Given my lack of Xtreme web coding skills, and because Leo said I should add a comments thingy, I’m going to try Blogger. I already hate lots about it, but perhaps Google will keep improving it over time and I’ll be able to live with it. I hate more things about iWeb’s poor excuse for a blog, so I won’t even go there (although at least you can read the characters in its comment verification images, unlike Blogger’s half the time). So I’ll post new stuff over there until further notice.

Promoting the 30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition of the Budokon performance and recording, Rick Nielsen was on the radio this morning. Enjoy. Unless you’re our old guitarist, in which case you’ll find Rick annoying and weird. Everyone else with taste, enjoy the genius that is Rick.

We were watching Get Smart this weekend… and loving it. (See how I worked that line in there?) That was a nice surprise. I try to ignore film critics and reviews because they’re nearly always wrong and full of shit, but I did manage to inadvertently read/hear enough to get the idea that the movie blew. Thankfully, Steve Carell, Alan Arkin, and even Dwayne Johnson made me laugh. Anne Hathaway seems do what she always does, which is to alternately look hot or look like an ugly nerd with her big, squishy lips and cow eyes. (Butters would poke them and say something a bit different than when Wendy got implants (go to 20:50), like “ewww, they’re all soft and oogy!”) So anyhoo, I liked the movie. Just keep saying to yourself “it’s only a stunt car” when the Opel GT gets smacked.

Holy crap on a big ol’ crap stick. We had our first practice tonight with our new guitarist, Craig. For the first time in 13 years I feel like I’m in a band again. He’s self–taught, doesn’t read music, and after they worked together for a few hours yesterday, John said he doesn’t even know the names of some of the chords he plays, like 7ths and such. When we did You Really Got Me, he was doing the Eddie licks with pinch harmonics and all that stuff that sounds sooooo good. It’s like being back in Spare Change or something, and I found myself being inspired while playing again. It’s just so amazing to be playing a song and not have one of the guitar parts perform a chromedectomy on a trailer hitch.

Be careful about making fun of the guy in the minivan next to you at a stop light. He just might whip yer ass and blow your nuts off. I’ll leave it vague like that, because I know some all of you will misinterpret the slang phrases and expect something completely different.

No matter how realistic robotic faces get, they still look creepy. Don’t miss the video at the bottom.

OK, I take that back. It looks far more realistic than this Korean woman who injected cooking oil into her face.

Excuse the accompaniment. John & Kim had never played the song. So here’s our 15 minutes of fame. Or infamy. I would’ve been excited had it been Fran Tarkenton instead. At least he’d’ve been coherent and lucid.

The Bolwell Nagari is a beautiful hunk of Australian supercar. I didn’t think they had it in them! I love the deep buttresses coming off the back of the roof that fool you into thinking the roof line runs all the way back. Sorta reminds me of the Mad Max V8 Interceptor.

The neighbors were using a U–Haul truck the other day, but today they had a P.O.D.S. delivered. What a cool damn thing that is. I’d never seen one in action. The Podzilla lift system is the stuff dreams are made of. Watch it in action. Look for the clips where the guy is driving it around in the parking lot.

First off, people of the past, you sounded like complete dorks when you pronounced it ROW–but. Secondly, these are not desirable features on a 2.5’ tall robot; “Hear his bell! Blow his whistle!” (And that 2nd feature comes out quite gay when coupled with the image of the little boy putting his lips around the thing on Big Loo’s head. Or it looks like a bong.) These 2 toys make me glad I was not born 10 years earlier.

Well slap my ass and call me Betty. Guitarist Jack sent out an email saying he will be quitting the band. That sound you hear is the collective sigh of relief coming from at least 3/4 of the remaining members. Helluva nice guy, but no musical ability at all.

We know another guy that’s part of a band that plays even less often than we do, and he has talent out the wazoo. Plays smoothly and effortlessly like he was born with a guitar in his hands. He’s shown up at a few of our gigs and joined us for a couple songs a couple times. Maybe we can get him. Or maybe Lodin will want to join.

