METALLIC HARDCORE MADNESS

Got together with the Milk Money dudes (and Casey* in case we needed a tie breaking vote) to talk about metallic hardcore for a while one night. We were on this Zoom call for almost three hours, and Dan patiently got it down to one. If you like Late 90's/Early 2000's HC, and want to watch what was described as "the nerdiest thing I've ever seen you do" by a friend of mine, hit play.

*I forgot about this post, but if you scroll to the bottom, there's a SoundCloud link to the time he and I drove to Las Vegas and he told me exactly what he wanted his funeral to be like. The possibility of getting derailed for some weird reason is the other reason we brought him on.*

VIVA LA UNDERWATER BOAT DEVILS!

While I'm not the world's biggest soccer fan, it has grown on me a lot over the past couple of years. I had season tickets for Real Salt Lake for a season, still go to a few games each year and paid casual attention to British Premier League games (now that they're on NBC quite a bit).

Over the past year, I've started to get more and more into soccer and it's mostly due to that Manchester United podcast (we've been going strong for almost a full year, only missing one week) that I'm part of. I still don't know much about the intricacies of the game and I couldn't tell you why some players work where others don't, but I'm learning.

The other huge boost that I got was getting laid off just before the World Cup started. I was planning on catching as many games as I could, but figured I'd only be able to catch the Saturday games and daily recaps. That changed, and I took full advantage of my summer vacation and caught as many as I possibly could. Now I'm really starting to get the hang of things.

The Premier League starts up again in a couple of weeks (with the German and Spanish leagues starting soon after), and pretty much every club is in pre-season mode. A whole bunch of teams from Europe (including some of the big names like Manchester United, Man City and Real Madrid) came over the U.S. for a little preseason tournament called the International Champions Cup. It doesn't really mean a whole lot, and it's mostly for the teams to build their profile in the United States, but it's still pretty awesome.

Manchester United was scheduled to play in Denver against AS Roma a few days after the Nine Inch Nails/Soundgarden show, and there was no way that Casey was going to miss it. He bought a couple of tickets and my friend Paddy, who also does the podcast with us, bought a few as well. Casey was going to take his wife, and Paddy was going to take his wife and two kids, but as the game got closer, most of the family bailed. Oz had used up the last of his vacation time on the Soundgarden trip, and Byron couldn't get away, because he and his wife had just their second kid not long ago.

I was still unemployed (still am, more or less), so I took one of the tickets and headed back to the Mile High City for the second time in less than a week.

I flew out early Friday morning, and got into town about 10:30, while Casey, Paddy and our friend Justin drove out got to town about 4 PM. We met up at the hotel and headed to Sports Authority Field to watch an open training session. Roma backed out of theirs, so we waited around in the pouring rain and watched Manchester United run around cones and do ball drills for a couple of hours.

The next day, we headed to the Four Seasons and waited for the team to leave the hotel. Casey and Paddy had a bunch of stuff they were trying to get signed, but the crowd was too big and the only player that stopped to sign anything was Chicharito—and even he only got through a handful of things before he had to get on the bus.

Casey's seats were on the 11th row behind Roma's bench, while Paddy's seats were in the 3rd deck. We split up, and Justin went up with Paddy and his friend that just happened to be in town, while Casey and I went down to our seats. The  field-level corners of the stadium ended up being pretty empty, so eventually we all met up and moved over to some vacant seats and watched the game. For the first half, Casey and I stayed in his seats and we got a great look at a Wayne Rooney goal that was awesome, a Juan Mata goal off a beautiful assist from Rooney and another Rooney goal on a penalty.

Basically, the first half was all Rooney. Since these games don't really matter, the entire team was subbed off at halftime, and the second half was decidedly less exciting, with the exception of a killer Roma goal that was lobbed in from just over mid-field.

Casey and I both way over-prepared for the 20% chance of rain, but didn't prepare at all for the 80% chance of the 95-degree direct sunlight that ended up being the case for most of the first half. It was brutal, but luckily clouds moved in, gave us some shade and cooled things down for the second half. Manchester United ended up winning 3-2 and I've never seen Casey or Paddy in a better mood.

