Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good evening, I'm Andrew Valentine and you're listening to off the Couch. Tonight's gonna be solo, not gonna be joined by Connor tonight. And the reasoning for that is our episodes are usually scheduled for Fridays at around 4pm we do our recording and then we upload them by 7pm on Saturday.
[00:00:16] I have to leave early Friday evening and so the 4pm time slot wouldn't work. So I figured while I'm sitting here waiting for my radio show, it's about 7:23 Thursday night.
[00:00:28] I figured I'd make this podcast.
[00:00:31] We're bi weekly.
[00:00:33] We skipped last weekend. It was also hollow weekend. You know, I'm not gonna after classes, I'm not gonna come into the podcast. I got other stuff I got to do and get ready for. But yeah, so the name change is something that I wanted to really just start off with really quickly.
[00:00:51] I know it's called off the Couch now. And the reasoning it's moved from off the Record to off the Couch is because we have a new radio show and that radio show is actually on air right now by a guy named Sam. His radio show is called on the Record and it is a variety music show much similar to mine.
[00:01:10] And that's from 7 to 8pm on Thursdays. So make sure you tune into his show. I believe he's on his second week so far. He's doing a really good job, but that's the reason for the name change. I'm not gonna make him change the name of his radio show. I feel like off the Couch fits my vibe a little more.
[00:01:28] Off the Record was kind of a throwaway name that I was having kind of for filler.
[00:01:33] And we have this name now and the. The logo will be soon updated on, on all streaming platforms and as well as Kastos. So watch out for that soon.
[00:01:42] So today is. It's been cold. It's been really cold.
[00:01:46] I think it's supposed to start snowing around Monday and we're gonna have some really low lows. And I'm really excited for that. And I will say I'm really excited for that because I am a winter guy. And if any of you were in Oswego last year, you will know that it can snow here. We had about, I don't know what is it, a three or four day cancellation of all classes by the. By the college itself, not even by individual professors.
[00:02:17] And that was because of just how bad the snow was. The snow was so unbelievably bad that, you know, parking lots, I don't know how many people had to help dig out of their parking spots? My girlfriend, my buddy Aaron.
[00:02:34] Not a very fun time. But I will say I do miss the snow. The snow. The snow is what honestly makes the campus. Same thing with the lake. And of course that's where we end up getting all that snow from.
[00:02:45] But I believe Monday or late or early next week, we're supposed to see some flurries.
[00:02:53] Very exciting for me. I'm a skier. I've been skiing for nine years and I haven't gone very recently. The last time I went skiing was last year. It was actually my last day of work. So I work at West Tennessee Buildings and Grounds over the summer and the winters. And it.
[00:03:14] I just. I do kind of a lot of maintenance work.
[00:03:19] And my last day for the winter it was a Friday. And I believe it was sometime in February or. No, it would have been late January because it would have been about a week before we had gone back to school for the second semester.
[00:03:37] And so I had gotten out of work at about 3:30. I went and gotten a haircut. And of course in the middle of January it gets dark at. Around, you know, one in the afternoon. And so we had this plan. We're gonna go to. We're gonna go to Labrador Mountain because as it happened, there was a.
[00:03:56] It was like the entire night for 12 hours of skiing.
[00:04:00] Rentals, ski pass and anything else was like $6. It was. It was so cheap. It was unbelievably cheap. It was either like 6 or $12, I don't remember. Or maybe it was 20. I think it was 20. It was. It was some ridiculously low price for a ski lift. And we had gone to Labrador, which is about 20 minutes from song Mountain because they're under the same partnership. And we went there. And by God, I have never seen a more packed ski resort. Maybe Bristol, on like a really nice day. But there were. The lines were intersecting each other. And I stayed in the car and a couple buddy. We had about six people, a couple buddies of mine went inside because they needed rentals. And they said, hey, guys, have any rentals? No, all out. Completely out of everything.
[00:04:50] And so we called Song Mountain.
[00:04:55] Excuse me. And they happened to have about nobody there. It was like no one there.
[00:05:03] And it was our blessing. And of course I was a little more excited to go to lab. I hadn't been there in a while. Song is a little bit of a.
[00:05:15] It's a step down in terms of difficulty. The trails are still really nice and it was a really snowy night. It was cold. It was so cold. And we got there. There had maybe. Maybe 50 people in the lodge, which is not a lot for a ski resort, especially on, like, a Friday night with a deal like that.
[00:05:39] I think everybody had just taken advantage of Labrador and went there instead. But we got food. We got.
