"The Dude abides..."

A Failed Comedy

2007-03-16T00:21:00.000-06:00

"Man Of the Year"

A great idea for a movie, and one so representitive of our current times. Robin Williams as a smart personable political comedian who has a show on TV. (John Stewart, anyone?) Suddenly he has the idea to run for president. He wins. There you have the great set up for a funny political movie to follow him through his first year or so and see what changes in the three branches of the US Government because of him. A real opportunity for a writer and a director to make a good point and really say something about the current political climate. But no, that doesn't happen. Instead you get a pseudo-comedy that looks great in the previews and completely fails when you watch the entire thing.

Apparently the writer didn't think that the above story line was enough and wasn't fully satisfied with just writing a comedy. He (Barry Levinson) wanted to make this a political thriller and by doing so, failed miserably at a comedy and at a thriller. He introduces a computer programmer (Laura Linney) who works for a company that gets the go ahead to do the entire electronic voting booths throughout the country. She finds a bug in the program, and alerts the CEO, but he sees his stock rising and if he were to announce this glitch, he would lose a lot of money, so he drugs her, gets her put into a hospital and fires her from the company. The rest of the story is her trying to tell Robin Williams that he's not actually president and the electronic voting company trying to find her to stop her from telling anybody.

Both ideas are good alone, but somehow they completely fail when put together. Kind of like lobster and oreos. You like lobster, and you like oreos, but sandwich some lobster between oreos.... I don't think so.

Needless to say, I was dissapointed. It could have been a great movie. I guess I like "Dave" too much and thought from the previews I was getting into something more reminicent of that. I guess I'll just have to watch "Dave" sometime this weekend. Kevin Kline is great in that movie.

And so it begins...

2007-03-12T23:32:00.000-06:00

So if any of you do not know - a couple friends and I started an Irish band awhile back for the sole purpose of having way too much fun the week of St Paddy's Day. It is a goal I think we might just accomplish.

The band is called "Juice of the Barley" after the Gaelic quote (not written here in Gaelic, but in English so that more that 6 people can read it):

"The milk of the cow is good for the calf, but the juice of the barley for me"

The band numbers 4, and features Dennis Bigelow on the guitar and lead vocals, Carole Lundren on fiddle, Sam Ernst on bodhran and harmony vocals, and myself on piano, harmonica, lead and harmony vocals.

It's been way too much fun getting together and jamming, and we've decided to stick around awhile and play year round, depending on the gigs that we get.

And on Saturday night, the madness started. We had a small intimate kickoff party with some great friends and some great beer to get things started. If you were unfortunate enough to miss said party, check out the Juice of the Barley myspace site for the complete rundown of all upcoming shows.

The pictures are from our living room show, I have to send props out to Kim who is responsible for the Manchester jersey and hat I'm wearing - I know it's not Irish, but I was so unbelievably excited that I got it, I had to wear it for the party.

And so raise your glasses and join me in the most traditional of all Irish toasts:

"May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be at your back, may the sun shine warm upon your face and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand."

Hope to see you out this week and if not - have a happy St Paddy's Day with all your friends.

Best movie I've seen in a long time

2007-03-04T13:47:00.000-07:00

I just saw the movie "Stranger the Fiction".

I loved it.

I'm not even going to review it, because I don't want create any preconcieved notions about it.

Just go see it. It's fantastic.

John Butler is a madman on the 12 string guitar

2007-03-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

Words cannot describe how much the John Butler Trio rock live.

The best word I can think of to even begin to encapsulate the awesomeness of this show is "powerful". Powerful in all of it's meanings. The music, the sound, the lyrics, the attitude - all just blew me away.

The show was billed as an "acoustic" show, but I don't know if it would be possible for them to rock any harder. John Butler has an amazing effect on his acoustic guitars that rivals any electric rock guitarist. Half way through the show he played an eight minute solo instrumental on the 12 string that expanded my known world on what is possible on that instrument. The rest of the show he continued to astound switching from 12 string, to Dobro, to lap slide, to banjo and even some ukulele. The bass and the drummer were equally as mind-blowing on their respective instruments. The final encore song went on for a good ten minutes featuring an incredible bass solo followed by an amazing drum solo that left everyone in the crowd screaming for more. Between songs throughout the night John Butler would bring it down and tell the crowd a little bit about the song and where he was in his life when writing it which gave a very cool intimate "Storytellers" feel to this sold out show at the Fox.

Basically what I'm getting at here is that the John Butler Trio rocks. If you haven't seen them live make it a top priority. That's all I'm saying.

The Shins Rock the house and Cliff Diving at "The Most Exciting Restaurant in the World"

2007-02-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

Wow.

Let me tell you something, Denver. You put out quite the night. Even hitting rush hour straight on couldn't put a damper on this evening.

It's been so long since I've been down to Denver during a rush hour that I completly forgot they existed. I'm used to trying my patience on Shields and Mulberry trying to get home from work - that's nothing compared to going 7 mph on a four lane interstate jam packed with cars. And then just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" came on the radio and all was better. Check out the music video for that song if you don't already know what I mean.

Then it was time for dinner - not my choice, but I was all for it when I heard what Cynthia suggested and all of the sudden we found ourselves at the entrance to the Denver, nay, Colorado landmark: Casa Bonita. I hadn't been there for probably 20 years and it definitely was everything I remember and more. Self proclaimed as "The Most Exciting Restaurant In The World" I would have to agree. It's set up exactly like an amusement park all the way down to the line you have to wait in to order and to get into the actual restaurant. Then once you get to the tables you're surrounded by palm trees, cliffs, water falls, old "Mexican" posters and decorations, Mariachi bands and high school actors and members of the local dive team who work part time putting on a melodrama with cliff diving every 15 minutes. Pretty spectacular. We had fun.

Then it was on to The Fillmore to see The Shins. It'd been a couple years since I had seen a show at The Fillmore and I forgot what a great venue it is. We got there in time to catch the last few songs of one of the opening bands - Viva Voca - a duo that had kind of a catchy Weezer type sound to them. The girl sang and played an electric two necked guitar/bass while the guy sang and played keyboard and drums at the same time. Pretty cool to watch.

Then The Shins came on and rocked the house. I've got their new album "Wincing the Night Away" and was sure that they'd start with the opening track on the album "Sleeping Lessons". I was right, and it just got better from there. After "Sleeping Lessons" they went right into "Austraila" followed by "Pam Berry" immediatly into "Phantom Limb" which was incredible. Next they played a couple songs off their oldler albums "Kissing the Lipless", "Girl on the Wing", and "Mine's Not a High Horse". After that came "New Slang" when all the 16 year old girls (and other Garden State fans) when crazy and started screaming. Definite highlights were "Saint Simon" (which totally made Cynthia's night) where they got the whole crowd to sing along on the "La la" parts. "Pressed in a Book" was a definite favorite of mine as well as "A Call to Apathy". They ended the show with "Girl Inform Me" which was a great high energy song and a perfect song to go out on. The sold out crowd was great and the Fillmore even gave the band little trophys for selling out the show which the brought out on stage and showed everybody.

Overall it was an awesome show - one that I would reccommend not to miss when they're anywhere nearby your area of residence.

Here's to another fabulous night, Denver. Rock on.

Strange Happenings in Local Ice Chest

2007-01-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

Check this out:
I filled up a normal ice cube tray midday and then 8 hours later we needed some ice, and upon removing the tray from the freezer we found a freak occurrence. Sometime during the freezing process, normal everyday physics had flown out the window and left us with the ice cube shown. Dennis put it in his tea and as far as I know is still living normally, so it must have just been the physical properties of the ice cube that had changed inexplicably and not the chemical properties. What made this freak occurrence take place? We are without explanation.

Weird dream

2007-01-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

I had this crazy dream last night, which is weird because I usually never remember my dreams. Our family was visiting some friends who lived right by a harbour on an ocean and there was a big steam powered paddle boat that was just floating out in the harbour. Then my dad and I thought it would be a cool picture if I were to jump in the ocean - it was shallow enough to stand - and push the huge boat around. But as we started walking down to the water this big storm came up and the water got really rough, but I thought I'd do it anyway so I jumped in with my clothes and sandals on and the water immediately took the sandals off of my feet. I kept looking around the bottom for the sandals, but all I could find were other people's flip flops. I was so mad at myself for not taking off my shoes before jumping in and now they were gone forever.

When I woke up this morning I was so disappointed and still mad at myself for losing my sandals. And then I realized that it was just a dream.

Shoveling for days!

2007-01-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

So there was a blizzard in Colorado. Everybody in the country knows this. We were on national news and not only because DIA had to cancel a thousand flights. We got about two feet of snow on the first blizzard and then a week later we got another eight inches. Fun times, unless you've got a two wheel drive Oldsmobile that doesn't like snow and ice.

Wednesday I had taken the day off of work with the intention of doing brunch at Lucille's (one of the best breakfast places in Fort Collins) and then the brewery tours with some friends of mine. Budweiser was already closed so we decided to meet at Lucille's at 11:00. By this time it was a full on blizzard. Then we made our way over to Fort Collins brewery (leaving my car at Lucille's) and to our utter disappointment they were "closed". The door was unlocked and there were people working there, but they refused to give us any tasters. We were there, they were there and the beer was there, but for some odd reason we left without any tasters. Disappointed to say the least. Then it was New Belgium Brewery. We got there just as they were closing up the registers, but being the cool people they are, they showed us around a little and gave us an awesome taster and a couple glasses and bottle openers. Then it was on to Odell's who were completely open and acting like nothing was any different than any normal day. So after a great taster at Odell's and a great tour we headed over to Wal-Mart to buy Madden 2007 for Nintendo Wii. For the rest of the afternoon (with the blizzard raging outside) we were working up a sweat playing football.

When we emerged from the basement to walk and get food it was as if we were in some post-apocalyptic zombie movie. I kept waiting for the looting to begin. At least a foot of snow with more coming down and cars were beginning to become abandoned. Needless to say the pizza tasted amazing.

Upon reaching the car we found it to be covered in snow with a huge bank behind it, but with a couple pushes and gunning the engine the car bashed through the snow and was able to drive away. However...it got stuck about three blocks from the house...

The next three days were full of movies and shoveling. Then it was Christmas, which was nice, and then the next Thursday it snowed another eight inches. More shoveling and watching movies.

It might melt by March...

Happy New Years!

Another quick barrage of movie reviews

2006-12-11T18:11:00.000-07:00

"Shopgirl" - Not sure if I really liked it. There were definitely several parts that just made you feel awkward, and I'm not a big fan of movies that make me feel like that. Steve Martin did a decent job, but more of the definite older man of the picture - think "LA Story" or "Father of the Bride" with no humor. Jason Schwartzman is also good in it, but his performance is where a lot of the awkwardness of the movie comes from.

"Topaz" - A good spy film. It's old and so kind of slow, but I enjoyed it. Not Hitchcock's best, but definitely not one of his worst.

"Cool Hand Luke" - You need to see this movie. It's a classic. Paul Newman and George Kennedy are incredible. A great story about the unbreakable will of a man.
"That old Luke smile. Oh, Luke. He was some boy. Cool Hand Luke. Hell, he's a natural-born world-shaker."

"Junebug" - Not quite sure what I thought of this movie. The performances of the cast was good enough, but the story was nothing to spectacular. Although it didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth, the was nothing quite memorable about it either. Good one to skip.

"Hoodwinked" - Thought it was going to be much better than it was. It had it's moments, but as is it in most of these movies, the moments that it has you've seen on the previews and the rest is just filler. Could be a good family movie, but then there are others that are much better.

"Terminator 3" - Pretty sweet. Good third film of a pretty cool trilogy. Although, I wouldn't be completely floored if they released another. Arnold's back and bad as ever although this time even more than in Terminator 2, you have no idea how he's going to win as out matched as he is. The story is definitely good enough to keep you entertained through the parts that have a little less action although those parts are few and far between. Check it out for a good entertaining couch night.

"The Squid and the Whale" - Didn't like it. Very disturbing. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney had really good performances, but if I had never seen it I wouldn't be any less for it.

"Munich" - Powerful movie, powerful filming, writing and acting. Another good serious Stephen Spielberg success.

"Pride and Prejudice" - I haven't read the book, nor have I seen the BBC edition of the movie that came out a while ago and is about three times as long. I've heard that people who have read the book or seen the other version are really disappointed with this movie, but I thought it was actually pretty good. Donald Sutherland as the father of the girls does a great job, and Keira Knightley does a great job as well, although I'm a little biased on that point.

"The Sentinel" - Great movie. Intense all the way through and keeps you on the edge of your seat. The performances of Michael Douglas, Keifer Sutherland and Eva Longorina do not hurt the film either.

"Saint Ralph" - I really liked this movie, although there's some stuff in the beginning you're going to have to look over. Don't watch this movie with your parents but I think watching it separate from each other, each party would really enjoy it. A story about a boy with everything against him striving to do the impossible: win the Boston Marathon. It's definitely a drama, with some great funny parts in it as well as a lot of things to really make you think.

"Lucky Number Slevin" - Fast paced filming, smart writing, quick dialog and great performances from the all star cast make this a film not to miss. A little violent in times (it's about two rival gang leaders and a hitman) but that's easy to look over in a film this good. Sir Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman play the two rival gang leaders and have an incredible scene between them. Bruce Willis is still in his prime and there are two surprisingly good performances from both Josh Hartnett and Lucy Liu whom I'm starting to like more and more with each movie I see them in.

"Art School Confidential" - Not as good as I thought it was going to be. Couldn't tell if they wanted to make it a mystery, a romantic comedy, or just a stupid college life run of the mill comedy. For me it ended up turning into the last one, just with out being very funny. Skip it.

"X-Men III: The Last Stand" - Wow. Really good movie. Action packed, good story line, great acting and unexpectedly dark. Very cool effects. Best of the trilogy. See it if you liked the other two, or even kind of liked the other two. If these type of movies aren't for you, then you probably won't see it anyway.

"Cocktail" - It's okay. Nothing too special although there's a good 10 to 15 minutes of Tom Cruise and co-star Bryan Brown doing some really cool bottle tricks while bar tending in crowded NYC bars. Other than that, I think it was only popular because it came out shortly after "Top Gun".

"The Break Up" - Surprisingly more of a drama than a comedy, although it definitely did have its laughs. Vince Vaughn is Vince Vaughn, and if you've liked him before you'll like him now. Same with Jennifer Aniston and same with John Favreau. The writing is pretty good though, and for all it's billed as a comedy - it's a good serious movie that I think couples will really enjoy.

"A Prairie Home Companion" - I liked it enough, but nothing really great. I think I liked it as much as I did because I've listed to the radio show enough that I really got the characters. It was interesting seeing Garrison Keillor as an actor, but I would definitely say that John C. Reilly and Woody Harrleson stole the show. Their number towards the end of the film was a high point in the film for me and had me laughing out loud. A good family movie with not a lot to it.

"The Prestige" - Really good movie. Thriller that keeps you guessing (or at least kept me guessing, Julia caught the ending much sooner than I did) until the end, or nearly the end. The writing, filming and acting are incredible - there's not one weak link in the cast. See this movie.

"Sahara" - Fun entertaining movie. Steve Zahn is great and gives you laughs in his role as only he can. Matthew McConaughey is perfect for the lead character and I hope (although I think some of Clive Cussler's fans will disagree) that they will continue with this character and make some of the other books into movies.

