We're all one

I see that things are going so well in Iraq that the corpses of recently deceased westerners are being dragged through the streets. I guess it could be worse, they could be fucking them.

His greatest day

I imagine twenty years from now his children will ask this gentleman what his proudest day was. He'll reply, "Well, it was the day back in early 2004 when I made international news by celebrating the violent death of a fellow human being."


Twenty five years from now this man's alcoholic grandchildren will ask him what his proudest day was and he'll reply, "it was the day I realized that my general apathy for anything but my own interests could be portrayed as patriotism."

Gettin' there

There is a street in Charlotte called Queens. It's raining today and the leaves on the oaks in town are in their light green phase as they are just popping out. In the next week or so, if you live in Charlotte, cruise down Queens if it's raining out. It's the prettiest green you can see this side of the mold between Tom's toes.

Praise Jebus

"Jackson has said he is pretending the 1976 update does not exist."

I think Jack Black working with Peter Jackson on King Kong is really cool.

Just say no

I think they gots enough teams in the playoffs. We don't need the NFL going the way of the NBA or that useless hockey league.

Light blogging is for wimps

This last Wednsday William and I drove up to Greensboro after work to see a band called the Constantines play at an awesome little club called Ace's Basement.

First the club. Ace's Basement is located in the basement of a scary old hotel near the Greensboro Coliseum. The hotel is one of the L-shaped hotels that looks like it was built in the 1960's. Judging by the customers of the hotel it houses a lot of transient construction workers and just plain ole transients. Our initial reaction to the hotel didn't inspire in us much hope for the club itself. We were very surprised. Whoever owns Ace's Basement obviously put a lot of thought, work and money into it. The stage is stuck in the corner and is about one foot high. Directly across from the stage is a nice long bar with plenty of stools for us old people to sit on. To the left of the stage is the soundboard. There are also three remotely controlled digital cameras stationed to the left, right and front of the stage. They are used to broadcast the perfromance on three televisions stationed around the club. In between bands they displayed previous bands performances at the club. Pretty cool, I thought. I would very much like to attend another show at this nice little venue. Also, I was the oldest customer. This is starting to become a trend as I attend shows in small clubs.

Recently I have started to notice that when I attend the occasional performance by a newer young band at a club like Ace's or Tremont that I have started to become, if not the oldest person there, then in the top ten. It reminds me of my earlier days in Charlotte when I was in my early 20's. I used to notice an older guy at all the good shows. He was in his 40's and had a been long beard and glasses. He looked like he could have been an English professor or a pot dealer or both. He was never there trying to make the scene and was attempting to be cool. He was just there to see good music. I noticed he was always very into the band that was playing and always stood on the outer fringe of the crowd. I remember thinking that I hoped when I got to be his age that I would still be willing to take a chance and go out and hear new music and not end up stuck in a rut and just listening to my old records. I'm approaching 40 now and I am willing to be the old guy at the club. I'll stay out of the way and ejoy the tunes.

The Constantines were the second band of three. The headliner was band called Pretty Girls Make Graves. They were fronted by a punked out girl and William says their name is inspired by something by Keroauc. The Constantines were only onstage for a half hour which really disppointed me. But, man, did they throw down. I love seeing a young strong band like the Constantines. They played with such intensity that brought in most of the crowd about halfway through their set. I love when general interest evolves into enthusiasm when a great band plays their asses off. I read a review that said the Constantines were a combination of Fugazi and Bruce Springsteen. I thought they had some nice punky/Crazy Horse guitar interplay. I love shit like that. Kudos to the Constantines they are a great young band with a lot of intensity and I hope they come to Charlotte soon so I can badger a few of my friends to seeing them with me.

Update concerning the juice bar

Any remarks concerning a young lady at the juice bar at my local health food store should only be taken in the most positive manner possible. It is possible to appreciate the glowyness of a young lady without the writer being seen as a lustful old goat.

I may never go there again. I'm so embarrassed. Damn blog.

I haven’t been away, I’ve been writing with invisible ink, you bastard.

It’s strange, I’ve been in kind of a funk recently. A sort of non-blogging, not excercising fog. I know what it is, I am having a lifestyle problem. You know, tired of being tired kinda thing. Mid-life crisis? Fuck you, it isn’t. Remember I bought a 1989 Honda Civic, not some hotrod I couldn’t afford. Time to gather up all my shit and get it together.

I finally, finally got off my ass on Friday and went for a bike ride. It was only my second bike ride in March. Unacceptable. It was fun though. Sweating is good, it clears up your mind and darkens your clothing. I also saw my first bikini clad female of the spring. She was laying on the grass located on the tiered section of Freedom Park. Gracias.