[00:05:46] We got a lot of skiing. We had about six hours of skiing.
[00:05:51] It was. It was like. It was from 6 to 12.
[00:05:55] So I only skied until about 1120 because I had gotten so tired, I was so out of it.
[00:06:04] And where I work, I wake up at about 5:30.
[00:06:11] So for me, I had been up from 5:30 in the morning all the way till about 11:30 at that point. And so I tapped out. I was so tired. I was so cold. My head started to hurt. I was done. And it was also the first week that I was able to kind of do things. I'd gotten my wisdom teeth taken out prior, and it was kind of the first time that I was able to go out and kind of, you know, do any kind of straining or anything like that.
[00:06:39] And it was. It ended up being a really fun time because my nerves were put to rest. I was. I was so worried about, you know, dry socket when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I had them out on January 6th, and I was so ungodly worried about getting dry socket.
[00:06:55] And I don't think I ate solid food for about two weeks, maybe a week and a half. Then. Even on that, you know, half of that week, I ate, like, ravioli and macaroni that I, you know, still was so nervous about eating.
[00:07:10] And then I think by that point, I was a lot more comfortable. And so it got to the point at the night where buddies of mine, they wanted to keep skiing because this is. This is like the millionth time they had gone in the season. I couldn't go because I was busy with work. I went and visited my girlfriend one of the weekends. And honestly, you know, I didn't have a lot of time.
[00:07:35] But it was beautiful, beautiful night. I took some great pictures. I was very warm, too. We had gone to Dick's, and we had got. I spent about $80.
[00:07:47] I had a gift card. Spent about $80 on a very nice pair of insulated gloves. Cause that was always my issue. I'd go on the mountain. Everything else would be nice. I'd have my snow pants. I'd have my nice winter coat and windbreaker.
[00:08:00] My hands would be, you know, two minutes away from frostbite. And that was because I had gloves that I didn't know, had holes in them. And they were really old gloves, too. I think I'd borrowed them from my dad or something like that.
[00:08:11] And I just. I remember, you know, being, wow, my hands are sweating. I remember thinking to myself, I have to take my gloves off.
[00:08:20] My hands are sweating so bad. But honest, I didn't end up having to, you know, go back into the lodge, warm up my hands by the fire like I've had to previous times. But it was a good night, and I'm really excited to go back skiing. And with this winter weather coming up, I'm hoping over this break, because I don't really know what I'm gonna do, if I'm gonna go back to work or if I'm gonna try and go for an internship. I've been talking to a lot of people. I've. I've been put in contact with a guy from wsyr. I've been given his information.
[00:08:49] And.
[00:08:51] And this was through an alumni day that we had last weekend, last Saturday, I believe it was last Saturday.
[00:08:58] And we had a lot of alumni come in. They would pay for, like, different slots on the radio. We had that going on. We had. It was. It was really the opening of the new Hewitt building. That's what it was marketed as.
[00:09:10] All of this. All of the facilities, like the podcasting room, all of the other, like, film studios and new studios because they previously weren't available to students before, and now they are. And so that was kind of like the grand opening because the building was already open, but I'd say it was the grand opening of the facilities.
[00:09:25] My job during that day, I was in the podcasting room with my good friend Raina, who is our productions director here at wnyl. And her and I had just. We had guests come in. We had a four, A four mic setup.
[00:09:43] And so we would have two people at a time come in and out. And we had some great conversations. We had a couple of alumni come in. We had some professors come in, some students come in.
[00:09:53] I posted it a little while ago on my Instagram, thinking of posting it on my LinkedIn or YouTube page somewhere.
[00:09:59] But we made, like, a lot of money from that event, all in the alumni fund, over a grand, I believe.
[00:10:05] And that is really huge for us.
[00:10:09] You know, we really got on the radar with that alum. I talked to a lot of alumni. They were really happy that we were kind of continuing their. Their journey with what they started.
[00:10:21] And it was. It was a really nice thing to see, you know, coming full circle for A lot of people. Because for a lot of these guys, Hewitt was the location of the radio station. Right now it's in Murano. It used to be in the basement of Hewitt, and we have a lot of old photos from that old studio. And of course, once MCC was renovated and it became the new campus center, because it originally was Poucher Hall.
[00:10:48] I believe it was. I believe it was Poucher was the whole thing, if I'm not incorrect. And they still have Poucher hall in mcc, but now it's the far side that's closest to Shinnamon, like, with all the. With the language departments, and upstairs, too, with the English department and all that stuff.