"Borat" - You'll either love or hate this movie, and if you love it, there will still be several unbelievable scenes that make your jaw drop and your mind have to ask yourself if you actually just saw what you think you did. There's enough press going on about this movie that I don't need to review it any further.

"Clerks II" - Not as good as Clerks I, and I didn't really feel that it had quite the Kevin Smith touch as his other movies, but as a sequel goes - it accomplishes what it needs to. It's a nice wrap up and a nice continuation of some running gags throughout the Tri-city movies. There were a couple of great dialogues reminiscent of the first movie and those definitely made me laugh out loud. There just weren't enough of them for me.

"Superman Returns" - Pretty good. I really liked Kevin Spacey, thought he did a great job as Lex Luthor. Decent story line as well, but nothing awesome. For as much hype as it got and for as big as it needed to be as a new Superman movie, it fell a little short for my liking. Not that I didn't think it was a good movie - it was a fine movie - but nothing special. A good, entertaining, Sunday night flick for the whole family.

A Trip To Paradise

2006-12-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

Wow. What to say about an incredible week spent with great friends in one of the most beautiful places in the world? I spent last week in the town of Paraiso in the Dominican Republic with two great friends from high school and junior high, one of whom is a Peace Corps volunteer down there working with a coffee cooperative. Now I'm not extremely well traveled, but I have been to my fair share of the world and I must say that the beaches of the southern coast of the Dominican Republic where the most breathtaking beaches I have every seen.

So because I can't tell you everything about the trip - it would take way to long, as those of you who know me realize ;) - I'm just going to give you some highlights:

-fresh fruit: It's incredible. Oranges, grapefruit, papaya, passion fruit, avocados, sweet lemons, bananas, and coconuts. First time eating fresh coconut and trying to peel them from their outer shell with a machete. Good times.

-people: Everybody we met were so helpful, gracious and wanted to be the best hosts they could be. We were offered fresh made Dominican coffee in every house we went to, very sweet coffee, but I enjoyed it. Everybody made us feel very welcome and all of Kat's friends became our friends in a matter of minutes.

-the first view of Paraiso. After driving down a road near the coast line, you wind up a fairly large hill (mountain) and as you turn the corner and start the decent you have an amazing view of the green landscape, the blue sea and sky and the white of the clouds and the sand. Beautiful.

-riding on a "moto": The main mode of transportation and my first time on a motorcycle. There's not a better way to see the scenery around you though.

-the weather: I mean come on! It's December and I'm in shorts and a t-shirt, sunny all the time hanging out on the beach in the Caribbean Sea. Pretty sweet.

-Bahia de las Aguilas - Bay of the Eagles. Two hours in the back of a truck carrying 11 people, but it was a fun ride and the destination for the day was absolutely worth it. White sandy beaches, clear sky, blue water, snorkeling, eating freshly caught fish, picking up little blowfish, laying in a hammock in the shade of a tree, walking the beach during an incredible sunset.

-Santo Domingo: Overall not my favorite, and glad we only spent a day there, but it was cool seeing the Colonial District of the first European city of the New World. Standing outside Columbus' house, visiting the first Cathedral of the New World walking by the remains of the first hospital.

It was just an incredible time. And even though I don't speak Spanish (I'm learning though!) I was able to have a great time and understand a lot of what was going on and make some great friends. I will be going back.

20061205_Trip to Paradise

Livingroom Bowling and Beercheese Soup

2006-11-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

Nintendo Wii rocks. So does Beer cheese soup.

Last night my buddies Sam and Dennis and I got together to play Wii and make some amazing beer cheese soup. Both were considered by all to be a great success.

If you have yet to hear about the Nintendo Wii - you do not need to hear about it on my page. Suffice to say that it is awesome, and bowling, golfing, boxing (among other things) in the living room is very cool.

The beer cheese soup was also an excellent addition to a cold evening in November. Here is the recipe for all of you who would like to try it in your own homes. Please keep in mind, however, that when I'm cooking, there's a lot of approximate amounts going on - a lot of "season to taste" - so I'll give you what I can, and the rest is up to you.

So without further ado, here it is:

"Livingroom-Bowling Beer Cheese Soup"
-1/2 cup celery (chopped)
-1/2 cup carrots (chopped)
-1/2 cup onions (chopped)
-3 big cloves of garlic (if you like garlic add more, if not add less)
-5 cups vegetable stock
-3/4 cup butter
-1/2 cup barley flour (I'm sure regular flour would work, but this is what I had and it was awesome)
-6 oz Cheddar cheese
-2 big table spoons Parmesan cheese
-about four shakes of dry Chinese mustard
-5 or 6 shakes of Worcester Sauce
-1 pint of Odell's 5 Barrel Pale ale (you can use a different beer, but it should probably be not to malty, a little hoppy, but nothing as lacking in flavor as your regular Bud or Miller. Good beers will give you a good soup.)

Directions:
Chop up the celery, carrots, onions and garlic. Melt the butter in a pan and add the veggies to saute them. Make sure too cook them, but not to brown them. Next blend in the flour and the mustard. Slowly add the chicken stock and bring the mix to a boil. Cook at the boil and stir for five minutes. Then mix in the cheese and beer. Simmer for half an hour and continue to stir every now and then to make sure nothing is settling on the bottom and cooking to the bottom of the pan.

And there you go! Works really well with a good sourdough bread and a full red wine (or the beer you used to make it of course, if you hadn't finished that during the making of the soup).

Hope you enjoy!
Dave

Housewarming Party!

2006-11-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

Last night Carole and I were finally both available at the same time so we finally had our house warming party.

It was a ton of fun and a lot of great friends and family were able to make it. Good food, good drinks, good friends and good fun. We had friends jamming in the front room and playing cards in the living room. Just a great time and a perfect way to make a house really feel like a home.

I tried looking for a quote about homes, but they were all too lame and didn't sound appropriate. The one picture of the poster is an idea that Carole got to have everyone sign when they came in and now it hangs next to the front door.

I can't believe the waste!!

2006-11-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

Ahhh! Here's my rant for today.

I bought an electric shaver two years ago. Today I was at the store at thought I might get some new blades. I saw the exact shaver that I bought, it was $29.42. I looked for the replacement blades and saw the blades that I needed and - get this - they were $29.89.

Cheaper to throw the whole shaver away than just replace the blades! Why?? Way too much waste in this country.

Rogue Squirrel on Election Day

2006-11-07T14:06:00.000-07:00

First of all just want to say that everybody should vote today if you haven't already. I think it's a sad state of affairs that they're only predicting Colorado to have a 60% voter turnout and around 40% nationally. That's ridiculous. Voting is simple, it doesn't take up a lot of your time and it has a direct impact on what the next couple years will be like where you live. So don't give that apathetic excuse that so many do when they say that their vote doesn't matter. Or that you're sick of the two party system and the third party candidate who you would vote for wouldn't win anyway so you'd just be wasting your vote. Do you realize how crazy it would be if everybody who thought that actually did go vote for the third party candidate? They'd win by a landslide! So start the change this year and go vote this afternoon.

Here's something I found on YouTube. Apparently I checked it out and it didn't actually happen in Colorado, it was in Oklahoma where this squirrel chewed through a bunch of cords of electronic voting machines.

What I'm wondering is, how can you tell a rogue squirrel from a normal one? And how do they know this one was a rogue?

Rock Opera in a Coffee House

2006-10-28T10:05:00.000-06:00

Local Fort Collins artist Vee deVice as well as several friends who joined them on stage wowed friends, family and newcomers alike with their release concert of the first act of their Rock Opera: "Love Will Tear us to Shreds". The first act "And Quiet Flows the Dawn" was performed in its entirety along with narration and visuals at Everyday Joe's coffee house in Fort Collins, CO.

The night was started out in a surprisingly unique way with local band The Tanukis, a band that can be described as hardcore indie acoustic Russian folk music. Not knowing what to expect it caught me a little off guard, but I ended up really liking them. The vocal harmonies were tight, as was the music, and the song they ended their set with - a Russian folk song, song in Russian - was really good.

After The Tanukis were finished with their set Vee deVice, fully clothed in their Russian opera get up began to take the stage. Backed up with various musician friends to be able to play the album in entirety and an old public domain war propaganda film, the Narrator took the mic and requested that all applause be held until the entire opera had been performed. And then they were off into the life of Isaac Babel. Only having seen the band a couple times live I really had no idea what to expect in the concert. I was completely impressed to say the least. The album itself is extremely well written and each track fits in perfectly with the story they are trying - succeeding - to tell. The instrumentation featured acoustic and electric guitars, acoustic bass, mandolin, banjo, violin, accordion, piano, trombone and even crystal glasses. The vocal harmonies in a couple different tracks with Babel and the soldiers were particularly good and would have to be one of my favorite points of the show. The visual film in the background also accentuated the show with several times seeming purposefully in sync with the music.

After the final song was performed the audiences reaction told me that everybody there had the same impression as I did as the quality of the show. Keep an eye out for news of the release of Act II of Vee deVice's three disc rock opera "Love Will Tear Us To Shreds". If it's anything close to Act I, we're all in for a treat.

NEW HOUSE!!

2006-10-11T17:55:00.000-06:00

I have moved a relatively few times in my life and thus lived in relatively few houses. When I was younger (<5) I moved a couple times, but then since then, I've lived up near Lory State Park for about 17 years (I suppose you could count the couple years living in the CSU and Budapest dorms, but during the summer and vacations I was always back home) and then the house near Old Town for 4 years now.
Our land lord had been trying to sell the place that I was living for quite awhile and a couple weeks ago he finally got an offer that he accepted. So that gave me a couple weeks to find a new place to live. As luck would have it, one of my good friends from high school was also looking for a place and she found a two bedroom house and asked if I wanted to move in.
Moving is a kind of a pain, but wasn't especially bad since I was only moving about 10 minutes away and I didn't have an unordinarily large amount of stuff. So yesterday I finally finished moving all of my stuff over to the new place and spent my first night there. I really like the place a lot, but we'll definitely have to work on some little "homey" touches - especially with all of the blank wall space.
Should be a great place to live though, and I'm definitely looking forward to enjoying this new change in my life.

Ben Kweller at the Fox Theatre

2006-10-06T09:02:00.000-06:00

Last night Jules & I went to see Ben Kweller at the Fox in Boulder. I'd been looking forward to the show ever since I heard he was playing in town. The first time I'd seen him was down in Austin a couple weeks ago at the festival and he completely rocked - although it was cut a little short because of a rampant bloody nose. This show was a full set and was even better than I expected.

The Sam Roberts Band opened up and were pretty good - kind of an early 90s grunge band from Canada. Tight band and good to listen to for a little while, but it seemed like a lot of their songs were the same, and I don't think I would really enjoy a full show if they were the headliners.

The Ben Kweller came out solo and played a couple acoustic songs on the guitar and one on the piano and then the rest of his band came out starting with "Wasted and Ready" and continued to keep it upbeat and rocking for the entire two hour set. I was completely blown away with all of the talent of everybody in the band. They all played several different instruments - piano, guitar, bass, percussion - and played them all well. During the encore song - "In Other Words" - Ben Kweller got up on top of the piano and started dancing and nearly looked like he was going to tip over the piano and fall off.

Didn't get to meet him after the show or anything, but I did talk to the piano player of the Sam Roberts band and he was pretty cool. Overall just another great night of music at the Fox. Already got my tickets for Donavon Frankenreiter at the end of this month and that should be amazing as well.

Until next time!

Carbon Leaf & Matt Nathanson at the Aggie

2006-10-01T10:42:00.000-06:00

Last night I went to see Matt Nathanson and Carbon Leaf at the Aggie. I had won two tickets, but couldn't find anybody who was able to go, but had to go anyway. Matt Nathanson is great to see live and I had heard some of Carbon Leaf's stuff, but had never seen them live, so I was really looking forward to it. Biking down to the Aggie I thought I would ride around the back to see if any of the band was out in their bus or just hanging outside the theatre. I noticed that the back door was wide open, so after locking up my bike, I took a quick look to see where the security guard was looking and then walked in and down the stairs to the green room. When I got in I saw Matt Nathanson was sitting on the couch working up his set list so I said hey and talked to him for a while. Told him I'd seen him a couple weeks ago down in Austin and that I was looking forward to the show. He offered me a beer and we talked a little more and then I headed up the stairs to check out Carbon Leaf. As I was walking out, the security guard noticed I didn't have a wrist band and noticed that I was coming from the back, so he told me I had to leave and go around the front. Oh well, no big deal.

The show itself was great. Carbon Leaf is a great band and really tight on their live performance. They've got a really good sound and a lot of catchy songs. I haven't heard all of their new CD, but from some of the stuff they played off of it last night, I might have to check it out. Favorite song that they played was definitely "The Boxer" and their hit single awhile ago "Life Less Ordinary" was a close second. After they were done, the band came out to the crowd and hung out to listen to Matt Nathanson play and I got to meet and talk with their keyboard player and one of the guitarists. Pretty cool guys.

Then Matt Nathanson came on. No big surprises since I'd seen him recently and several times before, but it was still a great show and he played a lot of songs that I really enjoy and that the Waido Band covers. "I Saw", "Little Victories" and "Suspended" were among my favorites of the set.

Everytime I see this I laugh

2006-09-29T09:11:00.000-06:00

There are just some things that no matter how much you see them elicit a chuckle or two and just make your day better. I am happy to share one of mine with you. No matter how much I see this particular Calvin and Hobbes it makes me laugh (I think its the word 'ludicrously').

Hope you enjoy it too.

Tour de Fat & The Ditty Bops

2006-09-24T15:30:00.000-06:00

20060923_Ditty Bops at Tour de Fat

Sep 25, 2006 - 23 Photos

Yesterday was the annual Tour de Fat wrap up party at the New Belgium Brewery and the festival just keeps getting bigger every year. I slept in a little this year so didn't participate in the bike ride around town, but was able to see some of the crazy home-made bicycles and all of the riders in their costumes.

The festival itself was a great time with a lot of New Belgium Beer - from organic biodegradable cups - and pizza from Cozzola's. The Handsome Little devils(http://www.handsomelittledevils.com/) opened the festival with their unique juggling/vaudeville act. They were on for about an hour and ended their show juggling a chainsaw, a bowling ball and a ping pong ball. Needless to say, it was pretty impressive.

After The Handsome Little Devils got done, the Ditty Bops took the stage. I had seen them once before when they came through on their cross country bike tour and played the Aggie Theatre. It's a four piece band, two vocals - Amanda, who plays mandolin & washboard, and Abby, who plays guitar - and then a piano and acoustic bass. Really good old style swing music - reminds me a little of Squirrel Nut Zippers without the horns and a lot like the music from "The Triplets of Belleville". Check them out: http://www.dittybops.com/

AUSTIN CITY LIMITS - DAY 3

2006-09-21T10:30:00.000-06:00

Finally, the last day of the amazing Austin City Limits festival. This was an incredibly full day, but I only saw four bands instead of the usual 10+. The place was packed for the last day, and we decided rather than go to several different stages, we would just stay by the main stage and try to get as close as we could. It did not disappoint.

First was KT Tunstall at 2:30. Awesome. Played all of her songs off of her CD "Eye to the Telescope" which was great to see live. If you haven't already picked up that CD, do so, it's a great one. She does a couple songs with a loop over her vocals so during the chorus she was harmonizing with herself which was pretty sweet. Her band was great too and they all looked like they were having a lot of fun.

