to the end of the ramp where you merge on to River Rd. and traffic stopped again. I saw him taking off his seatbelt and was thinking “oh great, homeboy still isn’t done?” He walks up to my window, calls me an asshole and fucking punches me in the mouth.

I was in complete shock. Who the hell does that?

After he punched me, he jumped back in his car and sped off like a complete douche.

If I wasn’t in such shock, I might have done something in retaliation, but in hindsight I’m glad that I kept my cool. I wasn’t even really that pissed off, I just couldn’t believe that it happened.

He hit me hard enough to bust my lip a bit and my one tooth hurts when I touch it, but it should be fine in a day or two.

This is like the kind of shit that you see in movies or on TV. Real people don’t do this. It’s not like I was in the middle of Camden, I was in goddamn Piscataway.

Bunch of savages in this town.

Yesterday, I was driving home from work on 287 and the most ridiculous crap happened to me…

I moved over to the deceleration lane for exit 9 (River Rd.) where I normally get off. There was a car broken down with some other cars stuck behind it that made it look like traffic was backed up, which happens there, but I quickly realized what was actually going on. I put my left turn signal on to move back into the right lane of the highway so I could go around, but there were tons of cars coming by. When I finally got my chance, I pulled out and gunned it to go around the guy. At the same time that I was doing this, another guy was in the middle lane and started to move into the right lane without a signal so I had no idea he was moving over until I already started to go. By the time I saw he was starting to move, I was already halfway over and couldn’t go back without hitting the cars stopped behind the broken down one. The guy hit the brakes and we didn’t hit each other, but he got behind me and was flipping out. After getting halfway up the ramp, traffic stopped and he pulled up next to me with his window down and started screaming at me about it. The guy was really flipping out for a solid 30 to 45 seconds. I couldn’t believe how pissed he was…especially since it was his fault. Finally, traffic started to move again and I let him go in front of me. We got up to the end of the ramp where you merge on to River Rd. and traffic stopped again. I saw him taking off his seatbelt and was thinking “oh great, homeboy still isn’t done?” He walks up to my window, calls me an asshole and fucking punches me in the mouth.

I was in complete shock. Who the hell does that?

After he punched me, he jumped back in his car and sped off like a complete douche.

If I wasn’t in such shock, I might have done something in retaliation, but in hindsight I’m glad that I kept my cool. I wasn’t even really that pissed off, I just couldn’t believe that it happened.

He hit me hard enough to bust my lip a bit and my one tooth hurts when I touch it, but it should be fine in a day or two.

This is like the kind of shit that you see in movies or on TV. Real people don’t do this. It’s not like I was in the middle of Camden, I was in goddamn Piscataway.

Bunch of savages in this town.

I think my new summer trend is to listen to the Lawrence Arms as much as possible. Last summer, Oh! Calcutta! was pretty much around 85% of everything that I listened to. I didn’t even like the album that much at first, but once it grew on me…oh man…This summer hasn’t been much of a departure from that. It’s probably been toned down to like 50% and spread more across their other albums as well, but I don’t think I’ve gone a day yet without listening to something by them. They really need to get their act together and tour or put out another album. I want more.

Speaking of music, I’ve reviewed 65 CDs so far this summer. Christ, that’s a lot. Reminds me of when I was music director at RLC and I reviewed 30+ CDs a week. After a while, you just completely run out of things to say about the music. It gets to a point where you just feel like you’ve heard everything it all sounds the same. Sometimes, I just want to put “RIYL: anything” and leave it at that. I think it’s even worse when a well known band has an album. What do you say about it? Do you gear your review towards someone who has never heard them before which is probably the vast minority or do you just compare it to their older stuff?

There’s a lot that are decent, but usually very few that really stand out. If I find one CD in each batch of CDs that I take to review that I still care about two weeks later, I’m happy. Sadly, that doesn’t always happen. Booo to that.

I’ve been using the internet since 6th grade, which I think was 1994/1995, yet I’m just now starting to get into the blog thing. I’ve been reading blogs for a long time and it’s not like I never knew what they were. I was just never really much into doing them myself. Occasionally, I would start one and make like one or two posts and then get bored with it.

For some reason, over the last week I’ve gotten really into the idea of doing blogging. I was never much of a fan of livejournal and throwing my whole life out on the internet for people to read, but I’m thinking it could be kind of fun and cathartic to do a public blog for personal stuff. I have a nerd blog that I do and use to comment on tech/science news that I’ve been having fun with, but I feel kind of limited in it. I also have a few blogs that I keep for personal use and do not allow to be publicly viewed. I thought about starting a blog that would just be movie or music reviews, but I don’t think that I’d update it enough if that’s all it was.

After thinking about all of that I decided to start this here blog. I am probably going to purchase andygapin.com one of these days and make a full website about myself and then this will display on there, but for now, here it is!