[00:11:05] And when that was renovated, all of the people moved over there. All of the. Like, wtop, they have the Al Roker studio.
[00:11:21] What else?
[00:11:22] There's a lot of stuff that moved over there. And then once Hewitt started to become a shell, because everything moved over to mcc, there was nothing left in Hewitt. The bookstore moved out. The bookstore is now in Lanigan.
[00:11:37] I think it would have been cool if they moved it back to Hewitt, but I understand why they, you know, kind of a lot to, you know, move over, but they moved everything.
[00:11:48] And then that kind of set the stage. Well, Hewitt's kind of this building that was. It wasn't rotting, but it was kind of just sitting there without a purpose. I mean, there were. There was. There was stuff to do there, but it was kind of dwindling, you know, in the recent years before it was renovated.
[00:12:03] And it's a really good thing that they did. It's really unfortunate, though, that it took so long, because I remember coming in as a freshman and I remember seeing Hewitt still being constructed, and I was told, hey, it's going to be done by your sophomore fall semester was not done by then. And I think there were a lot of people wondering if it was going to, in fact, be done by this. By this fall semester. And of course, it did happen to be done. It did, but I think there was a lot of doubt. But a lot of that delay was because of COVID because they started it in 2021 and all, and a lot of the money was kind of short, I believe. And it's kind of the same reason that Little Page was never fully renovated or fixed. They had plans to renovate the whole thing, and they ended up doing so with Pathfinder. They ended up renovating the inside.
[00:12:58] And they were supposed to fix a lot of issues with Littlepage, but they ended up not doing that because I believe. I believe their last construction Project on it was supposed to be like 2022 to 2023. It was supposed to be done by my fall semester, my first semester here, but it was not.
[00:13:18] And I think as the result of the whole situation with the Molden Johnson and all of the freshmen being moved mostly to West Campus. I live on West Campus in Onondaga hall. And all of these people are moved in Cayuga and oneida.
[00:13:37] That's like 200 more people moving over here.
[00:13:43] And we have one dining hall.
[00:13:46] And that's bad.
[00:13:48] It gets really bad. It gets. And it's something that they need to start thinking about if they're gonna have this long term. I know just recently they made the decision they're gonna have Fennell as one of the freshmen only dorms. And then they're going to. I think Seneca is going to be the singles only or something like that.
[00:14:06] And it just makes me wonder, you know, if all these pieces are going to fit together well and if they're going to mesh well. I'm really hoping they do. And obviously the best of luck to the school because obviously, I mean it's, it's, it's kind of a bad card all around. Everyone's kind of dealt a bad card and that's just kind of the way it is.
[00:14:25] But moving on from the school stuff, I'm, I'm getting too into it, I guess.
[00:14:32] We were on the topic of concerts last time and because we had just had our fall concert and that was our first fall concert and so we're having another one and it's November 15th. It's, it's, it's still in the same spot. Laker Lounge and Murano Campus center. Doors open at 6:30, show begins at 7. We're gonna have quantifier Jerry Biggs world famous band in debatably stable. Tickets are $10, they're available at the door. It's cash.
[00:15:02] We're not gonna do online.
[00:15:04] But it was really interesting how this happened.
[00:15:07] My manager, Ben Goldblatt, he was reached out to by these bands. And it's really interesting too. To preface, we were trying to get these bands previously and they were, they were busy, they were booked. And then they reached out to us and initially we had to say no, but then they were willing to work with us.
[00:15:28] And now we have these three big bands who are, I'm very confident will draw in a large audience.
[00:15:36] I'm not saying anything negatively about the previous four bands we had, but in reality these guys have a little more.
[00:15:44] They're a little More known, like, I think quantifiers opening for a lot bigger bands now. And I mean, obviously amazing that they have the opportunity to do that. Wonderful.
[00:15:55] And I'm glad that they. That they were, you know, so adamant on coming here.
[00:15:59] And we are really. We're excited about it. We've made posters, we made flyers.
[00:16:07] We're gonna. I'm. We're gonna really hammer this advertising down in the next couple weeks.
[00:16:14] It's. It's something that is going to put a big mark on wnyo.
[00:16:22] We just. The ability to do these concerts have this kind of notoriety now that we can put this stuff on.
[00:16:33] And it's like, because. Because ultimately we're doing this ourselves.
[00:16:38] We're doing it ourselves. And it's all. It's our planning, it's our money, it's our expertise, and it's our charisma. You know, it's. It's our personality that's. That's drawing these bands in.
