December 2006 Archives

366 days ago, I decided to see what would happen if, on my two day-by-day calendars, I ripped away each day but never removed the remnant glue from the top of the calendar. Some people are anal about removing that stuff, spending precious seconds each day doing so, leaving their calendar prim and proper. That's most certainly not me.

Plus, I wanted to see if I could make it the entire year.

The funny thing is, the more of that crap you leave at the top, the less you can tear away from each day's sheet, which leads to more crap left over, which means you can't tear as much off, and so on and so forth. Around May, five months in, the right-hand corners started becoming buried beneath the crap left over.

When I left for San Francisco in June, I had a sneaking suspicion that someone would try to clean up the crap left over. Most people are extraordinarily anal about their day-to-day calendar crap left over. Some people are annoyed when others do not share their anality. And a select few will become so incensed that they will stoop to removing someone else's crap left over.

I couldn't take that chance. So I safely stowed away my Dilbert and George Carlin calendars in a desk drawer, to be removed upon my return.

And as the leaves changed, and fall rolled in, the crap left over was becoming a scourge. People would comment on it. One guy said it reminded him of Howard Hughes (talk about off-the-wall references). By November, the date -- theoretically the most important part of a calendar -- was no longer visible, hidden beneath crap left over. I steeled my resolve to make it through the end of 06.

Well, folks, I made it. Look at that epic, awesome, inch-and-a-half crap. Its like a Meatloaf song from Bat Out Of Hell IV. Not the best song from the album, probably not even a single, but a solid B-side or album cut, without a doubt.

You bet.

Oh, the cruel twists of fate. Just like my Vikings have done in Super Bowls past, the Colt 45s choked this weekend. Took a dump on the 50 yard line. Pissed a victory down their leg. In a word, lose. And you know how I hate to lose.

Ironically enough, the Vikings defense got me 19 fantasy points -- a big number for any position, but HUGE for a defense -- and then my offensive guys did OK but not spectacular. To be fair, they would have had to have massive weeks to win, with what my opponent put up.

Drew Brees, 13-32 for 132 yards and a TD. Rudi Johnson, 30 rushes for 129 and a TD. Reggie Bush, 20 rushes for 120 and a TD. But my collection of jokers, stiffs and punk-ass stiffs got me nothing -- Torry Holt's Rams managed 37 points but he had no TD's. Nice work. Reggie Brown's Eagles had 23, and he had squat. Thanks for playing.

Iowa boy Nate Kaeding overachieved with 10 points. All totaled, 66.09 points -- not a bad week, but not a great one either. A terrible week when your opponent nets 95.61.

Marc Bulger, 25-38 for 388 yards and 4 TDs. Ladell Betts, 29 rushes for 129 yards and 2 TDs. 15 fantasy points from Baltimore's defense. He beat me with just those three guys. Frickin' 3-on-7, and he wins. 67 points between those 3 guys alone.

Which was good for him, because his collection of jokers, stiffs and punk-ass stiffs got him nothing, either. Bryan Westbrook, Terrell Owens, Plaxico Burress and Jeff Wilkins had one TD combined (TO).

All totaled, I lose in a smackdown asskicking buffet, 95-66. If there's any consolation, I did get a nice, crisp $50 bill for appearing in the Super Bowl. But alas, the Colt 45s were the runner-up, which meant the $150 winner's pot went elsewhere.

Jokers, stiffs and punk-ass stiffs. Damn you.

You bet.

You bet.

For Christmas, my brother and I trade gag gifts. We trade-off years, meaning you only get to gag them once every other year. This also means you have to wait 12 months for payback.

This has been going on for years, but probably reached its apex when I was a Senior at Creighton and he was a Sophomore at UNI. That year, he had grown his hair out to ridiculous lengths, and its naturally curly. So he wound up with this mess of long, blonde, curly hair. At the exact same time, a guy named Justin Timberlake from a little-known band called N*Sync started wearing his hair the same way. When N*Sync hit the big time, the comparisons on the Northern Iowa campus began. He hated every minute of it, but not enough to cut his hair. Just like his older brother, he's stubborn.

The best was at a Taco John's in Cedar Falls, when the teenage girl taking his order started giggling and called him "Justin" no less than three times.

That Christmas, I bought him a "Justin Timberlake" marionette doll. Cost me $25 but it was well worth it.

Years ago, MGM released a box set of the 4 Rocky movies (I, II, III and IV) on VHS, but in a box big enough to hold 5 movies. The idea being, when V came out, you could buy it and put in the case to complete the set. Forward thinking in one respect, but they didn't anticipate the DVD thing. Last year, my buddy Dick Herculanum gave me this set when he was cleaning out some old tapes. I had to laugh. Well, now, the long-awaited sequel to Rocky IV has arrived in the form of "Rocky Balboa". If I can find it on VHS, I can complete this box as intended!

You bet.

A couple of weeks ago when I was home in Iowa for Thansgiving, I was sitting at my mom's iMac trying to fix a printer issue. While I was waiting for a driver to download, I was thumbing through the booklet of a CD that happened to be sitting on her desk: The Best of the Grass Roots.

