Finals, Foo Fighters, and Link's Awakening

Hey everybody.  John here.  Looks like it's my turn to write a blog post again.

As most people are probably aware, right now Vanderbilt is in the middle of exam week.  Because of this, the majority of my time has been spent studying for upcoming exams and working on a take-home for an anthropology class.  For the most part, this has been pretty mind-numbing, but the take-home was interesting because I got to do a paper on moshing from a post-modernist perspective.

Anthropology at its finest

To keep me from going insane while studying, I've found myself listening to a lot of new music.  If you want some thrashy punk/metal to listen to while you stare vacantly at notes you don't even remember writing, check out this band I just discovered called Voivod.

I also have a friend who just recently discovered how insanely good the Foo Fighters are, which inspired me to watch their amazing documentary "Back and Forth" for a second time.  Whether you're already a fan of this band or have never heard their music before, I highly recommend this documentary.  The film offers a great mix of humor, passion, and some really incredible live footage of Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a ton of other great bands.

Also, here's an awesome live version of their song "White Limo."

When I wasn't listening to music, I managed to distract myself by playing an emulated version of the Gameboy color game "The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX."  Originally released on the black and white Gameboy system, this title was later redone in full color for the Gameboy color, adding a few new features like an extra dungeon and new side quests.  This was the third Zelda game, and it introduced a lot of the classic elements of the 2D games like the ability to equip different items for both the A and B buttons and the ability to jump using the Roc's feather.  This game is really strange compared to the other Zelda titles.  It deals a lot with dream imagery, and because of that there are a lot of bizarre elements to the game.

In the other titles, you fight through dungeons to save the princess.
In Link's Awakening, you fight through dungeons to get THIS.

The game also features some surprising cameos from characters outside of the Zelda universe.  Does this look familiar?

Or this?

How about this?

The only time I managed to get away from my computer this weekend was when I went to Clarksville to play a show at the Coup with the bands Guntherdoug and Linear Downfall.  We had a reporter come down that night to take some photos of us for an upcoming article in Clarksville's newspaper the Leaf Chronicle.  This was the 49th Resistance House Band show, which is kind of exciting because our 50th will be at the Coup's insanely big End of the World show.

If you want to know what zombie rock sounds like, there's free music here.

Anyway, that pretty much covers my weekend.  Since we are rapidly approaching winter break, this is going to be our last post of the calendar year.  We'll be resuming our posts whenever everyone gets back on campus.  Hope everyone does well on their finals and has a great break!