Ever since that spack in the Minneapolis paper compared Journey to Nickelback, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to differentiate them, and to basically justify having Journey songs on my iPod. Because if they’re nothing more than a former-day Nickelback, they have to go.

I do believe I’ve found it. Journey’s Escape video game, released for the Atari 2600 in 1981.

That’s right, Journey had a video game. I know, I forgot about it too, which is surprising — I don’t usually forget things like this. But there we were at the bar Saturday night, and someone brought it up; I was dumbfounded. After my memory was jogged, I remembered small pieces: that you had to pilot the band to the Scarab, maneuvering away in the standard video-game fashion away from the bad guys, in this case, groupies and managers and paparazzi. From the original box:

Saturday, a group of us went to the free Bright Eyes concert in the park, which was a fantastic show. Except for the whole raining-for-90-minutes thing.

I will admit right off the bat that I am not a huge emo fan. I like a lot of music, and will listen to anything except country. But I’ve never been terribly interested in music that will make me depressed and sad, or exasperate those conditions if they were pre-existing before the music came on. Seriously.

That, and I don’t have any clothing with extraneous zippers, I don’t look like an albino goth and I don’t wear eyeshadow. At least, not in public.

This is not to say that I’m totally ignorant to Conor’s music or his following.

I read at my buddy Dick’s friend Lazy-I’s website this snippet:

“Some won’t come because they despise Conor’s politics. Some won’t come because they despise Conor’s music. Some won’t come because they despise the kind of people who like Conor’s politics and music…And then there’s the weather. And on and on. But maybe the most telling indication of how many will come to the concert in the park is that cheerful Petco clerk bagging my milk bones. ‘Bright Eyes? Never heard of ‘em. Is that a local band or something?’”

My Iowa high school math counting skills tell me there was about 9,000 people at the show. A respectible amount, to be sure, and if the weather had held up, they all would have had a good time.

Add it up, and I’ve spent as much time in Minnesota over the last week as I have in Omaha. Three days last weekend, four days back in Omaha, then two more days in Minneapolis over this past weekend. So that’s actually more time in Minnesota than here over the last seven days. Huh.

Not that I’m complaining. Although wearing a path up I-35 for 390 miles is something I’d prefer not to make a habit of.

Saturday, we buried my Great-Grandma up in Austin, who was 104, on a very cold and rainy day. It struggled to get above 50 degrees most of the day — a stark contrast to the 95 degree heat we’d left behind in Omaha. As it turns out, Minnesota is far enough north that it still gets cold in June.

Born in 1901, her parents had emigrated from Norway. Her dad was the very first employee hired by George Hormel when his little eponymous food processing company was just starting out. An avid singer and sportswoman, she played several sports growing up. After marrying my great-grandpa, they adopted two girls from an orphanage down the road. Great-Grandpa would serve two terms as mayor of Austin, and was a Vice-President of Hormel for many years. He died in 1968, so she was a widow for nearly 40 years.

The urn that his ashes were in was a double urn, with the other side for her upon her death. This meant that instead of burying the urn, it was stored at the funeral home. When she lived almost 4 decades longer, it became kind of a running gag that we hoped the funeral home would still be open and know where the urn was stored at when the time came to go get it. Needless to say, they are, and they did.

When we were in Minneapolis last weekend, one of the biggest fights we had — the one that caused Cliff to physically leave the group and draw cartoons on his napkin — was about music. Two of his college buddies who live in Minneapolis have pretty absolute opinions on music and can probably be described as “scene” guys — all popular music is terrible, anything on the radio is crap, most classic music is dated and “history” — you know the type. So you can imagine what happens when you put those two, a classic rock guy like Dick, an arena-rock guy like Continental, a music whore like myself who listens and enjoys everything, and a lot of alcohol together.

Talk about a combustible cocktail.

Mostly we ripped on two of Cliff’s favorite bands, Coldplay and John Mayer. Hilariously, he wouldn’t let it go. When one of his college buddies said Coldplay is a populist version of Radiohead, that was just about it for him.

“When Radiohead started expanding their vision and popular radio and MTV and by extension many of their fans didn’t follow, they needed somewhere to turn. Coldplay picked up that torch and carries it proudly.”

And to think I summed up that crap band by saying simply they are a “high tech Bread”. Same difference, I think.

I won’t tell you what they said for John Mayer. Suffice it to say it was not kind.

I’ve never understood the idea of a business announcing “New Management!” with a giant banner on their building. Its like telling the world “Hey, we sucked before, but now we don’t anymore because we got a new manager!”

Seriously, when I pull into a restaurant with that sign on their door, I usually think about going somewhere else. They had problems, serious enough to fire the previous management, but now everything is cool. Right.

I saw one the other day that said “New Management! New Attitude!”. Nice. Like Patti LaBelle singing in Beverly Hills Cop. This sign apparently means, not only did our previous management suck, which we now admit, their attitude also was poor. Nothing worse than a bad manager with a mean attitude.

The best is when it says “New Ownership!”, like I care that someone else owns it now. Previously owned by Richie Rich III, now owned by Richie Rich IV! Save it for the business section of the newspaper.