Jess and I are headed to both New York City and Washington, D.C. for spring break.  I’ve never been.  I’ve got a short list of stuff to check out that I’ll dig:
- The UN
- Where CBGB’s used to be (does anyone know if there’s anything left or has it completely disappeared?)

In D.C:
- The Holocaust museum (I know, how spring break cliche)

So what do you think?  You know me.  Point out some stuff that I’m too dumb to think of.

Dear Britney,

I never spend time thinking about you. I avoid news about you at all costs. And yet, I just read the Rolling Stone cover piece about you this month, and I have a favor to ask of you.

Come to punk rock.

It’d be perfect! You’ve been a pop superstar and now you’re totally disenchanted with the system. While so many bands bitch about the commercial music industry, they’ve never really faced it. But it’s chewed you up and spit you out!

Plus you’d have cred, which is so valuable in the punk scene. Consider the following:
1. You’ve had drug problems (see: Sid Vicious, Brett Gurewitz*, Topper Headon, Richard Hell, etc.).
2. You shaved your head. Rather than faux hawk it like so many posers, you went ovaries out and got rid of all the hair!
3. There is a real underrepresentation of women in punk rock. Brody from The Distillers needs someone to hang out with.
4. You’re all about shock value now (see: G.G. Allin, Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, etc.)*.

You could write all those songs about people dumping on you and the system and say “fuck” a lot, which is your new favorite thing. Plus you’re a bad song writer, but that’s okay. All you need are three chords and a repetitious chorus!

You’d be silly not to take me up on this offer. Just think about it.

Wes

So thanks to Shannon, The Impact’s promotions director, I scored a pair of tickets to see stand up comedian Ron White on campus.  You may recognize his name from his involvement in the Blue Collar Comedy Tours (yes, there have been multiple).

So Jess and I went, and to my surprise, it wasn’t bad.  Granted, it was his second show of the day and he’d been drinking, but his material was neither ignorant nor unrelatable.  He even once referred to “Larry the Cable Idiot,” a sentiment I could get behind.

All in all, my advice to you is, if someone hands you a free ticket to see Ron White, go for it.  Not a glowing review, I know, but there’s nothing wrong with a pleasant surprise.

So you think you know music, huh?

Suppose you’re tasked with this:
Make two mix CDs.  One represents “hard rock” to the fullest.  The other (possibly a double album) encompasses all that was 90s alternative.

What do you put on it?  What do you not put on there?  Use the comment box below to tell me what to do.

I finally won something!

Last month, I entered the Michigan Association of Broadcasters College Station awards. I turned in a public service announcement and a newscast. The PSA went nowhere, but my newscast on whether or not MSU is a party school (A: it’s not) turned into a first place award!

Check it out for yourself! (And look at all the MSU on it. So green and white.)

I’ll be sure to grab a copy of it and post it on here for your listening pleasure soon!

Congratulations will be accepted in the form of cash. Or comments below.

“It’s a major award!”

So The Impact is sending me to Las Vegas.  You may have heard of this place.  It’s a bastion of libertarian political thought, it has a vast history of atomic testing and is located near the Hoover Dam.

Oh yeah, and there’s gambling or something.

The Radio-Television News Directors Association is going on there from April 13 to April 17 and I’ll be there for it, most expenses paid.

But there is a catch.  In the past, I have had about three different attempts at going to Las Vegas.  So I’m trying not to get my hopes up on it, but it should be pretty fun.

So who wants to visit me out there?  It’s a cheap time of year to visit Vegas, it’s not far from Seattle by plane, and airfare from Seattle to Vegas is also cheap.

C’mon!

Oh, I forgot to mention when I’m on air this semester:

- DJing: Tuesday 1pm-4pm (EST)
- Exposure (talk show): Tuesday 7pm-8pm (EST)

Listen online at impact89fm.org!

Holy macaroni. I’ve been an idiot for not getting more into Queens of the Stone Age. My friend Jenny was the proud recipient of a buzzed voice mail the other night with me apologizing for shrugging off one of her favorite bands so many times in the past.

I bought Rated R a while back, which got me interested. Then I just bought Songs for the Deaf last week and god damn, it’s just absorbing me.

This is a classic case of being the last person to get into something cool. You want to talk about it with everyone, but in return you get blank stares and shrugs, usually accompanied by a “Well, yeah,” or “Yup, I remember.” Which you’re probably doing right now as you read this.

The blog has returned due to popular demand (three people). But that’s enough for me. So, here’s a recap since I last posted:

- I started dating Jess, a great girl in my program.
- I struggled through Journalism 815: History of Journalism for reasons that are too embarrassing to list online.
- I succeeded in Journalism 438: Online Publishing, by writing in HTML.
- I succeeded in launching and reporting for Sparty Secrets.
- I got things started at The Impact’s News Department, hiring on a staff to report the news, and even doing a bit of reporting myself. One news piece I produced has been submitted to the Michigan Association of Broadcasters for a possible award (we’ll see).
- I finished up my penultimate semester and came home to visit in December. I’ll post a recap of that soon, with pictures and everything. It was a blast, and Jess came out to visit.

Sorry for the absence from blogging these last few months. I thought no one read this thing. Then I got shit for not writing it. Which I deserved. I’ll try and be more upstanding in the future. Plus, let me know what you think of my new site!

So as some of you know, I host a weekly community show called Exposure on The Impact. Once a month during the academic year, it turns into Sexposure, a sexual-health-in-college-themed show. Well, last Tuesday, I hosted my first.

As with anything sex-related, I was nervous during my first time. But my guests were gentle. So what happened? Well, we counted down the top ten things to know about sex and the student body.

Oh, and I ate lube and applied a condom to an orange dong. On air.

Listen: Sexposure

Listen (lube about half way through, dong near the end).