Yesterday I went by Berrybrook and got me another of them fantastic veggie burgers. Damn, I love those things. They finally got some Desert Essence Lip Rescue back in stock. I was jonesing bad. Thanks also to the pretty girl in the juice bar who smiled at me. Garsh, how can you not adore those young hippy girls they get in there? They are so young and healthy that they almost glow.

About fwiggin' time

"Last season at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway, driver Jerry Nadeau was seriously injured in a crash during a Nextel Cup practice session in May. In September, after the SAFER barriers were in place, Jason Keller escaped injury in a similar crash. NASCAR said crash data recorders inside those two cars showed a 75 percent reduction in G forces felt in the driver's compartment from Nadeau's crash to Keller's."

Fearless leader

"I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on Cold War issues when they back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back. They wanted to work on the same issues right away: Iraq, Star Wars. Not new issues, the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years."

Oh, internet, How much do I love thee?

Last night for a mere $10 I purchased the soundboard recording of the Primus show I saw in Charlotte on March 9th. How cool is that? I listened to a good chunk of it while downloading and it sounds fantastic. In fact I can hear the vocals better on this recording than I could at the show. Why is that, wonders I? On the Primus website you can purchase a soundboard recording of every show from their recent tour. I hope this is a trend other bands follow. First Pearl Jam released a whole tour on CD and now Primus does this. I imagine as the technology gets more affordable even smaller bands will do something similar. I can't wait. We all know you don't really experience a band until you hear/see them live.

Sneeze, cough and then blow your nose

The worse thing about being sick with a cold, to me, is that I cannot sleep when I have a cold. It's hard to sleep when you can't breathe and you have a headache. Crap. I'm sick of laying down and being awake. I'd like to lay down and, oh, I don't know, maybe...sleep. I've read my book until I'm tired of it. I played on the Xbox for a while. I caught up on tracking the goings on of a few of my favorite bands and labels. I'm very close to giving my cats a bath.

That horse ain't dead yet

Have you seen this? Good stuff.

Things I saw at the zoo or Yeah, it's actually 5 a.m.

Saturday a friend and I had planned on driving out to Asheboro and visit the North Carolina Zoological Park, otherwise known as the zoo. Friday evening I started to feel a little poopy with a headache and scratchy throat. I woke up early Saturday and was feeling poopier. I took some medication and went back to bed for a few hours. I woke up feeling pretty good so I went ahead and went to the zoo. I love that zoo. I really appreciate how they make an effort there to make the animals comfortable. Even to the point of not giving us humans the most advantageous sightlines. They don't hide the animals from us but they do seem to try to give each enclosure a spot where the animals can go and hide from the spectators if they so wish.

Highlights:

Oh man, the polar bears. I love the polar bears. They are the first exhibit I visit and the one I spend the most time at. We got real lucky this time. There are two of them one was crashed out on his belly and the other was playing with one of those red lifeguard flotation devices. He would pounce on it in the water and drive it to the bottom and try to hold it down. After it popped back up he would grab it, hold it and bite on it. He would then float near the underwater viewing glass, push off the glass with his back feet like a competition swimmer and push himself back to the shallow water and do it again. We watched him play for over fifiteen minutes.


The gorillas were especially disgusting. One gorillla presented his or her butt to another and starting pissing at his feet. The subject of this offense then leaned over, stuck out his jaw and proceeded to accept the urine into his mouth. This was taking place right at the glass in front of over twenty people packed tight. The reaction was a unanimous "ewww!" Then the pee reciever closed his mouth and drank the piss. The crowd said "ewww" again even louder. One little boy, hearing the reaction rushed to his Father's side near me and asked his dad, "What's going on?" Dad said, "Did you see it." His son answered, "no." Dad said, "Nevermind." I said to him, "Yeah, you're better off." Dad chuckled. I didn't take a picture of that. I was too shocked to react.

This was the first time I had been to the zoo since they had reopened the chimpanzee enclosure. Over the last couple of years they had the chimps off display while their environment was being remodeled. The new display is fantastic. There are several windows which offer you a great view and it's very large. They even opened the back up so the lions can view the chimps from their area. It's interesting to be able to watch the chimps while you see a lion in the background doing the same thing. When we got there two juvenile chimps were play-fighting right near the viewing windows. It was fascinating to watch them wrestle and beat on each other.


If you look in the center of this picture you can see the female lion checking out the chimps.


When I got home Saturday afternoon my cold came back hard. I felt like shit for the rest of the night and missed a shindig to celebrate a friend's upcoming wedding. I guess I wasn't feeling as well as I thought when I left out that morning. I believe I will stay home from work today so as not to infect my co-workers. I am sure they will appreciate that gesture.