While I'm not really a huge fan of the team, I'm glad to say that I've seen a British Premier League team in action. The quality of play is way better than what I'm used to, and after seeing that in person and spending a month watching World Cup, it's going to be tough to watch an RSL match next time they're on.

But I'll still do it. The Jazz are going to be terrible again, baseball games are getting harder and harder to sit through (more on that later), and the NFL is a complete farce. So let's go soccer!

VEGAS BABY!

"Timely" isn't something I'm great at - especially when it comes to this blog. I'm generally a little bit behind the times and when it comes to reviews, I'm way behind the times.
The plan was to do a review of the Nine Inch Nails show as soon as I got back last week. Then one thing led to another and before I knew it, I was waist deep in JFK conspiracy theories for a good 5 days straight. Writing a recap of the trip and the show wasn't nearly as important. Who wants to focus on writing about one of the best live shows you've ever seen when you can listen to 6 hours of podcasts about magic bullets, missing brains and LBJ ordering pants that don't feel like he's riding a wire fence?

Quick side note here: LBJ was sitting at the White House and decided that he needed to order pants, so he called Joe Haggar. When was the last time you think any acting President ordered his own custom pants, shirt and jacket?

Okay, back to the task at hand.

Casey and I left Salt Lake about 10 AM on Friday morning. We made pretty good time on the way down and, as usual, we stopped in Scipio at the petting zoo. Even ran into a friend of mine also on his way to the show. Got back on the road, pulled in to town and checked into The Plaza in old Las Vegas at about 3:30. We grabbed some lunch and wandered around the strip for a bit before meeting some friends for a late dinner.

Old Las Vegas is pretty great. It's far less crowded than the strip, but still full of weird stuff. When we got back to the hotel, we decided to walk across to Fremont Street, which is just weird. The Strip is full of tourists and mostly younger people looking for the "hottest" clubs. Fremont Street is full of older people that still want to get wild, but don't want to hang out with any of those other people.

About halfway down the street, we saw a huge crowd of people and heard a lot of shouting. We kept going and met the crowd just as there was a fight about to break out. There was an honest-to-goodness motorcycle club feuding with some street performers and drugged out hanger-ons. One the MC guys was in a shouting match with a guy in a wheelchair and the two of them kept moving in circles. Eventually, the MC guy got sick of it, got along side of the wheelchair and pushed it over. As he walked away, feeling triumphant, a guy in an Elmo costume took his head off, held it in his left hand, walked up behind the guy and threw a haymaker at the side of his head. That's when all hell broke loose. Pretty soon the place was swarming with cops and a guy in cut off sweat shorts and no shirt was screaming at everyone wearing an MC cut trying to fight all 15 of them. We stuck around hoping things would get really out of control, but the cops were able to keep it in check. We made our way back to the hotel listening to the sweet sounds of "Enter Sandman" coming from the Fremont Street house band.

The next day, we grabbed breakfast as Society Cafe in the Encore and did a little more wandering around. Casey wanted a sweatshirt, but after looking in about a half-dozen stores, he changed his mind and we hit up our usual Las Vegas snack spot, Twin Peaks. The food there is pretty terrible, but we went there as a joke last time, so we decided it was now a tradition. The best part of the whole meal was the table full of guys next to us. Twin Peaks is basically a knock-off Hooters with an outdoorsy theme. There's a climbing wall at one end of the restaurant, and for a certain price, you can challenge any of the girls that work there to a race to the top.

One guy chose the hostess and while the server went to get everything set up, they started talking about how good of a climber the guy was and how it would be a piece of cake. Casey and I watched them get geared up, then watched as the hostess climbed the entire wall before he could even get two moves finished - all while wearing Ugg boots. It was amazing. He didn't say much when he got back to the table. It was actually kind of great.

