I'm alive and well... Where am I?

Amazing Larry

2011-06-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

And So This Is Father's Day.

Many moons ago when Motley Crue's Theatre of Pain tour came to St. Paul my Aunt Cookie and I were eagerly waiting in the box office line the day of the show for tickets. Regrettably the show sold out a few dozen people ahead of us. Pee Wee's Big Adventure was fresh out in theaters at the time and neither of us had seen it yet, so in an effort to alleviate our sorrows we headed back to the car in the parking ramp and off to the movie thee-ay-ter to take in what would instantly become one of my favorite movies of all time. I found a Footloose soundtrack cassette on the parking ramp floor as we walked back to the car which was pretty sweet. It had been run over a few times but much to my surprise when I got home and popped it in the ol' boom box it still worked.

One of the hardest laughs I got was when Pee Wee yelled at his friend Amazing Larry. Larry happens to be my dad's name, so as a result since day one he has always been my first point of reference whenever I hear that name. When you're 12 or 13 and don't see it coming, Pee Wee Herman Yelling "IS THIS SOMETHING YOU CAN SHARE WITH THE REST OF US AMAZING LARRY?" followed by the scene at the left is some funny shit. Especially when your dad is named Larry.

I think we need to start calling my dad Amazing Larry. Why? Well let me crack into a Top 11 list like I did for my mom and explain why. The idea behind a Top 11 List is 11 has one more 1 than 10 which makes it one more awesome than 10. And it consists of all #1's. That's how #1 my parents are!

Amazing Larry's Top 11 List

1. He busted his ass and took care of his family. That's golden rule #1 of being an awesome dad. He didn't go off having a bastard son with the family maid like that Terminator guy did. We never had a maid but that's beside the point.

1. When mom called upon him waking him up (easy thing to do, he worked nights) getting final approval to spend his hard earned money on my first real guitar amp, he said yes. There was never a moment with either of my parents where they weren't supportive with my obsession with the guitar.

1. On that note, my bedroom was right next to his and he worked nights. I liked to play my guitar. A LOT. Do the math on that one. While he was next door attempting to drown the noise out with a fan and saw logs for his next 12+ hour night shift at 3M, I was cranking the likes of KISS, Overkill, Van Halen, Motley Crue, Megadeth, Nuclear Assault, Slayer, Exodus, and Death Angel to name a few. Imagine trying to sleep while a wall-muffled version of this shit was blaring next to you. Add my trying to learn those guitar riffs into the mix, listening to these songs over and over... it's a wonder why he didn't come in and Bluto my guitar. I still listen to That Shit on a regular basis and love it. Sorry for the years of torture, dad. If it's "a phase" as people sometimes like to say, I'm still stuck in it!

1. The many times I was brought to the Bad Report Card Altar of Sacrifice (usually prior to his pre-work nap) he never sacrificed me. I got a good talking to, believe you me. I suppose it was more of an altar of verbal sacrifice. I certainly deserved it. Like the aforementioned loud music I often think he must have had to sit on his hands to keep from strangling me sometimes.

1. This kind of applies to the last 2 #1's, but after the Report Card tongue lashings I'd usually end up grounded and sitting in my room. And like I said, they were always supportive with my craving to play music so never took my guitar away. Being imprisoned to my room for bad grades meant more time with my guitars and KISS records. Thank you for grounding me!

1. I can't tell you the number of times he's come to rescue all of his wonderful delightful children (and wifey-poo) with cars that were either stalled or had keys locked in them. He drove all the way out to Minneapolis and crawled under my dead station wagon that was on a busy street a time or two. Amazing Larry was and is the go-to dude for all of our emergency car repair needs and questions. I don't have a car anymore so he's kind of off the hook with this one... but I can't thank him enough for saving my arse so many times.

1. He makes a boooooooooya that is fit for a king. That word is funny, "booya". The recipe is a secret which I don't know if anyone but Amazing Larry will ever know, and when he makes it there's enough to feed a large army. If it weren't for freezer containers he'd need two bathtubs to contain all of that succulent booya. That stuff is some of the most delicious, savory liquid food with chunks ever. I wish it could be mailed to me.

1. He is the grill master. I got a few lessons from him back in day of how to season grass-fed cow meat, shape it into exquisite patties, and grill those little pucks of deliciousness up. I've tried my hand at grilling over the years but it's just not the same as when Amazing Larry does it. A few years back everyone came to our apartment in Minneapolis where I did the grilling and felt like I was writing a song that Paul McCartney was going to listen to.

1. He can sing like a mo-fo. The Three Tenors should have been the Four Tenors, Amazing Larry being the fourth one. Now that Pavarotti isn't in the mix anymore perhaps he should fill out an application to take his spot.

1. He took guitar lessons way back when I was a wee lad and kept his nylon string Sigma guitar in a black case under his bed. I used to sneak in there and crack open the case to pluck the strings long before I knew what all of those frets and tuning pegs were for. Some dads keep loaded guns hidden in their bedrooms... mine kept a loaded guitar. AW YEAH.

1. He had (and probably still has) a "guy drawer" in his dresser that I used to snoop around in after I was done with the guitar. It consisted of coins, combs, credit cards, and a vast assortment of other belongings that didn't really have a proper home.. so they went in the guy drawer. I always thought that was really cool.

1. He led by example with the DO IT YOURSELF super power. That's the one where you can either a) do a kickass job of fixing something on your own or b) pay someone else a lot of money to do it for you and almost always opt for number A. Fixing cars, remodeling basements, bargain hunting, electrical wiring, duct work, you name it... he is to that stuff like my mom is to sewing, cooking, and pianoing.

*******

This list was just off the top of my head and I could keep going to 111. It's too easy to think of stuff. I think this list actually has twelve #1's... oops. But that's the beauty of the top 11 list. It can have 1 more #1 in it that it's supposed to. I'll hang it up for now but pick up right where I left off next year.

Happy Father's Day, Amazing Larry - Wish we were about 1,170 miles closer so we could cruise over and party with you today!

Amazing Larry Photo by Amazing Chad Richardson Photography 07.07.07

11 Awesome Things About My Mom

2011-05-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

All of them are #1 because MY MOM FUCKING RULES. This was going to be a list of 10 items but I made it 11, because it has one more 1 in it which makes it 1 more awesome than 10. That's how #1 she is!

1. She drove me all over the place to buy my first few guitars and amps. Dad would have too but he worked nights to pay for things like my 2nd guitar and amp and various effects pedals so he was usually sleeping during the day.. I guess I can let that slide, Dad. But hey, more about him on Father's Day.

1. She stands up for her right to eat sardines in the house even though everyone else says they stink

1. My sister and I (I think?) were bickering in the car while Mom was driving and we were annoying enough to disgust her to the point of making her throw her chicken sandwich out the window. Yet she still kept us! Yay for not being sold to a third world country and subjected to a life of sewing soccer balls together or making socks at the Hanes factory for 18 hours a day!

1. Mom makes the coolest quilts ever (ours has KISS pajama patches in it and even a pocket)

1. Mom makes the best bread in the world and killer mochas

1. Back when we lived in MN I was always sent home with white containers of delicious homemade Mom food

1. She subjected me to good music when I was a kid

1. She knows how to send the email on the internets and use The Facebook

1. She used to take me along on midnight shopping trips to Cub Foods and buy me issues of Hit Parader and Metal Edge

1. Before I knew her she was hot. I can't say she's hot after being born because that's kinda gross, but I've seen pictures of her back when my Dad was courting her and yeah, she was hot. She probably still is but like I said, I just can't go there. I'm her son, for crying out loud

1. She makes cakes that are 10 times better than any of that crap you pay 10 times more for at a bakery. For reals. Hit her up for a wedding cake sometime, even if you're not getting married.

There you have it. There's a million more #1s about her but what do you think I do, sit around and write 11 Awesome Thing Number 1 lists about my Mother all day? Only people who are sick in the head or still think their mom is hot do that. I've got an iced mocha to drink and fingernails to clip. Time is money. Chop chop!

Love ya Maw - Happy Mum's Day!

Sounds like I'll need to wear Depends on Thursday

2011-01-31T12:34:00.000-08:00

I've been emailing back and forth with a vendor about getting a computer part that I need to have in my meat hooks ASAP and asked if they could reroute the delivery address to my workplace instead of our apartment. In his replies I'm noticing that although he seems to have a relatively firm grasp on how our language works, there are still a few wires under the hood that need detangling. Either that or he knows something I don't know... will the restrooms at work be out of order on Thursday? Am I going to be so excited about this package arriving that I'm going to lose control of my own package? Why is he suggesting that I may be less likely to lose control of my bladder if FedEx delivers on Saturday?

Time will tell. Without further ado, here's his note.

Package is signature required so UPS won't leave it untended

If they wont be able deliver it on Thursday let me know we'll reroute to your work address. Unfortunately we can't reroute right away becose UPS have to make one delivery attempt

Sorry for any incontinence

If it is going to be more continent we can ship it VIA FedEX so it can be delivered to you on Saturday

Tank you

My chili contains oatmeal, therefore it is good for me

2011-01-29T09:53:00.000-08:00

Last night while busting out the Hebrew Nationals and can-o-turkey chili for a kickass Chilidawgs au Tabasco dinner I realized something about the can of chili: back in the old days we used to have to use a can opener to access our chili.

As you can see by observing my photo to the left, no can opener required nowadays. There's an easy open tab on top of the can! I'm so glad that Hormel has incorporated this convenient feature into their packaging. In the 1990s if I was on the train or bus and came across a can of chili when digging around in my backpack for an item to snack upon, there's no way I'd be able to access any of that delicious chili without the aid of a can opener. I'd have to opt for the CLIF bar instead, and sometimes I'm just not in the mood for a CLIF bar. From now on I'm always keeping a can of Hormel chili in my bag. Alls I have to do is pull that tab and drink up as much slightly-colder-than-room-temperature Hormel chili as I can muster.

As an added bonus, the lid would serve as a personal safety device. I don't need no knives or guns, oh HELL no. All I need is the chili lid. Let's say a bunch of seedy thugs were to board a train that I was on and there was the funk of imminent trouble in the air. They'd think nothing of it if they saw me dig my can of chili out of my bag. "It's cool, dudes, just gonna drink some chili. Long day at the office, ya know what I mean?" They'd let their guard down after realizing I wasn't pulling a piece out of my bag. Little would they know as soon as I put my index finger in that can opener ring and ripped it off, well... "Say Ello To My Little Frend". As soon as they started getting up in someone's shit I'd jump up and start swooshing my canblade through the air. "YOU WANNA FUCK WITH PEOPLE, HA? WELL YOU PICKED THE WRONG TRAIN TODAY, MUTHAFUKKAAAAAS!!" With a few lightning fast swoops of my canblade ring I would have all but one of them decapitated. I'd let the last one go so he could run crying back to their leader like a little baby with a gigantic warm pee stain on the front of his trousers. But before he ran off I'd let him know: "Tell the boss man that he can thank Canblade for sparing your life."

*******

When looking at food packaging it's interesting to think that someone actually takes the pictures on those labels. There were probably a few hundred photos of chili taken that day and they probably all looked roughly the same. A team of experts was then called in and paid to sift through them all and pick the best picture of a bowl of chili. Imagine how much pressure there must be to do that job.

"The cloth napkin is a little blurry in this one."
"This one's good but the steam wafting off of the chili just doesn't speak to me."
"I like how clear this one is but the beans aren't evenly distributed."
"Does anyone have a magnifying glass? I think I see the tip of a talon."

I'd definitely need a strong cocktail after a day of that. Once the final decision is made, off it goes to be printed onto a paper cylinder which is then adhered to a chili can. Billions of these are made and sold around the nation. It's sad to think that not even a small fraction of those who purchase Hormel chili stop to appreciate the photo and the hard work that must go into it. It brings chili consumption to a whole new level of artistry and appreciation. I wonder if the guy who took the picture on the Hormel can stands in the chili aisle and watches how people respond to his work. I should hope not, because he would eventually feel so unappreciated that he would start seeking for some sort of appreciation elsewhere, most likely at the bottom of a bottle of vodka. I doubt that there is therapy powerful enough to compensate for the lack of recognition that comes with being a chili photographer. But it must be pretty cool to see your work every time you go to the store and see chili cans. Yep, I did that. It probably gets the person a lot of action at parties, and I'm sure there's other fringe benefits as well. At popular nightclubs for example. "Sorry sir, the club is full. What's that? You took the picture of chili that's on the Hormel cans? Shit, dude... my apologies. Right this way." And the maroon velvet snake rope fence is unlatched from the gold post and raised just like that.

*******

Right beside the photo of the chili on the can are the words SERVING SUGGESTION. Every time I crack a can open I'm tempted to put my chili in a ceramic bowl and gingerly place a light green leaf and a chip that's shaped like a hexagon on top of my chili. I would also fold a cloth napkin just so and position it as close as I could to the way it is in the photo on the can to obtain the most accurate chili reenactment possible. It has to be the SERVING SUGGESTION for a reason, right? This may very well unlock a secret chili experience that takes the already hypnotic canned chili bliss to a totally new level otherwise not achievable without the aid of illegal mind-altering substances. I never seem to have the right materials for a proper chili can photo reenactment, but someday I will. I'm sort of afraid of what might be waiting on the other side. What if it's so amazing that I only leave the apartment to get more cans of chili? Or maybe I would even just have it delivered. Leave it at the door, man, and I'll slip the money under the crack after I hear the secret knock. I have this vision in my head similar to a severely discombobulated Howard Hughes sitting alone in his room with his unkempt Forrest Gump-jogging beard surrounded by bottles of pee, but in my case it would be empty Hormel chili cans.

I was quite surprised when looking at the ingredients. Although disturbing, they're not quite as disturbing as I'd expected. Everything in there is pretty good for you maybe with the exception of the salt and the "meat". I had no idea that there's oatmeal in my chili. It's almost healthy! One cop out that always gets me with food labels is the use of the word "Flavoring". Sit and observe the chili for a bit while reading into that word and just you try to refrain from getting sucked into a grossout spiral. "Flavoring" could really be anything. Aspirin, for example, has flavor. So we could presumably classify it as "flavoring". I'm sure that bleach has a flavor. Rats and rat excrement which happen to fall into the chili cauldron at the Hormel factory? They probably add some flavor. Very little flavor due to the size of a rat (or rat dropping) vs. a gigantic cauldron of chili, but it's flavor nonetheless.

"Spices". That's another cop out. No shit there's spices. But which ones? Why even put that word on there? What if I'm allergic to turmeric? That would completely discredit the "Hey allergy freaks, it's all good!" message on the ingredients label. It's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

My wiener of choice.

The more I think about this chili, the more at war I am with myself for ingesting it. I don't eat it all that often, but one side of me is saying to not buy it anymore.. but then this whole new Canblade revelation I've had along with the convenience of being able to drink chili during my commute sort of cancels out any minor truth stretchings that lie within in the Nutritional Information.

It's a good thing that I don't eat it on its own. It goes right on top of my Heeb National hot dawgs which are made with 100% kosher beef. There's certainly nothing bad for me in those... nope. They are the ideal canvas for my Hormel turkey chili. Rather than its religious meaning, I take the word "kosher" for its informal definition which is "Genuine or authentic." My hot dawgs contain only 100% genuine or authentic beef. I suppose there could be other ingredients in them, because beef certainly does not resemble a pencil eraser when it comes off the cow.

OK. I really need to stop thinking about this while I'm ahead of myself. Flavoring is good for me. Spices are good for me. Mechanically separated turkey is good for me. These are not the droids I'm looking for. These are not the droids I'm looking for. These are not the droids I'm looking for.

Addendum

After finishing this blawg entry another thing dawned on me with the whole Canblade thing. If I were to save up 8 of those, I would be fully equipped for heavy combat. I could wear one on each finger and be the Freddy Krueger (or maybe even Wolverine if I did my hair right) of canned chili. Sorry Nutrition Information angel on my shoulder, but you just got knocked off.

"What IS Sylvester Stallone" thought spiral

2011-01-22T20:56:00.000-08:00

I sometimes wonder what Sylvester Stallone is going to look like when he gets old and then something occurs to me: I probably first saw him when he was around 27 and ice skating with Adrian. Whether I like it or not that will always be my primary Sylvester Stallone point of reference and the image that appears in my brain's slot machine every time that I hear his name.

It's 2011 now and he's approaching 65 years of age... but he certainly doesn't look 65 to me. It almost sounds like I'm complimenting him. Not really the case. There are additional words that follow that glob of words which funnel said glob of words into a proper What IS Sylvester Stallone perspective, and they go like this: He doesn't look 65 at all. He doesn't look 75, he sure as Hell doesn't look 55, and 45 is way out of the picture. He doesn't look 70. Or 60. Or 63. Or 47. He doesn't really have any sort of age at all, he's just this weird looking thing now that's not a person anymore. He's Sylvester Stallone.

Kind of like how Oprah is. I grew up back when Oaps was just a talk show host. At some point in the late 80s or 90s she crossed over from being a daytime talk show host to being a mascot of herself, for herself. She has been completely de-personed. What does she reward only the most dedicated viewers of her show with? The gift of experiencing being in the same room with Oprah Winfrey. That's what. And now she's got her own TV network. Her OWN TV network, that is. How about that for a network name? And guess who's going to be on the next cover of O Magazine... would it be Oprah by chance? I'll bet her bed is setup to dispense 1500 thread count Egyptian Cotton sheets like Kleenex. If she perspires ever so slightly while on them, fwwwwwwwwip - pull those old ones off to dispense the next ones and call your Oompa Loompas in to take the used ones to Oprah's Personal O-Incinerator.

So annnnnnyways. Back to Sly. The only age I ever remember him being is late 30s or early 40s. I'm talking about Rocky III and First Blood. You can at least look at him and picture him as being your friend's cool single dad or something.

See what I mean? That's from Rocky III, my second favorite of the Rocky movies right below the first one. That's a 38ish-to-42ish year old if I ever saw one. Check out how badass his opponent Clubber Lang is. Holy crap, now there's a guy I wouldn't want to piss off. Like if I worked at his local video rental store back in the day and he returned his VHS tapes without rewinding them, I probably wouldn't say anything to him, nor would I charge him the 25 cent fine for not being kind and rewinding. I'd just let it go. It would certainly be a better alternative to potentially watching all of his sweaty hate unfold point blank into my face. Mr. T was in a movie called DC Cab which I rented after seeing his bad ayuss in Rocky III. I remember that I didn't really understand DC Cab and got pretty bored with it after about 20 minutes. I drew pictures as I watched it which is a telltale sign of its inability to keep my attention. Right around that time my brother received an LP entitled Mr. T's Commandments for his birthday. It was an entire record of Mr. T angrily reading positive rhyming affirmations for children over music which at the time I categorized as "break dance music". The break dance music which he angrily spat rhymes upon sounded like it was put together by a freshly castrated Quincy Jones taking his depressing post-surgical woes out on a Casio keyboard. I have it in my iTunes and listen to it on occasion for a good chuckle. Like Sylvester Stallone, it's aging at a rather awkward curve.

*******

OK, so I started writing this with the intent of trying to crack the code that is Sly Stallone and have digressed a few times already. I'm digressing because the more I try and venture into the "What IS Sylvester Stallone" spiral, the more uncomfortable I get. How long has he been taking steroids? He takes 'em, right? Does he really look that way because of the steroids? Was he really born in 1946 or is that when he was left here on our planet in a smoldering black crater caused by the UFO which intentionally left him here and took off in a hurry?

Perhaps Brigette Nielson was behind the baseball-faced meathead he has mutated into. Let's say that Sly was enjoying a cocktail in a hot tub with Brigette back in the day. I know, it's a rather arousing thought but stick with me for a few more minutes before going to grab a tissue to dab the lustful sweat beading on your foreheads. Perhaps said cocktails were ingested after Brigette had discovered that Sly wasn't filming Cobra II as he'd told her and that he was actually having adult relations with a hot bikini model. Brigette being all shitfaced and high on goofballs 24/7 like she was back then decided to seek revenge and tainted his beverage with some sort of toxic concoction akin to Smilex. "Oh NOOO deea, ze maid just geef you voad-ka and toan-eek like you alwiss have," she'd say after he took the first sip and commented on how it tasted like aspirin. He would also attempt to comment on how his vodka and tonics aren't usually green and bubbling, but she'd say "Shhh sh sh sh shhh... dreenk aahp" and tip the cup against his crooked lips until the liquid poured in and ceased his ability to render his observations into words. This toxic cocktail then cast a freaky-ass spell upon poor Sly's development as a living thing rendering him immortal but tricking 50% of his body into forever thinking it was 16 years old.

I dunno. Does he really look like he's 65? I'm not seeing it. I don't see any age at all. Kind of like another Sylvester: Sylvester the cat. I can't look at him and give you an accurate age estimate. I just look at him and say "Yep, there's Sylvester the cat." Guess how old Sylvester the cat is? I just Googled him and he's 66. He was created one year prior to what IMDB says Sylvester the Stallone was created. Interesting.

I give up. I should really stop before I transition into my conspiracy theories on those weird looking old puffy guy masks, teeth, and wigs that Mickey Rourke wears.

So THIS is Christmas?

2010-12-26T10:06:00.000-08:00

Holy crap, what happened to 2010?

Last I remember we were riding the F train home at 2am on January 1st watching an outstanding young gentleman who looked like Danny from New Kids On The Block. Danny was soused beyond belief and had his arm around his equally soused underage girlfriend. They were slouched sideways in their subway seat. If you were to trace a shape in the air around them you'd get a pretty decent parallelogram. They had both obviously boarded the train at the Times Square station and were decorated with crooked party hats, noisemakers, and residual confetti. Danny was spending those first few minutes of 2010 pointing at one of his friends also on the train slurring "Loogit this fuggin guy, loogit this fuggin guy!" He wasn't trying to pick a fight, he was just a drunk happy dude who found something amusing about That Fuggin' Guy. I was happy for every second that Danny was focused on That Fuggin' Guy, because that was one less second we were at risk of having to watch him make out with his girlfriend any more than we already did.

And... POOF! There went the year - full speed ahead. Here we are at the end of December already. Christmas has come and gone. It always used to pretty much be my favorite most ass-kickingest holiday of the year, but it was a bit of a toughy this year being away from our families and homies. Sure as heck don't miss the Minnesota weather, that's fer damned sher, but the peeps are another story. It's too bad that whoever invented the vacuum tube Habitrail thingies at drive thru bank stations that you send thermoses through couldn't also invent a people sized one. I figure with one of those we could hop in, be in Minnesota in about an hour, and then just hop back in the capsule and zip back to Brooklyn on the same night. Missing family sucks. Especially at this time of year. I have tons of cool Christmas memories that I always look back on quite fondly when I'm in Miss-Mode like this. And when I do so, my brain does this:

I'm sorry. What I MEANT to say is my brain does this:

*******insert Wayne and Garth's "diddlyooop... diddlyooop..." wavy hand gesture here representing being transported to another time*******

My Pyraminx was just like this!

THUD! I've landed in 1982. It's Christmas Day at Grandma Gert & Grampa Claire's. To this day whenever I smell turkey and/or hear Johnny Mathis, I am instantly transported to their home on Palace Ave. in St. Paul. Someone gave me a sweet Tron tee shirt at this particular get-together. I believe it may have been my Aunt Dolly. I hadn't seen Tron yet but was a big Star Wars fan and the Tron dude looked Star Wars-y enough, so that deemed the shirt worthy of wearing. A nearby candle tipped over on the table I'd set the shirt on after unwrapping and some wax ended up splattering on it. I was quite devastated by this until someone suggested we put it in the freezer and the wax would freeze and break off. Worked like a charm. Also on this evening my Aunt Jeannie gave me a Pyraminx which I became completely enamored with and was eventually able to solve every time. Couldn't do the Rubik's Cube back then, still can't. But Pyraminx? I had that shit covered. My sister received a kid's activity book from someone that night (I think?) called GOOD TIMES that completely blew my fucking mind. I was able to score my own copy on Ebay about 10 years ago for $10 and it's still just as fun to thumb through. It's a treasure trove of cool facts and activities that deserves a journal entry of its own, so maybe I'll just shut up about that for now.

Diddelyoop... diddelyoop... diddelyoop...

1983: Walk, Man. On this Christmas Day my sister and I each unwrapped our very own Sony Walkman AM/FM radios - complete with headphones with the bitchin' orange foam covering. Portable music has always been a pretty intense addiction of mine and this is where it started. To be able to put on headphones and listen to music.. and walk around without worrying about cords coming unplugged from a stereo receiver? The sense of freedom was almost too much for me to fathom. It was like floating. I remember on the way to Gert and Claire's that afternoon Lisa and I were cranking our new portable music headphone devices in the back of the station wagon. We were both tuned in to WLOL and Stray Cat Strut was on. Yes please. There's a scene in National Lampoon's Vacation when Russ and Audrey are in the back of the Wagon Queen Family Truckster rocking out with their headphones on. That toadilly always reminds me of that Christmas Day with my sis.

The night before, my Aunt Lucy gave me an issue of the heavy metal magazine KERRANG! with KISS in it. This magazine contained the first pictures of them I'd ever seen playing live without makeup. It came with a bonus yellow flexi-disc with a live version of Quiet Riot's "Slick Black Cadillac" on it. I still have that mag and it's awesome to skim through it every now and again. I smell the new electronics smell of the new TV we got around that time as well as new brown living room carpet we had installed that Febrooary whenever I read that magazine. Weird how memories trigger different things like that.

Diddelyoop... diddelyoop... diddelyoop...

The year: 1984. By far my favorite Christmas vacation in my entire 13 year school district 833 prison tenure.

It's the weekend after Christmas. I'm at Cottage Grove's go-to store for all of your heavy metal needs: In Concert. I'd just talked myself out of buying the Twisted Sister Velcro wallet and was staring at the cassette tape display case. I am deep in the throes of a major crisis. Do I want to spend $7.98 of my Christmas money on Helix's Walkin' The Razor's Edge or hold out for something better? Back before the internets, buying an album was a considerably difficult decision for me - there was no way to hear any of the songs unless I'd heard anything on MTV or the radio. If I forked over $8 and didn't like the album, tough titty - I was stuck with it. I usually had to go by how cool the album art and song titles were. I decided that Helix looked "metal" enough for my liking and ended up purchasing the tape. I raced home to throw it in the tape player... Brian Vollmer's first "GIMME AN 'R'!" kicked things off and I thought Man, I want to make heavy shit like this when I grow up. Whenever I take a trip down memory lane and listen to that record I realize that my definition of "heavy" has substantially changed for the better over the years.

Later that week I attended my first KISS concert at the St. Paul Civic Center with my Aunt Cookie. Some new band called Queensryche had just released an album entitled The Warning. I remember seeing it advertised in Circus magazine. I couldn't understand a word Geoff Tate was singing but still thought that they kicked ass, as did KISS. Being that this was my first arena concert I didn't know what it was going to be like. Were we going to meet KISS? Did they walk through the crowd and sweat on people while they were playing? Would some unruly drunken fan stab someone like I'd heard my sister said happened at an Aerosmith concert a year or two earlier? Would they surprise everyone and come out with makeup on?

Nothing like that happened. Cookie and I were given a good solid rock show, complete with confetti and pyro that blinded us - we could feel the heat on our faces even from our borderline nosebleed seats. Paul Stanley made fun of people who listened to Thompson Twins and did a bit with a Michael Jackson doll where he held it to the microphone and mimicked Michael. He played his cracked mirror guitar and occasionally one of the 8 million reflections from the spotlights hitting it would zoom across my face or shirt. I remember feeling as if I'd been baptized every time that happened and thinking Dude. The light reflecting off of Paul Stanley's guitar just hit me! It sounds funny now but that shit's pretty much the most rad thing ever when you're an 11 year old KISS fan. The clip I've pasted here is from that tour - same guitar. Cookie and I dined at the Taco Bell on Robert St. in West St. Paul prior to that concert. This was right around the time I'd developed a liking for hot sauce. I used 3 packets of HOT sauce per taco (there was no "Fire" sauce back then).

Hey, check out how awesome the internet is. I'm going to figure out the exact day of that show. Hold on a sec.

December 29th 1984. That was on a Saturday.

Way cool.

I received a little action figure that Christmas from Cookie called a STINKY. It was a little blue rubber elephant monster looking thing and its odor was "rotten eggs". That thing really smelled like ass. Needless to say it was an instant favorite.

Diddelyoo... diddelyoo... diddelyoo...

Christmas Break 1985 This was the year I started playing guitar. "Santa" left me a Leo Kottke greatest hits record. I also got a telescope and a Radio Shack electronics learning lab. Sadly there weren't any hot chicks on our block who disrobed in front of open windows like there are in the movies. It was too cold to go outside and stargaze, so I pointed it out our living room window and saw a murder happen in the neighbor's window.

Just kidding just kidding just kidding.

I was able to get a pretty good view of the oil refinery that was 5 or 6 miles away from our house. It wasn't my favorite constellation Orion, but it got the job done. For New Years I got to travel via Amtrak to my Aunt Sue's house in LaCrosse - all by myself! They shoot off fireworks from a bluff on New Years Eve in LaCrosse which I had to see to believe. Fireworks were only supposed to be a 4th of July warm weather thing from all I'd known at that point. Seeing them at 12:01am on January 1st 1986 from the inside of a car was pretty damned cool.

*******

Blimey, I could go on and on about other highlights of Christmas past. I haven't even touched on The Great KISS solo album Chirstmas of 1979. Maybe next year. It's nice to be able to play these little home movies back in my brain every December. The weird thing is I don't even have to play them - they play themselves automatically. I catch a whiff of Christmas tree and am suddenly back in 1984 with my brother Chuck dropping Christmas ornaments strategically in our tree to see how far they'd fall. I see a tray of cookies and think of my Great Aunt Chris. I smell wrapping paper and I remember gift tags that said To: Mike From: Santa in handwriting that I never really realized looked a lot like my Mom's. And it doesn't matter what time of the year it is if smell turkey in the oven (which usually happens at the grocery store): It's 1982 and I'm back at Gert and Claire's again.