The Grass Roots are perhaps the band everyone has heard but fails to realize that they have. If you've ever listened to an oldies radio station -- and if you're like me and your art teachers in middle school subjected you to the oldies on a daily basis, you have -- you've heard the Grass Roots a bazillion times. Seriously, go to iTunes and look them up. You've heard "Midnight Confessions", "Sooner or Later", "Temptation Eyes" and "Lets Live for Today", you probably can sing along to them, but you probably didn't know the band that performs them is the Grass Roots.

I had this revelation a few years back, when they played a benefit concert in Fort Dodge. Song after song, I recall thinking, "You guys sang THIS ONE TOO??" My knowledge of 1960s music is spotty at best. It turns out they were on the Billboard charts for 307 consecutive weeks from 1967-1972 with various songs. That is one helluva accomplishment to never leave the airwaves, even for a week, for nearly six years. And yet no one remembers how popular they were.

Anyway, as I was thumbing through the booklet, admiring the design and what not, I noticed an interesting notation in the band credits: their guitarist's name was Creed Bratton. If that name doesn't ring a bell, think of Creed on "The Office". His last name on the show is Bratton. Hmmm.

The other night, I was talking to my brother, and asked him a hypothetical question. If your friends threw a party to celebrate your promotion to Art Director, you'd make sure to remember to go, right?

He deadpanned, "The party is for me? Damn right...not even the lamest guy in the world skips their own party. Unless a 'Heroes' marathon is on, in which case all bets are off." That's such an odd response. Heroes? That horrible "Save the cheerleader, save the world" crap? And not just one episode, but a marathon? Come on now, I don't know anyone who would actually rather watch Heroes than drink beer and watch football with all of his friends, at a gathering to celebrate his promotion. No way that happens...

I don't know where I'm going with this. Oh, wait, that's right!

Sunday, we all got together at Stevie J's bar in Dundee to celebrate Gilby's promotion to Art Director, an honor bestowed upon him on Friday. Of course, as you'd expect, being his celebration, Gilby was there. He must have ESP, because when he came in, he somehow knew about my brother's strange comment about "Heroes", even though I hadn't written about it here, and Gilby knows my brother only in passing. He said he almost didn't make it to this, a party for him, because he was so engrossed in an episode of the show...then laughed and assured us that he was only joking. No one would actually do that. Whew!

As we sat and drank a few pitchers while the Giants/Eagles and Broncos/Cardinals games were on, Continental Frutiger, Dick Herculanum and myself laughed at the irony of Gilby starting his new position as an Art Director mere hours before Cliff Glypha started his new job as an Art Director on Monday.

Albeit, by a technicality, but still. Hilarious. You can't make this stuff up...no one would ever believe you.

A couple of years ago, my brother convinced his wife to buy him an iPod for his birthday. He of course took me with to buy it, because he didn't want to get ripped off. I think we ran everywhere in town that day, looking for a place that had them in stock (this was way before Omaha had an Apple Store).

We went to one Best Buy, but all they had in stock were the full-sized iPod, and he just wanted a Nano. So we went across town to another Best Buy, and they were completely sold out. Then we traversed across the river to Council Bluffs, and the Best Buy there only had pink Nanos in stock. He briefly contemplated getting a pink one just to end the shopping excursion -- this trip was nearing 90 minutes, which is completely unacceptable for the Univers brothers.

But clearer heads prevailed, and the thought of owning a pink iPod gave us the strength to continue on.

The first Super Target we hit had five pink Nano's, and nothing else. The next one had nothing. Then we went to Wal-Mart, and the guy working in electronics tried to tell us there weren't any in stock even though we could clearly see there were in the case. After arguing in three languages, we left.

For the record, those languages were English, Pissed Off, and Really Pissed Off. Stop jumping to conclusions all the time, its unbecoming.

My buddy Mick sent me this note: "Jim Rome ranted for 10 minutes on yesterday's show about making 3 "easy" payments. I immediately thought of you and Ron Popiel. Mr. Rome also believes the payments are not easy. He also says that if you need to finance a product sold on TV you cannot afford it. This is good stuff."

Indeed!

This may require a bit of a back story, so that means its time for another trip in the Polyfro Time Machine! Built into a dark brown AMC Javelin, the Polyfro Time Machine can transport you to anytime from the late '70s until now, for the purposes of telling classic stories. This time, we'll set it for 1998:

When I was in college, a certain Ron Popiel and I had a pretty vicious feud. You know Ron from his infomercials for the Showtime Rotisserie and other various ridiculously overpriced inventions. His infomercials aired quite a bit, always late at night, and something about him just rubbed me the wrong way. One night in my dorm room, I'd had enough of his smarminess, I snapped and started talking smack to the television, basically telling Ron what he could do with his "inventions".

"Oh, its SHOWTIME, Ron! Its Showtime!"

Back in September, I lamented the fact that our fantasy football draft had gone pretty poorly for me. At the time, I commented on this very site, "Clearly, that is the worst team ever assembled. I'll be lucky to win a game."