After KT Tunstall ended we began the surge towards the front of the crowd, which basically took me until 8:00 (5 1/2 hours) to get to the fourth row for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. At 4:30 Matisyahu took the stage and blew my mind. I had heard his CD "Youth" only recently before seeing him live and I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing. The band was incredibly tight and Matisyahu himself was awesome. Seeing this jewish rabbi with the full get-up, beard and all, dance all over the stage, jumping up on speakers and singing reggae with the best of them was surreal. The music was great and the crowd was really into the whole show. Quite the memorable experience.

After another hour of crowd surging towards the front (I ended up in about row 10) The Flaming Lips came on. Best live show I've seen ever. It was incredible. They had Wonderwoman and Captain America setting up, a huge plastic clear ball that the lead singer got inside and rolled over the crowd in, huge cannons that fired billions of scraps of confetti, streamers, smoke machines, fox tails, strobe lights, fake blood, a group of dancing girls dressed up as aliens, a group of dancing guys & kids dressed up as santas, two huge blowup dancing astronauts, a huge blowup dancing alien, a huge blowup dancing Santa and a dancing guy in a mouse costume. Not to mention the band. Only four people in the band and if you've ever heard their CDs it is hard to believe the music can be performed live. But they completely rocked. It was incredible. If you ever get a chance to see them live DO NOT pass it up.

And then it was another hour (in which I moved probably 20 feet to get to the fourth row) watching all of the stage hands clean up all of the streamers and balloons and confetti on the stage to get it ready for Tom Petty. Tom Petty is one of those bands that I've been listening to since pretty much forever. I grew up with the music of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Stevie Ray Vaugh, BB King, and Led Zepplin to name a few. To be in the fourth row at Austin City Limits with 80,000 screaming fans behind me seeing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for the first time - well it was an experience to say the least. It pretty much rocked. The show was great, they're old - and they look it - but they can still rock with the best of them. They played all the old hits: Mary Jane, Free Fallin', Refugee, American Girl as well as a lot of new songs off of the "Highway Companion" album. I thought it was a pretty awesome show and apparently so did Matisyahu and Matthew McConaughey because they were standing in the front VIP/Press section.

And that was Austin. Three days packed full of music and fun. Definitely worth the entire trip, and I will definitely be going back every year from now on.

20060915_AUSTIN CITY LIMITS DAY 3

Sep 18, 2006 - 70 Photos

AUSTIN CITY LIMITS - DAY 2

2006-09-20T18:59:00.000-06:00

Day 2 of Austin City Limits was a little less crazy hectic as day one. We kind of took our time and left a little early rather than doing ten full hours of music in the sun.

Saturday started with lunch at Joe's Crab Shack, with a crab cake sandwich and a big plate full of fried things from the sea. Then we got to the festival grounds at a little after 2:00, noticing that the festival was much more crowded Saturday than it was Friday around the same time. The first band that we really wanted to see was Ben Kweller, who was playing on one of the main stages. He was supposed to start at 2:30 - and at this festival no one was more than 5 minutes late - and he didn't come out until about 2:45. When he finally did come out, it was with a white towel shoved up to his nose, that was getting covered in blood. The guy had a bloody nose that wouldn't stop, but he's such a rockstar that he played the show anyway. After a couple songs, (with the camera continually highlighting the blood streaks on his guitar) he asked the crowd if anybody had a tampon, which he preceded to shove up his nose and then play another couple songs. After that he told us he had to sit down, so he was going to play a piano song. The nose continued to bleed - getting blood all over the microphone and the piano keys - and after that song he said he couldn't continue. He did play probably about 1/2 an hour though, and thoroughly rocked the stage.

After leaving Ben Kweller, we walked over to a side stage and checked out the end of Galactic and the first half of Nada Surf before heading back to the main stage to see The Shins. Galactic was pretty sweet live, kind of a hip-hop, funk New Orleans style band. Nada Surf was good, but nothing really spectacular. We weren't all that close and neither of us knew too much of their stuff though.

The Shins, however, were a different story. The crowd was completely into it, and the band put on a great set. It's a lot of fun seeing a band that you've recently heard a lot of music from, but never had the chance to see live, or really gotten to know too much about them. Seeing some of my favorite songs in the last couple years performed live was a cool treat as well.

After The Shins, we walked to a side stage to check out Aimee Mann who put on a really laid back, but incredible show. She played a lot of songs from the Magnolia soundtrack as well as some newer stuff that I hadn't heard before. The band was really tight and it was a perfect relaxing show to take in while sitting in the grass under a clear blue sky.

After Aimee Mann we left the festival and went to grab massive amounts of BBQ at Rudy's. It was amazing! You just go in and order different meat by the pound. We got a half rack of ribs, half pound of chicken, half pound of lean beef, half pound of fatty beef, and half pound of turkey. Then they give you a loaf of white bread and you load up on BBQ sauce and you're on your way. If you're ever in Austin, you have to check it out (for you non-vegetarians out there) http://rudysbbq.com/

The rest of the night was spent on the couch watching Nebraska lose to USC, and eating way too much meat. Again, sleep came easy as the excitement for the coming day gave way to the exhaustion from the current one.

20060915_AUSTIN CITY LIMITS DAY 2

Sep 18, 2006 - 21 Photos

AUSTIN CITY LIMITS - DAY 1

2006-09-19T20:57:00.000-06:00

Last weekend Waido and I went down to Austin, TX for the Austin City Limits festival. It was incredible. We left Thursday morning at 4:35 in the morning and pulled into the house we were staying at in Austin at 7:49pm. Long drive, but we switched every 250 miles or so. We were lucky enough to stay with a couple of Waido's friends who happened to work at a couple amazing restaurants in downtown Austin, so that was pretty sweet. Thursday night we all went downtown and had dinner at Manuel's - an incredible Mexican restaurant - and then we walked around 6th street for awhile. Went in to a couple bars and checked out a couple bands, all around good time.

But the best time really started Friday morning when we got to the Festival. Here's the bands we saw.

David Ford - great solo musician from England, does a lot of political songs and plays guitar, bass and piano with loop pedals. Really cool.

Terri Hendrix - really good folk band. Great lyrics, covered a Woody Guthrie song, also a very political act. And speaking of political acts... I don't think any band there - or anybody for the most part supported the current administration... One of the really cool things about Terri Hendrix was that she had a signer on the side of the stage to translate her lyrics for the deaf.

After Terri Hendrix we wandered around the shop booths for a bit and grabbed a bite to eat and then walked over to the Barton Springs. Barton Springs was about a 3 minute walk from the festival grounds and is a natural spring that they've dammed up to make a pool. It's around 68 degrees and although that's normally really cold, it felt awesome when it's 95 degrees outside, there's not a cloud in the sky and it's Texas humid. After spending about a half an hour at the springs (only $3 for the entire day) we walked back to the festival grounds to check out Guster.

That was the first time I'd ever seen Guster live and the thing that made the show for me was their drummer. He was incredible. He has this set that he's put together of a ton of different hand drums and percussion instruments and is just insane on them. You could only watch him the entire time and be constantly amazed.

After checking out Guster for awhile we walked towards one of the smaller stages and as we were walking Waido noticed someone near us and shouted out "Ray?" and Ray LaMontagne said "Yeah?" So we talked with him for awhile, which was awesome. We both shook his hand and told him we were really looking forward to seeing his show later on. We also asked if we could get a picture with him, but he told us he doesn't do pictures. But it was pretty sweet anyway.

Then we checked out this singer/songwriter girl named Tristan Prettyman. Really good music and she had some great sounding riffs on the acoustic guitar. She was backed up by a drummer and a bassist, but you could tell that she's normally a solo act, because they were both at the back of the stage and she was front and center.

After Tristan Prettyman we saw Matt Nathanson. Both Waido and I had seen him before (we cover a couple of his songs) and it's always been a good show, so I was looking forward to it. He did put on a great show and played some songs from his upcoming CD, but his inbetween song bantering went on for a little long. But a cool set none the less.

Around this time (still only 4:30) we were feeling a little warm and a little tired, so we walked over to this big tent that was advertising AT&T and had air conditioning and internet access. So we stayed in there for a bit, bought tickets to see Bob Schneider later that night, cooled off and then were ready to check out Gnarls Barkley.

6) Now I don't know too much about Gnarls Barkley, and they were playing one of the main stages, so it was packed and we were way far away. You could still hear the music and see the stage, but not too well. When they were done with their first song they apologized to the audience that Gnarls Barkley couldn't be here today and they were some other band (I forget the name they used) and were just filling in, but they'd try to cover some of their stuff. Since I'd never seen them before, I didn't know what was going on, but apparently they play all their shows as different identities, and after the third song (their main hit "Crazy") I knew it was them. Fun show, good music, but again, we weren't too close.

7) Then we left Gnarles Barkley to go and see Gomez. Amazing. Awesome show and incredible musicians. I had heard a couple of their songs on the radio, but that was it. After seeing them live though, I'm a huge fan and have to check out more of their music.

8) After Gomez we went to see Austin's home boys - the Los Lonely Boys. They rocked. Although the crowd wasn't as into it as I was expecting, I think because they were still kind of during the beginning of the evening (they started at 6:30) and it was still sunny and really hot out. The band rocked the stage anyway though and played a lot of stuff from their new album which I had bought a couple weeks previous. They also played a couple of their hits from their other album, which went over really well.

9) Then we left Los Lonely Boys and walked to the other main stage to check out the last part of Thievery Corporation. I'll definitely have to see them live again, because it was packed around the stage and we could only really see the screen and not the actual stage. There was probably about 16 people in the band and they rocked the hip-hop/reggae. Really good live.

10) After listening to a couple songs from Thievery Corp, we walked to another stage to see Ray LaMontagne. For as mellow as his songs are, and for how anti-social he is, he puts on a hell of a show. He played mostly stuff from his first album "Trouble" which was fine for me because I love that disc, and I'm not too big of a fan of his new one. "Jolene" was probably my favorite live, but the entire show was incredible.

11) I had to leave Ray early because I definitely wanted to catch the whole set of John Mayer and I wanted to get in close. I got there about 10 minutes before he came out and was able to get a good view of the stage and right in front of the huge projection screen, so it worked out really well. John Mayer rocks. He played a lot of older stuff and a lot of stuff from his new album "Continuum". "Slow Dancing in a Crowded Room" was incredible to see live. He played "My Stupid Mouth", "Daughters", "Gravity", "Vultures", "Waiting on the World to Change" and a ton more. He is absolutely mind blowing on the guitar and he shows it live. It was awesome.

After John Mayer, we left the festival to go downtown. This was at 9:30. We were worn out and needed food so we went to the Rio (used to be the Real World Austin house) and one of the girls we were staying with was working that night so we got hooked up pretty nice there. After some great food at the Rio we walked over to Antone's and got there 10 minutes before Bob Schneider and his band started. Antone's is this great small club that even if you're in the center in the back row of the crowd you're no more than 20 feet from the stage. We had a great spot to start out with, but we'd both been on our feet all day long and were really tired, so when I noticed a balcony section that had some people sitting at tables overlooking the stage, I thought it would be nice to get up there. I walked up to the door (which read "Authorized Personnel only") and asked the security guard who was right next to it if he minded me going up there. He said that he couldn't let me up there, so I went back to where I was before. About three songs later, I used the bathroom and when I came out the security guard was gone, so I just walked through the door. Then I was in the green room with the band's guitar tech, and walked up the stairs and grabbed an empty table next to all of the bands friends. Later I got Waido up there (telling a different security guy "Don't worry, he's with me") and we hung out there for the rest of the show. After the encore when we were ready to leave we walked down into the green room and there was the whole band so we told Bob what a great show it was, got a couple pictures with him, talked with the rest of the band and then headed out. It was awesome. The show was incredible too - another band that if you have the chance to catch, there's no excuse not to. So much fun.

By this time it was well past 2:00am, we'd been listening to live music for over 12 hours and been out in the hot sun for over 8 hours, so we were pretty much spent. I have never slept so well on a couch before in my entire life.

20060915_AUSTIN CITY LIMITS DAY 1

Sep 18, 2006 - 46 Photos

Highlands Fest Show

2006-09-10T21:39:00.000-06:00

First off, I have to say that I'm a little disappointed in this years Highlands Festival show. Now, I've got to cover my bases when saying that - keep in mind that I've only gone to two in the past and that's been probably three and four years ago. When I went those two times, my buddy was in a bagpipe band, so I went up with him and got into the festival free. Back then all of the closing night concerts were still on the festival grounds, in a huge tent, didn't cost any extra money and was just a good time with a lot of beer and dancing to some kick ass, rockin' Celtic music.

This year was a little different. And not in a really great way. Seven Nations was playing again, which was cool, since they hadn't played the festival in three years, but the closing show that they were playing each day took place at the Estes Park YMCA, which is a good 20 minutes outside of town and quite far away from the actual festival grounds. So I had quite a bit to do Saturday, so didn't go up for the Highlands Festival during the day, but just went up to see Seven Nations because it had been awhile since I'd seen them. The auditorium that they played in was fairly comparable to a high school auditorium. There was a light above us that the fuse didn't work, so it couldn't shut off. At first glance, the majority of the people there were older - and no offence to the elderly, but they're not necessarily the hard core dancing, cheering crowd at a concert. There was no food or drink in the auditorium which was probably most disappointing to the bands, although towards the end Seven Nations seemed to ignore that 'rule'.

The opening band was a group from Australia called Brother. I don't think I've ever seen as many didgeridoos in one place at one time. It's a four piece band and I don't really even know how to describe their music. Call it Australian/Afro/Celt. They had a drummer on a trapset, a guy who played synth and didgeridoo, a rasta/Australian guy who played guitar, bag pipes, penny whistle, didgeridoo and sang, and then another guy who played bass, electric guitar, bag pipes and didgeridoo and sang as well. Very weird melodic styles, some of the melodies almost reminded me of Gregorian chants and old English melodies. Really good though - I liked them a lot, and now I'm starting to learn anew how to play the didgeridoo. Thought that was pretty sweet.

Then Seven Nations came out. Now I've seen Seven Nations probably over 10 times. This was not their best show. It just kind of seemed like they were tired after playing two days at a festival, and then the sound guy was pretty much terrible, so that didn't help their attitudes at all. Now, don't get me wrong - the music didn't suffer at all. They played a brand new song that was incredible, all their old stuff was great and the even brought out "Under the Milky Way" for their encore with Brother. But you could just tell by watching them that they weren't having the most fun that they've had. One funny thing about it was that Scott - their bagpiper - requested a jig set that Dan - fiddle player - always brings out his tap shoes and does a great jig to towards the end of the song. After Scott requested it and said that he wanted to play it, Dan said no way, and gave Scott the most hateful look ever. But the played it and Dan got on his shoes and busted out his dance that was incredible, but you could tell afterwards that he really didn't want to do it. I think Scott just got a kick out of making Dan do something that he really didn't want to do.

But it was a good show and I'm glad I went. I was able to get front row on the dance floor, just because there wasn't a lot of people who felt like getting out of their seats and dancing. So that was pretty cool. Also really glad I got to see the band Brother. If any of you hear of them coming around and get a chance to see them, I would totally jump on it. There a bunch of fun guys and play some really cool music.

