Just my luck, as soon as I post my analysis of Mickey Rourke’s appearance at Wrestlemania he decides to chicken out. So I feel that there is only one recourse in this situation. I, the legendary Cajun Assassin, will come out of retirement to challenge Mickey Rourke any place, any time, any style of match. If he wants a scientific wrestling match I’ll take him down with my patented Cajun Crab. If he wants to make it extreme I’ll take him on in an electrified barbed wire deathmatch. No matter what he decides I’ll make sure he feels the pain that he has inflicted on the wrestling fanbase.
(Some people might laugh at that paragraph. Others will recall that I have a wrestling mask in my office and wonder if I might not be kidding around.)
Ok, it’s late and I’m tired and I am just going to list a few strange things about this part of the country that I have noticed over the past few months. Just a sample of the apparent Bizarro World that I find myself in.
· Within a half mile of my apartment is a “Kennedy Fried Chicken” and a “New York Fried Chicken”. I never thought that any restaurant would scare me more than a KenTacoHut. I was wrong.
· There is an establishment near where I live called “The Bar”. In a way, that seems to be the exact type of place I would find myself drinking. If you are too lazy to name the place I’ll probably fit right in.
· No one in this town knows how to drive. Seriously, I thought the drivers in Kansas were the worst but I was mistaken. Sure, you would occasionally find yourself stuck behind the Joad family on K-10 but they would at least drive. Today I was stuck on a two lane road behind a driver who apparently accelerated and braked at the same time. I’ve never seen a car leave a stop light and not have the brake lights go off before. Drove me insane.
· Apparently an inch of snow is a winter weather emergency that results in school being cancelled. This wouldn’t even be an emergency in Kansas (where they once dismissed everyone from work and I didn’t even notice that it was snowing). But any thought of snow turns this area into a 70’s disaster flick.
· Way too many DJs at the bars. I have no problem with dance clubs as some people enjoy them. I however would rather listen to people play their own music instead of just borrowing someone else’s. The problem is I just have been unable to find a good bar with cool bartenders, an interesting clientele, and a properly stocked jukebox. It shouldn’t be that difficult.
Coming on Sunday: The Return of the Super Blog. Yes, the live blog returns in its traditional form. Who will win the big game? Will Bud Light cover the spread in the Bud Bowl? Will the fifty bucks I put on heads pay off this year. Join me and find out.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
From the edge of the pop culture universe
Time for a trip through the pop culture universe…
Mickey Rourke to appear at Wrestlemania 25: From everything I have heard from my sources it is official that Mickey Rourke will face Chris Jericho (formerly known as “Lionheart” Chris Jericho and “Y2J” Chris Jericho, real name Chris Irvine, and no I did not have to look any of that information up) at Wrestlemania 25. This will mark the second appearance of an Oscar nominated performer at Wrestlemania (the other of course being Dame Judi Dench’s appearance in a Barbed Wire Deathmatch at Wrestlemania 19).
There are a lot of things that strike me about this and none of them are good. First off, for Mickey Rourke this will essentially derail any comeback hopes that he imagines. As much as I love wrestling this is a real step down and you just can’t figure out how it makes sense. It also shows just how twisted the wrestling business is. Vince McMahon hated the movie when it came out because it showed in vivid detail the dark side of the business and how it takes performers, turns them into stars and leaves them as poor shells of their former self. He didn’t want anything to do with it. Now that it can make him some money and a few additional pay per view buys he will welcome it with open arms.
My biggest issue though is I don’t know how the match will work. Not the physical nature of the match; I think the two of them could put together a decent match. Rourke trained as a wrestler for the role, looked realistic in the ring, and Jericho works a style that should translate to an entertaining match. The problem is that Jericho is a bad guy right now but I expect the crowd (filled with hard core fans) to cheer him over the movie star encroaching on their turf. The celebrity is supposed to be the hero in these situations and I expect Rourke to be booed like mad (unless of course he has Marisa Tomei in character as a stripper as his valet. Then he’ll be the babyface.)
Children with unpopular names more likely to be delinquents: I saw this article on Yahoo today and I have to state that this is the most poorly worded scientific study that I have ever seen. Mainly in that they have confused “unpopular” with “unique”. Essentially what they did is they looked at the rates of occurrence of certain names in the population and correlated that with juvenile delinquency rates. What they found was that those names out on the Long Tail had higher delinquency rates than those in the front end.
Now I’ll assume that they did the math correctly and accounted for the fact that of course the bigger samples will look more like the average just due to their size. What really bothers me is that they called them unpopular names and tried to justify their results based on the fact that “the children may not like their names” or that “they may be picked on”. This seems ludicrous especially given that one of the names chosen as an unpopular example was Alec. There was no work done to connect the name with popular conceptions so unpopular is the wrong term since it implies a social stigma. In reality, what this shows is what was discussed in Freakonomics: that people of lower income levels tend to give their children uncommon names and that people of lower income levels tend to have higher delinquency rates.
See, I told you I should have been a sociologist.
Wednesday Night Music Club: Sigh. I could spend all day listening to Beth Orton. And then to see her in a cowboy hat just makes my heart go all aflutter.
Mickey Rourke to appear at Wrestlemania 25: From everything I have heard from my sources it is official that Mickey Rourke will face Chris Jericho (formerly known as “Lionheart” Chris Jericho and “Y2J” Chris Jericho, real name Chris Irvine, and no I did not have to look any of that information up) at Wrestlemania 25. This will mark the second appearance of an Oscar nominated performer at Wrestlemania (the other of course being Dame Judi Dench’s appearance in a Barbed Wire Deathmatch at Wrestlemania 19).
There are a lot of things that strike me about this and none of them are good. First off, for Mickey Rourke this will essentially derail any comeback hopes that he imagines. As much as I love wrestling this is a real step down and you just can’t figure out how it makes sense. It also shows just how twisted the wrestling business is. Vince McMahon hated the movie when it came out because it showed in vivid detail the dark side of the business and how it takes performers, turns them into stars and leaves them as poor shells of their former self. He didn’t want anything to do with it. Now that it can make him some money and a few additional pay per view buys he will welcome it with open arms.
My biggest issue though is I don’t know how the match will work. Not the physical nature of the match; I think the two of them could put together a decent match. Rourke trained as a wrestler for the role, looked realistic in the ring, and Jericho works a style that should translate to an entertaining match. The problem is that Jericho is a bad guy right now but I expect the crowd (filled with hard core fans) to cheer him over the movie star encroaching on their turf. The celebrity is supposed to be the hero in these situations and I expect Rourke to be booed like mad (unless of course he has Marisa Tomei in character as a stripper as his valet. Then he’ll be the babyface.)
Children with unpopular names more likely to be delinquents: I saw this article on Yahoo today and I have to state that this is the most poorly worded scientific study that I have ever seen. Mainly in that they have confused “unpopular” with “unique”. Essentially what they did is they looked at the rates of occurrence of certain names in the population and correlated that with juvenile delinquency rates. What they found was that those names out on the Long Tail had higher delinquency rates than those in the front end.
Now I’ll assume that they did the math correctly and accounted for the fact that of course the bigger samples will look more like the average just due to their size. What really bothers me is that they called them unpopular names and tried to justify their results based on the fact that “the children may not like their names” or that “they may be picked on”. This seems ludicrous especially given that one of the names chosen as an unpopular example was Alec. There was no work done to connect the name with popular conceptions so unpopular is the wrong term since it implies a social stigma. In reality, what this shows is what was discussed in Freakonomics: that people of lower income levels tend to give their children uncommon names and that people of lower income levels tend to have higher delinquency rates.
See, I told you I should have been a sociologist.
Wednesday Night Music Club: Sigh. I could spend all day listening to Beth Orton. And then to see her in a cowboy hat just makes my heart go all aflutter.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
25 Random Things
I’ve seen several people post to their Facebook page a “25 Random Things” note and I have been tagged in a few of them. What this means is that I am supposed to write 25 things about myself, my view on the world and other facts that most people don’t know about me and then tag 25 people so they can do the same. Well, I am writing the list but tagging it makes it seem like some strange chain letter scam. Plus I’m cross-posting this to my blog and it’s not like I ask random people to respond to any of my blog posts.
So here it goes. 25 Short Facts About Me.
1) I liken myself to an iceberg; you only see ten percent of me at any one time and ships have an unnerving tendency to ram into me.
2) Everything I write is 75 percent true. My novel, the blog, this list, it all contains a mix of truth and embellishments. It’s up to you to figure out which is which.
3) I wish I had enough faith in my writing to make one all out effort to see if I could make a living out of it. But the thought of doing my best at something I love and being told that it is not good enough scares me to death. The dream of success is preferable to the reality of failure.
4) My answer to the last question in the quiz given on “Inside the Actor’s Studio” is “Did I do a good job?”
5) I never intended to be 35 and single. I really thought that I would be a dad by now. This all just kind of happened.
6) I still can’t believe that I turned down the opportunity to study history under Stephen Ambrose at the University of New Orleans. When I finish my time machine my first order of business is to go back in time and kick my own ass.
7) I never intended on going to Notre Dame. I visited the school when I was 16 and I hated the place. I sent my scores there on a lark and I think I talked to Brian at a recruiting event in Chicago. I didn’t even intend to apply. I was going to get my MBA at night at the University of Chicago. But then I was invited to spend a few days on campus and fell in love with the place. Completely changed my life.
8) In retrospect, if I could choose any career it would probably be a combination sociologist / statistician. I’d love to have a job where I could explain how culture works.
9) The reason I became an electrical engineer is because it was universally considered the toughest major at Illinois and I wanted the challenge. The reason I specialized in power is because the lab stations in the Power Lab had big red buttons on them labeled “Emergency” that you got to press if you were concerned that your circuit was about to explode. I don’t think I ever considered myself more than a fair electrical engineer but I do have a natural knack at understanding how electrical grids work.
10) I am immensely proud of my blog. I’ve recently uploaded my 1,100th post (or roughly 700,000 words) and it has readers on every continent. For something that started as a silly idea that I assumed no one would read it has taken on a bit of a life of its own. It is certainly my biggest undertaking.
11) I take an amazing amount of joy out of being an uncle. My nieces and nephews constantly astound me.
12) I wish I had found a role at Sprint where I could have shown off all of my skills. I always seemed to be caught in the right place at the wrong time until I saw that my best move was to step away and take on a different challenge.
13) I miss Kansas City more than I ever expected. I left behind a lot of great friends in that town. Plus, it is just impossible to get a Boulevard Wheat out here.
14) Every day I begin to understand more and more what Woody Guthrie meant when he wrote “One by one my hair is turning gray, one by one my dreams are fading fast away.”
15) I have had two moments in my life that could have been taken directly from a movie script. One involves a rather circuitous stream of events that resulted in my being named to prom court and the other featured a heated argument in an apartment parking lot at three in the morning during a blinding thunderstorm.
16) I wish Riberdy was around so that I could thank him for all that he did for me. I wish I could tell Donna just how much she meant to me. And I really wish I could sit down with both of them one last time, have a great laugh and get that one last piece of advice.
17) There isn’t a realization that makes you feel any lonelier in this world than sitting on the edge of your bed on a Sunday night and coming to grips with the fact that the only person you talked to all weekend was a cashier.
18) I wish I could tell you why I remember that ALF’s real name is Gordon Schumway or that Tootie’s first name is actually Dorothy. I really don’t know why those facts are stuck in my brain. They just are.
19) The following moment is the psychic equivalent of being kneed in the groin. Be at a bar, talking to a woman that you are totally mad about, have her discuss how horrible her boyfriend is and call you “the perfect guy”. Because at the end of the night she’ll leave with him and you’ll leave alone. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been a part of that conversation.
20) I am slightly more stylish than I was before. This isn’t much of an accomplishment given that I have t-shirts that date back to high school. If I could go on one of those style makeover shows I really would.
21) At this moment I am working on my next five year plan. Since I was twenty I created five year plans to guide me through life. Whether they have worked or not I’m not sure but I really don’t feel like stopping now.
22) For the record, I pilot the Green Lion in Voltron. Super Dave pilots the Black Lion.
23) I think the world would be a better place if everyone would just sit down and listen to a Josh Rouse record every week.
24) My personal motto is from Michael Faraday (the founder of electrical engineering) “All of this is but a dream. Still, let us examine it with a few experiments.”
25) I don’t think I’ve accomplished a quarter of what I am capable of. Just wait until I start getting some confidence; then you’ll start to see the results.
So here it goes. 25 Short Facts About Me.
1) I liken myself to an iceberg; you only see ten percent of me at any one time and ships have an unnerving tendency to ram into me.
2) Everything I write is 75 percent true. My novel, the blog, this list, it all contains a mix of truth and embellishments. It’s up to you to figure out which is which.
3) I wish I had enough faith in my writing to make one all out effort to see if I could make a living out of it. But the thought of doing my best at something I love and being told that it is not good enough scares me to death. The dream of success is preferable to the reality of failure.
4) My answer to the last question in the quiz given on “Inside the Actor’s Studio” is “Did I do a good job?”
5) I never intended to be 35 and single. I really thought that I would be a dad by now. This all just kind of happened.
6) I still can’t believe that I turned down the opportunity to study history under Stephen Ambrose at the University of New Orleans. When I finish my time machine my first order of business is to go back in time and kick my own ass.
7) I never intended on going to Notre Dame. I visited the school when I was 16 and I hated the place. I sent my scores there on a lark and I think I talked to Brian at a recruiting event in Chicago. I didn’t even intend to apply. I was going to get my MBA at night at the University of Chicago. But then I was invited to spend a few days on campus and fell in love with the place. Completely changed my life.
8) In retrospect, if I could choose any career it would probably be a combination sociologist / statistician. I’d love to have a job where I could explain how culture works.
9) The reason I became an electrical engineer is because it was universally considered the toughest major at Illinois and I wanted the challenge. The reason I specialized in power is because the lab stations in the Power Lab had big red buttons on them labeled “Emergency” that you got to press if you were concerned that your circuit was about to explode. I don’t think I ever considered myself more than a fair electrical engineer but I do have a natural knack at understanding how electrical grids work.
10) I am immensely proud of my blog. I’ve recently uploaded my 1,100th post (or roughly 700,000 words) and it has readers on every continent. For something that started as a silly idea that I assumed no one would read it has taken on a bit of a life of its own. It is certainly my biggest undertaking.
11) I take an amazing amount of joy out of being an uncle. My nieces and nephews constantly astound me.
12) I wish I had found a role at Sprint where I could have shown off all of my skills. I always seemed to be caught in the right place at the wrong time until I saw that my best move was to step away and take on a different challenge.
13) I miss Kansas City more than I ever expected. I left behind a lot of great friends in that town. Plus, it is just impossible to get a Boulevard Wheat out here.
14) Every day I begin to understand more and more what Woody Guthrie meant when he wrote “One by one my hair is turning gray, one by one my dreams are fading fast away.”
15) I have had two moments in my life that could have been taken directly from a movie script. One involves a rather circuitous stream of events that resulted in my being named to prom court and the other featured a heated argument in an apartment parking lot at three in the morning during a blinding thunderstorm.
16) I wish Riberdy was around so that I could thank him for all that he did for me. I wish I could tell Donna just how much she meant to me. And I really wish I could sit down with both of them one last time, have a great laugh and get that one last piece of advice.
17) There isn’t a realization that makes you feel any lonelier in this world than sitting on the edge of your bed on a Sunday night and coming to grips with the fact that the only person you talked to all weekend was a cashier.
18) I wish I could tell you why I remember that ALF’s real name is Gordon Schumway or that Tootie’s first name is actually Dorothy. I really don’t know why those facts are stuck in my brain. They just are.
19) The following moment is the psychic equivalent of being kneed in the groin. Be at a bar, talking to a woman that you are totally mad about, have her discuss how horrible her boyfriend is and call you “the perfect guy”. Because at the end of the night she’ll leave with him and you’ll leave alone. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been a part of that conversation.
