March 2008 Archives

20 Mar

March 28th or 29, the band Cobra Kai will be possibly reuniting at Glypha's House, a small club venue in Western Omaha.

They will be drinking the bears, eating the meats and salads, and playing the Rock Bands. Also rocking the house down.

At present, only one member of the band, Cliff Glypha, has confirmed attendance. More on this as it become available.

Below: In this rare 2007 photo, four of the five original members of Cobra Kai can be seen after their last concert in Omaha, NE. The gig was called to a close early when angry fans burnt the venue to the ground upon news of a break-up. (left to right: Max Univers, Dick Herculanum, Continental Frutiger, and Cliff Glypha.)

Another post in the "Randomly Occurring Periodic Post About Something Design Related" series, because although I wasn't asked to participate in the Grand Finale Series on a certain website, that doesn't mean I don't have things I'd like to write.

One day last week, I was out running errands over my lunch hour, and I needed some general consumable household items. Paper towels, toothpaste, garbage bags -- real exciting stuff, let me tell you. I happened to be on 140th and Center here in Omaha, so I decided to swing by Shop-Ko because it was the closest store.

I've always held a certain kind of fondness for Shop-Ko, because its always reminded me of Target before Target was TARGET, if you know what I mean. A cleaner, friendlier discount department store than Wal-Mart. Everything from the layout of the stores to the price signs on the shelves typeset in black Helvetica Bold on plain white stock reminded me of Target: 1990. They weren't trying to be hip, cool or trendy, just a nice, clean store. They were what they were, and I respected that.

But as I pulled into the parking lot, I metaphorically dropped my chalupa on the floor of my car. Not literally, because chalupas are too tasty to actually drop no matter how shocked you may be by an event. But metaphorically, sure, I dropped it. And it was a metaphorical mess, just like this story. Shut up.

Last weekend, I somehow managed to break my internet. It was a simple maneuver, or so I thought: I was moving the giant-ass TV in my office into another room, and putting a smaller TV in the office so it could set on my desk. I was getting a serious case of sore-neck-sickness turning my torso to watch basketball last weekend, and this was a great solution.

But moving the TV from one side of the room to the other required unhooking the cable modem so that a longer wire could be strung to it. When I plugged it back in, the damn thing didn't work.

Could be the wire, I thought. So I hooked the old one back up. Nothing.

Might be the splitter, I reasoned. So I hooked it directly up to the wall. Same deal.

Called Cox, and talked to their tech. I was glad to hear that the ridiculous computer-generated "Automated Tech Support" was no longer employed, because its insulting to have their computer ask you if the reason your computer isn't working is because its not plugged in. I don't much like acting as an intermediary between two computers. That's not quite the role a sentient being ought to play, now is it?

The second round of the NCAA Tournament took place on Saturday, featuring the four winners from Thursday facing each other for a trip to the Sweet 16. Kansas took on UNLV, while Wisconsin battled Kansas State. With two Kansas schools playing, tickets were going for ridiculous prices on the street. But UNLV and Wisconsin had plenty of fans too.

As Gilby and I walked in, we noticed an extraordinarily tall dude in front of us. I should have had my celebradar calibrated better, but I didn't notice who it was. That is, not until a pack of UNLV fans began chanting, "Lar-ry! Lar-ry! Lar-ry!" When he turned to acknowledge them, I said "Holy crap, that's Larry Johnson! Grandmom-ma! Gilby was particularly excited, because Larry had played a lot of years for his Knicks.

It had been a long, late night of partying for both of us on Friday (albeit at different parties) so we were not at all upset at the lack of beer sales. I'd been mildly perturbed by this fact on Thursday, although my behavior suggested I didn't really need beer to make me act like a fool. But on Saturday, not so much. I desired one, two and perhaps even three Cokes. I settled for one Large Coke.

Last week, the Men's Basketball Tournament visited Omaha. Of course, because I'm just that awesome, I was able to buy tickets a year ago. Mind you, the tickets were never made available to the general public -- you had to be a Creighton season ticket holder to get them. But of course, as a Jaybacker and ticket holder for years, that wasn't a problem for me.

