Andy Gapin

I’m not going to go into too much detail, but over the weekend, I took a trip down to Baltimore for Insubordination Fest. It’s a pop punk fest that’s been going on for a few years now. Including the pre-show, it was three straight days of pop punk. It was way more awesome than it sounds, I swear.

I think the best band turned out to be The Copyrights, but Cloak/Dagger, House Boat, Lemuria, Dillinger 4, and Dear Landloard were really awesome as well. The Steinways were very good, but a bit messy. It was supposed to be their last show for real this time, so I’m glad that I got to see them since I never had before.

Anyway, I picked up two shirts while I was there…

Last night’s show turned out to be pretty good, definitely better than last week’s. There was some pretty decent musical variety, but I opted for some longer songs which I normally don’t do.

“Night Guard” is the only song that I’ve heard from this Post Honeymoon record so far, but I was really into it so I’ll have to report back about the whole album next week.

Here’s the playlist…

Source: 90.3 The Core

Without question, jumping out of a plane for fun has to be in the top five craziest things anyone can do. So naturally, I’ve wanted to do it since I was a kid. For various reasons I never had been able to do it until just recently. I don’t think I can actually describe the feeling of it either. You’re falling, but that’s not even what it feels like. You actually feel more like you’re floating than anything else. Floating with a whole lot of wind coming at you.

The whole experience was pretty crazy. They took us up in this tiny little plane that barely felt like it should be able to get off the ground. Including the pilot, there were six of us packed into it and that didn’t any room to move at all. It takes a while to get fully up to altitude and the sky was starting to cloud over to the point where they weren’t sure if we’d be able to jump or not. This wasn’t really a plane I wanted to land in. I think I felt safer jumping out of it.

We got lucky though and the pilot was able to get us up high enough to jump and even though it was a raining a little bit, the instructors felt like it was safe to jump so we did. My friend went first. They opened up the door and I nearly crapped my pants. That’s actually the moment it really hits you that you’ve about to do probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. At this point, there wasn’t really much backing out, I was all connected up the instructor and we started scooching over to the door. We got in position and before I could really even prepare myself, all say that I may have had in the situation was taking away from me and he pushed us out. This is the point were I’m pretty sure that I just started yelling “holy shit” over and over, but once you’re out the plane and doing free-fall, it’s not as scary. In fact, this was probably the least scary part of the entire experience.

The first few seconds of free-fall were through the rain. This wasn’t really the best feeling in the world. I mean, the falling thing was absolutely the most incredible feeling I’ve ever felt with my pants on, but the rain felt like getting shot with hundreds of paintballs. The good thing was that this only lasted a few seconds and then we were out of the rain. I’m actually not sure how that worked, but it did.

We continued to free-fall for a little bit longer. I couldn’t tell you how long it was, maybe 10 or 15 seconds? I really don’t know. Then the instructor pulled the chute. I had kind of expected this to feel a lot more intense as the air caught it. I thought it would be much more of a jolt, but it really wasn’t.

This is the point that I stopped yelling “holy shit” over and over.

From there, we did a couple turns with the parachute and made our way safely down to the ground with a perfect landing.

It was intense. I don’t even know how else to describe this. For anyone that even remotely thinks they might want to do, go for it. It’s one of the most terrifying things ever, but you’ll be so glad that you did.

Here’s the video, which is a little (read: one metric asston) embarrassing, but I’m glad that I got it. You may notice that on the certificate, they put my last name as “Capin” instead of Gapin. Oh well.

I’ll get right to it, Dead Snow was simply amazing. It was incredibly well done from start to finish. I got the joy of seeing this in a small theater with a screen not much bigger than the one I use at home for my projector and in the audience was the director, Tommy Wirkola, who did a nice Q&A afterwards.

I feel like the whole Nazi zombie sub-sub-genre had been a bit neglected lately, so it was great to see someone bring it back in the most awesome of ways. When Tommy introduced the film, he said that he was trying to return to the gory, but comedic horror of years back. He accomplished this perfectly. The gore was great and there were guts everywhere. Most of the time, this was hilarious like having a dude’s head got ripped apart and his brain dropped to the floor. Think Evil Dead, Dead Alive, Bad Taste, and Shaun of the Dead all rolled up in one in a Norwegian flick with a lot of intestines, but don’t get the impression that this was a total ripoff either, there was more than enough originality to make this movie stand out within the zombie genre and possibly even put it at the top of all Nazi zombie flicks.

