IMPORTANT THINGS - OCTOBER, 2011

Ladies and Gentelmen, welcome to trevorhale.com.

I've had this blog for a few years now, and while it was left neglected for most of the summer, I'm kind of back on the horse. 

This is my little corner of the Internet where I show you stuff I like, stuff I don't like, things I write, movies I want to see, bands I want to listen to and so on and so forth.

I've got a few other social networking sites and I try to keep content different for each one.

Instagram (@trevorhale) is for making my bullshit pictures look fancy and one of the reasons I was most excited for an iPhone. I know the user etiquette and won't flood your feed with pictures of my cats or things I'm eating. I promise.

Twitter (also @trevorhale) is for jokes and random thoughts contained to 140 characters or less. I think I'm hilarious and so do at least 3 other people.

Tumblr is for me to waste my time and reblog pictures that I like and keep up with the lives of people I'll never meet in real life. 

Join the party. Follow me here, there and anywhere else you might want to.

And don't be afraid to drop me a line and tell me what you think.

I'm here to help you kill time by telling you all the things you never knew you wanted to know.

"IT CAME WITH THE FRAME"

If anyone has a lead on a huge house, let me know. These all need to be framed and hung, but I've got no room.

KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE

I should have learned my lesson by now, but I haven't. 

The lesson, of course, is to stop loaning out my favorite books because I never get them back.

I've purchased Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs four times and this is my third copy of Killing Yourself to Live. I keep loaning them out because I want people to appreciate them the way I do, but it never quite works out that way. It usually just ends up like this:

"How did you like that book?"

"What book?"

"*Insert book title here*? You asked if you could borrow it a while ago?"

"Ohhhh, yeah! I haven't gotten to it yet. I still have it though. I'm excited to read it."

Usually the phrase 'I still have it, though' is code for 'Oh shit. I lost that book like two days after you loaned it to me, forgot the title and haven't thought about it since.'

The bottom line is that I found this book for dirt cheap, so I didn't feel too bad shelling out a few more bucks to read again.

It's a road trip story in which Chuck Klosterman (a guy you'll either love like I do or wholeheartedly despise) drives cross country and visits the site where significant rock stars died. He then examines what it meant to their career, and in a lot of cases, them dying was probably the best thing to happen to their fame.

It starts at the Chelsea Hotel where Sid and Nancy died and ends in Seattle at the home of Kurt Cobain. And through the trip, all he has is time to reflect and over analyze hundreds of songs, their meanings and how they relate to his life.

It's a great read if you're a fan of music, rock stars, fame and the whole 'only the good die young' mantra.

Pick it up and hold on to it.

Definitely don't loan it out. You'll never see it again.

CITY TO CITY

This is my love letter to City to City. I'm not ashamed of it at all.

For those that don't know, City to City is a band from Salt Lake that I absolutely loved. Granted, I'm great friends with every single person in the band, but that doesn't change the way I feel about their music. It was a great mix of hardcore, post-hardcore, rock & roll and good old punk rock.

They were a great live band and people loved watching them, because they were one of the rare SLC bands that had great sing-a-long choruses. That's not to say that other bands didn't try to write those parts, it's just that none of them did it as well as City to City did.

I tagged along the weekend they recorded and took my video camera to try and make some sort of documentary out of it for my old blog, Grudge City Activities. I managed to get some really good footage and I was actually pretty happy with the way it turned out.

The EP they recorded that weekend ranks among one of my favorite SLCHC releases to date and if you haven't heard it, you should.

You can download the entire thing for free by clicking this link.

Also, if you're interested, there's a whole bunch of old SLCHC releases in the GCA Music Archive—all free.

But back to City to City.

One of the best bands to have around and I miss them. This is all the footage I shot during that weekend and made in to 4 separate videos.

*Edited to Add*

I put a break before the videos because the page was taking forever to load, and that's not a good thing. So hit the jump to see the rest of the post. It's worth it.

BEETEETH

My man Dan Christofferson—you may remember him from such posts as Terrible. Gentle. Man., The Bees Knees, and Top 5 Anythings - 2010‚—has another can't miss art show this weekend that requires your attendance.