20) I am slightly more stylish than I was before. This isn’t much of an accomplishment given that I have t-shirts that date back to high school. If I could go on one of those style makeover shows I really would.
21) At this moment I am working on my next five year plan. Since I was twenty I created five year plans to guide me through life. Whether they have worked or not I’m not sure but I really don’t feel like stopping now.
22) For the record, I pilot the Green Lion in Voltron. Super Dave pilots the Black Lion.
23) I think the world would be a better place if everyone would just sit down and listen to a Josh Rouse record every week.
24) My personal motto is from Michael Faraday (the founder of electrical engineering) “All of this is but a dream. Still, let us examine it with a few experiments.”
25) I don’t think I’ve accomplished a quarter of what I am capable of. Just wait until I start getting some confidence; then you’ll start to see the results.
Monday, January 26, 2009
People who at one point knew me
I hate to inform everyone about this but Facebook is no longer cool. See, like all cutting edge technologies there is a tipping point in which it becomes so popular that it ceases being cool. Based on the fact now that it is odd for me to find someone not on Facebook I really feel that the point has been crossed. However, as opposed to the Friendsters and MySpaces of the world Facebook is still really, really useful so I expect it to hang around for a long while. I’ll stay on it; I just won’t feel hip and cutting edge for doing so.
(And before you ask, no I am not setting up a twitter feed. If you’ve read this site for any length of time the concept of me writing anything meaningful in 150 characters is pretty ludicrous.)
But there is something about Facebook that has really been bugging me and I just have to get it off my chest here. When I started on it my friends were legitimately friends or at least strong acquaintances. These were people I worked with or went to Notre Dame with. Then it started growing as more people from my past began to find me. It is pretty cool to catch up with an old friend from college and even more so when it is someone from back in the grade school or high school days. But then it gets a little weirder.
At some point you start getting requests from people you haven’t thought about for twenty years. I always assume that the reverse is true; I have a hard time believing that anyone would ever find me so memorable that after twenty years they’d go “I wonder what Chris is doing?” This is followed by the friend requests from people you don’t even remember. They theoretically know you and they are convinced that they were your classmate but you simply don’t recall them at all. For me this is pretty frightening because it means that there is this huge blank spot in my photographic memory.
So I would like to propose the following rule. All friend requests are subject to a three fact rule. To become friends if you do not see or speak to this person on a regular basis you must be able to recite three facts about them. Doesn’t matter what they are, just state three facts about their history. This way we will keep Facebook as a collection of people who know each other as opposed to random lists of people you at one time came across.
My other issue is that there really is this strange reaction I get when befriending people from high school on Facebook. Now don’t get me wrong, I really find it cool and a few read the blog which is amazing, but it really does transport you back to that timeframe. Which means that I am constantly trying to deal with all of those emotions of high school most of which I never want to relive. I’ve left that part of me in the distant past and I don’t have a great desire to go back.
But that is exactly what you do. You constantly try to portray yourself in the best light possible (or at least I do). I want to show that I am successful and have accomplished all of my goals and am happy whether any of those things are true or not. Suddenly I find myself in a popularity contest with people I haven’t seen for twenty years. Which is made even worse when I realize that mathematically speaking I am closer to 50 than I am to 15.
Wow, that last sentence is true. I’m just going to curl up in the corner and sob quietly for a moment. Excuse me.
In the end I have prided myself on living my life under no one’s rules but my own. That means that on the bell curve of experiences I typically find myself at either end but never in the middle. Which makes it a little strange when you meet up with people you sat next to years ago and you realize that your lives are completely different. If I am in the right mood my reaction is that I don’t really care. If I’m happy and they’re happy then who is to say who took the right path? But sometimes I do wonder just how I got here and where this road is going to take me.
(And before you ask, no I am not setting up a twitter feed. If you’ve read this site for any length of time the concept of me writing anything meaningful in 150 characters is pretty ludicrous.)
But there is something about Facebook that has really been bugging me and I just have to get it off my chest here. When I started on it my friends were legitimately friends or at least strong acquaintances. These were people I worked with or went to Notre Dame with. Then it started growing as more people from my past began to find me. It is pretty cool to catch up with an old friend from college and even more so when it is someone from back in the grade school or high school days. But then it gets a little weirder.
At some point you start getting requests from people you haven’t thought about for twenty years. I always assume that the reverse is true; I have a hard time believing that anyone would ever find me so memorable that after twenty years they’d go “I wonder what Chris is doing?” This is followed by the friend requests from people you don’t even remember. They theoretically know you and they are convinced that they were your classmate but you simply don’t recall them at all. For me this is pretty frightening because it means that there is this huge blank spot in my photographic memory.
So I would like to propose the following rule. All friend requests are subject to a three fact rule. To become friends if you do not see or speak to this person on a regular basis you must be able to recite three facts about them. Doesn’t matter what they are, just state three facts about their history. This way we will keep Facebook as a collection of people who know each other as opposed to random lists of people you at one time came across.
My other issue is that there really is this strange reaction I get when befriending people from high school on Facebook. Now don’t get me wrong, I really find it cool and a few read the blog which is amazing, but it really does transport you back to that timeframe. Which means that I am constantly trying to deal with all of those emotions of high school most of which I never want to relive. I’ve left that part of me in the distant past and I don’t have a great desire to go back.
But that is exactly what you do. You constantly try to portray yourself in the best light possible (or at least I do). I want to show that I am successful and have accomplished all of my goals and am happy whether any of those things are true or not. Suddenly I find myself in a popularity contest with people I haven’t seen for twenty years. Which is made even worse when I realize that mathematically speaking I am closer to 50 than I am to 15.
Wow, that last sentence is true. I’m just going to curl up in the corner and sob quietly for a moment. Excuse me.
In the end I have prided myself on living my life under no one’s rules but my own. That means that on the bell curve of experiences I typically find myself at either end but never in the middle. Which makes it a little strange when you meet up with people you sat next to years ago and you realize that your lives are completely different. If I am in the right mood my reaction is that I don’t really care. If I’m happy and they’re happy then who is to say who took the right path? But sometimes I do wonder just how I got here and where this road is going to take me.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Basically, make it look like you don't live there
In a bid to make this site more beneficial to my regular readers I have decided to post these helpful hints as to what every single male must do to his apartment before inviting a woman over. Yeah, I know, this is mainly theoretical on my part. It’s nice to know that I can discuss what happened in the first three seconds of the universe’s existence and not be questioned in the slightest but the second I talk about relationships it suddenly becomes impossible to believe that I may have insight into the matter. Still, here is a handy list to use at your convenience.
· Remove all reading material from your bathroom: As the one place it is certain that the woman will enter is your bathroom it is vitally important that you set up that room as if you have never entered it. Thus, remove all books, magazines and other items that you use to avoid the otherwise deadtime in your life.
· Sticking with the bathroom, besides cleaning it, clearly place items that show you take care of yourself but remove those that are too indicative of the fact: All guys have liquid soap. Classy guys like myself have high end cleanser, face scrub and hair gel neatly organized with the labels facing out near the sink. Hide the nose hair trimmer though. As important it is to know that you have a situation there that needs addressing it is not something that you wish to advertise.
· Candles. They come with a catch: You want to have a few small, scented candles scattered around your apartment as proper decorating items. However, there are a number of rules that come with the operation of these candles. 1) They cannot be lit when she enters the room. That indicates that once you hit play on the stereo you will hear the soulful sounds of Barry White and that is not the best first impression to make. 2) They cannot show any evidence of ever being lit. That means that you had another woman over recently and were too lazy to get new candles. 3) Rules 1 and 2 can be ignored if you suffered at least a three day electricity outage in the past two weeks.
· Hide any films starring Bridget the Midget: Note: may not be applicable if one is dating someone who is vertically challenged though on second thought, hide it really well in that case. This goes double if said films also involve clowns.
· Magazines may be neatly arranged on a coffee table taking special care to disguise those that may feature actresses in skimpy attire. It goes without saying that you should keep your collection of Maxim issues out of plain sight. There is a bigger challenge when it comes to GQ and Esquire. These are actually useful magazines that one reads for personal benefit that just happen to occasionally feature a nude Jennifer Aniston on the cover. In that instance, best to hide or in my case, momentarily organize the stack of issues in non-chronological order. While that goes against all principles of natural structure it is a price one must pay.
· Reorganize bookshelves to display most popular and /or impressive books in the most prominent position: You’ll want to use this as a conversation piece so start with what will work, even if that means admitting that you own The Da Vinci Code. Your science fiction collection should be moved down a few shelves. If you’re like me and have an entire shelf dedicated to pro wrestling auto-biographies well, you should just be happy that a woman has voluntarily entered your abode in the first place.
· On that note, hide the pro wrestling DVDs: Though if you meet a woman who goes “why don’t we just snuggle together on the couch and watch The History of the Intercontinental Title DVD” marry her instantly.
· Stock the refrigerator and pantry with items that indicate that you know how to cook and / or take care of yourself: Whether you actually can or do cook is irrelevant. The key is to give the impression that you do. Hence, the fridge should contain some sort of green vegetable as well as something that could be described as fruit. Leftovers should only remain if they are less than one day old and not in a takeout container. While microwave and bag dinners are acceptable they need to be balanced by other items that would at least require turning on the stove to cook. Random spices are also beneficial. And for the love of God, bottled water in the fridge please. She’s going to ask for water and you look like you know what you are doing when you pull out a nice, chilled bottle of water.
· Remove the action figures from your home office: I know Boba Fett is the man. You know Boba Fett is the man. Hell, she knows Boba Fett is the man. For some reason though it is unacceptable to place Boba Fett in his rightful place of honor inside your apartment. For the life of me I do not know why.
That is what I have to start with. Any additions?
Best of 120 Minutes: I’ll leave it to Juliana Hatfield to describe how most of my workouts have been going recently. After another bike ride to nowhere somehow this seems really fitting.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Insiders “Not For Sale”
2) Julie Delpy “Julie Delpy”
3) Jon Dee Graham “Swept Away”
4) Lyle Lovett “Lyle Lovett”
5) Victoria Williams “Water to Drink”
· Remove all reading material from your bathroom: As the one place it is certain that the woman will enter is your bathroom it is vitally important that you set up that room as if you have never entered it. Thus, remove all books, magazines and other items that you use to avoid the otherwise deadtime in your life.
· Sticking with the bathroom, besides cleaning it, clearly place items that show you take care of yourself but remove those that are too indicative of the fact: All guys have liquid soap. Classy guys like myself have high end cleanser, face scrub and hair gel neatly organized with the labels facing out near the sink. Hide the nose hair trimmer though. As important it is to know that you have a situation there that needs addressing it is not something that you wish to advertise.
· Candles. They come with a catch: You want to have a few small, scented candles scattered around your apartment as proper decorating items. However, there are a number of rules that come with the operation of these candles. 1) They cannot be lit when she enters the room. That indicates that once you hit play on the stereo you will hear the soulful sounds of Barry White and that is not the best first impression to make. 2) They cannot show any evidence of ever being lit. That means that you had another woman over recently and were too lazy to get new candles. 3) Rules 1 and 2 can be ignored if you suffered at least a three day electricity outage in the past two weeks.
· Hide any films starring Bridget the Midget: Note: may not be applicable if one is dating someone who is vertically challenged though on second thought, hide it really well in that case. This goes double if said films also involve clowns.
· Magazines may be neatly arranged on a coffee table taking special care to disguise those that may feature actresses in skimpy attire. It goes without saying that you should keep your collection of Maxim issues out of plain sight. There is a bigger challenge when it comes to GQ and Esquire. These are actually useful magazines that one reads for personal benefit that just happen to occasionally feature a nude Jennifer Aniston on the cover. In that instance, best to hide or in my case, momentarily organize the stack of issues in non-chronological order. While that goes against all principles of natural structure it is a price one must pay.
· Reorganize bookshelves to display most popular and /or impressive books in the most prominent position: You’ll want to use this as a conversation piece so start with what will work, even if that means admitting that you own The Da Vinci Code. Your science fiction collection should be moved down a few shelves. If you’re like me and have an entire shelf dedicated to pro wrestling auto-biographies well, you should just be happy that a woman has voluntarily entered your abode in the first place.
· On that note, hide the pro wrestling DVDs: Though if you meet a woman who goes “why don’t we just snuggle together on the couch and watch The History of the Intercontinental Title DVD” marry her instantly.
· Stock the refrigerator and pantry with items that indicate that you know how to cook and / or take care of yourself: Whether you actually can or do cook is irrelevant. The key is to give the impression that you do. Hence, the fridge should contain some sort of green vegetable as well as something that could be described as fruit. Leftovers should only remain if they are less than one day old and not in a takeout container. While microwave and bag dinners are acceptable they need to be balanced by other items that would at least require turning on the stove to cook. Random spices are also beneficial. And for the love of God, bottled water in the fridge please. She’s going to ask for water and you look like you know what you are doing when you pull out a nice, chilled bottle of water.
· Remove the action figures from your home office: I know Boba Fett is the man. You know Boba Fett is the man. Hell, she knows Boba Fett is the man. For some reason though it is unacceptable to place Boba Fett in his rightful place of honor inside your apartment. For the life of me I do not know why.
That is what I have to start with. Any additions?
Best of 120 Minutes: I’ll leave it to Juliana Hatfield to describe how most of my workouts have been going recently. After another bike ride to nowhere somehow this seems really fitting.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Insiders “Not For Sale”
2) Julie Delpy “Julie Delpy”
3) Jon Dee Graham “Swept Away”
4) Lyle Lovett “Lyle Lovett”
5) Victoria Williams “Water to Drink”
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Until We Say Goodbye
[Author's note: I'm kind of blank from a creativity standpoint at the moment so I thought that I would dig into some of my older material. Here is the prologue and opening chapter to the novel that I am working on. Enjoy.]
Prologue: I Always Wanted to be an Astronaut
I never intended for my life to end up this way. When you’re a kid and someone asks you what you want to be when you grow up you always answer something glamorous like football player or doctor. Some outlandish, success filled profession where the rest of the world would look at you with admiration and awe. You never answer “I want to grow up to be a faceless cubicle drone just hoping to get through the day without having my soul forcefully ripped from my body.”
And I don’t care how much fun you have in your early twenties, when life simply consists of endless adventure and carefree existence, you always know that those moments are going to be fleeting. You’ll soon meet the woman that completes you (or at least doesn’t actively annoy you) and you’ll move out to the suburbs with your wife and your dog and an immaculately manicured lawn. That is the end goal and not for one second do you doubt that it is going to happen.
But life has a way of messing with your plans. What was always intended never occurs and you find yourself spending Valentine’s night working late in an office for a job you grudgingly perform because it gives you something to do during the day. Not even upset that you aren’t out because you were so unceremoniously dumped that the very concept of seeing happy couples sickens you. All of those dreams and convictions that fed you have slowly disappeared and all you can do is ask yourself “Is every day going to be like this for the rest of my life?”
That’s where I found myself. A seemingly successful thirty two year old lost amidst his life. No one to love, no burning passion in his heart, and a sinking feeling that life had past him by before it even had a chance to start. As if all of my dreams of happiness were as silly as my childhood dreams of being an astronaut.
Fate has a sense of humor, though. Life can take you for an adventure when you least expect it. The world can show you things that you never imagined.
Like I said, I never intended for my life to end up this way. But it makes for an interesting story.
Chapter 1: Some Mornings It Just Doesn’t Pay to Wake Up
Tuesday mornings are the worst. There is nothing more painful than coming to the office on a Tuesday morning. At least on Mondays you have a built in excuse for laziness. No one expects you to be a functional human beings and even the bosses are a little slow on the uptake. Everyone in the building is of the same mindset. No one wants to be there. We’d all much rather be in bed.
