i wonder if there's such a thing as late-onset ADD

for me you would make an exception

i don't think i like this more than the original but i know that i like it a whole bunch. i was talkin' about it to nate and he played me this song by jeffrey lewis which is about that song, but also about everybody ever, i think.

who needs exercise?

i'll exercise when i'm dead

actually, i guess i probably won't

especially if i find out how to eat when i'm dead

going home

i'm gonna miss hank and heidi a lot. i kind of hope my flight gets canceled tomorrow, but i couldn't ask for anything more. when do i wake up?

austin

pumpkin soft serve. chai tea smoothie. sriracha mango shake.

i like the word "boogie" so much. it means what it sounds like and it sounds like something good and it looks even better than it sounds. round-tall round round round-low straight round.

i think i'm gonna buy some fancy headphones. nothing too fancy. maybe not anything from outer space. right now my ears are ringing and it doesn't seem very important, and maybe that's best.

i am going to get a championship belt tattooed around my waist. bang bang bang bang bangs.

i only listen to songs about the moon
moon moon moon
let me play among the stars
wider than a mile
how faint the tune
dsafjkhczxvhur

free mustache on a stick

if you are 8 years old and you show up to a concert in costume and the lead singer invites you on stage so you tell him that your name is "maximillian", and then you get to crowd surf, well, i think your life is gonna be pretty good. i think your life is pretty good. i think life is pretty good.

ear to ear and you should live here

i think i might actually prefer this version to aretha's. is that sacrilegious? maybe. it does make the gender politics of the song pretty weird, but i think it was written by a couple of dudes anyways, so... well. i guess it's pretty weird no matter what.

you made it pretty when you put it on

that's true of all of us

after you can breathe

when it’s raining hard enough to be cozy but it hasn’t yet started raining hard enough to be sad (unless you get your shoes wet) you can fight off your blankets and still not escape super metroid and doolittle

and that's okay

i can't wait for fall

throw your penny in my fountain

i like songs that say "cutie pie" in them

i know your part'll go fine

see you later, laser

ikebana nacho

i really like foods like salads and nachos where you sort of decide from bite to bite what you're gonna get

i think nachos might be my favorite food ever

for a while i thought it would be cool to make a bunch of weird nacho variations (deconstructed nachos? dessert nachos? pizza nachos? really pretentious nachos?) and then make a photobook of them, 'cause, like, the way i see it, making nachos has a lot more in common with flower arrangement than baking a cake

except, not really, because flowers aren't delicious

(i'm probably never going to do that)

i could probably solve most of my problems if i just threw my computer into the ocean

bolder than buzzing bugs

wow

oh, that dreamy otamatone

i'm so vain
i probably think this song is about me

you were bringing me oxygen

when i saw the gaslight anthem, frank turner opened for them, and he really really blew me away. i didn't know any of his songs, but i heard him sing something about "the resurrected spirit of gram parsons", and i felt like i was going to cry. i hope he makes a million billion dollars someday.

this song is about something pretty sad, but the song itself is really nice, and the video. when i played it for my dad he sang along with the last chorus even though he'd never heard it before. i think that's pretty neat, too.


...but, of course, he can write some awesome happy punk-y folk songs, too. like "dan's song". that's a good one.

anyways. yesterday randy played me the song "smiling at strangers on trains" by million dead. and then he told me that it was frank doing the vocals, and it surprised me haha. i think it's pretty cool that he can make a song sound good in a hardcore band and as a slow solo folk-y thing. the lyrics are great, too. i wish the original video didn't have a homeless guy peeing on people.

a fickle lover
beats the shoreline back, and then
pulls him in again

in other words

mantra

genuinely inspirational

i've started cleaning my room, now. i took the old printer downstairs but i'm scared to move the old computer. i haven't turned it on in three years. there's going to be a bright white semi-rectangular dustless patch and i'll probably think it's a metaphor for something.

