June 2006 Archives

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.

Pretty sure this means something, but just what escapes me. But I had several Coors Lights in bottles last night. Coors Light. There's never a time when that's a good drink. I don't call it beer because its really not, its ill-tasting yellow water. Kind of like dog piss only without all the flavor.

I know what you're saying. How can a guy with PBR and Schlitz in his fridge make fun of Coors Light. There's a difference, a very subtle one admittedly, but it is a difference: PBR and Schlitz are really cheap, so you're willing to sacrifice little things like "taste" and "quality" and "enjoyability" for "quantity". Coors Light costs, on average, on par with Bud Light or Miller Lite, both superior beers in most respects.

Coors Light is a designer's quandary. Here you have a beer with the best logo, best can design and best slogan, yet it tastes like flavorless dog piss. Fresca is terrible too, but those cans are, to quote Cliff P. Glypha, "the new hotness". Coors Light is "the old hotness", I suppose, and much like Fresca, attractive to designers on a purely superficial basis. The Silver Bullet. In a long, narrow silver can, streamlined to look like an aerodynamic bullet. The old-fashioned type font logo.

So even though I knew the beer itself was crap, I got through several of them. Partly because that's what was in the fridge at my brother's house, but mostly because when the choice is ugly-ass 2003-era Bud Light cans (how he even got those, a mystery to me) or cool-looking Coors Light cans, aesthetics win out.

I blame Coors Light and their cool design for the bad aftertaste and the Ron Burgundy-esque feeling of cracking open the can and exclaiming "I immediately regret this decision!"

You bet.

This weekend, I'll be in Minnesota for a funeral/party for my great grandma, who passed away Sunday at the age of 104. Yep, she was born in 1902. Lived in her own house until she was almost 96 years old, healthy as a whip. Spent the last several years with Alzheimers, in otherwise perfect health, but with a mind filled with a century of stories wasting away. She wrote it into her will that when she died, there was not to be a sad funeral, but a party to celebrate good times. So that's what will happen. We'll celebrate, and because she was one of the biggest Twins fans I ever knew (rarely missing a game on TV or radio for as long as I remember), taking in the Twins-Orioles game that night might be part of the party.

This will, of course, be the second weekend in a row I'll be in Minneapolis, having spent last weekend there at Vosstag 06, our weekend of guy-ness thrown in Cliff's honor last weekend. A stop by the Mall of America may be need to be in the plans this time around. There's a t-shirt I need to get, one I was talked out of buying last time.

***

Sunday in Minneapolis, I was digging through a shelf of T-shirts at a store in the Mall of America, when I kept getting harrassed by a dude who spoke minimal english. He kept pointing at me, and I nodded and all, but he persisted. Eventually I determined he thought I worked there, and his daughter had a question. I politely told him I did not, in fact, work there and moved on. Apparently wearing a t-shirt automatically means you work in a t-shirt store. You bet.

Sitting around before our games Tuesday night, my man Brotha Cheese pointed out mathematically just how much our team sucks at the moment. "The only team worse than us is a team that stopped showing up after week one. Out of the teams who've played every week, we're dead last."

Now, we've fielded some pretty awful teams over the years, but never a last place squad. We even took second place one year, and played for the title in the championship round (we lost badly). But this time, this year, it looked bad. It was playoff week, and we were the bottom seed.

"But look at it this way," I said, "if we win all four matches tonight, and the team right ahead of us loses all four of theirs, we finish in 9th place."

We both thought about this possibility, dreamt of it, and then sat in momentary silence. Then we laughed and went back to drinking a beer. We weren't gonna win all four games!

We won all four games.

You see, we had forgotten that our team was not the team it had been for most of the season -- it was our full, healthy squad for the first time all year. Our best player was back after a two-month layoff. How much did this matter? We won all four games, and we didn't finish in last place, so quite a big difference.

Its amazing what honesty kids will share, you know? "You're pretty good -- at times among the best players on the court -- but you don't make everyone around you better." A guy not even old enough to drink legally told me this. "Actually, you hog the ball and almost make your team worse at times."

Ouch. Is that really true? Am I a ball hog? I talked to my brother on the phone as I drove home later on, and asked him point blank that very question. "Max, your basketball teammates didn't call you 'Tommy Gunn' because you liked Rocky V. You were  a gunner then, and you're a gunner now. Yes, you're a ballhog, but you know what? You're much better at deferring than you used to be. So you got that going for you."

Damn. As I think about this, its true. The player who hadn't played with us for two months? She sets perfectly so me and Brotha Cheese can hit. She directs traffic so balls don't drop untouched. She returns wicked serves. She makes everyone around her better. I do not.

Because I am a ballhog. But at least I'm not a ballhog on a last place team.

You bet.

Last night, I was preparing to upload some files via FTP. Only, I had forgotten my password. Searching my email for it was hell, as I've used the subject line "FTP Login" as a secret code for some time, disguising private emails that casual glancers would never open -- as a boring subject line like FTP Login makes your eye move on to the next. Meantime, the real scandalous stuff is disguised with that subject. Very tricky.

Problem is, the email with my actual FTP login was also somewhere in my inbox with that subject line. So talk about biting me in the ass!

Still, a better code than what I used to do with a former girlfriend -- typing secret messages via email in white type, so you'd have to select the text to read it (since a selection inverses the selected part). Cool, but occasionally I'd forget the private stuff was in there and forward it on -- not a huge deal, since unless you knew to look for it you'd never see the private prose -- but when you'd print it out, most email programs convert all text to black and would print everything. One time getting burned with that was enough to forever put the kibosh on that secret code. And tonight's events have probably put the kibosh on the Operation FTP Login code system. Dammit!

I love it when the Twins play out on the west coast. I'm a creature of the night, always up until midnight or later anyway, so when the games start at 9pm, I love it. Back when I was growing up, the Twins played in the Western Division and would play out on the west coast a few times a month. While we didn't get the games on TV then, I remember listening to the games on the radio in my bedroom, often times falling asleep to the postgame show after midnight.

Back in those days, the only time I'd see a game on TV was if ESPN picked it up. The bitch of the late game is that sometimes the early game goes long, and you miss the first inning or so of the late game. This upset me exponentially more when I only got to watch maybe three games a year on TV. To my ten-year old mind, why ESPN couldn't cut from the end of the Detroit-Cleveland game to show the first pitch of the Twins-Oakland game was beyond my comprehension. I mean, who cares about Detroit-Cleveland? The Twins game is starting now!

I understand now why this is, that networks schedule games to overlap on purpose so that they don't lose viewers in between games. I don't get as upset anymore. Usually.