But on Tuesdays you lose that societal pretense of collective laziness. You’re expected to be in the office at eight and working whether you have your coffee or not. It’s part of adulthood, I guess. You show up at the faceless corporation and do your job. In my case you do it drudgingly trying to find the point of maximum results with minimal effort. I certainly don’t want to be there. I’d much rather be on my couch watching ESPN Classic and waiting for happy hour. Maybe that is why I spend most of my workday writing emails. At least that doesn’t feel entirely like work.
When I woke up this morning I actually felt pretty good about myself. Sure, life wasn’t entirely perfect and I’d have to drag my body through another day in the office but for once being Brian Evans wasn’t a bad proposition. I might complain about my job but at least I am successful at it. People in the office refer to me as the spreadsheet guru, the guy who can make numbers dance and that weirdo who always has headphones on (depending on how they feel about me at the time). I have a group of buddies who keep life interesting for me. Plus, there was Mary.
I don’t know about other people but I tend not to start relationships. It is more like I awake one morning to find myself in one. No one ever seems to inform me of the fact, there is never any paperwork to sign, all that happens is one night at the bar someone starts asking about my girlfriend and it suddenly dawns on me that I am dating someone. That’s kind of how things were with Mary. Met her at Pops and started hanging out. Before I knew it we were a couple and had actually started to like each other.
We spent the past few weeks doing all of those early relationship rituals. Spending night after night on the phone, secretly texting each other from the office, and finding every excuse to be together. “Want to go get coffee?” “I need to do some grocery shopping, care to join me?” No errand was too silly if it meant a few minutes together. Every word we shared was a revelation. I even made big plans for tomorrow. Dinner, flowers, the works. It is Valentine’s Day after all.
It didn’t surprise me that there was an email from her waiting for me in the morning. That’s just one of the ways we stay in touch. It did confuse me as to why she replied to an email that I had sent her two weeks earlier. All that email was about was how the Star Wars films created their own philosophical milieu. I tell all this just so you know that before I opened my email my world was, for all effective purposes, decent. I certainly did not expect the first words I read this morning to be
“Brian, I’m sorry but I don’t think you should ever talk to me again.”
There was only one thought in my mind after reading that.
“When does the bar open?”
Prologue: I Always Wanted to be an Astronaut
I never intended for my life to end up this way. When you’re a kid and someone asks you what you want to be when you grow up you always answer something glamorous like football player or doctor. Some outlandish, success filled profession where the rest of the world would look at you with admiration and awe. You never answer “I want to grow up to be a faceless cubicle drone just hoping to get through the day without having my soul forcefully ripped from my body.”
And I don’t care how much fun you have in your early twenties, when life simply consists of endless adventure and carefree existence, you always know that those moments are going to be fleeting. You’ll soon meet the woman that completes you (or at least doesn’t actively annoy you) and you’ll move out to the suburbs with your wife and your dog and an immaculately manicured lawn. That is the end goal and not for one second do you doubt that it is going to happen.
But life has a way of messing with your plans. What was always intended never occurs and you find yourself spending Valentine’s night working late in an office for a job you grudgingly perform because it gives you something to do during the day. Not even upset that you aren’t out because you were so unceremoniously dumped that the very concept of seeing happy couples sickens you. All of those dreams and convictions that fed you have slowly disappeared and all you can do is ask yourself “Is every day going to be like this for the rest of my life?”
That’s where I found myself. A seemingly successful thirty two year old lost amidst his life. No one to love, no burning passion in his heart, and a sinking feeling that life had past him by before it even had a chance to start. As if all of my dreams of happiness were as silly as my childhood dreams of being an astronaut.
Fate has a sense of humor, though. Life can take you for an adventure when you least expect it. The world can show you things that you never imagined.
Like I said, I never intended for my life to end up this way. But it makes for an interesting story.
Chapter 1: Some Mornings It Just Doesn’t Pay to Wake Up
Tuesday mornings are the worst. There is nothing more painful than coming to the office on a Tuesday morning. At least on Mondays you have a built in excuse for laziness. No one expects you to be a functional human beings and even the bosses are a little slow on the uptake. Everyone in the building is of the same mindset. No one wants to be there. We’d all much rather be in bed.
But on Tuesdays you lose that societal pretense of collective laziness. You’re expected to be in the office at eight and working whether you have your coffee or not. It’s part of adulthood, I guess. You show up at the faceless corporation and do your job. In my case you do it drudgingly trying to find the point of maximum results with minimal effort. I certainly don’t want to be there. I’d much rather be on my couch watching ESPN Classic and waiting for happy hour. Maybe that is why I spend most of my workday writing emails. At least that doesn’t feel entirely like work.
When I woke up this morning I actually felt pretty good about myself. Sure, life wasn’t entirely perfect and I’d have to drag my body through another day in the office but for once being Brian Evans wasn’t a bad proposition. I might complain about my job but at least I am successful at it. People in the office refer to me as the spreadsheet guru, the guy who can make numbers dance and that weirdo who always has headphones on (depending on how they feel about me at the time). I have a group of buddies who keep life interesting for me. Plus, there was Mary.
I don’t know about other people but I tend not to start relationships. It is more like I awake one morning to find myself in one. No one ever seems to inform me of the fact, there is never any paperwork to sign, all that happens is one night at the bar someone starts asking about my girlfriend and it suddenly dawns on me that I am dating someone. That’s kind of how things were with Mary. Met her at Pops and started hanging out. Before I knew it we were a couple and had actually started to like each other.
We spent the past few weeks doing all of those early relationship rituals. Spending night after night on the phone, secretly texting each other from the office, and finding every excuse to be together. “Want to go get coffee?” “I need to do some grocery shopping, care to join me?” No errand was too silly if it meant a few minutes together. Every word we shared was a revelation. I even made big plans for tomorrow. Dinner, flowers, the works. It is Valentine’s Day after all.
It didn’t surprise me that there was an email from her waiting for me in the morning. That’s just one of the ways we stay in touch. It did confuse me as to why she replied to an email that I had sent her two weeks earlier. All that email was about was how the Star Wars films created their own philosophical milieu. I tell all this just so you know that before I opened my email my world was, for all effective purposes, decent. I certainly did not expect the first words I read this morning to be
“Brian, I’m sorry but I don’t think you should ever talk to me again.”
There was only one thought in my mind after reading that.
“When does the bar open?”
Thursday, January 22, 2009
No love for Sex in the City?
Well the Oscar nominations came out today so I might as well end the week with a discussion on them. I’ll start with something that most people probably missed, which is who is receiving the honorary Oscar this year. Hold on to your large comical hats folks as this year’s winner of the honorary Oscar will be….
Jerry Lewis.
Yes, that Jerry Lewis. The Absent Minded Professor Jerry Lewis. The very popular in France Jerry Lewis. The less talented half of Martin and Lewis Jerry Lewis. Officially this is for his humanitarian work and you can’t really fault him getting an award for that. But somehow the fact that he is receiving and Oscar is a bit disconcerting.
(Best explanation as to why he is popular in France is this. On the surface Jerry Lewis appears to be the prototypical American. Athletic, handsome, completely self-confident. But when he opens his mouth he is a complete idiot. The French love this.)
On to the real nominations. If you need to bet your life savings on any category take Wall-E for best animated film. It could theoretically lose to Kung Fu Panda but only if the panda lobby offers a lot of bamboo to the voters.
Most surprising nomination: Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder. I’m not saying that he doesn’t deserve the nomination and I am certainly a believer in the fact that comedies are always ignored at Oscar time. But I can barely get my head around the fact that Tropic Thunder pulled in an Oscar nomination. No film that featured Ben Stiller should ever be nominated for anything.
Welcome Back awards: Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei both were nominated for their work in The Wrestler (which I still haven’t seen but really want to. How can you not want to watch a film that features Necro Butcher breaking out the stapler.) Mickey Rourke looks and act the part of a broken down wrestler so well that it is scary. From every scene that I have seen he looks and acts like a wrestler and his in ring work has been praised by actual wrestlers. And Marisa Tomei apparently brings it. I’d like her to win just so she can be the most unlikely person to have two Oscars on her mantle.
Reason I’ll be watching the awards show: Amy Adams. I think that she is my new celebrity crush. Talented, amazingly beautiful and she actually seems to be a decent person.
Trivia that you probably do not know: This is Kate Winslet’s sixth Oscar nomination. The fact that she is two years younger than I am makes that fact slightly depressing. Still, she is one of my favorites and is one of the few actresses in Hollywood who actually looks like a real human being.
Surprise of the year: No Randy Newman song for best original song? Hell, they didn’t even nominate the Springsteen track from The Wrestler. Maybe they realized that they are not going to come close to what happened last year with Once so they’ll just decide to hand it to Peter Gabriel this time.
I’ll try to post something interesting over the weekend. Not sure if it will be another dating story or not. Either way, I’ll try to make it worth your while to stop by on the weekend.
Jerry Lewis.
Yes, that Jerry Lewis. The Absent Minded Professor Jerry Lewis. The very popular in France Jerry Lewis. The less talented half of Martin and Lewis Jerry Lewis. Officially this is for his humanitarian work and you can’t really fault him getting an award for that. But somehow the fact that he is receiving and Oscar is a bit disconcerting.
(Best explanation as to why he is popular in France is this. On the surface Jerry Lewis appears to be the prototypical American. Athletic, handsome, completely self-confident. But when he opens his mouth he is a complete idiot. The French love this.)
On to the real nominations. If you need to bet your life savings on any category take Wall-E for best animated film. It could theoretically lose to Kung Fu Panda but only if the panda lobby offers a lot of bamboo to the voters.
Most surprising nomination: Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder. I’m not saying that he doesn’t deserve the nomination and I am certainly a believer in the fact that comedies are always ignored at Oscar time. But I can barely get my head around the fact that Tropic Thunder pulled in an Oscar nomination. No film that featured Ben Stiller should ever be nominated for anything.
Welcome Back awards: Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei both were nominated for their work in The Wrestler (which I still haven’t seen but really want to. How can you not want to watch a film that features Necro Butcher breaking out the stapler.) Mickey Rourke looks and act the part of a broken down wrestler so well that it is scary. From every scene that I have seen he looks and acts like a wrestler and his in ring work has been praised by actual wrestlers. And Marisa Tomei apparently brings it. I’d like her to win just so she can be the most unlikely person to have two Oscars on her mantle.
Reason I’ll be watching the awards show: Amy Adams. I think that she is my new celebrity crush. Talented, amazingly beautiful and she actually seems to be a decent person.
Trivia that you probably do not know: This is Kate Winslet’s sixth Oscar nomination. The fact that she is two years younger than I am makes that fact slightly depressing. Still, she is one of my favorites and is one of the few actresses in Hollywood who actually looks like a real human being.
Surprise of the year: No Randy Newman song for best original song? Hell, they didn’t even nominate the Springsteen track from The Wrestler. Maybe they realized that they are not going to come close to what happened last year with Once so they’ll just decide to hand it to Peter Gabriel this time.
I’ll try to post something interesting over the weekend. Not sure if it will be another dating story or not. Either way, I’ll try to make it worth your while to stop by on the weekend.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
When does The Pick Up Artist 3 begin?
I just want to state my amusement in that they actually made Obama retake the oath of office today because he said it incorrectly yesterday. See, I was right in saying that he wasn’t officially president. It’s frightening how observant I can be at times. No wonder I saw five people wearing Aretha Franklin’s hat today.
Ok, over the past few weeks I have been very poor in my coverage of VH-1’s reality programming. This has been a huge overlook on my part as some of the shows are just classic. Let’s run through some of the shows currently airing.
Real Chance at Love: I know this show just had its season finale but I really need to start here. So we have Real and Chance, two contestants from I Love New York, which featured New York from Flavor of Love, which was created when the relationship between Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielson fell apart, a relationship that began on The Surreal Life, a show that existed to promote people who used to be vaguely famous, are on a Bachelor type show. That sentence does make sense even if reading it makes you die a little inside. What makes the show so brilliant is the degree to which this is a competition. These women dream of dating a former reality television show contestant. Everyone is serious: best evidence when Chance questioned Corn Fed (a woman from Fargo who yes, was called Corn Fed for the entire series) whether she could handle his lifestyle. Which raises the question: what lifestyle?
Tool Academy: This is the flip side of The Pick Up Artist. Whereas that show focused on guys who can’t get women and then teaches them all the tricks to have beautiful women falling all over themselves trying to be with the former geeks this show is about muscle bound, self-absorbed guys who are trying to be taught to be caring sensitive males. So essentially this show is about unlearning everything that Mystery taught me and getting back to being myself. And people wonder why I have such a hard time meeting women. I can’t even figure out what side of spectrum to be on.
Confession of a Teen Idol: This show, which not surprisingly comes from the inventive mind of Scott Baio, focuses on former teen idols as they try to make a comeback. Now some of the people on the show are actual teen idols. Christopher Atkins, Jeremy Jackson, and even Adrian Zmed fit the criteria of once being lusted after by fourteen year old girls. Also on the show is Billy Hufsey. I don’t have any clue who this guy is. He apparently was on the TV show Fame, which I barely remember. Sign that your career has gone badly: when you are on a show featuring washed up stars and none of the other has beens can remember who you are.
Sober House: Here is how Wikipedia sums up the first episode: “Steven Adler comes to the house not only high, but bringing heroin.” If that doesn’t catch your interest nothing will. For those of you who need more background this is a spinoff of Celebrity Rehab (yes, in the world of VH-1 even a reality show about rehab can merit a spinoff). After watching your favorite D-list celebrities get clean in rehab now you get to watch how they try to stay sober. Featuring, and I’m not making this up, the aforementioned Steven Adler from Guns N Roses, porn star Mary Carey, Andy Dick and in the best non sequitor casting ever, Rodney King. There should be a contest connected with this show where a random member of the public is placed in the house with this crowd and if they don’t become a drug addict trying to deal with all of them they win a million dollars.
And we can only end with…
Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels: Ok, I’m just going to list the awesomeness of this show in bullet point form.
· Bret is always shown wearing a bandanna because it is clearly apparent that he has lost the vast majority of his hair.
· Also, all of Bret’s individual segments are shot in front of a backdrop of all of his gold records. Except that it is clearly a greenscreen so they could put the surface of the moon back there and he would never notice.
· The third episode of the show was titled, and again I’m not making this up, “Skanks on Ice”
· We have contestants named Brittanya, Jasmineva, Constandina, and Mindy.
· The fact that not only were they able to find new contestants that met the former stripper standard set in the first two seasons but they found twenty of them.
· The entire concept of the show is this. As Bret was unable to find love in the first two seasons (what a surprise) he is now searching for a woman who will be able to withstand his rock and roll lifestyle. So now the contest is going on the road with him as he travels to such exotic locations as Louisville, Indianapolis and my former home of Champaign, Illinois. That is not a bad judgment of true love for you right there. If you can find a woman who will willingly travel to Champaign with you marry her.
Wednesday Night Music Club: Time to increase my indie cred. Fleet Foxes, yes they were on Saturday Night Live but they are still all kinds of awesome.
Ok, over the past few weeks I have been very poor in my coverage of VH-1’s reality programming. This has been a huge overlook on my part as some of the shows are just classic. Let’s run through some of the shows currently airing.
Real Chance at Love: I know this show just had its season finale but I really need to start here. So we have Real and Chance, two contestants from I Love New York, which featured New York from Flavor of Love, which was created when the relationship between Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielson fell apart, a relationship that began on The Surreal Life, a show that existed to promote people who used to be vaguely famous, are on a Bachelor type show. That sentence does make sense even if reading it makes you die a little inside. What makes the show so brilliant is the degree to which this is a competition. These women dream of dating a former reality television show contestant. Everyone is serious: best evidence when Chance questioned Corn Fed (a woman from Fargo who yes, was called Corn Fed for the entire series) whether she could handle his lifestyle. Which raises the question: what lifestyle?