Brains are weird.

I think I'd like to make my version of A Christmas Story out of that kick-ass 1984 Christmas some day. Instead of a Red Rider BB gun I'll be asking for a dual cassette boom box with EQ and detachable speakers. It would be difficult to cast who would play me. I'm going through a list of current celebs in that age group and it's tough with all of the great talent out there. Jaden Smith would probably be the best fit.

Happy Holidays, y'all. May your 2011 not suck at all!

2010 List of Shit I'm Thankful For

2010-11-25T13:11:00.000-08:00

I never really understood Thanksgiving. As a kid it was just a lame warm-up holiday to the cool one that happened 3 weeks later where Santa came and we got presents and money. As I got older I grew to appreciate it more as an opportunity to hang with family and eat like there was no tomorrow. Now that we live in Brooklyn things are a little different. In some ways not so fun (we miss the shit out of our families) but in other ways I guess it's nice to just be able to stay home and have a small, quiet din-din.

Alas, this is our second Thanksgiving here and it's not quite as odd as the first one was. Granted last Thanksgiving was a blast in its own new way, it was our first major holiday away from the Fam (Columbus Day was a real bitch too if you want to count that but we somehow pulled through). Here we are on Thanksgiving Part II. Our first year in Brooklyn zoomed by at the speed of a Slayer record playing at 78rpm. We've busted our asses and are still here as a result of said ass busting. Things are just getting started! Here is what I am giving thanks to:

My lovely wifey, of course. No duuuuh. I thank her for having an awesome brain, good scents of humor, being very easy to look at, and for being cool with packing up and moving 1,200 miles east last year. I don't know of too many spouses that would partake in such shenanigans.

I am thankful that we survived our first year as New Yorkers with flying colors. Contrary to what Emo Philips told me when talking to him backstage at ACME Comedy Club in 2007 (true story), it didn't eat us alive. It hasn't been easy all of the time, but learning how to play the guitar wasn't either and look - I'm still playing it over 20 years later. No pain/no gain. Thank you, New York.
I am immensely thankful for the CVS Ear Wax Removal Syringe . I'll just leave it at that.

The Number 7. This blog has been brought to you by the number 7. It is my favorite number in the world. I'm not superstitious and don't do things like open a door and close it 7 times or stop and make a clicking noise 7 times every time I hear a trigger word. I've just always liked the number. I always thought it looked cool on the 16 ounce green glass 7UP bottles at my grandma's and on my dad's Heinz 57 sauce. I was born in July, the 7th month. I was 7 when I got my first KISS record. Married to the lovely wifey on 7/7/7. I have 7 stars in my tattoo. 7/8 is my favorite and most comfortable meter to play/write music in. We moved to 7th Ave in Brooklyn - pure coincidence on the street number. My new job that I really enjoy going to is on the 7th floor, also a coincidence (not like I could really hold out for a job until I found one on a 7th floor). I just bought a bottle of Jack Daniel's (more on that later) which has "No. 7" on it. Just like Jack's jackass in Grizzly Adams. Steve Vai's got it for the number 7 too.. I read an interview where he said he makes every seventh song on each of his CDs some sort of big-time ballad. It's true! Although Eight Is Enough, 7 is truly where it's at for this fella.
I am incredibly grateful that if we want or need something, be it butter, beer, milk, or whatever, we can walk outside and find it within a 2 block radius of our apartment 24/7. The delivery services here are quite convenient too.
I'm thankful that I don't stock shelves at the Target in Atlantic Center.
I grew my beard back this year after a year or two of going without. Turns out that I missed the little fella more than I thought I did. Frank likes to rub his face on it, so I guess he missed it too.
I am thankful that Stevie Wonder's Sir Duke is on right now. That song will always kick major ass in my book.. one of my favorite unison riffs ever.
I'm glad that the few family peeps and friends who have made it out here to visit made it out here. I hope to see more of you make it out here!
On that note, we visited MN over the summer. We didn't miss the state/Twin Cities so much, but we sure miss family (Jesus, can I say that enough?) so it was really awesome to see everyone. It had been almost a year and it was great to see everyone. Mad props to my incredibly awesome Grandma Alice and her way cool twin bro John and his rad wife Chris for coming to see us when we were there. I want to be like them when I grow up. Represent.
I heard that this is Shrek's last year as a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I am thankful that there is one less Shrek promotional vehicle in the world, even if it's just for one day. ENOUGH WITH SHREK ALREADY.
We got to see Jeff Beck in June. I never, ever thought I'd see him live. Not in a meelion years. Mind-blowingly awesome. He does things with the electric guitar that no one else can, and even if they could get close to what he can do, Jeff was still the first one to do it. We were also interviewed by a Rochester news crew while quite soused on the patio of a bar not too far from the show about attending the Rochester Jazz Festival. Peep this and tell me he's not amazing.
Smash Mouth headlined the Rochester Jazz Festival, by the way. What the name of all things that don't suck is that all about? Not thankful for that. We heard the entire set from our hotel room.
I'm thankful that there's a Taylor Swift Thanksgiving special and a Beyonce one on tonight as well... and that I won't be watching either of them.
I'm thankful to be in a no football household. No football on Thanksgiving or pretty much ever is cool with me. Kudos to you if you're a football person, but I'm not. People always ask me about the Vikings out here and they may as well be asking me about how to perform brain surgery.
I'm thankful for Line 6's POD HD500. That thing kicks total ass.
I am thankful for a co-worker at my previous job for reminding me how NOT to treat people in the workplace.
I got to play Iced Ink music in Montreal and some pretty cool spots in NYC. Sorry again to the guys that I had to pull the plug on the band as a live entity, but in hindsight that's what I get for moving here and trying to overachieve without first taking a breather.
Our automatic cat feeder. The cats no longer wake us up at 5am (unless it's empty like it was the other day)
I'm thankful that if I don't like something, I'm at a point in life where I'm able to speak up and change it - even if it makes me feel like a dickhead. And I quote Rick Nelson: "You can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself."
On that note, I didn't like where my work situation was heading and was able to change it by busting my arse to find a new job much closer to home. I seem to have just enough leverage on my resume to do that kind of thing now. I really dig my new job. Like, a LOT. My condolences to the person who took over for me... I wouldn't wish that upon too many people.
Jack Daniel's. It was the first hard liquor to tickle my taste buds way back in 1988. Sorry to break the news to you, Mom and Dad. I have a fear of throwing up which is something that has saved me from many a hangover throughout the years (not to mention a lot of trouble). As a result I only had enough sips back in '88 to cop a decent buzz and I knew damn well when to stop. Hadn't really touched it since but I just bought a bottle. Sipping on that stuff is bringing back some really cool, fun memories. Memories like sitting in the passenger seat of Gyro's Mustang and cruising Maplewood for chicks while blasting Motley Crue and sipping JD (sorry again, Mom and Dad). My recent JD renaissance reminded me of Gyro's Mustang's dashboard: it was black with a white Tron-like grid pattern on it. I think it had maroon upholstery in it. I can smell the strawberry air freshener. Good times & warm fuzzies.
Gyro! There's someone I need to track down. He was amongst the very small group of die hard KISS fans I bonded with in my early teenage years. We talked like Yoda all of the time for no reason. Didn't help us much in the chick department.
Them Crooked Vultures. They kick total ass.
Joe Satriani's new album is actually really good too. I lost interest in him in the mid 1990s and have tried all of his records since but they've all left me kinda empty. His new record Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards actually kicks ass, more so in a Jeff Beck kind of way than a Joe Satriani/irritating one trick pony guitar shredder kind of way (I actually discovered Jeff Beck via a Satriani interview in the 80's where Joe cited him as one of the greatest 'lectric guitarists ever). It is a good F5 of why I was so inspired listening to Satriani as a teenager.
The new peeps I've met since moving here. Y'all rule. Even if I only see some of you once every few months.
I'm thankful that it's only 3:39 right now and we're about to assemble a delicious Thanksgiving feast for two. The cats will be getting some primo canned food and catnip as well.

As stud muffin Gary Lumpkin used to say on Good Company, "There you have it." And as a sign I drove past in St. Paul Park one year read, "Be Thankful, Eat A Turkey."

Lost in Translation

2010-09-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

Peep this.

I just went and picked up a sammich at the Subway shop on West End Ave. and 61st Street. I ordered a 6" turkey on roasted garlic bread. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

The distinguished young sandwich artist standing across the counter before me was at the ready. He put on a fresh pair of exam gloves and looked at them as though they were his paintbrushes. The sandwich artist grabbed a footlong bat of roasted garlic bread, sliced it, and started filling it up with turkey. Okay, so I'm getting a footlong now. I guess it's only $1 or so more if that and I'm kinda hungry anyways... no skin off my back. He then grabbed a tile of flatbread, put turkey and cheese on it, and asked if I wanted either one or both toasted.

Says I: "Uh, sorry, but I did not order another sandwich, much less one on flatbread.. cancel that one, please." He then went over to the footlong and started scooping the bread-meat out of the loaf, essentially leaving a hollowed out bread-bowl pod. "This good.. you mean like this?" he asked.

Okay. So that's how this is gonna go down? I explained to him once more as clear as possible that I only ordered one sammich, NOT 2. Just the 6" footlong that he was making for me. I went into caveman mode and pointed to it and nodded my head yes, pointed to the flatbread and shook my head no. Big sandwich. Yes. Sandwich on bread tile. No. Please, thankyou, etc.

I thought to myself He clearly understands my order now, right?

"Okay. Lettuce tomato?" he asked, pulling both the scalloped loaf of bread and flatbread canvases toward the pallet of fresh fixins. Every time I told him what I wanted on my 6" footlong he would throw it on the flatbread as well. This sandwich order discombobulation continued to the bitter end. I contemplated leaving in lieu of sticking around for whatever sheer terror was about to transpire at the cash register. The man couldn't operate a loaf of bread... how could he possibly ring me up - especially without any pictures on the buttons?

I was going to add a beverage to my order but refrained from doing so. There was no need to complicate matters more than they already were. The way things were going he'd probably snap his fingers and a team of sandwich artists would suddenly emerge from the back room with a 6 foot party sub loaf crammed full of oatmeal raisin cookies.

In the end I was charged for only 1 footlong and left with two sammiches. Not a bad deal. I can only hope that this particular sandwich artist changes professions someday. I'd love to see what would happen if he ended up being my teller at the Bank of America counter and had to exchange my $10 bill for a roll of quarters.

My life is about to change forever

2010-09-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm expecting the UPS man to deliver a box to me that contains a brand new 3rd generation Kindle e-book reader. Thanks to all of the electronics purchases I make on behalf of my employer, I recently racked up enough bonus points to cash in for one. Six months ago I could have cared less about such a doodad, but I'm currently going on almost a year of reading roughly 2 hours a day on the train to and from work. I have 30+ notches in my finished book belt since last October which is prolly more books than I've read (through to the end at least) in the last 20 years combined. And a lot of these books I've been reading don't even have pictures! I know! It's amazing how my attention span with books significantly increased when suddenly the only alternative I had to reading them was staring at Docker and pantsuit-adorned asses 12" from my face when sitting in a crowded train.

The problem with reading books on the subway is they're just another gall damned cumbersome thing to carry, not to mention at least once or twice a day while I'm reading someone will brush past me getting on or off the train and inadvertently flip a few pages. In order for that to happen after tomorrow, someone will have to bend down and press the page turn button on the side of the Kindle.. and I will take that Kindle and whap them on the head with it providing there's room on the train for my arms to adequately pivot.

I've always had this weird thing with trying to keep my books in pristine shape when I read them. Not so easy to do when I have to shove my books in my backpack every day.. by the time I'm done with them they're far from mint (I still haven't read my Dave Mustaine book for that reason). That won't be an issue anymore being that there are no covers or dust jackets to worry about with e-books.

Another great life change I anticipate with Kindle ownership: it plays mp3s. This will really come in handy when I jog around the park because now instead of bringing my iPod along for the run as I always do, I'll bring the Kindle to a) play music and b) read as I run. I have a cartoon bubble over my head of running, listening to Slayer, and reading some Mark Twain - all at once. Sure, I might crash into another runner, tree, or maybe even a cyclist, but that's OK. As long as I have my Kindle I can use its 3G service to email someone for help.

My Kindle will hold up to 3,500 books. That's fucking sweet, man. Can you say "book burning party"? The wife and I have quite the little book collection on the 6 tier bookshelves in our living room area that surround our television. Now we can get rid of those unsightly books and I can put the Kindle on one of the many empty shelves in their place. The rest can be filled up with dirty dishes, beer bottles, unopened mail... the sky is the limit. I'm so excited to get all of that shelf space back! I almost want to burn them now just to get an early start.

I wonder why it's called a Kindle? I know the people at Amazon are clever sometimes... Maybe that's some sort of sarcastic name and it's actually nonflammable. I'm going to go throw some lighter fluid and a Zippo in my backpack for when it arrives in my office... I'll spray it all over the box, set it on fire, and once all that can be burned has been burned there will be one thing remaining in the pile of soot: my sweet new Kindle. When co-workers inevitably walk by to see what all of the fire and fuss is about I will hiss at them so they know to keep their distance. Leave me alone, man. Sue me if you have to. When I have to do that thing in court where I put my hand on the ho-lee bible I'll be able to download it to my Kindle on the spot via the Amazon store in less than 60 seconds.

My Hanes T-Shirts Are Sealed for Freshness

2010-09-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

I noticed something about my 3 pack of Hanes Premium shirts when throwing it into my basket at Target yesterday: the top of the bag is resealable. Well I'll be damned. This is something that I've noticed before, but I didn't notice notice it. I never really stopped to think about why that Ziploc-style technology is there.

I'm all for sealing my shirts in a bag and keeping them fresh; there is nothing like that first time you wear a shirt or pair of socks after buying them. You get that one day of pure absolute joy and then after the first washing they just become another t-shirt or another pair of socks. But here's the problem: the 3 shirts are all stacked together like flapjacks, folded over a square of cardboard, and then secured together with a few pieces of clear tape. If you're like me, you wear only one Hanes Premium t-shirt at a time. Am I supposed to remove the glob of shirts from the package, get my one shirt, and then fold and tape the two remaining shirts back onto the cardboard and stuff them back into the resealable bag? That seems like a lot of work, but it dawned on me that maybe that's why my white t-shirts are "spoiling". They seem to develop yellow stains in the pits after a while. Could it be because I'm not storing them in the resealable bag?

Call me crazy but I've always just removed them from the bag after buying, refolded them, and stashed 'em in my dresser drawer with my other white tees. Could it be that the yella pit stains are contagious and transfer from my old shirts to the new ones? Should I be throwing out the older ones and keeping the new ones that aren't in use in the resealable bag just as an extra measure of protection? Do I need to have our dresser fumigated or swabbed for traces of yellow pit stain bacteria? Maybe a black light test is in order.. I saw that on Dateline once and haven't looked at hotel room TV remote controls and faucet knobs the same since. One thing I'm guessing wouldn't be too contaminated in a black light test is the bible in the nightstand drawer. Chances are if you're someone who reads the bible you already have your own good book in tow laced with your own personal holy DNA and bacteria.

Back to the shirts in the resealable bag. I pay a premium for my premium shirts which I thought all this time was just for thicker fabric. The regular flimsy Kleenex-thin white tees reveal my chest hair and upper arm tats which is something I'm not cool with; it looks trashy and grody. But now I see part of that premium also goes towards the deluxe resealable packaging. Although I'm not going to dilly dally with stuffing my new shirts back in that bag I'll at least try and repurpose it. It's too bad they don't make loaves of bread as tall and wide as the bag dimensions.. it would make a killer sandwich carrier. Perhaps Hanes could get into the bread business. Flatbread might work. Is there such thing as a square pita? The Ziploc-style seal is much nicer than those on the deli meat bags we get with the little white square pull tab that always falls off, so maybe the next time we go get a pound of smoked Boar's Head toikey I'll throw the bag at the clerk and say "Fillerup!" I will request a stack of extra large slices - that way I can also reuse the cardboard by taping the turkey slices onto it (that probably looks a lot cooler in my head than it does in written word form).

It would also make a good resealable bag for 45rpm records. The problem with that is I don't have any. Part of the premium I pay is for this deluxe bag and I'm not just going to throw it away... At least not until I get a hold of the people at Dateline to do an expose on my theory of yellow pit stains being contagious to other shirts. I might have them bring the bag back to their labs to see if there's some sort of stain-blocking particles in the bag that they could clone and turn into an underarm spray.

Adventures in Podiatric Space Taco Selection

2010-09-12T19:47:00.000-07:00

I've been a jogger of sorts on/off since my high school days. Mostly "on" for a week or two then "off" for a few years. This past year however I have really taken a shining to it now that we're spoiled by living a mere 2 blocks from one of the coolest parks in Brooklyn to run around. The scenery is something I now look forward to every morning. I've got trees, trails, grassy fields, horse poop, water, an unspent condom, an empty enema box... it's really quite breathtaking. I've been doing about 20 miles a week and as a result my feet and knees have been letting me know lately that I need better shoes. Apparently running shoes are supposed to be replaced every 300-500 miles. I did not know this. My current pair was approaching the 3 year mark and had the support of a pair of flip flops. I've been ignoring the fact that I need to buy new ones for the plain and simple fact that I don't want to spend money on the f'in things. It's much more fun to spend money on more important needs such as beer and pizza.

All that I can say after buying a new pair of running shoes this weekend is that running shoes are pretty much the ugliest fucking things ever. It's not much better for chicks either, but dude running shoes win the ugly race by a long shot. There are decent looking options that appear to be running shoes, but after doing some pretty extensive research on running shoe ratings I found that basically anything I'd instinctively walk up to and want to buy was not a practical option if I was planning on doing anything more than regular old walking in 'em. Dropping what to me is a substantial amount of money on something I wouldn't want to be caught dead in is not a fun shopping conflict to be in the middle of. Hmmmm.... On that note I think I'll tie a pair of Chuck Taylors around my waist in the event that something happens to me. Hopefully I'd be able to change back into those and throw my running shoes into the bushes with the crushed beer cans and enema box.

Is there such thing as a running shoe that doesn't look like a space caterpillar wrapped in a doily crochetted by an intergalactic alien grandmother? Seriously.

What the fuck is this?

For reals?? Did the shoe trailer accidentally get dropped off at the Edge shaving gel factory? Why silver? Why shave gel blue? Do the stripes on the side make you run faster? Do the little red nubs on the bottom that look like LED lights illuminate or blast you off the ground into the mothership? I know that running shoes are a result of some highly sophisticated engineering and foot nerdery, but that doesn't mean they can't camouflage said nerdery. You're pretty much left with no choice but to have your feet adorned with shoes that yell out to the world "LOOK AT ME EVERYONE! MY FEET ARE IN SPACE TACOS!"

Maybe they make them look like that so that you have to run from people who are trying to beat you up because you're wearing such ugly shoes. Exercise via fear. Perhaps it's a ploy to get you to run more and wear them out faster so that you go buy them more frequently with aspirations of the manufacturer opting for newer, less shaving-gel-burrito-from-Pluto aesthetics. The particular shoe that I was sold on provided me with the option to pick my own custom colors on the Nike website for an additional $30. Bryn had mentioned that this was maybe why they make the standard shoes so gall damned ugly - it makes you consider paying even more just to get something that doesn't look like Stevie Wonder chose the colors while standing in one of those cash tornado booths filled with ugly color swatches.

I ended up going with the peculiar looking chunk of rubber and other space-age fibers to the left. Yeah, they're pretty rad. Out of the 4 available colors this was the least nauseating choice. The others were black with white and baby blue accents (yes, that combo is for dudes), light grey with white and fluorescent radioactive urine-colored accents, and then white with puke grey and bright blue accents. Alas, this particular specimen was one of the higher rated podiatric space tacos within my budget and the very instant I put 'em on, my feet were in absolute bliss. For Christ's sake though, why all of the busy stuff? Who was the genius that decided on off-tan, brown, white, orange, and maroon? It's not like I'm Tim Gunn or anything or that I have anyone to impress - especially while running. It just boggles my mind that people have to abandon basically all and any taste when it comes to buying footwear for running. I accept the fact that although the build of my running shoes are just a few strands of DNA from Gene Simmons' dragon boots, they're saving my knees and feet. But this color combo madness needs to stop.

I'm sure there are those who see a pair of shoes that look like the design was based off of a late 1990's Aiwa 3 CD changer bookshelf stereo system and think "Wow, those are really sweet. I absolutely must have them and wear them at once!" I ask that those of you on that side of the fence take my running shoe rant with a grain of salt. I'm a dude who has adhered to a strict diet of Chuck Taylors since the late 1980s and maybe am just a little narrow minded. I'm guessing that the pro-running shoe design fans are far outnumbered by the anti fans, though.

Anyways. My run this morning was an incredibly cushy ride in my sweet new A&W root beer colored kicks, so I should be thankful that at least they're serving their purpose. I paid close attention to the shoes of other runners in the park and realized we're all on the ugly shoe train together. Perhaps we all need to gather in the middle of the park to protest and have a shoe burning. Do you hear us now, Nike?

(Insert Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It here)

No rallying until I hit the 450 mile mark with mine though... I paid good money for these ugly-ass sunnofabitches. In the mean time I guess there's always that Croc burning protest idea I can start putting together.

Enema Enigma

2010-09-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

Men At Work's "Business As Usual" was cranking through my earbuds and I was on the home stretch of my morning run through Prospect Paahk today when something caught my eye. Occasionally I'll see a stray empty beer can, a few fast food wrappers, and other assorted garbage that presumably ends up there as a result of someone mistaking beautiful, flourishing park foliage for a waste receptacle. I can see where it's pretty easy to mix the two up.

Today's standout garbage item was something much more unique and thought provoking than your run of the mill nugget of garbage. Even more thought provoking than the unrolled prophylactic that I ran past on the park's east side dirt path for about a month until it mysteriously disappeared. Did a dog eat it? Was it finally used? Did a kid pick it up and inflate it? I'll never know and it's causing me to lose sleep. At any rate, this morning's bright and shining mystery star on the ground was none other than an empty enema box.

An empty enema box? In Prospect Paaahk?! On a 50' stretch of trail that goes through a tunnel of trees?

If only empty enema boxes could talk.

Instant Everything™

2010-09-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

Instead of screwing around on Facebook when I'm mentally restless I'm going to try and focus at least some of that energy on journaling instead when the urge to type brain Twinkies emerges. Even if it's just a short entry and not a mile long book like I've been doing lately what little I post on this thing. Facebook is fun and all but it's a little too instantaneous and time stamped. I don't like the fact that I can post something and potentially have someone read it and think "Hmm... so Mike hasn't responded to my email/voicemail yet but he has time to post on Facebook?" A few times people have called me out on that. Sure, I'm guilty, but a) I'm horseshit at answering my phone much less putting forth the effort to press and hold the 1 key on it to check voicemail, and 2) maybe you need to make your messages stick out a little bit more or at least interesting enough for me to make it past the first few words. Did you ever think of that, lame email/voicemail leaver? It's not all my fault. It takes two slices of bread to fulfill my attention defect disorder sandwich of correspondence.

So anyways, this new Google Instant thing sort of concerns me. If you're not yet familiar with it, try Googling it and a million links will vomit themselves up in your browser without you even having to press enter. I tried searching for something this morning and it looked like my web browser was having a seizure every time I typed in a character. At first I thought it was a cool hallucinogenic side effect of the 16oz Red Bull I'd slammed but it turned out that my browser was the one that was doing the jitterbug.

Does the world really need this? I've been an avid Google user ever since being blessed with a Gmail invitation from a friend back in the invite-only days. I'm starting to notice that the more changes they make to the Gmail interface and the Google search engine over time they're really not making life easier. Sure.. that's what they're doing on the surface. But at the same time they're slowly turning our brains into lazy mushy globs of mashed potatoes, and not even real ones. Yeah - powdered ones. I recall the days of searching the innernets for something and if I happened to misspell a word or two (shocking I know, but even awesome people like me make mistakes) it would kick back zero or very few results. Usually the only results were meaningless sites that happened to feature the identical misspelling that you'd just fed into the search engine. It was at least reassuring to know there was another human out there who made an identical fuck-up, and even went so far as to accidentally publish it on a website.

Looks like those days are becoming extinct. I suppose it's convenient. But so was watching Jerry Blackwell's big sweaty ass on AWA on Sunday mornings and drinking Pepsi instead of doing my homework in 5th grade. As a result of computers thinking for me I'm finding that I no longer pay close attention to how I spell stuff. I've talked to other people who are going through the same thing. That's fine and dandy on a computer, but when I have to hand write something or type into one of the few text applications left in the computer world without spell check I'm pretty much fucked with most of the words my inner proofreader stops me and taps my shoulder on. This is not good. That helpful skill has been overwritten with other information.. like the echoing sound of a robotic auto pilot voice in my head that tells me "DON'T WORRY, YOUR FRIEND MR. COMPUTERMACHINE WILL FIX IT FOR YOU. THANK YOU AND HAVE A NICE DAY, YOU JUST KEEP ON MAKING MISTAKES NOW, YOU HEAR?"

If this keeps going, what's next? Google Fridge? I open the fridge and if I think of the letter B, butter, beer, and broccoli suddenly swoosh to the front and center? Google TV? Google purse? Google chewless chewing gum that blows its own bubbles and loses flavor after 10 minutes all by itself? Google poop-and-dingleberry magnet toilet paper? Can we not just leave the entertaining psychic computer stuff to 20Q?

I dunno. Call me old fashioned but sometimes I enjoy the whole process of having to think and react in order to accomplish something. Sometimes. Just some occasional combustion up in the ol' noggin to shake the dust off. Such as when I want my shoes tied: I bend over and tie them and bask in the fruits of my labor with a rewarding walk from point A to B without my shoes falling off. I do not need a Google Shoelace app to accomplish this. I love my iPod but still find the greatest joy in dropping a needle down on a record and looking at the massive 12x12" album art printed on the cardboard sleeve. It's nice to still have to press COPY on the copy machines at work if I want something that's on 8.5 x 11 duplicated.

I have this fear one day of satellites being blown to bits by aliens and the internet as a whole crapping out like an old car. You never know, someone's pet hamster could get stuck in the internet pipes or something. What will the people who have subconsciously become dependent on technological conveniences do at that time besides hit things when they don't work and then stand there and drool? I'm slightly scared... I think I'm going to head on over to Google.com to find help. Sadly that involves either typing Google.com into my web browser or pressing its home page button. That sounds incredibly exhausting to have to do. Maybe if I sit and stare at the screen it will go to Google.com and do all of the rest of the work for me.

I'm getting verrryyyy sleeeepppyyyyyyy.....

My nose hair trimmer has been seen on TV

2010-07-28T21:07:00.000-07:00

I'm ecstatic about my new nose hair trimmer. It's the first one I've ever bought, and It. Is. BAAAYud. AYYYYuusssss.

Since spending my entire 5th grade school year looking at my teacher Mr. Basil's nose hairs that were so unkempt that they practically could have been French braided, I've always wondered at what point in my life I would start a) noticing such things coming out of my nose, and as a result b) have to do something about it. I now know the answer: My 37th birthday. That's the magic number where my olfactory filaments began to try and grow out onto my face like the ornamental vines on the side of my old apartment building on 24th and Hennepin. In the past I've had instances where I've tamed a few sporadic strands trying to peek out. Those were easily managed with beard trimmer attachments built specifically for nasal cavity landscaping.

That was then, this is now. Things seem to be getting a little more unwieldy in my beak, and it seems they just don't make those beard trimmer attachments like they used to - that is unless ripping the hairs out with a dull reverse pencil sharpener is what it used to feel like and I just don't remember. I've tried carving them down with the regular flat clipper attachment by bending my nasal cartilage to a point to where I could get the corner of the clippers in there, but that only calms the savage beasts that are my nose hairs for a day or two. Plus when you've got a cat who likes to hop up on the sink and get all up in your binnit like Frank does, I could end up with one big nostril if he caught me off guard mid-trim.

The first thing that caught my eye on the packaging and made it stand out amongst the rest at Bed Bath & Beyond was the AS SEEN ON TV emblem (or AS ON TV as the seductive propaganda to the left says). If you see an ad for a nose trimmer on TV, yup, that's the same one I use. I'm a distinguished gentleman who will settle for nothing less than the finest trimmer available for my nose hair.

Check out all of the functionality built into this thing. Look at how happy and confident the man using it is. His nostrils are crisp and clean. He's in it to win it. He's going to go into that interview and land that job. And then when he goes and meets up with the guys for a round of Coors Lights at Applebees to celebrate, the chicks will be lining up to talk to him. Anyone who knows anything about well built machinery will tell you that the AS SEEN ON TV emblem basically means you can rest assured that this product consists of nothing but the highest quality parts and most superior craftsmanship that money can buy. It's almost as if the manufacturer is shooting itself in the foot by selling such a fine product. Once you buy one, you'll never need another because it will outlast you. And your children. And quite possibly their children. On my deathbed I will pass this nose hair trimmer down from my generation to the next. I haven't just bought a nose hair trimmer... it's an heirloom forged from the finest plastic and metallic-looking substance that is hopefully mercury/lead free that one could ever ask for. I'm almost tempted to make an appointment with a jeweler to take it in and have my name engraved (or melted as the case may be) into its shaft.

As you can also see in the graphic, it has a built in light which is incredibly handy when trimming that hard to see hair on the back of your neck. All these years I thought it was because my eyes were on the opposite side of my head, but it turns out that's not the case. Inadequate lighting is to blame. That and not owning this fantastic apparatus any sooner. The light is also useful when I wake up in the middle of the night and feel an extra long brow or beard follicle when I randomly brush my hand across my face. I can run to the bathroom mirror, take advantage of the simultaneous light/trimmer feature, and crawl back into bed without disturbing the wife or cats whatsoever.