Anyway, I had the chance to buy eight tickets, and I should have done so. Not so I could have scalped them -- although I could have made, by some media accounts, $1500 for a pair -- but because I had a lot of friends ask me for tickets, and I would have loved to help them out. I think scalpers are scum, especially ones who made $1500 for tickets with a face value of $53.

For the four games on Thursday, my college roommate drove up from Des Moines. For the two games on Saturday, Gilby Clarke joined me. A journey through a cornucopia of hoops and other stuff follows. Since the games were all blowouts, the stories below mostly revolve around everything BUT the games. You bet.

So I was eating a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal on Monday morning when suddenly, a tiny leprechaun leaped out of the box and onto my spoon. "Two dollar beers at three bars in Dundee tonight, matey, arrgghh!" Huh, now there's something you don't see every day, I thought. A pirate leprechaun, I mean. Tiny leprechauns jumping out of cereal boxes is not all that out-of-the-ordinary; its practically a daily occurrence, isn't it? It's not? Well then. Excuuuuuse me.

I'm going to be at the Qwest Center so much this week, I might as well bring a toothbrush and stay there. Tuesday I was at Creighton's NIT game against Rhode Island. Gilby Clarke and I had to make do without beers, though, because the NIT is an NCAA-sanctioned event and as such, cannot serve beer. Its alright, though, because for once I was able to tell if what I perceive to be a horrible cal was ACTUALLY horrible, or whether its just the beer goggles...

And then Thursday, I'll be there all day for the NCAA Tournament. Four games, baby. At 11:15 #1 Kansas takes on the Washington Generals, er, #16 seed Portland State Vikings in a game that will be decided by 35-40 points. At 1:45, the UNLV Runnin' Rebels take on the Kent State Golden Flashes in a game that would be much more exciting if Larry Johnson still patrolled the paint and Jerry Tarkanian was chewing on towels on the UNLV sideline...also, it would be better if Kent State fans wore those still-ahead-of-their-time Flower Planter Hats that Devo made famous. The members of Devo went to Kent State. Shut up, its funny, trust me. Just laugh already and we'll move on.

Then the evening session features two more games. First is the best game of the day, anywhere in the country, and its in Omaha. USC vs Kansas State, or as it should really be billed, OJ Mayo vs Michael Beasley. The two biggest freshmen recruits, and the likely #1/#2 NBA draft picks in June, the two will battle each other on the court in Omaha. Seriously, the hair is standing up on my arms just thinking about this one. In five years when these two are among the greatest in the NBA, I'll look back and say "I was there in person when they played in the NCAA Tourney." You bet.

The last game is the Wisconsin Badgers against Cal-State Fullerton, in a game that may well induce the crowd into a coma. There is no more boring team than Wisconsin, a team that reminds you of a slow, plodding, 40-year old YMCA rec league team. This game will end with a 50-48 score, and the Big Ten will rejoice at the beauteous wonderment that is basketball. Then they'll remember the USC-KState game from earlier that night, and they'll go drink heavily to forget such things exist.

Saturday, the winners play each other. Two more games, two more chances for Awesome. You bet.

One time many, many years ago, my brother and I went to a bar and, upon discovering that the clientele consisted entirely of Level Three D-bags, left in a haste. But before we left, I put five bucks in the jukebox.

My brother wanted to play Backstreet Boys on a loop for as long as that five bucks would last. I wanted to play the Happy Birthday song. I won and we played "Happy Birthday" 22 times -- 4 times for every dollar, plus the two bonus tracks for putting in a five dollar bill. That particular version of the song lasted just under 2 minutes, so it probably lasted for a good 35-40 minutes.

Of course, I say "probably' because I don't know. We split before the first play ended.

Alright, so Friday night we were at the Dundee Dell hanging out with superstar designer DKSF, back in town for a few days from San Francisco. Four conversations stick out in my mind:

One. DKSF arguing with a fellow blogger at our table about the longterm viability of Google vs Facebook. A completely absurd thing to argue about in a bar, isn't it? Kind of cerebral. So of course, Dick Herculanum convinced them to settle it the only proper way: by arm wrestling.

