Wow Sox

I am gobsmacked the Red Sox got the sweep. Bless 'em. I'm sure people who care will spend days debating why the Rockies didn't manage to snatch as much as a game in the World Series (my fave is still the 8 day layoff and the snow angels). I feel bad for the Rockies - after all, I've actually been to Coors Field whereas I never ventured into Fenway while I lived in Boston - but I can't help but root for (and be psyched for) the BoSox.

Mike "Eyebrows of Love" Lowell is my hero. (I even called him for MVP when he homered tonight. Yay me and my total lack of baseball knowledge!)

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Retroactive Track o’ the Post: Sweet Caroline from Neil Diamond's 12 Greatest Hits, because Red Sox Nation is crazy about that song.

Oh, Internets, how I love thee!

Some tidbits that make me happy:

  • Have you found He-Man? I'm not really sure why they've labeled this guy He-Man. He's much more like a Chippendales dancer with his Swayze mullet, velvet choker, and perv 'stache.
  • You know who makes me happier than He-Man? German Techno Viking, that's who! He makes me giggle with the boundless joy of a little girl.
  • Then there's Tiffany Sutton (no known relation, thanks). Brozo pointed her out to me a while ago when her story first broke. Now she's been to court and "attempted to show her remorse". (I'm guessing she didn't do so well, if that's how they wrote it up in the paper...) I've bolded some awesomeness for you:
    • In one incident, she and the victim, 46-year-old Robert McDaniel, were high on drugs and drunk when he agreed to be tied up during sex, a police report states.

      McDaniel told police he became scared and asked Sutton to untie him when she attacked him with a knife. Instead, she sliced his leg, punctured his arm, shoulder and back, and cut his neck and stomach, court records show. When he escaped, she chased him with a pickax.

    • So you're telling me there were multiple incidents? Did the others involve excavation tools?

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Track o' the Post: Moaner from Boucoup Fish by my favorite techno wizards, Underworld (FYI: This is the first time Amazon didn't have the MP3 download for the track I originally wanted to use: "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" by the Arctic Monkeys, which I still think is the more appropriate/amusing choice.)

No Tix for Rox & Sox

Totally awesome. Say your team is in the World Series for the first time ever. Say the World effin' Series is coming to your town for the first time ever. What the one thing you can't do?

That's right, fuck it up.

And that is just what happened, boys & girls. I suppose you could say the Rockies were trying to fight the power by not going with TicketMaster to distribute their tickets.

Locally, the Rockies are the only pro team that isn't a Ticketmaster client. It picked Paciolan in 1998, primarily because the team wanted control over its own inventory, said Kevin Fenton, the team's senior director of ticket operations.

The Rockies' previous provider, Destinet, went bankrupt and left the Rockies in the dark for six months.

(Or maybe that's a history of bad decision-making?)

I suppose you could say they were trying to make the ticket sale more "fair" by doing online sales only. (Or at least they did.)

All I can say is that the end result of Paciolan's entire evenue.net service crashing utterly under the strain of 8.5 million hits in 90 minutes is nothing if not completely obvious.

You see, online-only sales are "fair" to everyone, so anyone who saw that it snowed in Denver yesterday is thinking "Sweet! World Series + ski trip!!" and trying to log on to get some seats. If you are a team like the Rockies, who have been in the dumps for so long nobody knows WTF is happening right now, you need to sell some season tickets with this miracle run. You NEED to get some local fans in those seats for a World Series game. Next in line, you should get some Red Sox fans on board, because they are everywhere and love them some baseball. After that comes the tourists.

Screw being fair! You need to take care of that guy (I personally know a few) that comes to as many Rockies games as he can and always has a hell of a time. The people that showed up at Coors Field today, with a vague threat of riot int he air? Those are your people. Take care of your people and they might forget that the team is winning in spite of a front office that could seemingly care less.

Update: As of about 7pm Mountain, they still have no answer. Also this here site comes up #1 for "fuck Paciolan". How cool is that? Granted, it's pure coincidence, since I never typed that phrase until now, but whatever. If the shoe fits... ---

Track o' the post: All The Old Showstoppers from The New Pornographers' latest, Challengers for this lyric:

When we hit the numbers we broke Broken and changed 'em Changed as we spoke

Greenman: Half way there

Saturday afternoon was again spent in Fish's chair at Th'Ink Tank. He came at me with a much more sensible approach of shading and coloring chunks instead of shading the whole thing and coloring it all the next time. (He did all the shading on Ed's at once because he had to let Ed walk out with a tattoo that looked complete.) As per usual the color work is astonishing: Green Beard Originally uploaded by Jake Sutton.

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Track o' the post: Ullyses from A Passage In Time by Dead Can Dance, because the greenman is so Goth. ;)

Monkey Murder

The Deputy Mayor of the Indian capital, Delhi, was killed by a horde of moneys, if you can believe it.

SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys.