Take that, you sweaty bastards!

I went and saw Primus perfrom at the Grady Cole Center the other night. How was it, you wonder? Let's just say it was the Primus saw I've been wanting to see since I discovered them in 1990. Two sets, over two hours long and the the encore was "Too Many Puppies." It's always cool when the one song you want to hear by a band is played in the encore.

Funny moment of the night: I don't remember which song it was, either "Is it Luck" or "II" but during this particular song the mosh pit was really going. Bodies were flying all over the place and it was starting to get a little too big for those of us there to actually see the band. Primus songs change tempo a lot and this song had three seperate portions where it sped up and the moshers would go gaga. The third time this portion came around Les Claypool slowed the band down and started chanting the lyrics to the soft un-moshable beat. It was brilliant. All the moshers froze is their starting positions, kinda looked around and then turned to face the band. I didn't expect to laugh outloud at the concert but I gotta thank Les for that gut laugh.

What a crock of crap

We all know drinking and driving is wrong. It's dangerous and puts you and others at risk. I still don't understand why everytime an athlete gets into legal trouble you always hear idiots crying for the athlete to be fined or supsended by the governing agency of the sport he is associated with. If any other person gets a DUI these media whores don't call reporters and demand that bankers, librarians and any other average joe should be fined by his employer.

More dickness

In his first campaign commercial, George Bush reached down and molested the dead

Bigger, longer, now in my possesion

Yesterday I stopped by the Repo Records store on Central Ave. When I first moved to Charlotte back in 1990 Repo was the only place I bought CD's. They had a good selection and the best prices in town. They also had one of the first good used selections in Charlotte. They were really ahead of the curve at Repo as far as re-selling used CD's. I remember when they were being pressured by the industry to stop selling used CD's but they owner ignored the industry and kept on selling them. Now, of course, almost every music store now sells used CD's. Another thing I loved about Repo was that their prices were the lowest in town. I don't know how they managed to sell new CD's at almost five dollars less than the other stores but they did.

I've stopped going to Repo in the last few years although I am glad to see that the store on Central Ave is still open. I think I go there less than I used to is because I don't drive down Central Ave that much anymore. I stopped in yesterday because it was nice out and I was wanting to extend my drive around town for a litte while.

I spent about half an hour browsing through the used collection and I was happy to see that their selection is still pretty darn good. They actually had a couple of used CD's by the Mekons and those are about as common as used Flaming Lips albums and Neil Young albums without Pearl Jam or not dedicated to Kurt Cobain. I almost bought the Mekons CD's but I saw the used DVD of Southpark: Bigger, Longer and Uncut for $10. I've been meaning to get that for a while so I put back the Mekons and left with Southpark.

What a dick

I am sure this may have popped up on other liberal America-hating blogs but our president sure is a dick.

An unrelated but still humorous note

I have a list of my passwords for all those dang sites that require passwords saved on my yahoo account. I had to check it the other day in order to access a site I hadn't been to in a while. I noticed that a large number of my passwords are obscene. I thought about that and then realized that my speech in the company of my friends is laden with obscenities as heavily as Charlotte's sky is with ozone. And if you scroll down a little bit you will see yesteday's obscene bile ridden post. Must be this modern world pressing down on me.

It's now a tradition

I just bought my ticket to next week's Primus show and since I had to purchase the ticket through Ticketmaster I will do my standard "I hate ticketmaster" rant.

Here we go. Fuck, I hate Ticketmaster. I fucking hate them. I just bought a $30 Primus ticket and it cost me $41.60. One quarter of my cost went to a third party that did nothing but gouge me. God, they fucking suck. I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate Ticketmaster. A friend of mine was going to go to the show and I was considering buying him a ticket. Once I saw how much I was giving to those fuckers at Ticketmaster for one ticket there was no way I could really afford to buy two. The fuckers.

OK, I feel a little better now. Not much better. The fuckers.

Another reason

Here's another reason that aliens haven't visited us yet

Hollywood Glitter

I am sure you probably guessed that I have a great disdain for those that follow the lives of celebrities. Is it really necessary to know who movie and television stars currently are banging? I think not. My knowledge of the goings on of our elite corps of celebrities stems mostly from the covers of People magazine that I scan while waiting in line at the grocery store and the headlines on Yahoo! news that you can't help but see as you check the site.

Still, I am a sucker for the Oscars. Once a year I actually pay attention to movie stars and allow them their 3 1/2 hours of pomp and self congratualtion. They've given me hours of entertainment over the years to I'll give them a Sunday evening.