[00:16:54] And we're making a good track record, and I think that's really good for us.
[00:16:59] Speaking of concerts, I was gonna go off on a tangent a little bit about some concerts. I mean, last one I saw was Metallica. It's funny enough, I'm wearing a Metallica shirt right now under my suit.
[00:17:12] And I'm wearing a suit right now because tonight on a radio show is jazz night.
[00:17:16] It's jazz, swing and the best. That's what I'm calling it. I was initially just gonna narrow it down to jazz, but. But that was kind of too narrow.
[00:17:24] And I wanted to do swing. I wanted to do a couple other. Because I got Sammy Davis Jr. In there. I've got Seth MacFarlane in there. I've got Dean Martin. And those songs I put in by. Those three aren't necessarily jazz. They're more swing and they're kind of, you know, golden oldie stuff. And I wanted to have that in there, too. I didn't want to narrow it down, but my guests and I. I made the decision that we're all gonna wear suits. We're all gonna wear some kind of nice articles of clothing. Even if people can't see us.
[00:17:52] I want it to be like that. Just for the vibe, just for the. The feeling, you know, I feel like a little more executive. I feel a little more old when I wear a suit. I feel like it matches.
[00:18:06] But Metallica, I think they. They just went to Australia.
[00:18:11] It was funny because for their Halloween, it was. It was. I think it was on Halloween they had a performance. And James, he came out in a couple costumes. One he did like Harvester of Sorrow and like a.
[00:18:22] A kangaroo costume. It was kind of funny.
[00:18:25] I really hope they come back to Syracuse in my lifetime. Obviously, they're 60s now, and. And that time. That time, excuse me, is dwindling. You know, that time for concert going, it's gonna kind of shrink. I mean, I know they've said that they kind of want to, you know, run it until they can't, you know, you know, sing till they drop.
[00:18:52] And part of me wants them to, part of me doesn't. Only because obviously touring takes a toll on artists, and especially if they plan on having another album afterwards. I think they are, but especially if they plan on having any subsequent albums, then they gotta stay healthy. You know, James's voice, I think when he. When he takes time off of touring, I think that's kind of Metallica's huge thing is they tour a little too much.
[00:19:15] I think they haven't really. They haven't had a break in three years. They've been touring since 23, and they were touring prior to that. In 2022, I think the 2022 one, a lot of that was making up hype for the new album, but a lot of that was just kind of performing. They had some stuff in 22. They had a bunch of stuff in 21, I think in 21, in December, they had, like. Was it the 40th? They had some. Some anniversary, and they played a lot of songs I don't usually play.
[00:19:45] They didn't do a lot in 2020.
[00:19:47] And I think that was also when James had just gotten out of rehab, because after S M2, he had gone to rehab again. He was. He was. He was drinking and he. It was showing that he wasn't really doing the best. So we went to rehab and he was back after a while, and in 2020. And I think that rehab, it kind of. It saved his voice. And I think not touring, kind of being inside, it really saved his voice. I think he is an old dude and he's got to save that.
[00:20:22] That's just my opinion.
[00:20:25] But let's see. November 6th, that's what today is. We got about, I don't know, five shows until the end of the semester.
[00:20:38] And I know. So tonight's Jazz, and I guess I will reveal my last show.
[00:20:48] It will be a two hour segment of. It'll be called Guy Under a Tree. It's my Christmas special, if that doesn't make it apparent enough.
[00:20:57] And it's gonna be about two hours during finals week. I'll most likely do it on Thursday if I don't have a final, you know, at 9:30 the following morning. I would hope not.
[00:21:12] Really hope not.
[00:21:16] And we're also gonna do what's called Holiday Thon. We're going to have it kind of like Radio Thon and Vinyl Thon, which I do plan to be involved in both of those next semester.
[00:21:28] I was involved in Radio Thon last semester, Logan and I. The way we did it is we always like three. His was three to. No, his was four to five or it was something like that.
[00:21:46] It was like his, I think his was four to five and mine was five to six.
[00:21:52] It was two one hour slots and so I was a guest on his slot and then he was a guest on my slot. Because when it's about 4, 4 in the morning it gets lonely. You know, not everybody wants to be sitting in a studio by themselves. I know I don't. I like, you know, I like having people there especially during my radio shows and I'm live. I like having the banter to go off of. You know, it's a little different when I'm podcasting because I can just kind of talk about whatever.
[00:22:20] I, I have some things written down but a lot of this is just coming off of my brain.