Tommy decided to go with fast zombies that could think and organize themselves which I usually don’t like too much, but it really fit with the movie. The zombies were bad ass, but then again, so were some of the characters towards the end. Everything fit together really well.

During the Q&A session, Tommy mentioned that there might be a sequel and even went into a little detail about what he envisions for the beginning of the film. He’s got some good ideas. Not only should you make sure that you see this movie, but you should also keep an eye on Tommy Wirkola. He’s been talking to some people around Hollywood and it seems like this could be just the first of many great things from him.

Rating: A

This is another Woot shirt, my girlfriend saw it and got it for me. The worst part is, I don’t even think it’s the most questionable shirt that I own.

I love this shirt. It came from Woot. The first one came with a stain on it, but they sent a replacement with no questions asked.

Last night’s radio show was much better than last week’s, I got my act together and had much more fun with it. I liked the equipment in the temporary studio still, but again felt limited with just the one computer and the awkward counter space. There were a couple iffy segues between songs, but my music selection for the show was excellent. For the most part, the show felt like it flowed from genre to genre. I would have liked to fit some more punk type stuff in, but there just wasn’t time for it.

I can’t believe Joan Of Arc has ANOTHER album out. It seems like they put out a new one every year. This is twelfth, apparently. I had no idea it was that many. I kind of lost interest years ago.

Source: 90.3 The Core

Hands down, The Hangover is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s consistently funny from beginning to end and barely gives you enough time to breathe between laughs. The previews for this movie just don’t do it any justice at all. They make it look like it could really go either way, cheesy and stupid or testicle-explodingly funny. It is strictly the latter.

The Hangover is funny in the same kind of way that Old School and Wedding Crashers are funny the first time you see them. If you wait to see this, you are making a mistake. I don’t even know what else to say. Just see it.

The movie aside, my trip to see this last night was further enhanced by a potentially awkward as hell situation. Even though it was a Sunday night, the theater got a bit crowded, by the time the previews had started, there were only a few good seats left. Two of which were next to me on the left. My girlfriend was sitting on my right. So into the first trailer, I notice two people shuffling down the row to get to the open seats next to me. I thought the girl looked a little familiar, but it was dark so I didn’t think much of it…until she sat down next to me and I realized it was my ex-girlfriend with her new dude. Now, we dated for quite some time and are still good friends, but we have spent minimal time around each other with our new significant others. Had we had a really bad breakup, this could have been an awful situation. I mean, how much more random can things be? Of all the theaters in the area, all the movies currently out, all the showtimes available, and all the seats in the theater, what are the odds that this happens? It’s like an FML, except not.

Last night felt like another off show for me. I just didn’t really have it in me to put much into it. For the rest of the summer, we’ll be broadcasting from a temporary studio in another building on Livingston Campus because the Student Center is under construction and everyone had to be booted while they worked on the fire alarm system. The temporary studio is pretty impressive considering that it was hobbled together from old equipment that was lying around in under a week. Even though it’s all equipment that I’ve used before since I’m a pretty much a dinosaur at the station these days, I thought it would be a big hindrance for the first couple shows from there. Mostly things like getting used to doing some things slightly differently than how we’re used to in our amazingly awesome studios in the Student Center. It’s not much different, but just enough where you need to be paying attention. In reality, this ended up being a complete non-issue. The show went down without a single hitch and some of the little quirks actually turned out to be things I liked. Equipment-wise at least. The room itself is a little awkward. It’s too roomy and the lighting is fluorescent only so it’s hard to get a good mood going in there. There’s also only one computer when I’m used to having two station computers (soon to be three) and my laptop (there’s no wireless). I got by though.

Musically, the show was a bit mellow compared to where I’ve been the past couple of months. I don’t think it was bad at all, it fit the mood I was in, but it was a little different than what some listeners may have come to expect.

I noticed that on the new Camera Obscura record, Tracyanne’s voice sounds scarily like Zooey Deschanel’s. It’s so similar, in fact, that the DJ after me walked into the studio and commented that he was into me playing Zooey Deschanel. I don’t think it does quite as much on the older stuff, but it’s insane on this album. Obviously, this makes me like it even more.

Anyway, here’s the playlist for the show:

Source: 90.3 The Core

These three are from Threadless. They had a sale going on which got a little dangerous for me, but luckily I was able to keep it to just three and not spend too much money. I also ordered another Woot shirt last week that showed up today as well, but it had a stupid stain on it. I’ll post it after they replace it.

Anyway, the below is now my fifth zombie shirt in my rotation. I’m pretty proud of this fact.

Sorry for the crappy photography.