i'm full of bees

i never get anything done ever

i think i'm allergic to my living room
it makes me blink
and fill cups with water
and pour them on my stupid face

i can say hi

i always feel like spending a lot of time in a car by myself will help me get my act together, but mostly it just gets me thinking about robots and losing my voice.

i fell out of bed and somebody called my name

goodbye hawaii. i love you. i am unreasonably sad about returning to the mainland.



my friend ray played this for me a while ago and i liked it a lot. for some reason, i kind of figured that they were pretty popular, but the video only has like 5,000 views. what?! it's a super awesome video, too. i mean, i like andré and mr. a already, but i thought it was really well done. maybe the views got trapped in a time vortex or something. those damn time vortexes.

made my heart come all undone

i think that 511s are the only pants in the world that look good on me. frankly, even 511s might be up for debate. maybe i'll start wearing them like stringbean.

today i went surfing for the first time. i wasn't too good at it, but i got pretty stoked on it anyways. now i can feel justified about watching endless summer twice a week.

this funky gym do make you tough

yesterday we went to a used bookstore that had about equal amounts of hawaiian, japanese and american music. the heady combination of cheap prices, unfamiliar material and hilarious engrish played straight to my weaknesses and made for a perfect storm situation where i bought like five CDs just because i thought their covers were funny. i can't say that i found any hidden gems that changed my musical landscape, but c'mon. how could i resist an album by a band called "super gooooood!"? maybe there's somebody out there who's immune to band names with six o's in a row and superfluous punctuation, but it's sure not me.

you win again.

i was so proud of myself for staving off desire for the DSi and XL. i thought i had freed myself from the grip of E3 hype. but tempt me with a new paper mario, a new mario kart, star fox 64 and i melt and go along. alright. fine. maybe i do want a 3DS.

and i can't wait for the scott pilgrim game. but that's only natural.

you say it's a good thing that you float in the air
that way there's no way i will crush your pretty toenails into a thousand pieces

things i wish i was good at

Ninjas from Erik Otto on Vimeo.

i feel like flatland is one of those things that's amazing no matter how much you understand it. that might be a pretty big assumption, though, 'cause i probably don't understand it. it sure is pretty, though.

sometimes i wish that i had studied computer programming, at least a little bit. when i was a kid, i really wanted to grow up to be a video game designer, and i don't think i ever really grew out of that. having said that, though, i also wish that i took classes in engineering, english, music, and a bunch of other stuff, and i'm really glad for (almost) all of the design classes i took, so i think that maybe i want to know how to do everything in the world. ohhhh, and that's alright with me. whoa-oh-oh-oh thunder road.

learning to play the piano is pretty tough but pretty cool. maybe someday i'll be able to do it with both hands at once.

i am ready for a groovy sea space journey

sometimes i feel like i'm getting taller, but i'm pretty sure that i'm not. maybe i just need to stand up more.

slow down, quentin

slow down

if there's a better thing in the world i haven't seen it

we'll call our friends back east collect and read the weather pages 'til they all hate us

"california" by frankie big face

took a long time to come

i heard the reason their album is called "odessey and oracle" is because the designers who did the cover couldn't spell "odyssey". that is scary and cringe-inducing, but it's also kind of funny. poor the zombies.

i started to make a list of all the things that i want to do in my life, in hopes of figuring out where i'm going and what i'm doing. i still have no idea, but it was pretty inspirational. i may be a bit overambitious in places ("skateboard on the moon") but i won't have an excuse for being bored ever again.

besides, skateboarding on the moon would be the coolest thing ever.

i'm really stoked on amazon mp3's daily deal thing, it's shown me a ton of stuff i would otherwise have missed entirely. one of those things is the avett brothers; one of their albums was $3 and i liked the sound of the first track, so i figured "why not" and then i ended up loving it and buying like 3 more. they've got a good sound and some really diverse songwriting – you can really hear a lot of different influences from song-to-song, but they all blend together really well.

their studio stuff is sweet, but i'm gonna just go ahead and post this tour bus video because it's super fun. i like it when the people i want to listen to seem like people i'd like to hang out with.



