dailyeatings » museum

Anthology

David — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:55:30 +0000

On the occasion of my first anniversary of working at the Field Museum, a playlist of songs. Fair warning, though: I make no claims to elevated taste or standards. What I listen to at work is mostly intended to help me concentrate by shutting out the world while keeping me from really noticing the music too much.

Oct08	Frou Frou – Must Be Dreaming Most of these songs were holdovers from what I was listening to during those last few boring weeks at the hospital.
	Yelle – A Cause Des Garcons (Tepr Remix) Made friends with a girl at work over this song, right when I started.
	The Gaslight Anthem – Old White Lincoln
	Ladyhawke – Another Runaway
Nov09	The Killers – Human Absolutely hooked on this song when it first came out. Listened to it continuously for a couple days, at least. The same with its remix. Unquestionably the soundtrack of my first month at the museum.
	MIA – Paper Planes
	Van She – Sex City
	Ingrid Michaelson – Creep
	The Sounds – Hurt You Liking this song provided a social entry with certain others that would have otherwise been impossible. Seems silly now in retrospect but was a huge deal at the time.
Dec09	Thomas Newman – Define Dancing The start of my enduring Wall-E fixation, particularly with EVE. It’s one of the reasons why most everything I make is mostly white with grey and blue accents.
	Adele – Right as Rain
Jan09	Miley Cyrus – Breakout Extraordinarily catchy and mindless, perfect for blasting through headphones while concentrating on other things. Left it on for hours while designing BioSync’s website. Sorry, Audrey.
Feb09	Kelly Clarkson – My Life Would Suck Without You See above.
	Johann Strauss – An der schönen blauen Donau I had a brief obsession with 2001.
Mar09	Beirut – My Wife, Lost in the Wild Very vivid memories of my hotel room, being lost in DC, the cute brunette, feeling completely overwhelmed professionally, eating questionable Chinatown food.
	Coldplay – Viva La Vida Needed the cheery optimism to balance out the slow, tumor-like growth of bad vibes.
Apr09	Andrew Bird – Anonanimal Best Concert of the Year.
	Culture Beat – Mr. Vain Mostly to annoy Ryan.
May09	The entire Braid soundtrack. Of the game’s many merits, the music was probably the best.
	El Ten Eleven – Central Nervous Piston I was pretty obsessed with Helvetica at the time.
Jun09	Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero The song of the summer: frisbee lunches, interns galore, league games, my sister’s wedding.
	Pains of Being Pure at Heart – This Love Is Fucking Right!
Jul09	Weezer – El Scorcho “I’ll bring home the turkey if you bring home the bacon” remains to this day my favorite lyric ever.
	Bruce Springsteen – Tunnel of Love Falling back to an old favorite, during what was perhaps the nadir of my work experience so far.
Aug09	Au Revoir Simone – Anywhere You Looked Went to their show with Matt, on a whim. He and Kim moved away shortly thereafter, but the music stuck with me.
	Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy Described to a new friend how my love for this song was both 100% ironic and 100% earnest.
Sep09	Kings of Leon – Use Somebody Alone in my room in Paris, late at night, over and over again.
	Brian Sharpe – She Drives Me Crazy
Oct09	The Format – The First Single
	Jason Robert Brown – Stars and the Moon This one’s completely the fault of my brother, the composer/songwriter.

Conversations with Gorier, ep.1

David — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:42:58 +0000

So did you say hi to the T. rex today? What’s his name?

“Well, it’s actually a girl. And yeah, I saw her today. Every day, actually.”

A girl, huh?

“Her name’s Sue.”

No way.

Yes way. Look, see? ‘Sue’. Not very intimidating, is it?

“That’s funny. So you work right by her?”

Do you see in the pictures, the banners by the elephants?

“The orange ones?”

Yeah. Between the orange and yellow banner, and down the hallway–that’s where my office is.

“Wow, neat. The elephants, do they have names?”

Not any official ones that I know of. But since they’re fighting, I call them ‘Nick’ and ‘David’*.

“Ha!”

*‘David’ is the attacking elephant, for the record.

I can’t stop laughing, and I can’t tell you why

David — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:20:53 +0000

I love my job.

New Employee Orientation

David — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:09:52 +0000

A ridiculously attractive girl took me on a tour of the Fish and Reptile collections, a trip that included expositions on her recent induglences in 80′s synthpop, vivid anecdotes regarding the industrial-strength smoke machine at her Halloween party, a working model of a Dunkleosteus skull, discussing why Facebook is good for two things only: stalking and sharing photos, the story behind her very unusual yet appropriate first name, and a side trip to a room full of aquaria, whose occupants included a piranha and a 30-year old African lungfish whose tank was tightly sealed lest he escape again. Normally, I wouldn’t be too terribly impressed by tall, quirkily dressed former art students-turned-zoologists — I mean really, what’s so special about that — but a woman whose idea of a good tour is showing you the piranhas, now that’s the stuff instant, huge crushes are made of.

FMNH

David — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 02:29:28 +0000

This is where I’ll be Monday morning.

And Tuesday morning. And Wednesday morning. And every weekday after that.