It also comes with a pen-style cap which protects the "now 50% more power" blade when not in use. What's awesome about that is the pen cap has a clip on it so that I can keep it securely in my shirt pocket for those unexpected times when I need precise nose hair, brow, beard, ear, or neck hair trimming on the go. There's been so many times where I'm sitting on the train or in a meeting and suddenly remember that I forgot to trim my nose hairs or those dozen or so beard hairs that are longer than the rest. Those days are gone. Now it's just a matter of saying "Excuse me" during that meeting, asking the person next to me to hold up a CD or other reflective surface, removing the trimmer from my pocket, and giving the nose hairs a little touch up. I can feel the righteousness now of putting the cap back on, sticking it back in my shirt pocket, shaking the clippings off the pie chart printout in front of me on the table, and saying "All right gentlemen.. carry on."

The next time you see me and you're taken aback by how attractive and youthful I look, take a good long gander at my well groomed nostrils. Because that's where all of that new found youthful radiance is coming from. All with the help of my $9.99+tax Men's Precision Groomer. You know. It's the one you've probably seen on TV.

I AM (met) OZZY

2010-01-30T11:10:00.000-08:00

As far as my personal views on religion (and/or lack thereof) go, Ferris Bueller put it best when he said "A person should not believe in an -ism; he should believe in himself." Whenever I find myself in situations where people are stating their religious beliefs and it inevitably becomes my turn to chime in, I usually just say that my religion is "Musician". It usually garners a chuckle or two, but I'm not kidding.

My primary denomination of Musician would probably be ROCK, first and foremost. Thanks to my darling sister telling me about groups like KISS and Alice Cooper at the ripe age of 5 or so, rock music perked my interest and quickly became an obsession. Whenever Moms or Pops took me to K-Mart and I grew tired of ogling the Star Wars junk, I would always walk over to the record department and gaze at album covers and posters, wondering about things like how the guitar player on the AC/DC record cover was still alive if he was impaled by a guitar like that... and if Alice Cooper really was as blue as he looked on the From the Inside album cover. Although I didn't own any rock albums, I always felt connected to the cover art and would stare at it whenever I could. Eventually that obsession gave way to buying those records and listening to them... which led to buying rock and roll magazines, which led to picking up the guitar (shout outs to my parents as well on making that one happen), and ultimately 25 years later led us to New York.

My rock/metal magazine phase kicked into high gear around 1980-81. They became my comic books - I spent countless hours looking through them until they would ultimately fall apart and become wallpaper in my bedroom. Many of those mags featured articles on (and more importantly pictures of) Ozzy Osbourne. Ozzy pretty much scared the crap out of me more so than anyone else I'd laid eyes on in those magazines. Meat Loaf was the scariest rocker prior to that, basically because in most of the photos I could never tell if he was a dude or a chick (I was still uncertain when I first heard Paradise By The Dashboard Light but eventually figured it out). To me, he was just a big sweaty androgynous something-something who wore shirts that looked like wedding cakes.

I would see the pictures of Ozzy and read all of the interviews and stories and think Holy crap... that dude is truly crazy; if I were in the same room with him he might bite me in the face! Other than maybe Popeye, Ozzy was the first person I'd ever seen with tattoos. And they were scary ones. Tattoos are about as pedestrian as eyeglasses nowadays, but the flaming blue demon head on Ozzy's upper right chest was the first large tattoo I'd ever seen and it had me convinced that his threshold of insanity knew no bounds (I wasn't too far off the mark). I never actually heard Ozzy until Bark at the Moon came out in late 1983 and I saw the video for it. I'd just gotten over the phobia of our basement that the movie Poltergeist had sparked, and when I saw the Bark video it was back to square one - I pretty much promised myself that I would never go down there again. Our basement had a creepy crawlspace which contained a frighteningly realistic dwarf-sized stuffed clown doll that our grandpa allegedly dumpster dived and brought over to us kids as a "present". My siblings will testify that in addition to the dead basement bugs and scary clown doll, the crawlspace was infested with Krenner-eating monsters eagerly awaiting to kidnap us into their underworld. After experiencing the Bark at the Moon video (which looks completely ridiculous when I watch it now, thankfully) I was convinced that Clown and the Krenner-eaters were most likely accompanied by a rabid pack of Ozzywolves.

About a year or so later I was playing video games with my home boy Troy and he popped in the Bark tape. "So Tired" came on and I thought Huh... this stuff is actually pretty damn good. He can't be THAT much of a freak, can he? Around that same time my Aunt Lucy brought me some old Black Sabbath tapes to listen to (I have been blessed with some really cool aunts). I had read about Ozzy being in Sabbath in my old magazines and now FINALLY got to hear them. At first it was a little too slow and syrupy for me, but after a few more listens it clicked. The Wizard became an instant favorite tune of mine and is to this day. Although I never got into Ozzy's music as much as I did KISS, Zappa, and all of the other big ones, I always put him at the very top of the heap as far as heavy rock music royalty goes (yes, even above KISS). Ozzy is more than the dope on The Osbournes and/or the guy who bit a bat's head off... he basically helped invent heavy music as we know it. For example: Without Black Sabbath there would probably be no Melvins, and without Melvins my life would be very sad. He has released a wealth of material since, most of it rules, and I still consider him to be the king as far as heavy metal goes. Some may beg to differ with all of that, but that's just how the mental waffles stacked up over time in my little noggin. It is what it is.

That said, my "religion" left me with no choice but to go pay my dues for a few hours with Wife last Tuesday at the Borders bookstore in Columbus Circle where Ozzy was doing an I AM OZZY book signing. I had high hopes to A) get a book signed for Troy - not only for his birthday, but as a thank you for being my gateway to Ozzy records, and B) make some sort of connection with the man himself for a few split seconds. I always make a point of it to say something slightly left of field in situations like this to break the "Dude you fucking RULE" monotony (I once met Dave Grohl and asked him what he had for breakfast). Thankfully we were there early enough to get a decent spot in line. A river of people ran throughout the entire store, and an additional gaggle of Ozzyheads were staged outside of the store hoping to get in. As we got closer to the table I felt fireworks in my belly similar to those I felt when standing before KISS during a signing they did at Sam Goody in the Mall of America in '92. We were about 20 feet away from Ozzy now and had a great view of him. He appeared to be in a "Let's get these f*&king books signed already" mode - not really looking up all that much. His hair was hanging in his expressionless face as he signed book after book. The only movements he was exhibiting were a) his mouth chewing gum, and b) his right hand swirling over books with a Sharpie as the Borders gimps hurriedly passed them under his hands like an assembly line. From a distance it looked like he was drawing an infinite series of slow-motion loops. I wasn't sure what I was going to say and we were just seconds away...

Bryn went first and got her book signed, and when he looked up at her I instantly heard that infamous blurry Ozzy voice in my head: "Bullocks, an I haffta go home to Sharrin?" My book was slipped beneath his hands and life was suddenly in fast-forward. He started squiggling his name in my book and I peered into those trademark circular Ozzy sunglasses. It was like looking into the top of two cups of black coffee; I could just barely make out his eyes. The fireworks in my belly turned into an all-out fireworks factory fire. It was my turn. I had to remind myself: Quick... think... don't just stand there - say something, dumbass!

The first few pages of his book contain a strategically placed blank page which I found to be quite the humorous and priceless literary inclusion on his part. I decided to use that as my ice breaker for our 5 second rendezvous. Belly fireworks ablaze, I felt my mouth open and heard it say "The blank page is absolutely brilliant, I seriously can't stop reading it." He stopped his name doodling, looked up for a moment, and although I still couldn't really see his eyes all that well I could tell he was looking at me. This officially confirmed that I'd just jostled the little Ozzy hamster wheel in his head and that it was starting to rotate a little. Victory! He broke into a nice big pearly white-bearing goofy open mouth smile and bobbed his head up and down - and although he didn't say anything, I could see exactly what he was thinking: "Haaaaaaaaaaaa, yeah, ah know, that woss a real good one, roit?"

We were rushed towards the exit by the Borders gimps much like the mall elves rushed the kids away from Santa in A Christmas Story. I looked at the inside of the book. I thought about how he was already back to scribbling in other people's books and giving them their moments. He had probably already forgotten about what I'd just said to him, but I was happy to have said something that briefly changed his disposition and crack him up.

Yet another priceless moment to cross off of our "Cool shit in life that we didn't know we were gonna get to do" list. And thankfully this is as close as he came to biting our faces off or turning into a werewolf:

There is life outside of watching Dick's big ball drop on NYE

2010-01-01T09:57:00.000-08:00

December 31st, 1981

The kitchen/dining room area in our family's house on Ideal Avenue was empty and the lights were off which meant the coast was clear. Either a) Moms and Pops went out that particular evening and my sister's friend Tessy was babysitting us, or b) They had people over and were in the living room or basement entertaining (I can't recall). I unplugged the portable black & white TV on the kitchen counter top and for the next 3 hours held it hostage in my bedroom to watch Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve. As far as I was concerned, all that existed in the world that night were me, a 16oz glass bottle of Pepsi, and that TV. I put the TV on my bed so I could lay down like a king and watch the New Year ring in beneath the comfort of my Mom-made quilt. It was about to become 1982.

One thing I did a lot when I was a kid was watch TV shows with a perpetual and insatiable hope that KISS was going to be on. Unfortunately for me that was never the case... but for some reason I didn't ever let that stop me until I was 10 or 11 and wised up. It kind of happened with Scooby Doo and CHiPs when there were KISS-like guests worked into an episode, but never the real KISS. This was back when you had to actually watch shows of this type in order to know who was on them - there was no magical innernets back then that you could run to at any given minute for such info. There were the TV listings in the paper of course, but usually for shows like this it only said SPECIAL GUESTS. At any rate, due to this disadvantageous television intake ritual of mine I was prepared to be Rocked by this Rockin' New Years Eve special that KISS would inevitably not appear on.

Although there was no KISS, there were a lot of other great performers. I vividly remember Dick Clark saying "Please welcome 1981's queen of rock and roll, PAT! BENETARRrrrrr!" I briefly wondered who made her the Queen and pictured her with a crown on her head. She was wearing a crown, I guess - it was just in the form of a headband. Pat Benatar and her band commenced with a severely ass kicking performance of Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Much like Joan Jett, 8-year-old-Me was slightly afraid of her - to me she looked like a tough chick at the mall who you'd go out of your way to avoid making eye contact with lest you want to be beaten to a pulp or knifed. The Village People were on as well. Back then to me 5 dudes in costumes, two of which were scary to me in a good pseudo-Gene Simmons kind of way were better than no KISS at all (the biker and the Indian... and I guess the construction worker was pretty badass to me as well due to him having a lightning bolt on his hat and a screwdriver in his mouth). I want to say that Christopher Cross performed on this particular Rockin' New Years Eve, but that and other details have evaporated over time.

I had a great time watching the show and waiting for KISS to not appear. That New Years turned out to be the benchmark of New Years Eves to come; likely due to a) Having the TV in my room for one night, b) It's the first one that I somewhat clearly remember... and c) It was my first exposure to the anticipation of a gigantic ball dropping on top of a building located on a faraway planet called "Times Square". Having only downtown St. Paul on the way to Grandma Gertie's as a reference point of what cities were supposed to be, when the camera first panned over the crowd and the buildings and the lights it looked like the most massive thing in the world - a place that I surely would never visit in this lifetime. I'm not sure if it was that year that I made the connection that Times Square = New York, but it happened eventually. And I knew that KISS were from New York (yeah, here we go with the KISS thing again). Back then, to lil kids like me they were the biggest monsters in the world. In my mind they were 10 feet tall. Combine that, the hugeness of the Times Square footage, and maybe some misconstrued perspective of buildings courtesy of my Spider Man album cover, and from that point on I assumed New York City was hands down the most gigantic fucking place in the world. Not necessarily in a buildings per square mile sense, more so in overall height and massiveness of the buildings sense. Everything looked double in size to me. In New York Groove Ace Frehley sang To the left and to the right, buildings towering to the sky which is something I always took quite literally... right up until the first time we walked through Times Square in 2007 and I thought "Huh. It looks a lot more compact than it does in books and on TV." It really does. It is indeed huge - but not as huge as TV makes it look. Same goes for the Statue of Liberty. It's big... but not as big as I thought it would be.

Every single year since then I've made a point of it to watch that dang ball drop and would always think Man, if I ever lived there (this was long before I had any idea that I someday would) I would TOTALLY go to Times Square on New Years Eve. I didn't watch it one New Years in 94 or 95 - the one night I went out to some dive sports bar in the Cottage Grove mall and got blurry off of drinks with my friends and thought about the ball dropping when 11:59 came - but other than that I NEVER missed it.

Like, dude, we totally live here now

Fast forward to 2009. After all those years of watching the ball drop on TV we actually live where it happens now. As mentioned in other blawgs, I now walk through Times Square nearly every day on my lunch hour. I still compare the image of it embedded in my head at a young age vs. what it really is - a gigantic, dirty pinball machine crammed with buildings that are slightly more compact than I thought they would be. Some of them do indeed tower to the sky, though. And it is out of sight, in the dead of night.

One of the most frequently axed questions that people had for us (and understandably so) was "You going to watch the ball drop?" Nope, we didn't. It definitely crossed my mind, but after going to watch fireworks when we were here as tourists last year on Pier 11 I'm not sure that it would be all that and a bag of chips. One thing they don't show on televised major public events is everyone standing in one spot for 3 hours so they don't lose it, and then everyone trying to leave at once when the event is over. Everyone's been drinking, everyone has to pee, and most places after events like that do not offer up public restroom accommodations. A smart move on their part, but when we were waiting in line for restrooms at a nearby Burger King for 20 minutes and longing to just get back to the hotel to sit down, yeah... it's not the big party it's all cracked up to be on TV. I think the trick is to get so inebriated that you're oblivious that you're "trapped" within such circumstances. I prefer to have memories of going to such events, so that's not really an option. Plus at $6-8 a beer that would be a pretty expensive buzz to maintain for an entire night.

Ultimately we ended up attending a party at a photographer's studio in SOHO that we were invited to by our dear friend JB (thanks, JB!) Never really having access to such events back in MN, I don't think that either Bryn or I really had any idea what we were in store for. Alls I knew is if we spent our first New Years Eve in New York watching the ball drop on TV when it was happening a mere 2 miles away from us, that would feel just plain old wrong. As some things can be when you don't see 'em coming, it was amazing. It turns out that this photographer's clients include Billy Joel, Sting, Miles Davis, and countless others. His walls were plastered with decades worth of work (one of my favorites being an Innoncent Man-era Billy Joel promo shot that I recall seeing at Great American Music when that album came out). His main floor gallery had photos of Fast Times-era Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Jason Leigh. This picture of Miles Davis which I've seen countless times while standing at in the music biography section at Barnes and Noble. I spotted a few familiar photos of John Lennon. DAMN. There were only 2 dozen or so people there if that and a potluck spread right smack dab in his basement which is half studio/half kitchen - it was pretty surreal thinking about all of the famous people (talented ones that I admire, no less) that have set foot in that studio.

Good times were had, midnight arrived, we all did the HAPPY NEW YEAR deal, and shortly thereafter I had a brief out of body experience for about 10 seconds experiencing the following thoughts pert near simultaneously:

Holy shit

We're in New York

It's New Years Eve

We're at a party in New York on New Years Eve

Said party is hosted by an extremely talented and successful photographer

This is like something out of a movie

Actually, this is something that happens in movies

Thank goodness Jennifer Aniston isn't here making one of her dumb pouty heartbroken faces

Is this life imitating art or does art imitate life?

I love the music that he's playing and that it's kept at a conversation-friendly volume

Do I have one more beer left? I'm really kind of tired of beer but if I have one left I guess I'll drink it

Should there be movie cameras in the room or is this just what life is like for some people here?

Seriously.. we're really here and doing this?

After that stream of thoughts it occurred to me that for the first time in 29 years (save for that one year at the white trash Cottage Grove bar) I didn't watch the ball drop on TV, much less even think about it. Ironically it happened to be the first year we actually could have watched it in person. There wasn't a TV in the room, and who knows, maybe there wasn't a TV in the entire building. Maybe when you achieve that level of success as an artist you don't need a TV because you're too busy being creative and doing what you love. Maybe there is no need for escape real life for a while, at least via a television. In all of the years prior to this I'd always make a point of it to watch the ball drop even if it was on a TV in the background - my New Years Eve would always threaten to feel incomplete without it otherwise. But there we were in SOHO at a small party with Food, Folks and Fun (© McDonald's) welcoming 2010 in without the help of a 4 ton illuminated jewel encrusted ball slowly plummeting to the roof of One Times Square. And it was really, really fun. Not particularly loud, crowded, or rowdy - I will quote the Three Bears and say that it was just right.

Who knows what next New Years Eve will bring or where we'll be. The 2009-2010 transition was definitely right up there on the Most Awesome list next to that fateful New Years Eve of 1981 watching a much younger and fully functional Dick Clark, the Queen of Rock & Roll, and the gayest boy band in the world. I hear Dick isn't doing so well and was planning on appearing on the show on New Years Eve but wasn't sure if it was going to pan out for him which is kinda sad. All I know is that I learned that I can still have a really good time on New Years Eve without Dick Clark - and we certainly did on Thursday night.

I guess that means I can tell people that I was Dickless on New Years Eve and it was one of the best times I've had since we've moved here. That would sure get some interesting reactions at work on Monday morning.

Happy Freakin' New Year.

No car, no cry

2009-12-19T10:16:00.000-08:00

It has been 110 days since I have operated a motor vehicle.

I don't miss it at all. No insurance premiums, no gas tank to fill, no flat tires, no dead batteries, no oil changes (which I never really kept track of anyways - sorry Grandpa), no filling the windshield washer fluid, no window scraping in the winter, having to replace headlights and wiper blades... the list goes on and on. We have been in a standard size vehicle two times since we've lived in New York and it was surprising how claustrophobic I felt both times. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way where I immediately took notice that I hadn't been in a car or thought about being in one in quite some time. Sitting in a car used to feel completely normal, but now it feels like being in a glorified upholstered Rubbermaid storage container.

Old fashioned mp3s

I bought a new vehicle once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away: a Chevy S-10 pickup back in 1993. It featured the Tahoe trim package which basically meant the tires looked more bitchin' than the standard S-10 and it had a sweet-ass Delco AM/FM cassette player. It had a manual transmission which is something that I had never laid hands on prior to signing my life away to GMAC on that fateful autumn day. An automatic transmission would have added $700 or so onto the final price of the vehicle, not to mention there was only one black S-10 on the lot which is what I wanted. In spite of the manual transmission, that wasn't going to stop me from learning how to drive it. It was a bit unnerving watching my salesman Rick Cherry ("Like the fruit," he'd say when telling people his name) walk towards me with freshly typed up loan papers to autograph in exchange for a new vehicle that I didn't know how to make go. Just like most of the others in the handful of big risks I've taken that could have resulted in complete and utter catastrophe (make note of the word "most"), everything worked out fine. After a few weeks of letting up on the clutch too fast, slamming the brakes and killing it on hills and at stop signs, that is.

For several years that truck was my life. Not so much in the way that other dudes look at their cars as babe magnets or status symbols - to me my truck was a glorified private stereo system on wheels that I liked to keep shiny. As a teenager I'd always fantasize about having my own vehicle with a tape deck in it so I could aimlessly drive around and crank my tunes by myself. Kind of like the solitude that a bathroom offers but with driving and loud music instead of pooping and reading the latest issue of Rolling Stone. When I bought my truck I loaded up my 24 cassette tape suitcase with all of my favorites and DROVE. For once in my life I had a reliable vehicle, and being that I was 20 at the time and hadn't been outside of the St. Paul area all that much, I explored. I've always taken a fancy to wandering around in unfamiliar territory so did a lot of driving around outside of the St. Paul city limits to places like *gasp* Edina and sometimes even *ohmygawd* Minnetonka, simply because I could. Although these places were only 15-20 miles away they seemed like different worlds to me. This was back before the internet came around and fucked everything up for independent record stores and guitar shops, so more often than not I'd look up music shops in the Yellow Pages and go cruisin'. As convenient as the internet is sometimes I miss the old days of having to hunt and gather my music rather than just typing it into a magic box and downloading it within seconds.

I don't know if it's the holidays making me nostalgic or the fact that we don't live in MN anymore is truly sinking in, but lately I catch my brain randomly remembering Twin Cities roads and highways and which routes I'd take to get places. It's only been three months but it seems like we moved out here a couple of years ago. A few nights ago just before falling asleep I found myself trying to accurately recall as many details as I possibly could of the Lyndale exit ramp off of 94 and what everything looked like getting from there to our place on Grand Avenue. Although I pretty much remember all of it, there are some things that I'm sure have evaporated from my noggin. I'm sure there's many snippets within the Twin Cities scenery that I subconsciously absorbed, but not until next time I'm in MN and see them will think "Oh yeah, I remember that!" I also play video in my head of the route from 80th Street in Cottage Grove to my parent's house a lot. I'm still batting at 97-98% on that one because I grew up in the Grove for 18-19 years, but now on top of that my brain has additional new cud to chew: What will it look like next time I'm there? When will I be there next? Whose car will I be in? and a bunch of other junk that didn't really occur to me until we recently became so geographically displaced from our roots. We used to get out to Rancho Relaxo about once a month on average, so this three month stretch is a new record. I'm not sure how to feel about that, but it is what it is. Thankfully Google Maps has street view (plus there's Google Earth) so I can always visit places that way, but that's sort of like cheating.

Good ol' Cabbage Grove.

I just read Paul Shaffer and Craig Ferguson's books, both of which interestingly enough go into detail about moving far away from Mom and Dad and their families and ultimately ending up in New York City... that subject matter certainly hit me on a much different level now than if I would have read those books back in Minneapolis. Instead of reading it and thinking Man, that would really suck I read it and think Yeah, it really sucks (we miss you, family and friends!) Life in Minneapolis didn't involve two hours on the train every weekday for me to sit and read, so I probably never would have read those in the first place had we not lived here. Right place/right time, I guess. If we were still in MN I would have given them a half assed read at best and never finished 'em. Not because they weren't good - they were incredibly excellent books. My attention span just doesn't allow me to finish books unless I'm in a situation where I'm forced to, such as sitting on the train trying not to stare at the asses and crotches in my face of people who got on at Times Square and have to stand and hold the bar above my seat (I believe they're lovingly referred to as strap hangers even though there aren't straps in the subways anymore). Times Square is the stop on my way home from work where everyone and their mama boards the train; I'm incredibly grateful that I get on three stops before it when seats are still available.

I've been wondering when I'll be behind the wheel of a motor vehicle next - we just scored tickets to a Jeff Beck gig in June which will require 6 hours of driving upstate, so it looks like that might be it at this point. Maybe instead of renting a car I'll bust out Grand Theft Auto and brush up on my carjacking proficiency. That and maybe one of the Need For Speed games to familiarize myself with getting past the road spikes they'll put up as we approach the Newark Turnpike at 110mph.

It's Beginning to Look a Not Like Chrissss-mas!

2009-12-14T19:16:00.000-08:00

Wow... Here we are three and a half months into this whole NYC thing already. It's interesting thinking back to August not knowing how in the world this was all gonna pan out. I remember thinking "What happens if we don't have jobs and savings runs dry?" and envisioning having to sell my amp and a guitar to pay for a moving truck back to Minneapolis, but lo and behold our savings account is still alive and we both have jobs. It feels strangely like home here rather than some big scary intimidating city you always see in the movies that we packed up and moved to.

Every day during my lunch break I religiously walk to south Central Park, down to Times Square, and then take the train back to work. We honeymooned in that general area so it's always quite nostalgic walking past all of the spots and remembering seeing them for the first time. When you see a building or even a doorway that you remember from a movie or TV show for the first time it's almost as cool as seeing a celebrity. Maybe it's better than seeing a celebrity now that I think about it... buildings and historic sites can't talk. Unless you're on some sort of illegal mind altering toxin, I guess. Then they probably talk a lot.

Will Lee, man on bass

On that walk I make a point of it to pass under the Late Show marquee outside of the Ed Sullivan Theater and remember a) crapping my pants in delight when we turned the corner onto Broadway from our hotel and seeing it IN REAL LIFE and b) waiting outside for tickets to Dave's show a few days later wondering what it would be like to live here. A few days ago I saw Late Show bassist extraordinaire Will Lee outside the building for the second or third time - he's pretty hard to miss. I always get a little musician-giddy when I see him. Not just because of his undeniably stellar bass skills and his place in Letterman history, but also because he laid down some pretty kickass bass lines on Ace Frehley's 1978 solo album (which also features equally kickass drumming by Late Show drummer Anton Fig who I hope to see roaming the streets some day). That record has been a staple of my music intake ever since Santa's elves made it for me and left it under the tree on Dec. 24th of 1979 or 80 (thanks, Santa!) My sister and brother both remember those songs simply because I played the shit out of it and still do to this day - I'm sure it has been embedded into Bryn's brain as well at this point.

I also unwrapped the Paul Stanley and Peter Criss solo albums that morning, completing my collection of KISS record awesomeness that my Aunt Cookie started the previous July by giving me the Gene Simmons record for my birthday. Ace's was and always will be by far my favorite. I wonder what Will looked like back then. I'm guessing he sported a sweet beret and a moustache. Pretty much every good rock bassist back then seemed to look like they were in the Doobie Brothers.
Speaking of Santa giving me KISS records, Christmas is right around the corner, yet life feels strangely UnChristmas. This is not a bad or a good thing, it just is what it is mainly due to the following two circumstances:

Friends and family are 1,200 miles away. If I were The Dude from The Big Lebowski this would certainly register at the top of my "Major bummer, man" list.
New York City's weather is currently 49 degrees. Minneapolis' is that minus 50. I don't miss that by any means, but it's certainly different living without it at this time of the year.

#1 is a given to throw anyone's holiday spirit for a humdinger of a loop. I love being around my families, all two of them, and wondering what spending the holidays without seeing them all sucks. It's one of the first things that weighed quite heavily on my mind when planning to move out here. Christmas + No family = Major bummer, man. The only thing I can really compare it to is the feeling I had when I was 14 and couldn't go see Ace Frehley's 21+ show at Ryan's... there was something awesome going on that I really wanted to be part of but couldn't go. We made it through our first Thanksgiving on our own last month just fine though, so there is hope. Missing everyone aside, it was quite the lovely holiday to be quite honest. It still felt like Thanksgiving rather than a day of feeling like we were the only two people left on the planet missing our family and friends. Hopefully Christmas will be the same... we'll miss everyone like crazy but as Tony Soprano would say, "What da fugg yagonnado?"

#2 The weather. This one kind of took me by surprise. In my happy little pretend la la land world I choose to walk around in most of the day, in order for Christmas to occur there needs to be snow on the ground accompanied by nose leak-inducing temperatures. Rumor has it that does occur around here on occasion, but at the time of writing this it's 49 degrees and all I see when I look at the ground are the beautiful filthy gum-spotted sidewalks.

There is a #2.5 to this that I just realized: There aren't any tacky yard ornaments or lights to see on people's homes... I'm assuming that is because there are no yards in most areas of the city. When one does not have a yard, one cannot decorate one's yard. Makes sense, I suppose. There are front stoops of course, although I have yet to see any of them completely pimped out for Christmas (there were some really well done Halloween stoops so I know they've got it in 'em). There are three Christmas tree vendors on our street alone, and every time we walk past them I get in a good huff of Christmas tree smell which will forever give me the warm fuzzies and flashbacks of things such as watching John Denver hanging out with the Muppets, the smell of wrapping paper, and eagerly awaiting the two week break from school. Those are things that encompass true meaning of Christmas, after all. Man... I miss the two week break from school. I work at a school of sorts now and have a copious amount of envy when I see the unspoken anticipation in the faces of students of not having to come here for two weeks. Lucky sonsabitches.

Christmas will come and go, as will New Years, and then it's onto that long stretch to spring. We certainly aren't going to get the same amount of frozen crystalline precipitation that I'm used to in Minnesota which is primarily a good thing. Once winter is over perhaps we will catch a glimpse of the East Coast's own special extreme weather treat: Tropical cyclone season. I'm not sure that we're close enough to get any of that action firsthand, but a guy can always hope. I've always wanted to hold onto a tree for dear life while my body is parallel to the ground as a result of 150mph winds. Perhaps I will shave all of my hair off so that I'm more aerodynamic.

Dear Santa:

This Christmas in preparation for East Coast tropical cyclone season I would like an adjustable hair trimmer, a bottle of Nair, and a nerd strap for my eyeglasses to keep them on my head while I'm holding onto a tree for dear life and being blown sideways by torrential winds.

Sincerely,

Micycle.

Gainfully employed and Back In The (better) NY Groove

2009-11-01T09:39:00.000-08:00

To quote one of my editorial heroes Jim Anchower, "It's been a while since I rapped at ya." It seems to be getting increasingly more difficult to find the patience to sit and type out one of these things nowadays having been conditioned to the world of things like Facebook where it's a little more instantaneous and concise when you type something you want to share with the world. I have this huge backlog of stuff in my mind I could write on and on about but I prolly won't get around to simply because I want to put my time into focusing on NOW vs. writing about something that happened a month ago. It's been a wonderfully crazy two months in NY of doing nothing and everything simultaneously if that makes sense. We've covered a lot of ground but have barely scratched the surface of what this city has to offer.

Moving to NYC without jobs and living off savings which was purposely saved with this exact goal in mind is an interesting position to be in. I've told a few people it's similar to going to Six Flags and just sitting in the parking lot all day eating homemade sandwiches and reading a book. A world of blissful fun is at your fingertips... but then again at the same time it's not. It felt incredibly safe, yet at the same time there was always an underlying sense of urgency to find a gall damned job. We knew we'd be fine for quite a while, but every time money was spent on anything from groceries to a slice of pizza to a bag of crack (just kidding on that last one, I think) there was a lingering cartoon bubble over my head of a gunnysack labeled SAVINGS getting kicked by a big hairy guy named Vinnie resulting in a few dozen origami butterflies made of money flying out of it every time. And then that would trigger another cartoon bubble; one containing the scene towards the end of Back to the Future where Marty McFly is holding the picture of his slowly disappearing family - but with us substituted for Marty and a picture of the NYC skyline disappearing instead.

