kman3115

2016, Music, punk, Punk Rock

My Favorite Records of 2016: Part Two

Yesterday, I posted a list of records from 2015 that I listened to heavily in 2016. The next two installments of my favorite records of 2016 will exclusively focus on this year and the amazing music that was released this year in the punk/indie/rock world. I listened to 40 records pretty regularly at various points throughout the year. Part two of this list will be a list of 30 records that were great but didn’t make the top 10. 2016 was an incredible year for music and it was hard leaving some of these records off the top 10.

American Football: LP2
Bayside: Vacancy
Bouncing Souls: Simplicity
Brian Fallon: Painkillers
Caskitt Old Fires, New Frontiers
Ceres: Drag It Down On You
Chris Farren: Can’t Die
Daughter: Not to Disappear
Diarrhea Planet: Turn to Gold
Face to Face: Protection
Gates: Parallel Lives
Grayscale: What We’re Missing
Holy Pinto: Congratulations
Hurry: Guided Meditation
Joe McMahon: Another Life
Modern Baseball: Holy Ghost
Mom Jeans: Best Buds
Moose Blood: Blush
Pinegrove: Cardinal
Pkew Pkew: Pkew Pkew Pkew
Ray Rocket: Do You Wanna Go to Tijuana
Shit Present (two e.p.s)
Signals Midwest: At This Age
Slingshot Dakota: Paycheck
Tiger Army: V
Tiny Moving Parts: Celebrate
Touche Amore: Stage Four
Trash Boat: Nothing I WriteYou Can Change What You’ve Been Through
Two Houses: I Feel So Goad I Can’t Stand Myself
Volbeat: Seal the Deal and Let’s Boogie

2015, 2016, Music, punk, Punk Rock, Uncategorized

My Favorite Records of 2016: Part One

Last week, I posted a quick recap of 2016 from a personal and professional standpoint with an emphasis on how music was a big part of the personal growth I went through this year. I also teased that I would be posting a list of my 10 favorite records this year with a summary describing each record. What I failed to realize that I listened to so much music in 2016 that it was hard to narrow my list down to just 10. While compiling this list, I decided to break it down into three categories so there will be three posts for each category.

This post is the first category: My favorite records released in 2015 that I either didn’t really get into until this year or records that came out at the tail end of last year that didn’t hit with me until 2016. There were a few records released last year that I just missed the boat on or didn’t know about until well into 2016. These records were huge for me this year in addition to all the new music released this year that I listened to.

Here is a list of records from 2015 that I loved and listened to a lot in 2016 (in Alphabetical Order):
The All Brights: …Are Wild for the Night

Bully: Feels Like

Burn Rebuild: Losing Grip

The Cardboard Swords: The Cardboard Swords

Daisyhead: The Smallest Light

FIDLAR: Too

Julien Baker: Sp rained Ankle

Spanish Love Songs: Giant Sings the Blues

Sports: All of Something

Turnspit: I Wonder If They’re Happy

We Were Sharks: Not A Chance

Wolf Alice: My Love is Cool

2016, facebook, Uncategorized

Social Media: A Double Edged Sword

I have been fascinated with the social media phenomenon and the rise in social media use in our daily lives for as long as I can remember. This fascination with how much we use social media exists because I’m old enough (early 30’s) to remember a time where social media didn’t exist and we had to rely on face to face and telecommunication in order to interact with people. My childhood up until age 11 exclusively involved face to face communication or talking to friends over the phone. I vividly remember being in elementary school spending many hours with friends prank calling various other friends and business owners (we were kids okay). Sure we had computers when I was a kid but they were almost exclusively used for playing games like the Oregon Trail and Solitaire instead of using them for any social purpose. This was as far as we got with technology in the early 90’s.

Then the summer before the beginning of middle school happened and the world wide web, Windows 95 and AOL were introduced to the masses: And. That. Changed. Everything.

I still remember logging on to AOL right before the start of 6th grade and I remember hearing that awful login sound that defined the next seven years of my life. A whole new world opened up for me. Now I could talk to friends on the computer and “instant message them.” Sure the connection was slower than you can imagine (56 K!), you could only use the service with a landline phone and websites were very limited but it was still a whole new world and for a kid just starting his formative years, that was everything.

I thought it was so neat that I could talk to my friends on the computer in addition to calling them. Little did I know that I would eventually be able to meet people from all over the world through AOL’s chat rooms. My middle and high school years were defined by going on AOL (and dealing with the awful login sound and the slow internet connection) and talking to random people from all over the world. I often found myself in the Blink-182 chat room talking to various teenagers from all over the country. Looking back on this now, I have no clue if some of the kids I ended up talking to were actually my own age. The internet was still under a cloud of anonymity back then. You really had no way of knowing if you were talking to a 50 year old pedophile or a cute 16 year old girl. I just loved this new form of technology because it easily allowed me to meet kids with similar music tastes and other similar interests. I got into so many bands based on the friendships I formed during the AOL days.My exposure to the internet during my adolescent days is something I’ll always cherish for the reasons I mentioned above.That brings me to the present: 2016.

