Saturday, May 17, 2008

Starting the Process

Well,
I have decided to take Molly's advice and start clearing things out for my move ASAP.  I did some cleaning up in the kitchen today, and threw a few things away.  
I think job number one is to get together all of the clothes I don't wear anymore and bring them to goodwill.  Then there is the basement... lots of unnecessary stuff down there, old electronics, papers from coaching, tools.  Getting that done would go a long way towards clearing things out.
There is painting to be done, lots of gardening, more cleaning, not to mention finding someone to housesit.

It is definitely time to get on top of all of this.

My Goal: be totally done and free by July 1.

Then I go wherever I want.

Television Ad

Here is the copy of the TV ad that has been showing.  It turned out pretty well I think.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Saturday. Night.

Ok, here's the big one.  Saturday Night.  It all starts with a chilly bike ride down to RT Quinlans at about 9:30.  The streets are strangely empty of cars as I have free reign along Superior, cruising along with the both lanes to myself.  

I walk down into the crowded basement bar to be greeted by a very jovial (read: drunk) Bryn.  He is in fine form tonight and can be seen making cracks to the mayor and giggling to himself about just about everything.  He is hanging out with Dusty who has a thin, dirty mustache inked on his upper lip.  Fitting.

On stage Jake Willis is doing the drumming for Taconite, Don Lisdahl on the bass.  

I headed down to the stage only to immediately be hit in the face by a mumbling drunk man's sweatshirt.  He of course is totally unaware, although several other people see it.  The man continues to be a source of amusement throughout the first two bands.  I meet up with Michelle, Richard, and some others that I don't know so well, including a girl who is REALLY excited about a bike she bought at the swap.  Kind of fun to hear that.

So after Taconite's fairly long set, which was good, Circa AM was up.  Don plays the bass in this one too.  Kind of hardcore/death stuff.  Check out the crazy headgear on these guys.  Don wears a full-on metallic elk rack, and the other guy has a big shiny unicorn horn (which continually slips down over his eyes while he plays)!  It was pretty hilarious to see!

Drunk man from earlier spends the first part of the set putting his ear directly up to the speaker, then joins a girl up front who has acquired the unicorn horn and the two of them have a great time stroking the metallic fallice for the rest of the set.

I get a call from April, who is at Twins bar with Hasty, E-Morris, Mo, and Gator.  I head out, leaving my bike at relative safety of the brewhouse before walking up to 4th.

The Very People are playing when I get there, but finish up shortly after.

Mo and I play a quick game of foos before Canine Heart Sounds comes on.
Nothing too eventful here, just some good music!

After Canine Heart Sounds, we decide to head to Luce.  On the way out the door we see someone talking to the police... her rear bike wheel was stolen!  Shitty situation to be in, and I feel bad for her.  That's exactly why I left my bike down at the Brewhouse.

We start to walk towards Luce, with April complaining about not being able to walk well because her legs were hitting each other??  I don't know.

Anyways, April's walking difficulties leads her to flag down a random van driving down the street.  He agrees to give us a ride and we all pile into his van.

April finds a weird deer head in the back seat that she thinks looks like her dog, it does!

So we find out that the guy giving us a ride is in a band that played earlier in the night, he gives us some CDs, then drops us off at Luce after making a stop at the Orpheum to pick up some money.  I don't know what was up with that.  I think Erin was very happy to get out of the van, she was definitely getting creeped out in there!

After a short wait in the line outside we are in!  Somehow we get good position right up front and wait for Crew Jones to start.  This is when more craziness starts.  First of all, there is some dude in dark glasses smoking a cig right up front.  Who is it? Matt Livingston, bass player for Crew Jones.  Somebody tells him to put it out, and he does, but it is clear to those of us around him that he is messed up!  He staggers his way up on stage while the rest of the group is setting up, and obviously cannot function.  He fumbles around with the plugs and dials, screwing with everyone else's settings.  Eventually he totally falls over backwards:

Hasty is all worked up at this point, asking me: Did you see him? He's fucking up the whole thing! Nobody wants him up there! Nobody is saying anything to him! They need to step up and take care of this shit!  Did you get a picture of that?
They eventually get Matt upright and start the show, but he just stands there doing basically nothing with his bass, he is to wasted to even follow the music!  After maybe two songs, Burly steps behind Matt and tells the sound guys in the back to turn off his bass.  They make it through one more before Burly tells Matt to get of the stage.  Someone else steps in for him and the show can finally get under way properly!  

Here are Hasty and April gettin' crazy:

Some pics of Crew Jones action:



The rest of the show is fun and things wrap up sometime around 3 am.

I bike home, passing by a group of probably 5-6  police cars, with more sirens on the way, just past Walgreens on Superior Street.  I didn't stick around to see what was up.  It can't have been good.  My chain falls off halfway up the hill, but after a quick fix I am back on and no more problems the rest of the way home.

It has been a long, fun night.

In bed at 4 am.  Good night.

Saturday's Trail Run

This is exactly what I needed.  I was WAY to caught up in my head the last couple days.  The sun was shining, the weather was sweet, made me want to move my runnin' feet! (thanks Bob Marley).

I headed in to Hartley and ran the guardrail loop.  The trails were muddy, deep standing water everywhere.  Awesome.  I passed up a group of runners gingerly picking their way through the woods, trying their best to bypass the mud and water.  As I streaked past them, mud caked on my legs, water from the last puddle dripping from my face, huge grin on my face, they probably thought I was slightly insane.

8, maybe 9 miles in the woods, and I feel like myself again.

Friday Night Homegrown




I've got a lot to update today, I'm going to break it into a couple of posts though so it is less overwhelming.  I'll start with Friday night out for Homegrown.  I started out at the brewhouse and met up with Underwood.  We stayed there for a little while, but I headed out to see Chad Salmela's band Nell E-A-3-0.  Whoever was playing before them was not very good.  Luckily I only caught the tail end of them!  Salmela wasn't too bad.

Underwood joined me after a while, and we headed down to Luce to catch some Giljunko and hear the Turtles after them.

We got in the door just fine, I think a line started outside just after we made it in.
The place was packed as usual for Trampled.  I really wasn't expecting that much from them tonight, I'm not in to their shows like I used to be.  I was still surprised at how jam-bandish they sounded tonight.  Everything was played at superspeed, its was all about getting hyper and jumping up and down.  I mean, shit, I love to dance to good fast bluegrass...but this is not dancing, and no longer very bluegrass.  The crowd eats it up as usual...not because they like the music, but because it's cool to like the Turtles, apparently.  Oh well.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Rain and cold...

Have soaked me to my bones.  It was a really wet ride home from work tonight.  I'm having trouble getting rid of the chill that set in.  Today was a rough day at work, I was dragging the whole time.  I am really feeling the motivation to get things done leaving me.  The lack of motivation grows every day.  The weather doesnt help things either.  The one thing I am looking forward to at work is the commercial shoot on Tuesday.  It will be kind of fun to be on TV again.  Hopefully I can get a copy of it from the station and post it on here.

Other than work getting in the way, I've been feeling great.  Still havent been practicing my Japanese like I should... hopefully this weekend, I have both days off.  I can get that ivy finally painted over too, god that has been a long time coming.

Well, heading out for some homegrown tonight and catch some music!
Speaking of that, Molly gave me some music last night, Camera Obscura and Broken Social Scene.  Both I had heard of but not really listened to, I'm listening to Obscura right now...I'm in to it, kind of Haley Bonar/Fiest-ish but not quite?

Right, thats it for now.