also, i think this video is my new favorite thing in the world.

it was almost invisible

the place we ate at tonight had "caribbean pizza". apparently, a caribbean pizza has bacon (uh-huh), pineapple (mm-hmm), and... banana? whaaaa?! it was weird! i don't think i would ever order it again but i'm glad i tried it. i really like trying weird pizzas, actually. i kind of want to travel the world and eat strange pizzas.

sometimes i think i prefer things that are weird and dumb to things that i know will be good.

cricket is a bizarre sport that i can't even begin to figure out. it's like baseball if it was played by wizards who were trying to keep secrets. i feel like that's part of the appeal! i hope nobody ever explains how it actually works or all the beauty will get sucked right out of it.

i think if you want to be a good photographer, you need to have a good eye and a loose idea of how the equipment works, and then you just have to focus really hard and think a lot about what you're doing and just keep focusing and thinking. i don't think i have the sharpness for it. i really respect those that do.

the world is really pretty and really sad and really hopeful and really good and really bad. as best i can tell. i don't really feel qualified to talk about it beyond that.



i can listen to "doolittle" like three times in a row.

a radio play just for two

there's this thing called Under the Influence where the record label Vinyl Collective gets a bunch of bands they like to do a cover of a song that was really influential to them. it's a pretty sweet idea, and they make a really neat package out of it. nice cover art and a short essay from each band about why they like the original song, and usually on transparent vinyl (i like transparent vinyl!). in all of the ones i've heard so far i kind of prefer the original, but it still feels really cool to know that the bands i like like the other bands i like. and the original "two-headed boy" is one of my favorite songs ever, so i don't think it would be 100% fair for me to expect a cover to replace it.

ran me off the road

i always thought i didn't like the strokes because the only thing i ever heard was "last nite". turns out that that's, like, the only song i'm not into.



and i'm pretty sure i have a little bit of a crush on julian casablancas in this video. but hey! that's okay, right? right? right.

you're not to blame

"walk away renée" has one of my favorite hooks ever. i don't think i've ever heard a good straight cover of it (tough to capture the teenage ache and harpsichord combo!), but i really, really like billy bragg's version of it. both the spoken word piece and the guitar piece (i think it's played by johnny marr) are pretty brilliant on their own, but together it's amazing.

if you shake your heart enough

i think it would be pretty cool to make mixtapes for my friends featuring only songs that reminded me of them. or a mixtape of music that reminded me of a year. that would probably be a neat way to encapsulate the college experience.

"encapsulate" is a silly word.

this song wouldn't be on anybody's mixtape, but it's about as good an example of wistful summery pop as you could find. it's interesting how the video wasn't ever intended to be with the song, because they complement each other so well. or maybe i just like the gonz!

remember everything

the later you stay up, the more important things seem. when i was really into doug cheatwood's music, he was as old as i am now. that doesn't mean anything! right? maybe it means that i should drive to roanoke and see a show after six years of listening to him.

i probably should've gone to see titus andronicus in chicago. it's probably for the best that i didn't go to see them in indianapolis, though. columbus could have gone either way, i guess. cities cities cities cities. it's just sad to miss a band three times in a row. i'm missing weezer in maryland because i'm graduating or something! maybe next time.

cleaning out my desk at the design building was weird. i found my SX70 again, and it was, like, one of those coincidences that would make you roll your eyes if it happened in a movie. "oh! bittersweet nostalgia. this is a good time for the protagonist to find some outdated camera equipment that can represent memories, or something." whatever, cynical post-modernism! get off my back. i know that i'll be glad to have those pictures down the line.

everybody assumes they're the protagonist. see what i mean? that seems really significant to me right now, and it's like the dumbest thing ever.