It was getting rather discouraging the past few weeks after sending out well over 150 cover letters and resumes over the span of the past month and a half and hearing NOTHING from any prospective employers. It didn't matter how much I tried to correspond and follow up. Out of the 150+ aforementioned cover letters and resumes sent out (each one tweaked to accommodate the job posting I was responding to, mind you) I only heard back from three people: 1. The hiring manager of the place I started at last week, and 2: Two "thanks but no thanks/we'll keep you in our database" emails from other companies. But persistence paid off - all it took was that one hiring manager to make me an offer I couldn't refuse (no, it's not a job with the mafia).

SO. As of now we've both finally secured ourselves jobs that we love, and they tie in with our personal interests to boot. Uncertainty has since been replaced with reassurance that we're going to be able to "keep" New York after all. Thank goodness for that, because I really don't think we would be partial to a 1200 mile drive back to MN in a moving truck crammed full of our stuff with no jobs, nowhere to live, and our tails between our legs. From what we've been told by the locals it's a pretty impressive feat to have only been here 8 weeks and already have jobs, so I'm just going to go ahead and take that as a glass-half-full sign of things to come.

Commuting to work in NYC is a rather peculiar experience having come from MN where for the past four years I could conveniently bike to my last place of employment in 15 minutes. Now in order to get to work I take the morning train. I take the B from 7th Ave in Park Slope to Columbus Circle in Manhattan and quickly learned that it just so happens that basically everyone and their mama get on the train prior to my stop. People are literally packed in like sardines... it's similar to being in the front row of a really, really crowded standing room only concert sans the loud music and alcohol. Now that I think about it I suppose depending on which train you take and what time of day it is it's highly probable that there will be loud music and alcohol on the train, but that's another story...

There are only so many poles on the subway to hold on to and stabilize yourself when the train stops/starts/turns, so when it gets packed and you can't find something to hold onto, well... tough shit! Such was the case on Friday - I was part of an aimless subway inertia mosh pit with a few other riders who only had their feet and surrounding people to fall back on. We danced and we danced hard. I'm starting to get the hang of riding without bracing myself on a post though, it's actually a pretty good workout on the calves. It's all good; as long as I have my trusty iPod to keep my brain happy I'm set. It's New York City, after all. For someone to voluntarily move here and then complain about something like that is, and I quote Paul Stanley in an interview from the 80s when he was washed up the first time, "... like winning the lottery and complaining about the taxes. If you're lucky enough to get what you wanted, then shut the fuck up." Thankfully my rides home are much more mellow than that and there's always multiple open seats. I'm much happier it's that way after work than the other way around...

And now It's FINALLY time to focus on the music and being creative, which is what pretty much led us here in the first place. I've been corresponding with numerous musicians via online musicians wanted ads and it's mind boggling how flighty people can be here (not just musicians, either - people in general). One minute they're really interested and the next minute they fall off the face of the earth never to be heard from again. It will happen, though, there's no doubt in my mind about that.

In the mean time, it's time to make it to that first paycheck which will cement in the notion that this all really is for real. And maybe start exploring and getting out to some new places that we've been eyeballing since we've been here. There's this restaurant in Atlantic Center we've been meaning to check out called McDonald's... I've heard really good things about it, so maybe it's time to go see what it's all about. With a name like that I'm guessing it must be some sort of authentic Irish or Scottish cuisine.

Is that a pole in the subway or is it just happy to see me?

2009-10-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

I love the subways here. LOVE. THEM. I love how from the outside they kind of resemble 1950s aluminum airstream camper trailers. I love the way the insides look. The gust of warm subway wind you get blasted with when one whizzes by in the underground terminals (wow, that was a very farty sounding sentence). I relish the smell of subway air; Bryn can attest that I actually huff it when we walk through a strong cloud of it. The sound and feeling of one rumbling the sidewalk from below as you're walking outside. I enjoy looking for rats on the tracks and observing the trash while waiting for trains. The subways are seriously one of my favorite things about NYC - from the newer ones which are bright and clean to the older ones with off-yellow interiors which resemble a pair of stained undies from the 1970s at Goodwill... I love it all.

One night last week while getting nestled in the oh-so-comfortable seats of the Manhattan-bound F train to meet up with some peeps, I looked at the suspension/people-holder-upper post in front of us and mentioned how if one was a talented female stripper, one might be able to make some extra money on the ride home from work. More people would use the subways, generating more revenue for the MTA maybe even lowering the current $2.25 fare. The subway cars might not be wide enough to accommodate the "hold onto the pole sideways and swirl down" stripper move, but who knows... if horny dudes are ~~dumb enough~~ willing to go give all of their hard (pun intended) earned money to hot babes that aren't going home with them in the first place, maybe they wouldn't mind getting whacked in the head by a whirling pair of trashy clear stiletto heels, either. If you ask me, the latter of the two actually makes more sense.

Now that I think about it however, the stripper idea might be too much of a security risk, and worse yet a bacterial risk. I already get the heebie jeebies holding onto those subway posts and warsh my hands as soon as I can after making contact with 'em. There's no need to add more body juice of strangers into the mix at this point.

Maybe they could put merry-go-round horses on the posts which riders could hop on and read the paper while in transit. They could even equip each post with headphone jacks so that if you wanted, you could plug your earbuds or headphones in and listen to carrousel music while going up and down on the horsie. Think of how much fun that would be!

I need to digress for a moment: I just went to good ol' Google to verify that I was using the correct spelling for "carrousel" due to Firefox's spell check wanting to correct it. I had it right (carrousel/carousel = same thing) , but made a rather disturbing discovery: when executing a Google query for "carrousel music", this site is one of the first on the list: music.carouselstores.com. I listen to some pretty disturbing music, but this goes far beyond even my palate. If you willingly search out and buy a CD full of carrousel music I'm sorry, but that's kind of creepy. The only use I think there would be for something like that is to play the CD on repeat super loud on the surround sound when leaving the apartment for the day just to make neighbors wonder a little.

Back to the topic at hand. The subway posts. The only other idea that immediately came to mind is putting something on the floor similar to a Sit-N-Spin where one would hold onto the post, stand (or sit if you're tired) on the platform, and spin around until you're silly in the head and feel like you're going to blow chunks. That might be the most affordable add-on out of all of these options so far and make those after-bar rides home rather entertaining. Get the throwing up done on the train so when you get home you can just pass out on the floor. What a great time saver that might prove to be.

The thought of affixing a tetherball onto the posts just crossed my mind, but I'm not sure I want to get conked in the melon by a tetherball soaring around the post at dangerous speeds. The only thing we did with tetherball in elementary school was whack the ball really hard in the same direction until it was completely wound around the post... I would imagine there would be more of that than actual games of tetherball in the subways. Which I guess isn't a bad thing if you're on the train and have some frustrations you need to get out.

They could also consider going the Willy Wonka route. The posts could be replaced with delicious candy cane sticks which riders could lick while in transit. Not only would it be a delicious snack for all to enjoy, but the cars would smell minty fresh at all times. I guess I wouldn't want to hold onto something like that though. It would be all sticky and grody and full of things like jacket residue, hair, and other people's spit.

I dunno. I'll think of something to do to enhance those darned posts. They do serve a purpose and a great one at that by holding both the ceiling of the cars up as well as people during jerky train departures... but they're so plain. I think something like a carrousel horse would really make it pop and bring the overall experience of wasting time sitting in the innards of a subway to a whole new level.

Micycle's 2009 Music Buffet by micycle

2009-10-02T16:55:00.000-07:00

Micycle's 2009 Music Buffet by micycle

Earlier this year I cranked out three new Iced Ink tunes. Only one of them ("Ikki Lake") got around to being rehearsed enough to be played live by the "real" band, and unfortunately the summer got a little too crazy and zero of th...em were recorded by the actual band.

Who knows when/if these will be played by live musicians anytime soon.. that said, I think these demos deserve to be heard (FYI - these were recorded all by my lonesome at home in my undies with a handful of guitars, my computer and a drum sequencer). Without further ado, here they are! Sorry, no lyrics are available at present time. (ps - Joe and Barry: Miss you guys!)

Song-ographies:

"Don Julio" We went to Cabo in February 2009. I immediately became enamored with Don Julio Anejo tequila and this is my little love song I wrote for it.

"Ikki Lake" Iced Ink played a gig in spring of 2009 and shared a bill with a self-proclaimed "Leading female guitarist in America". Not only did I accidentally catch It bending over to pick up Its amp, which I still need to go to therapy for - but It also expected to keep the $20 that all three of the bands made that night. A week or so later, the song "Ikki Lake" was born as my angst-ridden musical diary of the whole experience. If you think you're a rock star and you really, really aren't, I'm sorry - but you're going to have to go fuck yourself.

"People Syrup" My my my.. Now here's a happy, light little piece of subject matter! This one is the result of a sick lil' musical experiment of forcing myself to not tell anyone about something rather horrifying that I saw until AFTER I'd gotten it out in music: A few months ago I was biking home and at a red light in DT Mpls... looked over to the corner on my right and there was a guy laying on the ground in a frozen mannequin-like position with a steady flow of translucent red drips coming from his head (thankfully he was facing the other way). A stranger was standing over him on his cell looking around frantically for police.

It freaked the shit out of me thinking I'd just seen someone who was likely dying or already dead.. and who knows why or how it happened. That's something I've never really experienced before and it's kind of hung with me, so what better way to let the demons out than through a really fucked up new Iced Ink tune?! People Syrup = the translucent red stuff leaking out of his head. There was a little dried sidewalk stain when I biked past the scene next morning (I HAD to look for it). Ish.

Major chain store grocery shopping excursion in Brooklyn

2009-09-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what it's like to buy groceries in one of the busier hubs in one of the busiest cities in the world? Last Friday I got my chance and let me tell you... I haven't had that much fun since reading The Great Gatsby in 11th grade! Apparently I wasn't too interested in that book - I didn't read a single page of it. That and a few other assignments I neglected ultimately led me to having to retake 11th grade Engrish in summer school with a teacher who would make little movements with her mouth while you'd talk to her.. sort of like she was secretly trying to lip sync to your talking. Good times.

Back to the shopping trip: I needed some canned goods and produce the other day with which to make chili, salsa, and bean soup (we're very regular around here if you know what I'm sayin'). I could have very easily strolled two blocks down to Key Foods, but they're better for smaller/last minute trips being that everything costs a bit more and the selection isn't as vast.

There's this little place called Pathmark down at Atlantic Center which I figured I'd walk down to, explore, and buy all of the items needed to make the aforementioned entrees. From the outside to a Pathmark virgin such as myself I first thought it was a massive dollar store, but once I walked in for the first time when we first got to NY I realized that I'd entered another dimension... The Pathmark Zone. (insert Twilight Zone theme here) This particular location is a quick 15 minute walk from us and conveniently next to the Target we frequent. I figured I might as well jump in and see what it's all about. Here's a street view of the area courtesy of Google maps:

View Larger Map

Pathmark is to the left. If you click your mouse and drag around to the right and look up, there's Target. We all on the same page now? Good.

That photo doesn't accurately represent the day to day hustle and bustle at this intersection - it's smack dab in the middle of 6 subway lines and 2 bus routes which makes it a bit of a clusterfuck to walk through at times, but everyone is generally nice in a "We're all in this together" kind of way which is cool. You have to go there in the mindset that yeah, it's going to be busy and suck.. that's just part of the "charm" of living in the big city.

It was raining out and I had nothing to lose but calories, money, and time. I put on my boots and made the 15 minute walk to Pathmark with Bryn's gramma's trusty grocery cart in hand. It was pretty weird walking into a new grocery store in a new state for the first time. Everything is the same but different. The produce department is like the size of a small football field - and although 90% of it is in horseshit condition and inedible, I realized that if I did some digging that I pretty much found everything I needed - except for jalapeno and Anaheim peppers which seem to be a rarity in this area.

And then there's the aisles: hardly anything on the shelves is in the right place. The general area is right but as far as things like cans matching up with shelf labels? Fegeddabaddit. The neighboring Target store is the exact same way every time we go; if you were to walk in there on any given day and pick 10 random items off of the shelves, I'll bet you 8 of them would differ from the shelf label area they were stocked over. It's really quite impressive! I imagine the job interview process for stock people at these places is something like this:

Pathmark: "Can you take things out of boxes and put them on shelves?"
Interviewee: "Yep."
Pathmark: "True or false: Canned tomatoes go in the canned vegetables aisle."
Interviewee: "Umm... purple?"
Pathmark: "When can you start?"

After about an hour of aimlessly wandering around and exploring all of the glory Pathmark had to offer, I had all of my items in the basket and was ready to pay. Now here's where it gets painful: Every time we've walked by this store and I've peeked in I'd see about 40 checkout aisles all so crammed full that the lines actually curl around into the shopping aisles. I used to think it was just coincidentally busy whenever I'd look in but I'm pretty sure now that it's always that way. There are no short lines or better lines than other ones - they all suck. You just have to find one and start standing. Which I did.

Thank goodness for my iPod, that's alls I have to say. While standing in line I listened to 27 minutes of a Podcast, called Bryn, and read some of People Magazine's special 1970s flashback issue. They lost major points with me for not mentioning KISS in the music section. They mentioned Elton John and The Eagles as if they were the Beatles of the 1970s but nothing about KISS. Don't get me wrong, I love Elton and The Eagles, but no KISS? What's wrong with the people at People?

I was almost at the finish line. The man ahead of me had one of those 24 roll packs of toilet paper. You know how at Target they'll put those plastic tape handles on for you sometimes? Not at Pathmark. I kid you not - I watched the cashier casually tie five plastic bags together to form a belt which she wrapped around the cumbersome package of asswipe while myself and a dozen other people behind me waited. It was like watching MacGyver in ultra-slow motion. That's treading a rather thin line between exceptional customer service and Beeitch.. what the feck you doin'? He bought it, let him figure out how to carry it home.

My turn finally came and I was fearing what the total was going to be for my pile of stuff. I kept thinking Aw man... this would cost me around $30 in MN and I'll bet it will be $50 here. Surprisingly it all came to $34. What you don't pay in money you certainly pay for with time, but thankfully I've got time right now (thank you, savings account). I loaded up the grocery getter cart and pushed that sucker home in the rain, proud that I'd survived my first big trip to Pathmark. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the grocery shopping life at a major chain store in Brooklyn.

It's really not that bad as long as you're in the right mindset and have tunes to listen to. There's another Pathmark the same distance from us as the Atlantic Center one which we briefly ventured into last week. It doesn't seem nearly as crowded there, so I think we'll hit that one next time and up until we become members of the Park Slope food co-op a few blocks from our place. Everything at the co-op is a bit cheaper, far superior in quality from anything else I've seen around here, and although it gets crowded in there too it's not nearly as draining as Pathmark. There's a one month waiting list to get into the co-op and we have 28 days to go before we're in. That's going to be awesome. I'm sure I'll miss Pathmark when that time comes.

Out East and Up, Unloaded and Walkin' (Part II of 2)

2009-09-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we hit the one week mark since our now legendary cross country move occurred. We attended a quaint, loverly BBQ at our friends-of-a-friend-and-now-our-friends-too's place. It's nice to know that yards do exist within the city, and nice ones at that. In order to get into their backyard you have to walk down through the basement then up and out through a stairway where if you don't remember to duck it's highly probable that you'll conk your melon on the top of the doorway. That's what I love about New Yolk; everything is compact in its own unique way... even access to the backyard. I'm sure there are traditional backyard portals here where one can remain outside on ground level and walk from the front of the property around the perimeter of the house to the back, but what fun is that? Kudos to J&I for having a cool yard which can only be accessed via the elusive cellar door. Defenestration via their kitchen window would likely get you there as well unless a strong wind was present and knocked you into their driveway on the way down.

(Well gawd damn, look at that. My Aunt Cookie taught me the word "defenestration" some 25 years ago and I just used it practically for the very first time in this here journal entry. Until now I've just casually brought it up as cool word trivia in the company of strangers in lieu of talking about the weather, but now that word's time in the spotlight has come. Thanks, Cookie!)

I digress. Back to one week ago: We arrived at our new home in the moving truck, parked it, and barreled across the street to the Realtor office to obtain our keys. As we unlocked and entered the main entry door to the building we live in, we realized that the stairway we remembered as being only 8-10 steps to our apartment door was actually more like 20 steps. Thank GAWD we'd hired movers just days prior. We were on borrowed time with the rental truck as well as mental/physical energy. Hauling 800 cubic feet worth of boxes up those "bonus stairs" we somehow didn't remember after being on the road for so long would not have been pretty at this juncture. Let me just say that those movers were by far the best $130 I’d spent since that hooker in front of the Popeye’s Chicken on Fulton Street (sorry, I’m saving that story for the grand kids).

The movers were due to show up in an hour so we decided to get some of the more fragile items up and out prior to their arrival – cats, guitars, picture frames, and our massive glass sofa... okay, I made that last one up but you’ve got to admit that would be pretty cool, especially if it had some sort of built in neon green lava lamp effect.

At any rate we climbed the Stairway to Heaven and unlocked our apartment door for the very first time. It turned out that just like the stairway, the version of the apartment in our memories differed a bit from the real thing, mainly due to the fact that it was a tad bit less spacious than we remembered. The bathroom, for example: it does not allow one to comfortably sit on the john and read unless you sit at an 8 o’clock position on the seat. Evidently this is a rather common NY apartment idiosyncrasy. I’ve managed to sit on it in the traditional 6 o’clock position a few times, but only after some ample stretching and careful planning in regard to which leg goes where and when whilst mounting ass upon seat. We are quickly learning that walls aren’t just for hanging pictures on anymore… in a small apartment they seem to double as flat closets; same goes for the ceiling. I'm finding myself looking at things like a blender and thinking Hm.. with a couple of S-shaped hooks I’ll bet I could hang that sucker from the ceiling… and probably fit a frying pan, my Etch-A-Sketch and that rolling pin in there somewhere as well. Alas, it’s our apartment, and although it’s a little bit smaller than we remembered it’s awesome and we absolutely love it as well as the city which surrounds it.

After the movers came and lugged our stuff up for us the place was wall to wall cardboard boxes with a narrow path to get from the front door to the bathroom and through to the bedroom. It was time to celebrate our official move-innance with a beverage. I cracked open a beer, Bryn made a cocktail, and we sat on the half of the couch that wasn't blocked by boxes to bask in the glory of what we'd just accomplished over the past three weeks. There we were, home at last.

Our lips didn't even make contact with the delicious celebratory beverages. 20 minutes later we both woke up still sitting upright with our drinks somehow still in our hands and filled to the rim, the glasses just as sweaty as we were when we sat down with them. Unfortunately the box spring and mattress were tilted up against the wall because the floorspace needed to lay them down was occupied by a graveyard of boxes. I remember thinking Awww HELLL maaaaaaaaan, I juss wanna duct tape maahself sideways onto that muh-fuggin bed and sleep for two days! Not an option.

We somehow stayed up a few more hours to dig out the basics we needed to get through the night and went out for our first meal at a fine Italian dining establishment two blocks down from our door. The meal consisted of spaghetti and meatballs accompanied by a glass of wine with which to wash said bawls and pasta down. I was quite fried by that time, but I recall it being rather delicious. Although I really don't remember much aside from the "OHMYGAWD WE LIVE HERE NOW!!" euphoria, I have a barely noticeable dime sized oil stain on my green pants from a piece of meatball that fell on my lap. I don't see that stain as a bad thing, it's more like a clothing tattoo. Every time I see that stain I'll remember what it took to get to that stain.

Now it's just a little over one week later and it's finally starting to look like an apartment when we walk in rather than a gigantic cardboard origami orgy gone wrong. We still have a ways to go with unpacking but honestly I don't give a rat's arse anymore. We're Home and it fucking ROCKS here.

East Bound and Down, Loaded up and Truckin' (Part I)

2009-09-03T07:18:00.000-07:00

Pardon my language, but Holy excrement. What a month August was.

From nyc move

On Friday night Iced Ink played our farewell show at Big V’s and I can’t thank everyone enough for coming out and representin’. If you ever have to move across the country and want to play a bye-bye show with your band, be sure it’s not the night before you leave town. Bryn and I were so fried by the time we got to V’s that it's not even funny. But it was a total blast to see all of our friends and family show up and an honor to take the stage one last time with two of the most goodest and bestest musicians I’ve ever had the fortune to play with – Berkman and Barry. There is now a giant void in the cockles of my heart without you guys. When I did things like try to cram the “Sweet Child O Mine” riff over “Steve Buscemi Overture”, you guys always hung in there and kept the train rolling as I laughed at myself. No one else that reads this will get the sheer ridiculousness of that, but I don’t care. That’s just how good you guys are and it sucks that I couldn’t take you both with me. There’s some pretty big shoes to fill out here in NY in that regard.

From nyc move

The gig ended, we left around 2:30am and took a wee 6 hour nap at our homeboy Eric’s place. Woke up, left Minneapolis at around 10:30am on Saturday morning, and drove a nice brisk 26 hours straight through to Brooklyn with no naps whatsoever, something that I'm sure I'll one day refer to as "the dumbest fucking thing ever I did when I was younger... I coulda swerved off da road and killed us all!" The only stops made were one in Bryn’s hometown Wautoma to drop some stuff off in storage and shower at her parents, and then approx. 5 stops to fill the 16’ moving truck with gas and go potty. We were a little concerned with how the cats were going to behave in the cab of the truck for a day and some change, but it turns out that they’re natural travelers. They did the whole drive with minimal whining or fuss. Damn!

From nyc move

Things got rather interesting in Pennsylvania. Driving euphoria started sinking in due to the sheer exhaustion – plus there was a lot of fog in some of the lower altitude regions... at times I was wondering if we’d crashed and were driving through the pearly gates. Whenever it got to be too much I’d stop for a Red Bull. I don’t know what they put in that stuff… I know there’s an old rumor that it’s bull piss or semen something of that nature. Even if that’s the case, I tip my hat to all of you bulls out there. Next time I have to make any sort of drive like that, which hopefully won’t be for a very, very long time, I will have a stockpile of Red Bull in tow. Pennsylvania is a beautiful drive, however. Mountainous and picturesque, and quite spectacular when you’re fortunate enough to catch the sunrise on the road.

At about 11am on Sunday, along came the Garden State. The first thing I thought of when crossing that border was Huh.. so this is where Springsteen and Bon Jovi come from? There sure are a lot of trees. Traffic got progressively more congested and the highways more littered, when finally we found ourselves at the clusterfuck that is the Holland Tunnel which shoots you straight under the Hudson River and into Manhattan. We sat in line for a good 20 minutes as I pissed my pants hoping that no one would crash into the moving truck in such close quarters. We arrived at the toll booth with cash in hand, excited to cross the border and get to our new place. And the lady in the booth kindly said this:

From nyc move

“You gonna have to take the Lincoln Tunnel. Commercial vehicle.” She let us through, a cop directed us to a quick left turn which routed us back towards the Lincoln Tunnel… and another 20 minute wait. At this time I was starting to notice the gas gauge needle slowly creeping towards E. How awesome would that be to run out of gas in this fine little mess? We turned around, sat in line, zipped through the incredibly narrow Lincoln Tunnel, and POOF. There we were in Manhattan. I felt like Clark Grizwald making it to Wally World. If you ever want to experience the most intense rush ever, don’t sleep for over a day and try aimlessly driving a 16’ moving truck full of your most prized belongings through Manhattan. THAT was a trip. Between the GPS, Bryn peeping a map, and my hella madd defensive driving skiznills, we somehow made it through the city in one piece and crossed the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn. One straight shot down Flatbush and I heard the GPS robot lady voice say the most beautiful words ever: “Take a right on 7th, and after one quarter mile you have reached your destination.” Had I not been so focused on driving and not crashing the truck I would have made out with the GPS right then and there.

The next impediment to overcome was to somehow find a parking spot for the moving truck that wasn't 3 blocks away from our front door. Let me tell you... the fun never ends when moving to a big city. Thankfully there was already a moving truck hogging up space practically right smack dab in the front of our place, so Bryn hopped out and asked the driver if we could cram our truck in behind his to unpack while I anxiously circled the block. He was cool with that, I parked the truck, and there we were in Brooklyn ready to start a new chapter in life. We walked across the street to the Realtor to get the keys to our new apartment.

Now all we had to do was unpack the moving truck... and then find a place to put it until the next morning when we could return it.

Coming soon: The exciting conclusion, tentatively titled Holy Shit, our apartment is crammed full of boxes wall-to-wall... we do have a floor, right?

From nyc move

Bye bye, Pinto.

2009-08-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

After a good 4 year run with the Pinto (thanks to Cookie handing me the keys in exchange for a batch of my sugar cookies), I did what I thought I would never do yesterday: sold it.

No kidding! I thought I would never part with the car, but then again I never thought we'd be moving across the country so soon to a city where having a car is a humongous and expensive pain in the ass, so there you have it.

The Pinto was the most awesome car I've ever owned. Nearly every time I drove it I would see people laughing at it (which if you're me is a good thing) and more often than not I'd get a honk and a thumbs up. Sadly it quickly began deteriorating the more it was used. The car was a '74 and Gramps used it primarily as his leisure cruiser so it was in pretty good shape when I got it. Thems old cars are fragile though, and 4 years was about all it could take before it started falling apart. It was starting to completely rust out on the bottom, needed new tie rods, brakes, seats, carpet, paint job... basically it needed a new 1974 Pinto.

The final curtain call was this last May when it was sideswiped by some dumbass hauling a massive trailer on a side street. He was changing lanes and had no idea he hit me - he just kept on going and disappeared into the sunset. I got out of the car thinking maybe he scuffed it, but it turned out that the entire drivers side quarter panel was pretty crunched in and there was a massive black scuff on the door where the faux wood paneling was erased. Even if we ever did find the driver and his insurance covered it, it wouldn't have been the same. May 15th will forever go down in my mental calendar as Death of My Pinto Day.

Even though I was pretty emotionally attached to the car, it was obvious that it was time to take Ol' Yeller out back to the shed and shoot 'er dead. I hadn't driven it but 5-6 miles for the past 8 months, not to mention we're moving at the end of the month. #1. It was not driveable, #2. I wasn't going to be able to afford to fix it anytime soon, #3. it would cost way too much to store, and #4. Why store it in the first place if I wasn't sure if I was ever going to fix it?

Craigslist to the rescue. Or so I thought. Several unsuccessful tire kicking/no show responses later I remembered a note I'd saved that someone stuck on the windshield of the car a few years ago which said If you need parts or want to sell, call me with a name and phone number. I wrote a blog about that but am too lazy to find it and link to it. Would be funny to read in hindsight now though.

So anywho, I called the guy and it turns out that he has 15 or so Pintos and was still interested in buying the car. We met yesterday afternoon, I gave him the key, the car, and he gave me cash money - and there you have it. No more Pinto. I wasn't able to get much for it due to the rust and severe disrepair the car was in, but I'm happy with what I got for it - and that I got anything at all. Not to mention the tabs were going to expire in a week so I saved $50 right there. It's nice to know it's not going to be used in a demolition derby like many Pintos are (oh for shame!) - it's going to live in its "retirement home" at this guy's place up in Rogers, MN happily ever after.

This is the first time in 19 years that I haven't been attached to a car and it's a pretty awesome feeling. No more paying for insurance that I've spent thousands of dollars on over the years and never really had to use (either that or it conveniently didn't cover what I needed it to when the need was there). No more worrying about where gas is going to be cheapest. No more tabs. No more harvesting garbage out from under the seats every 6 months. No more brake jobs, oil changes, breakdowns on the highway, worrying about a parking spot.. the list goes on. It's going to be an adjustment trying to lug heavier things around (i.e. an amp and guitar) via taxis and subways, but if a billion other people there seem to be able to do it there's no reason why I won't be able to.

Thanks for the memories, Pinto - you were an awesome car. The Wifey's Jeep gets picked up by the guy who bought it this Wednesday, and POOF. We'll have two large blank spots behind our place where our cars used to be. The only vehicle that will be in our possession is a 16' moving truck, and that will be out of our hands come next Sunday.

Keep/throw/keep/throw/keep/throw...

2009-08-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

Friday, August 21: I'm sitting at my desk thinking 1 week from now I will be thinking 24 hours from now we'll be in a moving truck crammed full of our stuff and cats headed towards the MN border. And when that time comes, I'll be thinking 1 week ago I was sitting at my desk thinking about how in a week and a day I'd be doing what I'm doing now. Brains are weird.

Saturday, August 22nd: It's getting to the point with packing now where I'm trying to decide whether or not to get rid of incredibly important things. Things like my disco ball. I think I've officially decided that's going in the KEEP pile. I mean, come on... it's a fucking disco ball! A real one, too - not one of those deals you see at Target and Spencers.

And then there's my Zero Blaster. This was something I remember I HAD to have when I read about it. I went to 3 malls before finding a store which still had them in stock. Intressting thing about my Zero Blaster is I never, ever use it.. yet feel this inexplicable need to hold onto it. Some day at some point in my life, a time will come where I'll think "Dang... I'm glad I held onto my ugly purple zip gun that shoots fog rings."

The Zero Blaster may very well someday save my life. Therefore as of right now I have officially decided that it's going in the KEEP pile. How exciting that this moment has been immortalized in my blog. I'm glad you could be here to share this moment with me. I've thrown/sold/given away tons of shit over the past few weeks, but for some reason I can't bring myself to part with my trusty Zero Blaster. Even though it's got a nice skin of dust growing on it and the last time I shot fog rings was probably a couple of years ago when I first got Frank and wanted to see what he'd do with floating zeros. He watched them, turning his head very slowly as they'd float by. You could tell he was thinking about swatting at one, but he held back and just watched. Just like with the laser pointer, he gave it a few minutes and then once he figured it out, BORRRRING.

