...that is, I think its not too bad.

A mid-term took me 22 minutes. Before you ask what the grade was, I haven't gotten it back yet. But do you really think I'd turn that thing in if I thought I just pissed it away?

It was for Psych class. All I have to say is if anyone failed this then they should just pay me the tuition and stop going to classes because its wasting everyone else's fucking time. Remember how I said how the professor only tests the info off of his power point slides, which he hands out every week? Well he also likes to tell you what each and every question on the mid-term will cover. Not only that, he tells them sequentially. I figured that he'd at least mix-up the order, but no. So because of that, I could predict what the next answer was before even reading the question. Half the time the answer would be surrounded with answers that he already said wouldn't be on the test. I fucking love college.







On the T the other night when I was coming home from Kingjames "back to the front front to the back" Bigelow's music class, I saw a few Mormon's doing their thang. I find these people pretty amusing. Sometimes I'll talk to one and sort of lead them on for a bit just to ultimately waste their time. I spent some time in Salt Lake City a couple years back. Shit was crazy out there. I couldn't buy a beer above 3.5% before................

----we interrupt this blog to report that I think I see Pat Sajak sitting next to Michael Madson at the Angel's game-----

.....................8pm one day because I had to "wait for the polls to close". That was state wide. BUT, they have some really good food there.

Anyhow, there were two Mormon's strategically placed at each end of subway car. The Mormon I was sitting in front of was chatting with this guy who strongly resembled a crack-infested Steve Urkel, almost to the point of looking like Flavor Flav, but not THAT bad. I had my headphones on so I have no idea what was actually being said, but Urkel certainly seemed interested. I had my suspicions, though, that Urkel hadn't seen this hustle before, because you should have seen his face when the Mormon handed him a card with Jebus on it. He left on the very next stop. Society 1, Mormons 0.

Next walks on a 20 year old mother and her kid in a stroller. I notice the Mormon starting his hustle again. So I take a look at the mother and assume she's either really really tired, or high as fuck. As she's talking, her eyes only half open with every blink. The Mormon has his work cut out for him.

....well more like he was put to work. The Mormon soon started the talk, but that ended as she was fast asleep moments later. Here's the sad part. Every time the train stopped and started, the stroller would start moving. The first couple times it probably would have went all the way down the car if it wasn't for people stopping it for her. Then she would fall asleep again. What it took was for the Mormon to keep his foot behind one of the wheels until the mother magically awoke and exited the train. Society 2, Mormons 0.





I just want to declare that I didn't watch any live coverage of a big ass balloon. I was probably too busy playing Uncharted 2, the best game I've played in years.






I've been obsessed lately. If it was anything else I'd have to attend a program to make me stop. Thankfully there isn't because what I'm obsessed with is........... The Beatles. As you may or may not know, there are two types of people in the world: Elvis people or Beatles people. No one loves both. I was raised with both to listen to, but my parents only owned the greatest hits albums by Elvis, whereas they had Rubber Soul on vinyl. Later, my mom bought Help!, Sgt. Pepper, and Past Masters vol 2. They may have introduced me to some of Elvis' classics, but I specifically remember my dad turning the speakers up loud as hell just to hear "Revolution" (Past Masters) only to turn to my mom mouthing the words "TURN IT DOWN!". They may have had Elvis movies on from time to time, but it was "Help!" that my mom and I knew most of the lines to. I may recognize Elvis songs when I hear them, but it was at my boy's wedding when I heard "When I'm 64" and I cried because it reminded me of my mother.


In fact, I bet when The Beatles met Elvis, and Elvis said "Hey, I have a great voice", John Lennon probably retorted with something like this:



yeah. fuck Elvis.

So I pretty much knew anything from early Beatles through Rubber Soul. I knew a couple songs from Revolver. I knew 4 songs off of Sgt. Pepper. I had never listened to anything after that, though heard most of the singles on commercials, radio, and covers by bands I liked. I mean, the first time I had EVER heard "Strawberry Fields Forever" was on an in-store sampler while working at Sam Goody.......and it was sung by The Verve Pipe.

this is literally the version I heard:


yeah. it was like that. But now I'm repenting in a BIG way.


My girl's brother purchased the new stereo box set of The Beatles' work. He then did me a huge solid (I'm using that term out of sarcasm because I fucking hate that saying) by burning it all on cd's for me. My life for the last month has been scored by The Beatles in every aspect imaginable. I netflixed the 4 DVD anthology and watched that. George Martin, the producer of most of The Beatles music, wrote a book: I read it. Geoff Emmerick, a sound engineer on Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and Abbey Road, wrote a book: I'm reading it. To summarize, here's what I've discovered.

