Weekend stories

A couple of stories from the weekend…

1) As I’ve always said, living in Kansas City is an adventure. Things happen here that you just would not expect to happen anyplace else. Like random radio station format changes. See, I had found that there was one good music station in this town: The Planet, which would play Jack Johnson and Ben Folds songs along with a neverending stream of Dave Matthews and Matchbox 20. But it was at least something that you could put on and not be offended by. Well, Friday evening after finishing my last CD for the week I flip on the station and discover that it is now The Max. And they rock. Because I know that I just can’t get enough AC/DC in this town. Seriously, I’ve lost the one good modern rock station and have gained a bad classic rock station. Only in KC.
2) Still, here is my best Planet story. They invested a lot of money in sending a signal that allowed them to show the song title and artist on your car stereo. That was really cool. They also would show their slogan “World Class Rock”. Well, the first time they did this they didn’t realize the number of characters the typical car stereo would show. Thus, in one of my favorite moments of last year while listening to Rob Thomas warble on I looked down at my stereo and read “ass Rock.” Couldn’t agree more myself.
3) Didn’t do much this weekend other than turn this into my Fall Cleaning weekend. I finally made my way through my closets and have ended up with three garbage bags filled with clothes to give to charity. For the most part they’re good clothes, it’s just that they are from about six years and forty pounds ago. Which reminds me, I really need to get serious on a workout plan. As someone who in college was six foot one and a lean one hundred and forty five pounds, I really don’t believe that I’ve gotten this heavy. Still better than being 145, it certainly wasn’t a good look.
4) Peyton Manning and the Colts basically killed my fantasy team this week. I think I still have a chance but it’s a long shot. Can’t win them all but come on, how the hell can Peyton a) not throw a touchdown pass and b) not throw for over 200 yards. I’ve built my entire team around the guy. He needs to perform pronto.
5) I’m not even going to talk about Notre Dame right now. I’m still pissed about the game. And could it have been any longer? Now that NBC isn’t paying my tuition can I complain mightily about the lengthy television timeouts?
6) Picked up two books from my favorite writers this week. Terry Pratchett’s latest “Thud”, which is another Sam Vines and the City Watch book in the Discworld series. (Think Harry Potter but with more consistent writing) and Jonathan Carroll’s “Glass Soup”. It’s Jonathan’s that leaves me excited to read and nervous at the same time. When I read his last book I, well, for lack of a better term, became a part of the story. I’m not making this up. When I was reading “White Apples” I had a dream where I was the main character, someone I knew was playing the female lead, and we acted out the first hundred pages or so. One of the most bizarre experiences in my life. I woke up and couldn’t figure out what was a dream, what was fiction and what was reality. Who knows what’s going to happen this time around.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Continental Drifters “Vermillion”
2) Julie Miller “Broken Things”
3) Rachmaninov “Piano Concerto No. 2”
4) The Subdudes “The Subdudes”
5) Sting “The Soul Cages” (which is the first CD that I ever purchased. Wow, don’t know if I should have admitted that one in public)