Also recently spared from the giveaway/sell bonanza was the infamous green davenport that I more or less inherited when Gramma Gertie passed away a few years ago. It's this beautifully hideous vomit green 1950s sectional full of family history. Lots of Christmas presents unwrapped and pictures taken while sitting on that sucker when we were kids. It was tearing me apart thinking of potentially seeing it go to someone on Craigslist. Wifey to the rescue - she called me at work and surprised me by saying we're splitting a storage space with her parents for a year for dirt cheap. The couch (and her set of dining room chairs) will not only be able to live in there, but her dad Buffalo Bob will be wrapping it 3x in heavy plastic to protect it from being chewed apart by small rodents. THANK YOU, WIFE... and to my parent-in-laws!! Yous guys are the bestest.

Today is the day I thought would never happen: someone is coming to look at the Pinto and might very well buy it. I've reached a point with the car where I'm okay with selling it. It's rusting out and beat to Hell now, just shell of the awesome babe magnet of a wood paneled station wagon it once was when I first got it. It served its purpose and I loved the time I had with that car. It's time for us to part ways now. If the guy who is looking at it today takes it, that will be a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders - not only because it's the last "big chunk" we need to get rid of before moving, but also because he seems like a good guy. I would be happy to see the Pinto go to a good home. Keep your fingers crossed.

In 7 days we'll be on our way, and there's still a lot to do between now and then. Time to go make me an iced mocha and get shit done. To quote my hero Navin R. Johnson: "What do you think I do, sit around and write letters all day?"

Things I'll miss out on by not living here

2009-08-15T23:02:00.000-07:00

Little random things keep popping up that I realize will no longer be a part of my life after we move. I guess they're not necessarily things I'll miss in a "boo-hoo" kind of way, more so just little things that I probably pay too much attention to and am just now realizing I will soon be 1200 miles away from.

The word slut written in cursive in massively drooled lines paint on select street corners
The offensive and pungent B.O. of the clerks at Hums Liquors
Convenience store clerks who hate their lives and never make eye contact or talk to you
Seeing Scott Seekins on the bus or walking on Hennepin and trying to look at his perplexing fake hairdo without being too obvious
Whatever that food is I smell that's always cooking in between 22nd & Pillsbury on my bike ride home from work. I have no idea what country it's from but damn that shit smells good. And they sure eat a lot of it.
Dick Enrico: I'll miss your sexy tan and sweet accent on your fine commercials. I'm now kicking myself for not stopping you for an autograph when I saw you walking around Lake Calhoun a few years ago.
The smell of the stairwell I walk down during my lunch break at work (mentioned in previous blog entry)
You know how you look at someone and think it's someone you know, but the closer you get you realize it's not that person? I'm horrible with remembering faces so do that all of the time. I'll definitely have a clean slate in that regard.
Seeing the two Weird Beard homeless guys I've seen walking around the city since first moving to Uptown a decade or so ago. They're still walking around and look exactly the same. Will they still be that way (or alive) the next time I come back?
The portly old bald guy with the orange beard who wears suspenders and walks down 22nd St. to SA every day for a 2 liter of Mountain Dew. He doesn't seem to trust his suspenders - he's always holding his pants up with his left hand. He almost qualifies as a Weird Beard, because you can tell he's not all there (he's constantly chewing on nothing), but his beard is well groomed and he appears to have clean clothes and a home. Sorry dude, no Weird Beard status for you.
The horrendously thick Minnesota accent of the bald floor supervisor in the DT Target. I always hear him yapping over his handheld radio to his "team members" when I'm walking through there on my lunch break. The dude's voice is a carbon copy of William H. Macy's in Fargo.
The Papa John's pizza fumes secreting through the walls when looking for a movie to rent at the neighboring Blockbuster Video
Buying Caribou Coffee's espresso beans. Out of Dunn Bros., Caribou and Starbucks, I loves their beans the most. Every single time I go buy a pound, I ask for whole beans... and when I pay for 'em the barista always asks if I want those ground or whole.
Dunn Bros. iced mochas. God damn are those good. The espresso shots are like syrup. I don't get them very often because they use tiny ice pellets rather than cubes which melt faster and water the mocha down. That pisses me off when paying $4 for a drink - but every few months or so I'll break down and deal with it.
TV ads on all of the local networks featuring Twin Cities news anchors pretending to be friends behind the scenes. You're so white that you're clear, and please tell your bosses that you're not actors.
People saying "melk" and "Jeez".
Our incredibly loud neighbors who live across the alley behind us who I've never seen. They have a 5' tall fence so it's always been a mystery. I heard a circular saw going in the backyard at 1am a few months ago. That was interesting.
Driving the Lake St./Hennepin intersection and always pointing out like a grumpy old man how commercial it is and how much it sucks now

I'm sure I'll add more as they happen and I run across them over the next 9 days, but those are the major ones.

The Moving Chronicles: Chapter I

2009-08-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

HUGE progress was made yesterday while sneezing from the dust we're stirring up packing everything and shuffling things around as we sell them: Bryn sold her Jeep-mobile! The person who bought it filled out a business check (he appeared to be a small-scale car dealer) for the amount she was asking for and will be back in 2 weeks before we leave to transfer the title and pick it up. Cha-ching... there goes another nice chunk into our savings account.

Speaking of the Jeep, one thing people axsk us quite frequently is whether or not we'll have cars in Brooklyn. NOPE. It would just be one more expense to worry about, and an incredibly impractical one at that for where we're living. And the parking... what a nightmare that would be. It would be like constantly trying to find parking at the mall during the final days of Christmas shopping. We've wasted enough precious minutes of our lives sitting in a car circling the blocks of Uptown and cussing thus far in life, so there's no need to do it any more at this point. We'll get around just fine via our bikes and train/bus rides... we're smack dab in the middle of about a dozen subway and bus stops, so what we can't walk or bike will get done one way or another, and quite easily.

We also have those often overlooked things located at the end of our legs called feet. Not only are they weird looking smelly things that we cover up with shoes, but they're good at taking you pretty much everywhere you need to go in the city. That's one thing I'm really looking forward to - the walking. Each week we've stayed there Wife and I prolly put more miles on our Chuck Taylors than we do in any given month here in Minnesota, and it feels good.

It will be very liberating to not have cars to say the least. I've been living sans car for almost a year now thanks to putting money in savings for this move instead of into my vehicle, which is in severe disrepair, and hell if I'd want a new car payment at this point in the game. It's been good practice for when the Jeep goes bye bye forever and we REALLY have no car. Plus my key ring will be about a pound lighter which is cool... it will lessen the elementary school custodian/Jingle Bells effect when I walk around with them clipped to my belt loop.

Today I took notice of something that I'm really going to miss when I'm no longer working at the Outsell office. I walk the Riverplace skyway over Hennepin to get outside for my lunch break walk. In the building across the street there's a stairway I take to get down to the street level and I use it specifically because of the way it smells - there's this intense crispy, industrial cement aroma which always reminds me of the way the stairs leading to the vending machines in the Cottage Grove ice rink smelled. I always get a few extra good huffs in on the way down and suddenly feel like I'm 8 years old again and stumbling around on ice skates. I can hear Stevie Nicks and Don Henley singing Leather and Lace on my dad's Marantz stereo receiver when I smell that. Those nostalgic lunchtime stairwell huffs are now numbered.

We obtain the moving truck in less than 12 days. We still have piles of stuff to get rid of, but we will. It feels good to cleanse the palate. Final Iced Ink show on 8/28, then we wake up bright and early 8/29 and we're adda here. I'm all, like, "Dayum, gurl!"

Sadly, there's much Les Paul in the world as of today.

2009-08-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

You hear that sound? That's the sound of billions of people all over the world typing "RIP LES PAUL" on message boards and social time wasters.. er.. networking sites on the internets. I won't waste my time repeating what you can certainly read elsewhere about Les Paul other than saying the dude was pretty much a genius.

In June of 2008 Wifey and I reserved tickets a month in advance to go see Les at the Iridium Jazz club in NYC on our wedding anniversary. The show happened to fall exactly on our anniversary date (July 7th), so that was pretty much a no-brainer. Sweet!

A month later we walked to the Iridium a couple of hours early which was just a few blocks from our hotel in NYC. Our hearts sank a little when we saw that there was a pretty long line already started to get in, and seating was first come first serve. While were in the long line to get in and sweating our tails off, a cartoon bubble popped up over my head of us sitting behind a big concrete post (the club is in a basement) and having to lean over for the entire show to see anything.

Wifey mentioned in passing to a woman ahead of us that we were there for our anniversary. She told us to hold on, went past the line and into the bar with her son, and 5 minutes later her son came out and said "Come on." It turns out she had a connection at the club and smuggled us in. We caught the tail end of the early set in the back of the bar (he always did two - an early and late set). At the end of the tune we walked in on, it was encore time and Les announced that he had a special guest he'd like to invite on stage... Steve Miller and a few of his band mates. Lo and behold, Steve Miller walked right past us (I could see the stubble starting to grow in from his shave earlier that morning) and cranked out a mellow version of "Fly Like an Eagle" with Les. That fuckin' ruled.

The bar cleared out and not only did we get to stay for the second set (the one we made reservations for in the first place), but the bar was toadilly empty and we had our pick of where we wanted to sit. Damn! We sat right smack dab in front and for the next 1.5 hours sipped on overpriced blue martinis while watching the most humbling guitar playing that I've ever been privileged enough to experience at a live show. Complete with another Steve Miller encore, which was a surprise to that crowd but at that point we were thinking "Pssht... that's soooo two hours ago." (Kidding.)

Afterward there was a meet-n-greet and Les hung out at a table with a beer by his side and signed stuff/took pictures with fans (including us). He didn't stop until every last person was taken care of. I think it was around 1:30AM when we got out of there. Not too shabby for a 93 year old!

Even though we were probably just a blur to him in a long line of fans, it was one of the coolest things ever. We walked up and out of the bar and walked aimlessly around Manhattan trying to keep our jaws from hanging open from all of the awesomeness we'd just taken in. We ended up at Ray's pizza and each ordered a slice from a life-long Ray's pizza serving associate who beared a striking resemblance to Sloth from The Goonies.

Good stuff.

Thanks for making the music world what it is today, and for the memorable anniversary. Tonight we will raise our glasses to our framed napkin and bar tab which we had Mr. Paul sign. In between packing up boxes I will play my Les Paul until my shoulder hurts... which I'm guessing will take about 20 minutes. Them things is heavy, yo.

Money shot of Les' pedalboard taken from where we were sitting (click for larger image)

It's as if pirates were made to be videographers

2009-08-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

Think about it.. typically they've got a patch over one eye, so all they have to do is put the camera up to their good eye. No one-sided squinting necessary.

Maybe that's why Sammy Davis Jr. was so into collecting cameras...?

Hey, I know... Let's move to Brooklyn!

2009-08-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

There's so much overdue correspondence in regards to this move of ours it's not even funny. I guess that's to be expected when you decide to quit your job, pack up and move 1200 miles away to one of the busiest cities in the world... in three weeks.

Rather than say and type the same thing over and over a few dozen more times, I'm taking the more efficient route and just doing it via this journal entry on the internets. That said, if you've ended up here by chance, welcome. On the other hand, if I've sent you a link to this entry as a result of you saying something along the lines of What the Hell... they're really moving? Are they crazy? Here's the pooper scooper:

First off, let's get the two frequently asked questions out of the way right now:

Most frequently asked question #1: Do you have jobs?

Nope. We've got savings which should last for a good while as long as we're smart with it. Aside from that, we'll figure it out when we get there.

Most frequently asked question #2: What's in NY?

That's a loaded question with a billion answers. The biggest one for me personally though is the kind of music I like to make is a bit... Abby Normal. Minneapolis is great and all, but I've always felt there's something more out there for what I like to do. Since going to New Yolk, my gut tells me whatever it is, it's probably there waiting for me. Thankfully I have a wonderful and supportive Wifey who feels the whirlwinds of creativity in the air there as well and is 200% behind living there, so POOF. Off we'll go at the end of August into the sunset in a 16' truck full of our crap and 2 cats... which will coincidentally be full of their crap as well (and hopefully hold it between potty stops).

Wifey and I are at an age now where there's a fork in the road, and we can either take the comfortable and relatively predictable road and keep doing what we're doing like people are programmed to do, or we can take the other, not so traveled one. We've opted for the latter of the two. We honeymooned in NYC a few years ago and the moment we emerged from the smelly, humid subway terminal up into the busy streets of Manhattan, that was it. Remember that scene in The Jerk when Navin R. Johnson heard the ultra-white swing music in the middle of the night and he suddenly came to life and had to move to St. Louis? That's pretty much what it was like.

Unlike Navin who took the hitchhiking route, we started saving up money after the honeymoon and secretly made our last trip to Brooklyn this past July a quest to find an apartment. It was a pretty brutal week of searching but on the last day we found our new home. Tuesday (Aug. 4th) we got the call that we were given the thumbs up to rent an apartment in the lovely Park Slope area of Brooklyn. We received the lease via Fed Ex that Thursday and signed/sent it off the next day. You only live once, so what the fruck... ya know?

We are determined to make this work. If this ends up chewing us up and spitting us back out to the Twin Cities, which I don't think it will, at least we tried... and that's much better to me than not trying at all. Human beans are taught to abide by tradition. Well... I guess we're not traditional!

Family, band members, and friends: you all know that I already miss you like crazy. Fer reals. That's the hardest part of this all. I will be adamantly journaling this whole transition and the wackiness that ensues as a result on this here blog though, so bookmark it now and check back often.

It's time for us to live. The STOP sign at the end of our street in Minneapolis pretty much says it all:

Hell NO we won't.

PRESS RELEASE: Micycle returns to blogger

2009-03-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

I used to type these blog things almost every other day for quite a while. But then real life intervened and every other day became every other week... and every other month... and then that turned into a year, and so on. It's time to change that!

I have no idea where to begin. So much has happened over the past couple of years. Allow me if you will to present some of the highlights in a neatly organized bulleted list format:

I got married to a very cool and very hot momma, putting a permanent end to my "IS EVERY WOMAN OUT THERE A FUCKING NUTJOB??" woes. Just like I'm sure it is with boys, I discovered that the answer to that question is yes. You just have to find the proper frequency of fucking nutjob-ness in that other person; one that is properly in sync with yours.
I got a new job. And then I was laid off from that job. And then I got a new job 4 months later: my old job at the same place, but with better pay. So technically my new job wasn't "new" per se; I already had it at one time and then someone else did it for a while. So maybe I should call it a gently used job. I like my job. Lots.
I fulfilled a lifelong goal of actually setting foot in New York City. Twice in the past two years and hopefully much, much more in the future. We first went for our honeymoon in July of 2007 and let me tell you what: the second we emerged from the humid, dark, reeky subway terminal up into the narrow, noisy streets of Manhattan, I felt like I was home.
Another goal fulfilled: Owning a hollowbody Gretsch guitar. The Wifey bought me my first one as a surprise Thanksgiving/Can't Wait Until Christmas gift in 2007, and my other one came home with us from Manny's in NYC in 2008. You know when you try a pair of jeans on and they fit perfectly? That's how those guitars are for me. If I play any other kind of guitar now it feels unnatural and I feel like I'm cheating on them.
I stopped playing acoustic guitar pretty much altogether. I'm sick to death of hearing those Finnegan songs and haven't felt like writing anything new, so my acoustic guitar is in hibernation until whenever I decide to bust it out again. Who knows when that will be. When I tell people that, they say "Ooooh, but that stuff is so gooooooood!" Thank you! So are pancakes, but that doesn't mean you want to keep eating them and eating them every day.¹
I've been in a creative dry spell for a year or two now and feel a strong need to bust out of it, hence my dusting off the ol' virtual blog pen and typing this today. I need a creativity enema.
In another attempt to break the creativity block, in addition to Iced Ink last fall I joined a new band called fe-rah'go. I am very fortunate to be playing in 2 bands with extremely talented musicians who are awesome people.
I have lost a lot of patience and hope with the local music scene here in Minneapolis.
I never, ever thought I'd go to Mexico. I never really had the desire, much less the opportunity. All of my life that was always something in pictures and on TV that other people did. It turns out that when given the opportunity to go to Mexico for the mere price of airfare and food, the desire was kicked up a few notches. We went last month and it was awesome.
Whilst baking in the sun by the pool in Mexico, I read Nikki Sixx's The Heroin Diaries; a compelling and disturbing conglomeration of journal entries he wrote in the late 80's at both Motley Crue's peak as well as the peak of his heroin addiction. The book made me realize that I used to write journal entries on this here site and made me miss it a little. It also made me thankful that I've never tried heroin and therefore never wrote a journal while on the heroin.
Last Halloween I was Mork and shaved off my goatee for the first time in about 12 years.
I am now a beer snob. (Gee, thanks a lot Joe Berkman on bass!)
BLOG. I've never liked that word, and it's starting to sound a little dated now. So I think I'll just call this a journal.

That's alls I've got for now. It's a good start. My goal is to have another meatsmoothie.blogspot.com spewing posted within the next 48 hours. Can you handle the suspense?

_{1 Subtle Mitch Hedberg reference}

Van F*&kin' Halen, bro. (Part Uno of Dos)

2007-10-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

When I first heard that David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen finally buried the hatchet and were going on tour, I pert near soiled my pants with joy, much like the whole KISS Reunion 12 years ago. I was a bit torn when I learned that Eddie's son Wolfgang would be taking over the bass duties and that the band (a.k.a. Edward) had basically written Michael Anthony out its history. You know that chick you hear doing backup vocals in all of the VH tunes? That's Michael Anthony. That and his overall stage presence were a major part of the Van Halen experience for me. I got mad and disowned this new incarnation of Van Halen, David Lee Roth or not.

Until the day of the show rolled around, that is.

On the way into work on 3rd Avenue in downtown, I heard the words Van Halen, Concert, Tonight, and Target Center on the radio. My heart reminded me that it was in my chest by making me feel as if it were an overinflated beach ball that just burst at the seams and and was getting cold and shrively. I haven't missed a Van Halen show since I was old enough to go to concerts, and sadly for me, my concert-going ripeness arrived a year or two after Roth was no longer in the band.

About an hour later, my lovely wife forwarded me an email from her co-worker trying to off her nosebleed Van Halen tickets. I got my hopes up and asked her to pursue, but by the time we heard back, the tickets were gone like a fart in a windstorm. We both wanted to go to the show now, and I was in full-throttle Van Halen Ticket Acquisition Mode. I made numerous Ticketmaster attempts and decided I didn't be raped upwards of $130 to sit up in the few remaining high altitude/limited stage view seats.

Enter: good old trusty Ebay.

It was high noon and I found a pair of 32nd row floor tickets that were going to the highest bidder at 3PM. Ebay "will I win" euphoria was power-vomiting itself through the cockles of my heart. 3:05 rolled around and I was still the highest bidder at $150 for both tickets. Hell yeah! Just ONE of those tickets cost $147.50, not to mention additional TicketBastard fees. I called the dude whose name was Ryan and he sounded legit. He closed the auction and the tickets were mine. I wanted to Jump - JUMP! Go ahead and Juuuump.

Ryan needed his money before he could email me the tickets, so he got all of my contact info and my Ebay ID and sent me an invoice for me to PayPal him his loot. I never got an invoice so called him after 20 minutes passed. "Well I sent it twice now... you didn't get anything? Okay. Let me look into this and call you back in 10 minutes."

A half an hour passed. Nothing. I called him back and he suddenly developed an intense case of verbal constipation. "Um, well, looks like someone placed a bid before I closed the auction so the tickets went to someone else. Sorry!"

Turns out I was outbid by $7.50 and although the winner clearly wasn't me, Ryan took up permanent residence on my shit list by giving the other guy, who bid at 3:22, (AFTER I talked to him the first time and gave him all of my info, mind you) the tickets. And he was too much of a meow-meow to have the decency to call me back and tell me. Just for that, don't ever buy a car from a guy named Ryan at Eich Motors in St. Cloud. Oops, did I say that?

So yeah, I was hella pissed. I found one more set of 23rd row main floor tickets on Ebay available for over $300. I sent him a best offer of $150 which of course wasn't going to happen, but at least I tried.

I drove home ticketless. I travel directly past the front side of Target Center every day on the way home from work. That day as I passed and sat at the red light on 7th and Hennepin, to my left I had the Hard Cock Cafe cranking Van Halen and people sitting outside nursing delicious beers before the show. And to my immediate right was the Target Center, and the fenced off Van Halen tour buses.

I rarely cuss out loud, especially when no one's within earshot, but I recall mumbling "Fuck off!" at that moment. It was similar to Pee Wee sitting on the bench bikeless and everyone biking past him.

I got home and checked my email, and saw a new message that told me YOUR BEST OFFER OF $150 WAS ACCEPTED. Well I'll be danged, there is a Gawd after all! And his name is Edward Van Halen... and we were going to be watching him from the 23rd row in less than 3 hours.

Um.. Ryan who?

Part II: Concert and people-watching review to come soon.

Separated at birth?

2006-12-18T08:14:00.000-08:00

Not sure whether or not this has been noticed yet, but I can't be the only one that sees the resemblance.. is James Lipton actually a Gibb?

Today is my Mom's anniversary of being born!

2006-12-06T05:53:00.000-08:00

Today my Mom turns.. um.. I don't know? Good job, Mom! You're the best mother I've ever had, and not only am I incredibly thankful that you rule so much and you're such great phone support when I have a cooking question, but I'm also incredibly thankful that you had such awesome kids.

I ponder what my Mom's pre-husband and kids life must have been like when her birthday rolls around, and it's really bizarre for me to imagine. It's hard to believe that my Mom was freshly born at one time and was not housebroken. At one time in her life, my Mom weighed less than a sack of pataytas and my Grandma was wiping her poopie butt and changing her diapers. I have pictures to prove that she was once that small; but still it's fooking strange to think about my Mom being younger than me.

I remember Mum was driving me around running errands when I was a youngen. I asked her how old she was, and she said 32. I'm 32+1 right now, and I get the heebie jeebies when I think that I'm as old as my Mum was when I asked her that question. She already had gotten married and had kids long before that, and damn.. that's just weird. Kind of like when I was 27 and got a copy of my person receipt (a.k.a. birth certificate) - it said that my Dad was 27 when I was born. (insert Twilight Zone music here)

At any rate, as anyone who has met the lady knows, my Mom toadilly rules. If there were a Best Mom In The World contest, she would win, hands down. You think your Mom is cool? Nah-ah. Outside of her Mom, my Dad's Mom, the Mom of my nephews and niece, and my future Other Mom, all other Moms suck eggs. Lela's Mom is pretty awesome too now that I think about it, so I'll give her Mom immunity as well.

Let's just hope that the less fortunate egg sucking moms are sucking on my Mom's homemade deviled eggs. It will give them an idea of how they should taste next time they try to make 'em.

Enjoy your day of birth, Mom!

Past Blogs of Birthday Mommery:

2005
2004

It's not Bluetooth.. it's StupidlookingEar

2006-11-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to see a consumer trend out there when I'm running errands and standing in line at stores. More and more people are popping those little Bluetooth headset doodads into their ears. I recently spotted a run of the mill 40-something mom at Walgreen's, and she somehow managed to look even more absurd than this dork in this photo I found on Google to show you what I'm taking about:

Can we please stop this, people? Do you know how fucking lame you look walking around with these things in your ears? It's like you just came from a Star Trek convention where you were all dressed up in character and then forgot to take that one little piece out of your ear when changing back into your Earthling clothes.

I think we're starting to forget the simple things in life. Call me old fashioned, but here's what I do when my cell phone rings: I take it out of my pocket, unfold it, and guess what I do then? I hold it up to my ear and talk into it! Novel concept, wouldn't you agree? There's no need to stick a plastic beetle on the side of my noggin. Those things at the ends of my arms.. um.. oh yeah, my hands - they're great for doing things like answering phones. Bluetooth users would likely disagree with me: But Micycle. What if I'm doing something with my hands like carrying groceries up the stairs or doing the dishes and my phone rings? Here's what you do: you let it go to voicemail and then call the person back when you're done. It's that easy, mate! Unless it's a matter of life and death, who really needs to have a phone on their head at all times?

It's just like back in the day when pagers were all the rage: I'm sure about 95% of the users really don't need the technology, but buy into it because they saw someone on MTV with it or someone else walking around with it. I saw a young dude walking down Lyndale last night. He had the ear thing in and was yammering away at someone on the other end. People wearing these things have two strikes going against them: 1) They look like dorks because there's a piece of plastic on their head, and 2) They look like even bigger dorks because unless you can see the high tech gadget affixed to their head, it looks like they're talking to an imaginary friend.

It's all further proof that technology owns us instead of us owning technology. I'm really thankful that I grew up in an era without most of this poot, because it learned me real good that my life doesn't have to depend on it. If I forget my phone at home, then so be it.. I'll get to whomever calls me later. Sometimes I'll purposely leave my phone behind and just BE. It feels good - try it sometime! I don't know about other cell phones, but if anyone calls when I'm not near mine, when I come back to it, it says MISSED CALLS and the caller ID tells me who it was and if I have voicemail. Wow, it's almost as if that's why those features are on there!

If you're on the market for the Bluetooth headset, I have a special money saving offer for you. For $10, I'll duct tape your phone to your head, and for an additional $5 if your phone has it, will help you set up the voice recognition so you won't ever have to touch the thing again. Keep those hands free for more important things, such as managing the information on your Blackberry.

Guitar Center Ate My Balls

2006-11-20T06:29:00.000-08:00

I loathe Guitar Center. A few years ago I even went so far as to put together a "song" named with the very title of this journal entry. Ever since the late 80s when they opened up a store here and my mullet and I went in to peep the place, I always got a used-car salesman vibe from the place. Remember the scene in Fargo where William H. Macy tells the customer he'll go back and talk to his manager to see what he can do? And then he talks to his manager about the hockey game and runs back out to the customer and closes the deal? Yeah, like that. Some people can deal with that, but personally, I can't stand it. I'd rather pay slightly more and know my money is going to a local shop where everybody knoooows your name. [insert piano ending of Cheers theme here]

If you've never been, GC is a big more-is-more American chain store, which means you're pretty much forced to go there when you need something ASAFP. Reasons being because

1) they can afford to be open when the smaller independent shops can't,
2) they're conveniently located, and
3) they have just about everything under the sun in stock.

Those three factors have pretty much killed off their smaller competitors over the years that I used to support. I still do all of my binnit at smaller stores and only go to GC when I absolutely have to, which is very rarely. Last week I needed a mixer for recording Fish Pudding and ended up scoring a closeout floor model from GC. Got home, plugged it in, and the bastard didn't work.

I called the other location in town to see if they had any left. In the token overly zealous GC duder voice, I was told "Yeah, those are great little mixers! Hold on man, let me check!" Mmm hm… Minutes later, GuitarDude popped back on the phone and said "All right, man, looks like I have one left in stock. I can get you a killer deal on it too 'cause it's a floor model. 10% off!" It's a 15 mile drive to the store and I couldn't afford to pass it up ($30 vs. $70?) so asked him to hold it for me until the next day when I could come in.

"Oh no worries, dude, it'll be here!"
"Great.. but can you set it aside for me?"
"Um – well if you're coming tomorrow, it'll be here. Just ask for [insert boy name here that's likely misspelled on purpose, i.e. "Jaysin"] and I'll hook you up!"
"Well can I give you my credit card number to buy it now and be safe?"
"Nah – just come on in tomorrow!"

Ugh. FINE. I took the chance and hung up.

Goldie and I went in the next day and looked through the clusterfuck of gear in the Pro Audio department for my $30 mixer. No dice. I asked one of the three dozen Pro Audio salesmen on hand where it was. GuitarDude checked, and it was still listed in their inventory. I breathed a sigh of relief as he scurried off to hunt it down. 10 minutes of unbearable Metallica/shitty razor blade distortion two handed tapping riffs later, Dude came up to me and said "Toadilly sorry man, I have no idea where it is… I don't know what to do."

Out the door we went.

Over a beer and pizza lunch a block away from there, I decided to not make the trip a total waste. I'd just go back, buy the expensive mixer and just return it after the couple of hours I needed it for, telling them it wasn't what I needed. It's the least those fuckers could do for me for suckering me into driving out there for nothing.

I ran in, bought a new $70 mixer, and took off like a Bat Out of Hell Part II. When I got home, I carefully opened the box, took out the power supply, and plugged it into my old mixer that didn't work in the first place just for shits and giggles. It lit up like a Christmas tree and worked like a charm.

Today, Guitar Center can and will eat my balls yet again when I return the $70 mixer with the old shoddy power supply for a full refund. After all is said and done, I'm ending up with my original mixer that works again… so that's the glass is half full side of this. Thanks once again for the inconvenience, Guitar Center.

Grand Theft Parking Lot

2006-11-16T08:29:00.000-08:00

1 shot in Conn. Playstation waiting line

My darling brother Chuck and I went to Best Buy on Wednesday and there were people already camping out in front of the store with their tents set up waiting to buy PS3s. It was prolly only 40 degrees out, and I'm guessing there were a good 2 dozen folks out there waiting. It looked like they'd been there for a while already and had 2 days to go yet.

EEDIOTS.

Not that I'm in favor of ass cappage, but maybe in this case, it's a blessing in disguise:

1) The situation probably made the people in line realize that maybe life is a little too short to be standing in line for days in a row for a fucking VIDEO GAME CONSOLE.

2) Hopefully at least a fraction of the people's memories were refreshed on the lesson that we're told time and time again by crime experts: just give them what they're asking for, or take the risk of having extra holes put in your person. Give 'em your credit cards; you can cancel those out. And if you're dumb enough to have $400 the thing costs right there in your pockets in the form of cash money, then maybe you deserve to learn the hard way, you stoopid shit.

I dunno. I guess it just makes me sad that people will go this far out of their way for things (both on the camping out side and the ass-capping side.)

Maybe some good will come out of all of this: the first thing that comes to my mind is a shooter game for PS3 called Grand Theft Parking Lot. Just don't get shot while waiting in line to get it.

Okay, can somebody please tell me what the fuck this is supposed to mean?