Tool Academy: This is the flip side of The Pick Up Artist. Whereas that show focused on guys who can’t get women and then teaches them all the tricks to have beautiful women falling all over themselves trying to be with the former geeks this show is about muscle bound, self-absorbed guys who are trying to be taught to be caring sensitive males. So essentially this show is about unlearning everything that Mystery taught me and getting back to being myself. And people wonder why I have such a hard time meeting women. I can’t even figure out what side of spectrum to be on.
Confession of a Teen Idol: This show, which not surprisingly comes from the inventive mind of Scott Baio, focuses on former teen idols as they try to make a comeback. Now some of the people on the show are actual teen idols. Christopher Atkins, Jeremy Jackson, and even Adrian Zmed fit the criteria of once being lusted after by fourteen year old girls. Also on the show is Billy Hufsey. I don’t have any clue who this guy is. He apparently was on the TV show Fame, which I barely remember. Sign that your career has gone badly: when you are on a show featuring washed up stars and none of the other has beens can remember who you are.
Sober House: Here is how Wikipedia sums up the first episode: “Steven Adler comes to the house not only high, but bringing heroin.” If that doesn’t catch your interest nothing will. For those of you who need more background this is a spinoff of Celebrity Rehab (yes, in the world of VH-1 even a reality show about rehab can merit a spinoff). After watching your favorite D-list celebrities get clean in rehab now you get to watch how they try to stay sober. Featuring, and I’m not making this up, the aforementioned Steven Adler from Guns N Roses, porn star Mary Carey, Andy Dick and in the best non sequitor casting ever, Rodney King. There should be a contest connected with this show where a random member of the public is placed in the house with this crowd and if they don’t become a drug addict trying to deal with all of them they win a million dollars.
And we can only end with…
Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels: Ok, I’m just going to list the awesomeness of this show in bullet point form.
· Bret is always shown wearing a bandanna because it is clearly apparent that he has lost the vast majority of his hair.
· Also, all of Bret’s individual segments are shot in front of a backdrop of all of his gold records. Except that it is clearly a greenscreen so they could put the surface of the moon back there and he would never notice.
· The third episode of the show was titled, and again I’m not making this up, “Skanks on Ice”
· We have contestants named Brittanya, Jasmineva, Constandina, and Mindy.
· The fact that not only were they able to find new contestants that met the former stripper standard set in the first two seasons but they found twenty of them.
· The entire concept of the show is this. As Bret was unable to find love in the first two seasons (what a surprise) he is now searching for a woman who will be able to withstand his rock and roll lifestyle. So now the contest is going on the road with him as he travels to such exotic locations as Louisville, Indianapolis and my former home of Champaign, Illinois. That is not a bad judgment of true love for you right there. If you can find a woman who will willingly travel to Champaign with you marry her.
Wednesday Night Music Club: Time to increase my indie cred. Fleet Foxes, yes they were on Saturday Night Live but they are still all kinds of awesome.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
So all our problems are fixed now, right?
Addendum to last night’s post: For those wondering, I checked the “why yes, let’s try talking for more than six minutes” box for a number of my encounters that night. Probably more than half now that I think about it (and two of which I really did want to see again). So I wasn’t being my usual, overly selective self. I was open to pretty much anything. I guess that makes the ending even more depressing. I’m not sure.
I’ll just do a bit of quick hits on the inauguration tonight.
1) There is nothing that speaks evil criminal genius like the sight of Dick Cheney in a wheelchair. Seriously, they should have given him a white cat to place on his lap and slowly pet while the ceremony progressed. Maybe have the camera focus on him occasionally while he issued a maniacal laugh.
2) I had an interesting argument last week with someone who was at the inauguration. They were surprised that I wasn’t going and would therefore be missing a historic moment. Which is true in that I wasn’t there; I was watching it on television. That said, none of the people who were there witnessed the historic moment either. They all were watching on big screens. They just happened to be in the same vague geographic region. That is why I am more than glad that I actually saw Obama and Biden on Saturday. That was more than enough for me.
3) I believe from now on in every crowd one person must be wearing Aretha Franklin’s hat. It should be made a law or something. For the good of society we need more large, comical hats. I’m also curious as to the song choice of “My Country Tis of Thee”. It’s a fine song and all but not one that I’ve heard recently. (Still, I wish people would recognize that Woody Guthrie did not intend “This Land is your Land” to be considered this wonderfully patriotic song. It is a protest song against the upper class not sharing with those less fortunate. For once I would like people to note that when they sing it.)
4) I really want to start the urban legend that since Obama did not correctly recite the oath of office that he is not officially president. There is precedence for this. The term “read the riot act” comes from the fact that under British law before they could arrest protestors the police must read a specific list of orders. This is (or at least was) true. It is also true that one set of rioters were set free because the cops did not end with “God save the Queen”. Honestly, history classes would be much more interesting if this is what children were taught.
5) The idea of the inaugural ball seems so anachronistic that it is almost laughable. Here we are celebrating the inauguration of a president whose entire campaign was based on supporting the common man and what do we do to celebrate? Quick, everyone into tuxedos and formal gowns so we can have a ballroom dance! It is one of those moments where you celebrate in a way that no one, including yourself, would ever celebrate in. It’s like taking waltz lessons so you can perform the first dance at your own wedding. It’s your wedding; you really shouldn’t need to take classes for it.
6) Can I state that it was kind of sad to see George Bush walk off the stage and leave? Not that I admire the guy or anything; I’ve been on the public record for years as saying that he was the worst president since Millard Fillmore. But it is always this strange, bittersweet moment when a president leaves office. He just stands there, watches someone new take his job, and he changes from being the most powerful man in the world to just another guy in a suit. Then it is off to the helicopter to get him out of town while the movers are packing up his stuff. This is before the crowd starts booing or throwing shoes at the White House. Like I said, I don’t like the guy but you should show a little bit of respect.
7) I’ll end with something that is mentioned every four years but should really be noted here. The amazing thing about our country is that throughout its history every four years we hold an election and a leader is sworn in. This is never challenged, no one has tried to seize control, there have been no military coups or dictatorships form. Bush just hands over the reigns of power to a political rival and the entire country goes on just as it always has. That is really incredible and when you study the history of the world it is really an American institution. There is no backroom intrigue (well, somewhat with elections but nowhere near as many murders as in other parts of the world) or hostile takeovers. Just a continual flow of control. It’s rather amazing.
Tomorrow I will address the fact that I have been very neglectful in my analysis of VH-1’s rather brilliant reality programming. Stay tuned.
I’ll just do a bit of quick hits on the inauguration tonight.
1) There is nothing that speaks evil criminal genius like the sight of Dick Cheney in a wheelchair. Seriously, they should have given him a white cat to place on his lap and slowly pet while the ceremony progressed. Maybe have the camera focus on him occasionally while he issued a maniacal laugh.
2) I had an interesting argument last week with someone who was at the inauguration. They were surprised that I wasn’t going and would therefore be missing a historic moment. Which is true in that I wasn’t there; I was watching it on television. That said, none of the people who were there witnessed the historic moment either. They all were watching on big screens. They just happened to be in the same vague geographic region. That is why I am more than glad that I actually saw Obama and Biden on Saturday. That was more than enough for me.
3) I believe from now on in every crowd one person must be wearing Aretha Franklin’s hat. It should be made a law or something. For the good of society we need more large, comical hats. I’m also curious as to the song choice of “My Country Tis of Thee”. It’s a fine song and all but not one that I’ve heard recently. (Still, I wish people would recognize that Woody Guthrie did not intend “This Land is your Land” to be considered this wonderfully patriotic song. It is a protest song against the upper class not sharing with those less fortunate. For once I would like people to note that when they sing it.)
4) I really want to start the urban legend that since Obama did not correctly recite the oath of office that he is not officially president. There is precedence for this. The term “read the riot act” comes from the fact that under British law before they could arrest protestors the police must read a specific list of orders. This is (or at least was) true. It is also true that one set of rioters were set free because the cops did not end with “God save the Queen”. Honestly, history classes would be much more interesting if this is what children were taught.
5) The idea of the inaugural ball seems so anachronistic that it is almost laughable. Here we are celebrating the inauguration of a president whose entire campaign was based on supporting the common man and what do we do to celebrate? Quick, everyone into tuxedos and formal gowns so we can have a ballroom dance! It is one of those moments where you celebrate in a way that no one, including yourself, would ever celebrate in. It’s like taking waltz lessons so you can perform the first dance at your own wedding. It’s your wedding; you really shouldn’t need to take classes for it.
6) Can I state that it was kind of sad to see George Bush walk off the stage and leave? Not that I admire the guy or anything; I’ve been on the public record for years as saying that he was the worst president since Millard Fillmore. But it is always this strange, bittersweet moment when a president leaves office. He just stands there, watches someone new take his job, and he changes from being the most powerful man in the world to just another guy in a suit. Then it is off to the helicopter to get him out of town while the movers are packing up his stuff. This is before the crowd starts booing or throwing shoes at the White House. Like I said, I don’t like the guy but you should show a little bit of respect.
7) I’ll end with something that is mentioned every four years but should really be noted here. The amazing thing about our country is that throughout its history every four years we hold an election and a leader is sworn in. This is never challenged, no one has tried to seize control, there have been no military coups or dictatorships form. Bush just hands over the reigns of power to a political rival and the entire country goes on just as it always has. That is really incredible and when you study the history of the world it is really an American institution. There is no backroom intrigue (well, somewhat with elections but nowhere near as many murders as in other parts of the world) or hostile takeovers. Just a continual flow of control. It’s rather amazing.
Tomorrow I will address the fact that I have been very neglectful in my analysis of VH-1’s rather brilliant reality programming. Stay tuned.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Adventures in Speed Dating
As I’ve mentioned before last summer I found myself writing for another website (sadly brief lived) on the topic of relationships. The idea behind my joining the site was rather brilliant. I would simply provide my perspective on the topic; that perspective being that of a 35 year old single male, never married, hell, never even engaged, who had just been dumped by his girlfriend and while not exactly as a result moved across the country to a town where he knew absolutely no one but the two events have somehow become intertwined. While my experience cannot be considered common it at least speaks to a rather standard occurrence: How in the world do you meet people in your thirties especially in a place where you are starting from ground zero? No friends, no support network, not even a bar where you are a regular. I had a list of activities that I would undertake and document to show just what it is like out there. Even though that website is no longer the idea was just too good to pass up.
Hence, I somehow found myself speed dating last week.
Now speed dating is one of those things that I had always heard about but had never even tried. Nor have I ever known anyone to try it. Just the very idea seemed like an evening of continued awkwardness along with the concern that the only people who would be at a speed dating event are people who need a speed dating event. It’s the Catch-22 behind all dating services; all of the people that you would actually want to date are obviously socially advanced to the point that they no longer require dating services. Your romantic life is one of those activities that is extremely difficult to outsource.
But after seeing an ad for one in Wilmington in a magazine I decided to sign up and see what could happen. I was a little apprehensive at the sign up process. First off, I had two options to choose from: one an event for 25 – 35 year olds and another for 45 – 55 year olds. This was quite concerning for me as I turn 36 in nine months and apparently at that point even the people who run speed dating think I’m such a huge loser they won’t allow me in the building for another ten years. Then there was the fact that you just signed up. Pretty much filled out a form and you were in. That and you had to pay a fee. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of this. I paid good money for this experience.
So the big day came and I made my way there after work. That was probably my first problem because by the time I get home from the office all I want to do is lie down on the couch and sleep for an hour. All I do all day is look at numbers so it takes me a while to switch off that brain and get the social interaction part of my personality functioning. It’s tough to get to know someone when part of your brain is still writing excel formulas.
The event was being held on the second floor of a bar. To reach the second floor (and I swear I am not making this up) you had to climb up what for all intensive purposes appeared to be a fire escape with a small little banner on it promoting the speed dating event. It made the whole event seem so illicit and back alley, like I was going to have to perform a special knock and give a password to be let in the door. Also, there is nothing like climbing a fire escape in the middle of January and looking out at the city to make you wonder just how horrible your social life has become that this is now considered to be an acceptable option.
I get enough courage to enter and sign in, happy that I timed it so that I wouldn’t be the first one there, and make my way to the bar. Now one would think that if I had paid money to be at a singles’ event I would make a concerted effort to, you know, talk to people. Of course, if I told you that I had the option of a) talking to the random stranger to my left and b) watching a random Big Ten basketball game on the television set most of you would rightly assume that I would take a much greater interest in Ohio State than anyone around me. Now I didn’t just sit there silently. I did try to make small talk and crack jokes but in essence I did what I always do when I’m in a new social situation. I sit back and observe. This puts me at ease but sucks in terms of first impressions.
Then it was time for the speed dating to begin. I’ll go over the ground rules now. The women are all given specific numbers and locations to sit. The men are also numbered and we are told where we shall sit to begin. All parties are given scorecards (there is no other way to describe it. They looked like they were from a romantic themed miniature golf course) and pens. When the bell rings you introduce yourself to the other party and write down their name in your scorecard in what might be the most awkward moment I have ever experienced in my entire life. Then you have six minutes to have a conversation at which point a bell rings. At this point three things happen 1) you try to politely wrap up the conversation, 2) you then turn to your scorecard and check either “Yes, I would like to talk to this person again” or “No, those were six minutes of my life I will never get back”, and 3) the guy gets up, moves to the next table down the line, and promptly bangs his knee into a table leg.
Now I’ll admit this is not exactly a format that works to my advantage. I don’t think you can pick up my better qualities in six minutes. I’m not sure if six months would be enough time. Hell, I’m not even sure how I work and I’ve been me for a very long time. It’s the type of thing where you need to be on from the moment the bell rings and I’m much more of an ease into the situation type of guy.
Anyway, so we all go to our stations and I discover that, uh, there is no woman sitting across from me. Yes, even at speed dating I couldn’t get a date. Well, what had happened was that two of the women were late including the first person I was supposed to meet. So I just sat at a table for six minutes watching everyone else have a conversation while I just sat there feeling quite possibly as pathetic as I have ever felt in my entire life. Now I’ve been by myself when people are being social before. I know the horrors of hearing Wonderful Tonight and watch everyone else go to the dance floor while you make your way to the bar and hope that you can somehow drink yourself into numbness. But being ditched at something you paid for was another experience entirely.
Then the bell rang and I went to the next table where I met…well, no one. She wasn’t there either. This is what you call an auspicious debut. Even worse it meant that I wasn’t going to be warmed up whereas everyone else had been talking for a while. She at least arrived before the six minutes were up thus allowing me to have thirty seconds of conversation with a real person.
For the rest of the night I at least was able to talk to women so things did improve. It’s very strange having a six minute conversation with someone you have never met before. The first topic is always what do you do for a living. That is actually a rather challenging question for me as I still haven’t figured out how to explain my job. My title is Transmission Specialist, which makes me sound like a mechanic. I usually mutter something about the energy business. It is either that or I fall into the spiel I used to do when I was interviewing over the summer where I would describe my entire work history in an attempt to….ok, I have no idea what that was meant to accomplish. I did it repeatedly through the night because after months of interviewing you can discuss your work history at the drop of a hat. Exactly how my resume was meant to entice a member of the opposite sex to speak to me again is a mystery.
You also have the usual chit chat about what do you do for fun or where you have traveled to recently. Think about what you tend to talk about with a random stranger at the bar and it is similar to that. They did provide us with handy question sheets and dice so that we could randomly choose which question to ask the other. I always felt like that was the silliest thing in the world. How bad is it when within four minutes you are going “I’m just going to read off the cue cards here.” Whenever that happened I said, and I’m not making this up either, “well, if we are going to ask random questions let’s use the best random question that anyone has ever asked me in a bar. Who is your favorite muppet?” Somehow I don’t think that worked.
(For the record my answer is Rowlf the Dog. You can’t go wrong with a piano playing dog.)
The challenge is that six minutes is just long enough to become horribly awkward and short enough so that you can never have a proper conversation. There were a number of times when I was just starting to feel like we had overcome the opening jitters and were getting to know each other when the bell rang and you moved on. It’s as if you are constantly interrupted and by the end of the night all you want is to just have one conversation that doesn’t have a stop watch attached to it.
