Andy Gapin

It was a decent show last night. Not super amazing, but relatively solid. There wasn’t too much to comment on in my mic breaks though…and I was competing with Obama. But despite competing with Obama, I did get a request for Budos Band which I was able to fit in.

I finally got to check out some Bad Lieutenant (members of New Order) as we’ve got the album in now. Pretty good, I’d say. I’ll have to listen to more later though.

That’s really about it so here’s the playlist; if you’re reading on Facebook, you’ll have to click the link to the original or it will just be a jumbled mess.

Source: 90.3 The Core

Okay, so I finally saw Avatar. I’m the last person on Earth to have seen this, I think. What’s left to say about it? Really? The effects were incredible. Nothing else is even remotely notable about it in either direction. It comes down to this, see it in IMAX 3D in the theater or don’t ever see it. Pretty simple.

Rating: Does it even matter at this point?

I actually saw The Lovely Bones last weekend and meant to post about it, but completely forgot. My girlfriend had been wanting to see this for months. She was really excited about it, but the weird limited release thing that they did with it was incredibly annoying, especially since the full release wasn’t listed right away. I’ve never read the book myself so I had no personal interest in seeing it other than the fact that the lady was really excited for it. However, I actually liked it quite a bit.

The flick was definitely a bit long feeling, but it was more than tolerable. I don’t think there was anything that could have been cut out. And the length was partially a side affect of what was also one of the best parts about the movie, Peter Jackson’s absolutely amazing visuals which were quite thoroughly shown off. The lush landscapes and overall beauty of the in-between world were incredible. If you’ve seen the trailers, you know what I’m talking about. But to me, it was the camera work that made The Lovely Bones so visually appealing.

Beyond the visuals though, there is a lot of substance to The Lovely Bones, it’s not all eye candy and no story. Having not read the book, it’s hard to comment on this fairly, but I can’t say that I expected it to get as intense as it did at certain times. I actually felt pretty uncomfortable for a while.

I don’t know, if you read the book or you want to see the polar opposite of Peter Jackson’s early work like Dead Alive and Bad Taste, this is probably for you.

Rating: B

Great show this week, definitely a huge bounce back from last week‘s disaster. I felt completely on top of it all and it was a return to more of the randomness that normally makes up The Playlist. For the past month or so, I’ve been picking out my entire playlist ahead of time instead of merely grabbing about fifty CDs to work from and then just flying by the seat of my pants during the show. I finally returned to the unplanned style last night and, even though it’s a bit harder to do a show that way, it’s a ton more fun and comes with a greater connection to the listener.

My only low points of the show were the Erik Hassle and Twilight Hours songs that I played. I’d never heard either before and thought they would fit in well based on the reviews on the albums. I was wrong. Definitely not a fan of either, but that’s one of my favorite things about the way I do The Playlist. It’s not only an adventure for the listener, but it is for me as well. I play a lot of music that I haven’t listened to yet on the show. To sound overly cheesy, I feel like it makes every week a journey that the listener and I take together.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from those two are the albums by Dawn Landes, Thomas Function, and Spoon. Spoon’s Transference is an excellent follow up to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. While not quite as good, it gets very close. And before next week, I want to spend some time with the Taylor Hollingsworth and Curtis Harvey albums as well. I liked the songs I played a lot so I’m anxious to give the rest of each album a listen.

On a final note, last night was actually the first time I’ve ever heard Vampire Weekend. It’s not like I haven’t heard of them seemingly incessantly for quite some time now, but I just never actually heard their music. I guess it had something to do with the people who were obsessing over them? I mean, nothing against them, but the people that always talked about Vampire Weekend seemed to be people that had different tastes than I do. So I always figured it was something I wouldn’t be into. I was kind of impressed though.

Alright, that’s all I have to blabber about this week so I’ll just give you the playlist, but remember, if you’re reading on Facebook, you’ll have to click the link to the original or it will just be a jumbled mess.

Source: 90.3 The Core

This week’s edition of The Playlist was probably the worst show that I’ve done in the last year. Probably longer, actually. I don’t know, I just felt incredibly off. I had nothing to say, I couldn’t really focus. I was just all kinds of uninterested. It’s weird too because I had a lot of new music to play this week for the first time in about a month. Maybe it was just because of the rough day that I had at work prior? Let’s say that.

I still need to check a lot of this music out, but I’m very excited about the Thomas Function and Dawn Landes records. I don’t really know anything about either of them, but the songs I played last night were awesome. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Just like last week, I brought my camera with me to take some pictures around the studio. I turned the lights up a little brighter this time which helped a lot. I took a few shots that I liked a lot so I figured that I’d share them with you. The one of the console is probably my favorite. It’s nothing special, but I like how the focus and lighting came out a lot.

Source: 90.3 The Core

Cloudy With a Chance Of Meatballs is completely outrageous and seriously hilarious! I definitely wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did, but it was pretty much perfect. There are a lot of really good laughs to be had from this flick. They’re mostly cheesy and cliché, but they work every time. At the same time, the movie keeps a nice pace with some action spread around and nothing getting too slow for too long. And I’d say that the animation for this one is slightly above average for a non-Pixar CGI flick. It’s very good and definitely included a super cute and nerdy animated chick that I may or may not have a crush on now.

As with a lot of these CGI movies lately, the voice cast is pretty damn stacked. You’ve got Bill Hader, Anna Farris, James Caan, Andy Samberg, Bruce friggn’ Campbell, Mr. T (yup), Bobb’e J. Thompson (that kid from Role Models. I love this kid), NPH, Al Roker, and Will Forte. That’s a lot of great names right there! Loved it!

