Second Wind gig

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

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?

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?

Busy. What's it to you?

kill for an X-Box?

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

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!

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