2006-11-09T10:34:00.000-08:00

I just received a perplexing spam email this morning and is it me, or is the crux of the message slightly vague? Is there some sort of encryption that I'm missing out on, here? Here.. you read it:

Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 16:05:37 +0000From: Joanna Cooke rjvqy@hasilnet.org.my

Subject: turtle protest

Hoy Lunes me ha costado verdaderos esfuerzos. But I'll still fulfill my debt to society with advice: Change your driving habits and save gas.fil-Bitha tat-Teatru Manoel.Can a computer emulate living beings? As advertised, the booster stickers can be shown to work by viewing the signal strength of a cellphone.fil-Bitha tat-Teatru Manoel.Eleven years ago, I knew what it was because I wasn't one. Great for TV junkies, or those who just want something good to watch with a bowl of popcorn.For this event, the German and Spanish. Use this "couch-computer" to watch a DVD: A hidden projector plays video on a recessed, ceiling-mounted projection screen. If so, use these "alternate input devices". com a couple months ago.These special laptops are called "Tablet PCs".Open the couch arm, insert a CD, and listen to music as you browse the Web. "Public key" and "private key" email encryption techniques enable users to hide the contents of any email message, protecting the information with complex, unbreakable mathematical formulas.Difficult and important questions. Often it involves completely changing the way you enter data. These are little stickers advertised to increase the signal strength on your cellphone, giving you clearer calls and fewer dropped conversations. Just because people will buy it doesn't mean it should be sold.So I put the antenna booster stickers to the test. This software may help us find answers. Hoy Lunes me ha costado verdaderos esfuerzos.

Um. Yeah. Beats the living feces out of me. Although it must have some sort of purpose, as I just looked down into my lap and a cartoon bubble popped up telling me I can get Viagra for only pennies a day. There's another cartoon bubble that just popped up over my cell phone telling me I can get a free laptop, iPod, and Palm Pilot if I can click the rapidly moving animated bear wearing a hat and sunglasses.

Holy shit, dude... has my psyche been infected with a spam worm?

Uh oh.. just as I finished typing that question out, the lenses in my glasses turned from clear to now having in intermittent banner that flashes into my eyes informing me that my brain may be infected with viruses and to blink twice for a free 1 month trial of Spyware Doctor.

I better go now.

I demand the use of the word "Dems" to cease immediately.

2006-11-09T06:03:00.000-08:00

I don't know why it bugs the shit out of me so much when people abbreviate certain words whilst talking, but it does. During this last election season (thank Gawd it's over with, by the way) I've noticed an incredibly unnecessary instance of this pet peeve of mine. It seems that it's being used a lot, and that it had never previously been used before this week (at least that I know of):

DEMS

Enough!! Please. PLEASE just say "democrat". It's really not that hard. Two more syllables to say, and/or just a few more letters to type. Life isn't that fast paced where we have to start shrinking our everyday words as if we're text messaging someone on a cell phone. I first saw this on YAHOO! News the morning after the erections.. er, pardon me, elections, and now it seems to have caught on like the Macarena. Whomever started this monster deserves a Louisville Slugger to the shins.

Since I'm on this topic, I've got a bone to pick with traffic reporters as well: highway 35W should NOT be referred to as "35 dub" when you're doing your little traffic reports. Say it like the white bread bird chested momma's boy you are. It will take about 2/3 of a second off of your air time, which at very worst means you'll have to trim some of the fat off of your lame, watery jokes you spew when you bounce things back to the news reporters. Repeat after me: Thirty Five Double-You. Dub is by no means a cool and hip way to refer to the letter W. You will not get younger viewers or groupies as a result of using the word "dub". Think of how dang stupid that would sound if you were telling someone about a website: "Yes, you can find us online at dub dub dub dot iced ink dot net." People never feel the need to shorten it to dub in that instance, and better yet they use it three times in a row!

Another one that makes me want to throw my glass of water in restaurants when I hear it: Guac. Is the "amole" part really that much more work to throw in?

If you're typing it out on a wee cell phone with 12 keys, that's cool. By all means abbreviate. But if you're talking or typing, just put in the extra effort, people. Abbreviating words in everyday face to face communications may have been cool at some point... Like 10 years ago when instant messaging really started taking off. But it taint cool no more in my book, nor was it really ever.

"Long.. it's the new short."

True Confessions: Really Stupid Shit I Did When I Was a Kid

2006-11-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

Vol. XIV
Chapter VII
pp. 34-41

Todd was a good buddy of mine back in grade school. He was the token cool friend on the block that had an Atari 2600 with my favorite game of all time, PITFALL. He also had the Twisted Sister "Stay Hungry" tape and every Weird Al cassette released up to that time which made him even more incredibly awesome (as if the Atari weren't enough.)

I remember riding the bus home from school with Todd on several occasions to sit and play Atari for hours. His dad had a barbershop quartet-style moustache and preposterous amounts of Playboys lying around in his cluttered basement office. The door to his office was always closed, but we snuck in more often than not to have us a looksie. Most of the pics had black bars over the eyes and "good parts" of the girls which I always found a bit peculiar. Is this how Playboy was made? If so, what was the point? Or did he black bar everything on his own? Did his wife do it? Was he one of those guys that read it for the articles, or did he have some sort of black bar fetish?

Todd was my first trouble making partner in crime during those early years. We did a lot of stupid shit together that probably could have killed us, so needless to say it was always the most fun hanging out alone with him. We did all of the fun stuff that kids weren't supposed to do; experimenting with fire became our forte (this in hindsight was my boot camp for the be-all-end-all almost burn down the entire nature preserve incident a few years later with my buddy Troy.)

We somehow learned that WD40 made fire get really big (don't try this at home, kids.) We'd make blow torches by holding a lighter in a steady stream of WD40. We never really took into consideration the fact that if the flame ever entered the can via the stream coming out of the nozzle, it would toadilly explode and we'd be Stop Drop and Roll poster children with missing appendages and complexions not unlike well done pizza when you peel the cheese off of the top. We would spray WD40 on Star Wars guys, records, firecrackers, coins, capgun caps, and just about anything else we could get our meat hooks on. If there was nothing to burn, we'd spray a big puddle of it on the garage floor and light it up.

When not melting things or snooping through his dad's Playboys, we would get a tape recorder and tape ourselves cussing up a storm and saying naughty X-rated things and listen back with the tape on Chipmunk speed and laugh our asses off. I recall one day being summoned to the living room to discover that my mom had just put one of her dubbed Placido Domingo tapes in to play for my dad and Aunt Cookie and instead heard me and Todd who had taped over it speaking in blue tongue. Let me tell you, it was much less amusing when played on normal speed and heard by my owners.

As I learned, all good things eventually come to an end. Our stupidity reached its pinnacle at the beginning of the 6th Grade school year when we stumbled upon a pack of cigarettes. They were KOOLs that we nabbed from a friend's mom's carton in her Frigidaire. Naughty kids with matches + minty cigarettes = Hells yeah, fire 'em up!

We needed to think of an incredibly private, sequestered, top secret pad that no one knew about to spark up our KOOLs in, so started thinking: The vast, enormous field with the giant street drainage tunnel that we would crawl into? Nope. The ball field dugouts way the hell out behind the high school where no one could see us? Nope. Hmm.

Just then I had a moment of divine brilliance and suggested my Pappy's shed in our back yard 50 feet from our house in plain view from nearly every window. Not only that, but Pappy happened to be home that day.

Out we went. I had the KOOLs, Todd had the matches. We left a slight crack open in the shed door for ventilation (certainly an open shed door with smoke burping out of it wouldn't catch anyone's attention) and got down to business. As Todd lit up, I looked at the dry, yellow grass clippings on the floor from the lawn mower. I gazed up at the ancient green and white garden hose hanging from one of the 8,000 ancient gardening tools which were leaned up against roughly a dozen or so ancient 2x4s, scraps of particle board, and pieces of sheet rock with right angles cut out of them.

It was my turn to fire up. I fearlessly held the match to the end of my KOOL and sucked on it like a straw, storing all of the smoke in my mouth. I heard the delicate sound of the KOOL's paper and toe-backy burning. Without knowing I was supposed to inhale, I let out a nice big puff of smoke. It was similar to when I was allowed to have my first teeny sip of beer (from Grampa who let me try it probably because he knew I'd hate it and make a funny face.) I really didn't see what the big deal was and it tasted like minty ass.

Just then the door to the shed swung open and there stood my Pappy with a look on his face that I'll never forget. I think I remember seeing points forming in his forehead as if horns were about to burst out, but am not entirely sure. I don't remember much after that because I was paralyzed in cold white-knuckled terror. He didn't throw us a beatin', 'cause dad wasn't really the spanking type, although I'm sure I deserved it a lot more than I got it. Todd was sent home, his parents were called and informed, although I'd leaned that he'd immediately come clean to his 'rents when he got home before my Pops had called. Pappy sat me down at the kitchen table telling me I was going to smoke every last got-damned cigarette in that pack before I got up. I sat there in fear, but refused to light up. Not because I'd get sick, because thankfully I didn't know enough to inhale. I just felt like a complete dumbass and that was punishment enough.

After about an hour of holding out, I left the table without having to smoke, and I'm sure was grounded for some time. Things weren't the same between Todd and I after that. We grew apart. Throughout the years, occasionally I'd see him in Jr. High and High School and if anything we'd give each other an awkward "Hi" in passing. That's about all there was to say. I became a metalhead, and Todd took a more conservative route, becoming a permanent fixture in the honor roll and student council. Everything happens for a reason, and the way I look at it is this: I was put on this planet solely to straighten Todd out and steer him from a life of evil and in to a path of wealth and success. Job well done. I'm sure he's an accountant or lawyer somewhere now earning a 6 figure salary and living happily ever after. You're welcome, Todd! *clapping dirt off of hands*

It's hard to believe I'd covered that much ground and was only in the 6th grade. And I had a lot more ground to cover over the years (which I definitely did.) I'm sure it makes Mom and Dad proud!

Bill Cosby said that parents will say "Some day you're going to have a kid, and they're going to behave JUST LIKE YOU!" I recall my Dad saying that to me and my sister at times when we were misbehaving, and I listened closely to that. Thinking back on everything I'd done prior to moving out on my own, it clearly explains why I'm 33 and still only have a cat. If I had a kid in my 20s, by now it would be in the prime shenanigan years and I would be well on my way into my paranoid schizophrenic years... Sitting and waiting for the house to blow up, the feds to come seize the family computer, or just from wondering what the other 9 things my sneaky little kid was doing behind my back for every 1 thing was he getting caught for.

Here's everything good I can think of about having bronchitis:

2006-11-01T06:01:00.000-08:00

I went to the doc on Monday after being sick for 3 weeks. Survey SAYS: Bronchitis.

That said, here's everything good I can think of about having bronchitis:

Politicians are dumb stupid idoit fart booger-butt dumby dootie heads

2006-10-24T07:13:00.000-07:00

I've had it up to here [holding hand high above head] with the relentless political advertising on television. It's the same thing every voting season, and every voting season that passes, it pushes me one step closer to Andy Rooney-dom. Politicians sitting on benches in parks with old people who read their scripted lines poorly. Politicians in schools. In factories. Holding babies.

Sigh.

If your opinion is swayed by a 30 second spot where someone with a bad hairdo and Dockers pulled up to their man-titties slams their opponent and then turns around and talks about how bitchin' they themselves are, you've got diarrhea in your head.

In an ideal world, I would like to take all of these buffoons and tie them all to chairs in a stuffy, non-ventilated room. I'd set the mood by cranking my Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits CD. Then what I would do is assemble a team of big meat-and-potatoes construction workers and feed them the biggest, spiciest meal they've ever had in their lives, and I'd make damn sure everyone downed at least 2 servings of baked beans.

Then an hour later, once that meal starts to wreak havoc on their digestive tracts, I'd have them all file into the room full of politicians strapped to chairs, put their big beefy asses right in the politician's faces, and let them squeeze out as many hot, sweltering silent farts as they could muster. It's only right to violate the fuckers right back for all the years of violating me when I'm just trying to watch Entertainment Tonight. I'd have movie cameras filming all of this, and gladly provide masks and toilet paper for the construction workers. The politician who would make the funniest throw-up face would then MAYBE win my vote.

These days if the remote is close by, I instantly mute the telly when one of these ads comes on. Televisions now have that V-Chip dealie bopper in them which makes television viewing an even more edited and sanitary experience than it already is, sucking all of the awesome sex and violence out of the programming. To Hell with that.. I want a muh-fuggin P-chip in my teevee, knowumsayin? The Politician Chip. Every time a political figure is on teevee spewing the same mundane cookie-cutter drivel, The Jeffersons will pop on instead. And hopefully it will be the one where George is running in place on the bed having a total spaz attack. You know, the clip that they show during the opening credits.. I've never been fortunate enough to catch that episode, so that would rule ass.

My name is Micycle Tricycle, and Hells yes, I most certainly approve of this message.

Spontaneous combustion of a moist towelette

2006-10-24T05:28:00.000-07:00

Recently the Misses and I were vacationing in a lovely little small town in Southern Minnesota.

I brought my Taylor acoustic guitar along as I like to do when away for a few days. Even if I don't play it, it's nice to know I've got it on hand should musical inspiration unexpectedly pop up. Plus it's a rather spendy chunk of wood that I saved up a long time in order to buy, and separation anxiety starts to set in if I don't see it over extended periods of time.

I had the guitar safely (or so I thought) in its hardshell case sitting on the hotel bed. I was getting ready to play and wiping my grubby hands down with a handy dandy moist towelette as I like to do. That's when the weirdest thing happened: Suddenly the damned towelette burst into flames right in my very own hands. I was like, all, what the hell, man? and felt my hands telling my brain that they would start to burn if I didn't let go. I threw the towel and it landed on the bed next to my guitar case, shook the pain off of my hands, and then watched in horror as the case started on fire. Well gawd damn.

I stood there watching the case start to melt and wondered how it could melt, because it was made of wood.. and last I heard, wood doesn't melt. I grabbed a pillow and smothered the flames, opening the case in cold panic making sure my guitar was okay. It seemed fine, and I was a little freaked out wondering how a moist towelette could burst into flames like that. They aren't made to do that; they're made to smell like Froot Loops and make my hands all nice and clean.

I picked up my guitar and played it for a minute. Something didn't seem right, so I checked the Yella Pages in the hotel room for a music store in town to have a looksie and get a professional opinion.

We walked down to the music shop I found in the phone book and I took my guitar in to see if someone would take a look at it. Behind the counter was Mike, the owner of Eclipse Concert Systems in West St. Paul! I wasn't sure what he was doing working at this other store smack dab in the middle of nowhere, but left my guitar with him to look at. I trust the guy and it was cool to see him again, as I was an avid Eclipse customer for a good 10 years back when I lived over there.

We left for lunch and stopped back in a bit later to see if Mike had a chance to look at my geetar, only to find him sitting with a really weird vintage looking instrument jamming with a band up at the front counter. Not missing a single note, he nodded his head sideways, sort of motioning me back behind the counter as if to say "I'm jammin', man. Your guitar is back there... you can go grab it."

I stepped through the band behind the counter to my semi-melted guitar case and opened it up. It looked fine to me. I ran my fingers across the edge of the body and my heart dropped.. on the front bottom side of the guitar, a good 2" chunk had been taken out of it. Even though acoustic guitar bodies are hollow, the newly damaged area was solid. It almost looked as if it was made of cheese and somebody had taken a huge bite out of it.

I hated myself. I'd had this guitar for almost 5 years and managed to keep it as well as the case in immaculate condition (the wooden Taylor guitar cases aren't made anymore and are highly coveted by Taylor guitar owners.) I'd saved up so long for this thing. It was my first "real" acoustic guitar after years of playing cheap knock-offs, and I was always took such pride in owning such a beautiful, nice playing instrument. But now I was standing there with tears welling up in my eyes.. looking at a melted case and a rather expensive guitar with a big eyesore of a chunk missing from the body.

My mind was racing. If only my dumb ass would have washed my hands at the sink with soap and water instead of using that moist towelette. If only I could go back in time and throw it somewhere other than the bed when it burst into flames. It's going to take me a few years to save up for a new one.

At that precise moment, I blinked a few times and couldn't see a thing... everything went pitch black. I heard a clock ticking. I reached down to my right and felt my cat Frank sleeping at my side. Goldie was on my left sleeping as well. My heart was writhing in disgust over what happened to my guitar, and I ran my fingers through my hair to try and calm myself down. It's just a guitar, I kept thinking.

I got out of bed, walked to the fridge, and pulled a big ol' refreshing gulp of orange juice from the carton. Temporarily blinded by the fridge light, I stumbled back into bed and let out a sigh of relief.. I wondered why I just can't just for once have a really awesome dream. Something along the lines of winning a lifetime supply of uber-soft Sour Patch Kids, or if my Pinto was made out of delicious milk chocolate that regenerated itself every time someone took a bite.

And back to sleep I went.

Clyders vs. The Pumpkin Innards

2006-10-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

I ain't carved a jack-o-lantern in at least a good 5-6 years, and last weekend we had the rare opportunity to hollow out and carve us some punkins at our friend Marie's birthday party.

Every time I carve punkins, a charming little Halloween memory comes back to me and gives me the warm fuzzies. No, not the one in 6th grade where I was a punk rocker and put Vaseline in my hair hold my a mohawk (FYI: Vaseline really adheres to your follicles once it has been smeared onto them. We had to warsh it out with kerosene per doctor's orders and poof - my hair was back to normal and I got a free day out of school without even having to fake a cold.) I digress.

The memory that I speak of takes us back to 1985. I was in high demand as a babysitter on our block back in the day; mainly with my next door neighbor Jason. Jason and his owners lived in a white rambler with an enormous garage which basically left them with all of about 4 square feet of lawn once it was all built. Every Tuesday I would hang with Jason while his parents bowled, and it was 3 hours of as many blissful shenanigans as I figured I could let us get away with without him yapping any of it to his parents when they got home.

One Tuesday in October, his mum and dad left us 2 huge punkins to convert into jack-o-lanterns. They left to get to their bowling game as Jason and I started scooping out punkin guts into a large silver bowl. Enter: Clyders, the family English Bulldog.

Clyders was creepy, odoriferous, and would "slime" everything his cheeks would come in contact with. He hated basketballs. If Jason ever left them out in the yard, Clyde would run out and attack, pop, and lock his jaws onto them. Even if we left one in our backyard, Clyde would sit at the fence and aggressively run to and fro barking at the fucker as if it were making fun of him.

Clyders and his little happy boy-dog lipstick humped the couch cushions and throw-pillows all of the time, and because of that (and lord knows what else he did to them) they reeked of dried urine. We would often toss the pillows on the floor and point and laugh as he would approach them, sniff out the one he was most attracted to at the time, and engage in a passionate lovemaking session.

Clyde often was a key element in our shenaniganry (we made sure he never got hurt.) As Jason and I sat in the kitchen on the newspaper covered linoleum carving away at our huge punkins, the silver bowl overflowethed with slimy orange seedy innards. Being the incredibly smart and delicate creature of God he always was, Clyde moseyed on up, took one sniff, and parked it in front of the bowl. He started eating, and Jason laughed. Having learned from past ground-level encounters with Clyders, I got up off the floor and sat on a chair in lieu of getting a crusty dog spit stain on my grey corduroys, continuing to watch.

Jason picked a huge, gnarly glob of punkin guts out of the bowl and held it up in the air for Clyders to covet. I still have the visual in my head as if it were yesterday: His arm outstretched and silver ID bracelet shimmering in the light, and Clyde standing and gazing up at the glob of slime, huffing and trying to bounce his fat hammy body up to get a piece of it, never losing eye contact. His front paws even hit the bowl a few times.

Jason lowered his arm and Clyde nabbed the entire glob in one fell swoop. He stood over the newspaper chomping, and his cheeks made the most disgusting intermittent slobbery flapping noise trying to keep the mass contained in his giant basketball-slaying yap. He had that determined look in his eyes to keep it all in, looking at us as if to say No WAY you motherfuckers are getting any of this precious delight back! Jason let one of those raspy 5 second long out of breath exhale laughs, and continued to feed Clyde a great deal more of what was in the bowl.

That night I gathered my babysitting dues and left wondering what would become of Clyde. A cold wave of fear washed over me.. what if Clyde died from a punkin O.D.? Al and Avis would be at our doorstep in a second ready to tell my parents and throw me in jail.

As fate would have it, nothing really happened to him other than shitting like a fire hydrant for the next few days. I remember going back the next week to get all the gory details. Once the driveway was empty and the coast was clear, Jason told me that they couldn't figure out for the life of them what Clyde had eaten that would make him dump so many bushels of Squand out in the yard. They even thought about switching his food on them, but waited it out and forgot about it once his poo was of scooping consistency once again.

We had a good laugh over that. And all the while, Clyde was somewhere off in the distance happily making sweet love to his favorite olive green throw pillow.

Man, I sure as shit can tell that it's Friday the 13th.

2006-10-13T08:13:00.000-07:00

It's been one thing after another today.

First, I woke up at 6:02am when my alarm was set to go off. When I got out of bed, the wood floors were slightly colder on my feet than the nice cozy warm temperature they were under the blankies. I was all like, what the fuck is this, man?

Once I was all dolled up and ready for work, I went out to my car and it was cold out. And worse yet, the door to my car was locked, so I had to unlock it. The sonofabitch wasn't already running and heated up for me like it would be in an ideal world, either. Talk about bad luck.

And now I'm at work, and I have to be here until the end of my shift, which is 3:45. I'm not very superstitious, but geez. I should have just stayed in bed today.

Pocket Water, Bob Dylan's severed head, Ruth, and 27 TVs

2006-10-12T15:22:00.000-07:00

1. How tall are you barefoot?
Approximately 25.4 millimeters shorter than when my Chucks are affixed to the walking apparati located at the end of my legs.

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
No, but I live with a heroine and she rules toadill ass.

3. Do you own a gun?
Yes, a purple Zero Blaster. You break in to our place or piss me off, I'll put a cap of incredibly slow moving dissipating fog in your ass, bitch.

4. Who's your best friend?
Aside from the obvious female one, I'd have to say whomever sells me a winning Powerball ticket. Any day now, SuperAmerica clerks; no need to take your time (preferably the one on Lyndale and 22nd, as that is most convenient for us.)

5. Do you get nervous before "meeting the parents?
"No. I have my own set of those that I've known all of my life, so I've had a lot of practice being around them and studying their behavior.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
It's like when I try new stuff at Indian restaurants: Chances are as long as I don't know what's in it, bring that shit ON.

7. What's your favorite Christmas song?
That Menards jingle. It's basically the same ball of cheese it been for the last 20 years, just with some sleighbells thrown in for good measure. It goes something like "Warm Seasons Greetings from us all... at... Menards!" It's over in 5 seconds - short but sweet.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Ice cubes.. or "pocket water" as I like to call it when I'm on the go.

9. Can you do push ups?
I'm very good at doing them upside-down. "It's much easier to push air than to push floor" as I always tried telling the gym teacher.

10. Is your bathroom clean?
Define "clean".. you mean, like, no poop on the walls and fixtures?
If so, probably not.

11. What's your favorite piece of jewelry?
The skin watch that I shaved into my arm hair. Hoo ha! I even got most of the numbers to be pretty legible.

12. Do you like painkillers?
Although it's good population control, killing is not polite in this day and age and could influence the user to think that killing is ok. Let's start calling them painreducers, please.

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
A nice fake orange tan, lots of cologne, the latest Sean John apparel and bling bling from head to toe, and leaving several copies of bodybuilding magazines around the house. That's pretty much how I won Goldie's heart.

14. Do you have A.D.D.?
Is that one of those new flatscreen high definition TV sets?

16. Middle Name?
The one in between my first and last. It has 2 vowels and 3 consonants in it.

17. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment?
1. (something explicit) 2. I like music and food3. (something explicit again)

18. Name the last 3 things you have bought:1. 1 Kaki King ticket2. another Kaki King ticket3. 3 hours of parking next to the Varsity Theater, wherein the Kaki King tickets were redeemed.

19. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink:1. Hummingbird blood2. Antifreeze (the blue Toyota kind)3. Gravy

22. Current worry?
Where did questions 20-21 go?
Are they okay?

23. Current hate?
The wind we've been having lately. Wind seriously pisses me off.

24. Favorite place to be?
Curled up in the fetal position drunk and smoking in a dark, musty basement wearing a stained wifebeater and tighty whiteys... wondering why Ruth and I had so many children. She couldn't even hold a god damned job back then, and now she's put on so much weight that she's out of breath just going out to check the mail to get our welfare check. And me?
I'm helpless on account of my back injury I got while trying out for professional rassling. I digress..

25. Least favorite place to be?
In bed at 4am while Ruth is in the living room watching QVC and chain smoking her generic cigarettes. What happened to my Baby Ruth I knew in high school?

26. Where would you like to go?
The basement of the Alamo, where the theif is evidently hiding my tricycle. Sounds like the perfect honeymoon, doesn't it Goldie?

27. Do you own slippers?
Yes, 2 Kleenex boxes that fit my feet perfectly (I leave some in the box for a little extra cushion)

28. What shirt are you wearing?
My hypercolor shirt.. always nice and dark in the pits and chest hair areas.

29. Do you burn or tan?
I wear a specially formulated lotion that actually makes me lighter when exposed to sun for extended periods of time.

30. Favorite color(s)?
Earwax orange.

31. Would you be a pirate?
No, pirates are the new cool thing to be thanks to Johnny Depp. Pirate-ism has now become Hollywood, therefore it is now lame. I'll start the next trend and be a Menshevik. I'm bringing Mensheviki back. (I guess I DID listen back in history class!)

33. What songs do you sing in the shower?
I play my theremin. The Misses accompanies me on wax paper and comb on weekends. Where did question 32 go?

34. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?
Bob Dylan's severed head. Not a lie (hm.. good subject matter for my Hollerween blog!)

35. What's in your pockets right now?
My slingshot, a piece of twine, my pocketknife, some chaw, and a 17 year old rubber that I hope I get to use someday. The wrapper is pretty much deteriorated and the expiration date is 07/89, but I'm not giving up hope.

36. Last thing that made you laugh?
The movie of Owen wiggling his finger on John's neat cell phone that looks like a high tech hybrid harmonica with accordion buttons on it.

37. Best bed sheets as a child?
Good ol' tinfoil (dull side up.)

38. Worst injury you've ever had?
Back when I had really long hair, if I left it in a ponytail for too long and took it out, my scalp would hurt like a motherfucker.

40. How many TVs do you have in your house?
27. Rather than changing channels all of the time, we got a TV for each channel we like and just flip them all on at once.

41. Who is your loudeend?
To be honest with you, I have no idea what the hell that means. I'm guessing it means 4th grade teacher, and that would be Mr. Casey. He looked like Ric Ocasek of The Cars until he got a perm. Then he looked like a really scary tree.

42. Who is your most silent friend?
Tony. He's my friend that lives inside my mouth.

43. Does someone have a crush on you?
The Misses tries to crush me, but she's too skinny to do any sort of damage.

44. Do you wish on shooting stars?
No, I wish when I SEE one, for I am incapable (as far as I know) of being "on" one. Those things are going way too fast and I'd be dead before even being able to think about wishing for anything.

45. What is your favorite book?
Anything with lots of neat pictures of kids with bowl cuts playing with toys. MAN I miss being a kid and mining through the Sears and Pennys catalogs.

46. What is your favorite candy?
Dried up toothpaste from the bathroom sink (especially if it has shaving residue on it)

47. What song do/did you want played at your wedding?
We were talking about "Endless Love", complete with afro wigs and huge phallic 1970s microphones.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
"Everybody Have FUn Tonight" by Wang Chung (seriously.) That or Fish Pudding's version of the Taxi theme song.

49. What were you doing 12 AM last night?
Not sure - I was sleeping at the time. I didn't wake up with a dull, bloody knife in my hands this time, so that's always a good sign.

50. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up this morning?
Thank Gawd I'm still here and they haven't found me yet.. I always sleep with one eye open. They wanted me back at the Mothership with samples no later than July, however I broke the golden rule and fell in love with an Earthling. If they want me to leave Earth with them now, it's going to have to be in a body bag. Or as we refer to it in my native language, a "Rz__+PLLK}}$$)-=*".

Creative uses for tampon wrappers

2006-10-10T05:25:00.000-07:00

As I was stumbling into work this morning feeling half dead, I noticed a tampon wrapper on the ground. It was not really near any secluded areas in which one would go to discreetly install a tampon, which I found to be a bit peculiar as well as a wee bit grody. I'm hoping that it just blew out of somebody's trash receptacle from the residential sector about a half a mile away and ended up there on the sidewalk due to the crazy-ass winds we've been having around here lately.

Back when I was oh, 4 or 5, tampons were amongst the many unknown wonders of the world to me. There was always a secret stash of Tampax in the back of the bathroom cupboard, and I never really knew what they were for or why they were there. I even referred to the fold-out instructions showing poor line drawings of chicks putting them in their slots, but never put 2 and 2 together. When you're a kid, you don't know a pachina from a hole in the ground.

I loved snooping around in the bathroom and always knew there were fresh tampons waiting there for me to dissect. I'd play "telescope" with the 2 piece tube and spy on our neighbors. I'd put it up to the faucet and run water through it. I always wanted to do something fun with the stuffing, but never really got too far with that. I had visions of putting googley eyes on the end of the string/cotton wad to make a pet mouse, but never found any googley eyes in Mum's sewing boxes.

Anyhow, I digress. Back to present time:

I sort of reverted back to my 5 year old self seeing this wrapper on the ground. I didn't pick it up and play with it, but sometimes when you see something out of its element like that, it gets the creative juices flowing (no pun intended.)

My first thought was: You know... that's sorta the same size of the packs of RainBlo gumballs I used to get when I was a kid. I wonder how many I could fit in there? I had a few blocks to go, so my mind started to take this a bit further. Tampon wrappers would indeed make great gumball holders. What else would they be good for?