One of the best things about this movie is the disaster movie parody aspect of it. There were some very clear influences from and references to real disaster movies like Twister, Armageddon, Dante’s Peak, and The Day After Tomorrow. But the it’s done very well and not at all like what I’m sure Disaster Movie, which I haven’t actually seen, was. Instead of just throwing things in just for the sake of being funny, they use a collection of parodies that work together to create the “perfect food storm” which I promise you looked as delicious as it sounds.

Something that I got out of this movie that I didn’t expect though was the realization that I definitely prefer for movies that are based on books, even children’s books, to keep things very different. With a few exceptions, I prefer when movies take the basic idea of a book and then do something different with it. There isn’t much of a point to following the book exactly or even trying to get real close to it. A film will never be exactly the same as the book and when you try to get close, it’s those little differences that tend to take away from the film rather than add to it. And besides, if it’s exactly the same, what’s the point? To reach out to people who are too lazy to read? But if you just take that basic idea and sort of re-imagine it or simply use it as your inspiration, you have many more possibilities. You get to do something different and run less of a risk of completely ruining the book. You get to pay homage while still maintaining your own creativity.

Rating: A

Last night’s show was a bit interesting since there hasn’t been any new music to work with in a few weeks. It’s just a slow time of year, but I think I made due alright though. For the most part, I felt really, really on. I had things working just the way I wanted and my mic breaks came more naturally than normal with that conversationy type feel that radio DJs strive for. That is except for the completely botched one where I got confused by a CD that was put back in the wrong case, but I think I recovered nicely from that mess.

So on the music front, there’s not really anything to highlight that I haven’t spoken about before, but I did snag a shot of the Godzilla we have standing at the top of our main rack of equipment in the air studio. It was hard to snap the shot being that it’s up on top of a rack of equipment and I’m a short guy. The positioning of the lighting in the room didn’t help much either; it was difficult to keep all of the lights out of the shot. This was the best of the shots I took last night, but it’s still not that great. Though, to be fair, I couldn’t really focus on shooting while I was trying to do a radio show.

Here’s the list of what I played, some of it was reaching back a few months, but that’s okay. And as usual, Facebook will drop the table formatting and just give a jumble of words so click the original if you need to!

Source: 90.3 The Core

First of all, I don’t get why everyone is hating on 2009 so much. I feel like people do this every year. One year ends and everyone hates on it saying it was terrible. But it’s the same routine every year. Maybe you have your reasons, but I bet some good shit happened to you too. Sure, a lot of celebrities died in 2009. A lot. But, you know what? You don’t know those people! Yes, it’s terrible for them and their families and friends and some of them probably brought some joy into your life through their work, but still, you don’t know them personally so don’t let that make you feel like it was a bad year. You know, if that’s your reason–hey! I’ve heard it! But that’s besides the point. Maybe that’s not your reason for hating 2009, maybe you’ve got some good personal reason and that’s fine. Maybe the recession hit you or your family hard. Fair enough. I’ll give you that, but I know one guy who would say that being laid off right in the beginning of the year was the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Anyway, the fact seems to be that people tend to hate on every year. A year ago, I was sick of everyone calling 2008 “tw0-thousand hate.” Now, I’m sick of everyone saying that 2010 better be better than 2009. People like to focus on the negative things.

I’m sure that if you think about it, there were plenty of good things that happened to you or that you did in 2009. I took up snowboarding, went sky diving for the first time, went to Paris and London, went to Chicago again, started dating the girl of my dreams, got more serious about running, spent and awesome weekend in New Hampshire with some great friends, saw a ton of great movies. The list goes on and on, but I’ll stop. There were some bad things that happened too–my dog dying being at the top of the list–and ultimately, the thing I wanted to do most in 2009 didn’t happen, but fuck it, why worry about that stuff if you don’t have to? And it’s funny, while I was going and grabbing those links back there–I had to sort through almost 200 posts from 2009–I realized that there was even more great stuff in 2009 that I had forgotten about. Hell, I went on a first date on Valentine’s Day only to never go on another date with the girl again. I totally had forgotten about that and that’s great story potential right there!

But anyway, this post is about 2010, right? Right. I think this is going to be a great year too. I hope so, at least. I’ve got some little goals. I’m going to be running my first half marathon, I’m going to Disney, I’m hoping to make good on my plan to one day move to Chicago, and I’m taking up photography. For Christmas, I got a beautiful Canon EOS t1i digital SLR. I don’t really know how to use it very well yet. I mean, I know what most of the buttons do and all that, but just getting my pictures to look decent is going to take a while. I’m really excited about it though. I’ve wanted to get a nice camera for years and years, but I was always afraid that I’d never use it because I wouldn’t want to carry the thing around all the time. Well, I got a over that. I take thousands and thousands of pictures on my little point-and-shoot, a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, and it’s great, but it definitely feels lacking. It will still get a ton of use, but there are plenty of times where I know ahead of time that I’m going to want to take some really nice photos. And those will be the times that I have my SLR with me. What I’m getting at here with the photography thing is that if all goes the way that I hope it does, I’ll have a lot of great pictures to post here. And post I will! I’m going to try to post more of other stuff as well this year, but we’ll see.

But for now, here are pretty much the best shots I’ve take so far with my camera. They’re all of my cat, but she makes for a great subject and the past couple of days have been way too cold and windy to go outside. Obviously, you can click them for larger versions.

Alright, so let’s go 2010! Woooo!