HELLO FUTURE

Shortly after World War II ended, a statue was erected in Cherkassy, Ukraine. The statue was a woman holding an ever-burning flame in her right hand to symbolize the memories of the fallen soldiers. It used to be a popular place—from the look of old photos, which is really all I have to go by.




When the Soviet Union collapsed and different regions became independent, some things were overlooked and other things changed. In particular, Cherkassy would no longer receive the natural gas used to keep the flame burning for free. Eventually, that led to it being extinguished.

Then the future came along.

A Russian company installed a cell phone tower on top of the statue surrounded by a video screen covered in pixelated flames. Now it looks like a combination of ancient history and an 80's Nintendo game.

Sometimes I look at technology and just shake my head. Or write about it on the internet.

WILD THINGS

So good.

IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN

Nothing goes together quite like Straight Edge and Bacon.

Man, I love AFI

Not as much as I love Converge, though.

Sick tat, brah.

I don't even have a quip for this one.

Think you know the rest?

Oh, not quite.

And completely unrelated but still awesome photos, I would support both of these teams whole-heartedly.

NOT QUITE...

In a 1985 issue of EBONY magazine, they had a feature called "Portraits of the Stars" and used computer wizardry (and in the mid 80's, it really was wizardry. Now, your 6-year-old could probably do the same thing with some weird program they download from the Internet) to project what the stars of the 80's would look like in the year 2000.



Here's what they said about Michael Jackson, if you can't read the little tiny writing: "At 40, he will have aged gracefully and will have a handsome, more mature look. His fans will have grown tenfold by the year 2000."

What they wanted to write was, "We're pretty sure he's going to slowly turn in to Lando Calrissian from The Empire Strikes Back."

HEH HEH HEH

See ya next year.

BEANTOWN

I've never been to Boston. And to be honest, I don't think I'll ever make it there.

It may be a lovely town and I hear that I'd probably really enjoy it. That's a very good possibility, as I usually do enjoy visiting new places. I love wandering around random cities and seeing what they have to offer. I've never spent much time on the east coast (other than NYC) so, Boston would be probably the next logical place to check out.

But I'll never go there for one reason, and one reason only.

Because I hate the fucking Red Sox. I hate everything about them.

I'm sure real Red Sox fans (ones that don't think baseball was invented in October of 2004) are a different breed since they've grown up around the team and rooted for them their whole lives, but everywhere else in this country it's another story.

It's like a flashback to the early 90s when everyone wore Raiders hats and Kings jackets because it was 'gangster'. Now, everyone is big supporter of the working class and the Red Sox are the team that represents them.

I was a big fan of baseball when I was little (yes, I was a Yankees fan growing up and I still root for them, so I don't have much room to talk, but this is my blog. Get your own.) and followed it casually ever since I got out of high school. I never heard anyone talk about baseball in general, let alone get specific enough to name drop a team. But once 2004 came around the Red Sox started doing well all I heard about was that this was the year they were going to break "The Curse."

The Red Sox are the epitome of a bandwagon team. And it doesn't end there, either. I don't care about hockey, but I hate the Bruins. And it almost pains me to say it, but I hate the Celtics, too. And that bothers me because I really, really like KG, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce—and now Rasheed Wallace. I really want to like that team, but as long as their jersey says BOSTON across the front, I just can't bring myself to wish them anything but the worst.

I don't want to jinx anything, but man I hope the Angels win so I don't have to hear about the fucking Bo Sox anymore for another year.

Kind of a shame though. I hear Boston has some great vegan food.

UNBROKEN

So good.

THE ROAD

I don't know how people commute from Ogden to SLC every day. That drive is boring. At least I had some entertainment.


Guilty pleasure, I guess you could call it, but damn it's good.


I haven't really cared about this band since the Agoraphobic Nosebleed split, but this album is really, really good.


And I like this band. Street cred - gone. So what.

ONR

Old News Records

If you didn't know, I run a small (very, very small) record label. It's basically just for fun and I only release records from bands that broke up before they got around to releasing anything. There's two out now, Tamerlane (who is still a band, but this was recorded literally 6 years ago) and Up River.

There's another one in the works right now and it's City to City. Hopefully that'll be out before the years end. We'll see. I have kind of a lot on my plate as it is*.

(*That's not really true.)

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

I'm equal parts nerd and little kid at heart, so it's no surprise that I'm really, really excited to see this. Toy Story double feature in 3-D? Sign me up. It's a limited two week run, though. That's the only downside.

If I have to see it alone, then so be it. No way I'm missing this.

EMERALD CITY

I went to Seattle this weekend to see Unbroken. I've always wanted to see them and I missed both the Chicago and California shows, so I figured this might be my last chance. Totally worth the trip. They were awesome, shit got nuts and I had a good time.

However, I did manage to make one giant, idiotic mistake. I left my bag in the overhead compartment on the plane. Such a dumb move.

