October 2007 Archives

Courtesy of SportsIllustrated.com, one of the greatest conspiracies in modern sports was uncovered:

My buddy Dick Herculanum alerted me to this. "Did I miss the 8 straight Super Bowls the Vikings went to? Read caption under photo."

I immediately went and looked at the site. This was no hoax -- the site literally said the Vikings played in EIGHT STRAIGHT SUPER BOWLS.

That's when I started to get sharp pains in my temples, followed by shooting pains in my cerebral cortex, and finally debilitating pain in my neck that shot down my spinal cord to my lower back. And then bits and pieces of long-suppressed memories began creeping back into my conscious mind. After a few minutes, I was recalling vivid memories of eight consecutive Super Bowl losses.

Saturday, I woke up in the middle of the night, which is something I almost never do. Once I'm out, I'm out. It seemed unbelievably cold in my house, so I stumbled in the dark to the thermostat and saw the giant LED read-out: 62F. Sixty-two degrees! Holy buttery biscuits of fire! I'd been holding out on turning my furnace on for the first time this season, because that's a slippery slope of cliches; once you turn that thing on, you're admitting winter is just around the corner. Hell, "slippery slope" is in and of itself a cliche. Its no good, is what it is. But clearly, I could hold out no longer.

This got me to thinking. My brother, before he was married, liked to keep his house in the low 60s all the time. When I used to go visit him in college up in Cedar Falls, he and his roommates kept their house even lower than that -- in the mid-50s, purportedly to save money. All the more to spend on beer, you see. It was like a meat locker. Seriously, you walked in there and you half-expected to see slabs of beef hanging from the ceiling and Rocky Balboa taking swings at them.

Walking in there was one thing. Sleeping there after being at the bars was something entirely different. I don't know the science, but it seems in my experience that your body temperature drops while you're sleeping...and it drops even moreso if you've had a few drinks. Well, imagine that scenario in a house where its 55 degrees to begin with.

Brrrrr.

A couple of weeks ago when we were out in Colorado, I took advantage of the free postcards at New Belgium Brewery to send a guilt-trip card to Continental Frutiger (CF didn't make the trip with us). Problem was, I didn't know his address off the top of my head.

Dick Herculanum said, "Just put 40th & Farnam on there, the postman will get it to him."

I was skeptical. "They'll deliver it without an exact address?"

"Of course they will, the postage is paid, what are they going to do with it otherwise? Let it sit in a bin at the post office?"

So I sent it using the estimated address, and earlier this week, I finally got around to asking him if the postcard was delivered.

Indeed, a big tip o' the fro to you, USPS.

I shot this photo from my driveway one day last week as I was heading into the office. What's better here: using the name "Top Gun" for a carpet cleaning business, the sweet retro 1980s graphic treatment, or the knowledge that losing to Maverick and Iceman relegates you to a carpet cleaning business in the midwest?

I'm still waiting for an electrician with a business named "Short Circuit", and "Johnny Five" sewn onto his name bade on his shirt...now THAT would be dominant.

You bet.

Last year, Dick Herculanum and I took a flyer on a guy named THOR, and we went to see him in concert. While he was dominant, his opening band was just as noteworthy. Not because they were dominant, but because they were just so...well, there needs to be a better word for odd.

Their name was Zolar X, and they are not of this Earth. They come from Zolaria, and they don't speak English. No, they speak in a manufactured language, namely, Zolarian.

Lead singer and Lazor Guitarist Ygarr Ygarrist (don't ask me how you pronounce that) has neon green hair and antennae protruding from his head. Rhythm Guitarist Eon Flash also has neon green hair. Drummer Qazar Quantor has antennae that move as he drums. In short, its crazy time.

Friday night, I was sitting in a bar in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and behind the bar, a TV blared. Fox's newest reality show "The Next Great American Band" was on. You know the one: produced by the people behind American Idol, the goal is to find not a singer, but a band. It should be terrible. But from what I saw, its actually decent and borderline good -- because the bands are encouraged to sing original songs, and because a lot of the bands are really quite good.

Saturday morning, we got around late in the morning after a long night of Rock Starr'ing. Personally, I got up around 10am, and since silence perturbs me (a big reason I don't frequent libraries, bookstores and coffee shops) I turned on the ginormous LCD TV in our hotel room. I was looking for SportsCenter; what I found was the Iowa football game. For a moment I had an existential conversation with the jazz-rock band Chicago and asked, "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"

Then I remembered that Denver is in Mountain Time, and that an 11am game in Iowa City would take place at 10am in Denver. Relieved I was not A) crazy and B) talking existentially to a band about their 1973 hit, I watched a typical boring offensive possession by the Hawks before getting around for the day.

Our day began not with food, but with football. Specifically, we headed to Invesco Field At Mile High to take a tour; Dick Herculanum is a die-hard Broncos fan. And so it was that a Packer fan, a Viking fan, and a Bronco fan toured Invesco Field.

The New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins offers self-tours six days a week, but no one goes on the tours. Just a hunch, but I think this is due to the fact that they give everyone who comes in the door four free beers. Read that again: FOUR free beers.

Reason #3 why Colorado State would be an excellent college choice: free happy hour at New Belgium Brewery every day. Reason #6: there are two other breweries on the same street that also give away free beer. Reason #99 why I wish I was still in college: see above.

Anyway, being tourists we took the quickie five minute tour, and then it was time to find a seat in the bar and most importantly, get our four free drinks. The bar is set up like a German pub, with long narrow tables intended to be shared with other groups. Because we had The Original Ladies Man, Jack Bauhaus with us, we were able to talk our way into joining a group of lovely ladies from Fort Collins.

