"I'll be the one in black..."

...A very unhelpful tip Graham gave me to help me find him upon arriving to the scene of all scenes - a death metal concert. Thankfully Graham is 6'8 and I've since learned that everyone who attends death metal concerts and isn't a 10 year old kid is 5'2 and 125 lbs. I guess I'd be angry too if I was so scrawny. I'll tell you what though - this is their one shot to throw their small amount of weight around. I've never been blatantly shoved, jostled, and walked through in my life like I was last night. I just had to laugh at the audacity of these wimps. I figure they either count on that reaction or just don't care if they die, hence their attachment to death metal. I have to say, this was a pretty special experience because when else do you get to hang with people like this:

So, here's how it all went down. We were going to see Children of Bodom. Skeleton Witch and Black Dahlia Murder opened for them (I'm not kidding, I swear). As soon as you walked into the place, you could smell sweat, dirty hair, and most of all teen angst. I missed Skeleton Witch but as Black Dahlia Murder was doing their sound check, the lead singer goes, "check, check check...brgghhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa." And for those who don't know, brggghhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa is the "growl" from this video.

During the Black Dahlia Murder set, there was this teenage couple (roughly 14ish) who were relentlessly making out. They stopped for a while, but then they launched into it again when Black Dahlia Murder turned the romance on high with "Closed Casket Requiem." Other gems from the evening included "Christ Deformed", "Statutory Ape", "Are You Dead Yet?", and "Blood Drunk." Children of Bodom even calls their fans the Hate Crew.

Thus, Sunday September 27, 2009 was the very day that my mom feared when I was 10 and she still wouldn't let me listen to any non-Christian music besides the Beach Boys and Phil Collins. Don't worry mom, I don't like death metal and after last night, I am not convinced to do drugs, hate and/or kill my parents, nor worship Satan. Last night, I learned that with this kind of music, there's no point in lyrics. There's just hard thrashing guitars and lots of f-bombs to give anger-ridden teenagers a chance to take out their hatred for pretty much everything by relentlessly launching themselves into each other. I even remember when I had a bit of that anger myself.

Now, fast forward....Years of disappointment with stupid humans, the corporations being all corporationy, and the government being just horrible have made me grizzled and indifferent to the status quo. While I admire the aspirations of Children of Bodom to change the world (though they're probably not sure to what) through metal, "telling those bastards what we think of their rules," will not actually be heard by "those bastards" because those bastards don't listen to heavy metal. And even if they did, they wouldn't understand what you're saying because you're just growling and screaming nonsense the whole time. Oh wait a second. I'm grown up, I wear a brooks brothers shirt and dress pants every day, and earn a decent living. I am one of those bastards!

I must say this about metal though, at least Children of Bodom. The musicians are actually really, really talented. They have to be. Every song is so fast so there's a lot of notes in a short period of time, which makes for some really impressive guitar and bass. The drums are cool too because the bass drummer has to play two bass drums instead of the normal one. Bottom line - I respect the talent but am just not that into metal as a genre. However, it makes for great people watching and is actually no harder on the ears than any other concert. There should definitely be a "Next Metal Star" if there isn't already. Then again, what makes it heavy metal also makes it not fit for TV I guess. Long live death! (note the irony). Brrrrgghhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Song of the Day:

Children of Bodom - Are You Dead Yet?

"That was a ninja turtles shirt and it was the right thing to do"

So, as I write this, I'm still in the process of trying to bring myself back to life from the shenanigans that went down this weekend. Me and a bunch of college friends, all of whom are bigger than me by 30-100 pounds, got together in Tahoe in honor of our fallen comrade, Max, who will be dedicating his life to a female named Elizabeth in less than two weeks. We are very happy for you Max and happy for ourselves that you getting married has provided us with an excuse to get together twice in a two week period. Soon you will be blessed with a beatiful wife, which I've been told will be accompanied by a "honey do" list. I just recently learned (not first hand, thank God) that this is a widely used term and I am frankly sickened by this revelation. For this weekend though, it was nothing but absurd amounts of dude. It's one of those that is best explained with pictures, though the pictures that most adequately describe the tenor of the weekend can't really be posted here. Most of the best pics I have were from a hike we went on through the mountains on Saturday. Severely dehydrated and not under the legal limit aren't the best ways to take a hike in an extremely dry climate but we made it work...

Potsmokers shanty we found up on the mountain. A pothead actually had the attention span to build this.

Here we found this, I'm not sure what it means but I liked it enough to declare it the theme for the weekend.

Then, we found this sweet rope tied to a tree, which started playtime. Despite getting riddled with splinters the first time, this is me doing it a second time because it was fun. Now I know how KC feels when he knowingly drinks Mount Gay Rum despite being allergic to it.

The splintered hands hurt, but not as much as when I dropped down to the ground. Look at my posture and look to the left of the picture. Yup.

The view did not suck

A small preview of the shenanigans....

....and of makeshift cheeseburger subs (a twooooooo, a twoooooooo a cheeeese a boooooooorger)

...and lastly of pain intentionally inflicted upon friends. I know one person who is sad he missed this fratty retarded, yet hilarious, awesome game more than anyone else who was not in attendance: Brian Niemczak.

Songs of the Weekend:

Show me your...

Pearl Jam - Daughter, Jeremy (a capella, a la tub de hot)

Stone Temple Pilots - Plush (a capella, a la tub de hot)

Weezer - Say it Ain't So (a capella, a la tub de hot)

Toploader - Dancin in the Moonlight (live at delightfully cheesy karaoke bar)

Some others I can't think of because I hate Kings of Leon and their song Use Somebody so much and I can't get it out of my head. Gonna make you notttttttiiiiiiiiiiicceeee..... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Go open for U2 or something guys.