Social media and the digital world have taken off so much in the past 20 years that it’s hard to picture that there was a time when you had to deal with an awful screeching noise to access the internet. Most people have access to the internet at edge of their fingertips. You can easily access any website you want through a smartphone, a laptop or a tablet/I-Pad. The advancements in social media have also seen a similar rise over the past 20 years. Sites and apps like Facebook, Tumblr, Snapchat, Skype, Instagram and Twitter make it so easy to connect with people all over the world. It’s surreal to me how far we’ve come in the past 20 years. I love the influence social media has had on my life. Without the influence of social media in my life, this blog would not exist and I wouldn’t be able to connect to a good percentage of my current group of friends without Facebook. I also wouldn’t have discovered the amazing and incredible medium of Snapchat and gained a small following because of the content I post on Snapchat. This modern age of social media is incredible. Therein lies the problem with social media though: Even though it’s a great tool for connecting with friends you don’t get to see every day, we’re losing a lot of the face to face and personal communication skills because we’re always on social media.

Since it has become more prevalent, social media has made people have a tendency to want to interact with people online rather than in person because it has made the process simpler.The number of face-to-face interactions is not the only thing that has been negatively impacted. The quality of these decreasing interactions are suffering as well. People are not having these intimate conversations and personal interactions with each other anymore. People, instead, have turned to the Internet to take away some of the nervousness that some may find in trying to start a relationship with another person.

As someone who suffers from social anxiety, I’m pretty guilty of using social media as a crutch and I’m constantly on my phone texting someone or checking Facebook and/or Instagram when I’m feeling nervous in a social situation. I’m also the type of person that craves intimate conversations with people and so in a sense, constantly being on social media is not a good thing for me. Lately, I’ve been trying to decrease my time using my four preferred social networks (Facebook, Tumblr, Snapchat and Instagram) but I’ve found it very difficult because of the convenience factor. One helpful thing I have been doing for a couple of years now is just taking two hours out of my day to cut myself off of any digital communication and social media and do activities not involving social media. These activities usually involve exercising, taking a walk, catching up on Netflix shows or reading a book. Doing this helps clear my mind and gets me refocused after being behind a screen for most of the day.

I also marvel at those friends in my life whose lives are not dominated by social media. I know a handful of friends that rarely post any content on social media and usually only post information about important life events. Most of these friends are busy living their lives mostly free of being stuck on a phone or a computer and these friends are what I eventually strive to be.

While social media is great, take some time to communicate with your friends in person. Say hi to someone you’ve never met. Put your phone away at a large social gathering and talk to people. Sometimes these things might be difficult to do in this digital age (especially for those of you with social anxiety like myself) but you’ll be a better person for having more authentic conversations instead of constantly being on your phone or on social media.

2016, 2017, Music, punk, Punk Rock, spotify, Uncategorized

Big Things Are on the Horizon For Me in 2017…A Teaser For My Favorite Albums of 2016

2016 has been a positive and inspiring year from a personal and professional standpoint. I found myself trying new things while meeting new people personally and pursuing new endeavors professionally, both of which took me out of my comfort zone and made me a better human being. 2017 is going to be another year where I take even more steps on both fronts to be the person I know I’m capable of being. The one constant through all of these life experiences this year, however, has been music. Music, specifically rock, punk and indie music, have always been my go-to through the good and the bad times and 2016 was no exception.

I listened to more music in 2016 than I have any year before and I ended up falling in love with so many varied bands and artists. I will eventually compile a list of my 10 favorite records of 2016 and write a brief summary of why each specific record made my list which will be posted on here.

In the meantime, I compiled a Spotify playlist of two songs from all of my favorite albums released this year. It amazes me that 40 albums (a total of 80 songs) ended up being on this playlist. The albums that made the playlist are a perfect combination of new material from some of my long-time favorite bands along with many albums from bands I never heard before this year. Click the link and take a listen to some of my favorite songs released this year and stay tuned for a detailed list of my top-1o favorite albums released this year.

Kiran’s Favorite Albums of 2016 Playlist

growing up, Traveling

Stuck in Two Different Countries With a Burst Appendix

“This pain is unbearable. I feel like little monsters are stabbing the right side of my stomach and there’s nothing I can do about it!!!!”

This thought ran through my mind as I tried to fall asleep in a tiny single-sized bed in a Japanese hotel room before the 11-hour flight back to O’Hare the next morning. The unbearable pain felt like Gollum from Lord of the Rings had infiltrated the right side of my stomach while repeatedly yelling “I’ve got you now my precious!!!” How on earth did I end up in this predicament? How did this crippling pain take hold of the right side of my stomach and latch on to me until I was on the last legs of life? Well, this whole story started 3,305 miles away in the tiny pacific island nation of Singapore.