[00:22:27] But we're gonna have, we're gonna have a Holiday Thon and that's going to be most likely the last week of classes. It'll probably be like the Friday and the Saturday. It's going to be the same, you know, 24 hours. We're gonna have the, one of the, one of the last hockey games along with that, with like the teddy bear toss and, and that's, I'm gonna talk to Derek. We're gonna have some cool, you know, interaction with, with, with the hockey game and stuff like that. And it'll, it'll, it'll ultimately it'll be really cool. Ultimately really cool. We'll hopefully set this as a stage. We're going to try and do it every year.
[00:22:59] I have what, two more Christmases left here so hopefully we'll, we'll have this done next year too is what my, that's what my hope is.
[00:23:08] And I think the goal, what we want for Holiday Thon is it's not a Christmas Thon. There are so many holidays in December.
[00:23:17] Even that leak into November and January a little bit this Chinese New Year. There's Christmas, there's pagan holidays, there's Hanukkah, there's, there's, there's so Many.
[00:23:25] And it makes me wonder, like, I really want to have, like, a good amount of people, but it makes me wonder.
[00:23:41] It's. It's kind of getting into the last week of classes. It's, you know, Christmas time, your holiday time. People are going home. So I'm hoping we'll have a good turnout.
[00:23:51] Sorry if I was becoming a little spotty there with my talking. My buddy Joe had sent me something.
[00:23:57] I wanted to make sure it wasn't something too important, because he never usually texts me anyway.
[00:24:05] Yeah. So Holiday Thon could be a big hit. Hoping it is. We'll see what happens.
[00:24:09] Halloween was pretty fun.
[00:24:12] That was last weekend.
[00:24:14] And.
[00:24:16] Yeah, so.
[00:24:19] So, yeah, correct. Correction. The alumni event was two weekends ago, and Halloween was last weekend. So I was.
[00:24:29] I was a farmer. I was a gardener and a flower with my girlfriend Jenna. And then that was the night one, and then night two. I was Dr. House from the show. House MD. I'm actually wearing the same suit that I wore. I washed it. Don't worry.
[00:24:45] I had a cane that I borrowed. And I.
[00:24:51] What else? I had my buddy Nolan. I was trying to convince him to do this last year, but he didn't want to do it. We went and we went as House in Wilson.
[00:25:01] So in the show, if you're not familiar, House is kind of. It's a parody of.
[00:25:06] Not necessarily a parody, but it's like. It's a spin on, like, Holmes and Watson. House is kind of like a.
[00:25:13] He's a goofy, but kind of an asshole doctor.
[00:25:18] But the caveat to that is he's most of the time always right. He's a genius. And he's most the time always right about what he's diagnosing. And so he's a specialist, and so he gets all of these, like, infectious disease and weird things that they come to him because he's kind of like the last line.
[00:25:40] You know, the other doctors can't figure out what's wrong, so they send him the doctor House. And in the show, Wilson is like his kind of friend. Like, they're good buds. And the play on that they have there is that they're kind of always screwing around with each other.
[00:25:56] You know, one episode they're, you know, being dickish. The other episode, you know, they're. They're good friends, but they have a pretty good dynamic. And so Wilson in the show, he's an oncologist. So he's a. He's a cancer doctor.
[00:26:08] And the.
[00:26:10] Wilson is kind of the.
[00:26:15] If you had to put it in a way, Wilson is the angel on your shoulder, and House is the devil on your shoulder. If the devil, you know, had a cane and. And he had, like, a Vicodin addiction in the show for a majority of the seasons, actually.
[00:26:28] And so we ended up doing that.
[00:26:30] It was a good time. It was a good costume.
[00:26:32] I didn't really spend a lot of money in Halloween this year, which I'm very thankful for.
[00:26:38] You know, last year, I kind of went overboard. I. I was. I was. I was James Hetfield last year for one of the nights. And then my girlfriend and I, we did Remy and Linguini from the movie Ratatouille. And for that, I had to buy a whole chef's outfit. So that was kind of expensive.
[00:26:56] And I also bought a wig and all this other stuff for the James Hetfield costume. But most of the stuff I already had, thankfully. I think I had to buy, like, arm bands too, but that was, you know, whatever.
[00:27:08] In my other friends, they. What did they go as?
[00:27:13] We didn't do, like, anything. We didn't do any huge group thing, to my knowledge.
[00:27:18] It was kind of like there were a couple duos here and there. Like, Nolan and I had our costume. Jenna and I had our costume. My buddy Aaron had his with his girlfriend. My buddy Sammy, my buddy Evan. Those two had their own stuff.