Question: Can it be officially called Guys Weekend Out (GWO) if Continental Frutiger and Gilby Clarke don't make the trip?

Answer: If Jack Bauhaus, Dick Herculanum and Max Univers go, and coincidentally run into Cliff Glypha while they're in town, you'd better believe it counts.

The original idea, as it was concocted six months ago, was to go to Denver for the Great American Beer Fest -- which was coincidentally at the same conference center on the same weekend as the AIGA Design Conference. But we waited too long to get tickets and it sold out before we could get them. Plan B, as you'll see, was still awfully awesome.

Thursday after work, Jack, Dick and I hopped into my car and began the 560-mile trek to Colorado. Our journey on the first day would take us just under halfway there, to a little town called Holdridge, Nebraska where a college friend of Dick's lives. He graciously offered us the guest room at his house Thursday night, and we of course accepted.

Four-on six-volleyball is tough enough on its own. You have to cover more ground, and if the other team is any good at all, they can set you up by getting you out of position, and then spiking it where you ain't. If ain't were a word. Word.

So four-on-six volleyball is tough, we've established that. When you are the only guy on the team, a sexist would believe it to be tougher; a strategist would believe it to be an interesting problem solvable by strategic positioning; Max Univers would believe it to be awesome; and an atheist wouldn't believe anything at all.

As we finished warming up, one of the guys on the team on the other side of the net yelled at me. "You guys ready to go?"

"Yeah, there's only four of us though. We're OK if you are."

"Just you an' the ladies tonight, huh? Nicely done bro."

Called me bro. I've never met this dude before; I'm not his bro. Anyway, back to the stilted dialog.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"You're like Leon Phelps, is what you are. The Ladies Man!"

Now, Cliff and Dick will read this and laugh hysterically that anyone, anywhere would use Max Univers and Leon Phelps in the same sentence, let alone the same thought. Ladies Man? Hardly.

Tuesday, I got home to find a rather large box on my front step. And when I opened it up, I found a box just as big -- only it was gold with, um, gold foil stamping in the shape of a coat of arms.

This box measures 14" x 20" x 6". For perspective of just how big that is, that photo is taken on top of the counter in my kitchen -- and the box is taller than the space between the counter and the cabinets. Awesome.

But what is inside the box? Well, lets open it up and find out!

A life-size The King mask! Sweet! Seriously, this is not the super-lame face-sized the King masks that BK sold the last couple of years. This is a 12" x 18" ACTUAL SIZE THE KING mask from the commercials. The real thing, baby. And yes, it is that big.

Happy Tuesday from The King.

Oops, that should read ESPO, er, EPNS, im, EPNS, grrr, ESSSSSSSSSPN, gah! ESPN. Yes, ESPN. I typed it twice just to prove that I cuold, er, could.

Aaaaaaaaag that's all I have to say about that.

You bet.

Every year, when we bring in out-of-town superstar designers to judge the local design competition (aptly named "The Show"), we give them a stage to present their own work on the evening before the judging. As the third and final judge wrapped up her presentation, she put up a slide dedicated to Nebraska.

It read "I Heart Cornhuskers", and had photos of a state map, Warren Buffett, and corn husks. Nothing out of the ordinary there, certainly. Very out of the ordinary was the fourth and final image, however.

Yours truly, Max Univers, making some sort of goofy face. Nebraska: The Land of Warren Buffett, Corn Husks and Max Univers making goofy faces. Strange, because there can't be more than a handful of photos in existence of me making a goofy face, and even fewer that someone from Cleveland would have access to. Oh wait. Never mind.

I've been rocking out to the sounds of Van Halen's 2007 Tour opening night concert all week in my car. Yes, the reunion tour with David Lee Roth, which opened last Thursday. How so, you say? Lets just say I was forwarded a copy of the show on CD.

Its a phenomenal audience recording (anyone familiar with, ahem, bootlegs knows that audience recordings can be a tough listen) that could be mistaken for a FM broadcast recording if you didn't know better. Seriously, the reverb and "distant" sound inherent in audience recordings is nonexistent on this show; the guy who gave it to me is what I'd call an audiophile and he rates it an A-. I'm not an audiophile, so I rate it an A+. But this is the same guy who rails about MP3s sounding like rainbow unicorn turds, so if he says its the best audience recording he's ever heard, and a richer sound than many soundboard recordings, I take his word for it. Good stuff.

The blistering 26-song set is all classic VH, all the time, and while Diamond Dave's stage theatrics don't always translate well on audio (perhaps why an official live album was never released - lets just say he skips more words than he bothers singing), hearing him strum an acoustic guitar while telling a five-minute backstory leading into "Ice Cream Man" is a revelation.

If only you knew someone on the inside who could get you a copy of this show. Alas, you probably don't. While you're crying about that, I'll be listening to the second show of the tour, which I just received from the same guy but haven't played yet.

Last month, we discovered what takes place on the indoor courts at the bar where we play volleyball at: Dodgeball. Let me type that again for emphasis: DODGEBALL.

Sixth grade was the last time I played Dodgeball. You would think that growing up in a city named Fort Dodge that Dodgeball would be the unofficial sport. You would think wrong. But in sixth grade, we used to have the most epic Dodgeball wars in the history of such things.

Our middle school was broken into "academic teams", whereby your grade was assigned to a group of teachers. The Blue Team would be on the east wing of the school, have their lockers on that wing, and all of their "core" classes would be on that wing with a group of five teachers. The Red Team would call another wing home, and so on and so forth. Sixth grade was on the ground floor; seventh grade on the second floor, and eighth grade on the third floor. This made a giant school seem a lot smaller.