From the time I was 13 until I graduated high school, my mom traveled five-six months out of the year for work. Her job as a computer engineer would land her in exotic and interesting cities and countries such as Dusseldorf (Germany), Hong Kong, Macau and India. I specifically remember spending months during the summer of 1998 (age 14) traveling with my mom all over India while she worked as a computer engineer. I spent most of my time that summer between Bangalore with the rest of my family and Hyderabad where my mom was working at the time. I have very fond memories from that summer, and I’m thankful I got to see a big part of another country very different from where I grew up at such a young age. That brings me to the following summer when I ended up in Singapore because of my mom’s job.

I spent three weeks in Singapore during that summer, and I had an amazing time there. I still have vivid memories of exploring Sentosa Island, looking like a fool while attempting to play Dance Dance Revolution for the first time and taking in all the sights and sounds from this tiny island nation. It wasn’t until the end of the trip when Gollum decided to explode inside the lower right side of my stomach causing a turn of events that would create one of the most memorable experiences of my entire life.

It was the last night of my trip and I was bracing myself for a 3 a.m. seven-hour flight from Singapore to Tokyo’s Narita International Airport in a few hours with a one-day layover in Tokyo followed by an 11-hour flight from Tokyo to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. I decided to unwind by watching TV for a few hours before I had to head to the airport for the long flight. Everything was fine and dandy at first. I ended up watching a thrilling baseball game featuring the Ken Griffey and Alex Rodriguez-led Seattle Mariners. At some point while watching the game, I heard a pop in the right side of my stomach.

“Hmm… It must have been the noodles I had for dinner. I better go to the bathroom and take care of my business now so I’m not shitting bricks at the airport.”

I thought the pop was no big deal. It wasn’t until a few hours later when I was at the airport and Gollum started his wailing that I knew something was seriously wrong. I vividly remember being in the security line at Singapore Changi Airport and not being able to walk because the pain was so bad. I really believe Gollum was trying to take over my soul through my stomach because he somehow thought I had possession of his precious ring. This excruciating pain I was going through put me in a dilemma. Do I postpone my flight back home, go to a hospital in an unfamiliar foreign country or do I suck it up and wait until I was back in the United States 36 hours later to see a doctor?

Common sense says I should’ve immediately gone to a doctor in Singapore but at 15, common sense was something I sorely lacked. Plus, the very idea of going to a hospital and possibly getting surgery (and all the repercussions that would come from said-surgery) in a country I had only spent three weeks in terrified me so I eventually made the tough decision to limp through that security line and board my flight to Tokyo.

That first flight was excruciating in every sense imaginable. I couldn’t sleep the entire flight and the horribly dubbed Kung-Fu movie I was watching couldn’t even lift my spirits up. If you know anything about me, you should know that I love horribly dubbed Kung-Fu movies. The flight was indeed that bad. I somehow made it to Tokyo in one piece and this is where things get even weirder. Wait, there’s something weirder than having Gollum take hold in your stomach and yell “I’m coming for you my precious!” while you travel between two foreign countries? Oh, things get even stranger from here.

After landing at Narita and limping through customs, I decided to sit down on one of the numbered luggage carousels while I waited for my suitcase to arrive. I was in excruciating pain at this point which caused me to have trouble breathing. How I was still alive at this point is something I ask myself to this day as a 30-something adult. After catching my breath and resting for 10 minutes, I feel something poking my back (which was just great for the pain I was in). I turn around to see a very angry airport security officer staring at me with an angry look in his eyes.

“Why you sit here! This no place for sitting! You get up from here now!”

If only this lovely man knew the pain I was going through, maybe his tune would change? Yeah, I didn’t think so either so I reluctantly got up without questioning him and waited for my suitcase to arrive. With my suitcase in tow, I eagerly anticipated reaching my hotel as quickly as possible and hoped I could sleep at least for a few hours as I was on zero sleep from the flight. Instead, I got swarmed by 40-50 Japanese girls running after an international pop star. It makes perfect sense that something like this would happen to me at this point.

“AHHHH! RICKY MARTIN IS IN THIS AIRPORT!!!”
“WE NEED TO FIND HIM!!!”
(One girl sees Ricky)
“THERE HE HIS!!! TIME TO MOB HIM!”

I knew Ricky Martin and his hit song “Livin’ la Vida Loca” were a huge hit in the United States in the late 90’s, but I soon found out that this Latin popstar was huge in Japan. To this day I’ve never seen anything like that scene I saw at Narita Airport in July of 1999. I also would’ve loved to have braved the swarm of Japanese teenage girls and meet him but Gollum had other ideas. I had a good laugh out of the whole thing and made my way to the hotel room where I planned to spend the rest of the night sleeping and maybe even watching and enjoying a horribly dubbed Kung-Fu movie on TV this time around.