[00:27:32] And yeah, we didn't really do. Because the year prior, we did.
[00:27:39] Well, I didn't, but a lot of my friends did Mario. They did a bunch of Mario characters. So they had, you know, Mario, Luigi, Waluigi, all that stuff.
[00:27:47] And that was pretty cool.
[00:27:50] But I think last Halloween, in terms of what I did, was probably better.
[00:27:58] I went out a little more. Although I will say last Halloween sucked because I was sick as a dog.
[00:28:06] I had some sort of sinus infection. Would have turned. It turned into a post nasal drip cough. That was just killing me, man. It was bad.
[00:28:15] But I was all good this year, thankfully. No issues there.
[00:28:19] And it was a good time.
[00:28:23] Yeah. Wondering what I'm gonna do next year.
[00:28:26] Hopefully something funny. I don't know. Halloween is like, always. Ever since I was a kid, Halloween has been something I've always loved. It's been my. One of my favorite holidays I've probably ever had.
[00:28:38] Besides Christmas, of course. My least favorite is Easter.
[00:28:41] And that's just.
[00:28:43] It's my least favorite time of year. I think January. Like late January to actually. No, I lied.
[00:28:51] March to April, my least favorite time.
[00:28:57] It's cold, the weather can't decide what it wants to be. It's either raining or it's still snowing, or it's just muddy everywhere.
[00:29:08] And I can't stand it. I genuinely cannot stand it. Because at that point, the snow melts. It's too warm for snow, but it's not warm enough for everything to come back yet.
[00:29:19] Except if you're a wasp. I've seen many wasps in the middle of March, in the middle of April.
[00:29:25] And I'm voice cracking a lot. I'm kind of tired, so forgive me, please.
[00:29:35] And in. The grass is dead.
[00:29:38] It looks like crap. You know, it's like. It's like that really. It's really that. Like that brown green color that no one likes.
[00:29:47] I don't like it. I can't stand it.
[00:29:50] But one thing I will say, St. Patrick's Day is fun.
[00:29:55] It used to be fun because I would. My parents would put around, like, gold coins, like around the lawn or something like that. And I. I mean, of course, I was a lot younger, but this time around, you know, when I'm older, I don't really care for St. Patrick's Day that much. I mean, I'm Irish. I'm very Irish, so I kind of lean into it a little bit.
[00:30:18] But all in all, that kind of. That time of year is not really amazing.
[00:30:22] I mean, May is really where the sun starts to come out more and the vitamin D starts to work its magic.
[00:30:30] Then I start feeling a lot better, you know, May, June, July.
[00:30:34] Great trio of months. You know, it's the end of school, it's the start of summer.
[00:30:38] Beautiful. My birthday's in July, so that's also why I included July in there. August here, nor there. August usually signifies. It's kind of a countdown in September. October, September, October, November and December are probably the best four months out of the whole year.
[00:30:56] September, you're getting back into the swing of things. October, it's Halloween, it's fall.
[00:31:01] November, I mean, November is good if the weather is good. I don't really care for Thanksgiving that much. I like the food. It's not really my favorite holiday. There's a break in there, so I guess I kind of gotta be appreciative. But November, it depends on the weather. Like right now, it's November 6th, we haven't gotten snow yet. We're about to.
[00:31:23] And it's very windy. I'd say this is a good November. So far. It's been rainy. I think this whole month has been rain. So far it's only six days in.
[00:31:35] But that means with that precipitation, gonna get a lot of snow. And that's What I'm excited for in December, obviously. What's not to love about December? It's like the holiday opus of the year.
[00:31:50] And I think it's probably my favorite month. I've always. I mean, I've always been a winter dude. Ever since I've been little, winter's been my favorite. I've never liked summer. I like it now because as I grow older, I like being outside. I like going out and doing stuff. And I think, you know, Christmas, New Year's, you know, being off of school.
[00:32:16] I mean, obviously now I've been working over December break.
[00:32:20] So that kind of sucks a little joy out of it. But I work at a good spot.
[00:32:25] And one thing I'll say is that for me, the second New Year's is done. Like, I wake up January 1st, I don't care. Bring me to February. I don't care. You know, second New Year's is done. You might as well throw me back in school because what's the point, you know, I'm not waiting for anything. I'm not waiting for any holiday. Maybe Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That's the only holiday, you know, we get a day off from.
[00:32:52] But other than that, there's really nothing else in January.
[00:32:56] I mean, just the name itself. January, it's like a.