Wedding in the Mountains

2006-09-05T17:16:00.000-06:00

This weekend was pretty cool. Normally I'm one to freak out at weddings - not any weddings, just weddings of friends, because I feel I'm so far from that point, but this wedding was really cool. Two of my good friends from college got married this weekend at the Snow Mountain Ranch about 20 miles outside of Winter Park, CO. The got a couple of cabins and had a bunch of camp sites reserved for the whole weekend and were having all of their family and friends come in and spend the weekend up in the mountains. I had a gig (or thought we did - see previous post "Motor City Mad Man") Friday night, so I didn't get down there until Saturday evening, just in time for the 'rehearsal dinner' which was basically just a cool dinner with everybody hanging out, meeting new people and talking to old friends. Later that night the party descended to the depths of karaoke and drinking games - but it's all forgivable at a wedding.

Sunday we awoke, had a long relaxing breakfast and then played some hardcore volleyball (I tell you - if Olympic scouts would have been there, man... ;) they would have just kept right on walking...) and then played a great round of disc golf through trees and down mountains, and then it was time to get cleaned up and look presentable. After all, we were here for a wedding.

The wedding ceremony was perfect. That's all I can say. I can give any more descriptions because I feel like me trying to describe it would take away from it. It was perfect. That's it.

Then the reception. Great food, great music, great people, the dance floor was occupied pretty much the entire night. It was way too much fun.

Monday everybody was a little slow getting up and getting ready to head out. A great testament to the lucky couple was how cool all of their friends were. Friendships were made in two days from people who had never met each other and now will probably stay in touch for years to come. One of CJ's (the groom) good friends from New York was out for the wedding and wasn't leaving until Tuesday, so Monday she and I hung out in Boulder, walked through a cool Labor Day festival, ate lunch at Illegal Pete's (awesome) and went on a short hike through Chautauqua Park. Then we drove back to the Fort, and Anne (girl from New York, who just happens to be an amazing cook) put on a dinner party and cooked for a couple of us. Great relaxing way to end a perfect relaxing weekend.

Motor City Mad Man

2006-09-02T10:48:00.000-06:00

Last night... I saw Ted Nugent live in concert... Here's how it came about:

Second Wind was booked to play the Thunder Mountain Harley Fest Friday night over on the Clear Channel stage on the other side of the interstate from the Budweiser Event Center. We were scheduled to go on at 9:00 after two other bands and a preliminary round for a bikini contest. We later heard that during our set breaks there was going to be a scantily clad dance troop dancing on stage, so overall, it had all the ingredients for a fun time. Unfortunately, we show up and the weather is rather dismal - cold, windy, looks like it might even rain. And, because of this rather unpleasant weather, the crowd was pretty pitiful. The first band cancelled, none of the bikini contest or dancing girls showed up, and half way through the second band's set they told us that they were going to cancel our show. Now, we've played in the cold before, and we've definitely played to an empty audience before, so we were a little miffed that we weren't going to play after lugging all of our equipment out there on a Friday night. Luckily that had a VIP lounge that had a balcony that over looked the stage and a cool heated kitchen area with all the beer & wine you could drink and a ton of food. Needless to say, that was taken advantage of. But even after the free food and drink, we still felt a little let down, so a suggestion was made that we get free tickets to go see Ted Nugent who was also playing that night, but at the Budweiser Event Center.

So that happened. We got in for free - there was no way we were going to pay to see him - and I guess one of the only things I can say was that it was loud. Really loud. If he was trying to be the loudest thing that had ever been in the Budweiser Event Center, I think he succeeded. I couldn't even tell what songs he was playing - not like it would have mattered too much, because I can't say that I know any Ted Nugent songs. All I know is that I felt completely out of place in my baggy cargo pants, hippie sweater pullover and shaggy long hair. Oh and being a democrat, anti gun, anti Bush and pro peace didn't really help me to feel welcome either. The guy brought his machine guns on stage. Need I say more?

So we stayed for probably 45 minutes. Started out in the stands, then my Dad and I wandered down to the front of the stage to get our ears blown off, until we got kicked out, and then we walked up on the balcony, checked it out from a VIP booth, and walked around to the back of the stage. Somewhere in there I caught a fairly awful version of Isaac Hayes and David Porter's "Soul Man". Seriously, that was the only song I could tell you that he played. All the rest (I guess including "Soul Man", but I caught the distinctive bass line) was just a bunch of yelling and loud noise.

As far as concerts go I'd give it a 2 out of 10, but I'm not a fan, so take it as you will. As far as life experiences go, I can at least say I've seen the Nuge live, although I've probably sacrificed four years of hearing for it. Was it worth it? I leave you to think that one out.

Another friend in another part of the world

2006-08-31T16:40:00.000-06:00

I feel so lucky to have the friends that I do. The group of high school friends that I've kept in touch with are always spread throughout the world doing some incredibly cool unique things. From studying theoretical chemistry in Germany, to doing African dance in Ghana, to working for the ICTY in the Hague, to living and working at the Baha'i World Center in Haifa, to teaching English in Kunming, China - the different paths my friends take throughout the world continue to amaze me.

This is the newest adventure. My buddy Jesse is spending the next couple years in Antarctica working at a research station down there. Check out his blog: http://jesse-in-antarctica.blogspot.com

"Little Miss Sunshine" movie review

2006-08-30T18:59:00.000-06:00

I went to see "Little Miss Sunshine" last night with a couple friends and was full of great expectations. Now, there are times when I'd like to see a movie and not really know anything about it ("Dot the I" is one of those such movies), but there are times when you can't really help it - case in point being "Snakes on a Plane". Now I had seen a preview for "Little Miss Sunshine" quite awhile ago and I knew right away that it was going to be one of those movies that I would really enjoy. So when it came out in limited release, I of course read all of the reviews and was pleasantly surprised to find that it got good reviews. Now, for the most part I don't take a lot of stock in reviews. There have been many a bad review for movies which I've absolutely loved, and a couple good reviews where I've truly thought that they were watching a different movie than me. But when a movie gets all good reviews, it's a pretty good sign that the movie is going to be at least decent.

"Little Miss Sunshine" was much more than decent. First of all, any movie with Alan Arkin as a fairly main character has to be good. Think of his character in "Edward Scissorhands" just 30 years older and a little less suburban. That being said, I can't ignore the rest of the cast either. There wasn't a weak link in the entire ensemble. Greg Kinnear did an excellent job as a failing motivational speaker who doesn't believe in failure, Toni Collette was perfect as the mother trying to hold the whole family together. Steve Carell played a depressed suicidal uncle, the foremost intellectual on Marcel Proust - no wonder he's depressed and suicidal. The brother is played by Paul Danno who has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a fighter pilot, and the little girl is played by Abigail Breslin who does an incredible job. The film mainly takes place in a beat up VW bus on a road trip from Albuquerque to southern California where the family is traveling so their little girl can compete in the Little Miss Sunshine Beauty Pageant. I suppose it would have to be classified as a fairly dark comedy, but you're definitely smiling all the way through the movie and you just feel happy at the end.

There's definitely quite a bit of cursing in it, so it's not a younger family movie, but it's not one of those that the language really takes away from the overall film. Basically it's just a nice funny movie about a semi dysfunctional family on a road trip so there daughter can compete in a beauty contest that she's obviously not going to win. The characters are great, its amazingly well written and there's enough funny moments and touching moments to just make you feel good after you've seen it.

I would definitely recommend it to anyone. I'll buy it when it comes out on DVD. 10 out of 10.

Pluto: A small, inadequate misfit

2006-08-29T12:47:00.000-06:00

Isn't it enough that we took away Pluto's status as a planet? Do we have to resort to name calling and kicking it when it's down?

I was reading this article today from a link on Google News and came across this quote from astronomer Dava Sobel.

Referring to Pluto: "Adults relate to its inadequacy, it's marginal existence as a misfit."

Kind of harsh isn't it?

my refrigerator

2006-08-24T22:11:00.000-06:00

Last week all of my roommates moved out and back into the dorms, so over the weekend I did a throughough cleaning of the house, including the refrigerator & the freezer. And believe me - that needed to be cleaned.

So now that I've gotten rid of all of the old food and have no roommates with their food, I look at my refrigerator and think, "Man, I really need to go to the grocery store!"

Proof of Dark Matter gives scientists a warm fuzzy feeling

2006-08-24T09:47:00.000-06:00

Sticking with my recent "science in the news" posts:

For years astronomers and scientists have been using this theory of "Dark Matter" in space to help them understand different observations and prove different theories. Only no one had ever been able to scientifically prove the existence of the stuff, which kind of makes one uneasy after basing so many other facts and observations on the assumption that dark matter does exist.

So you could imagine hearing a collective "whew!" throughout the scientific community this Monday when studies of the Bullet Cluster were announced and given as the best evidence to date that dark matter actually exists. Basically, two clusters of galaxies collided and through observing the collision - astronomers had already know what collisions of stars and other previously studied bodies looked like - they detected the dark matter indirectly through gravitational lensing. Kind of cool, right?

So now they've got one thing checked off the to do list. I suppose the next will be, "alright, so we know now that it actually does exist, so now... what is it?"

But that might be a couple years down the road.

Picture is a new photo from NASA showing the Bullet Cluster and what is believed to be dark matter, shown in blue.

Roman God of the Underworld no longer special in the skies

2006-08-24T09:27:00.000-06:00

Today astronomers from all over the world at the International Astronomers Union gathering in Prague finally nixed Pluto from the 9 (now 8) planets of our solar system. Pluto, named after the Roman God of the Underworld, just didn't make the cut after much discussion on a final definition for "planet". Last week a secret group of astronomers that had been appointed to define the word basically came out with a definition that a planet would be something with enough self gravity to make it round, but that didn't hold up since that would have brought in many other things to qualify as planets. So they scrapped that definition and came up with the following:

"To qualify [as a planet], a celestial body must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star. It must also be large enough in mass for it's self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a...nearly round shape, and has cleared its neighborhood around its orbit." *

So no more Pluto. All of those elementary school teachers will have to come up with new mnemonics to teach their kids the planets without including Pluto. All new models of the eight planets will have to be built. Think of the impact!

I just hope Disney won't change the name of Mickey's dog to Uranus.

* source: BBC News

"Snakes on a Plane" review

2006-08-24T09:14:00.000-06:00

This is not so much of a review as a suggestion to go see this movie. There are plenty of other reviews out there from writers with a greater gift for words than I have, so if you want to read a fun review, check all of those out.

First of all, I give this movie kudos for it's marketing racket. "Snakes on a Plane" as a title? Of course I'm going to see this movie. It leaves no mystery as to what the movie is going to be about. It's going to be about snakes - on a plane. If you're not into movies for the pure sake of entertainment and fun, if you're not into great B-movies, you're not going to see this, because it's called "Snakes on a Plane". However, if you want to see an entertaining movie, how could you not see it? So I was super excited when I saw the previews.

Then I got a call from Samuel L Jackson and thought it was so cool that I proceeded to have him call a bunch of my friends. That was awesome. I still have the message he left saved on my phone. Hopefully I won't rack up too many minutes listening to it. If you want to have Samuel L Jackson call one of your friends check out www.snakesonaplane.com

So finally the other night a group of my friends and I went to go see it. It did not dissappoint. There were scenes that made you jump, scenes that made you squirm, scenes that made you laugh, and scenes that made you say "oh snap!" Now, it's definitly not a kids movie. There's a lot of violence (basically a whole mess of snakes killing a whole mess of people - on a plane) there's some sex and of course the obligatory language that comes with Samuel L Jackson being a bad ass mother.

The movie is awesome. Go see it. I have to give it 10 out of 10 just because it was such a fun time. I'd see it again.

New Websites!

2006-08-09T07:33:00.000-06:00

So the news of the past couple days is that I just got a new website for both of the bands I'm in. Both sites have our gig schedule and contact information which is always nice to have. I'm working on the Michael Waido Band website, and I'm kind of new to the whole HTML thing, so it'll be a learning experience and the website will get better with age - so continue to check it.

Anyway here's the links, check them out!

Second Wind: www.swband.com

Michael Waido Band: www.michaelwaidoband.com

Cool idea

2006-07-31T01:24:00.000-06:00

One of my buddy's found this on YouTube and I thought it was pretty sweet. It's a much cooler idea than just taking pictures of your trips around the world. I've been in that exact same spot in Berlin and Seattle, and at least near the same spot in San Francisco - check out if you recognize any places you've been.

Second Wind gig

2006-07-29T18:51:00.000-06:00

So today I went down to Denver with Second Wind for a gig we had at the Denver Thunder Mountain Harley custom cycles. It was way too hot, but was a really fun gig. Now I'm not much of a motorcycle guy, but there were some incredible bikes there. I'm talking really nice custom cycles with awesome paint jobs. They also had 103.5 The Fox radio station there promoting the Hogfest tomorrow and I got to see one of the DJs there - Kathy Lee. That was pretty crazy, just because if you've heard some one for a really long time and never seen what they look like you automatically develop your own image of them in your mind, and then you finally see them and it totally doesn't fit with your own made up image. They also had some girls from the Denver Coyote Ugly bar so that was kind of nice (that's the picture).

The gig was a lot of fun, we played really well despite of nearly all dying of heat stroke. It's just a good thing we were in the shade. The people there were really into our music - and we've started to think that we're a really good biker band. We're playing the primo spot at the big biker rally over Labor Day playing outside right after Ted Nugent gets done so that should be pretty sweet.

Our next gig is Wednesday August 9th closing out the summer CSU Lagoon Concert Series. So if you haven't seen us you should come out, it's free and hopefully it will be a great night weatherwise.

Myriad of Movie reviews

2006-07-26T20:33:00.000-06:00

So I've seen a bunch of movies recently, and since this post would be really long and would take a lot of time if I decided to completely review them all, I'm just going to do little blurbs about them.

On a Clear Day - See this movie. Independent film from a Scottish film company based on the true story of the first guy who swam the English Channel. Not a lot of action, kind of a slow movie, but really good. 9 out of 10.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story - Incredibly original, witty, well directed, well written & Steve Coogan rocks. Check it out it will be one of the most memorable movies you'll see this year. 10 out of 10.

Phantom of the Opera - Actors/singers were really good, as is the music. I'd never heard the entire opera, but I thought it was adapted to film really well. 7 out of 10.

40 Year Old Virgin - Freaking hilarious. If you're in the mood for a laugh, check it out, although not really a family film. 8 out of 10.

War of the Worlds - Lots of people are anti Tom Cruise now and I can see that, but the movie is actually really intense and I liked it a lot. Tim Robbins has a bit part in it that he's pretty sweet in. 7 out of 10.

Fantastic 4 - LAME. CHEESY. Don't waste your time. It's amazing how little actually happens. Hopefully they won't make a sequel, but I'm not optimistic. 2 out of 10.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 - Rocked my socks off. Everybody's back and with avengence. The cast rocks, and there's only really one or two parts where the movie goes a little over the top, but it's easy to take in stride. Be prepared to want to watch the third one right after the movie ends. 10 out of 10.

Brokeback Mountain - Totally didn't see what the big deal was with this movie. I think if it wasn't about two gay guys, but just about a man and a woman with forbidden love, no one would have said anything about it. It's just because the two main characters are gay that Hollywood is giving itself a pat on the back by recognizing how libreral and cultured they are, when really it shouldn't make any difference at all if the main characters are gay or straight. 4 out of 10.

Capote - Pretty slow movie, but I really liked it. Phillip Seymore Hoffman continues to astound me with the roles he chooses and the talent he brings to them. 8 out of 10.

Green Street Hooligans - Awesome. Beer, violence & football (European). Elijah Wood is great in it, as is the rest of the cast. It is very violent though, so be prepared. 9 out of 10.

