lunge.org - daily randomness

What is the meaning of this??

I just had to post this because it's too stupid not to. As I was spell checking my previous entry the Blogger spell checker reveled to me that it has no entry for the word "blog". It offered a number of suggestions in it's place from "bloc" to "Bloch" to "blows", but it does not recognize "blog". I had to make it "learn" the word. *shakes head* I would think that word would be standard by now.

posted by Erin - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 0 Comments

"Would I move to Turkey? Hell no. Why not? I couldn't leave my stuff."

Ahh, Henry Rollins. If you've never had the opportunity to see Rollins do one of his spoken word shows, you've missed out. We saw him last time he was here in November at the Moore and we had a wonderful time. I wasn't sure what to expect as I'd never seen him before, but it was great. I laughed so hard at times I almost cried. Good times.

Anyway, he now has his very own blog, or rather they're called "dispatches". Whatever they're called, he's writing pretty much daily. As I read his entries I try to read them as he would say them, it makes them so much better.

posted by Erin - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 0 Comments

That looks like a tube of cookie dough!

So, a week ago Shawn and got ourselves together and headed down to the Showbox to see Goldfinger, Reel Big Fish, Zebrahead and some opening band. I must say the Showbox is one of my favorite local venues. It seems like no matter where you stand, unless you're like 3 feet tall and standing on the main floor a good view is to be had.

We arrived at the venue a little after 9pm to see a line that went all the way from the front door on First Ave around the corner down Pike passed the Johnny Rockets (which honestly I hadn't been aware of until Shawn mentioned it the week before). I was slightly pissed off as I chose not to wear a jacket and the wind was icy and the doors should have opened at 8pm! Thankfully one of the security guys who worked at the Showbox came around asking if anyone had "tickets in hand", which thankfully we did and he rounded us up s he could take us "to the promised land" as he said. He was actually quite funny. He started yelling in spanish, and then told this guy with rather long hair that he needed to get it cut, and he didn't say it in a nice way either. Surprisingly a number of people didn't actually have tickets on them and they all got to remain standing in line in the cold waiting to be let in, where as us with tickets managed to get in rather quickly. Yay for planning ahead!

Finally we made our way inside to find out that Zebrahead had just taken the stage, apparently we missed the first band (our plan worked perfectly!). We decided to head over to the merch table because I was feeling like buying a shirt or something. Actually I wanted a hoodie, but didn't actually end up getting one. Shawn and I, the completely cheesy married couple that we are got the exact same shirt. It is a very cool shirt though. It's a black jersey looking thing with a white collar and white rings around the sleeve and it says "We're Not Happy Til You're Not Happy" on the front and "Reel Big Fish" on the back. I think we just have to come up with a schedule on who gets to wear it when.

During the Zebrahead set Shawn and I made our way to our normal spot up in the bar area by the stairs in the back. For some reason we always find ourselves standing over there, at least the past few times we've been there. We also decided on our way to the show to stop at a pharmacy and get some ear plugs. We didn't want to have a repeat performance of the whole Bob Mould experience where we lost our hearing for days. As my mother so delicately put it we're becoming "a bunch of old fucks". Whatever, at least we'll be "old fucks" with good hearing. So we remembered to put them in and even though we couldn't talk to each other during the sets, we were able to hear perfectly when we left. Earplugs are a good idea, trust me. As for Zebrahead, they're not my thing. They only have one song that I know and it's not even their song. It's a cover, in fact an awesome cover of 'Wannabe' by the Spice Girls, which they didn't even play. Bastards. Thankfully they didn't go on too long.

Eventually Goldfinger took the stage. I was excited to see them and they were pretty much the reason I bought tickets to the show in the first place. Shawn had seen them before and said they were pretty good and did a lot of Operation Ivy covers. I think I had my hopes for the show set a little too high. They didn't sound all that together and they're were looking rather old. They didn't play a single song off their new album and very few off their first one. They did their Cure cover of course, but played a lot of stuff from their middle albums that I never really listened to. They did however, play one of my favorite songs of all time "FTN", which stands for 'Fuck Ted Nugent'. I love it. I seriously think the Nuge is a complete waste of space. I unfortunately lost almost 5 minutes of my life watching part of "Wanted: Ted or Alive" on OLN one day and in that time was ready to break my tv or scratch my eyes out just so it would go away. Seriously though, try to find that song. It's great.

Then came Reel Big Fish. Honestly, I don't think I've actually listened to one of their albums all the way through before. I do know plenty of their songs and have enjoyed them, but for some reason they're not a band that I listen to with any sort of frequency. Regardless, when they took the stage they came out sounding really tight and together. They played a lot of songs that I knew including their wonderful covers of "Kiss Me Deadly" by Lita Ford and "Boys Don't Cry" by the Cure. How can you now like a ska-ified version of both of those songs? Exactly, you can't. However, once all the songs they were playing started to sound the same (which is the part of the problem with Reel Big Fish) we decided to make our exit.