[00:33:01] I don't like it.
[00:33:02] February, I mean, last name's Valentine. Valentine's Day.
[00:33:07] And. And last year we got the majority of our snow in February. We had like nothing in December. We had kind of some stuff. But end of January and most of February last year, I think that's when we had our most snow.
[00:33:23] Especially Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day. I had. I was. I was taking Jenna out on a date and we were going to Southern Fair down in Oswego and down in the town. And it was just flurry. Could not see. Obviously I drove, but it was not a great drive. It was not something I would love to do again. And that's why I stand by. I love to go in the snow, but if I got to drive, you know, it's not my favorite thing. You know, I've had to wake up for work at about, you know, 5:30, and by the time I'm leaving and going to work, the plows have not gotten there yet.
[00:34:00] So I'm driving and I'm practically hydroplaning. It's happened to me twice.
[00:34:05] The first time I was up and my dad, you know, I think he was up at the same time I went to shovel off his truck because I was using that and he was like, hey, before you go, put it into four wheel until you get out of the neighborhood. Because they hadn't plowed the neighborhood yet. It was like five in the morning. Okay. Got out of the neighborhood with some, with some struggle.
[00:34:26] And then I got out to our main road, still not plowed.
[00:34:30] I pulled up to a stoplight and ABS activated and I kind of slid into the intersection a little bit. Luckily at five in the morning, no one's really there but I was able to back up a tad.
[00:34:43] And luckily thankfully the light turned like as soon as I got there. You know, it was only like maybe like 30 seconds or maybe even 15 until the light changed again.
[00:34:54] But you just got to be careful. Got to be really careful. I mean that snow and ice, especially in the morning before it's had the opportunity to melt. Not something you want to mess with. Not at all.
[00:35:07] Just be careful, you know. And that's why I'll say to like all my friends, all my family and everyone up here in Oswego too. It gets bad up here, you know, Be careful, you know, don't. Don't be stupid. Don't drive stupid.
[00:35:19] My. My sister, she had gotten in a car accident. Luckily she was completely fine.
[00:35:24] She was on her way to Occ and she, she was driving and she was taking an exit ramp or yeah, she was taking an exit ramp to get onto 690 and as it had happened she kind of slid a little bit and if it wasn't for the guardrails she would have been off the exit ramp. So thank God for those exit rails. But her car was totaled. That's all it was.
[00:35:56] She was completely fine.
[00:35:58] And it's just the winter man. The winter. Just gotta be really careful.
[00:36:05] So what is this? 7:59. How long have you been going for here? I can't tell. It doesn't tell me how long we've been going for.
[00:36:14] 1089 bars. That's what it tells me. It goes by bars. I'm using GarageBand to record this, but I think I might as well wrap it up.
[00:36:26] What I'll do is I'm gonna make sure I do an episode next Friday as well.
[00:36:32] I'm not gonna. Because. Because this, this was such extenuating circumstances. Or is it extenuating? I don't remember one of those words. It was different circumstances than I usually like it to be. And I'd like to talk more with Connor. So I think on Friday I will do another show next Friday and cuz it's about eight I Got my show in an hour. News just went on.
[00:36:58] I'm going to go, you know, figure out my. How I want my set list to go. My set list tonight is fantastic, by the way. I'm just going to read it off to you guys right now. I have Ain't that a Kick in the Head by Dean Martin. Sadder But Wiser Girl by Seth McFarlane.
[00:37:13] Girl from Ipanema, Frank Sinatra. Love a Girl by Levy. I Still Can't Sleep, Slash Cannot Touch Her.
[00:37:20] It's from Taxi Driver. Blue and Green, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, you know, Bill Evans.
[00:37:27] There's Night Lights from the Gary mulligan sextet.
[00:37:30] The 1965 version, so it's only three minutes long instead of four.
[00:37:34] Misty, Errol Garner. That's my favorite version of the song. Blue Moon, Oscar Peterson, also my favorite version of the song. I like the instrumentals where it's a little more of jazzy piano in a sentimental mood with Duke Ellington and John Klatrane, but not for me. The vocal version by Chet Baker. I've Gotta Be me, Sammy Davis Jr.
[00:37:53] Cheek to cheek, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Cry Me River, Julie London and Naima. Is that it? Naima by John Coltrane. So that is our 15 song set list. Am I going to get to all those songs? Most likely not. My plan though is I will kind of shut my mouth a little bit because I tend to talk for a little too long. And I really want to get to a lot of these songs because a lot of them are suggestions for my friends that are also going to be on the show.