A Day With Tiger

Nothing humorous to report today but just a gushing blog about the greatest golfer ever. I just found out yesterday that I snagged tickets to the final round of the BMW Championship at Cog Hill. Even though Tiger was up by 85 strokes after shooting a 62 on Saturday, I figured since it was such a nice day, there was no way I could pass up the chance to see him. I am so glad I went. Unfortunately though, I just washed my car yesterday and they forced me to park in a grass field with a dirt driveway so my car is now really dirty again. A second negative was that they didn't allow cameras or cell phones. I guess this is a good thing but I had some incredible photo ops. Most notably, I saw a guy wearing a Herman Moore Detroit Lions jersey. I couldn't take his picture but I sure as hell walked up to him and shook his hand.

Golf wise, I was impressed with the diversity of the crowd though it was kind of creepy to see all of the Tiger clones everywhere. Grown men dressed just like him - same hat, same shirt. Real creepy. It was a magical day though. I always seemed to find myself in the right place at the right time. Tiger walked by me within a few feet twice and I gotta say, it's really hard not to be in awe of the guy. It's Tiger! In the flesh. I was grinning like a little kid. I was so close that I heard him drop an F bomb when he walked up to his ball after being on the wrong side of the fairway. This was right before he curled a 9 iron around a tree and brought it into the green from the side door. He's so good. They all are. Another impressive thing was how tall everyone is.

I actually think Tiger and I caught eyes and he gave me a knowing look after he dropped a 320 yard bomb on the 11th. I know you got it on lock Tiger. Holla at yer boy. It was even cool seeing the people from NBC. Roger Maltby is even fatter in person. Padraig Harrington plays slow....really slow. He held up everything. Slow play is even annoying when you're not playing behind them. I may have also even been on TV. When Tiger's playing partner Marc Leishman was way left, also on the 11th hole, I was at the front of the tunnel of fans that he hit through. If I were hitting, I would not have been standing where I was standing. The other cool thing was getting to see the faces of those idiots you always hear on TV yelling "get in the hole!!!!" They are exactly how you picture them. It was a perfect day. I even bolted after Tiger finished the 16th, avoided the traffic crush, and got home no problem. Big ups to my man Fred for the ticket and to Tiger for being such a ridiculous golfer with a ridiculously foul mouth. Check out the highlights here.

Song of the Day:

Kenan Bell - Good Day

Potpourri

I've seen a lot of things in the last few weeks that I meant to blog about and I just haven't gotten around to it. They were the best of times, they were the weirdest of times....

First, there was this lady who was sitting in her wheelchair in the middle of a busy road. I was about to go suggest that she move over to the sidewalk, then she just took off down the middle of the road and let me tell you, that wheelchair moved fast! But not fast enough to be on a major street. Really dumb....and dangerous, and she was absolutely fearless as cars whizzed by her and beeped their horns.

Last weekend, we stopped over at the Greek festival in our neighborhood to grab some pitas for lunch. Naturally, I could not resist the opportunity to go old school and win my girlfriend a stuffed animal. My game of choice was the dart game with the balloons. Here was the result. His name is Frank, which had something to do with a discussion on hot dogs, but I don't recall exactly why we named him that.

I am happy to report that Frank has been a well behaved penguin so far and has been a great addition to the house. We've learned that we are really good at having pets that don't require any personal attention whatsoever.

In much more disheartening news (DON'T LAUGH!!!!), this happened to my bike last Thursday after a really bad day.

So my bike is parked outside the office and someone rips off the handle bar grips? I mean, what the hell?????? Who does that? It's not like they punctured a tire or worse, stole a tire. I can go buy two new grips for like $5 so it's just mean and unfortunately capped off an already bad day. Frank was not happy either and expressed his disdain for this individual with this telling expression.

I can just picture some stupid college kid with floppy, curly hair, as seems to be the style these days, walking past it with a few of his d-bag buddies and saying,

"Hey check this out guys. Because I'm a complete asshole, and because you guys are complete assholes too, which is why we are friends, and because I will one day go to hell anyways for all the dick moves I've pulled thus far in my worthless existence, I'm going to take these grips off a complete stranger's bike. He will never have seen this coming. He's going to be so inconvenienced by having to ride this bike a couple times while using the handlebars with no rubber grips before he's able to make the 0.5 mile trip to the bike shop to get new grips. Though I have no concept of what being a man is, I want to declare that I am such an alpha male for having done this. You will now think I'm super cool. Hey guys, let's go the LaCoste store and buy some pink polos. Then, we can pop the collars, wear aviator sunglasses, and give unsuspecting chicks on the street a taste of the gun show. On the way back to the frat house, we can pick up a couple skim soy lattes from S-bucks, cross swords over someone's car, knock a little kid off his scooter, and light some bags of each other's feces on fire on an elderly couple's porch."

Here's to you douchebag frat boy. I hope you die.

Fast forward to labor day weekend. On Saturday morning, I went to the fish market to pick up a red snapper for date night Saturday evening. That's right my friends, I grilled a whole red snapper. His name was Fred (not to be confused with Frank, who was not grilled). I didn't take a "before" picture because that would have been sad, but here's the after. Fred, you were a delicious, healthy looking fish, which is why I bought you instead of one of your school mates. I'm sorry if the pain associated with removal of your scales was compounded by the copious amounts of salt and pepper I sprinkled on you. I'm also sorry if the rosemary, thyme and lemon wedges stuffed into your sides were uncomfortable in any way but this helped us most appropriately honor your death by eating you and enjoying it. Plus, you were already dead before both of these events so I don't think it was an issue. Regardless, you should know that you did not die in vain. Amen.

Song of the Day:

Illinois - Hang On