We headed over to the Hard Rock Hotel to check in, get our wristbands and wait in line. Since I signed up for the Nine Inch Nails fan club to get tickets early, we were let in before the rest of the crowd in a slightly disorganized fashion. While we were waiting in line, Casey spotted some actor that's on REVENGE and kept taking pictures and video to send to his wife. Then he spotted someone from GHOST HUNTERS. He was really excited about both of them. I had no idea who either of them were.

The Joint holds about 5,000 people and is more of a theater than the rest of the venues Nine Inch Nails were playing on tour, which was why I wanted to see the show there. The more intimate the venue, the more fun I have. When we got inside the venue, pretty much everyone rushed to the front, and camped out right in front of the stage. Casey and I stopped about 20 feet from the front, where the venue started to divide into tiers about 10 feet deep with railings and a small step separating each one. We camped out on stage left, leaned up against the railing and waited for the show to start.

Explosions in the Sky were the opening band, and while they're great musicians and I really like their stuff, I don't much care for watching them live. There was a guy standing behind Casey and I filming everything and he kept getting a little too close for comfort. Seriously, Casey and I were basically standing shoulder to shoulder with a few inches in between, and he had a camera right between our faces for the whole set. Just to piss him off, Casey and I started a conversation that lasted about 15 minutes. So if you ever find a shitty video of Explosions in the Sky in which the sound is compromised by some dudes talking about seeing Def Leppard play live, that's me.

Nine Inch Nails started just about 9 PM and it was everything I'd hoped it would be. I'd done some research to find out their set list so I knew what to expect and what they were probably leaving out, so I was ready to hear "Copy of A" and "1,000,000" right off the bat, but they tricked me. They played two shows in Las Vegas and played their regular set the night before, so they switched things up the second night. Good and bad came from that, since they cut out a couple of songs that I wanted to hear, but added a few, like "Reptile" that they hadn't really been playing.

Aside from all that, the performance itself was incredible. They had an amazing light show that was tailored to each song that was just awesome. They had to scale back on some of the bigger effects they'd been using because they wouldn't fit on the stage at The Joint, but I didn't mind. I liked seeing them in a smaller place.

Trent Reznor was interviewed about the setup and the show recently and the way he explained it made total sense.

“My goal is that — I can usually see the audience because I’m lit from behind a lot — is that I want to keep you from looking at your phone,” Reznor said. “I want to make you hold your pee because you don’t want to miss something. We’ve thought about all this stuff, and want to make this experience something that was worth your time.”

(*That link goes to a Buzzfeed article. It's there because I don't want to blatantly steal, but Buzzfeed is awful, so you don't have to click it unless you want to.*)

The whole month before I drove down, I'd wondered why I hadn't seen very many YouTube clips from Nine Inch Nails shows (granted, I hadn't been trying very hard), but the light show kind of explained it. They played for about two hours and worth every last penny I spent. One of the highlights of the show was when Reznor came back onstage for the encore and asked the crowd to help out.

He'd befriended a photojournalist named Andrew Youssef over the last year that was dying of cancer. Youssef was nearing the end of his battle and planned on making two more shows before he got too weak. He was able to hit the November 8 show in L.A. but had to cancel his trip to see the band that night in Vegas. Reznor found out he couldn't make it, so he called Youssef from the stage, chatted with him for a second then dedicated "In This Twilight" to him. It was pretty damn amazing and the perfect ending to the show.

The next day, we hit up the Mob Museum, which is in a renovated courthouse right near Fremont Street. The building itself is one of the last remaining historically significant places in the city. Everything else has been bulldozed and rebuilt, but the courthouse that held some of the Kefauver Committee hearings has been turned into a three-level archive of everything related to the mob.

There were a lot of great things, but since the mob is such a sprawling enterprise, there was almost too much going on. A lot of the exhibits were little snapshots that didn't go into too much detail. There was enough in there to spawn probably 20 great movies or TV shows (and probably 100 bad ones).

It was pretty great, but the mob is almost too expansive and has so many different aspects that it's hard to include everything. It ended up being more of a "greatest hits" type place, but it was still really, really interesting - though not as cool as the neon sign graveyard we saw last time we were in town.