Attempting to sleep didn’t work out for me all that well during my one-night stay in Tokyo. I spent the entire night tossing and turning, throwing up in the bathroom and yelling: “I must really be dying! I had a nice life. Goodbye!” Shit, I must have done something to Gollum’s parents or someone else in his family for him to be this angry with me. By this point, I had figured there was something seriously wrong with my appendix since the pain was in the bottom right side of my stomach conveniently where the appendix was located. Unfortunately, smartphones didn’t exist in 1999 and I didn’t have access to a computer so I couldn’t have gone to WebMD to confirm that I was indeed dying or at least suffering from appendicitis in a foreign country. After another excruciating night, I somehow braved Gollum’s deathly embrace and made it back to Narita for what I’m sure would be a “fantastic” 11-hour flight back home. By this point I felt like Mr. Wilson of Dennis the Menace fame. Even the slightest interaction with another human was sure to set me off. I’m pretty sure I gave the flight attendants menacing looks every time they offered me food or a drink during the flight. I know they were only trying to do their jobs, but I was on the verge of death by this point. As luck would have it, I ended up sitting next to a very attractive female around the same age as me during the flight back to Chicago. Under normal circumstances, meaning if I wasn’t on the verge of dying, I would’ve been extremely happy at this development because this scene was straight out of a romantic comedy.

Average guy takes flight home
Guy happens to sit next to a really cute girl
Cute girl and guy hit it off
Guy finds out cute girl lives in the same area
Guy and cute girl hang out all the time
Guy and cute girl fall in love and go through the highs and lows of a teenage relationship
Cute girl and guy break up
Cute girl and guy get back together after a big dramatic scene
Cute girl and guy live happily ever after.

Did I just describe a romantic comedy or an episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation? Regardless of how awesome this scenario would’ve been; I was in no mood to talk to anyone let alone a really cute girl. The whole situation was really unfortunate because this girl happened to be extremely sweet. I remember her asking me a lot of questions about my life, what I was doing in Japan and if I enjoyed my time there. At one point she even asked me to go to the bathroom with her to have what I’m assuming would’ve been uncomfortable but amazing sex in the tiny airplane bathroom.

I was cursing Gollum so much in my head at this point. A cute girl wanted to tickle my pickle 30,000 feet in the air. I politely declined because I’m pretty sure I would’ve collapsed trying to have any type of sex in my condition. Do you know how memorable that experience would’ve been for me? In fact, if that did end up happening, this story would’ve probably been about the time 15-year-old-me had sex in an airplane bathroom instead of rupturing my appendix (spoiler alert!) in a foreign country. After me and cute girl talked for a little bit, I ended up passing out due to the lack of sleep and overall exhaustion. Hours later, a flight attendant woke me up, mentioned that we were close to landing and that I had fill out a customs form. I had never been more relieved to fill out that form, get off that plane and rush to a hospital so I could figure out why Gollum hated me so much.

After going through the normal airport routine of passing customs and finding my suitcase in the baggage claim area, I saw my dad waiting for me right outside of the International Terminal at O’Hare. I’m pretty sure my mom (who had to stay back in Singapore for work) informed him of the situation so after asking how I was doing; he immediately drove me to the hospital in the suburban town where we lived.

At this point, my breathing was back to normal but my stomach fell completely bloated, and I felt like I was ready to pop ala Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka. After rushing me to the ER, I met with a doctor and after I described everything I had gone through the past two days, he felt my stomach and asked me this question:

“What’s your favorite food?”
“Um, potatoes. I really love potatoes.”
“Well, if I offered you a big bucket of French fries right now. Would you eat the fries?”

My Response:
“I don’t think so. I’m in considerable pain right now.”

What I Really Wanted to Say:
“No, you idiot. I almost died in two foreign countries over the past two days. Of course I don’t want food right now. I just want you to fix this unbearable pain I’m going through right now!”

After I answered all his questions and after he ran some tests, the doctor came back and told me I had a ruptured appendix and said I got to a hospital at just the right time because I would’ve died or gone into a coma if I had waited just another day due to the fluid from my broken appendix spreading throughout my entire body.

I eventually had surgery later that day to clean up my ruptured appendix and I eventually went home after five days of rest post-surgery. I even have a gnarly scar from the whole ordeal that I proudly show to friends after I tell them this story. If anything, I feel very fortunate that I survived the entire ordeal, and I’m still alive to tell this story. I could’ve easily died in Singapore, Japan or in an airplane while traveling back to the states. How many other people do you know can say they ruptured their appendix in a foreign country and traveled in serious pain only to survive? Not many I bet.