[00:38:20] And I feel like people listening to jazz aren't really going to be wanting to sitting there listening to me talk.
[00:38:26] I'm not really well versed in jazz, but I wanted to have this night because I know people who are.
[00:38:33] It's November, so it's kind of like, you know, people listen to jazz. I feel like more in the. In the wintertime. It's something that you cozy up to a fire and listen to.
[00:38:44] And I'm just gonna try and shut my trap a little bit, you know, I want to at least get to I've Got to Be Me by Sammy Davis Jr. If I have to cut out. Because most of these songs are like, like two and a half minutes, three minutes, four minutes. I got one that's five, 38 and maybe that one I'll leave till the end, you know, two minutes, 30 seconds, three minutes. They're all relative. They're under five minutes and we go by 18 minute intervals.
[00:39:12] And so I just really Want to be able to play all the music. And at the end I'll leave however much time we have to talk and who knows how much time that might be.
[00:39:24] So I actually probably will leave Blue and Green until the very end. I might just write that down right here or bold in it or something like that because I like talking, but I don't, you know, I want. I want my songs to play and I don't want to, you know, have these songs go to waste because usually I do. Like, I think last song, last show I did it was what night was? It was Metal night. And that was for my Halloween special. I did two 7 minute, no, two 8 minute songs to begin.
[00:39:58] And that was kind of boring. And I've kind of realized this, and this is one of the last things I'll say before I wrap it up.
[00:40:07] Metal as a genre is something that I got into. It started with Metallica and then it kind of branched off to, you know, other mainstream artists. And I never really got deep down into the discography of, you know, you know, you know, death metal and screamo and stuff like that.
[00:40:23] As I research and find songs for a lot of these shows, I kind of realized I'm not, you know, a huge. I'm not that big of a metal fan as I thought I was.
[00:40:35] You know, I. I love a lot of Metallica. That's kind of. That was kind of my favorite band. Kind of all I listened to really. And I think I've listened to other stuff and I've got to be in the right mood for it, of course, but I don't think I'm ever really in the right mood for a lot of the stuff that, you know, is kind of deeper down in the iceberg and, and that's okay. You know, I think nick jazz in 90s and, you know, all. All this kind of stuff psychedelic is.
[00:41:03] It's good to have this variation.
[00:41:06] And so what if I'm not as big of a metalhead as I thought I was? I kind of. I had my time as a metalhead getting into jazz now, you know, something like that.
[00:41:15] Because a lot of these songs, I mean, especially in this time of year, like I ride my bike and it's like nighttime and it's raining and I'm listening to stuff from Taxi Drive and I was like, wow, this fits the mood a lot more than Creeping Death, you know, or Master of Puppets or something like that. Fits the vibe a lot more.
[00:41:37] And I mean, yeah, there are different genres do a lot better with different times of the year.
[00:41:46] Like, obviously Christmas music doesn't work in June unless you're doing the Christmas in June Hallmark special.
[00:41:53] But besides that, you know, who really listens to Christmas music past Christmas, maybe a couple days after. But.
[00:42:03] And these are some things I'll keep getting into. You know, tomorrow night or not tomorrow night, but next Friday night I'll talk, you know, maybe what's the cutoff for Christmas music and stuff like that. But for now I'm gonna wrap it up. It's been a good little talk. I think we hit about 45 minutes and that's perfectly fine for me. I figured it beats. It's this.
[00:42:23] It beats sitting in the studio doing nothing.
[00:42:28] Yeah. This episode will be out Saturday by seven and hopefully it'll be a little better.
[00:42:34] The mic quality as for now is definitely a little better since I'm only using one mic. How we've had to use it previously is we had to have two people sharing one mic and that's not really practical.
[00:42:45] But our second mic was working. It's not working anymore. It's kind of got some warbly static to it. I wonder if it'll show up if I do this.
[00:42:54] Oh, yeah, not good. That just came through my headphones. So, so sorry about that.
[00:43:02] But it's a little glitchy and monstrous.
[00:43:05] But hopefully by next week it'll be all fixed and everything will be great. So I'm gonna, you know, for the third time, I'm gonna wrap this up here. I hope you guys have been having a good night listening to off the Couch. I will be back next week recording at 4 and that episode will be up that following Saturday at 7pM so check out my Instagram for any updates on my shows or podcasts. I'm thinking of probably transforming some of this into YouTube pretty soon and I hope you guys have a great night.
[00:43:33] This has been Andrew Valentine.