By the time we were out of there, it was about 3 in the afternoon and time to head back to Salt Lake. We made pretty good time back and the soundtrack of Prince, Billy Joel, George Michael, Kenny Loggins and Ludacris. It was a short trip, but it was a lot of fun. Much like Los Angeles, every time I go to Vegas I like it a little bit more.

Oh, also on the ride down, Casey started talking about what he wants to have happen when he dies, so I recorded it for an irregular podcast-type feature that I'm calling "Riding in Cars with Dudes." Here's Episode 1 - Casey's Dying Wish.

THE F*CKING RESERVES

Remember all those times I've tried my hand at podcasting without much success?

Okay, the GCAcast went a whole 12 episodes, but that's as close to any type of longevity I've had - and even those 12 episodes took well over a year.

Well, I'm back at it.

I'm sitting in on a football/soccer podcast centered around Manchester United.  It's called The Fucking Reserves, or as far as iTunes is concerned, The Reserves Football Podcast. We had to tone down the title (which I'm pretty sure they took from this clip) so they'd accept us and let us be a part of their podcast listings.

I don't pay much attention to soccer. Even last year when I had Real Salt Lake season tickets, I didn't pay much attention beyond what nights the games were so I could plan accordingly. Why I was asked to be part of this podcast still isn't quite clear. But I'm doing it. I don't have a lot of other things going on at the moment. And I like teasing these dudes when they get all riled up and start referring to a team in another country as "we."

Actually, that's probably why they asked me. I provide a smidgen of comic relief and an outsiders look into the English Premiere League. Sometimes it gets a little bit esoteric, so I'm there to step in and ask for an explanation every now and then. Now with a few episodes under our belt, we've kind of figured it out. I have my own little segment at the end called "The Afterglow" which is basically me recapping what I learned as a non-soccer fan over the course of an hour.

If you're at all interested in soccer, Manchester United, Real Salt Lake (we probably won't have much RSL to talk about after tonight, but...) or if you just like hearing my voice occasionally but never get to (You can always call, you know. You never call anymore.) check it out.

It's pretty much all over the place:
iTunes
Podbean
Tumblr
and Twitter. 

We're having fun, even though sometimes I feel a lot like Scott in the clip below.

BADASS DUDES TALKING ABOUT BADASS STUFF

Back in the heyday of Grudge City Activities, Casey and I decided that we wanted to start a podcast. We had no real radio skills or equipment to do such a thing, but that's the beauty of podcasts—any idiot with a microphone and an internet connection can do one. We had both of those things, so we did.

We recruited Dan Fletcher to do it with us and soon after he moved away to NYC (where he still is) we brought in our buddy Sias aka Cuatro to take his place. We got a solid years worth of podcasts done before we all kind of got bored or busy. The GCA website slowed down a bunch after that too, so there wasn't much reason for us to keep on keeping on.

We still had all the equipment and Casey and I talked about starting another one up, but just never got around to it. I broke everything out for a SLCFF podcast around this time last year, but even that was short lived.

Then, somewhere around Thanksgiving of 2011, Richard (who had done one episode of the GCAcast with us) and Casey decided they were going to start a new one. They added me on as a "producer"and recruited Fernando for the first episode. My role was basically to set everything up, edit the thing and "check facts" as they spouted off ridiculous things one after another. My only stipulation for that was that Casey had to be in charge of the website and finding a place to host them. If I was going to do all the work of editing them, the least he could do was make sure people heard them.

He agreed and we recorded the first one the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I had it edited within a week and sent it off to Casey.

About a month and half later, they wanted to record another one. I asked what happened to the first one and Casey told me he wanted to get a few in the can before he posted them so we could keep a regular schedule. Once we had a couple of them done, we'd start posting every couple of weeks. I edited that one together and had it done around the beginning of February.

Two weeks ago I posted the first one on my Soundcloud page. Yesterday I took it down and posted the second one.