Mean Machine - Another great British movie about violence and football. Produced by the same guy who was involved with "Lock, Stock" and "Snatch" and stars Vinnie Jones as a once famous footballer who gets sent to jail. Basically a British remake of "The Longest Yard". 7 out of 10.

Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang - Entertaining. I don't really know what to say about it. There were times where I was thinking it was awesome and then other times when I found myself saying "what's going on? why am I watching this?" I guess the best thing I can say is it's a pretty unique detective/caper film, fairly funny and pretty entertaining. 6 out of 10.

Breakfast on Pluto - Cillian Murphy as a young gay irishman who goes on a quest to London to find his mother who abandoned him at a church doorstep when he was a little baby. It's really funny, the soundtrack is great and the cast, although mostly not well known, is amazing. 8 out of 10.

Sunshine - Ralph Fiennes shines in this story of a Jewish-Hungarian family followed through three different generations from World War One all the way to modern day Hungary. A story about survival and values and how sometimes you have to give up your values in order to survive. Filmed on location in Budapest, Hungary, which I've spent six months in, so I really enjoyed that aspect of it. 9 out of 10.

In the Mood for Love & 2046 - Not good. BORING! Thought they looked interesting, but they're not. Felt like the hours just dragged on and on and nothing happened. 2 out of 10 for the first, 3 out of 10 for the second.

Heat - I can't believe I hadn't seen this sooner. Allstar cast which does incredible, great cop/robber movie. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro steal the show. See it. 8 out of 10.

Ordinary Decent Criminal - Kevin Spacey as an Irish fun loving criminal? It works. It's a fun movie and Kevin Spacey is great in it. So's the story and the supporting cast. If you're a Spacey fan, you'll love it, otherwise you'll think it's a pretty good movie. 8 out of 10.

seriously though... where have you been?

2006-07-24T22:56:00.000-06:00

A lot of work and a lot of band gigs.

For those of you who don't know - I'm in a couple bands, and work full time at a local engineering company. The last couple weeks I've had a bevy of gigs with my two bands - Second Wind (an eclectic rock, blues & boogie band) and Michael Waido (we like to call ourselves wuss rock, because the chicks dig it...).

The last month has been great for Second Wind - we've played some great gigs in Old Town and also a couple gigs down at Thunder Mountain Harley Davidson which landed us a spot at the main Harley Fest over Labor Day!

The big news with the Michael Waido Band has been that we've been fortunate enough to have my good buddy Eddy Miller back with us over the summer to jam some fiddle in with our regular wuss rock to give us a little bit of an edge. Eddy, Pete and I have worked up Charlie Daniels' "Devil Went Down to Georgia" which the crowd seems to really get into - I think it has to do with Pete. We've been playing Lucky Joe's and our new bar you can find us at - Chug's Pub - to rave reviews... admittedly by the time we ask our fans for reviews at the end of the night many of them are three sheets to the wind, but we'll take it :) Our "hell or highwater" drummer - Pete Carlson - is leaving us at the end of the month for a job at Barnes & Noble in Rotchester, MI - so that's a total bummer. If you know a good drummer who a cool guy to hang out with and looking for a band, let me know. Other than that - we'll be rocking the house, headlining the Starlight on August 4th - it's a requirement that everybody come out that night - it'll rock the socks off any Partridge Family show you've been to.

Work is still going well, saving more money than I spend (although not as much as I'd like) so I guess that's all you can hope for.

Other than that, hanging out with old friends and always meeting new ones - a better life I could not ask for (with the hopes of getting...)

That's it for now, I will make it a point to post more often than once every month.

Dave

Where have I been?

2006-07-24T22:48:00.000-06:00

Busy. What's it to you?

kill for an X-Box?

2006-07-24T20:27:00.000-06:00

So apparently (the jury is still out, so it would be wrong of me to assume) these three guys in Florida killed another group of guys (6?) with a couple baseball bats because they thought that these guys stole their X-box. Wow. What a senseless waste that was! I mean if it had been an Atari.... kidding

Speaking of how messed up the world is - I've recently been listening to BBC Radio 4. I love it. Such a change from the trivial, oft biased scare tactics and rantings that local news spews forth. I was incredibly impressed when listening to an interview of a Radio 4 journalist with the Secretary of Defense of Israel. The journalist actually had the confidence and the guts to ask some pretty forthright questions to the defense secretary about the recent retaliation of the Israeli army to Hezbollah and Lebanon. He quoted several Lebanese civilian deaths and targets that have turned out to be schools and hospitals and asked the defense secretary to explain if he thought it was right or not. The defense secretary didn't back down at all, but asked the journalist to check his facts and let him know that, yes he believes that Israel is doing the right thing in this engagement.

The next piece was talking about the G8 summit that is happening in Moscow. The main discussion topic was going to be about the energy crisis and Russia's attempt in cornering more of an upper hand in the European oil supply. But then this whole Lebanon/Israel thing happened and of course that must be the main thing discussed. Because we (the US) as a nation support Israel, many of the world leaders were calling to President Bush to urge Israel not to launch an all out attack on Lebanon, but respond showing an equal aggression that Hezbollah took initially when capturing the Israeli army officers. Bush didn't say a thing, only that he still supports Israel, and didn't tell them to back down at all. I feel he should have taken a stand a this point, but apparently he had to wait until there were more bombings in Lebanon and Israel and the Israeli army began a ground invasion of Southern Lebanon to send Condoleeza Rice to try and talk some sense into the Lebanese and Israeli governments. As of today, she failed.

We'll see what happens, but as for me, I've got a good friend in Haifa, Israel which is continually getting rocketed by Hezbollah rockets, and another friend who was in Damascus, Syria just before this whole thing happened and was planning on getting back into Lebanon, and for her sake, I hope she just got the heck out of there.

The world is too messed up right now. I guess that's kind of a consequence of it getting smaller. I mean 10 years ago, what would I care what happened in Mumbai, India. Even a year ago, I don't think I'd ever heard of the city. But when you have a friend who was on the same train that just got bombed a couple weeks before it happened, it kind of hits home.

Not to depress you or anything, it's just things I feel we should think about.

World Cup 2006 & USA

2006-06-12T19:35:00.000-06:00

First off - disappointing loss to the Czech Republic this morning, but what can you expect from the number two ranked team in the world? I guess I was hoping that the US would give it a run like they did four years ago and surprise the world with getting as far as they did. Hopefully they won't let this loss effect the rest of their games.

Second - and what this blog is really about is an article I read in the paper today, while eating a Big City carnitas burrito. The US team is followed everywhere they go by a huge security entourage and - get this - their team bus is the only bus out of all of the teams at the 2006 World Cup that isn't marked with the team name, the country, or the flag. In fact, the USA team bus is completely unmarked. What does that say about the state of our nation that we can't even advertise the presence of our soccer team because we're too worried that it might become a target for terrorists?

busy, busy, busy!

2006-06-09T13:34:00.000-06:00

Man it's been for ever since I've posted anything on this blog! Life has been pretty full recently, but all really good things so I'm still loving what I'm doing - lot of music, working and hanging out with friends - here's some highlights:

New trivia night at Coopersmiths! First week we did it we won! Then I didn't go until last week and we came in second to this team that's won the last three weeks in a row - they're going down next week though...

End of an era - my roommates who I've lived with for four years moved out and we got together for a dinner at the house and went through all of our stuff in the kitchen and throughout the house. My new roommates have lived in the dorms and are just staying for the summer, so they don't have any furniture or kitchen things, so I had to go get a table and chairs from my parents place and went out just a couple days ago to get a George Forman grill and a toaster oven. Now I just need a blender and a coffee table and I'll be set.

Lots of good times hanging out in Boulder eating mass amounts of delicious sushi - My girlfriend left for the summer a couple weeks ago to do law clerk work at the ICTY in The Hague, so before she left I spent a lot (all) of my free time with her either in Boulder or up here, and we went out to sushi a lot and saw a lot of movies.

First BBQ of the summer! The last week in May a bunch of my friends were randomly in town and we all got together to enjoy the nice weather and had a BBQ and just basically hung out, relaxed and had fun - which really is what summer should be all about...although now that I'm no longer in school and am working full time the whole kind of bumming around town, waking up at 10:00, playing frisbee golf in the afternoon, etc... doesn't seem to work all that well.

Tons of music! Second Wind played a gig on May 19th, May 26th and 27th (with a stand in guitarist that's a story in itself) and we have another two gigs this coming weekend at The Ranch at the Budweiser Event Center! Waido, Pete and I played a gig at the Starlight last Friday night with my dad sitting in on bass - which was a whole lot of fun - and then finished the night playing at Lucky Joes. After we finished at Joe's we ended up just leaving everything set up because we were playing all night Saturday as well. This weekend we're playing a Saturday night gig at Chug's Pub which should be really low key, but a lot of fun. Also two weekends ago most of the members from Innocent Bystanders got together and jammed for a couple hours - surprisingly enough, we even remembered most of our old stuff!

Other than that, I've been watching the occasional movie (although I've just started having some free time this week) working a lot, which I'm still really liking, and enjoying the weather - even though it has been unseasonably warm recently.

So that's it for now - hopefully it won't be another month before I get time to write!
Dave

excited

2006-05-05T07:50:00.000-06:00

So tonight I'm going down to Denver to see "Les Misrables" at the Buelle Theatre. I'm super excited, since the only musical I've ever seen at that scale was Disney's Beauty and the Beast and that was years and years ago, and it was Disney's Beauty and the Beast. The girl I'm going with has seen it around five times and has seen it on Broadway, so I'm convinced it's going to be pretty amazing.

Then tomorrow is KBCO Kinetics in Boulder, and I'll be going to that. John Butler Trio & Los Lobos are playing the event and I've been wanting to see Los Lobos live ever since I heard their "Just Another Band from East LA" CD a long time ago.

So, its shaping up to be a pretty sweet weekend!

worst smell ever

2006-05-04T12:00:00.000-06:00

Old sprouts that have gone bad. It's terrible. Makes you want to throw up when you smell it. And it lingers around as well.

If you have sprouts that you don't finish all the way, don't throw them in your kitchen trash, unless you seal it up in a couple ziploc bags.

Just a heads up.

Joan Miro's birthday

2006-04-20T08:15:00.000-06:00

Today, April 20th is the Spanish surrealist painter Joan Miro's birthday. Google is doing their cool "Google Art" thing so I thought I'd post something as well. He was born in 1893 in Barcelona, studied in Spain for awhile before moving to Paris where he really developed his surrealist style.

I'm a big fan of his paintings and like him even more because he's one of the few artists whom I've been lucky enough to see original paintings by in a museum I was at a while ago in Vienna. That always makes me biased towards an artist. In that same museum there were several Kandinsky paintings who, for me, ranks up in my top five of all time.

If you get a chance today, do some searching on Joan Miro, he's got some really cool stuff out there.

above picture taken from this site

State Radio show

2006-04-11T10:47:00.000-06:00

Last night I went to go see State Radio at the Fox Theatre in Boulder. Incredible show. If they keep it up like this it will only be a short time since they hit the popularity that Dispatch had before breaking up.

Out of the three guys in Dispatch, I would have to say that Chad wrote my most favorite songs. The General, Passerby, Cover This, Elias - his style was the upbeat rocking, political song writing. You can definitely tell that he picked up right where he left off. State Radio's new CD "Us Against the Crown" is one of the best CD's I've heard. I can listen to it over and over. The songs have a great drive, a beat you can really get into, and lyrics and melodies that you can listen to for hours on end.

The energy that they brought to the stage with their songs were incredible. Not only was the music really tight but they bring a political message to their shows through their songs and also between songs. They had a petition next to the merchandise table to try to push our country to act in the recent genocide that is going on in the Sudan and being greatly ignored by the US. Also, before playing the song Camilo, Chad said that he had a friend fighting in Iraq and when he came back to the states for leave, he said that he couldn't under good conscious return and fight, so he was arrested and put in military prison - so Chad wrote the song for him, and soldiers like him. You can download a free copy of the song at State Radio's website.

The show was great, the crowd was really into it - I think there were around five or six people who got up and did some crowd surfing - and overall it was just a great time.

If you haven't heard of them you should definitely check them out, and if you're a fan, be sure not to miss them the next time they come to your neck of the woods.

State Radio's website

"V for Vendetta" movie review

2006-03-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

Pretty sweet movie. Now, I've never read the comic that it was based on, nor even knew that it was based on a comic until the DC Comics logo came up in the opening credits, so I can't say if the movie did it justice or not. But I would assume it did a pretty good job.

The movie was written by the guys who wrote the Matrix trilogy and the plot is a little reminiscent of it, although much more of a Brave New World theme that's been used so often in this genre. There are some pretty sweet fight scenes, but mostly these are over quickly and the movie relies on the story, the actors and the set design to really carry it. That being said, Natalie Portman and Stephen Rea do an incredible job as two of the leads in the movie. Hugo Weaving plays the main character, and does a great job with his voice, but his face is behind the Guy Fawkes mask the entire time so the voice is the only performance you really get.

"People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people."

The plot of the movie is basically a tyrannical oppressive government in the not too near future of England and a revolutionary bent on revenge who's goal is to bring down the government and wake the people up to what they have been tolerating all of these years. It's well written and well executed, and a definitely entertaining movie. It is, however, quite dark, so if that's not you're thing, you probably won't be too big of a fan.

Let's go with an 8 out of 10.

On a side note, the mask that V wears in the movie is a Guy Fawkes mask. Guy Fawkes was an Englishman who, in 1605, tried to blow up Parliament & King James I, but was caught before he was able. On Nov 5th (the day in which he was caught) there is now a celebration in the UK in which they burn bonfires and dummies of Guy Fawkes to celebrate his failure. Years ago they would also tie up live cats inside the dummies to mimic the scream of a person getting burned alive, but they don't do that any more. Probably thanks to PETA.

Happy St Paddy's Day!

2006-03-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Don't have much to say on this post. Last night went out to see one of my good friends Irish band play at a punk bar here in town - pretty crazy experience. While they were setting up there was way too loud crazy punk music going on in the house (not my first choice in listening...) and then they played a great set, took a break, and a punk band did a quick change over and played a set (I hung out outside with my friend during that set to save my ears from exploding) and then the Irish band took the stage once more.

Anyway, the whole point is that they have this song (it's an original, which I was completely impressed by) which says that everyone's Irish for a day. So Happy St Paddy's day to all of you, have fun tonight, but be safe, and drink a couple Guinness (is there a plural for Guinness? Guinnesses? Guinnessi?) for me.

Also, find at least some Irish music in your music collection and do a little jig to get yourself into the spirit.

On a similar note - a couple days ago, the archbishops in Chicago declared that since St Paddy's day falls on a Friday - and during Lent, if you're Catholic you're not allowed to eat meat on Fridays - this particular Friday it will be okay if you eat your traditional corned beef and cabbage. But if you do, you have to find some other way to repent and sacrifice today. So for all of you Irish Catholics out there, don't worry, go ahead and have that second helping of corned beef and feel no guilt about it. The archbishop says it's okay.

"Elizabethtown" movie review

2006-03-16T18:54:00.000-07:00

Think "Garden State" mixed with "Almost Famous". Did you like those two movies? Then you'll like this. I loved those two movies and I loved this one as well. The soundtrack is great, the actors are great, and the movie just makes you feel good through the entire thing.

The cast is incredible. Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst do a great job in the leading roles, especially Orlando Bloom, but the supporting cast is great as well. Susan Sarandon, as usual, is great (anybody seen "Igby Goes Down"?) and Alec Baldwin, although not in the movie for very long at all, really nails his part.