So I’m sound–checking my drums last night and some big, wasted drunk guy is mumbling something at me from the floor. I can’t hear him, so he comes up on stage and mumbles more shit about “you know this song?” It was some crappy country song. I continue whacking drums for the sound guy and do the “look happy and mumble back at the drunk” thing. After sound checks, the bar auctioned off some Vikings stuff, like a football autographed by Ricky somebody. Later on, the big drunk comes up and asks if I know Margaritaville and says, “you know who I am?” I take a wild guess and say, “yeah, Ricky… uhhmm…” He says, “no, I’m Tommy Kramer,” and shakes my hand. I’d always heard he was quite the lush. That must be his favorite song because it’s about alcohol. He later talked John & Jack into playing it, since Jack sorta knew the chords, and Tommy slobbered his way through it.

I guess him being there was actually a paid appearance. I was wondering what the hell he was doing at a bowling alley bar in Delano, MN when he said he lives in Texas. Glen, the sound guy, told me I should put it on YouTube, since we were recording. Stay tuned. I haven’t watched the footage (or would that be gigabytage since it’s recorded onto a hard drive? Sectorage?) yet, but I’m guessing it’ll be good for a laugh.

Got a gig tonight out at Doc Holiday’s in Delano. Haven’t been there since May because of the road construction cutting off access and causing general havoc in the area. I’ll get to try the new throne and splash tonight.

Featuring the amazingly creepy–faced robot from The Phantom Creeps, here’s a classic song and video. It’s a good one to crank when you’re sick of the righteous hippies spouting feel–good drivel.

BTW, I’m still trying to figure out what’s wrong with my goddamn router. Linksys has offered no help at all so far. One person asked me to do try something, but it was so vague that it makes no sense. He has not replied back. One customer said he had the same thing happen after a power outage and had to reset it to factory defaults and re–enter everything. That didn’t work for me. So please pardon our mess. Here’s a picture of Hayden Panty–yay! making a mess. I work hard for you, the reader, to find photos that are relative to the topic. Goddamn she looks hot in this one. I normally don’t find her that attractive, but yowza. Maybe it’s the white stuff splashing onto her that really completes the image.

The Secret History of Kiss, the boys’ makeup applied to classic art.

What the fuck just happened? Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?

I got my splash cymbal holder springenized. I tried brazing the spring and bolt, but couldn’t get the rod to melt. I’ll just hope that it holds. It was a bitch to get in, so I’m guessing it’ll stay put.

I got our leaves done. Not a lot in the grass, but the landscaped hill was full. I tried using our mini rake to pull them out from around plants, but the one section that is covered with some sort of vine made that an impossible task. So I just used the blower on the whole thing and what ever leaves wouldn’t budge I didn’t worry about. I also tried neighbor Rob’s Ryobi backpack blower. I don’t like Ryobi tools, but I will admit that this blower started easily and ran much quieter than my Echo handheld. Neighbor Geoff has a backpack Echo, and it’s just as noisy as mine. Although none are as noisy as neighbor Joe’s. It’s some cheap piece of shit, probably bought at Target or Ace or some place like that, which is not a place where you should buy power equipment. I honestly don’t remember if it’s gas or electric, because the rotor noise is so fucking loud and high–pitched that it drowns out all other sounds, made worse by his habit of doing his entire front yard every time after he mows it, and by keeping the throttle wide open the entire time. No idling as he moves from spot to spot or pauses to look for the next leaf that needs to be blown into oblivion. But then he could already be deaf, and it would not surprise me at all, based on the volume and pitch of his wife’s and 2 little girls’ speaking and yelling voices. All 3 females are tiny and very sweet, but cripes, any one of them could easily take on Ella Fitzgerald at vocal glass–breaking and send Ella home defeated.

Ha! Remember this commercial with Chuck Mangione?

I’ve always felt that David Blaine is a dork. South Park declared him the biggest douche in the world. So when I read the following from him, I was surprised that he at least has a fantastic sense of humor. It’s from a collection of suggestions of what Osadamabalony’s half–hour TV show was going to be. (Was that even on? I certainly never heard anything about it.) Props to Zohar Lazar for that kick ass Newhart illustration. And I still think Blaine is a dork.