Casey's been planning his wedding recently (well, he's been planning it in his head for 10-15 years, but now he actually has the proper requirements like a fiance) and that's taken up most of his time. Also, (and mostly) he just doesn't want to do it. He's compulsive and comes up with awesome ideas, but has very little followthrough. So I stepped up, created a bullshit Tumblr page for it and started posting them.

I doubt we'll ever get to an Episode 3, but the first two are available right now. Go check them out and give them a listen.

We came up with the simplest name possible: Bad Ass Dudes Talking About Bad Ass Stuff

Enjoy.

Episode 2 - Stream or Download - Soundcloud.com/trevorhale

Bad Ass Dudes Talking About Bad Ass Stuff Website

SLCFF PODCAST #1

 SLCFF Podcast #1 by SLCFF

I have all the necessary equipment to record a little DIY podcast—mainly because I took most of it from Casey.

We had a podcast that we did probably once a month for my other blog Grudge City Activities, but like everything else on that site, we kind of just quit doing it.

Well now that we're getting closer to the Salt Lake City Film Festival, Justin, Miah and I decided that we should revive the idea and use it to talk about events that the Film Festival has going on. It's going to be a little irregular at first while we figure out how everything works, but hopefully we'll find a nice balance somewhere down the road and it'll turn in to something that people really enjoy.

The first episode was recorded last night, and we talk about this month's HEFFE'FILM'IN, in which we're showing KISS KISS, BANG BANG at Brewvies on Thursday and the FILM REELS AND FLYING SAUCERS art show this Friday. It's short and sweet for a podcast (about 15 minutes), but I think it turned out pretty enjoyable. You can listen to it embedded above or you can download it at the SLCFF Soundcloud page (or just clicking the little arrow pointing down on the right side of the player). Eventually we'll try to get iTunes involved, but for now, like everything else we've done for the festival, we're starting off DIY.

Enjoy it.

I SAY IMPORTANT THINGS

If you were unaware (and you might be, because I hardly ever mention it) I also write for/run a site called GrudgeCityActivities.com. Remember that, because we'll get back to it in just a minute. But now, imagine a ripple effect as I go for a bit of a flashback...

For the better part of two years now I've been a huge fan of podcasts. I had no idea what they were when they first hit the Internet, but slowly I started coming around. Podcasts are kind of like radio shows, but there's no commercials (usually) and any idiot with a microphone and GarageBand can make one (remember that part, too).

The first one I heard was SModcast. It's Kevin Smith and his producer/best friend Scott Mosier basically shooting the shit for an hour or so each week. It's hilarious and I look forward to it each time it starts downloading. After that, I looked around for more. Most news sites have old broadcasts in podcast form, Ira Glass has This American Life, ESPN's Bill Simmons has The BS Report (which is a close second to SModcast, in my opinion) and so on.

At first I thought you had to have access to professional microphones and all kinds of technical stuff, because they were basically radio shows. Then smaller podcasts started showing up everywhere and a lot of them were done on the cheap by people I know. A Damn Podcast is great and so is The Geek Show Podcast. After I heard those, I realized that literally anyone could have their own podcast.

With that, we decided that GCA should jump on the bandwagon. Only problem was that Dan and I together tend to talk about things that only interest us, and while they're great conversations usually, they might get a little boring. So we needed a Wild Card, of sorts. Someone that would speak before thinking and had a completely different outlook on things. So we called The Big Dogg. And since then, he's been the lifeblood of GCAcast with his crazy theories and tall tales.

Dan wanted to go with more of a magazine/newscast style with a few news stories, a new song review and then a feature, and that's the format we've been running with. When he moved out to NYC, Sias came on board and we've been rolling with he, Casey and myself ever since.

This is where the ripple effect would start up again as we jump back to the present.

GCAcast 11 went up last week and you should check it out.

It's gotten some pretty solid reviews and great pull quotes like these:

"It's the most boring thing I've ever heard." - Danny Payne
and
"I've honestly never made it through an episode." - Brook Lund

So if you're interested in hearing three dudes wax intellectual on things that no one really cares about, then check it out. Each episode is an hour of your life that you will never get back.

We were born to waste your time.

GCAcast on iTunes