The city has long struggled to counter its plague of monkeys, which invade government complexes and temples, snatch food and scare passers-by.

The Hindus consider monkey sacred, so they are basically allowed to reproduce like rabbits and generally fuck shit up all around town.

In other words, major cities in India are overrun by simian street gangs... To that I say, simply: No thank you.

(Props to Brandon via Twitter)

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Track o' the post: Shock the Monkey, an obvious choice from Peter Gabriel's greatest hits disc, Shaking the Tree

Celebrisexy

Would any of Christian Bale's film characters be a good lay? Probably not.

3:10 To Yuma: Unexpressive. Plays things close to the vest. Grim. Secretly defensive with too much to prove. Might open up in private and might consider decent cocksmanship another sign of his must-be-proven-constantly manliness, but also might consider foreplay a sign of weakness. Thumbs down.

Cocksmanship is the word of the day, kids.

This of course leads us to the proverbial "List" that we like to pretend we are all allowed to keep. The List specifies the celebrities that your partner is supposed to let you frolic freely with, should you ever get the chance. Of course, the only thing that even lets The List exist is the fact that you will never get that chance. In fact, I know someone who had a particular vixen removed forcibly from his List because he'd actually met her in person once. This brings the game too close to reality. No good.

I don't actively maintain my list, but I like to keep a fuzzy idea of who might be on it for when the barroom conversation turn that direction. I have to say, though, that the glut of celebrity gossip sites (coupled with the fact that I know a couple people in the film industry who like to tell me "Oh, she's a total bitch and she has some kind of weird skin fungus." when I bring up someone I'd totally take a run at) is kind of ruining the whole notion of The List. None of these people are nearly as perfect as they used to seem and that's just no fun.

Now that I've built it up so much, I'm balking on the idea of typing out my List. It's a fluid, ever-changing thing... I'm reticent to nail it down.

How 'bout you go first?

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Track o' the post: There's No I In Threesome from Interpol's latest, Our Love To Admire (Note: Those links take you to Amazon's MP3 download area, which I highly recommend. I might try to keep doing a track for each post. I might not.)

What's the Meme?

Just a couple quick hits worth noting:

  • This morning I gave Radiohead two British pounds for the digital download of their new album, In Rainbows. They let you pick your own price. I put mine on the low side because I'm only a marginal Radiohead fan (and the album web site is a pain in the ass). It's still more than five times the $0.74 per CD music artists supposedly get from the labels (if they're lucky).
  • Say what you will about the French, they sure have talented news anchors (careful, boobies!).

Amazon Sells Music Correctly

You know what else I like? The new Amazon MP3 Music Downloads thingy, that's what. Prices are roughly similar to iTunes Music Store and there's no DRM whatsoever.

Hotness on a bun. (Y'know... As far as buying music goes. I still say buy directly from the artist if at all possible.)

The boss at Yahoo! Music agrees:

But now, eight years later, Amazon’s finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that’s simple and works with any device. I bought tracks from Amazon (Kevin Drew and No Age), downloaded them, sync’d them to my new iPod Nano, and had them playing in my home audio system (Control 4) in less than five minutes. PRAISE JESUS. It only took 8 years.

8 years. How much opportunity have we lost in those 8 years? How much naivety and hubris did we have when we said, “if we build it they will come�? What did we spend? And what did we gain? We certainly didn’t gain mass user adoption or trust, two prerequisites to success on the Internet.

I'm also still a big fan of Amazon Unbox with its $4 "rentals" that download straight to my TiVo.

That's sexy, too.

Stuff and Junk

Firstly, it's worth noting that The Mother-in-Law has a new dog. Molly is a blue heeler mix of some sort. She's really sweet, though a bit crazy and fairly untrained. We're hopeful, though, since Australian Cattle Dogs are in the top ten for dog breed intelligence. ;) Next on the docket are the mighty Rockies. Now, I'm not a baseball fan. I root for the Red Sox on principal alone. But c'mon! Who doesn't love a "hometown underdog does good" story? Best of all, I know one Phillies fan who is an extremely sore loser. This could be fun.

In general, Autumn is upon us. The transition seasons always get me fired up in one way or another.

The Wife and I are taking a lot of long walks with Mingus to try to shed some pounds and keep the dog happy.

I've barely been on the Bonneville this year, but it's OK. My favorite riding time is now, so hopefully I'll get in the saddle at least a few times. I wish I was like these guys.

I'm itching to start a home project or a woodworking project (or both) soon. Updates when I do.

Trip Report and Other Junk

Well, really there's not much to report. The drive to Vegas went quickly and easily. We literally did nothing in Vegas -- In fact, we we most excited by the fact that the Luxor has two Starbucks. Party animals we are not.