The premise is simple enough, Orlando Bloom plays a young businessman in the shoe designing business who has just made this huge fiasco for his company, and he gets word that his dad just died. So his mom and his sister tell him he has to go out to Kentucky, where all of his dad's family lives, to pick up the body and bring it back to Oregon for cremation. He meets Kirsten Dunst on the way there and it goes from there. Outside of that, there are several things in the movie that just stood out to me and made me really like the movie in general. There's a pretty unique part with an exercise bike, an explanation by Alec Baldwin about just how much money 942 million dollars is, Freebird at a memorial service, but the best is the last 15 minutes which just made me happy for a couple days.

Definitely a movie to check out. 10 out of 10.

"Sadness is easier because its surrender. I say make time to dance alone with one hand waving free."

Washington DC

2006-03-16T18:21:00.000-07:00

We arrived in DC late on Friday evening and were planning on staying until Monday afternoon. The last time I was in DC was probably six years ago and we did the whole tourist thing, but because of that I didn't get a really good feeling of the city part of it. This trip staying with my friend in her place along with the other six people she lives with definitely gave me a good feel of the city. We did a lot of tourist things as well, but we also ran some errands and ate at places that I'm sure 98% of the tourists who go to the city have never heard of. Here are some highlights:

Saturday morning several of us went out to brunch at the Colorado Kitchen (named that way because it is located on Colorado St.) Excellent fresh homemade doughnuts before a pretty spectacular waffle.

Saturday night there was a house party for our friends birthday and a lot of the people she has met through work were leaving, so there was a lot of dancing and eating and meeting a lot of really cool people. (Side note here - the six of the seven people living in this house - including our friend - work for non profits in the city - and all seven of them are extremely liberal and not the biggest fans of the current administration - so we all got along together pretty well.)

Sunday we got up and went to the Spy Museum which was pretty cool. A lot of spy gadgets - a replica of the Bond car from the last Bond movie - and then a whole tour of the history of spying from the time of Caesar to East & West Berlin to the current technology of spying with the internet and everything. Although curiously enough, there wasn't any mention of illegal wire tapping or any of the other points of spying going on in our government today... The souvenir store at the Spy Museum was pretty sweet, and although I had no need of anything - if I had a lot of money that I had no need of, I think I would have spent an awful lot there.

Sunday night we all just hung out at the house and order Thai food and watched John Stewart rock the Oscars. It was the first time I watched the entire thing from the very beginning of the red carpet to the end of the awards show - and I think it will probably be the last time also. The awards show is fun, but I'm really not into seeing what all of the stars are wearing.

Monday we went downtown looking for a place for brunch. After asking a city employee we were directed to "The Waffle Shop - Chinese & American Diner" right across from the Ford Theatre and next door to the house where Lincoln died. It was an experience. Pretty good food (although none of us tried the Chinese - we all got their waffle special) but the experience alone was completely worth it. The next time you go to DC, have breakfast at The Waffle Shop. It was the first time I had ever had scrapple (I think its a patty of grits fried in animal fat. It tastes like some kind of meat - but it isn't.) and I think the last time.

Then it was a walk to the National Mall to the National Gallery where an exhibit was showing of Paul Cezanne. It was a huge exhibit (probably about 200 of his paintings) and many paintings that I had seen before in calendars, postcards, or what not. Much, much cooler seeing the actual painting a foot in front of your face. Then we wandered up to the Capitol building and saw the security guards milling about with their very large guns in full display, and then walked back home just in time to gather our stuff and catch the metro to the bus back to BWI airport. So easy. Why can't Denver get it together?

Great impromptu trip - and then it was back to work on Tuesday. I'm going to have to take more of these random long weekend trips to other cities.

Baltimore trip

2006-03-16T17:43:00.000-07:00

So a couple weekends ago my roommate and I made a trip out to Baltimore and Washington DC to see a couple friends. Here's some highlights:

-Thursday afternoon: pull into USAirport parking lot at 4:15. Flight leaves at 5:20... made it in perfect timing, although I don't think I'd like to test my luck that close again.

-Thursday evening: Flew Southwest Airlines - cool airline, they don't have assigned seats so you just basically sit wherever you want to, and since the flight wasn't full at all no one had to take a seat squeezed in the middle of two other people. We landed in Chicago (Midway Airport - another airport added to my list) at around 8:00, and had dinner at the airport version of Miller's Pub, a restaurant that I had been to in Chicago eight years earlier, and had pretty decent fried cod sandwich (although being in an airport it was nearly $10).

-Thursday night: Touched down at BWI right at midnight, walked out the door and looked down the row of buses just as our friend was pulling up - perfect timing once again. Then we drove over to her house - basically a three floor hallway - two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs (narrow stairway, only one person at a time), a 'living room' and kitchen on the main floor, and then storage and laundry downstairs. After taking the "tour" and talking for awhile we hit the sack, being pretty tired from the trip.

-Friday morning started with me being yelled at by a miniature parrot - not a parakeet - at 8:00AM (6:00 my time) until I got up, which is a lovely way to start the day. But then we got going earlier and got to see more of the city. Our first stop was to walk around Peabody Music Conservatory where my friend went for several years for violin & viola performance. Just outside the main building (there are only two) is the large monument and roundabout where a scene in "Enemy of the State" was filmed, so that was pretty cool. Then we walked down to the part of the harbor that all of the tourists go - you could tell by the Barnes & Noble and the Hard Rock Cafe. During some other random walking around downtown with no real destination we ran across a couple of reporters from the Baltimore news station conducting an interview on the side of the street - so perhaps, we were in the background of a news segment on the increase of cost of living due to trying to bring in more business and make the downtown area a little more upscale. After walking around the downtown area a little more we stopped and had lunch at an amazing Nepalese buffet and then went down to the boathouse - our friend coaches college & high school crew - where they keep all of the skulls and checked them out. They are so much longer in person that you would expect them to be. Pretty cool. After that we drove around Baltimore for awhile and walked around Fells Point where I saw my first Coast Guard ship. That evening our friend from DC drove up and we all went out to dinner at the Waterfront Hotel (a funky pub/restaurant in Fells Point) where I accomplished my goal of eating crab cakes while I was in Maryland. After dinner my roommate & I drove with my friend back down to DC where she had to drop off her car and then caught the metro to her house in Columbia Heights.

next entry will pick up in Washington DC

Great Big Sea show

2006-02-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

Went to a great show tonight at the Paramount Theatre in Denver. Great Big Sea (a band from Newfoundland) played, and I got to see them again for the first time in a couple years. Great show! It was the first time I've been to the Paramount and I really enjoyed it. It's a great old style theatre and had a nice ambiance for the concert.

The show in itself was incredible. They just put out a new album called "The Hard and the Easy" a CD of traditional Newfoundland folk tunes. The first set was mainly off of their new CD, and then their second set was more rock tunes from all of their other CDs. If you haven't heard of Great Big Sea you should definitely check them out. Their vocals are incredible and they blend really well together. They came back
for two different encores, the second one they all started at the front of the stage & told the audience to be quiet, and then did an acapella song (I think it was called Mr. Brown's Daughter) with no microphones or anything. Really cool.

Anyway - it was a great show, great venue & we had great seats. The next time their back in our neck of the woods you should definitely check them out.
Great Big Sea's website

"The Chronicles of Narnia" movie review

2006-02-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

Tilda Swinton rocks. Easily the best part of the movie. She was so good at being so evil, and she blew me away in the last battle. I don't think they could have cast anyone better as the White Witch.

So on to the rest of the movie. There aren't many movies that I've seen that I consider better than the books that they're based upon. This was definitely an exception. I read the Chronicles of Narnia a short time ago (all of them) and thought that they were okay, but nothing exceptional. Each book is so short, it seems like nothing much happens and there's really nothing in between the things that do happen. After reading them again the first time in years, I was skeptical of the movie and how they were going to make a two hour epic out of it. Well they did, and they did a pretty good job. When reading the book, CS Lewis does a good job of making the children really annoying and making you get pretty much fed up with them on the first part of the story. The same is true in the movie. The kids are annoying (and I'm not saying anything about the actors - they were great - it was just the parts written) in the first two thirds of the movie, and then they get a lot better. Liam Neeson is a great voice for Aslan, as well as the actors who do the voice for the Beaver (Ray Winstone) and the Wolf (Sim Evan-Jones).

Overall I thought the movie was really good, great visuals, great sounds, and battle scenes that were definitely up to par with what has become the norm with all of the recent epic movies.

I give it a high 7 out of 10. The annoying part the kids played took some away from it for me, but Tilda Swinton was awesome. The movie in itself is worth seeing to see her coming into the last battle in her chariot.

"Wallace & Gromit" movie review

2006-02-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

I give this 9 out of 10 stars. I might even go 9+. Its a great movie, I loved it. But for totally different reasons than why I loved "City of Lost Children".

"Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" just made me smile the entire time. First of all, I love Wallace & Gromit and have seen all of their shorts, so when I heard that there was finally going to be a movie, I knew I had to see it. Saying that, I find it hard to believe it took me this long! I guess that's what happens when you have other things to do in your life. The animation is incredible, and the voice talent does a great job. Helena Bonham Carter is perfect for her part. The comedy is great and there's a lot of little subtle visuals and lines that just had me busting out laughing. I particularly liked the "dog fight" at the end.
Check this movie out if you're in the mood for just an overall good entertaining movie. Great family movie as well.

"Aww. The bounce has gone from his bungee."

"City of Lost Children" movie review

2006-02-09T20:14:00.000-07:00

"I had a weird dream"

Little bit of an understatement. This was a crazy movie. Really dark, think Terry Gilliam at his best. Jean-Pierre Jeunet is quickly becoming one of my favorite lesser known directors. His visuals, set design, and color schemes are incredible. Think of the color schemes of "Amelie" and then go to the opposite spectrum of dark and twisted. Ron Pearlman does a great job in it (he's Hellboy in the movie of the same name) and the young actress Judith Vittet is incredible. The story is truly unique about this super intelligent guy who was created from a test tube but the person who created him left him and created him without the ability to dream. So he kidnaps children to try to see into their minds and what they are dreaming, but when he trys to get into their dreams they become only nightmares.

There's a lot of great memorable scenes in the movie, but one will stick out in my mind for quite sometime. For those of you who have seen it, you'll know what I'm thinking about, but since I don't want to give it away, I'll just say that looking yourself in the eye while you're dying would really freak me out.

If you're a fan of dark movies (I was a huge fan of "Dark City" and this is kind of in the same vein) you should definitely check it out.

I give it 8 out of 10.

Happy Groundhog Day

2006-02-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

Today is February 2nd - Groundhog Day! So go celebrate by doing whatever it is people do on Groundhog Day. I guess it's a big thing out east, especially in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, but if you happen to live no where close to that little town, celebrate in your own way.

The date is also the traditional day of Candlemas on western calendars. This was the date 40 days after the birth of Christ where the Virgin Mary would have gone to the temple to attend a ceremony of ritual purification and present her child to the temple.

Some traditions and superstitions surrounding Candlemas are that traditionally it was on the eve of Candlemas that all Christmas decorations were taken down for any traces of holly, lights, trees and anything else Christmas-like after Candlemas would bring death and misfortune in the coming year. (So all of you people who still have your Christmas decorations out, take them down already!) Also it was traditionally found that good weather on Candlemas Day meant another 40 days of winter, which is where the tradition of Groundhog Day originally comes from.

Also, Groundhog day marks the 6 week mark to another lesser known and even lesser celebrated holiday, St. Urho's Day. St. Urho is a fake legend that the Finnish made up when immigrating to America and wanted their own holiday to keep strong ties to their Finnish culture. (Some people think they were jealous of the Irish & St Patrick's Day) Apparently he is celebrated because he drove out all of the Grasshoppers from Finland...similarities?

Anyway a little fun trivia for you today on Groundhog's Day.

And by the way, Phil saw his shadow today, so hope you haven't got all of the skiing out of your system just yet.

End of an Era

2006-01-28T14:54:00.000-07:00

Thursday night I went down to Boulder to see the last Newcomers Home show ever. I've been following these guys and have been a huge fan ever since I saw them open up for Seven Nations three years ago on Valentines Day. Since then, I've seen them play a ton of shows and have a ton of great memories. Small acoustic shows in Nederland, Boulder, Fort Collins, shows with the full band at Octoberfests, Irish Fest in Denver, and of course a ton of great shows at the Boulder Theatre.
Thursday's show topped them all. You could tell they were having a great time up there and got pretty emotional during several songs knowing that this was an end of an era for them. They played from 8:00 to 11:30 and played a lot of their older songs off of their first two CDs that I had never heard live, so that was a special treat for me. Looking throughout the crowd you could see several people dancing a singing along to all of the songs that they all knew.

It'll be sad not to see the band as a whole again, but I wish all the best of luck to Katie on her solo work in Nashville, Tim & Laurie with The Blackthorn Project, Andrew with his concentration on session work where ever that may take him, and Scott & Brian with all of their side projects.
Thanks to all of you for several great years - I'll always be a fan.

"The Graduate" movie review

2006-01-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

Man, it seems like I've been incredibly busy recently and haven't been able to write that many movie reviews. This past week has been fairly crazy and lacking in sleep - so much so that I think I'll retire after finishing up this entry. But anyway for the first time in awhile (I always feel like I'm not getting the most I can from Netflix if I let my three DVDs sit on the table for more than a week) I had a couple free hours and wanted to watch a movie. The movie for tonight was The Graduate.

Now, I know what all of you are thinking - especially those of you who know how much of a movie buff I am - "You haven't seen The Graduate"??? Nope. Never got around to it. So now that I have finally gotten around to it, here's my review:

I give it a 6 out of 10. As it happens, being an old movie, its a bit slow. Not that I'm saying all old movies are slow and need to have crazy action, explosions, chases and what not to make them good. 12 Angry Men is one of my favorite movies of all time, and that stands alone with a solid script and great acting. The Graduate was just a little slow. The acting was great. Dustin Hoffman especially. Loved his nervous portrayal of the character in the first half of the movie, and then the change over his character in the second half.

The music - and this is coming from a person who thinks that the soundtrack and the music in the movie is one of the most important things (i.e. Garden State, any Wes Anderson movie) - was good, but my expectations had been built up so completely by this unforgettable Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack that I was expecting a little more. "The Sound of Silence" was played three different times in the movie! "Scarborough Fair" was played at least four times! So I thought it was kind of weird that they chose to use a few songs several different times.

But above all, my favorite thing about the movie, was finally seeing the original of what so many movies in our day and age have been quoting from. Seeing the original just made me laugh so much harder and appreciate those movies that quote it. I didn't realize that Old School is mimicking The Graduate when Will Farrell falls into the pool. And in Wayne's World at the wedding in the church, its a complete reference to the end of The Graduate. And although I've always been a fan of both of those more recent movies, seeing those scenes in The Graduate made me appreciate it even more.

Check it out if you've got the time. As everybody says "It's a classic".

Live at Lunch KRFC!

2006-01-25T21:03:00.000-07:00

So yesterday the Michael Waido Band did Live at Lunch on KRFC, Fort Collins local grassroots radio station. It was a great time and was the first time that I'd been in the KRFC studio. It was even, at least for me, the first time that I'd played music live on the radio. I was a DJ at KCSU for about a week three or so years ago, but the only thing I got to say was announcements about concerts and goings on, so that wasn't anything big. About half a year ago Waido and I made a trip down to Greeley for one of their local AM stations and did about a 10 minute interview promoting our show later that week at the Greeley Rio. We didn't play any songs but the interview was a lot of fun, and afterwards we thought we should have had it recorded because we were just going back and forth with some great stuff that had the hosts cracking up.