I can remember sitting at the bar that night, looking at the names of the assorted chumps I'd drafted all scribbled out on a napkin, and wondering how badly I'd get my ass kicked, and how long before my chances of making back my entry money would evaporate.

Then I won the first game handily. But I was not content with sitting still; I started making moves. I dumped Trent Green as my backup QB and -- in a genius move that literally saved my season and may yet give me the championship -- I signed Drew Brees off the free agent scrap heap. I won the next two games and sat atop the standings at 3-0 heading into October. Donovan McNabb, the guy everyone laughed at when I drafted him in the first round (I picked last and all the best running backs were gone), was carrying me.

Shows what I know, right? I was gloating; the amount of smack talk I was laying down in the office (did I mention this is a league comprised completely of guys at the office?) on Monday mornings was measured in tons. I even scanned in a photo of the new iPod I was going to buy with my winnings and sent it to everyone. The track playing in the photo? "Got Yo Money" by Ol Dirty Bastard. This, in hindsight, was a mistake. Karma comes back around. 

Over the weekend I discovered a website that is streaming high-quality concerts for free. Legendary promoter Bill Graham, who for years promoted shows at San Francisco's Fillmore East/West, apparently made soundboard recordings of every show he promoted. Ever. And no one knew this until he died, upon which time his estate auctioned the tapes off for $5 million to a music memorabilia company. This company, <a href="http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com/">Wolfgang's Vault</a>, is streaming the shows to draw traffic to their site in hopes that people buy things once they're there.

The legality of the whole operation is dicey at best, but when there's soundboard quality shows from Hendrix, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, and hundreds more, who cares?

This is where having a Mac kicks ass. I've been ripping away, recording these shows to iTunes, mostly because I'm not entirely sure this site will hold up legally and I don't want to lose access to these great shows. There's this little program, only available for the Mac, called Audio Hijack, which records ANY SOUND coming through your machine into a WAV or AIFF file. DVD, Internet stream, anything. If it plays through your computer speakers, it will capture a perfect copy of it. It will even automatically add it to iTunes and convert it to an MP3 or AAC file.

(For the record, I always try to buy music first. If its commercially available, I'll buy it, I will never, ever download it illegally. If its not for sale, either because its out of print or its a streaming live show like this, I resort to other means. But that's a last resort.)

Some time ago, I poked fun at my buddy Cliff's obsession with Karaoke. I even told stories of my own Karaoke adventures, few that they may be, and announced to the world (or at least, to the millions of people who read this site) that I was tone deaf.

Well, it turns out I'm not, at least, not in a medical sense.

As reader Cam Elyria tells me, tone deafness is actually a medical condition -- its official name is Amusia -- and that less than 2% of the world's population are affected by it. The condition is usually caused by physical defects, such as brain damage or an ear injury, although there are cases of genetically tone deaf people. I was able to verify all of these facts with Wikipedia.

Of course, socially, the term "tone deaf" gets thrown around to describe anyone who can't carry a tune, or more precisely, control the pitch of their voice. Its not a physical ailment, but the result of a person who hasn't been properly trained to sing within their vocal range and is trying to sing a song in an octave they just can't handle.

You remember this. Don't even try to deny it. The commercial for Freedom Rock, circa 1987, featured two weed-smoking hippies sitting by their van. The compilation, available on 4 records or 4 cassettes for $19.99, or $24.99 for 2 CDs, featured 40 of the best guitar-heavy rock from the '70s.

Why do I remember this? Wait, it gets better.

I was 9 when this commercial first started airing; my brother and I used to see it almost daily on Nick, MTV, and other cable channels. To the point where I recognized the 15 or so songs featured in the ad purely by the 2-second clip, and even years later, would hear one of the songs and instinctively feel strange if the next song wasn't the "next song in the Freedom Rock ad".

Well, over the weekend, Layla came on the XM, and as the opening riff played, my brother said rather innocuously, "Hey man, is that Freedom Rock?" Between nearly splitting a gut at hearing a classic line I hadn't heard in probably 15 years, I managed a "Yeah man!" response. "Well turn it up man!", and I did. Ah, Freedom Rock, sandwiched in the commercial break during reruns of The Monkees on MTV or Go-Bots on Nick.

This of course led to me spending no less than 45 minutes scouring the web for a photo of the Freedom Rock Hippies. I was unsuccessful, but I found something even better: the original ad, in its entirety, on YouTube. Dammit, YouTube is exactly the kind of innovation Al Gore had in mind when he invented the internet.

Someone told me I spend too much time reliving old TV moments on YouTube; that I have a YouTube problem. Well, I don't. Does Def Leppard have an awesomeness problem? No, and neither do I have a YouTube problem.

And now, without further ado, the original Freedom Rock ad:

Thursday afternoon, I was home for lunch and as I walked away from my parked car in the driveway on an extradinarily cold and windy day, I noticed something poking out from the top of my license plate. Probably a leaf, I remembered thinking.

So I approached and prepared to remove it. Upon further examination, it was not a leaf, but what appeared to be a crushed box that once held golf balls. What the sam hell?