The second leg of the drive into Los Feliz also went without a hitch. From then on it was just the usual sort of "hang out with Chris, Kate, and Chowda" sort of scene. Highlights as I remember them:

  • Best of all, we got lots of quality time with Scot & Matt. We love those kids. You might recognize Scot. Thanks to both him and Kate, I have a Bacon Number of 3!
  • Casa Bianca has the best sausage pizza I have ever consumed. I am curious as to whether it's the sausage or the pizza. I cheese pie trial needs to happen someday.
  • The Museum of Jurassic Technology is supremely weird. A must see if you're in LA (and like weirdness).
  • Friday poker: In spite of playing like an idiot (and in doing so, pissing Scot off a bit when I rivered and ace to beat his pocket kings), I managed to finish in second place. I had a chance to do better than that, but Matt's crazy enough that I shouldn't have tried to scare him out of a pot by going all-in with ace-high.
  • Saturday was Chris' birthday cookout/party in which Chris ended up doing all the cooking... *shrug* Staggering amounts of Guinness were consumed, and I got to see some of my favorite people.
  • The Wife and I hiked up to Griffith Observatory a couple times. It's a steep little hill, let me tell you!
  • Lots of dining out, but not as disastrous as usual. Though, we totally had to hit Tito's Tacos.

The drive back was fairly ordinary except for a crazy huge moon we saw rising over the Utah desert.

Today, when I came back into work, I found a strange Japanese swan phallus thingy on my desk. Thanks to Miracle Ed, I now get the reference, but nobody here has owned up to actually putting it on my desk...

Random, unrelated crap follows ...

In sporting news, the Red Sox managed to hold off the Yankees and will face the Angels in the ALDS, the Rockies are actually trying to get in the playoffs, the Broncos finally got the trouncing they've deserved after stealing their first two wins, and hockey season is about to get fired up.

...

On the booze-review tip: If you enjoy a good shiraz (I like to say "shih-RAZZ" because it's Australian, after all.) you should give the 2006 Mollydooker "The Boxer" a go. It's one of those uber-hip Stelvin cap jobbies, so no cork-screw needed. Also, it seems mollydooker is Aussie for left-handed, though as of yet, I've been unable to confirm it...

...

Weeds and Californication might be my favorite hour of television right now. Though, I already miss John from Cincinnati. (I might be alone on that one, though.)

OMW

The Wife and I will be on our way home from LA within the hour. See you in a couple days.

Update: Free intarwebs at the Super 8 in Green River, UT. W00t!

Update the 2nd: Home again, home again! Jiggety-jig!

Time for Travelling

Just when you thought posting couldn't get any lighter here at the ol' Blah and Stuff, LLC, I'm here to tell you that it will do just that. Time has come for The Wife and I to bundle into our Honda Civic and hit the open road to that glittering city known as Los Angeles for our annual road trip to see The Brother-in-Law and Auntie Kate. This time around it looks like we'll have extremely limited access to teh intarwebs, so the best you'll probably get out of me is a few tweets and some goofy pictures (both of which I can do with my cell phone, you see?).

For the record, my fame spotting abilities are next to useless. In all my trips to LA I've only seen the back of Zach de la Rocha outside Fred 62 and Melissa Joan Hart at the Suss yarn store. And those were only because somebody else pointed them out. I have hope, though -- the last episode of LA Ink showed Corey Miller discussing his impending vasectomy with his wife at Home, which is right up the road from Chris & Kate's house. Maybe I'll get to take a blurry phonecam pic of Kat Von D or my current tattoo TV crush, Hannah Aitchison, while I'm there.

We leave at the crack of Sunday, stop over at the Luxor in Vegas for a craaaazy night of not-doing-anything-in-Vegas, and arrive in Los Feliz on Monday sometime after grabbing that first In-n-Out burger and strawberry shake in Barstow. Plans are to leave LA on Wednesday, the 26th, in order to have plenty of time to decompress and do stuff around the house before heading back to work on October 1st.

We're very excited. Updates as they are possible.

Climbing Pics

Rocky Mtn Wife I've been scanning and posting a few rock climbing pictures from my days in Massachusetts (and a few from here in Colorado). There are some great shots of me and my friends from those days (most notably Miracle Ed and Hanh). Makes me wistful.

And a bit depressed... As Ed put it to me "You should get skinny again. You were pretty."

As of right now, the notions of getting skinny and getting back into climbing are almost a chicken and egg proposition... Nothing to it but to do it, right?

(Did I mention rock climbing is how I seduced my wife? It's somewhat true.)

Effective Clownery

Once, when I was small and living in the winter home of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, I thought I'd like to be a clown. Nowadays I mostly subscribe to the "clowns are creepy" philosophy, though. But when I come across a story like this, it warms the cockles, to be sure:

Clowns KKKick KKK ass!

"White Power!" the Nazis shouted, "White Flour?" the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt "White Flour".

"White Power!" the Nazis angrily shouted once more, "White flowers?" the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.

Awesome! And this happened in Knoxville, TN -- my old neck of the woods.