This time on the radio was much more all about the music. We were able to play a couple songs cued up from the CD, more songs that can be found on the CD live, but more importantly we were able to showcase most of the new stuff that we've been working on and got a recording of it.

The studio itself is a great room, and they've got a lot of really nice equipment for a local radio station. Phillip, our interviewer, was a great guy and it was a nice relaxing hour that seemed to fly by. For those of you who caught it, hope you really liked our new stuff, and for those of you who weren't able to catch the set, come on out to our shows and you'll definitely be able to hear them then!

Thanks once again to KRFC! That's it for now,
Dave :)

New computer!

2006-01-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

Fan-freakin-tastic!

So for the first time in my life I actually have a job that pays pretty well, so I have money to spend on things!

My first major purchase has been a much needed computer. It's great. I just got it shipped last weekend, so I've spent the little time that I've had this week setting it up and getting all of the settings just right. Flat screen, fairly large monitor, whole bunch of memory, Intel Pentium 4, huge difference from my roommates 10 year old laptop that he's been nice enough to let me use for the past four years.

Anyway, I'm quite happy with my purchase so I feel I should give a shout out to Dell. I'm a content customer.

Trip to Omaha

2006-01-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

So a couple weeks ago my family and I drove to Omaha, NE to see our relatives, do a belated Christmas and drop my little sister off for her second semester of her sophomore year at NU. Not counting this year, I have spent Christmas with all of our family in Omaha every year of my life. This was the first year that we spent Christmas here in Fort Collins just with my immediate family. It was a really nice relaxing time, especially considering the gorgeous weather we had over the weekend.

Then a couple weeks later we left for Omaha to see everybody that we didn't get to see for Christmas. It was great seeing everybody and was nice to have just a relaxing setting where we really didn't have to do anything, and our sole purpose was just to see the family. We even got to celebrate Christmas again at my Grandpas place because he postponed his Christmas until we came out there.

We got to Omaha on a Thursday, and then Sunday drove down to Lincoln to help my sister move back into her apartment. That was a lot of fun, especially helping your little sister move into an apartment for her sophomore year in college! Crazy how time flys. When we got to her place (it's not exactly dorms, more like an apartment building on campus) we found out her roommate was moving out and transferring schools (without telling my sister at all...). But apparently that didn't work out so well because she was back the next night....

Overall the trip was a lot of fun, got to bring my CD to a bunch of my relatives so they could finally hear the band, got to see where my sister is living, and got to take a few relaxing days off of work.

(The pic is my sister and I in her kitchen while she was putting new Christmas gifts away.)

New Years with Newcomers Home

2006-01-01T21:59:00.000-07:00

Amazing night last night. The best way I can think of to ring in the new year. One of my favorite bands (and every time I see them live they're easily my favorite band for the next couple weeks at least) Newcomers Home played their second to last show ever at the Redfish Brewery in Boulder to bring in the new year.

First of all, I went down with a bunch of really good friends from Fort Collins and then met up with some good friends down in Boulder. A great group of people to celebrate New Year's Eve with. Then we had reservations for dinner at the Redfish Brewery, which has incredible food. I ordered the seared sashimi grade Ahi Tuna steak with a crab and avocado risotto. Absolutely amazing. It's an expensive restaurant, but it was New Years, so we splurged, and it was delicious. Highly recommended.

Then Newcomers Home came on around 9:30 and played a fantastic first set. Really tight and you could tell that they were loving every minute of it. Their second set started around 11:10 and I got right up in the front to dance. It was a great set and they started with one of my favorite songs "Walls". They also played one of their older songs "Texas", but a much more rockin version of it. It was great.

For New Years the brewery passed out champagne and the band did an improve jam over the ball drop coverage from Times Square with Tim (the mandolin player) doing his own announcing. It was the perfect way to ring in the New Year. After the countdown was over and we had yelled "Happy New Year" the band started up again with the end of the song "Drewgrass", a fast jamming song that they had ended on just before the New Year's coverage. One of the best shows of theirs I had ever been to, and I've been to a ton of them.

It's too bad they're splitting up as a band, and that they're quickly approaching their last show, but I wish them all the luck on their other projects and thank them for all good memories.

2005 - A Year in Review

2005-12-31T15:45:00.000-07:00

Here's to a great 2005! A ton happened this year, so here's just a recount of some highlights:

-last semester at CSU. Graduated in Mechanical Engineering, finished up with our senior design project - actually produced hydrogen from our water electrolyzer - got to teach a couple classes filling in for one of my professors

-a job in town in Mechanical Engineering, actually putting my degree to use, working a lot and really enjoying it.

-lots of nights getting together with friends playing poker

-brewery tours at New Belgium Brewery, Odell's, Fort Collins Brewery

-lots of great movies: Garden State, Sin City, Napoleon Dynamite, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Motorcycle Diaries...

-several fun graduation parties, great food, beer, music, friends, family...

-fajita parties, sushi parties, wine & cheese parties, bbqs... with friends old and new, just in town for a couple days or living here

-two incredible girls who made the year unforgettable (you know who you are)

-irish festival in Denver that I had a 'musician' pass to and got to hang out in the musicians tent and talk with a couple people who I really admire.

-countless days playing the game "Killer Bunnies" with friends

-several great books (and a couple not so hot ones) - Neal Stephenson, the Harry Potter books

-watching Nebraska football end on an up note for the year winning their last three games and beating Michigan in the Alamo Bowl

-a great week in the summer spent in Nebraska for a huge family reunion

-a lot of fun festival gigs throughout the summer playing with my dad in Second Wind

-opening up for Mission 19 at the Aggie Theatre with the Michael Waido Band

-countless gigs at Lucky Joe's, Connor O'Neill's, & Raferty's with the Michael Waido Band, having way too much fun, starting to recognize people who come out specifically because we're playing

-playing the Brewfest and New West Fest this year in Old Town

-a near win in a battle of the bands

-finally releasing our CD, "Fellowship of the Flood"

If I'm leaving anything out, well, give me a break, there's a lot that happens in a year! But overall, it was a great year, and here's to keeping them coming in 2006!

Cons vs Birks

2005-12-31T14:58:00.000-07:00

I bought some new shoes Thursday. Which is weird for me, because I can't remember the last time I went out and actually looked for shoes for myself. All of the sudden I was thinking to myself, "I need to go out and get some Cons". Now I don't know why I suddenly thought that, I've never owned a pair of Converse in my life. And for at least 95% of the last eight years I haven't even had shoes with laces. I wear sandals pretty much up until there's snow on the ground and then I had these slip on clog type shoes. But Thursday I bought two pairs of Cons, brown and green. And they're awesome. It's rare that you put on a new pair of shoes and they're comfortable from the moment you get them. These were.

So then I got to thinking, do Cons and Birks mesh? If they met each other in a dark alley would they fight or would they go out for a beer? And if they fought who would win? You don't see a lot of hippies wearing Cons, and you don't see a lot of skaters wearing Birks, but Birks are worn not only by hippies, and Cons are worn by tons of people. So I thought I'd give it a go and see what happens. But I'll still keep them on opposite sides of the room ;)

New music

2005-12-31T14:16:00.000-07:00

Recently a friend of mine and I have been turning each other on to different artists and different types of music, and because of that I've discovered some amazing stuff. I know that I can put all the bands that I'm into on my profile page, but there's so little room, and that's for the stuff that I've been into for quite some time. I'm not going to review any of these artists (already did that for the new John Mayer album), but thought I'd just mention some stuff if anybody wants to check them out.

KT Tunstall - just got her CD in the mail yesterday, so its been in my CD player pretty much constantly, with a short reprise of the Very Best of the Beta Band. She's a Scottish singer/songwriter with an amazing voice akin to Susan Tedeschi and a solid guitarist. Good stuff, really laid back chill music. The CD I bought is "Eye to the Telescope"

The Beta Band - Seen "High Fidelity"? There's a quote from John Cusack: "I will now sell five copies of the three EPs by The Beta Band" ... later someone in the store asks "Who is this?" "The Beta Band" "It's good" "I know."
Check them out. They're good.

Mates of State - Crazy band from San Francisco, the happiest music I've ever listened to. You just put it on and you smile.

Diegos Umbrella - Four piece group out of the bay area. The first time I heard them I described it as underground music I would expect to hear in an funky coffee house in downtown Philly (or I guess San Francisco). Really chill acoustic stuff with some spanish influence, hip-hop, and pop. Good music.

Ending the year with the Michael Waido Band

2005-12-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

Last night we had our last gig of the year. It's crazy that we've been playing together for over a year and a half now. Lots of good memories and great gigs. I thought it only fitting that our last gig of the year was at Lucky Joe's, our hometown venue. We've had so much fun there and can't thank Joe, the rest of the people who work there, or all of our fans and family who come out to all of our shows there, enough. Last night was our sort of unofficial CD release party and I'm glad to say that we sold a lot of them. Thanks to anybody who came out and bought one to support us and what we do. We're booked throughout the next couple months with shows at Joe's (next one on Jan 27th) so check their website (www.luckyjoes.com) and keep up to date with our upcoming shows.

"Dot the I" review

2005-12-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

This movie blew me away. I had no idea what to expect coming into it, other than a recommendation from one of my good friends who has yet to recommend to me something that I did not like. So I moved it to the top of my Netflix queue and watched it last night. Incredible.

10 out of 10.

I'm not going to say too much about it, because I enjoyed going into it really not knowing what it is about (the Netflix blurb on the case is not even the top of the iceberg, its like a penguin hanging out on the top of an iceberg) and I don't want to ruin it for you. I will say that the acting is really well done, and the characters and the story are very original. This is not your run of the mill movie, so if you're a big Rob Schneider fan or waited in line to see "The Fast and the Furious", it's probably not your type of movie. For the rest of you however, you need to check this out. The leads are played by Gael Garcia Bernal (young Che Guevara in "The Motorcycle Diaries" and Natalia Verbeke and actress from Argentina, who I hadn't seen in anything before. They both do an incredible job (Gael plays a Londoner, and pulls it off well, accent and all, and Natalia is quite attractive, which doesn't hurt) and the supporting cast is great as well.

If you're up for checking out a great original movie, put this on the top of your list.

Like avocados?

2005-12-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

I love avocados. They make nearly every food better. Here's a little recipe type thing that I've been making recently. Credit goes to a good friend who learned of it during her stint down in Mexico.

What you will need:
1 avocado
1 can of tuna
lime juice
mayonnaise (or miracle whip)

Steps:
-Slice the avocado in half and remove the seed
-mix the tuna and mayo in a separate container (like tuna salad w/o all the other stuff)
-fill the two holes left by the seed in the avocado with the tuna and pile the rest on top
-squeeze a lime over the top of the tuna/avocado
-eat

It's pretty awesome and really quick. Makes a good unique appetizer for two people.

Michael Waido Band - Fellowship of the Flood

2005-12-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

BIG NEWS!!!

After a long journey of hard work - but great times - our debut album, "Fellowship of the Flood" is finally done and available. The twelve song CD shows our variety of styles from high energy uplifting songs to get your toes tapping, to slower melancholy piano songs good to listen to with the lights down low in an introspective mood. For those of you who don't know, the band features Michael Waido on lead vocals and guitar, Pete Carlson on drums and myself Dave Wisbon on piano. The album also includes guest appearances from Dennis Bigelow on acoustic bass, Eddy Miller on violin, Maren Shanahan on background vocals and Marty Singer on drums for April Fool. Several tracks also feature Michael's old roommate Parker Hills on lead acoustic guitar.

So if you've been supporting us for awhile and have seen us live, you can get the CD at

www.michaelwaido.com

If you haven't heard of us, check out some sample tracks from the CD at

www.myspace.com/michaelwaido

We'd love to have your continued support, so buy the album and tell all of your friends about it!

Hope all is well,
Dave :)

John Mayer

2005-12-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

Recently my taste of John Mayer music has increased nearly exponentially. Now I guess I've always been kind of a fan, because when he started it was the chill acoustic music that everybody was doing, and that sat well with me. Also some of his lyrics are pretty incredible and many of his songs bring good memories when hearing them (Comfortable, for example).

And then the other week I heard something that blew my mind. Eventually I was able to figure out that it was John Mayer and Herbie Hancock doing a song called Stitched Up off of Hancock's album "Possibilities". Then I remembered that John Mayer also did a sweet version of the song "I Don't Need No Doctor" with John Scofield off of his new album, neither song being the chill acoustic stuff I've been accustomed to hearing from him. So then I went out and bought the album "Try!" by the John Mayer Trio.

It is incredible.

On this album John is joined by Steve Jordan (a studio drummer who was in the Blues Brothers Band) and Pino Palladino (a bass player who has played with numerous bands on uncountable albums). These guys are tight. And John Mayer proves beyond a doubt to anybody who still thought that he was just another acoustic pop artist that he can wail along with the best of them on blues electric guitar. The song "Out of my Mind" is a long slow blues number with solos reminiscent of a Stevie Ray Vaughn or Eric Clapton laying down some slow blues riffs. Not only is his guitar right on, but the live emotion of his voice is incredible. He's putting everything into it. It's tough to come up with a favorite off the CD, but I would say that the three I like the best are the cover of Ray Charles "I Got A Woman", the Trio's song "Who Did You Think I Was" and John Mayer's song "Gravity".

If you're a fan of John Mayer, or a fan of good blues in general definitely check it out.

48 Degrees Celsius!

2005-12-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

So I was driving by the bank today and their temperature display read 48C. Now it's been awhile since I've spent enough time in Europe to feel comfortable knowing what the centigrade temperature scale feels like, but even I know that 48C is really, really hot. And I also know that it didn't mesh with the Fahrenheit reading on the next screen that said 12.

Mitch Hedburg

2005-12-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

So Mitch Hedburg came up in a conversation I was having the other day, and inevitability, we began to quote many of his one liners. His stuff always makes me laugh so I figured I'd share some of it as kind of a tribute to him.

"I had a stick of Carefree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality."

"I went to the park and saw this kid flying a kite. The kid was really excited. I don't know why, that's what they're supposed to do. Now if he had had a chair on the other end of that string, I would have been impressed."

"Mr. Pibb is a poor imitation of Dr. Pepper. Dude didn't even get his degree."

"I was in downtown Boise, Idaho, and I saw a duck, and I knew the duck was lost, 'cause ducks ain't supposed to be downtown. There's nothing for them there. So I went to a Subway sandwich shop, and I said, "Let me have a bun." But she wouldn't sell me just the bun, she said that I had to have something on it. She told me it's against regulations for Subway to sell just the bun. I guess the two halves ain't supposed to touch. So I said, "Alright, well, put some lettuce on it," which she did. She said, "That'll be $1.75." I said, "It's for a duck." And she said, "Alright, well, that is free." See I did not know that. Ducks eat for free at Subway! Had I known that I would have ordered a much larger sandwich. "Let me have the Steak Fajita Sub - but don't bother ringing it up, it's for a duck! There are six ducks out there, and they all want Sun Chips!"

A beekeeper, a magi, and a wind tunnel technician walk into a bar...

2005-12-12T12:48:00.000-07:00

So what do beekeepers, magi, and wind tunnel technicians have in common?