- track 5 to the end of Magical Mystery Tour is some of the best music I've ever heard in my life.

- everything I love in music, these guys did without thinking about it.

- with the exception of a few songs, their entire catalogue was recorded using 4, or less, track recording. Amazing.

- I had no idea they never toured in the last half of their career.

- I think I'm 55/45 in the Paul/John ratio.

- Sgt. Pepper defines the term "groundbreaking". Pet Sounds can bite it.

- Matt Vogel, you win this round.

Frustration

Yeah so I finished an EP this week that I titled "My Better Half". I'm pretty proud of it and I hope if you get a chance to hear it that you'll find something off of it that you enjoy as well.








The ball is still rolling, but it's awfully difficult to find worthy stories to blog about when it comes to only my experience with college. Particularly when my classes are quite dull at the moment. There may be more times than most where I write a more general blog than one that is full of humor.

So for anyone that really wanted to see how my Lit class has been, here's some behind the scenes footage. Keep in mind that I had to hide the camera very carefully in order to truly capture the essence of the class.



Last Friday's class was seriously out of control. To the point that I almost walked out. I mean, we went over homework for 3 hours. homework? HOMEWORK? I'm supposed to be a franchise student and we are talking about homework? not a test. not a new chapter. but homework.

It really got me thinking about my experience thus far. I'm looking at these kids and wondering how this happened. How did these people learn to be so disrespectful toward everyone around them? I can understand if they don't want to be there, or if they were forced. But they aren't. That's what blows my mind about all of this. They pay 3-4 times as much (I don't have an inkling of an idea how much public school costs) than a high school class and they have to make the effort to actually get to class. Its not like a bus comes and picks them up right in front of their house. So after all of this money and effort, they arrive in class......and do nothing to contribute. That's fine if you want to be the guy in the back who doesn't say anything; on average a class participation grade is usually only 5% of the overall grade. But to come to class and just talk about absolutely NOTHING pertaining to the subject is downright fucking irritating.

Last week, during the first 25 minutes of class, I actually thought it was finally going to be an interesting session. We were actually discussing the stories that we had been reading, which was some thought provoking stuff ("The Lottery" and "A Rose For Emily").

But then 5-6 people walked in. yeah. 25 minutes into class. One girl was 45 minutes late. After that the professor lost all control of the class.

Here's the root of my frustration. When I was 19, living in Illinois, and enrolled to go to UCLA (University Closest to Larkin Avenue) aka Elgin Community College, I wasn't really looking forward to it. I was in great classes in high school with great kids in those classes, but I was on the bottom of the grading curve pretty much all four years of high school. My friends all wore different color sashes and shit at graduation. I was something around number 236 out of some 400 students. At the time I felt that seemed important. So here I was, enrolled for college after my poor mother spent hours upon hours digging up receipts to make a portfolio so I could receive financial aid. This entire time I'm thinking "I'm going to blow my parents money. I'm going to fuck this up and barely even make it out of classes. If I don't give a shit about high school then why would I care about college? Its harder, there's more homework, and the teachers could care less what your homework grade is."

actual high school conversation:

me: "Hey Mr. Wendling! (my math teacher for four years) What's up?"
Mr. Wendling: "Not your homework grade."

yeah that pretty much summed up my accomplishments at 19.

So I decided to go to join the navy.....literally the Friday before the Monday of my first class at UCLA. I never heard if my mom was pissed about that, but I can't imagine she wasn't very happy at the time given that she worked so hard to prove that we needed financial aid. Later my dad told me that she thought I'd never make it through boot camp. He said she figured "if he doesn't even clean his room when I tell him then why would he listen to anyone else." That, my friends is called Smock Logic. My girl, KB, created the term based on things I've said in the past year.

Smock Logic:

KB: "So are you watching Obama's acceptance speech at Grant Park?"
me: "Yup. CNN is claiming there are over a million people there right now. That can't be a million people because I've never seen a million people and that's not a million people."

Anyway.....I joined the military to grow the fuck up. To gain some responsibility for myself. Essentially because I knew I needed guidance and if I put myself in a situation where I HAD to listen and follow orders then I wouldn't fail. All I knew is that I wasn't ready for college yet, and when I would be, college would be free.

So my point is that now I'm ready. I'm excited to learn. I enjoy writing papers now. I enjoy reading things I normally wouldn't pick out for myself. I enjoy learning about classical music, psychology, and how I still can't stand Hemingway, yet I respect him. I actually WANT to learn, but I can't. Because of these damn meddling kids. And there really isn't anything I can do about it.


Sorry for the negative vibe. Here, I'll end on a happy note.