back catalogue

Lately I've been busy filling up the gaps in my collection as well as deleting or storing the tons of new music I sift through each week, and have been somewhat neglectful in grabbing every bit of new music to review. However I do have a couple for you at least:

mika - Life in a Cartoon Motion: Peter bjorn & john dancing with the teddy bears at a scissor sisters concert. Insanely catchy. You may have heard one of the songs in a television advert for a phone or something.

rapture - Pieces of the People we Love: Much in the same way that the most recent !!! album is less pretentiously accessable, so too is the latest offering from the Rapture who presumably find themselves snorting less cocaine, or at least keeping the more aggro elements of their previous work to a minimum. They also find themselves in the opening slot of daft punk's brief jaunt through north america this summer.

a snowy day at the beach

Met up with j&d at the playah for some playah blue margs during the hail strom immediately following work on friday. Later stephanie made dinner again, I'm pretty spoiled in that department. Tonight's dish was chicken carbonara - yum. Up bright and early again saturday after taking a week off. headed up with j&d to a-basin where we met up with GW. It was raining in town, but that meant snow in the mountains - lots of it. It basically snowed all day, and by the end of it we were soaked, but had about 5 fresh inches. A-basin is a cool mountain, not huge, but it has plenty of challenging terrain and is the closest one that our passes are good at. You can park right at the foot of the hill, so around spring time, the tailgate party people are in full force with insane grilling operations and revelry tactics, such as the shotski. Even though we had some grill action and plenty of bevvys, we almost looked like amateurs. Hit a little traffic on the way home, but it let up around georgetown.

Later that night we headed to the buca de boomer for a birtday dinner celebration for paul, and cake & ice cream later on at hillside. Sunday was casual, while everyone was working on their taxes I headed to the park and hung my skychair up in a tree. Which was great until I got bored because I had no book or tunes with which to pass the time. Regrouped, then headed back to the park with stephanie, had lunch and played boule.

brough to you by the number 9

Check out amazon for a sweet deal on this 9.

spring chicken

Had a dual celebration dinner party over at edgewood on wednesday. It was anne's b-day and the first day of spring. Stephanie whipped up a spring chicken feast, and chocolate coconut cream cake. When anne blew out the makeshift candle she also sent the shredded coconut that was all over the top of the cake every which way. Funny stuff. On the way home I found a free bike on the side of the road in great condition - a 1988 diamondback ascent. All it needs is some grease on the chain and new tubes.

wack tuesday

Everything seemed to go wrong yesterday. I get to work, and the motherboard on my computer is fried. So I grabbed a newer computer, which is pretty cool if they let me continue to use it. I was waiting for the computer tech guys at compusa to diagnose my computer, but they had to wait for a manager so I walked over to starbucks to get a coffee and kill some time. It had a leaky lid, so I managed to get it all over my shirt instead. The goons at compusa were far from efficient and wanted all sorts of loot upfront, so I bagged that idea, went back to the office and spent a good portion of the day loading up all my old stuff onto the new computron. Luckily all my files are backed up every night, but I had to scramble to replace all of my cool programs. After work, I went to the grocery where I picked up one of those cool new tubular lightbulbs which Al Gore raves about only to discover it wouldn't fit in any of my bulbless lamps. Then I put on Freddy Got Fingered which was a good break from my doldrums. Then I walked over to Ideal market to pick up some old school lightbulbs, which I realized I already had when I returned home. Watched the first ep of The IT Crowd which was OK, but kind of just an intro to all of the characters (I've heard it gets way better). The capper was some fucking dog yelping outside my window from about 3 - 5am. I'm going to bring the old computro over to Renaissance at lunch, and I'm kind of hoping it's not worth the fix, because I'm digging on this new bad boy I'm using way too much, which I guess could be the upside to yesterday's debacle.

sound tribe saint patrick's day

Met up with greg & jillian for a quick drink at bacaro immediately following work on friday, then picked up some burritos, met back up at my place, and were soon joined by the rest of the gang for drinks and general merriment before walking down to the STS9 show at the boulder theater. STS9 were in town since tuesday for a string of 5 sold out shows, and outside the venue was a complete madhouse of people searching for tickets and whatnot. There we met up with steph miller & becky johnson. It was even more hectic inside, and we kind of got stuck in the back for the first set. We moved up closer during setbreak since everyone kind of cleared out for a while. It was a heavily upbeat show, and by the end of the night the venue was like a GD gymnasium, but it was worth the sweat for a slammin' show and that nice 'baraka' encore on the cake. Setlist:


I:
Mischief of a Sleepwalker
Peoples
Kaya
Music, Us
Crystal Instrument
Lo Swaga

II:
You Don't Say
Mobsters >
Surreality >
EB
Equinox
The Unquestionable Supremacy of Nature
Dance
Instantly

E:
Baraka

Saturday was absolutely gorgeous outside, so me & steph had a picnic in north boulder park. It was great chilling out in the park as I was already thoroughly relaxed from the full body massage from phoenix that stephanie was kind enough to hook me up with earlier in the morning. Then everyone came over for round round 2 of sound tribe and we headed over to ken's hut for a st. patty's BBQ complete with burgers, brats, and bevs. Lauren even stopped by for a spell. Then it was time to walk on over to the theater again. It was kind of strange because we showed up at pretty much the same time each night, but it was far less crowded for the time being so we made our way up closer to the front. They opened the show and said something about their planned special guest Richard Devine not being able to make it so they had something else special for us. And indeed they did - the whole first was a live PA and it kicked. Second set got even crazier thanks to colby jack and the reasonable security guard. The band got into some heady jams, and played my fave song, 'Circus', which reminds me of 'star 6 7 8 9' by the Orb. Overall it was probably one of the best sound tribe shows I've ever been to. A memorable quote from jacq: "I don't think I was ever going to come out of that jam," pretty much sums it all up. Post show we regrouped at ken's, grabbed some beers, and headed back to my hut where everyone fell asleep while me & jacq reminisced until we were finally shooshed for the last time. Updated setlist goes something like this:

I:
Weather
Against
H20
Parks
Oneaday (tease)
The Rabble
ReEmergence
Tooth

II:
Open E
LSB
Circus
This, Us
Luma
Tokyo
Aimlessly

E:
T.W.E.L.V.E
Rent

Sunday was another great day, so steph & I went for a bike ride up canyon along the creek where we found these really random rock formations, around the foothills neighborhoods, then headed home and watched some movies.

ride the zamboni

Hey look, that's me over there on the left side of the zamboni. I just came accross this photo taken during an Avalanche game a couple years ago:

oink oink my good man

Bacon of the month club from The Grateful Palate.

less than a feeling

Brad Delp, lead singer of Bostson committed suicide last week leaving the fairly depressing note, "Mr. Brad Delp. J'ai une ame solitaire. I am a lonely soul." It's too bad because they used to rock pretty hard as I recall the 'third stage' tour sold out 8 nights at the Worcester Centrum back in 1987.

vail chamonix

One of my bosses was kind enough to lend me his condo in vail last weekend. So after class on thursday, me & stpeh hit the road. It was kind of a crap drive, the weather sucked, and visibility was low. It was good that we left late because apparently vail pass was closed for a few hours due to a car driving off of it. It was a pretty cool place - 4 bedrooms, 3 stories, very rustic. Slept in friday and made it on the slopes by 11, rode most of the day in very spring-like conditions. We made the blue sky hike all the way out, and met up with a couple of like-minded guys who hooked me up big time. I ended up way too far down the road at teh bottom and had to do some hiking to get out though. Later we apres skied, then the rest of the crew showed up. Wound up hitting the slopes around the same time on saturday. It snowed heavy off and on all day which made for both low visibility and lots of fresh snow. We packed in som hamburgers with us and grilled them out at the top of blue sky basin. After we all headed back, we hung out at the condo for a while, snacking, drinking, playing cards, ordering pizza. When we ran out of beer, we headed into town to some fun club where we danced for a few hours before calling it a night. On the busride home there was some passed out drunk chick that the driver fooled into getting off at the wrong stop which was pretty funny.







We headed back to boulder early sunday, even though it was one hour later. Put together my new bed, which definitely needs a new larger mattress, went for a run, and did some school work. Yesterday I was at a trade show in denver all day. On the drive home I found out that sean kelley had passed away over the weekend. Luckily stephanie was making dinner for the ladies, so I joined them in my bummed out and somewhat inebriated state. They have some more furntiture now, so we started to watch stranger than fiction but it wasn't very interesting.

latest & greatest

The latest and greatest news from boulder is all about the 15 year old and her 17 year old boyfriend currently being accused of stabbing the girl's mom in the throat four times, the mouth once, and then leaving her body in the trunk of her car for three weeks while they partied at the house. If you're feeling sinister, you can catch up on the twisted mindset of the young girl courtesy of her fairly twisted and 'still not taken down yet' myspace page, or check out his page, or better yet his blog.

weekend adventures

It's going to be this weekend soon, so I better catch up on last weekend... Friday night steph & I caught a showing of Borat at the ISF on campus - way funny stuff. Post film, we picked up nathan, who's in town for the week, and hit up petes for some food & drink.

Got up bright and early as usual and headed to vail with nathan & dylan. Beat all the traffic, had some breakfast at joe's then hit the slopes. It seems like everyone else in colorado was at vail too, since they had the most cumulative reported snowfall the past week. We soon lost nathan, caught up with brode, then decided to make the hike along the back ridge of the blue sky basin. Then we lost brode. The hike was worth it as we put some fresh turns on an untouched cornice and through some trees. As we headed back to the front of the mountain, we caught a call from brode who apparently had gone off the wrong side of the ridge, essentially leaving the vail boundary entirely. Lucky for him some snowmobilers towed him for 7 miles to vail pass, where he hitched a ride back to vail.

Once we got back into town, we regrouped, and met up with the ladies for dinner at old chicago, had some margs at the rio, hung out a bit at euro 7, which was exceptionally euro-y, then hit up trilogy. MFA (motion for alliance) had performed earlier in the back room and now two of the band members were just running a live PA. Great fun - we stayed and danced til close.

No sleep for the tired, as the edgewood yardsale was in full effect sunday morning. We had sangria, breakfast, and tunes to keep it lively. It was probably the only yardsale going in town, since there was still snow on the ground, and amazingly the ladies got rid of practically everything, even the dirty toilet mat and wet furniture! Later on we met up with ken for some dinner at the mountain sun and called it a night.

On tuesday I had dinner over at edgewood, and it was pretty funny because the place was completely empty. The yard sale was a little too effective as there was no furniture to sit on, and I think they still have two months left to live there...

captain caveman

You know the Geico Caveman commercials? Well, the Caveman is being
developed into a pilot project for ABC about three cavemen who are
dealing with prejudice on a daily basis while living like regular
30-somethings in Atlanta, says Daily Variety. The project is from ABC TV
Studio and will be written by the same guy who wrote the commercials,
Joe Lawson, for the Martin Agency. Lawson also wrote the commercials
for the Australian accented gecko.

ha ha

Laugh of the day award goes to the Conservapedia. The site was created as a response to apparent bias in Wikipedia. But if "Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America," then isn't that just as biased? The fact that entries for animals always seem to include reference to noah and his ark is silly enough to save me from proving my point further.