(That's one of those odd triplets that really doesn't seem to belong together at all, isn't it?)

They all smell like frankincense!

Today we got an order of frankincense in at work (a sampler pack from India, Oman, Somalia, Estonia...) to test out how it would work in creating smoke for our wind tunnel applications. So I spent the whole morning with a little piece of charcoal dropping different samples of frankincense to see which one produced the best smoke or had the best scent to it.

For those of you who don't know, frankincense was one of the three gifts the magi brought to Bethlehem when Jesus was born (gold, frankincense, and myrrh). It is used mainly in religious rites (Picture the catholic priest walking down the aisle with the alterboys swinging the smoking gold pot behind him. That's frankincense.) but also goes by the name of bee gum. Beekeepers use it to charge their smoke guns when they smoke out the hives. The actual frankincense comes from the hardened sap (or resin) of the Boswellia tree.

So there's your nifty little tidbit of information. Whoever thought I'd be playing with frankincense in an actual engineering application? Learn something new every day.

Best usage of the word "masticate"

2005-12-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading this book, Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson (also the author of Cryptonomicon), and I came across this passage that I believe is the best usage of the word "masticate" that there has ever been and will ever be. I thought I'd share it.

"The Dutch Ambassador rolled his eyes and tossed the waffle back over his shoulder - before it struck the ground, a stout, disconcertingly monkey-like dog sprang into the air and snatched it, and began to masticate it - literally - for the sound it made was like a homunculus squatting on the floor muttering, "masticate masticate masticate."
-p232, Quicksilver

You know what really grinds my gears?

2005-11-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

Idiocy in the government.

A good friend of mine recently sent me this e-mail:

"Further evidence of how messed up our government is...

A recent Department of Commerce report regarding declining highway maintenance budget suggests, amongst other things, a specific tax for hybrid vehicles and small cars to make up for their reduced contribution in gasoline taxes due to higher gas mileage.

Besides begin totally moronic, I wonder if they considered the relative contributions to road wear made by a ~2500lb small car or hybrid vs. a mid-sized SUV at ~4500lb or a full-sized truck at 6000+lb"

Now, wait a minute. With rising gas prices, using up more and more fossil fuels, and becoming more and more aware of the impact our emissions has on the environment, isn't the whole purpose to reduce emissions, increase gas mileage, and ultimately decrease our dependence on fossil fuels? I guess some in the government would have us be punished for doing a good thing. And heck, while we're at it, how about putting a specific tax on those among us who don't even own cars and use public transportation or bicycles to get to where they need to go. They're not contributing anything in gasoline taxes, not to mention not contributing to the smog and dependency on oil we face. I think something needs to be done about them too.

And that's my rant for today.

"Crash" review

2005-11-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

9 out of 10 stars. Really good movie.

I had heard very little about this movie when it came out and very little from friends who had seen it other than, "You should see this movie, it's really good" but I didn't even know what it was about. I knew it was one of those movies that has a big cast and follows how each person is interconnected, but I thought it about a car crash and how everyone was affected by that. There's a line at the very beginning of the film said by Don Cheadle's (another incredible acting job by him) character that says:

"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."

This really sets off the whole film, which is more about racism than anything else. It reminded me of a really hard hitting Spike Lee movie, but instead of just using the black/white racism found in his films, this one was racism viewed from all different cultures about all different cultures. Overall it is a really powerful film with an incredible cast that really makes you feel what the characters are feeling. There are a couple lines and scenes in the movie that are almost like a punch in the gut and leave you shocked. I also have to give props to Sandra Bullock in this film who plays a rich middle aged white woman who is an angry racist. She does an amazing job and I have to respect her for having the courage to take that part and play it up the way she did.

The movie is definitely a drama, far from the scope of comedy, and is not going to lift you up or anything, and you're not going to feel all warm and fuzzy after it's over. It's a powerful, hard hitting film and if you're in the mood for something like that, I would recommend it absolutely.

Pocky

2005-11-22T07:37:00.000-07:00

So last night one of my good friends and I were in the mood for a movie and went to a local video store called the Village Vidiot. They have pretty much everything there in the way of independent films, foreign films, and just anything that you would be surprised to see say if you were at Blockbuster. So we had both wanted to see the movie "Crash" so we picked that up and were getting ready to check out when we noticed they had a bunch of Japanese candy, including a whole bunch of Pocky. Now for those of you who don't know, Pocky are thin breadstick like things dipped in anything from different kinds of chocolate to yogurt covered. But the best thing was- are you ready for this? Men's Pocky! We came up with some conclusions of our own before the owner told us that there's a strip on the side of the box that if you put it in the refrigerator it will reveal your fortune in love. Sadly, we did not end up getting Men's Pocky, but instead opted for the chocolate Pocky with almonds, which was - I am happy to say - a huge success.

what flavor pocky are you?

[c] sugardew

"Titus" review

2005-11-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

Wow. 10 out of 10 stars. This movie is incredible. I saw it a couple years ago, and remembered it being good, but not this good. But then again, using Shakespeare as the script, its tough to go too wrong, although I didn't like the modern version of "Romeo & Juliet".

Titus is one of Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedies and it shows in the film. Anthony Hopkins is incredible as Titus Andronicus, and the rest of the cast does an amazing job as well. Angus Macfadyen (Robert the Bruce in "Braveheart") is great as Titus' son Lucius and Jessica Lange plays the part of a revengeful, merciless queen of the goths perfectly. Apart from the acting, I also really enjoyed the production of the film, with the mix of modern and old set pieces seemed to blend all time periods together. Along with that the costume design (which was nominated for an Oscar) worked really well in the movie, especially the costume of the victorious Titus returning from war with the goths.

One other aspect of the film that deserves mentioning was the moor Aaron. All props on this go to Shakespeare and the actor Harry Lennix. Shakespeare for creating one of his most evil and baseless villains of all time and Harry Lennix for pulling it off so perfectly that you hate him so much but he becomes one of your favorite things in the film.

If you haven't seen this movie, see it. It's long, but it certainly doesn't seem long at all (except for the last 20 seconds, they could have moved a little faster). Even if you're not a huge fan of Shakespeare I think you will appreciate the quality of acting, the amazing story, and the artful approach to a classic that this film takes.

"The Day After Tomorrow" review

2005-11-14T07:36:00.000-07:00

Alright. So I had heard this was a terrible movie from some of my friends, but I decided to watch it anyway, and I'm glad I did. Now it's not like it's one of my favorite movies, and probably not even in the top 50, but for an entertaining Saturday afternoon movie, when it's cold outside and you have nothing else to do, it hits the mark.

I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Let me also tell you that I'm kind of a sucker for big disaster - how humans cope with terrible situations - type movies. And this movie followed the formula to a tea. Similar to "Independence Day" and "Armageddon", the movie touched on several different characters in the set up (you know, so we could get a feeling of their lives and feel bad when they die) and then followed a few main characters through the entire movie. I thought everyone in the movie did a good job, but I think they could have picked just about anyone for each role. The one actor who I thought did a great job, and was actually my favorite segment of the movie was Ian Holm, but I suppose that is to be expected. Not to look down on Dennis Quaid or anything, he did a great job also, but I think that other actors could have done the same.

Anyway over all I would say it was a pretty good flick, entertaining at least if not the most plausible movie. But seriously, if you're watching "The Day After Tomorrow" and expecting some scientifically based plausible story, you've got other problems than finding a good movie to watch.

Another flat tire?!?

2005-11-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

I am a pro at getting flat tires. If anyone has had more flat tires in a shorter period of time, I would like to meet them. And it's not like I drive through construction sites, or over hot lava, or boards with nails in them, or chase cars who throw spikes out the back to pop my tires. They just happen to go flat.

I thought this might change when I started riding bicycles, but I was wrong. I've been on a bike everyday for the past 3 months now, and I've gotten 5 flat tires! Different bikes too! I've gotten 2 on one of them and three on the other. Got my most recent one this morning on the way to work. And you know what? It used to be that there was nothing in life that got me pissed off except getting a flat tire. But today, wasn't angry at all. It was almost as if when I looked down and saw that the rear tire was flat, I had almost expected it. I wonder if now that I can deal with them civilly, I'll still get them? Let's hope not, because even if they don't bother me now as much as they did, it's still better to not get them at all.

"Rushmore" review

2005-11-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

10 out of 10 stars! Way to go Wes Anderson & Owen Wilson!

This movie is great. The script is completely original and the characters are amazing. Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and Olivia Williams are excellent in the movie along with all the rest of Wes Anderson's crew. It's hard to believe that it's Jason Schwartzman's first movie, he plays so well along side of Bill Murray, and there's a great scene when he's drunk at dinner with Bill Murray, Olivia Williams and Luke Wilson. Bill Murray also does a great job in the movie and although he's in way to many excellent movies to rank which ones I like him in the best, this is definitely up there. The quintessential scene of his character is a little ways into the movie after we've been introduced to him at his twin sons birthday party. He's sitting on the other side of the pool, smoking, drinking and wearing big read swim trunks with the Budweiser logo on them, when he gets up and stumbles up the ladder to the diving board (with drink still in hand), finishes his drink, looks around and does a cannon ball into the pool. It's great, and the music to back up the scene is perfect, as with all scenes in the movie.

Which brings me to my favorite part of the movie: the music. I've loved the music selection in all of Wes Anderson's movies and this is no exception. Featuring a lot of acoustic guitar music from mainly British invasion bands, the music fits in with every scene perfectly. My favorite two songs come from The Kinks, and The Faces song "Ooh La La" at the end of the film during the credits.

"I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger."

"Bottle Rocket" review

2005-11-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

Alright, time for another movie review.

First of all, I want to say that I am a huge Wes Anderson fan, so I'm a bit biased. If you've seen one of his movies and you don't like it, you probably won't like this one too much. My roommate left after half of an hour.
But I loved it.

I give it 8 out of 10 stars. The first movie that Owen Wilson & Wes Anderson wrote together and already you can tell the unique writing and direction. Luke Wilson is great in it, and I love how he plays out the first scene. The so-called "escape" from the hospital really sets the scene for the entire movie. Owen Wilson does a great job as an all out go getter with a never say quit attitude who things never quite work out for. I love the scene with him in his yellow jump suit on the dirt bike.

"On the run from Johnny Law. It's no trip to Cleveland"

Dannon water?

2005-11-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting here at my computer, checking my email, friends blogs, what have you, when I pick up the bottle of water to my left and take a drink. No surprises there, it's water. But then I put it down and realize for the first time that it's Dannon Natural Spring Water. No I've heard of Dasani and Evian and all the other stuff, but doesn't Dannon make yogurt? I'm not sure how I feel about drinking yogurt water. I'm not really sure how I feel about drinking bottled water anyway seeing as how I live in Colorado, but they have it where I work and it's better than walking down the stairs to the drinking fountian every four minutes.

I love Colorado

2005-11-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's November 1st. I woke up today to a beautiful clear blue sky, and rode my bike to work at 7:30 in the morning. Looking at where the sun is you would swear that it is 10:00 or at least 9:00 and although I won't appreciate this as much when it's dark at 5:30 as I'm on my way home, I can live in the moment right now. The weather is perfect also. Not a hint of frost and the only thing that gives away the fact that summer has left us and we're full bore into the middle of fall is all of the fallen leaves on the ground. It had to be around 50 degrees, and with the sun I could have worn shorts and a t-shirt and been comfortable. Everything was there for the makings of a perfect day.

And then the back tire on my bike went flat and I had to carry the bike the last fifteen minutes to work.

"What the Bleep do we Know?" review

2005-11-01T00:43:00.000-07:00

So there's been a lot of talk about this movie, and I finally saw it. Some of my good friends who are philosophy majors said it was complete bunk and that I shouldn't waste my time, but some other friends who I've listened to before said I need to check it out. So here's my review on it, take it or leave it.

I give it 3 out of 10 stars. Really didn't like it much at all.

First of all, what was with the whole wedding scenes? The polka dance and the animated addiction cells? Could have lived without all of that.

I thought the movie was split into three different aspects, none of the three I really cared for. The first one with seemed to me like a dialogue you would stumble across with a bunch of high, partially drunk PhD professors in philosophy and quantum physics at some party out east somewhere. It reminded me of all that I can't stand about philosophy. Now I'm always one to expand my mind and introduce myself to new ideas, but I can't stand this continuous debate on what is reality. Does it matter? I would like to see one of those philosophers who talks about this whole thing with quantum physics being able to choose your own reality actually live in his own reality. Because until then, we're all living on the same planet, with the same rules and the same reality as far as I'm concerned. And if someone does break out into some crazy new reality that they've created, odds are everybody's going to know about it the next day.

Secondly, I thought it was lame when the movie took a turn to kind of a self-help "lift up your self-confidence" type thing. Okay, so we can control our own decisions and they effect our feelings and our life. Right. Big deal. I think everybody knows that, thank you very much.

Finally I think it could have really done without the whole spiritual turn towards the end. The last thing I need to hear is a bunch of new age physicist-philosophers trying to tell me about God and faith and how we all tie in to the bigger picture.

Anyway, if you're one of those types who likes to hear all the different views on things, or is into debating what is reality and all that type of stuff, I guess you can spend a couple hours to check out this movie. If you're pretty much fine with your way of thinking, and not really into a whole bunch of new-age philosophy, I also recently saw "Bottle Rocket" and really liked that.

Homeland security

2005-10-26T07:58:00.000-06:00

I wonder if President Bush is a big fan of Thomas Jefferson....

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
-Thomas Jefferson

Kansas state quarter

2005-10-25T19:17:00.000-06:00

Come on Kansas.

Who voted on this? I don't mean to say anything bad about Kansas, I've got friends from Kansas and they're all very nice people. And I know there isn't a whole lot out there, but I think the quarter could have been a little more interesting. I mean, it's a buffalo and a flower. Wow. I rank it second worst after the Texas quarter. Just the big state of Texas with a star, but I didn't really expect anything else.

I guess we've still got North Dakota and Nebraska to go and they might be worse, but I don't know if it could be much worse.

confused by the fairer sex

2005-10-23T21:23:00.000-06:00

ahh, yet another chapter in my attempts with the fairer sex...

Don't you hate it when you're friends with this girl and both of you are single and you think you like it that way - you two both being friends - but then you start going back and forth and thinking, "maybe it could be better" but then you think again that you should just stay friends and all of the sudden she's dating someone and it's not you and you realize that you blew it?

That sucks.

Harry Potter

2005-10-23T20:52:00.000-06:00

Right. So I was a little late to jump on the whole Harry Potter bandwagon & just started reading the books a couple weeks ago. One of those "don't want to do it because it's popular" type things, and then I realized that was stupid and heard from a lot of people whose taste I trust that they were good, so I started reading them. Have to say I really enjoyed them, finished the 6th book today, and since I've been reading them basically one right after another, I find it disappointing that I'll have to wait until the 7th book comes out before finding out what happens in the end. I think the 5th book would have to be my favorite, I really like how dark it is and how quickly it starts. The 6th is a close second and then the 4th, 3rd, 2nd and finally the first book.

Anyway, guess the point is that not doing something just because it's popular is stupid, because there's probably a reason it's popular (although I have to retract that logic when it comes to pop music and reality TV....).

Hi everybody!!

2005-10-23T19:43:00.000-06:00

Hey all you people out there!

So this is my first attempt at doing a blog. So what should you expect? Random thoughts mainly, some music, movie or book reviews and just things about everyday life.

And so it begins...