I had been off the plane for an hour before I realized it. I had everything important in my backpack, so I wasn't too stressed, but I had no clothes. Kristien drove me to the nearest Target so I could get a few things, so that was a plus but still. Pretty sure i'll never get it back, either. I didn't put any tags on it (since it was a carry-on) and it wasn't in the SEA/TAC lost and found. The nice lady did send an e-mail to the next three places that plane went to, but I'm not holding out much hope.

All I lost was a few shirts, a hoodie and a pair of pants that was falling apart, but I did lose a badass shirt that had an ape king riding a mastodon. Oh well.

I did tourist-y shit all day Saturday before the show: Went to the EMP, the Sci-Fi Museum and the Aquarium. Weather was nice and I spent the whole day walking, then the show that night was awesome.

Nothing too exciting. Sorry for the bland post, it's late and I'm not very creative today.

I think I'll take a cue from Brandee and start making this blog a little more entertaining. After all, isn't that why you're here?

COMIC CON VIDEO

I'm no Marty Scorsese, but I pretend...

TO PROVE TO DAD THAT I'M NOT A FOOL

It's fall 2009 and I'm back up at the U of U campus. Again.

I graduated high school in June 1999 and started college that fall. Fall of 1999. I've been in college for 10 fucking years. At this point you may think I'm on my way to becoming a doctor, or a lawyer or something equally difficult, right?

Nope.

None of those things. I simply have no fucking clue what to do after I graduate. I'll have a degree in Film/Creative Writing and you know where that will get me? Nowhere. Might as well tell people I'm getting my degree in Unemployment—which I do from time to time and people find it funny and it always gets a good chuckle—but it's the fucking truth.

Right now I'd like to talk to you all about how despite my 10 year college career, I hate almost everyone on this campus. If I had to give it a number, it would be something like 82.8% of the people at this school are complete douchebags. Like the guys sitting at the table next to me in the Union. Plaid shorts, sandals, two t-shirts (white undershirt and a colored shirt with a bitchin' logo) and one guy with his collar still popped.

I was under the impression that popped collars stopped being cool a while ago, but I guess I was mistaken. This is going to be a long year if bullshit like this keeps up.

FROM THE PAST

I found a stash of cassette tapes and unmarked CD's the other day. I was afraid to listen to any of them for one reason—embarrassment.

I don't know exactly what's on them, but I have an idea. I'm always weary of listening to old mixtapes because I'm somewhat ashamed of the music I used to listen to. Now, a lot of it is still good and I'll still stand by that. There are a lot of bands I liked when I was 15 that I still like now (i.e. Misfits, Social Distortion and hell, Rage Against the Machine even) but for every good song that comes on I dread what might be right after it.

Keep in mind that I was 15 in 1995. That's a long fucking time ago. I didn't have any older siblings to get me into music. The only older guys I knew only listened to U2, so I was kind of on my own. Every couple of weeks, I'd take the number 7 bus down to Sugarhouse and wander around Raunch (which at that time, had moved to the old strip mall that was eventually torn down to make way for the Wild Oats) with babysitting money and try to guess what was going to be good. And usually I only had enough for one cassette single and some Taco Bell afterwards, so I had to choose wisely.

But I digress.

I pulled out one tape, popped it in my stereo (is it weird that I still have a stereo with a dual cassette deck?), hit fast-forward and stopped randomly and I knew exactly what was playing.

Lenny Kravitz - "Are You Gonna Go My Way?"
Not as bad as it could have been, but still. The only reason I ever owned anything by Lenny Kravitz is because I had a crush on a girl who loved him. Naturally, I thought the way to get her was to also love Lenny Kravitz. That didn't work and I was stuck with the man's entire discography purchased from second-hand CD stores with the rest of my aforementioned babysitting money.

Go again. Fast forward. Stop.

Live - "Lightning Crashes"
I don't know why I had this. It played on The Box all the time and it was easy enough to play on guitar. I made my band cover it a couple of times. I can't remember what we were called then. It was a little bit after we decided Renaldo and the Smoothies was too silly and before were came up the brilliance that was Rhythm and Rhymes. Back to Live. I saw them in concert when they opened for Bush and No Doubt, then they kind of faded away. I probably still have their second album on one of these tapes, too.

Fast forward.

Better Than Ezra - "Good"
This is still a good song. I stopped paying attention to anything they did afterwards, but this is solid.

Again.

Hootie and the Blowfish - "Hold My Hand"
Fuck. I don't have any kind of humorous anecdote for why I had this.

Fast forward.

Blues Traveler - "Run Around"
I'm convinced that harmonica sales tripled after this album came out. Then shortly afterwards everyone realized they weren't as easy to play as imagined and they all wound up at the DI.

Go again.

Dave Matthews Band - "What Would You Say"
This is what I was afraid of. I'm losing indie cred by the second and my hardcore scene points are flying out the door at record pace.

Fast Forward.

Soundgarden - "Fell On Black Days"
This is still one of my favorite bands. A little bit of redemption.

One more time.

Candlebox - "Far Behind"
God damn it.

That's just one tape. I like to think that as I got older my taste in music got better, but I'm afraid of all the shitty metalcore that awaits me on one of those unmarked CD's from the early 2000's. I don't think I can do that right now.