As for the women I was talking to, well, they were pretty amazing actually. Much, much better than I had anticipated and a lot of them were super cool. To the point where I really wondered just why they were there. I mean, I had a vague reason as being new to town does give me a little bit of an excuse, but some of these women should have no problems getting boyfriends. If I had known that going in I might have tried to up my game a little bit.
Finally I completed the circuit and the night was over. We stayed at the bar for a little while to finish off our drinks and talk some more but the crowd started to empty rather quickly. I was there later than most but soon made my way back home to heat up some dinner and enter my scores into the computer. See, that was the next step. We would all go online and enter whether we wanted to talk again or not. I entered my selections and waited the appropriate few days to see the results. I clicked on the link and was told:
“You have no matches.”
Sigh.
God I suck.
Hence, I somehow found myself speed dating last week.
Now speed dating is one of those things that I had always heard about but had never even tried. Nor have I ever known anyone to try it. Just the very idea seemed like an evening of continued awkwardness along with the concern that the only people who would be at a speed dating event are people who need a speed dating event. It’s the Catch-22 behind all dating services; all of the people that you would actually want to date are obviously socially advanced to the point that they no longer require dating services. Your romantic life is one of those activities that is extremely difficult to outsource.
But after seeing an ad for one in Wilmington in a magazine I decided to sign up and see what could happen. I was a little apprehensive at the sign up process. First off, I had two options to choose from: one an event for 25 – 35 year olds and another for 45 – 55 year olds. This was quite concerning for me as I turn 36 in nine months and apparently at that point even the people who run speed dating think I’m such a huge loser they won’t allow me in the building for another ten years. Then there was the fact that you just signed up. Pretty much filled out a form and you were in. That and you had to pay a fee. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of this. I paid good money for this experience.
So the big day came and I made my way there after work. That was probably my first problem because by the time I get home from the office all I want to do is lie down on the couch and sleep for an hour. All I do all day is look at numbers so it takes me a while to switch off that brain and get the social interaction part of my personality functioning. It’s tough to get to know someone when part of your brain is still writing excel formulas.
The event was being held on the second floor of a bar. To reach the second floor (and I swear I am not making this up) you had to climb up what for all intensive purposes appeared to be a fire escape with a small little banner on it promoting the speed dating event. It made the whole event seem so illicit and back alley, like I was going to have to perform a special knock and give a password to be let in the door. Also, there is nothing like climbing a fire escape in the middle of January and looking out at the city to make you wonder just how horrible your social life has become that this is now considered to be an acceptable option.
I get enough courage to enter and sign in, happy that I timed it so that I wouldn’t be the first one there, and make my way to the bar. Now one would think that if I had paid money to be at a singles’ event I would make a concerted effort to, you know, talk to people. Of course, if I told you that I had the option of a) talking to the random stranger to my left and b) watching a random Big Ten basketball game on the television set most of you would rightly assume that I would take a much greater interest in Ohio State than anyone around me. Now I didn’t just sit there silently. I did try to make small talk and crack jokes but in essence I did what I always do when I’m in a new social situation. I sit back and observe. This puts me at ease but sucks in terms of first impressions.
Then it was time for the speed dating to begin. I’ll go over the ground rules now. The women are all given specific numbers and locations to sit. The men are also numbered and we are told where we shall sit to begin. All parties are given scorecards (there is no other way to describe it. They looked like they were from a romantic themed miniature golf course) and pens. When the bell rings you introduce yourself to the other party and write down their name in your scorecard in what might be the most awkward moment I have ever experienced in my entire life. Then you have six minutes to have a conversation at which point a bell rings. At this point three things happen 1) you try to politely wrap up the conversation, 2) you then turn to your scorecard and check either “Yes, I would like to talk to this person again” or “No, those were six minutes of my life I will never get back”, and 3) the guy gets up, moves to the next table down the line, and promptly bangs his knee into a table leg.
Now I’ll admit this is not exactly a format that works to my advantage. I don’t think you can pick up my better qualities in six minutes. I’m not sure if six months would be enough time. Hell, I’m not even sure how I work and I’ve been me for a very long time. It’s the type of thing where you need to be on from the moment the bell rings and I’m much more of an ease into the situation type of guy.
Anyway, so we all go to our stations and I discover that, uh, there is no woman sitting across from me. Yes, even at speed dating I couldn’t get a date. Well, what had happened was that two of the women were late including the first person I was supposed to meet. So I just sat at a table for six minutes watching everyone else have a conversation while I just sat there feeling quite possibly as pathetic as I have ever felt in my entire life. Now I’ve been by myself when people are being social before. I know the horrors of hearing Wonderful Tonight and watch everyone else go to the dance floor while you make your way to the bar and hope that you can somehow drink yourself into numbness. But being ditched at something you paid for was another experience entirely.
Then the bell rang and I went to the next table where I met…well, no one. She wasn’t there either. This is what you call an auspicious debut. Even worse it meant that I wasn’t going to be warmed up whereas everyone else had been talking for a while. She at least arrived before the six minutes were up thus allowing me to have thirty seconds of conversation with a real person.
For the rest of the night I at least was able to talk to women so things did improve. It’s very strange having a six minute conversation with someone you have never met before. The first topic is always what do you do for a living. That is actually a rather challenging question for me as I still haven’t figured out how to explain my job. My title is Transmission Specialist, which makes me sound like a mechanic. I usually mutter something about the energy business. It is either that or I fall into the spiel I used to do when I was interviewing over the summer where I would describe my entire work history in an attempt to….ok, I have no idea what that was meant to accomplish. I did it repeatedly through the night because after months of interviewing you can discuss your work history at the drop of a hat. Exactly how my resume was meant to entice a member of the opposite sex to speak to me again is a mystery.
You also have the usual chit chat about what do you do for fun or where you have traveled to recently. Think about what you tend to talk about with a random stranger at the bar and it is similar to that. They did provide us with handy question sheets and dice so that we could randomly choose which question to ask the other. I always felt like that was the silliest thing in the world. How bad is it when within four minutes you are going “I’m just going to read off the cue cards here.” Whenever that happened I said, and I’m not making this up either, “well, if we are going to ask random questions let’s use the best random question that anyone has ever asked me in a bar. Who is your favorite muppet?” Somehow I don’t think that worked.
(For the record my answer is Rowlf the Dog. You can’t go wrong with a piano playing dog.)
The challenge is that six minutes is just long enough to become horribly awkward and short enough so that you can never have a proper conversation. There were a number of times when I was just starting to feel like we had overcome the opening jitters and were getting to know each other when the bell rang and you moved on. It’s as if you are constantly interrupted and by the end of the night all you want is to just have one conversation that doesn’t have a stop watch attached to it.
As for the women I was talking to, well, they were pretty amazing actually. Much, much better than I had anticipated and a lot of them were super cool. To the point where I really wondered just why they were there. I mean, I had a vague reason as being new to town does give me a little bit of an excuse, but some of these women should have no problems getting boyfriends. If I had known that going in I might have tried to up my game a little bit.
Finally I completed the circuit and the night was over. We stayed at the bar for a little while to finish off our drinks and talk some more but the crowd started to empty rather quickly. I was there later than most but soon made my way back home to heat up some dinner and enter my scores into the computer. See, that was the next step. We would all go online and enter whether we wanted to talk again or not. I entered my selections and waited the appropriate few days to see the results. I clicked on the link and was told:
“You have no matches.”
Sigh.
God I suck.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
My Brush With History
I know a lot of people who have made big plans for the inauguration. They’ve bought plane tickets, booked hotel rooms and rescheduled their lives just to be one of the millions people in Washington. I, on the other hand, just waited for Obama and Biden to come to me. And they did because I’m just that freaking awesome.
A little backstory here. Obama and Biden decided to recreate Lincoln’s train ride into Washington (except without the secrecy and rumors of being disguised in women’s clothing) and start in Philadelphia. From there Obama would go to Wilmington where Biden would join them, getting on the train at the same station that he always goes to Washington from. That station just happens to be directly across the street from my apartment. Literally. I am looking at where they spoke as I write this.
This did mean that certain measures were going to be in effect. For one thing, they blocked off all the roads surrounding my apartment. I think I theoretically could have left my apartment Friday night but given what was closed I am really uncertain that I would have been able to get back in without having to drive to Baltimore and turn around. Also, when I woke up on Saturday morning I was greeted by armed Coast Guard craft traveling the river below me, military helicopters overhead, and men in black on rooftops probably wondering why I was standing so close to the window. It was awesome and disconcerting at the same time.
So this is what it looked like when they first let the crowd in. Everyone rushed for the best position while I stayed in my nice warm and cozy apartment drinking my morning coffee. Now some people did actually watch everything from my apartment building which I thought was kind of silly. I mean, the next president is a five minute walk away. You’d think that you would make the trek. But even I decided that it was better to stay warm for as long as possible until I had to venture into the cold.
Once I thought that the crowd was large enough I bundled up and made my way to the park. To do so I had to stand in line to go through security during which I was able to examine all of the street vendors. Because if there is one thing that screams “America” it is poorly constructed commemorative t-shirts. Also, there were an amazing amount of buttons for sale. I mean like a dozen people selling buttons (including one really cute girl from Arizona who I probably should have bought one from just for the conversation). This raises the question of when was the last time you actually saw someone wear a button. It seems like a product that has no meaning.
After making my way through security I scanned the area and picked my spot. Once I saw where the tv cameras were and where the stage was I found a spot where I could see the podium. There was a tree in my way but I was just tall enough to see the stage. Not that there was anything to see at the moment. That was going to take another hour. We did have some advance entertainment. The national anthem was sung by a small child named Nichodemus, a name that would prove quite ironic as this tale progresses. Then we had the typical array of politicians and speakers before the big guns arrived.
Biden took the stage first (look to the right of the stop sign). He was introduced by the Amtrak conductor who would take him to Washington on a daily basis as a senator. It was actually a really nice speech by the conductor talking about how Joe was always for the common man. Joe took the stage and joked about the times that he called the station to let them know that he was only two lights away and to hold the train for him. That isn’t exactly a common man sort of thing to do but I’ll let it slide. Then it was time for the reason we were all here.
(Look to the right of the lamppost. Apologies for the quality here but I was shooting blind. I lifted my camera as high as I could and shot in the general direction of the stage.)
Obama took the stage and I actually had a view of him. I was probably between 30 and 50 yards from the stage so I was close enough to have a good look. We started by singing happy birthday to his wife and then we, well, I would like to say that we listened to his speech. To be honest I can’t really remember anything he said. I do recall trying like mad to take a picture (like everyone else in the crowd), being jostled by eight thousand people trying to get a better look, and, well, I’ll let the picture explain.
Yeah, a portion of the crowd was yelling at the little girl in the pink jacket to get out of the damn tree so we could see. I wouldn’t say that it was my proudest moment as a citizen but if you stood out in the cold you would want to see everyone that you could. Actually, this is probably the best picture that I got out of the bunch as if you look left of the stop sign you could see everyone waving.
Now this wasn’t a momentous speech or even a very crowded one. Nothing spectacular happened and outside of the people who were there no one will remember it. But I’ll have to admit that I got a little choked up as I walked in and looked around. It is quite an amazing sight to be surrounded by thousands of people who just want to cheer for a man who gives us hope that the future may be better than the present. That for once we have elected a candidate based on the promise of their potential. I was lucky beyond belief to be able to have such an experience in my front yard.
After it all ended and I started to make my way back home they played the following song over the loud speakers. I smiled my biggest smile of the night. It just showed that Obama was bringing Chicago to the White House. Who else would use Wilco as part of his official theme music.
(I know I promised a dating story this weekend. Don’t worry. It’s coming tomorrow and trust me, you will not want to miss this one.)
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Cowboy Junkies “Onesoulnow”
2) The Iguanas “Live at Wolf Trap”
3) The Pogues “The Ultimate Collection”
4) U2 “Zooropa”
5) Beth Orton “The Other Side of Daybreak”
A little backstory here. Obama and Biden decided to recreate Lincoln’s train ride into Washington (except without the secrecy and rumors of being disguised in women’s clothing) and start in Philadelphia. From there Obama would go to Wilmington where Biden would join them, getting on the train at the same station that he always goes to Washington from. That station just happens to be directly across the street from my apartment. Literally. I am looking at where they spoke as I write this.
This did mean that certain measures were going to be in effect. For one thing, they blocked off all the roads surrounding my apartment. I think I theoretically could have left my apartment Friday night but given what was closed I am really uncertain that I would have been able to get back in without having to drive to Baltimore and turn around. Also, when I woke up on Saturday morning I was greeted by armed Coast Guard craft traveling the river below me, military helicopters overhead, and men in black on rooftops probably wondering why I was standing so close to the window. It was awesome and disconcerting at the same time.
So this is what it looked like when they first let the crowd in. Everyone rushed for the best position while I stayed in my nice warm and cozy apartment drinking my morning coffee. Now some people did actually watch everything from my apartment building which I thought was kind of silly. I mean, the next president is a five minute walk away. You’d think that you would make the trek. But even I decided that it was better to stay warm for as long as possible until I had to venture into the cold.
Once I thought that the crowd was large enough I bundled up and made my way to the park. To do so I had to stand in line to go through security during which I was able to examine all of the street vendors. Because if there is one thing that screams “America” it is poorly constructed commemorative t-shirts. Also, there were an amazing amount of buttons for sale. I mean like a dozen people selling buttons (including one really cute girl from Arizona who I probably should have bought one from just for the conversation). This raises the question of when was the last time you actually saw someone wear a button. It seems like a product that has no meaning.
After making my way through security I scanned the area and picked my spot. Once I saw where the tv cameras were and where the stage was I found a spot where I could see the podium. There was a tree in my way but I was just tall enough to see the stage. Not that there was anything to see at the moment. That was going to take another hour. We did have some advance entertainment. The national anthem was sung by a small child named Nichodemus, a name that would prove quite ironic as this tale progresses. Then we had the typical array of politicians and speakers before the big guns arrived.
Biden took the stage first (look to the right of the stop sign). He was introduced by the Amtrak conductor who would take him to Washington on a daily basis as a senator. It was actually a really nice speech by the conductor talking about how Joe was always for the common man. Joe took the stage and joked about the times that he called the station to let them know that he was only two lights away and to hold the train for him. That isn’t exactly a common man sort of thing to do but I’ll let it slide. Then it was time for the reason we were all here.
(Look to the right of the lamppost. Apologies for the quality here but I was shooting blind. I lifted my camera as high as I could and shot in the general direction of the stage.)
Obama took the stage and I actually had a view of him. I was probably between 30 and 50 yards from the stage so I was close enough to have a good look. We started by singing happy birthday to his wife and then we, well, I would like to say that we listened to his speech. To be honest I can’t really remember anything he said. I do recall trying like mad to take a picture (like everyone else in the crowd), being jostled by eight thousand people trying to get a better look, and, well, I’ll let the picture explain.
Yeah, a portion of the crowd was yelling at the little girl in the pink jacket to get out of the damn tree so we could see. I wouldn’t say that it was my proudest moment as a citizen but if you stood out in the cold you would want to see everyone that you could. Actually, this is probably the best picture that I got out of the bunch as if you look left of the stop sign you could see everyone waving.
Now this wasn’t a momentous speech or even a very crowded one. Nothing spectacular happened and outside of the people who were there no one will remember it. But I’ll have to admit that I got a little choked up as I walked in and looked around. It is quite an amazing sight to be surrounded by thousands of people who just want to cheer for a man who gives us hope that the future may be better than the present. That for once we have elected a candidate based on the promise of their potential. I was lucky beyond belief to be able to have such an experience in my front yard.
After it all ended and I started to make my way back home they played the following song over the loud speakers. I smiled my biggest smile of the night. It just showed that Obama was bringing Chicago to the White House. Who else would use Wilco as part of his official theme music.
