Spencer Tweedy

I'm not as sad as I look in my picture.

  1. “I’m proud of you, Spencer”

    At the start of this school year—my sophomore year—I began receiving dozens of emails a week from colleges that seem pretty, pretty torqued at the notion of my attendance, despite their having no clue who I am or what my qualifications are. They’re form emails that emulate a genuinely interested, “proud” human on the other end, which I find manipulative and gross. It makes me wonder whether the schools that send these are an educational institution that happens to have a goal of making money, or a business that happens to educate people. Here are some actual subject lines from emails that I (and every other high schooler that I’ve talked to, although theirs feature their own name) have gotten:

    • “You’re one of the Best and Brightest”
    • “Students of your caliber…”
    • “Hoping to hear from you, Spencer!”
    • “Spencer, is this you?”
    • “Is this Spencer’s e-mail address?”
    • “You’ve been selected”
    • “Is this Spencer?”
    • “Spencer, I’m already impressed”
    • “I’d like to hear from you, Spencer”
    • “Trying to reach Spencer”
    • “I’m proud of you, Spencer”

    There’s a point where “marketing technique” crosses into immoral territory, especially when it’s executed by what are universally considered the pinnacles of intellect. Maybe I shouldn’t be talking, since I spelled “intellect” wrong twice when writing this, but I think that it’s wrong to play on the emotions of sweet, innocent, naive little high schoolers, excited and wide-eyed, whose hearts ache to go to college—myself included. I’m exaggerating (duh) but these are seriously no lower to me than those “You’re our 10,000,000th visitor! You won!” banners that pop up when you visit a crappy website. Makes me feel like these are from crappy schools.

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  2. A video I made for The Whole Love last summer that slipped through the cracks. Featuring my little brother, Sammy, his best friend, Joey, and my friend, Tavi.

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  3. I wrote a post about growing up, depression, and an emo pterodactyl for my dear pal Tavi’s magazine, Rookie. Read it here.

    I wrote a post about growing up, depression, and an emo pterodactyl for my dear pal Tavi’s magazine, Rookie. Read it here.

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  4. [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

    “One Day” — {Formerly The Blisters}

    My band recorded a song! Henry, our frontman, wrote/sings it. I play drums (and a dollop of mellotron strings and a tad of background vocals). We just “hired” a new kid to play with us, and we haven’t played any gigs in a really long time, so we’re still getting our act re-together, but it feels good to have something down finally. Gonna mail out a bunch of cassettes today.

    P.S. The Blisters chapter has ended. What should we call ourselves?

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  6. Went to see Kanye West and Jay Z at the United Center last night. The tickets were a Chanukah present for my inspiringly hip little brother, Sammy. He’s gotten super into rap this past year and had been begging my parents to go to this show for months. It became a sort of family joke for awhile because we thought it’d be hilarious for us, the Tweedys, dorky, Jewish, white folk, to go to a rap show. And, uh, it was. It was also a lot of fun, though. Crazy, foreign fun. If I were to break my impenetrable hipster guise of jadedness and superiority, I would even say that I really enjoy their music. Mostly Jay Z’s; Kanye is unique and talented, and seems to be some sort of a visionary, but ole Jigga’s tracks are raw (if rap can be raw). We had a good time.

    Went to see Kanye West and Jay Z at the United Center last night. The tickets were a Chanukah present for my inspiringly hip little brother, Sammy. He’s gotten super into rap this past year and had been begging my parents to go to this show for months. It became a sort of family joke for awhile because we thought it’d be hilarious for us, the Tweedys, dorky, Jewish, white folk, to go to a rap show. And, uh, it was. It was also a lot of fun, though. Crazy, foreign fun. If I were to break my impenetrable hipster guise of jadedness and superiority, I would even say that I really enjoy their music. Mostly Jay Z’s; Kanye is unique and talented, and seems to be some sort of a visionary, but ole Jigga’s tracks are raw (if rap can be raw). We had a good time.

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  7. Goodbye, Cutty.

    Goodbye, Cutty.

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  8. “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”

    Ralph Waldo Emerson on art

    Just starting to cover transcendentalism in my American literature class and it’s really interesting. I’m a full-fledged believer in modernism and innovation, but that doesn’t stop me from finding ole Ralph, Walt n’ Henry admirable and their work romantic. I love anything that helps me to better understand creativity.

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  9. [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

    Might as well post this one, too. No vocals.

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  10. [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

    Yet another demo. Bad vocals.

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