thought for the weekend

-with a tip of the hat to the bobbler-

last week

Had homemade burritos and watched Clerks 2 friday night. It was a total no brainer of a film, a bit overblown compared to the minimalism of the first. Headed out for a bike ride with stephanie saturday morning, and at about the 13 mile mark somewhere in Brighton, she got a flat. Of course we had nothing in the way of spare tubes or patch glue (plenty of patches, though), so I headed back to get my car and pick her up. On the drive back, I arrived at an accident scene just moments after it occurred. Some brainiacs were towing a hitch full of random junk going way too fast. The hitch started to fishtail, jackknifed, then the truck rolled a few times. The people inside did not seem to be wearing seatbelts because they were all rather bloody once they were pulled from the wreckage. The road was impassable due to the scattered junk everywhere consisting of plenty of nails, screws, and staples. The injured were being attended to by some other folks that had arrived before me so I split just when all of the emergency response crew had arrived.

Later that afternoon we picked up some floaty rafts and a bouncy ball and headed over to rizzo's pool with anne & heidi where we held court for several hours until hunger kicked in. We went back to the evergreens and grilled out before heading down to the scumdowner to sync up with joaquin. After some foosball action we wanted to go dancing so we stopped in both trilogy then euro 7 to unfavorably lackluster audio results. It was around closing time anyway so we hiked back to the evergreens and kept the party going for another hour or so before sacking out. Sunday was a wash, spent mostly on the couch.



Had dinner with the fam for lauren's b-day at casa alvarez monday night. They had just come back from some vacationing in south carolina. The past two nights I've been out running and exploring the new hood. Waneka lake is just past the school at the end of my street and through the other half of my 'ancient greek' neighborhood. The lake is 1.2 miles around and it has those little fitness stations where you do pull ups, stretches, etc, scattered throughout. Last night there was some party going on with a band and bbq. The ancient greekness of my hood is due solely to the street names - minotaur, sparta, delphi, angevine, etc. It would be cool if they had some mock ruins scattered about. Like a parthenon instead of a gazebo by the lake, maybe.

swept away

And the rockies just completed their sweep of the yankees - sweet!

hanker fer a hunk a

gellin like a fallin melon

I was casually strollin into whole foods at lunch today, and an employee had some galia melons on a serving cart. Suddenly he moved the cart, and as he did so one of the melons sure enough started to roll off of the top. Like the gellin fellow I am, I swiftly saved it from ungellin on the ground, and made out like a felon when it was bequeathed to me as a sample.

hot tuesday, cool tunes

justice - Cross: The debut full-length matches up to the two singles, 'D.A.N.C.E.' and 'phantom', that have been getting caned all over the europe. I think I've used this comparison before, but this is album daft punk wished they made next.



happy mondays - Uncle Dysfunktional: Ummm, huh? Shawn Ryder's first post-mondays work with Black Grape had its fair share of nonsensical lyrics, but at least they had a decent instrumental groove to offset them a bit. A drunk bum has more interesting things to say than whatever Shawn is going on about on this new album, and unfortunately whatever's left of the original Monday's line-up here don't make it very easy to get down to. In fact, it kind of makes you want to get away from instead. Kids, the moral of the story here is don't do drugs.



ween - The Friends E.P.: Genius comes in many forms, as the wonder twins can surely tell you. Form of eurotrash techno! Form of tropical reggae! And there you have the recipe for an absolutely mind blowing five song EP to tide everyone over until the proper full length this fall. Even I was shocked at the brownness oozing from the speakers.



white stripes - Icky Thump: Jack & Meg return with another bare bones zep fueled blues fest. Complete with south american & celtic overtones longside a helium fueled spoken word bit. I'm slightly more excited for the next Raconteurs album, but hey this ain't too shabby.

milo

Spent all of last week packing and watching the rockies dominate the red sox at Fenway. Tough losses for boston, but great wins for colorado. The yankees are here in town through thursday and here's hoping the rockies play just as well against them.

Saturday was moving day. I got the truck while stephanie waited around for the cable guy to get his shit together and make the signal work. The strange thing is that jacq's had cable there for 5 years, no problem. Jacq & dylan helped for a little while in the morning with large items, then stephanie returned from cable guy hell zone and we packed up the rest of the truck, unpacked it, got some food from one of the six mexican restys in downtown lafayette, and then passed out.

Sunday we cleaned ou the old place, half unpacked things, ran some errands, found a cool bistro table for the porch, and scored a cool brown rug for upstairs. Last night dylan dropped by in the van and we picked up matt's air hockey table (a 7 footer and not light). Somehow we managed to get it into my basement, put it back together, and play a round. Best toy ever!

some things I know, and some things I don't

Had a lazy friday, just watched some of the rockies game then an old dvdtron. Stephanie is training for a triathlon so I joined her on a 28 mile bike ride to lyons and back saturday morning. Later on I headed to j&d's hut and we walked over to the SoBo (south boulder) Fest, sponsored by the southern sun, so there was plenty of beer flowing, and hippie-type bands playing. Everyone else had the same idea, it was crazy crowded down there, and we saw almost everyone we knew from boulder. Crashed at stephanie's that night then headed back to j&d's to get my car and hang out the rest of the afternoon sunday. Caught the sopranos finale and here are my thoughts:

Was Tony killed at the end? Maybe so, maybe not. In the first episode of this mini season tony and bobby were in a boat shootin the shit and bobby asks tony what he thinks getting shot is like. And tony says, "It's like you are sitting there talking then everything goes black..." So when the ep just kind of went black, that could have been his death at the hands of any one of the seemingly familiar extras milling about the restaurant. For those of you paying attention (someone clued me into this, I am not this die-hard of a fan) the man in the Member's Only jacket was Phil Leotardo's nephew, the two gang banger kids were the ones who staged the first hit on Tony, and the truck driver was the brother of the DVD truck driver that got killed (he had to identify the body). Now all of those extras could have merely been a symbolic gesture that tony has to watch his step or whatever, or he could have been remembering those instances, and it was just life goes on and the viewer is left to, "don't stop believing". That would play nicely into the possibility of a future movie.