(I know I promised a dating story this weekend. Don’t worry. It’s coming tomorrow and trust me, you will not want to miss this one.)
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Cowboy Junkies “Onesoulnow”
2) The Iguanas “Live at Wolf Trap”
3) The Pogues “The Ultimate Collection”
4) U2 “Zooropa”
5) Beth Orton “The Other Side of Daybreak”
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Baby it's cold outside
First off, big props to the U.S. Airways pilot who ditched his plane in the Hudson River this afternoon. It is insanely difficult to do that and not have the plane break apart and start to sink. He did a textbook job in it, which is incredible given that he had all of two minutes to figure out what was going wrong, what to do, and how to execute it. Just an incredible job.
(Though this is just another example of the animal kingdom uniting against us. After years of destroying their habitat this was bound to happen. Just wait until the bears arm themselves and dolphins evolve opposable thumbs. Then you could measure our time as the dominant species on this planet with a stopwatch.)
Given the cold weather that is gripping the nation I figure that I should tell my favorite cold weather story. Now for those wondering the weather here in lovely Delaware isn’t nearly as bad as in other parts of the country. We’ll have below zero windchills tomorrow but for the most part the lows have been in the teens this week. To me that is not bad at all. I went all of December wearing a leather jacket and only now have broken out my winter coat. I’ve never even been forced to wear my ugly stocking cap that exists only to keep my ears warm. So it’s not like I’m in Minnesota or anything.
However, back when I was in college at Illinois we were caught in one of these winter weather disasters. Air temperature below zero and something like thirty below windchills. Just about as brutally cold as you can get. Now being a Chicagoan I pride myself on being able to withstand any type of weather. This has resulted in my now having my fingertips ache whenever it gets cold out (something that is true of anyone who ever played high school baseball in the Chicagoland area) but it means that I can handle pretty much anything. So, in order to make it to my engineering class I bundled up in about four layers of clothing, walked through as many buildings as possible, and made it through my classes in my usual stupor. (Seriously, how would you like to have to sit through three hours of engineering lectures every day when you were 20? Just because I make a living at it doesn’t mean I enjoyed it.)
All of us in class commented on how silly it was that we had to go to class. It was just brutally cold outside. Every part of you ached as you walked and it was physically painful to move from one spot to another. You would not take off your coat even while indoors as you just wanted to hold on to as much warmth as possible. It was suffering, pure and simple.
However that physical pain didn’t match the torment of the next day. That is when we found out that Illinois had cancelled classes the previous day because of the cold weather without, you know, informing anyone. This was in the wonderful days before email or text messaging so the official notice was placed in the campus newspaper, which no one ever read. They basically said “well, if you didn’t make it to class yesterday it is considered an excused absence.” That made all of us who braved hypothermia happy. That is a good explanation of being an engineer at Illinois. You go to classes that are entirely male, be taught a subject that is going over your head so fast it is making a whizzing sound, and on the one day you could have stayed in bed you end up volunteering for the suffering. In the end it is still worth it. Don’t know how or why but it is.
Another tale from the KC dating scene this weekend along with a bit of national news included. I’ll explain it as I get to it.
(Though this is just another example of the animal kingdom uniting against us. After years of destroying their habitat this was bound to happen. Just wait until the bears arm themselves and dolphins evolve opposable thumbs. Then you could measure our time as the dominant species on this planet with a stopwatch.)
Given the cold weather that is gripping the nation I figure that I should tell my favorite cold weather story. Now for those wondering the weather here in lovely Delaware isn’t nearly as bad as in other parts of the country. We’ll have below zero windchills tomorrow but for the most part the lows have been in the teens this week. To me that is not bad at all. I went all of December wearing a leather jacket and only now have broken out my winter coat. I’ve never even been forced to wear my ugly stocking cap that exists only to keep my ears warm. So it’s not like I’m in Minnesota or anything.
However, back when I was in college at Illinois we were caught in one of these winter weather disasters. Air temperature below zero and something like thirty below windchills. Just about as brutally cold as you can get. Now being a Chicagoan I pride myself on being able to withstand any type of weather. This has resulted in my now having my fingertips ache whenever it gets cold out (something that is true of anyone who ever played high school baseball in the Chicagoland area) but it means that I can handle pretty much anything. So, in order to make it to my engineering class I bundled up in about four layers of clothing, walked through as many buildings as possible, and made it through my classes in my usual stupor. (Seriously, how would you like to have to sit through three hours of engineering lectures every day when you were 20? Just because I make a living at it doesn’t mean I enjoyed it.)
All of us in class commented on how silly it was that we had to go to class. It was just brutally cold outside. Every part of you ached as you walked and it was physically painful to move from one spot to another. You would not take off your coat even while indoors as you just wanted to hold on to as much warmth as possible. It was suffering, pure and simple.
However that physical pain didn’t match the torment of the next day. That is when we found out that Illinois had cancelled classes the previous day because of the cold weather without, you know, informing anyone. This was in the wonderful days before email or text messaging so the official notice was placed in the campus newspaper, which no one ever read. They basically said “well, if you didn’t make it to class yesterday it is considered an excused absence.” That made all of us who braved hypothermia happy. That is a good explanation of being an engineer at Illinois. You go to classes that are entirely male, be taught a subject that is going over your head so fast it is making a whizzing sound, and on the one day you could have stayed in bed you end up volunteering for the suffering. In the end it is still worth it. Don’t know how or why but it is.
Another tale from the KC dating scene this weekend along with a bit of national news included. I’ll explain it as I get to it.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Hitting the gym
Editor’s Note: Apologies if my post last night made your browser go kablooey. Apparently the Alejandro Escovedo video I posted completely screwed up my formatting and I didn’t notice it until I was at work this morning. I’ve replaced the video with another one and now hopefully everything will be back to normal with my profile in the correct place. Also, let me know if my onslaught of YouTube videos is messing around with the load times. I could cut back on the number of posts on the front page (right now you get the past month in Battling the Current history).
It’s always wonderful to work out during the first few weeks of January. You learn so much about the human condition and how we are influenced by calendars during those first two weeks. Because it really is the invasion of the resolution people.
Now I’ll start off by saying that I’ve been working out regularly since October usually hitting the gym in my apartment four times a week. It’s not like they are good workouts or anything but I do cardio and am now lifting weights and my doing anything is better for me than sitting on my couch. The most incredible thing is that I now look forward to working out. I was very happy to be on an exercise bike for half an hour tonight and I can’t stand those things. So while I’m not a fitness fiend I do use the gym on a regular basis.
As with any gym there is a regular crowd. Everyone works out at about the same time and while you don’t know anyone by name you know the elliptical woman and the weight lifting guy and the woman who decides to walk on a treadmill at 1.5 miles hour just to annoy everyone. There are at most two other people with you at the gym at the same time and you never have an issue getting a treadmill. That is big because I usually use the treadmill. Speaking of which…I have a story to share.
There are two treadmills in my apartment complex. Ever since I started working out I always chose the one on the right. Over the past few months I kept on increasing the speed and incline and was very happy with my progress. I was so proud over the improvement that I had made since I left KC. Occasionally someone would be on my treadmill and I had to use the other one. For some reason those workouts always sucked and I ended up having to stop the workout early to save my legs.
Well, a week or two ago I go to the gym to find a sign on my treadmill saying that the motor is broken and it is out of service. So I now use the other treadmill regularly and have discovered that the challenging workouts that I could easily tackle on the old treadmill are now impossible on this one. So either a) my physical capabilities are dependent on my being three feet to the left of my preferred position or b) the other treadmill was calibrated badly and I was actually going slower than I thought. Talk about disheartening.
Anyway, back to the New Year’s Resolutions people. As a rule, the worst week to ever be in a gym is the first week after New Year’s because that is when everyone is trying to get in shape. Instead of two or three people in the gym now there were eight or nine; half of whom are trying to figure out how to work the machines. Or doing one of those “I’ll be on this machine for five minutes then switch to another and then another” workouts. And they even feel like talking in the gym. No one talks in the gym. We all have on our headphones (and I even have one of those armband things for my Zune now) and have no desire to admit that other people exist.
But tonight? Back to the same three of us that there were in December. They lasted one week. It’s nice that I’ve reached the point that I can laugh at other people’s exercise program. Sure, I’m still far from being in shape (and somehow have gained a few pounds since I’ve started lifting) but I am working out consistently. I feel better as well and that really is all that matters. Just wait until I start doing Yoga. Yes, that is on the list of things to do now. We here at Battling the Current do pretty much anything that is recommended to us in the comments.
It’s always wonderful to work out during the first few weeks of January. You learn so much about the human condition and how we are influenced by calendars during those first two weeks. Because it really is the invasion of the resolution people.
Now I’ll start off by saying that I’ve been working out regularly since October usually hitting the gym in my apartment four times a week. It’s not like they are good workouts or anything but I do cardio and am now lifting weights and my doing anything is better for me than sitting on my couch. The most incredible thing is that I now look forward to working out. I was very happy to be on an exercise bike for half an hour tonight and I can’t stand those things. So while I’m not a fitness fiend I do use the gym on a regular basis.
As with any gym there is a regular crowd. Everyone works out at about the same time and while you don’t know anyone by name you know the elliptical woman and the weight lifting guy and the woman who decides to walk on a treadmill at 1.5 miles hour just to annoy everyone. There are at most two other people with you at the gym at the same time and you never have an issue getting a treadmill. That is big because I usually use the treadmill. Speaking of which…I have a story to share.
There are two treadmills in my apartment complex. Ever since I started working out I always chose the one on the right. Over the past few months I kept on increasing the speed and incline and was very happy with my progress. I was so proud over the improvement that I had made since I left KC. Occasionally someone would be on my treadmill and I had to use the other one. For some reason those workouts always sucked and I ended up having to stop the workout early to save my legs.
Well, a week or two ago I go to the gym to find a sign on my treadmill saying that the motor is broken and it is out of service. So I now use the other treadmill regularly and have discovered that the challenging workouts that I could easily tackle on the old treadmill are now impossible on this one. So either a) my physical capabilities are dependent on my being three feet to the left of my preferred position or b) the other treadmill was calibrated badly and I was actually going slower than I thought. Talk about disheartening.
Anyway, back to the New Year’s Resolutions people. As a rule, the worst week to ever be in a gym is the first week after New Year’s because that is when everyone is trying to get in shape. Instead of two or three people in the gym now there were eight or nine; half of whom are trying to figure out how to work the machines. Or doing one of those “I’ll be on this machine for five minutes then switch to another and then another” workouts. And they even feel like talking in the gym. No one talks in the gym. We all have on our headphones (and I even have one of those armband things for my Zune now) and have no desire to admit that other people exist.
But tonight? Back to the same three of us that there were in December. They lasted one week. It’s nice that I’ve reached the point that I can laugh at other people’s exercise program. Sure, I’m still far from being in shape (and somehow have gained a few pounds since I’ve started lifting) but I am working out consistently. I feel better as well and that really is all that matters. Just wait until I start doing Yoga. Yes, that is on the list of things to do now. We here at Battling the Current do pretty much anything that is recommended to us in the comments.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The Best Concerts of the Kansas City Years (Part Two)
The following story is absolutely true. After writing about music all night I dreamt that I was dating Kathleen Edwards. One of those wonderful dreams where you are constantly in each other arms and every moment seems perfect and joyous. Then I woke up. There is no worse feeling in existence then waking up and feeling that you are in love with this beautiful and talented woman only to slowly realize that in fact you are alone, without a girlfriend and living in Delaware. You should not have to go to work on days like that. You should be able to call in and be marked absent with a reason of “discovered that the universe is patently unfair.”
Here are my top five shows. As each show has a story I will share the story and a video. That works a little better than last night’s vague attempt at music criticism (though you must listen to the Josh Ritter song.)
# 5: The Get Up Kids (Farewell Show) (Uptown Theater, Kansas City, MO): It was the last stand of The Get Up Kids, the best band out of Kansas since, well, Kansas. I actually have a connection to the band as a coworker and fellow blogger just happens to be the brother of the rhythm section. This led me to being in the VIP section (or at least closer to the bar) at one show. But for this one it was me on my own and that made it incredible.
Because as a result I experienced one of the most amazing crowds ever. When I drove past the theater at noon that day there was already a sizable line of people sitting in the July heat for hours before the doors opened. When I got there the line was three blocks long. While in line I found out that people had flown from Japan to be there. Then I met some people who came from Australia to see the band’s last show. Think about it. That is literally on the other side of the world. What have you done in your life that has caused anyone from the other side of the planet to visit you?
Finale shows are usually bad. Even last shows of a tour tend to be bad because the band is sick of each other by that point. When the band is breaking up they typically just want it to be over. The Get Up Kids broke the mold with this show. They played all out from start to finish with the crowd into it from the moment they took the stage. It really felt as though they were never going to end the show. I think the only reason they did was curfew and threats of arrest. But it was just one night of a band saying that they were going to go out with a bang.
# 4: Alejandro Escovedo (with Jon Dee Graham) (Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, Kansas City, MO): I’ll start this by giving praise to Jon Dee Graham, the man I saw in concert more than any other act in my five years in KC. Given that he is based in Austin and I probably missed three of his shows due to being out of town it shows a) just how much he tours and b) just how big of a fan I am. I was watching a documentary on him and they described him as music for adults. It is sad that when the words Adult Themes are used we immediately think of softcore porn. But Jon Dee sings about Adult Themes. About struggling through life and having to deal with defeats and the beauty in the struggle. He’ll never be famous, he’ll never be rich, but he has produced art at a level that I dream of.
As for Alejandro, I started going to his shows when I was in Chicago and was just amazed by the sheer power of his work. Here is a guy whose punk rock band opened for the last Sex Pistols show and he had evolved to someone who would take the stage with a cello and violin and still cover I Wanna Be Your Dog. As a huge fan I was stunned when I heard that he had essentially collapsed on stage and nearly died. I contributed to his medical fund and still wear my Por Vida (For Life) shirt with pride. For all that his music did for me it was the least that I could do.
This show was on his first tour back after several years of recovery. It was a two night affair and every single person in the room was a fan. When Alejandro thanked the crowd it was one of the most heartfelt moments that I have ever seen on stage. Then he just rocked it out as always with the addition of a beautiful string section that just left you haunted. This clip isn’t the best but it is the only one that I could find that showed the pure power of his music. Sometimes music unites people and that is what happened at this show.
# 3: Jay Farrar (The Bottleneck, Lawrence, Kansas): I have said in the past that I have never gone more than two weeks without listening to a Jay Farrar song. That is probably a little bit of hyperbole but if you add in the bands that were directly influenced by him it probably is true. Without a doubt, his music from Uncle Tupelo to Son Volt to his solo work has been the soundtrack to my adult life.
So when I found out that he was playing in a small venue I had to be there. In fact, I scheduled the day off so I could be the first person at the door when they opened. I didn’t want to have to do my usual change at the office and hope I make it there in time. Nope, this entire day was going to be all about music.
However, in a sign that maybe I should have gone to work for another company, that wasn’t the case. See, a few weeks after I scheduled my day off the VP decided to hold an informational meeting with my group on that day and my boss decided to try to guilt me in to not taking the day off. I wish I had said, “Screw you. It’s my vacation and I’ll use it whenever the hell I feel like it.” But instead I was a good employee and sat in a meeting where all I did was nod and then raced to the concert in a bad mood. I still hate myself for that.
I did end up in front of the stage though with a crowd that stood there in stunned awe. At one point the crowd organically began to sing along. It wasn’t a crowd interaction moment, there was no enticement from the stage, just an entire room full of people being compelled to simultaneously sing. He even played “Still Be Around”, a song that I never dreamed that I would ever hear live. Just an amazing night.
# 2: The Polyphonic Spree (Granada, Lawrence, Kansas): On the plus side, I’ve already told the lead up to this story in my latest KC Dating Scene post. Yes, I could have taken the librarian to the second best show I saw in KC but didn’t. No wonder she didn’t want anything else to do with me.