We dress Barack like Gandhi and put him in the middle of a jungle in Papua New Guinea with a group of isolated natives. He does simple miracles—walking on water, swimming on land. He teaches them hopscotch. One day, he summons a whale into their river, jumps inside, and disappears. A bobblehead Obama doll floats to the surface. He is immortalized as their savior.

Jeez! Never mind on that house. It sold already. Jesus tap dancing christ! I know it’s a nice house in a great neighborhood, but I never imagined it would sell so fast. Someone said the buyer is relocating—works for Betty Crocker or one of those big ass places. Just a couple in their 30’s and no kids. At least that’ll make 2 more people that will talk about something besides their kids at neighborhood parties.

I picked up a new throne today. I finally realized how tall that cafe style stool I use in the basement really is compared to how low I sit on my throne at gigs. I chose a nice Tama upholstered in leather rather than plastic. Maybe that’ll help with the SAS (Sweaty Ass Syndrome). It doesn’t have a backrest. I’ll have to see if I miss it. I know how much I loved being able to rest my back when I finally did get that current throne. But in most of the places we play, I’m pretty much up against the wall (redneck mother) any way, so I can always lean back when I’m tired or Jack is playing some long and boring solo. But I do see that Tama makes a backrest that I could add, and it folds down for storage, which would really help when finding a place to pack it in the truck.

Also got a new splash. I missed my 8” A Zildjians I used to use. The 10” Zildjian A Custom and 6” Sabian I have now are nice, but something about the pitch and decay of an 8” make it just right. Zildjian started making their regular A splashes thicker than they should be so they last longer, but it gives them a horrible “kang” sound. I smacked every 8” they had in the store and really liked the Paiste Signature. Yeah, I know, Paiste. But if they were good enough for Stew… I got another little clamp–on cymbal holder for it. Now I need to do my Frankenstein thing to it and add a spring to help extend the life of the cymbal.

Later in the afternoon we were going to run to Best Fucking Buy to get a longer component video cable. As we’re about to leave the house I mumble something about having a new TV would solve the problem of not being able to run HDMI from multiple sources to the TV, since it only has 1 HDMI input. Kim said that she didn’t want to mention it before because I’d get all crazy–eyed and wound up, but a girl she works with will be looking to get a 42” plasma in March. Kim knew I’d been bitching about our Samsung, so she said maybe we could sell her ours. At the store… well, prices were good as they try to get rid of this year’s stock, and blah blah blah, we got a Pioneer Elite 50” plasma. It’s pretty much the industry leader for the best black levels, contrast ratio, and color management. They just happened to review it in the current Home Theater magazine, mentioning that they also decreased its standby power consumption from last year’s model using 25 watts to this year’s less than 0.5 watts. That’s amazing. Nothing worse than something that sucks power like a thirsty whore when it’s turned off. It also has a little light sensor you can attach that works in conjunction with a display mode that adjusts color, brightness, white point, etc depending on the current room light. I’m jazzed about having a display that can do 1080p and the ability to display 24fps film–based sources correctly. I’m sick of watching interlaced video.

One of our testers entered a bug about how dashed frames can get a bit wonky at sharp corners when the frame weight is thick. I took a look and realized how sucky our dashing code is. Large dashes can fold back over themselves, negating the overlapping areas and leaving empty space. So I decided to rewrite it. The code is more than double the size it was—that’s how much it was missing. Some of that is comments, where none existed before. There’s nothing worse than looking at somebody else’s code that’s heavy on geometry and uses tons of variables with names like curveIsOver (There’s a curve above something? We’re done doing something with a curve?) and trying to figure out how it works and what those variables mean.

Something else that’s been on my list for a couple years is “Our path smoothing sucks.” I keep finding these path related problems or grossness to rewrite or fix. The guy who wrote all this stuff is smart as hell, but got kind of lazy and never worked on polishing features.

Only about half a dozen groups of kids tonight. It was a kid frenzy on Halloween the first couple years we lived here. More candy for me!

Anybody wanna buy the house across the street from us? Really nice kitchen remodeled a couple years ago. Unfinished walk–out basement—the perfect place for a workshop. 400 donuts.