They'd make great protective disposable covers for flushing levers on men's room wall urinals (and conventional lever-equipped terlits as well.) For those of you who like smoking doobies, you could stuff the things full of grass and twist the end shut. Instant Wonder Joint a la Booger in Revenge of the Nerds. They'd also be great cigar protectors. Or you could stuff the empty wrappers full of cotton balls and put the tube back in your purse.

They'd be great portable incense stick holders, covering the fragile "dipped" end as to not contaminate anything in your purse or backpack if you ever wanted incense on-the-go. They'd make great sparkler holders for that matter. I've always wanted to secretly replace someone's incense with sparklers, but will save that idea for my future Fun Things I Want To Do To Get My Ass Kicked entry I've been working on for some time.

If you had 10, you could paint them the color of your skin, put some LEE(TM) Press-On Nails at the ends, and wear them on your hands like long fake monster fingers. That's a great tip, as Halloween is right around the corner.

Hm, what else. AH! You know those new teeny Crystal Light powder pouches you dump into your bottled water? What if you're like me and like the bigger bottles of water? Problem solved - empty 2 or 3 of those pouches into an empty tampon wrapper, staple it shut, and you're all set when you need that extra flavor kick in your water.

Most of the time you see those huge bubble tea straws at coffee joints, they're unwrapped. Why not slip a tampon wrapper over them to keep off germs and dust? Give the bubble tea drinkers a piece of mind knowing that their straws are safe.

I'm sure I'm missing some other great uses for these thin little paper tubes - so please share if you feel inspired to do so. Millions of perfectly good tampon wrappers are going to waste every day and I think we need to stand up and do something about it! I'll keep my thinking cap on as well, and if there's enough material, heck.. maybe I'll submit them all to Heloise's Helpful Hints column in the newspaper.

My iPod favors the Brady Bunch.

2006-10-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

I've used the "shuffle all songs" feature on my Pod a zillion times now, as it seems to always be the best way to listen to mine toons. I've got over 5,000 to choose from and counting, and it gets to be a bit overwhelming. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just let my little ebony 60G Pod do the thinking for me. I have to give credit where credit is due.. it does a great job of shuffling, as I don't think I've heard the same song twice yet.

Except for one.

"Time To Change" by the Brady Bunch.

I haven't heard it just twice; I hear it almost every time I tell my Pod to shuffle the songs! This is not a complaint.. I like the tune, otherwise it wouldn't be on my Pod in the first place.

But how interesting that out of all of the musics available for my Pod to pick from, it almost always throws that one into the mix, and usually within the first 20 songs to boot. This morning on my way to work I selected SHUFFLE SONGS and pressed the "go" button.

BANG! "SHA NA NA NA NAAA NA NA NA NAAAA... SHA-NANA-NA-NA!"

There I was, fresh out of the starting gates of my day at 6:20am being pumped full of cheerful, wholesome Brady goodness. It was pretty dern loud, too, as I must have inadvertently knocked the volume up out of the safety zone I usually keep it at (I don't want to be any more deef than I already am.) The guitars were going YEOW chickka YEOW-WOW, tambourines doin' the chingy changy chingy changy, crispy trumpets, and best of all, the sonic massage of Barry Williams and Maureen McCormick carrying me through the verses. For my fellow Brady enthusiasts, no, sadly Peter isn't in the recording doing his mid-pubescent "SHA NA NA NA NAaaaaaaaa!" I know. Bummer, man. I still see him in my mind, though, making that kooky, zany, wacky face of his with the headphones on in the isolation booth of the recording studio.

Is my iPod trying to tell me something? Does it want me to put my old Brady Bunch Top 8 list back on my MySpace page? I see the repeated plays of this tune as much more than just a coinky-dinky. Come on - this one song out of the some fitty two hunnit I have on there? You can "rate" songs as they play on your Pod and tell it to play only the ones you rate highest, however I have never dialed up the rating screen on this one (although it does deserve 5 stars.)

Is it time for me to change and rearrange?Because gah-dammit, you iPod, don't you know that's what I just spent the whole summer doing? I need a break from the change/rearrange thing, please. I just want to kick back and watch some fuckin' TV, man. Leave me alone!

Maybe my iPod just likes that song. That's cool, I guess. It is pretty groovy and all, and it gives us all a great message. Listening to the lyrics, they really don't make any sense at all to me, but I'm sure there's a good message in there somewhere. Save the trees, love yourself and everyone else, know that the weird smelling fur that's starting to grow in your nether regions is perfectly normal and just roll with it, and so on. Did anything ever make sense on that show? That is why I love it so. Cheers to you, iPod, for picking this tune to beat to death over, say, Cannibal Corpse's "A Skull Full of Maggots".

sha na na na, na na na na, sha na na na na!
sha na na na, na na na na, sha na na na na!

Autumn turns to winter and then winter turns to spring,
its not just a season to know its goes for everything.
clouds can turn to rain and then it just might snow
You gotta take lesson from mother nature and if you do you'll know.

[chorus]
Well its time to change
then its time to change
move by the time come along for the ride, dont you see
when its time to change you've got to rearrange
move your heart to what your gonnabe.
sha na na na na na na sha na na na na na

day by day its hard to see the changes you've been through
a little bit of living a little bit of growing all adds up to you
every boys a man inside
a girls a women too
and if you wanna reach your destiny its what you've got to do

[chorus]
Well its time to change
when its time to change
move by the time come along for the ride, dont you see
when its time to change you've got to rearrange
move your heart to what your gonna be.
sha na na na na na na na, sha na na na na na

[chorus]
Well its time to change
when its time to change you've got to rearrange
move your heart to what your gonna be.
sha na na na na na na na, sha na na na na

Oh, Wikipedia, how I love thee.

2006-09-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

I can type pert near anything into you and you spew out copius amounts of useless informations that my brain thrives on. I wanted to read about my favorite candy bar ever in the whole world, Twix, and I'll be damned, you delivered the goods. Hey, Wikipedia, I'd like to know about Skittles. Wow, look at that! I've always wanted to know what happened to Stompers. Damn, I loved those things. Want to know more about meatballs? Wikipedia has got you covered.

This morning I challenged Wiki to learn me about one of my childhood heroes, Mr. Rogers. Needless to say, it definitely Wikied my Pedia. While reading about Fred, I was shocked to learn that "McFeely", the last name of the white haired Speedy Delivery dude, came from Fred's very own name. Assuming it's a last name, does this mean Fred was a name hyphenater in real life? If so, I suppose he shortened things up as to not give the impression that he and the Speedy Delivery man were shackin' up. That ain't how a mild-mannered Reverend wants to be represented, know what I'm sayin?

What I found to be most interesting was that before he was the big mac daddy at PBS, Fred went to Canada with an understudy who went on to become known up dare in Canada as Mr. Dressup. Evidently Mr. D was a Canadian version of Mr. Rogers, and rather popular with the young canadian chillens to boot.

Mmm... nice! Mr. Dressup? I'll say! Look at those snappy duds he's sportin'. We all know that Canada is a smoldering hotbed of comic genius embers, so I wonder if this guy was a goofball. I wonder if he spoke with a thick Canadian dialect like the one I loved so when watching You Can't Do That on Television and Mr. Wizard's World on Nickelodeon in the 80s (hmm, there's more stuff to look up!) I need to go find me some Mr. Dressup footage on YouTube or something to check this guy out.

This brings up a valid chicken/egg question. It mentions that Rogers and Dressup were homies, but whose show was first? It's unclear to me, and it only makes me wonder even more. Why did Dressup stay in Canada? Did he and Fred have a torrid love affair and break up? Why are the shows so similar (it mentions some of Dressup's songs were later used by Rogers.) Why did he pick "Dressup" as a name? Did he start the show by dressing up, unlike Fred who would come in and dress down into a thin colorful sweater and pair of blue and white sneakers? Judging from Mr. D's pic, if that's his version of "dressing up" I'd love to see what he looked like prior to that.

My inquiring mind wants to know. It's time to scour the internet for some answers and Mr. Dressup footage. I hope I'm not disappointed with my findings. I mean, I hope we weren't just fed a load of recycled Mr. Dressup crap when watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. GAAAHD that would suck.

But before looking into this, I need to get back to Wikipedia and see what there is to read about cheese food.

My newest internet pet peeve

2006-09-21T05:53:00.000-07:00

Those fucking semi-translucent Flash advertisements that ever so inconveniently slide themselves on top of the page I'm trying to read. By instinct, I try and scroll down past 'em, but the little bitches follow right along, bouncing all the way down until I find the miniature "x" box to click and close 'em.

Whomever created this mess deserves to have a pack of jumbo Oscar Meyer all-beef franks forcefully inserted into their number two area, and then bashed in the skull with a pillowcase full of soda pop cans (a la Sean Penn in the epic masterpiece Bad Boys.)
I just don't like being force-fed ads like that, especially when 99.9999% of them are for shit I could care less about. If someone would please invent a program that prevents these from interfering with my web browsing fun time, that would be terrific. I'll give you a $5 McDonald's gift card.

Okay, my advertising rant is over now. Move along, move along...

I, Micycle Tricycle, am hanging up my fart belt for good.

2006-09-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

Goldie and I had a fantastic "little" (some fifty plus folks came) party over the weekend to celebrate our bitchin' new pad we moved into over the summer as well as a belated engagement party of sorts. I would like to take a moment to thank everyone reading this who:

stopped over and Wang Chunged with us
put a dent in the keg and the wading pool of food that everyone brought
signed the wall of shame
took the chance to mingle with total strangers
listened to my bandmates and I slosh through a few tunes (and even applauded afterwards.. wow)
Thank you so much for all of the bottles of wine. Not too many people labeled them, so we're not sure who half of them are from. Great googley moogley - there's prolly more than a dozen bottles there. And we'll be sure to put them to good use.

There is a select group of those who couldn't make it out and said they would... hey man, it's your funeral. You missed the Doodie The Clown, famous for twisting inflated condoms into lifelike sloths. You also missed The Great Zamboni, the world renouned poodle trainer and his 5 dogs who jump through flaming hoops whilst blindfolded and barking the theme to Sanford and Son. One dog caught fire, and she tasted hella delicious - "Zeese eese why I allvays breeng 5 doags," he said. "Eef vun burns, choo haff a decent meal for zee crowd and zaire's steel 4 doags left!"

This was the first time that direct family members from her side and mine got to meet in person. Everyone got along just peachy and laughed and had a good time.

Now onto the rest of my story.

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I seem to be incapable of farting. I try and I try, but to no avail, it just doesn't happen. I want to fart. Seriously. Farting is funny. To me, there's nothing more comical than a well-timed and executed fart. Oh, what I would give if I could simply just float an air biscuit while waiting in line somewhere or at Blockbuster video when somebody was kneeling down at 2nd shelf level reading the back of a DVD box.

To kick things off at the party, my mum brought over a bubbling cauldron full of her delishish shloppy joe meat. There it sat in her electric pan: oodles of perfectly browned ground beefs swimming in a pool of mysteriously spiced, savory orangish dark-brown liquids. When my sis opened up the door to her car and I reached in to obtain the pot of slops to carry it upstairs, two things crossed my mind: 1) Yum. And 2) Maybe tonight will be the night?

I carefully brought it up, set it on our American Idol tablecloth, and plugged 'er in. Mum then brought up yet another cauldron, this one full of homemade baked beans. Oooh yes. Tonight was going to be the night, alright. I had my giant bottle of Tabasco sauce slightly chilled and at the ready.

As the evening commenced, I had me some slops completely immersed in Tabaska sauce. And then 2 bowls of baked beans. I warshed it all down with cup after cup of delicious keg beer and waited for divine gaseous intervention. I had a pile of my sister's awesome spinachk dip on the side, and some butt-tayta salad to boot.

Nothing.

An hour or so later, Iced Ink drummer Barry and his wifey-poo Lindsay strutted through the door. Barry brought his incredibly delicious and perfectly almost-too-spicy homemade bean dip, and Lindsay had a jar of her intense cosmic homemade salsa which was so yummy that when combined with Barry's bean dip, I began hallucinating and wanted to break into a frenzy of violent bliss after I ate a plate full. It was that damned good. Those two folks are a spicy condimentary match made in heaven.

I topped it all off with 2 of my mum-in-law-to-be's delectable holier-than-thou Cajun Mary Meatballs. It was the perfect icing on the cake. Everything I needed for the ultimate butt trumpet symphony had been consumed. There were Flavorgasms aplenty. I was certain that trouble was a brewin' downstairs in the walls of me belly, and this really got my hopes up. Tonight's the night, I kept thinking. I began to perspire and became anxious to get a-gassin'.

Nothing.

The party was over, and I put all of the foods away. There was a pretty big serving of baked beans left that didn't fit into the Tupperware, so down my hatch they went in a last ditch effort, complete with a hearty splash of Tabasco. I waited patiently for at least one little toot while nursing my last beer.

Nothing. Not even a mild cramp. I thought maybe I'd wake up in the wee hours with a crazy stomach just ready to blow the roof off of our place, but nope.

Nothing.

And so today, I am officially retiring any hopes of ever farting again. I used to when I was a wee lad, but I seem to have lost the ability over the years. It just wasn't meant to be. Some people can't see, some can't hear... I can't gas.

Next time you've got access to foods that you know will cause a serious ruckus strictly in the farting sense, be sure to have a little extra for me, if you will. And keep your hands off of that damned vial of Bean-O, if you will. If you're going to do it for me, I ask that you do it all the way.
I, Micycle Tricycle, am hanging up my fart belt for good.

Thank you and goodnight.

Suuree, or something like that

2006-09-07T08:58:00.000-07:00

Newspapers age to yellow and the tree leaves do the same,
Work time spent a-working, spare time spent on Scrabble games
I ponder where my life is going and things like armpit stains
And what I may have missed when I stopped watching "Growing Pains"

Another bowl of cereal and another sandwich lunch
Another seedless grape is plucked and eaten from the bunch
Life, it carries on and soon the day turns into night
I look up in the sky and see the moon and planes in flight

There's one thing that I know will always be there in the news;
One thing I can count on. One thing that we'll never lose.
It's covered non-stop in the mags and on the internet
More so than the weather report and how rain gets things wet.

This topic that's at hand is weighing talking heads at large,
Everybody knows, even the homeless girl named Marge.
This one thing that I'm talking about involves a girl named Katie,
and the fact that I don't give a shit about her and Tom Cruise's baby.

Word.

tap tap tap.. Is this thing on?

2006-09-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

My, how time flies! I took a break from this here Blogspot 'bout 6 months ago to go a little more full time on my MySpace blog. I started to miss my Blogspot page recently and figure it's about time to get back to my roots.

For those of you who haven't hit up other said blog lately, there's been some pretty neat changes in my life since I was last here. I'm getting married to a hot momma next year. She has neat hair, cool glasses, wears Chuck Taylors, and likes to joke about poop and farts. That's pretty cool if I do say so myself. I also put up a website for my acoustic guitar musics... and finally had CDs made to sell. I've been a busy little monkey!

It's good to be back.

What I did for my summer vacation.

2006-09-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

In the words of one of my favorite writers out there, Mr. Jim Anchower: "Hola, Amigos. It's been a while since I rapped at ya." Labor Day was yesterday, which tends to signify the end of summer.

And so another fine summer has come to a close. Another State Fair has come and gone. The school buses are back slowly rolling down the side streets once again, lights a-flashing and STOP signs popping out of their sides until the coast is clear and we can drive on without running over children.

We do this out of the goodness of our hearts, so that those children, too, can suffer like we did back in the day when we were serving our 13 years of edjamacation and waiting to grow up. Some day they'll eventually grow up too and get stuck behind school buses on the way home from work not running over the kids getting out of those buses. It's all about keeping the chain of involuntary education unbroken.

Yes... another fine summer has come to a close. The leaves are beginning to turn yellowish and reddish shades of green, a telltale sign that the trees will soon be bald. The mornings are cold and crispy. It's time to put away those all-white outfits for yet another winter, lest you want to be shunned by the fashion savvy folk for sporting such garments after Labor Day. (The double-V in "savvy" is dedicated to you, Scrabble Queen.)

At any rate, I hope you all had a fantastic summer. I know I did, and I'd like to share with you some of the highlights:

Attempted to train sunfish from Lake Calhoun to re-enact Season 2 of Sex and the City. Sadly, the project was canned after receiving a cease-and-desist order from HBO.
Ate a lot of ice cream. Whenever we'd go grocery shopping, I'd bring a spoon with and just load up on whatever I had a hankerin' for at the time.One Saturday, Goldie and I ran a lemonade stand! We made $13.22. That's nearly 4 Happy Meals!Cooking tip: during periods of extreme summer heat, frozen pizza is much more cool and refreshing when you skip the part where you bake it.
Collected flattened, dead, dried up frogs from roads and found creative uses for them (coasters, elbow pads on shirts, coin purses, frog jerky)
Learned while moving into new apartment that you can't fold a pane of glass
Stole a Metro Transit bus, gutted it out, and filled it with 4 giant tubes of 4x4-foot saltines.. those always reminded me of cracker boxes and I've always wanted to do that. Next summer I'm stealing a giant satellite dish and filling it with soup for the crackers.
Challenged a McDonald's employee to sell me a burger patty with cheese on it for 11 cents or just an empty bun for 78 cents. Regular cheeseburger = 89 cents. Double cheeseburger = $1.00. If you do the math, this makes perfect sense.. but that's not how they McOperate.
Naired the hair out of my nostrils. Not a good idea; those hairs are there for a good reason.
Developed homemade Etch-a-Sketch out of ant farm. I bought some high tech remote controlled ants at Radio Shack (one x axis and one y axis) and put the two controller knobs on the base of the ant farm.

In all, it was a fantastic summer, and I hope you all had one at least as half as exciting and fulfilling as mine. I would like to thank Goldie, my family, our pizza oven, my bandmates, Rockstar: Supernova, Chef Gordon Ramsey and Hell's Kitchen, and anyone else who helped make the summer of '06 one of the best. I would like to thank the bees and mosquitoes for keeping the annoyance factor to a minimum, although I know you bees are just getting started... so let's put a hold on thanking you just yet.

I would like to NOT thank my job for making me get up early 5 days out of every week this summer. I would like to not thank the Minnesota State Fair Amateur Talent Competition as well for not finding my performance of the Dog Seed Shuffle "Amateur" enough. I have something on a stick for you, and will gladly tell you where you can stick it, if you know what I'm sayin'.

Here's to a kick ass Fall!

I'm Alive and Well... Where the f*&k did I go?

2006-03-15T10:47:00.000-08:00

Hey, BlogSnots, it's been a while!

It's too damned much work for me to keep dual-blogging (I post here and on MySpace), and I get hollered at something fierce on the MySpace by some people if I don't post entries over there.

Until further notice (i.e. until I have the extra time and the extra .0005 calories for the engergy to keep up with dual blog postings) I'm moving over solely to my MySpace blog for the time being.

Sorry for the inconvenience.. not yours, but mine for choosing to dual post blogs in two different locations and not being able to keep up with it. I will put a link at the end of this post where the MySpace rendition of Diarrhea of a Madman resides. And sorry ahead of time for the few comment posters here that may not have MySpace accounts.

Go on over and check it out – there’s lots of new stuff. You can even leave your shoes on if you want. Please do - it smells bad enough over there as it is.

Sincerely, Micycle.

All right, fine, take me to the darn MicycleSpace Blog then>>

This just in: If my brain is like that of a grape juice drinking rat, I'm in good shape!

2006-03-03T23:41:00.000-08:00

I just read here that grape juice is good for the aging brain. I reckon I've mentioned this piece of Micycle grape juice trivia before, but here goes again for any of you who may not know (this is highly important stuff here):
I happen to looooove grape juice. However. It only seems to make me perpetually more thirsty for grape juice. And in the end, all I get out of it is a stained empty pitcher, purple lips, and a queasy stomach.
But now I've learned that I'm getting a lot more out of it than that. All these years, my undying thirst for grape juice and then more grape juice has been an insidious, camouflaged augmentation of my well being. My brain's just been trying to do itself a favor all these years!
That said, another round of grape juice, please. My brain is more limber than ALL of yawls. So go have fun with your rigid, barbarian grape juice-deprived think organs, now. I'm going to go off and do some proofs or something.

All of the Bill I can handle and none of the tornadic warnings

2006-03-01T16:51:00.000-08:00

So waaaaay back when in 2000-sumpin, some of you may remember a television program called Freaks and Geeks. Many of you prolly don't. This show ruled some serious ass; it was my favorite show ever. Still is. If you were even remotely amused by Wonder Years, do yourself a favor and check this show out. It has that same sort of vibe, but it's more of a high school/burnout crew, and there's no cheesy sentimental narration from Home Alone star Daniel Stern.

When I see something I like on teevee, I can usually tell that it's not going to last long. Why, you axsk? Because usually in order to be a successful television program (note how I say successful, which doesn't really mean good), it has to be something with a high suck factor. Sure, a few good shows slip through the cracks every now and again. But for the most part, teevee shows retain about as much of my interest as a football game.. and anyone who knows me knows that I go from awake to sleep in 30 seconds when "the game" is on.

That said, when I see a show I absolutely love, I religiously tape it to hold onto it and cherish forever. And unlike most people that tape shit, I actually watch it more than once. That's because there's very few things on that I like enough to record, so that makes it easy. The herd is thin and there's not much to choose from. I think all I have are my old Freaks and Geeks tapes, some old 70s KISS television footage, and an episode of SNL that Steve Buscemi hosted.

So yeah, I taped 16 of the 18 episodes of Freaks and Geeks and have watched them at least 2wice a year since then. They're piss poor recordings and many episodes are absolutely bedraggled with KARE 11 NEWS tornado warnings. Every few minutes the screen shrinks, the sound cuts out, and a beeping tornado alert scrolls across the screen. Man that used to piss me off. Not to mention the commercials for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Survivor.. yeah, those have been a real treat to fast forward though over the years.

Bill. a.k.a. My heeeeero! *swooooon*

Thanks to the shitstorm of telly-vision DVD box sets that has ensued over the last few years, Freaks made its way to said DVD format. And today I just got the complete set in the mail (thankyouverymuch, Ebay). How sweet it is. Every time my favorite character Bill Haverchuck and his harelip grace the screen, it is now in ultra clear digital quality. You can almost see every little zit, blackhead, and smudge on his glasses. His incredibly hollow and lifeless lines can now be heard again with no more tornado warning beeps. Yaaaaaaaaaay!!

The weird thing, though, is when I'm watching these DVDs now, I keep waiting for the screen to shrink and tornado beeps to take over. I actually sort of miss it in some fucked up kind of way.. just like how I got so used to where all of the skips were on my Gene Simmons solo album and was caught off guard when they weren't on the CD when I bought it. It grew on me after a while, but took some getting used to. To this day when I listen to his tune True Confessions, I still expect the a capella choir at the end to sound like this:

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa *pop*
aaaaaaah*pop*
aaaaaaah*pop*
aaaaaaah*pop*
aaaaaaah*pop*

...and so on (until I'd bump the record player to get it going again.) I'm thinking maybe there's an easter egg on these here DVDs that will enable me to watch the shows with the KARE 11 tornadic panic attacks every 5 minutes. Just until I get used to it without them, at least. Regardless, these DVDs and the extras kick waaaaay more ass than my VHS tapes, so I'll just do my best to get acclimated with this newfangled high quality format.

But not until after I scour the DVD menu for possible hidden Tornadic Panic Attack-Enhanced versions of the episodes.

I got a haircut!

2006-03-01T12:55:00.000-08:00

And quite frankly I'm a little disappointed. My hair reduction agent Mackenzie always does a phenomenal job in contributing to my dapper look I like to go for, but I'm thinking maybe she was a little preoccupied yesterday. I knew it was a little different than usual, but once I got home and was able to take a good look in the mirror, I was a little disappointed.

Peep this pic and give me your honest opinions now.. should I go back and axsk her to trim it up a little free of charge? FYI - I'm the one with the guitar, in case you can't recognize me now.. Attn. Ms. Roar: this pic was taken at a slightly different angle than the one I showed you yesterday, plus my hair has grown out some in the last 12 hours.

The Skin Fold

2006-02-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

Every so often I think back to 3rd Grade when I sat next to an orange haired fella named Jim. His last name started with a B, that's alls I remember. I always found him a bit peculiar, because he was one of the first people I'd ever met in real life with orange hair. His hair was so bright orange that even his eyelashes were orange too, and they sorta made his eyes look like venus flytraps. Not unlike the white eyelashes on my grampa's little white dog named Lumpy... for all we know, her eyes could have very well been venus flytraps (Lumpy wasn't the most friendly dog.)

Jim also had asthma, and I found this perplexing as well. I'd never heard of such a thing until we were playing Marco Polo during recess and he started a-coughing and a-whooping like nothing I've ever heard before. The asthmatic-induced noises he made were demonic to say the least. I always wished I could have asthma too, because it always seemed to get him out of running the mile for Phy Ed. Plus I have to admit, I always wondered what those inhalers tasted like.

One morning in class our teacher Mrs. Hauser handed out Physical Fitness cards that we were going to fill out in the week to come. I don't know if they still do this in schools, but during "Physical fitness week" they'd weigh you, measure you, and test your endurance on things like the 100 yard dash, relay races with chalkboard erasers, rope climbing (reeeowwll!), pull ups, and so on. Your basic public school lab rat thing.

While skimming over my Physical Fitness card, I noticed a term I hadn't seen before. The two words SKIN FOLD were on the card next to an empty box that was to be filled in with SKIN FOLD results.

Skin Fold? Says I to myself. What the fuck is that?

My mind started racing. The only thing I could picture in my head was a line of kids at the nurse's office holding their fitness cards and waiting for their turn to sit on a table. The nurse would then peel the skin of our scalps off to look at our brains, and then "fold" it back over to close things up.

Um. No thank you.

I felt a little ill and wished I had it in me to make myself blow chunks so I could go home for the day. But I just couldn't do it. I figured my ol' pally orange haired Jimmy might have some insight on what this skin fold business was all about, because when you have asthma, you must go to the doctor and get tested a lot. So perhaps he'd had a skin fold or two in his day. So I turned around and axsed him.

"Jimmy what's a Skin Fold?"

"Wha?"

"Skin Fold. Look it's on our cards."

"Oooh. That's when they slice a piece of skin off your dick." (pardon the French, but that's exactly what he said.)

At that moment my throat felt like it dropped into my stomach, turned into powder, and settled to my feet. Not a gall damn split second later, Mrs. Hauser got up and initiated our daily lifeless and robotic reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. All I could do was lip synch the words that day, as I was too paralyzed in fear to be 100 percent patriotic.

After a long morning of mentally shitting my drawers, we had lunch. I could only take a few bites out of my salami sandwich because all I could picture in my head was the school nurse holding a big tube of salami and a knife. Recess came and went, and suddenly the hour of the Skin Fold was looming. Sure enough, it was Phy Ed time and the "Skin Fold Line" was formed. I was wondering why the girls were also in line, but fear was overriding taking that thought any further.

About 10 kids ahead of me I saw the nurse holding the Skin Fold apparatus. It was an evil looking thing; a big white hunk of plastic that had what looked like a big nasty ass narrow pair of pliers on the end of it. I was getting dizzy at the thought of undoing my Star Wars belt and dropping my grey corduroys when my turn came. I was so freaked that I wasn't even paying attention to those being skin-folded before me. I just stood there in fear, making baby steps to the front of that line to be re-circumcised.

And so my turn came. I was numb. In a trance. The nurse said "Just lift your shirt up a little, honey. This won't hurt." The Skin Fold gun approached my 3rd grade side flab in slow motion and gave me a mild pinch, she wrote the measurement down on my card, and off I went to shoot hoops with the other kids in the post-skin fold waiting room of the gym.

Jimmy was there, looked at me and asked "How did it go?"

I wanted to tell him that his description of the skin fold procedure wasn't the most accurate, but then thought maybe because he had asthma, perhaps his skin folds were performed differently like that. So I just said "It was okay," and ran off to the drinking fountain to alleviate my cottonmouth.

I sipped the weird tasting school water and felt the writhing tension in my belly that had been there all day finally begin to back off. I thanked my lucky stars that my scalp, wiener, and sanity were somehow still in tact. Which I guess isn't all that different from what I'm thankful for every other day of my life now that I think about it..

Dude, I am TOADILLY going to die

2006-02-22T18:59:00.000-08:00

I splurged and bought me a dandy tin of $2 Altoids Sour Chewing Gum the other day, mainly because I'm a sucker for tins, and this one happened to be decorated in my favorite shade of green… Not to mention I like sour things, so it was meant to be, or so I thought.

I burn through gum like little kids use tape when wrapping presents. The second the flava starts to dissipate, down the hatch the ABC goes and a new piece is started. This is why I can never buy Fruit Stripes or Juicy Fruit, because replacing sticks of flavorless gum every 15 seconds could get a little expensive over time. Not to mention: Can you imagine the mess with all of those gum wrappers? I'd need to buy a wrapper rake.

So anyhows, a half a day later towards the 15th or so piece of the "about 20 pieces" the tin claims to have, I noticed something on the side of the tin:

BEST WHEN USED BY 13 FEB 06

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but today is February 22nd. Pardon me while I do some simple math:  22 - 13 = 9.  I've been eating gum NINE DAYS past its prime. I say "eating" because although I chew it, I swallow it as well, which thereby classifies my gum consumption technique under the eating category. I know, it's not healthy to swallow it, but either is fast food or most of the other shit that's 1,000 times worse for you but you put in your face anyways, right? Right.

I figured since I'd already downed most of the tin's contents already, I may as well throw the rest down the hatch, too. What good would throwing them out do now? Sure, I could use them as evidence in court, but what good is a $2 court settlement going to do for me if I'm not around to enjoy it?

I guess it's just a matter of time now before I drop dead. Let this be a warning to all of you gum chewers out there: check the expiration dates on the packages, or you could very well end up in my shoes. It's not a good feeling - I have so much I have yet to accomplish. Life has been great so far, but is this how it's going to end? From expired gum?