I’ve tried and tried to explain what it is like to see the Spree and I still don’t think I’ve accomplished it. Twenty five people on stage including a full choir, a string section, a brass section, a rather cute flautist, and a harpist. I’ve never seen a band with a harpist before. Nor have I seen a band take the stage for the encore wearing matching choir robes. Some people have said that their positive energy is an act but I swear to God that this show lifted my spirits like you wouldn’t believe. It was two hours of amazement and wonder. And I decided not to have a cute girl next to me throughout all of it. What an idiot.
# 1: Damien Rice (with The Frames) (Liberty Hall, Lawrence, Kansas): The best show I ever saw and I almost didn’t go. I worked late in the office that day and I asked myself if I really felt like driving all the way to Lawrence to see two acts I had barely heard of. I am so amazingly grateful that I made the trip.
To show how close I cut it, I entered Liberty Hall, bought my beer and got to the front of the stage just as Glen Hansard from The Frames plugged in his guitar. This was the first time I had ever seen The Frames (even though I still think I may have caught them in Chicago once) and they just floored me. Opening acts are never supposed to be that good, nor are they supposed to break into songs from Willy Wonka and have it work. From the moment I heard them play this mix of rock songs with an Irish fiddle in the mix I was hooked and would promote the band to everyone I met. A few years and a hit movie later, Glen would be on stage accepting an Oscar. If you haven’t seen the movie Once, rent it. If you don’t own a Frames CD, buy any of them. And if you ever get a chance to see them in concert jump at it. Best live band on the planet today.
(Oh, and if I ever had to choose a song to play over the credits of my life this would be it.)
I’m not sure if I can even describe Damien Rice’s set in full sentences. It was almost like a collection of magical moments. Lisa Hannigan sitting on the ground rocking back and forth to the music. Vyvienne Long’s intense cello. Damien finishing the song “Amie” by kneeling on the floor, staring at the ceiling, and slowly modifying his looped tracks until you felt as though the aliens were about to arrive. The Frames returning to the stage for the encore for a cover of “Halleiluiah” and a second edition of “The Blower’s Daughter”. A crowd that stood for the entire encore and literally left the theater dancing in the streets. I wanted to lift up a car after this show. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so alive. Seldom do you get to see bands on a perfect night but this was it.
This song is the best that I’ve ever found to capture that moment in the encore where everything just became perfect. Enjoy.
Here are my top five shows. As each show has a story I will share the story and a video. That works a little better than last night’s vague attempt at music criticism (though you must listen to the Josh Ritter song.)
# 5: The Get Up Kids (Farewell Show) (Uptown Theater, Kansas City, MO): It was the last stand of The Get Up Kids, the best band out of Kansas since, well, Kansas. I actually have a connection to the band as a coworker and fellow blogger just happens to be the brother of the rhythm section. This led me to being in the VIP section (or at least closer to the bar) at one show. But for this one it was me on my own and that made it incredible.
Because as a result I experienced one of the most amazing crowds ever. When I drove past the theater at noon that day there was already a sizable line of people sitting in the July heat for hours before the doors opened. When I got there the line was three blocks long. While in line I found out that people had flown from Japan to be there. Then I met some people who came from Australia to see the band’s last show. Think about it. That is literally on the other side of the world. What have you done in your life that has caused anyone from the other side of the planet to visit you?
Finale shows are usually bad. Even last shows of a tour tend to be bad because the band is sick of each other by that point. When the band is breaking up they typically just want it to be over. The Get Up Kids broke the mold with this show. They played all out from start to finish with the crowd into it from the moment they took the stage. It really felt as though they were never going to end the show. I think the only reason they did was curfew and threats of arrest. But it was just one night of a band saying that they were going to go out with a bang.
# 4: Alejandro Escovedo (with Jon Dee Graham) (Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, Kansas City, MO): I’ll start this by giving praise to Jon Dee Graham, the man I saw in concert more than any other act in my five years in KC. Given that he is based in Austin and I probably missed three of his shows due to being out of town it shows a) just how much he tours and b) just how big of a fan I am. I was watching a documentary on him and they described him as music for adults. It is sad that when the words Adult Themes are used we immediately think of softcore porn. But Jon Dee sings about Adult Themes. About struggling through life and having to deal with defeats and the beauty in the struggle. He’ll never be famous, he’ll never be rich, but he has produced art at a level that I dream of.
As for Alejandro, I started going to his shows when I was in Chicago and was just amazed by the sheer power of his work. Here is a guy whose punk rock band opened for the last Sex Pistols show and he had evolved to someone who would take the stage with a cello and violin and still cover I Wanna Be Your Dog. As a huge fan I was stunned when I heard that he had essentially collapsed on stage and nearly died. I contributed to his medical fund and still wear my Por Vida (For Life) shirt with pride. For all that his music did for me it was the least that I could do.
This show was on his first tour back after several years of recovery. It was a two night affair and every single person in the room was a fan. When Alejandro thanked the crowd it was one of the most heartfelt moments that I have ever seen on stage. Then he just rocked it out as always with the addition of a beautiful string section that just left you haunted. This clip isn’t the best but it is the only one that I could find that showed the pure power of his music. Sometimes music unites people and that is what happened at this show.
# 3: Jay Farrar (The Bottleneck, Lawrence, Kansas): I have said in the past that I have never gone more than two weeks without listening to a Jay Farrar song. That is probably a little bit of hyperbole but if you add in the bands that were directly influenced by him it probably is true. Without a doubt, his music from Uncle Tupelo to Son Volt to his solo work has been the soundtrack to my adult life.
So when I found out that he was playing in a small venue I had to be there. In fact, I scheduled the day off so I could be the first person at the door when they opened. I didn’t want to have to do my usual change at the office and hope I make it there in time. Nope, this entire day was going to be all about music.
However, in a sign that maybe I should have gone to work for another company, that wasn’t the case. See, a few weeks after I scheduled my day off the VP decided to hold an informational meeting with my group on that day and my boss decided to try to guilt me in to not taking the day off. I wish I had said, “Screw you. It’s my vacation and I’ll use it whenever the hell I feel like it.” But instead I was a good employee and sat in a meeting where all I did was nod and then raced to the concert in a bad mood. I still hate myself for that.
I did end up in front of the stage though with a crowd that stood there in stunned awe. At one point the crowd organically began to sing along. It wasn’t a crowd interaction moment, there was no enticement from the stage, just an entire room full of people being compelled to simultaneously sing. He even played “Still Be Around”, a song that I never dreamed that I would ever hear live. Just an amazing night.
# 2: The Polyphonic Spree (Granada, Lawrence, Kansas): On the plus side, I’ve already told the lead up to this story in my latest KC Dating Scene post. Yes, I could have taken the librarian to the second best show I saw in KC but didn’t. No wonder she didn’t want anything else to do with me.
I’ve tried and tried to explain what it is like to see the Spree and I still don’t think I’ve accomplished it. Twenty five people on stage including a full choir, a string section, a brass section, a rather cute flautist, and a harpist. I’ve never seen a band with a harpist before. Nor have I seen a band take the stage for the encore wearing matching choir robes. Some people have said that their positive energy is an act but I swear to God that this show lifted my spirits like you wouldn’t believe. It was two hours of amazement and wonder. And I decided not to have a cute girl next to me throughout all of it. What an idiot.
# 1: Damien Rice (with The Frames) (Liberty Hall, Lawrence, Kansas): The best show I ever saw and I almost didn’t go. I worked late in the office that day and I asked myself if I really felt like driving all the way to Lawrence to see two acts I had barely heard of. I am so amazingly grateful that I made the trip.
To show how close I cut it, I entered Liberty Hall, bought my beer and got to the front of the stage just as Glen Hansard from The Frames plugged in his guitar. This was the first time I had ever seen The Frames (even though I still think I may have caught them in Chicago once) and they just floored me. Opening acts are never supposed to be that good, nor are they supposed to break into songs from Willy Wonka and have it work. From the moment I heard them play this mix of rock songs with an Irish fiddle in the mix I was hooked and would promote the band to everyone I met. A few years and a hit movie later, Glen would be on stage accepting an Oscar. If you haven’t seen the movie Once, rent it. If you don’t own a Frames CD, buy any of them. And if you ever get a chance to see them in concert jump at it. Best live band on the planet today.
(Oh, and if I ever had to choose a song to play over the credits of my life this would be it.)
I’m not sure if I can even describe Damien Rice’s set in full sentences. It was almost like a collection of magical moments. Lisa Hannigan sitting on the ground rocking back and forth to the music. Vyvienne Long’s intense cello. Damien finishing the song “Amie” by kneeling on the floor, staring at the ceiling, and slowly modifying his looped tracks until you felt as though the aliens were about to arrive. The Frames returning to the stage for the encore for a cover of “Halleiluiah” and a second edition of “The Blower’s Daughter”. A crowd that stood for the entire encore and literally left the theater dancing in the streets. I wanted to lift up a car after this show. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so alive. Seldom do you get to see bands on a perfect night but this was it.
This song is the best that I’ve ever found to capture that moment in the encore where everything just became perfect. Enjoy.
Monday, January 12, 2009
The Best Concerts of the Kansas City Years (Part One)
Alright, the first part of the post I’ve been waiting months to do. It is time for me to list the top ten concerts that I saw in KC. Now typically at this time of year I just review the past year. Sadly, I only saw maybe a half dozen shows last year though they were all quite good and I actually had a date for one of them. Ok, maybe not a date but a woman went with me and I paid for the ticket. That counts for something; I’m just not sure what. Anyway, I want to try to capture my thoughts on five years of concert going in a town that was much better for live music than I ever anticipated.
Let’s start with some stats. By my estimation in my five years there I saw roughly 170 concerts and about 220 individual acts. In terms of number of my favorite bands here are the ones I saw most often:
6 shows: Jon Dee Graham, Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys
5 shows: Carbon Leaf, Richard Buckner
4 shows: Jack Ingram, Lyle Lovett (with and without his Large Band), The Gaslights, Vedera
3 shows: Alejandro Escovedo, Anders parker, Ani DiFranco, Cowboy Mouth, Garrison Starr, Gomez, Guster, Hank Williams III, Howie Day, Immaculate Machine, Lucinda Williams, Neko Case, Nickel Creek, Old Crow Medicine Show, Robert Earl Keen, Rufus Wainwright, The Brunettes, The Ditty Bops, The Get Up Kids, Wilco
So here is the bottom half of my top ten.
# 10: Aimee Mann (Liberty Hall, Lawrence, Kansas): A lot of people wonder how I could have gone to 170 concerts in five years. Well, one way of doing it is going to see people who you have heard of but don’t actually know anything about. Meaning that I walked into this show knowing that everyone praises Aimee but without actually having listened to any of her work other than “Voices Carry”. All I can say is that I don’t know if I was ever blown away more by a performance than with what she did that night. Just her and one other musician playing all of these songs about horribly flawed people in the most achingly beautiful manner possible. I immediately went out and bought everything she had ever recorded and have listened to her consistently ever since. That is why I go to shows.
# 9: Kathleen Edwards (with The Last Town Chorus) (Knuckleheads Saloon, North Kansas City, Missouri): My top concert for the year (yes, I could have gone with The Swell Season but I’ll be talking about them in later entries anyway) and the one at my least favorite venue in KC. First off, it is impossible to find. Then there is the fact that you can either a) sit down and not see anything or b) stand and have everyone yell at you to sit down. Incredibly annoying. I highly recommend that everyone pick up The Last Town Chorus’ “Wire Waltz”. It’s tough to call it a band as when I saw them it was just Megan Hickey solo, playing a mournful lap steel and singing achingly of lost love. She ended her set with the song “It’s Not Over” (which I’ll post here) and her leaving the stage with her looped vocal of “It’s Not Over” was just chilling. This was the best act that I stumbled upon this year.
As for Kathleen Edwards I would probably place her as one of the best female singer – songwriters post Lucinda Williams. Yes, I feel that she is truly that good. A wonderful mix of craftsmanship, moving lyrics and the ability to just rock out when need be. Great stage presence as well as absolutely nothing ever seems to faze her and she always seems to be having the time of her life on stage.
# 8: Gomez (with David Ford) (Grand Emporium, Kansas City, MO): This might actually have been the last great show at the Grand Emporium as it was in the dying days of its existence as a music club. This was after they had already turned it from a dank, smoke filled club to an upscale martini bar that for some reason would occasionally host concerts. The place was incredibly intimate and led to some of the most intense shows I’ve ever seen.
There are so many reasons to like David Ford. First off, he called his first album “I Sincerely Apologize for all the Trouble I’ve Caused”, which is just brilliant. Then there is the fact that he plays about fifty instruments, often on the same song, seemingly at the same time. (Check out some of his YouTube vids). But mainly I like him because when I saw him he gave every single ounce of energy into his performance and ended up with half of his equipment broken, leaning over the crowd with the microphone, and just belting out the chorus to this song. Have to say that this song and video pretty well sum up my life at times.
Gomez should make the list for having fat Harry Potter on keyboards alone. They are one of those classic British alternative rock bands that broke big and somehow get better with each album but sell less year after year. Their shows are just incredible and in a small venue (and literally this is as small as you can get) the sheer energy makes for a great night.
# 7: The Frames (with Josh Ritter) (Granada, Lawrence, Kansas): I’m actually not going to talk about The Frames tonight. That will come later in the week. I will talk about Josh Ritter though and the opening set that made me a believer in him. He might be the best singer-songwriter in the history of Idaho. True, it’s not a long history but it is a start. I’ve never seen anyone so genuinely happy that he is on stage. A lot of acts have that stage banter where they act so happy but you know it is just a bit. With Josh I legitimately feel that there was no place he would rather be in the world than on stage performing even as an opening act in Lawrence. And that joy is really infectious for an audience.
This was a few years back and he has been improving leaps and bounds as an artist. Now when people compare him to Dylan I actually think they might be right. In a perfect world people would know his name as much as they know John Mayer’s. Whether he would then also want to date Jennifer Aniston I’ll leave up to him. The song I’m posting here is called “Lawrence, KS” and has my favorite lyric of the past five years: “I’ve been from here to Lawrence, Kansas trying to leave this state of mind. Trying to leave this awful sadness. But I can’t leave the world behind.”
# 6: Neko Case (Liberty Hall, Lawrence, Kansas): Some concerts have more meaning to certain people than others. This was one of those shows. See, I’ve been following Neko for years and I vaguely knew her back when I lived in Chicago. She played at the club I was regular at so we ended up talking at the bar on occasion. To see her sell out Liberty Hall on a Friday night was such a joy because it meant that finally people have started to see how amazing she is. Oh, the fact that I was able to stand in front of the stage and I’ve, uh, publicly stated that I kind of want to marry her wasn’t bad either.
There is just something about her voice that just hits my soul. It just sounds like it should be coming from a sultry lounge singer but with just enough of a Patsy Cline tinge to both entice you and entrap you at the same time. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen her put on a bad show.
Let’s start with some stats. By my estimation in my five years there I saw roughly 170 concerts and about 220 individual acts. In terms of number of my favorite bands here are the ones I saw most often:
6 shows: Jon Dee Graham, Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys
5 shows: Carbon Leaf, Richard Buckner
4 shows: Jack Ingram, Lyle Lovett (with and without his Large Band), The Gaslights, Vedera
3 shows: Alejandro Escovedo, Anders parker, Ani DiFranco, Cowboy Mouth, Garrison Starr, Gomez, Guster, Hank Williams III, Howie Day, Immaculate Machine, Lucinda Williams, Neko Case, Nickel Creek, Old Crow Medicine Show, Robert Earl Keen, Rufus Wainwright, The Brunettes, The Ditty Bops, The Get Up Kids, Wilco
So here is the bottom half of my top ten.