sometimes i think this is the most beautiful song ever written

hermeto pascoal is my new hero

so amazing

i wish every night was arts and crafts night

the day that you moved in
we'd carry your records in
build a milkcrate fort
lay inside side-by-side
play either/or side-to-side
side-by-side and side-to-side
and back-to-back-to-back

all my friends are made of paper

i made a lot of paper people for my senior gallery. it was a lot of fun, actually. i basically want to play with toys forever.





more pictures here~

the look on your face yanks my neck on the chain

and i would do anything

i got a map and i know where i'm headed

i don't want to say that "listen close" by add music is my favorite song ever, but it's in the top 5.

dorothy parker

i think i have a crush on you
and you were born in 1893
i think i'm probably a weirdo
but you wrote so well

the colors red and blue

jose gonzalez did a cover of the knife's "heartbeats" that i think is pretty sweet. the original is great in a beepy-boopy kind of way, but sometimes you just want boy & guitar. and sometimes you want freaky primitive epcot noises, so you watch the live version.

so i'm pretty into this song right now!

sunshine and bicycles and friends and free pizza forever

titus andronicus

i have only had this album for three days and it has already been very good to me



it would be pretty cool to go teach english somewhere. wonder how i hook that up.

i am terrified of graduating

i know the sixties weren't actually like this

but what if they were



i would just be down at the beach every day

shakin' that thing

bein' a square

engineers in canada wear iron rings to remind them of their accomplishment of becoming an engineer and their responsibility to design well.

that's so cool.

the finalists for the independent games festival got announced (and written up on boingboing). every time this happens and i see games like continuity and limbo and stuff, i wonder if i should have tried to go to a school where i could study game design. of course, it's never too late, but considering i know next to nothing about programming and i'm about to graduate, maybe it is. hm.

i wish i played outside more as a kid.

seein' stars

brad mehldau covering elliott smith's "bottle up and explode!". i like his original stuff, but i think i prefer watching him go nuts on other peoples' songs i already love. like "things behind the sun" by nick drake. that one's good, too.

the fantastic mr. fox

dear wes anderson,
i like your movies a whole lot.
i'm sorry i still haven't watched "the royal tenenbaums".
love,
drew

even saw the lights on the goodyear blimp

this morning i saw pictures and a video of some of my friends doing my yo-yo trick on another continent.

this afternoon i went to get some art supplies, and when i came back i saw that the mega man 10 production team saw my papercraft and liked it enough to build it.

this evening, my 5:00-7:30 class was canceled, so i took a nap and ate some fried chicken with two good friends.

and tonight, i hit the first 360 flip of my life.

oh man sometimes my life is so awesome

sheep man

so, capcom is having a contest for mega man 10. i pretty much love mega man, so I made this papercraft:



i feel sort of weird entering a fan art contest, and even weirder asking people to vote for me, but i don't think anyone actually reads this blog so it's not a huge deal. if anybody wanted to vote for me i would seriously appreciate it.

oh yeah, and if you wanna build your own, you can do that here. i didn't really get a chance to make instructions, but i am pretty proud of it.



thank youuuu~

a shine to it

i am in love with Nobumasa Takahashi's aesthetic. i really want to get on that level.



so beautiful.

been listening to A Record by Laura Stevenson a lot lately. it seems very dangerous to make something so pretty and then just let it out into the world.

this is the first thing i did with oil paints. painting is really, really hard. i have so much respect for people who are good at it. that portrait of berthe morisot that manet did blows my mind.



i totally understand why people hate this kind of music, but this song made my day/week/life. it made me want to run around and jump off of things while yelling my head off. but in a good way!

also, this girl basically stole my heart clean out of my chest.

what a guy.

it seems unfair that chet baker should be so good on the trumpet and have such a pretty voice. if only he had two mouths. and it wasn't terrifying. somehow.

intentionality/sincerity

i'm almost positive that i would love "500 Days of Summer", but i haven't watched it yet, because i'm worried that it'll make me think.

i do this kind of stuff all the time.

terrible habit.

our nation turns its lonely eyes to you

i always thought that was just the coolest lyric ever.

i wanna start a comic club.