There is, however, a slight glimmer of hope:

In 1987 my brother, bless his little heart, alerted me of an entire box of unopened KISS trading cards from the 1970s that he found sitting at Shinders. This was back when Band Aid-sized sticks of chewing gum came in packs of cards. I bought every last overpriced pack of KISS cards they had, and lo and behold, the gum was still intact (although it had "grown" onto the backs of the cards over its 10 year hibernation.) It was hard as a rock and a little brownish/yellow looking (not quite the bubbagum pink it once was), but you bet your arse I ate some. It's not very often a KISS fan gets to eat 10 year old KISS card gum. It wasn't a choice; it was my duty. It sort of crumbled like chewy sand in my mouth and tasted like trading cards smell, but eventually took on a gum consistency once gnashed on long enough.

I don't know how many sticks of that shit I ingested, but it was at least 6 or 7 and I seemed to live through that just fine. However - the reason I think I lived was because there was no expiration date printed on the KISS card packages. That gum was made to withstand a nu-cu-lar war and still be intact. It was KISS gum and it was so badass that it didn't NEED no stinkin' expiration date.

Altoids however? I am SO dead. I plan on being cremated. My only request when I die from this tragic gum poisoning incident is that my ashes be placed in the Altoid tin responsible for my demise. I would like it to be mailed to the gas station on 28th and Lyndale Ave. where I bought it from. I will have a handwritten note prepared that I wish to be included with my remains that says "Thanks, I hope you're happy now."

I'll miss you all.

Jack in the Box

2006-02-22T18:58:00.000-08:00

As she stood outside, she heard the bustling traffic in the distance. It sounded as if the highway were breathing, save for a horn honk here and there on a nearby busy street which sort of reminded her of the coughing audience members at the concert hall a few nights before.

She opened her purse and shoved her car keys and makeup aside. After finally unearthing her pack of cigarettes, she carefully removed one from the box and maneuvered it past the purse's walls and its contents as to not bend it. She examined the cigarette closely for loose tobacco shards on the filter end and tapped it on the wall to pack it down some more.

She put it into her mouth and felt the filter stick to her lips ever so slightly. *click* went her lighter, and she held the flame to the end of her cigarette to get it started.

The breathing of the highway suddenly became non-existent as her ears focused on the tip of her cigarette beginning to burn. She pulled a nice long drag off of it to ensure that it was lit. She could hear the tobacco and paper fizzle as the filter gave off a barely audible high pitched whistling noise from the air passing through it.

She exhaled slowly as she put her lighter back in her purse. Taking another drag from her cigarette, she did with intentional sex appeal this time, as if she were a sultry 1950s film actress right about to blow smoke in the lead actor's face telling him to take a hike.

She exhaled and watched the smoke float up towards the sky and disappear. The nicotine was starting to work its magic and the inside of her head began to swirl. It was a long day at work and she had been looking forward to this break for almost 5 hours.

She took another drag.

BAM!

Suddenly all she could hear was the ringing in her ears. She stood there like a dead tree and felt her chest pounding. She was convinced that if her heart was beating any harder that it would burst out of her and bounce down the street to run away from the ruckus that had just ensued.

The cigarette was still dangling in her mouth, but it was no longer lit and the end was split into about 10 strands. Her face was covered in a layer of black soot. She opened her mouth slightly and let the smoldering remains of her cigarette fall to the ground.

That's it, she thought. Never again am I buying my cigarettes from a Magic Shop.

Happy birthday Chuck!

2006-02-20T05:05:00.000-08:00

It's my brother Chuck's birfday today - yaaay! (He's Frensch Flies on me MySpace top 8.)

My brother rules. He plays viola like I like to play geetar. He also does pretty damned good on the recorder, baritone, and the squeeze box if I do say so myself.

He makes very entertaining CDs that you have to hear for yourself.

He played with Trans Siberian Orchestra (in the 'orchestra' section) and said one time that when the guitarist went to play his solo that his amp wasn't on. So guitarist had porno face, but no guitar solo to go with it. THAT is funny. That's payback to that guy for me having to hear that fucking bah badda bah, bah badda bah, bah badda bah song for 3 months straight during the holidays. I'm glad Chuck was there and told me about that.

We've done a lot of smart things together. We used to take his piles of LEGOs and build what we called Torture Towns, comprised of various LEGO sculptures which would either mash or dismember its little LEGO citizens.

We used to open boxes of Jell-O in mom and dad's pantry and eat the powder (if you've never tried and are now contemplating, don't. The gelatin makes it a little chewy.. at least chase with boiling water if you're going to try.)

Once we were kind enough to secretly take my dad's coin collection and cash it in for "real" money. We put it to good use at Walgreen's buying plastic cans of slime and candy. Oh yes, we did. And oh yes, Dad found out and wasn't very happy to say the least.

That's just the tip of the iceberg of the so so many smart things we've done. Chuck is one of the coolest people to hang around with. He's practically like a brother to me! We have so much in common.. such as the same parents and sister.

Have a great birthday, Chuckers! Hopefully be seeing you in a couple o months.

I bought some pot today after work!

2006-02-17T15:45:00.000-08:00

It's amazing how easy it is to find the stuff - not even a half a block away from my apartment in the middle of the afternoon, no less. Oh, I'm gonna party tonight, yes I am.

Grandma's pot that I was using was just too old for my taste. It didn't get the job done anymore. Thanks to the Steeple People, I have new pot now and am ready to cook!

See?

Oh, I guess I meant to type POTS. I won't bother changing the blog title though, as I don't think it could really be misinterpreted, could it? I'm just too tired to add the s's where they're supposed to be; it's been a long day at the office.

On that note, it's time to go put my pot over an open flame and get this weekend started.

James and the Force Fed Flatulence

2006-02-16T14:29:00.000-08:00

Okay, let me lay some shit out for you here about my past. I recently have crossed paths with a lad I used to play with in my toddler days, and I've got a bone to pick with the dude. Mmkay? mmmkay:

James and I used to play together when we were little kids (my mom babysat him when his mother went to work at the cardboard box factory.) I had this Tonka truck. Really awesome Tonka truck, complete with a scooper (it was a yella tractor truck.) I got it as a present for finally going on the big boy potty.
James was always jealous of the fact that I was only 4 years old and could grow armpit hair at such a young age. So what does the little bitch do?

Peep this: He takes the scooper part OFF of my Tonka truck, farts in it, and then holds it to my face. Bitch puts it over my mouth and nose like it's a sawdust mask and pins me down, cause he was always bigger and stronger than I. Uh huh. And he did this on several occasions. Mom never believed me.

And now several years later, here we are, reunited in the real world. Years of therapy later, and I still can't make sense of the farting in the scooper thing. I can still smell it as if it were yesterday. Like deviled eggs and fish. SO. Game motherfuckin' ON. It's payback time. James' ass is grass, and I'm the lawnmower. It's time toupee the fiddler.

This is all to help me get on with my life once and for all. And I wanted to share this story with you, my faithful Meat Smoothie readers, just in case things get a little out of hand and I end up in the slammer for a while.

James: I just ate a buttload of White Castles and baked beans, and I'm comin' after you, boy.

Special thanks to the talented tag team who inspired the telling of this frightful tale. You know who you are...

This Valentines Day, I'm popping the question. Wish me luck!

2006-02-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

Tonight I have very special plans for a very special someone out there.

I'm going to start by making my special homestyle fried chiggen for dinner. It will be accompanied by a side of buttered and lightly salted grilled asparagus, mashed tayters, homemade white gravy, and the most incredibly delicious glazed carrot coins a person could ever hope for. I haven't decided yet if I want to go with buttermilk biscuits or garlic toast, but I'm leaning towards the garlic toast.

It will be complimented by a slightly chilled bottle of wine, and an ice cold carafe of water just to cleanse the palette.

Then, after dinner will come the proposal. I'm so nervous about this! But life is all about taking risks. Like I've always said - I refuse to grow up to be the old man in the old folk's home looking back at my life playing the "wish I wooda" game. Hells no, that's not my style. Life is too short, so speak up or you'll wish you would have; knowwhatI'msayin? And that's certainly the case in regards to this evening.

We'll retire back to the kitchen where the proposal will take place - right before desert. I will pop the question to Frank and he will generously accept.

I mean, of course he will. What cat wouldn't want some kitty treats after dinner?

Febrooary is National Dirty Onion Armpit Awareness Month

2006-02-12T14:28:00.000-08:00

Says who? Says me.

I walked past 4 people today (all men, mind you), and fer cryin' out loud. Put on some fucking deodorant, man! Seriously.

Sure, we all have those days where we're in a hurry and forget. Or we're overly active at times playing tennis, jogging, or even simply crouching in the bushes for hours on end stalking our would-be loved ones. The stuff wears off. Shit happens.

However, the people whose repugnant funk left me gasping today I know for a fact are not regular users. They are the people that have become so acclaimated to their own bouquet that they don't realize things have become a little stale over the years. Or they simply just don't give a rat's ass.

Case in point: Mr. Workplace Maintenance Man. Or Pigpen as I've dubbed him. An absolutely brutal adversary to all things in regards to applying pitstick. Every place I've ever worked at has had at least one Pigpen, and this guy immediately won the title at my current job. Just like the Peanuts character, there's an aura of dirty onion vapour surrounding him 24/7. And it trails up to 50 feet behind him (that's not an exaggeration - my co-workers will vouch for me), sometimes taking up to 10 minutes to dissipate. Dude doesn't simply forget every so often. He's forgotten every day.. since I've been working there, at least.

And it's embarrassing, because 5 minutes after he walks down the hall, you'll be walking in it and someone exits an office door, sees you, and immediately assumes you're the culprit. Sort of like the guy who farts in the elevator and gets off for the remaining passengers to be bewildered when the doors open on the next floor. All they can do is helplessly watch people step inside and wince.

Workplace Pigpen alone is reason enough to declare February National Dirty Onion Armpit Awareness Month. But I encountered 3 more people today - one guy who was even wearing a nice big parka, and gawd damn. If his odor was as loud as it was through a down-filled body-masking forcefield, I can only imagine what it must be like when he takes it off.

So if you all could just give your person a good armpit sniffing and make sure everything's in decent smelling condition, that would be great. And spread the word to everyone else while you're at it.

Together we can all make a difference, people. In the mean time, I'm going to Home Depot to get a face mask and some air sanitizer.

For Sale: 1 Sony™ Micycle™ Edition iPod™ $320.98/firm

2006-02-08T14:57:00.000-08:00

Just lookie here at what I have in store for you, you sexy portable music lover, you:

For Sale: 1 Sony™ Micycle™ Edition iPod™ $320.98/firm

In a last ditch effort to gather monies together to own one of the newer iPods, I’m selling my old one at an exceptional price, while supplies last. I hate to see it go, but I need to make room for my new iPod.

This baby holds up to 700MB of music with stunning CD quality sound. That’s right - 700MB! In old world standards, that’s 1 record album's worth of music. If you're listening to the Ramones, that means you can fit nearly 30 songs in this iPod at any given time! Sony™ Micycle™ Edition iPod™ will play up to 80 minutes of music.

Tired of scrolling through countless menus with that pesky iPod dial? The Sony™ Micycle™ Edition iPod™ has got you covered. This iPod has stop, pause, fast forward, reverse, and even skip buttons! You can randomize song playback, even repeat songs you want to hear over and over again!

There’s also a unique EQ feature: 2 bass boosting presets that provide enough bottom to keep you raisin' the roof in even the noisiest of environments!

It features an easy to read non-illuminated display screen that shows you which track you're listening to as well as how much time has elapsed and which EQ preset you're currently using. That means there's no more of those complex battery-hogging video screens that are too small to watch anything on anyhow (that's what teevee and movie screens are for, you silly goof!)

If you act now, I'll throw in some extra memory for your Sony™ Micycle™ Edition iPod™. I’m offering 10 pieces of fresh, new, high quality CD-R media to the lucky buyer, free of charge. That's an additional 7000MB of storage up to 13.3 hours more music!

Now let's talk about looks. The Sony™ Micycle™ Edition iPod™ is a beautiful midnight blue color with brilliant glitter inlay if you look close enough. It also features a 5 year old CHECKED FOR ACCURACY sticker from Taco Bell to give it that retro worn-in look that everyone's going after these days. You know what they say: "Old.. it's the new New!"

Act now, as this baby is going to sell fast. I'm willing to accept an even trade for a like new 60 gig iPod if you're sick of yours and want to go old school. You'll be the envy of your friends when they see you carrying it around. And how nice will it be when they ask you where they can get one? You can proudly say "Well, you can't get one. This is a Sony™ Micycle™ Edition iPod™. Only one was made, and it’s mine. Mine. All. Mine."

The phone lines are open. Cash and money orders only, please.

I'm in the midst of a moderately peculiar dream.

2006-02-07T15:39:00.000-08:00

I can’t remember exactly how it started, but one of the first things I remember about this dream is punching my alarm clock because it was making a horrendous amount of hullabaloo oh so early in the morning.

The punch silenced the alarm clock and Frank, who I guess was sleeping next to my head gave me a reeereooowll raaaaraah? meow when he saw me sit up.

I got out of bed and ate two bowls of Target’s Market Pantry brand corn flakes seasoned with a wee pinch of sugar. I then showered, shaved and applied product to my hair to give it that thick, rather unkempt front lawn look that I like to go for.

It was the weirdest thing.

Then I headed off to work and got a coffee on the way. A nice waifish tattooed girl was behind the counter and she was rather quiet, I’m guessing because in this dream it was quite early in the morning. She gave me my coffee, told me to have a good morning, and off to work I went.

When I arrived at work, everybody was there that usually is in real life and our server was down. A co-worker asked me if I’d like to see her pictures that she had taken on a recent vacation, and I took a gander. Amongst the many fine pictures was one of a dead half eaten deer that they’d spotted whilst snowmobiling in the northern woods of MN. I told her that the deer wasn’t dead, rather that it was just sleeping.. and suggested that she should use said deer photo as desktop wallpaper at her workstation.

Yeah, I have some pretty weird dreams.

Next thing I knew, I was still at work, but the servers were back up. My boss came in shortly thereafter and asked if everything was working okay and we said “yes.” I put my headphones on and listened to the Cinderella song Coming Home on repeat, 'cause evidently for whatever reason in this dream the song got stuck in my head from out of nowhere. It's a great song though, really.

Then, the strangest thing occurred: Still in my dream, mind you, I started writing a blog about this really weird dream that I was in the middle of and I'll be damned, I posted the darn thing on MySpace.

I’m dying to find out what happens next. This is the most realistic and uneventful dream I’ve ever had… I sure hope things get a little more exciting than this before I wake up and find myself back in the real world.

It's the only real world I know. The one where I’m surrounded by incredibly expensive vintage guitars and my harem of admirers. They’re all at my side swilling ale (and/or sodie pop), listening to music, playing video games, and bugging me to take them out back to my personal amusement park to pet the giraffes and ride on the ferris wheel.

Yeah, if someone could just be a lamb and wake me up so I can get back to that, um… yeeeah… that would be just great. I’ll be sitting here at work stuck in this gawd awfully boring dream in the mean time.

T0day’s c0mput3r tip:

2006-02-07T14:42:00.001-08:00

T0day I gav3 my c0mput3r's k3yb0ard a g00d cl3aning aft3r spilling s0m3 0rang3 juic3 0n th3 spac3bar | I t00k it all apart and s0ak3d th3 k3ys in s0apy wat3r |

Man’ y0u w0uldn,t b3li3v3 what a dirty m3ss th3r3 is living und3r th0s3 k3ys y0u typ3 with|

W0rd t0 th3 wis3 th0ugh+

If y0u d0 what I did and tak3 all 0f th3 l3tt3rs 0ff 0f y0ur c0mput3r k3yb0ard t0 cl3an it 0ff’ b3 sur3 y0u hav3 a pictur3 0f wh3r3 all 0f th3 k3ys ar3 Supp0s3d t0 g0 0nc3 y0u put it all back t0g3th3r|

It's g0ing t0 b3 a whil3 b3f0r3 I figur3 0ut wh3r3 all 0f th3s3 k3ys ar3 supp0s3d t0 b3... H3LP!

Sinc3r3ly,

Micycl3.

Note to anyone who may have just moved into a new apartment:

2006-02-07T14:42:00.000-08:00

If your bathroom window is about 20 feet away from a window in the neighboring complex that appears to be that of a yellow kitchen with me in it, I have one small suggestion:

You might want to close those blinds when you're poopin'.

Pretty please with sugar on top.

I beg you.

No.... really.

When I come home tonight, I want to look out and see a nice miniblind pulled alllllll the way down when I peep across the alley. You've got a good 4-5 hours to comply, as I'm on my way out for the duration of the evening.

I'll fix mine this weekend so you don't have to worry anymore, but in the mean time if you could just be a lamb..

There's no such thing as a perfect crime.

2006-02-07T14:41:00.001-08:00

I had 6 or 7 stray Cheerios left in my bowl with a wee splash of sugary milk. I had to leave the room for a minute to answer my telly-a-phone and came back to discover that my Cheerios and most of the milk had been stolen.

However. Take notice of the footprints left behind at the scene of the crime:

It is clear that whomever committed this heinous crime had really small feet. Not to mention they weren't very bright nor efficient in the heat of their criminal activites (notice how they took the long way to get to the bowl. Pshhht! Amateurs.)

I'm going through my entire apartment complex right now to look at all of my neighbor's feet and so help me gawd if I find the culprit, there's going to be some Hell to pay. The sugar-infused "melk" and slightly mushy Cheerios are my favorite part.

(On a side note I just noticed that I have a picture with my Wheaties tuque in it right smack dab in the middle of a Cheerio blawg. Perhaps I've found a new culinary breakfast blend here. You know.. sort of like that Hey.. you got your chocolate in my peanut butter! accident.)

Dr Pepper: a man of mystery

2006-02-07T14:41:00.000-08:00

This isn't the most fascinating thing to write about, but these are the sort of things that keep me up late at night.

I was just sipping on a Dr Pepper and got to wondering: What kind of pepper gives this drink such a unique and refreshing flavor? It doesn't taste like any peppers that I've ever eaten or any powders that I've used to enhance the tongue-burning factor of my foods. It really doesn't taste like anything but Dr Pepper.

And is the "Dr" part of the name representative of some sort of healing medicinal powers this drink holds (aside from quenching one's thirst)? And why is there no dot at the end of "Dr" in Dr Pepper? Is it not actually a doctor? Did they originally name it Dracula Pepper but need to cut out the acula to get the name to fit in the logo?

So I busted out my giant magnifying glass, put on my trench coat and detective hat, and off to YAHOO! I went to investigate. Here's what I found:

What flavor is Dr Pepper?

Huh. Way to answer a question without answering it. Looks like I now have the "Dr" part figured out, at least. But damn... I still can't place what that flavor is when I drink it. It's so weird - I try and try to figure it out, but in the end always hit that brick wall of telling myself Micycle. It tastes like Dr Pepper. Get over it.

The Chronicles of Pinto, Vol I Chapter XIV pp 22-25

2006-02-04T14:40:00.000-08:00

Attn. motorhead bitches: I repeat: the Pinto is Not for Sale.
A few days ago I walked out to my car and saw a sheet of paper underneath the driver's side winda-sheild wiper. Aw shit, says I to myself. Another ticket. Upon closer inspection, it was not a ticket. It was yet another note from a would-be buyer that thought I actually would flirt with even the faintest notion of selling my car:

Nah. Nah. Nah.

That's not how this works, Bob. I've known this car for my entire life and nothing, not even ten hundred billion dollars will separate me from the Pinto. Not even eleventy hundred billion dollars. Not a cure for the common cold. The blueprints build to a better mousetrap. Nothing you can do or say will ever make me get up one day and say "Hey, you know what? I'm selling the Pinto!"

One more time: The Pinto is Not for Sale. The Pinto is not just a car, it's my own little time capsule. I will be driving this thing until I can't drive it no mo, at which point I will park it in an undisclosed secluded location for it to die peacefully. I will visit it, bring it flowers, and sit behind the wheel making vrooom vrooooom! sounds.

Well. On second thought, maybe I can let it go for a couple hundred thousand. But only if said buyer happened to be a very attractive, witty and lovely single lady who could provide me with a cashier's check for $300,000 and also want to hire me as her own personal muse. I will write up a contract and in the contract, you may want to make note of some of the small print. It will read as follows:

- The Buyer can only drive the car when the Seller is in it.
- The "Buyer driving the car" is defined as the Buyer sitting in the passenger seat and asking the Seller to drive it (that is unless the Buyer knows how to drive a 4 speed stick.)

If you meet all of the above criteria, Bob, shoot me an email or wait by the car for me to come out someday so we can talk.

Women's Expo 2006 (part 1 of 2)

2006-01-30T16:26:00.000-08:00

Saturday January 28th was not just any Saturday. Oh no, it was Women's Expo Saturday. To all the Manly Man Dudes scoffing right now, go ahead and be jackasses and poke fun at it, I don't care. To Hell with the whole lot of ya, you don't know what you're missing. You wouldn't know a good time if it stood up and gassed right in your face.

It's truly the shit. I was hooked the first time I went quite a few years back and have made a point of it to go back since. To those of you who have never been, it's basically a big auditorium filled with booths of people pimping various products and services. The best part, however, is the free samples, which there are many of.

Take last year for example: I actually had to go to the car to empty our stash bags out and make room for more. It gets heavy carrying around all of that free shit you get. Vitamin gumballs, various trial size samples of shampoos, soaps, and other topically applied bodily toxins.. foods, detergents, coupons, cereal, oh my. And that's only the stuff you take home. There's also copious amounts of ready-to-eat samples of cake, soup, salad, cheeses, meats, juice, ice cream, candy you name it, its there. Be sure to bring your appetite I'd always tell people.

Basically you're paying $10-15 to gorge yourself like a little piggy on a million different foods, get at least a pillow case full's worth of take-home booty, and be surrounded by hundreds of glorious womens (with the occasional grumpy bored husband that was dragged along and doesnt know what a good time is.) The first year I went I was all like Hellllllll yes, sign me up for the next 10 years please! If a bomb were to ever drop, I thought to myself, this is the place I'd want to be. These things are like a People Watcher's wet dream. You ain't seen nothin' till you've been in a mile long line for free Nestle Drumsticks watching people impetuously elbow one other as the hander-outers repeatedly exclaim "One per person!" like trained monkeys. Muthafukkin' Survival of the Fittest to the extreme; that's right.

One year we even caught a Rick Springfield concert as a special Women's Expo extra, and let me tell you. There's nothing like watching Rick smash a dozen roses on his guitar to the delight and amusement of hundreds of screaming, ravishing ladies. Rick still got it goin on.

So last week my seester Lisa, who was taking her daughter to be initiated into her first ever Womens Expo experience called and invited me along. Needless to say I was in like Liza Minnelli at some pretentious washed up asshole celebrity wedding with an open bar: I pretty much said "Yes!" before she was even done asking.

Saturday morning 9:30am

Lisa and my lovely niece Deb picked me up from my weekend morning coffee/book ritual at my preferred local caffeine emporium. I had just sucked back one of the best iced mochas ever and made sure to do my bag carrying stretches, frothing at the mouth in anticipation over being part of yet another one of these freak shows. By golly, I was frothing so feverishly it looked as if someone had just fed me a box of Alka Seltzer.

And off we went to the Minneapplesauce Convention Center for our Girls Day Out. One $9 parking ramp tab and 4 block walk later, there it was: Women's Expo 2006. Right through the gates we each nabbed a lovely red Channel 5 News window scraper which we dropped into our red Channel 5 News bags. We shook the bags a little to make sure they hit bottom, making room for the stash to come.

Such a magnificent bounty awaited us. Such anticipation. Such splendor. All under one convention center dome-shaped roof. And Hell if anyone was going to get in my way this year at the Fruit Stripes booth. Oh no. I was ready to fight, and I was going to fight hard for my free stuff. It's the crux of what this fine country of ours was built on: Freedom and the willingness to fight for it.

Channel 5 Bags in hand, we all moved forward.

To be continued. Please tune in back to http://www.meatsmoothie.blogspot.com/ over the next few days for the exciting Women's Expo 2006 conclusion. (Cliffhanger blawg format inspired by Debbie Cakes)

I kicked Artificial Intelligence's ASS.

2006-01-29T19:07:00.000-08:00

I've been a lil' hooked on the game 20 Questions (the online version) since reading about it on a message board last year. For those of you unfamiliar, long story short, you think of something and it’s supposed to guess what you’re thinking within 20 questions, hence the incredibly clever name of the game. It's really quite fun - you can play it for free here or go buy a sassy little ball version of it for $15-20 in stores.

Recently, I wondered if 20 Questions was familiar with what a Micycle is. Sadly, it really had no clue. Here's each question that it asked me followed by my answer:

1. It is classified as Animal.
2. Can it be trained to obey commands? Yes.
3. Does it swim? No.
4. Does it have paws? No.
5. Does it have hooves? No.
6. Does it have a cold nose? Sometimes.
7. Can you see it in a zoo? Sometimes.
8. Is it a type of bird? No.
9. Is it a specific color? Yes.
10. Does it weigh more than 1 ton? No.
11. Is it dangerous? Doubtful.
12. Is it bigger than sofa? No.
13. Does it like to run? Sometimes.
14. Is it very large? No.
15. Does it have a long tail? No.
16. Does it make noise? Yes.
17. I guessed that it was a chimpanzee? Wrong.
18. Does it grunt? Sometimes.
19. I guessed that it was a bonobo? Wrong.
20. I guessed that it was a seal? Wrong.
21. Does it eat seeds? Sometimes.
22. Does it need love? Usually.
23. Have you seen one in real life? Yes.
24. Does it come in many varieties? No.
25. I guessed that it was an orangutan? Wrong.
26. Is it an insect? No.
27. Does it make a good pet? Sometimes.
28. Is it originally from Europe? No.
29. I guessed that it was a baby? Wrong.

Q30. I am guessing that it is a pug? Wrong

You won!

Okay. Now here's where it gets interesting. 20Q actually had the nerve to disagree with some of my answers! Dude, I think I know me better than you, you stoopid artificial intelligence. Here's what 20Q.com told me after I was done handing its ass to it on a silver platter:

Contradictions Detected
The opinions of the AI are its own and are based on the input of people playing. It does not matter if our answers disagree, as over time my answers will change to reflect common knowledge. If you feel that I am in error, the only way to fix it is to play again.

Does it swim? You said No, I say Yes.
Does it have a cold nose? You said Sometimes, I say No.
Can you see it in a zoo? You said Sometimes, I say No.
Is it a specific color? You said Yes, I say No.
Does it eat seeds? You said Sometimes, I say Doubtful.
Does it come in many varieties? You said No, I say Probably.
Does it make a good pet? You said Sometimes, I say No.

Um. Yeah. Nice try, but wrong on all accounts. I eat punkin and sunflower seeds sometimes. I only come in one variety. I go to the zoo sometimes. I never really learned how to swim. 20Q, you don't know me.

Here's what it told me next. A list of Similar Objects:

Similar Objects a chimpanzee, a bonobo, an orangutan, a baby, a pug, a kestrel (falcon), a seal, Mickey Mouse (cartoon character), an ape, a celebrity, a boston terrier, a ballerina.

Sure, I guess I'm cool with all of that. And last but not least, when you're done playing, 20Q challenges your answers one last time:

Uncommon Knowledge about me 20Q thinks these may be wrong
Is it commonly used? I say Probably.
Do you use it in public? I say Probably.
Can it help you find your way? I say Yes.
Is it annoying? I say Probably.
Does it provide protection? I say Yes.
Can it carry people? I say Yes.

Okay, so I guess it may have a few good points there. Anywho, I’m glad to say that I kicked Artificial Intelligence’s ass fair and square. Go ahead and try and call me a chimp or a ballerina, I still won. Sticks and stones, 20Q. Sticks and stones.

Dear Oprah: Don't be hatin'.

2006-01-27T18:07:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't heard, let me sum up this recent Oprah Winfrey gnus story for you:

1. Oprah Winfrey reads James Frey memoir "A Million Little Pieces"
2. Oprah believes its claim to be a harrowing nonfiction account of the authors struggle with chemical dependency
3. Oprah pimps book to her audience as her Book-O-the-Month
4. Everyone follows Oprah's word, buys book, reads it, also believing it's nonfiction
5. Whistle is blown on author James Frey, saying many details in book are bogus and ornate
6. Oprah calls into Larry King shortly thereafter saying "Na-AHHHHHH! It's real, dummy!" and sticks her tongue out at him
7. Oprah realizes she was wrong
8. Oprah has author James Frey on her show to flame him and hopefully make herself not feel like such a jackass.

While hearing news clips on the radio of her flaming this James Frey guy the other day, I got to wondering if Oprah reads my blawgs. You know, I'm sure Oaps grabs her boy toy Stedman, picks out hats for them to wear, and then they take their iBook and hit the local Starbucks on weekends. He reads the newspaper and sips on a cup of lukewarm water, and she hits up Blogger and MySpace to see what I'm up to. 'Cause Oaps and I, we go back a long way (she likes it when I call her 'Oaps'.) We worked at a Musicland together back in the late 80s before her talk show really took off.

Oaps, I just wanted to tell you that what I write in these journals is all 100% true personal experience and all from the heart... So don't you be reading my offerings and getting all skeptical and shit. You can't be hatin' just because of being burned by this phony Frey guy.

I really do want a pet giraffe. I really did lose my watch that one time and find it under a sock. I really do have a blind neighbor that accidentally crawls into my bed at night after cleaning my apartment and eating all of my hot dogs. I did have a torrid love affair with Olivia Newtown-John. There really is a bald alien man at my local coffee shop that is studying my behavior.

Its all fer real, and you had better live up to your promise of featuring my book in your Book-O-The-Month club once its published. After all, you dont want me leaking that little secret of ours from the Musicland days out to the tabloids, now, would you? You know the one involving me finding you and my girlfriend at the time in the stockroom making out? Man that room reeked of marijuana something fierce.