# 10: Aimee Mann (Liberty Hall, Lawrence, Kansas): A lot of people wonder how I could have gone to 170 concerts in five years. Well, one way of doing it is going to see people who you have heard of but don’t actually know anything about. Meaning that I walked into this show knowing that everyone praises Aimee but without actually having listened to any of her work other than “Voices Carry”. All I can say is that I don’t know if I was ever blown away more by a performance than with what she did that night. Just her and one other musician playing all of these songs about horribly flawed people in the most achingly beautiful manner possible. I immediately went out and bought everything she had ever recorded and have listened to her consistently ever since. That is why I go to shows.
# 9: Kathleen Edwards (with The Last Town Chorus) (Knuckleheads Saloon, North Kansas City, Missouri): My top concert for the year (yes, I could have gone with The Swell Season but I’ll be talking about them in later entries anyway) and the one at my least favorite venue in KC. First off, it is impossible to find. Then there is the fact that you can either a) sit down and not see anything or b) stand and have everyone yell at you to sit down. Incredibly annoying. I highly recommend that everyone pick up The Last Town Chorus’ “Wire Waltz”. It’s tough to call it a band as when I saw them it was just Megan Hickey solo, playing a mournful lap steel and singing achingly of lost love. She ended her set with the song “It’s Not Over” (which I’ll post here) and her leaving the stage with her looped vocal of “It’s Not Over” was just chilling. This was the best act that I stumbled upon this year.
As for Kathleen Edwards I would probably place her as one of the best female singer – songwriters post Lucinda Williams. Yes, I feel that she is truly that good. A wonderful mix of craftsmanship, moving lyrics and the ability to just rock out when need be. Great stage presence as well as absolutely nothing ever seems to faze her and she always seems to be having the time of her life on stage.
# 8: Gomez (with David Ford) (Grand Emporium, Kansas City, MO): This might actually have been the last great show at the Grand Emporium as it was in the dying days of its existence as a music club. This was after they had already turned it from a dank, smoke filled club to an upscale martini bar that for some reason would occasionally host concerts. The place was incredibly intimate and led to some of the most intense shows I’ve ever seen.
There are so many reasons to like David Ford. First off, he called his first album “I Sincerely Apologize for all the Trouble I’ve Caused”, which is just brilliant. Then there is the fact that he plays about fifty instruments, often on the same song, seemingly at the same time. (Check out some of his YouTube vids). But mainly I like him because when I saw him he gave every single ounce of energy into his performance and ended up with half of his equipment broken, leaning over the crowd with the microphone, and just belting out the chorus to this song. Have to say that this song and video pretty well sum up my life at times.
Gomez should make the list for having fat Harry Potter on keyboards alone. They are one of those classic British alternative rock bands that broke big and somehow get better with each album but sell less year after year. Their shows are just incredible and in a small venue (and literally this is as small as you can get) the sheer energy makes for a great night.
# 7: The Frames (with Josh Ritter) (Granada, Lawrence, Kansas): I’m actually not going to talk about The Frames tonight. That will come later in the week. I will talk about Josh Ritter though and the opening set that made me a believer in him. He might be the best singer-songwriter in the history of Idaho. True, it’s not a long history but it is a start. I’ve never seen anyone so genuinely happy that he is on stage. A lot of acts have that stage banter where they act so happy but you know it is just a bit. With Josh I legitimately feel that there was no place he would rather be in the world than on stage performing even as an opening act in Lawrence. And that joy is really infectious for an audience.
This was a few years back and he has been improving leaps and bounds as an artist. Now when people compare him to Dylan I actually think they might be right. In a perfect world people would know his name as much as they know John Mayer’s. Whether he would then also want to date Jennifer Aniston I’ll leave up to him. The song I’m posting here is called “Lawrence, KS” and has my favorite lyric of the past five years: “I’ve been from here to Lawrence, Kansas trying to leave this state of mind. Trying to leave this awful sadness. But I can’t leave the world behind.”
# 6: Neko Case (Liberty Hall, Lawrence, Kansas): Some concerts have more meaning to certain people than others. This was one of those shows. See, I’ve been following Neko for years and I vaguely knew her back when I lived in Chicago. She played at the club I was regular at so we ended up talking at the bar on occasion. To see her sell out Liberty Hall on a Friday night was such a joy because it meant that finally people have started to see how amazing she is. Oh, the fact that I was able to stand in front of the stage and I’ve, uh, publicly stated that I kind of want to marry her wasn’t bad either.
There is just something about her voice that just hits my soul. It just sounds like it should be coming from a sultry lounge singer but with just enough of a Patsy Cline tinge to both entice you and entrap you at the same time. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen her put on a bad show.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Sigh....
I had hoped that once I left the wilds of Kansas behind that I would have escaped the clutches of stupidity. That by moving to the East coast that I would have placed myself in a land of enlightenment where we would pass each other on the street and tip our hats and say “Good Morrow to you fine sir. Are you bychance going to the Wittgenstein symposium this afternoon?” True, I was moving to Delaware, a state that only exists because they decided to sign the Constitution before anyone could declare that you needed more than three people to be classified a state, but that was the overall hope. As the above picture shows boy was I wrong.
This isn’t something I pulled from the internet or from a bad Jay Leno sketch. I took this with my own cell phone camera (hence the absolutely horrible color balance) on Saturday morning in the strip mall where I get my hair cut and / or order Chinese food. (I don’t do both at the same place though to be honest it probably wouldn’t be that bad of a business model.) I have never been stopped in my tracks by a sign at an Oriental Massage parlor before. Especially one that made me wonder if I should go in and ask if I could get a “Hapy” Ending.
Seriously, a “Gand” opening? How in the world does that end up not only on an advertising poster but prominently displayed in the window of a place of business. Let’s walk through the steps required for this to occur. 1) Someone must design the poster, 2) The designers and the people paying for the printing must approve the design, 3) A graphic artist must place the design in the final format and send it off to the printer, 4) The printer must then create the final image and 5) The store must receive it and place it in the window. Are you telling me that not one single person in this entire chain took a step back and went “Hmmm…I think the word in the biggest font in the entire poster might be misspelled. Could be grand, could possibly be gland, but oh well, let’s go with Gand”. If you received this wouldn’t you raise holy hell and get another reprinted for free?
Unless of course this is part of some incredible viral marketing campaign in which case I would like to applaud them for their absolute genius. How often are you going to take a second look at a place that offers a therapeutic massage in a strip mall? Those are the stores that you walk past for six months and then wonder why they are now empty. But now every single time I walk by I will look for the sign and mention it to anyone passing by. So it is quite possible that this is all just an avant garde ad campaign that makes me proud to have worked in the marketing profession. Or people in Delaware are just really, really stupid. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Best of 120 Minutes: Ok, I’ll probably take some hits for this one but I don’t really care. See, I was into Sarah McLachlan well before the whole Lilith Fair thing. After hearing this song in college I went “She is really good” and bought all of her discs before everyone decided to play “I Will Remember You” at their high school graduation and ruined Sarah for the rest of us. But even so, she does have a great deal of talent. Plus she wrote this song about a guy that was stalking her and I have to say that is a pretty unique source for a song.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Wayne Toups and Zydecajun “Fish Out of Water”
2) R.E.M. “New Adventures in Hi-Fi”
3) Chris Mills “Kiss It Goodbye”
4) Jack Johnson “Brushfire Fairytales”
5) Robbie Fulks “The Very Best of Robbie Fulks”
This isn’t something I pulled from the internet or from a bad Jay Leno sketch. I took this with my own cell phone camera (hence the absolutely horrible color balance) on Saturday morning in the strip mall where I get my hair cut and / or order Chinese food. (I don’t do both at the same place though to be honest it probably wouldn’t be that bad of a business model.) I have never been stopped in my tracks by a sign at an Oriental Massage parlor before. Especially one that made me wonder if I should go in and ask if I could get a “Hapy” Ending.
Seriously, a “Gand” opening? How in the world does that end up not only on an advertising poster but prominently displayed in the window of a place of business. Let’s walk through the steps required for this to occur. 1) Someone must design the poster, 2) The designers and the people paying for the printing must approve the design, 3) A graphic artist must place the design in the final format and send it off to the printer, 4) The printer must then create the final image and 5) The store must receive it and place it in the window. Are you telling me that not one single person in this entire chain took a step back and went “Hmmm…I think the word in the biggest font in the entire poster might be misspelled. Could be grand, could possibly be gland, but oh well, let’s go with Gand”. If you received this wouldn’t you raise holy hell and get another reprinted for free?
Unless of course this is part of some incredible viral marketing campaign in which case I would like to applaud them for their absolute genius. How often are you going to take a second look at a place that offers a therapeutic massage in a strip mall? Those are the stores that you walk past for six months and then wonder why they are now empty. But now every single time I walk by I will look for the sign and mention it to anyone passing by. So it is quite possible that this is all just an avant garde ad campaign that makes me proud to have worked in the marketing profession. Or people in Delaware are just really, really stupid. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Best of 120 Minutes: Ok, I’ll probably take some hits for this one but I don’t really care. See, I was into Sarah McLachlan well before the whole Lilith Fair thing. After hearing this song in college I went “She is really good” and bought all of her discs before everyone decided to play “I Will Remember You” at their high school graduation and ruined Sarah for the rest of us. But even so, she does have a great deal of talent. Plus she wrote this song about a guy that was stalking her and I have to say that is a pretty unique source for a song.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Wayne Toups and Zydecajun “Fish Out of Water”
2) R.E.M. “New Adventures in Hi-Fi”
3) Chris Mills “Kiss It Goodbye”
4) Jack Johnson “Brushfire Fairytales”
5) Robbie Fulks “The Very Best of Robbie Fulks”
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Some musical honorable mentions...
Before I get into the whole “Top Ten Shows I Saw While Living in KC” I figured that it would be good to take a post and honor some of the acts that did not make the top ten. Bands who even though I had no idea who they were when I walked into the show somehow made me leave loving life a little bit more and, on a few occasions, wondering what drugs they were on.
Weirdest Opening Act: The legendary Superargo! A band that consists of two people: Person A is on stage in a suit and is playing what appears to be a Sony Vaio laptop and Person B who is in a slightly disheveled suit whose only job is to dance on stage. Oh, and Person B is also wearing a Skullface mask. Now why you need two people for music that is being played from a Sony Vaio is beyond me (a drinking bird hitting enter is all I would think would be required) but the sheer lunacy of the set made it one of my best moments. Here is a sample of the wackiness from a show at the Replay Lounge in Lawrence. I would like to note that A) Skullface parked in the same garage that I always did when I went to shows in Lawrence and B) you never have to work harder as a band than when you are competing against people playing pinball.
Best Set by an Opening Act: The Brunettes. I have never in my life seen a band so win over a crowd as The Brunettes when they opened for The Shins in Lawrence. Literally no one in the audience had a freaking clue who they were when they took the stage. I swear they looked around at their setup and it appeared as though they were unsure who played what instrument and what all the pedals were for. They also seemed to have the most overly complicated set imaginable as at one point three xylophones were required. But the crowd just loved these kids from New Zealand more and more after each song and when they finished with a song about the Olsen Twins that was performed while wearing Full House era Olsen Twins masks we wanted to carry them out of the building on our shoulders. I saw them a year later in Lawrence and they told me that they had never had a night like that in their lives.
Opening Act that Became One of my Favorite Bands: The Ditty Bops. I did not expect this one at all especially given that they were the opening act at a Nickel Creek show (at whose last show my discussion of their opening act resulted in physical threats against me). Abby and Amanda have created an incredible little niche for themselves. It’s part bluegrass, part vaudeville, part performance art and part community activism. The music is absolutely wonderful and the shows are fun for the whole family. Support this band, please, because otherwise they’ll be forced to bike across the country again to promote their latest album.
Weirdest Song of the Five Years: Glen Kotche’s “Monkey Chant”. Discount the fact that I went to a show by Wilco’s drummer. Yes, I went to a show that consisted entirely of one guy drumming. That would be weird enough. But just watch the first thirty seconds of this video and you’ll know what made this the weirdest song ever. The opening of forty five boxes containing crickets to create this otherworldly jungle atmosphere in the middle of a Kansas City winter. I just kind of stood there wondering just what I had gotten myself into. Awesome, though.
Strangest Crowd (Consistently): Hank Williams III for the mix of people that go to his shows. Because Hank III (who looks and sounds just like his grandfather) grew up on punk rock and thrash metal his shows have a very strange audience. You have the hardcore country fans who are there in overalls and cowboy hats. There are also punks in Mohawks and metal fans who look like they are just waiting for the mosh pit to start just to kick your ass. And Hank plays to them all by singing country to start until the end of the show is a thrash tour de force. Insane.
Artist Who I Was Almost Set Up With By Her Stepmom: Pieta Brown. Or at least I will go to my grave saying that when Iris Dement introduced me to her that she was trying to figure out a way for us to go out. The fact that I got to drink with Iris Dement is still one of the highlights of my life not just my concert going years in KC.
This will do for now. More tomorrow (I’ll probably do the top ten in two parts over the week.)
Weirdest Opening Act: The legendary Superargo! A band that consists of two people: Person A is on stage in a suit and is playing what appears to be a Sony Vaio laptop and Person B who is in a slightly disheveled suit whose only job is to dance on stage. Oh, and Person B is also wearing a Skullface mask. Now why you need two people for music that is being played from a Sony Vaio is beyond me (a drinking bird hitting enter is all I would think would be required) but the sheer lunacy of the set made it one of my best moments. Here is a sample of the wackiness from a show at the Replay Lounge in Lawrence. I would like to note that A) Skullface parked in the same garage that I always did when I went to shows in Lawrence and B) you never have to work harder as a band than when you are competing against people playing pinball.
Best Set by an Opening Act: The Brunettes. I have never in my life seen a band so win over a crowd as The Brunettes when they opened for The Shins in Lawrence. Literally no one in the audience had a freaking clue who they were when they took the stage. I swear they looked around at their setup and it appeared as though they were unsure who played what instrument and what all the pedals were for. They also seemed to have the most overly complicated set imaginable as at one point three xylophones were required. But the crowd just loved these kids from New Zealand more and more after each song and when they finished with a song about the Olsen Twins that was performed while wearing Full House era Olsen Twins masks we wanted to carry them out of the building on our shoulders. I saw them a year later in Lawrence and they told me that they had never had a night like that in their lives.
Opening Act that Became One of my Favorite Bands: The Ditty Bops. I did not expect this one at all especially given that they were the opening act at a Nickel Creek show (at whose last show my discussion of their opening act resulted in physical threats against me). Abby and Amanda have created an incredible little niche for themselves. It’s part bluegrass, part vaudeville, part performance art and part community activism. The music is absolutely wonderful and the shows are fun for the whole family. Support this band, please, because otherwise they’ll be forced to bike across the country again to promote their latest album.
Weirdest Song of the Five Years: Glen Kotche’s “Monkey Chant”. Discount the fact that I went to a show by Wilco’s drummer. Yes, I went to a show that consisted entirely of one guy drumming. That would be weird enough. But just watch the first thirty seconds of this video and you’ll know what made this the weirdest song ever. The opening of forty five boxes containing crickets to create this otherworldly jungle atmosphere in the middle of a Kansas City winter. I just kind of stood there wondering just what I had gotten myself into. Awesome, though.
Strangest Crowd (Consistently): Hank Williams III for the mix of people that go to his shows. Because Hank III (who looks and sounds just like his grandfather) grew up on punk rock and thrash metal his shows have a very strange audience. You have the hardcore country fans who are there in overalls and cowboy hats. There are also punks in Mohawks and metal fans who look like they are just waiting for the mosh pit to start just to kick your ass. And Hank plays to them all by singing country to start until the end of the show is a thrash tour de force. Insane.
Artist Who I Was Almost Set Up With By Her Stepmom: Pieta Brown. Or at least I will go to my grave saying that when Iris Dement introduced me to her that she was trying to figure out a way for us to go out. The fact that I got to drink with Iris Dement is still one of the highlights of my life not just my concert going years in KC.
This will do for now. More tomorrow (I’ll probably do the top ten in two parts over the week.)
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