But perhaps more interesting was the new series with a dumb name that came up next, John from Cincinnati, loosely about a family of surfers and some random dude named john that seems to have a knack for imitation. And even though the cast read like a VH-1 episode of where are they now (rebecca de mornay, luke perry, ed o'neil, luiz guzman), it created enough curiosity for me to watch it again.

wednesday choon round up

electrelane - No Shouts, No Calls: I've had this for a while back and remember listening to it in clear creek canyon on the way back from breck one weekend, but I was exhausted and this wasn't doing the trick. I've since had it spinning away in my car all week, and I've grown rather fond of it. Essentially we have 4 british ladies plugging away at some linear kraut/prog type rock while channeling stereolab. That being said, it's a far better thing than the last couple of stereolab albums.



berg sans nipple - Along the Quai: Mellow mostly instrumental post-rock that never gets overly self-indulgent. Makes for a pleasant listen when you need a more organic sounding chill out soundtrack to your leisurely activity.



beastie boys - The Mix Up: The boys 2 men have opted for the all instrumental approach on this one, not unlike the In Sound from Way Out compilation of previous instrumental work from the Check Your Head and Ill Communication era. Laid back and groovy.



they might be giants - The Else: After 2005's kid's album, TMBG return with another disk of their usual kooky college pop rock. These songs sound great interspersed amongst other college radio fodder over the airwaves, but fall short as a compelling full-length that can be listened to in one fail swoop. Mesopotamia not Istanbul or Constantinople.



dizzee rascal - Maths & English: I never really got into his first album & EP as they were a little too angry sounding, but I figure I'd give this grime guy another shot since I saw a photo of him wearing a red sox cap. At least he's not following the lemming-like trend oh so prevalent in popular hip-hop culture to always wear stupid yankees hats, so he's got that going for him at least. From the onset of this disc he seems to have chilled out a bit channeling some quasi de la soul daisy age type musings but still with his gruffy voice and unmistakably thick accent. I tried running to this, but wound up changing it to Minus the Bear which was a bad move (see below).



minus the bear - Planet of Ice: I first heard of these guys via a remix cd that came out which was pretty cool. Their actual sound tries a little too hard and only succeeds as reminding me of how boring Jawbox was.



antelope - Reflector: Minimal, repetitive, and catchy punk rock released on Dischord so at least it has the air of being credible if nothing else. I wound up finishing off my run with this and it was my favorite of the three.

not for the faint of heart

I hadn't originally planned to go see the Faint at the Fox, but I had scored some free tix to the second night and was kind of feeling the excitement since both shows had now sold out. Add to that one of the openers was the Berg Sans Nipple who I've been digging on lately. I figured I'd give taping a shot too, but was stifled by band management at the door. No biggie, stephanie was with me so we decided to grab another drink at pete's where we had just eaten dinner to kill some time. What we wound up succeeding in was accidentally killing our timing. The Berg was on the bill for both nights, and the other opener was different each night so my logical assumption was the Berg would play second. Not so - they played first and we completely missed them. I was kind of bummed as we suffered through a horrible set by the Services banging away at a keyboard and one cymbal. By the time the Faint came on, the vibe in the place had gotten to be too much to handle - everyone had all this weird pent up anger or something. There's that old saying, "It only takes one asshole to ruin a good time." Well in this case it was a whole crowd of assholes. For example the guy who was trying to start static with me because he didn't think I should bummed out that I missed the Berg. Ummm, wicky wicky whaaaaat? Or the guy with the Bright Eyes t-shirt and halitosis that started slamming into me once the Faint hit the stage. I could go on, but I will spare you. Indie goth dance punk douche bag fans. The Faint were pretty cool though, they had quite the light show going on and they were all way into their playing, even debuting some new tracks. But the vibe in that place was way too depressing, so we split. You win some you lose some I guess. Come to think of it we really didn't lose anything since it was a freebie.

basedrawl

Yikes, I'm having withdrawls. I've had a baseball IV stuck in my arm all weekend starting friday when steph & I watched the 1st game in the red sox/yankees series at the Barrel House since it was not being televised on regular cabletron. What a crazy game, the fenway fans were making fun of a-rod (yanks) with 'blonde-girl' masks referencing his recent indiscretions. Unfortunately he got the last laugh on sunday with his game winning homer (bastard). There were the four hit batters and the pitch at youk's (sox) head from scott proctor (yanks) on friday which got scott immediately ejected, on the heels of torre's (yank's manager) ejection earlier in the game for arguing with a call, then doug mientciwitz (yanks) and mike lowell's (sox) collision sidelining doug for up to 6 weeks during saturday's win by the red sox which took something like 4 hours including a painstakingly boring 30 minute rain delay in the middle. So the wanks took the series, but we are still up 12 1/2 games over them and 10 games up over baltimore in the AL east division, so it could be worse. Add to that the actual rockies game that I went to with stephanie and her sister's fam. That was a great win over the reds. The rocks came from a 2-8 deficit to tie it up and win it in the 10th. Four games in 3 days, all of them longer than usual = roughly 15 hours of my life I will never see again. Play ball!



In between games I went out on pearl friday with steph where we bumped into joaquin and headed to the scumdowner, then again saturday with jacq where we met up with joaquin (but this time planned) at juanita's. Went to bacaro for a minute, then to tahona for a drink, before exploring lolita's for some late night grub, then somehow got lost on walking on 8th street on the way home (fyi - I live on 9th).