We burst through the doors into the cold, January night air and made our way back to our car, without even a hint of ringing in our ears and made our way home.

All in all it was a fun night. I'm glad I got to see Goldfinger, but I don't think I'll bother wanting to see them again, They weren't as good as I was hoping they'd be. Shawn said they were better when they had one album and once they played all the good songs from that started playing covers. That's what I get for living in a rather small town in Northwestern Ontario Canada back in the mid 90's. I missed a lot of good stuff. Oh well, that's life.

One more thing though, this was the first time Shawn and I had been to a bar/club/show since the whole smoking ban went into effect. I actually quite enjoyed coming home and not feeling the need to burn my clothes because the reeked so badly of cigarette smoke. It was also nice to be able to see the stage without the normal haze of smoke in the air. Granted, it made for some cranky people, but honestly I enjoyed it. I was against the smoking ban in the beginning though, only because of the ridiculous 25 foot rule, that's just a bit much and in fact I find that people aren't really following that part of it anyway. But I am enjoy the smoke free atmosphere of shows. Makes me wonder how El Corazon, formerly Graceland is these days. Perhaps we'll have to give that place another try.

posted by Erin - Sunday, January 15, 2006 0 Comments

Note to Self

After drinking more than half a bottle of champagne don't wake up the next morning and decided to go shopping for clothes. Especially after not having anything but a cup of coffee and a muffin. You will be dehydrated and because of that retaining water and pants will not fit you very well. Also, do not buy a pair of pants that are a size too big because you think they're cute. Because once you get back to drinking water like normal and are not dehydrated they will keep slipping off your ass. Then you'll be stuck with a cute pair of pants that are slightly too big and you'll have to either get yourself a belt or a pair of the pants in the size you normally wear.

posted by Erin - Friday, January 06, 2006 0 Comments

Hang the DJ

What has happened to the state of the radio in this country? The mainstream radio stations seem to feel the need to compete with satellite radio or something and have become total crap. Granted, most mainstream radio stations have always been crap, but lately they seem to be even crappier than ever. Meh.

Due to the fact that I work in a fairly large office all by myself, I need some background noise to keep me sane and working hard. Seriously, I don't think I'd last more than a few hours with absolutely no noise save for the cars driving past my window. So I've always enjoyed having the radio on, as I don't have to think too much about it; no need to switch cds or anything like that. Also it's helpful to have a nice variety of songs that I don't actually have to pick for myself. Apparently while at work I'm lazy about my listening choices.

Anyway, awhile back I started listening to what at the time was K-Rock, with Andy Savage and his whole morning crew that came from 107.7 The End (after they got booted off, for whatever reason). Things were going along swimmingly, a nice variety of alternative music, an amusing morning show, great DJs. And then all of a sudden one day at 10am on the nose they started playing some craptacular song by Pink. At first I though to myself that this was a joke, and then they started having commercials for Jack FM and playing all sorts of random crap. Apparently unbeknownst to anyone the station decided to just up and switch formats to a DJ-less format that plays all kinds of random crap. Thanks but no thanks.

I then moved on back to 107.7 The End, which I'd listened to previous to K-Rock. I wasn't overly happy about this as I wasn't too keen on the DJs on the End and their morning show was hideous. DJ No Name was one of the worst morning show DJs of all time. But at the very least him and his sidekick were stationed in Seattle and played decent music and often had Sean from Harvey Danger on the show. This made it all bearable. That and randomly sending snide e-mails about my distaste for DJ No Name as both a DJ and a person also helped.

Fast forward to today. Even though I thought the morning show on The End could not get any worse, the wonderful people at Entercom somehow managed to find a way to burst my bubble. They have now joined a number of different stations across the country in broadcasting the Adam Carolla morning show. Adam Carolla; a complete waste of space. I honestly don't think that man has anything to offer. He's not even funny. So instead of a little yapping by DJ No Name and Jennifer White and a fair amount of music between the hours of 6am-10am, I was subjected to inane ramblings of Adam Carolla and his co hosts this morning.

I couldn't even make it to the end of his show. It was terrible. Once I realized that there wouldn't really be any music playing, I sent an e-mail to Entercom letting them know of my distaste for the sad state of affairs that is mainstream radio and promptly turned the dial to 90.3 KEXP.

So I've been listening to KEXP for a few minutes now and it's ok. Not as "alternative" as I'm used to, but they do play John Vanderslice and Bob Mould, so they can't be all that bad. If this doesn't work out though, I don't know what I'm going to do.

UPDATE: As of 11:52am I am no longer able to stand listening to KEXP. Don't get me wrong, they do play some decent stuff, but it's so few and far between I find myself sitting here thinking "What the fuck am I listening to now?!" I need to come up with a solution to my problem that does not involve satellite radio, hearing the same song more than twice a day (unless it's a really great song and it's my decision to hear that song repeatedly for 8 hours straight) and that doesn't require me to think too much. Meh.

posted by Erin - Tuesday, January 03, 2006 1 Comments