He's been killing it lately with all kinds of different formats and this weekend at Cathedral Tattoo (249 East 400 South, SLC, UT) will be no different.

Lately, his work has focused a lot on images and impressions that our state—and the west in general—is known for, twisting and interpreting them to resemble his feelings.

Hints have been dropping all over his Instagram/Twitter feed (@robotwithwings), which if you're not following, you should be. There is also a little preview of what's to come hanging in the Trolley Square Whole Foods.

But make sure you come out this Friday night for what's likely to be the last Gallery Stroll where we'll have good, tolerable, walking-around-outside weather for the next five or six months. There are bound to be a few other good galleries (like Blonde Grizzly's Monster Show), but this is one you shouldn't miss.

See you there?

WELL DONE, RANGERS

No one watches baseball anymore. Everyone thinks it's too boring and wants no part of it.

Not me.

I still love game and it was one of my favorite parts of coming home from work after a long Sunday, when I could grab some food and watch a bit of the Sunday night game on TV.

And I really loved the last day of the season when there were four teams (two in the AL and two in the NL) fighting for that one playoff spot. I got to see Papelbon blow a lead that cost the Red Sox the season and watch Evan Longoria hit a ball that barely cleared the fence, sending the Rays to the playoffs.

The playoffs were pretty good and though I still have a tough time rooting for Texas-based teams, this summer has done a lot to sway me away from that.

First the Mavericks put on one of the most memorable runs I can remember and as much as I wanted to, I just couldn't bring myself to root against them.

Then, the Rangers just looked so damn good that they deserved every win they got (and hopefully get, since I don't much care for the Cardinals).

But one thing that stood out after the Rangers beat the Tigers in that last game—their on-field celebration. Every team that makes the World Series celebrates on the field, so that's no surprise, but still—the Rangers did it a little differently.

See that picture up top there? That's the Rangers dousing each other with Ginger Ale.

Not champagne.

I wrote about it last year, when they made the World Series for the first time in 50 years, but it's worth mentioning again. The on-field celebration with Ginger Ale has become their new thing as a way to include recovering addict, and one of the Rangers' most important assets, Josh Hamilton and their number 1 pitcher, C.J. Wilson, who is Straight Edge.

They still do the champagne and beer in the clubhouse later, with Hamilton and Wilson hanging out elsewhere, but it's awesome that the Rangers found a way—and cared enough—to make such a seemingly insignificant change to postseason tradition mean so much.

And I have to ask again—how am I supposed to hate Texas when they do stuff like that?

THE BECOMING (STILL)

Such a great band.

TEDDY ROOSEVELT WAS AWESOME

I love this story.

"October 14, 1912 -  

Minutes before giving a speech on a campaign stop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Theodore Roosevelt is shot in an assassination attempt.  

The would-be assassin’s bullet is slowed down after travelling through a steel eyeglass case and the folded, fifty page speech he intended to give, stopping in his chest. Realizing that he wasn’t coughing up blood, Roosevelt figured he was well enough to go ahead and deliver his speech rather than rush to the hospital.  

He spoke for the next 90 minutes, opening with the words: 'Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.'  

Doctors deemed it too risky to remove the bullet, and Roosevelt carried it with him inside his body for the rest of his life."

WEEKENDERS

END OF THE LINE

You'll be missed, old friend.

YOU VANDAL

Wise words from the neighborhood vandal.

ONLY LIVING WITNESS

This is one of the songs that would be on the mix tape that only myself and Dan Fletcher would listen to.

WILD THING

This post was shamelessly stolen from my man Destin over at Steady Clappin'. Make sure you head over there at some point and check it out. He does good work and makes way better mix tapes than I could, which is why I never started. Well, that and not enough people want a mix tape full of Life of Agony, Into Another, Only Living Witness and Helmet. But I digress....

"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it."  —Maurice Sendak

WHAT HELMET LAWS ARE FOR

Antelope - 1
Mountain Bike Dork - 0

"SORRY GENTLEMEN, THE LAW IS THE LAW"

This has been floating around the Internet for years but I just came across it via Badass Digest. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins were required to fill out a customs form declaring what they brought back to the U.S. after Apollo 11 touched down off the coast of Hawaii.

No, really. They actually did.