If you look really close, you can see me fumbling for my camera in the lower right corner of that photo. Thankfully thanks to DKSF uploading his triumph to Flickr, I was able to get photographic evidence of this event. You bet.

Two. Cliff Glypha continued to argue in vain that Coldplay does not, in fact, suck huge amounts of crap all of the time. "I'm telling you, when we saw them a couple of years ago, that was the most rockin' show I've ever seen."

When you live in a rough part of town, its probably not a good idea to leave your front door wide open. Put another way, when you've got ladies propositioning you from the sidewalk in front of your house, you might want to keep your doors locked. Well, in college I lived in such a place, but we left our door open a lot. One of my roommates was a legendary skinflint -- a cheapskate, really -- and he tried to use the intimidation of advanced age to control the thermostat.

Opening the windows and doors was a big part of that. Well, one night we were all upstairs in the house, and a criminal came into our house. This person stole the wine from our mantle, the beer from our fridge, and several things from my bedroom. Unluckily, I had the first bedroom off the living room on the main level of the house, making my room a quick target for such an intruder.

We realized what had happened later that night, and not so surprisingly the ageless wonder wished he'd been downstairs when the intruder entered. He claimed he'd have looked forward to kicking the guy's ass. Of course he did. Because, you know, attacking an intruder is always a good idea. You bet.

You know things have gotten bad in this country when I decide its too expensive to drive home for lunch. Even in my 35 mpg car, doubling my mileage in a week by driving to/from the office twice a day is outrageous with gas at $3.15 and climbing. Thanks, so-and-so.

But here's the quandary: I still need my mid-day nap. When there's no such thing as an early night -- seriously, I'm convinced that when I get sick twice a year its because my body breaks down from lack of sleep -- you need 15 minutes of sleep at noon. There's no shame in this.

Doctors would tell you differently, and believe me, they've told me. "If you're taking naps midday, that means you're not getting enough sleep at night!" Well, I'm sorry for you. It must be sad to live such a boring life that you feel compelled to give up at 10pm every night. Guess how it went when I offered those sympathies to my doctor for his life sucking! If you guessed "Not so well", you're absolutely correct!

Recently, my web host sent me a thank you gift for my continued business. This gift was a giant box of assorted vending machine candy. If I didn't know better, I'd think my web host and Dick Herculanum were one and the same. Oh, wait. They are? Never mind.

Its the sixth anniversary of his company, and according to the accompanying card, the traditional gift for a sixth anniversary is candy. So he created a gift that looked like Anyvendingmachine, USA and I must tell you, I was very appreciative. Thanks buddy!

In the gift box, there was some good stuff, some questionable stuff, some heinously nasty stuff, and one package of the worst candy in the world. I'm talking about Corn Nuts, here, people. Corn Nuts! Who eats Corn Nuts? What the hell are Corn Nuts, anyway?

I'm sitting here at the Honda dealership -- where I've been all morning, incidentally, because I stupidly told them I would wait for my vehicle instead of taking a complimentary shuttle elsewhere. Now, I had good reasons to stick around. These free cookies are delicious, and did I mention they're free? Right. Anyway...

-They have a self-service snack island with warm cookies (two varieties!), bottled water, and more. This was my breakfast this morning. It might be my lunch unless they get done soon.

-I read two newspapers front to back, the World-Herald and the USA Today, and then browsed the internets for an hour on my iTouch. When this became boring, I went to the iTunes store and bought a bunch of music I shouldn't have. One of these songs was the American Idol version of Lionel Richie's "Hello".

I've detailed my ongoing dispute with my Homeowners Association on several occasions over the last few months. For those of you who haven't been following the saga and want the full story, here's a recap.

It started in September with a nasty letter from The Association detailing the ways in which my new landscaping violated their rules because it was unapproved by The Association board. I laughed it off as the politics of a few people with too much time on their hands.

Things escalated in December when, upon the first snowfall of the year, my driveway went unplowed. I left my driveway snow and ice covered for three weeks in January, and what did I get for my silent, stubborn protest? I received a written letter from The Association notifying me I was in violation of the rules by having an "unsafe driveway" that could "cause potential bodily harm to pedestrians." I wrote them back that I quote "couldn't afford to buy a shovel because I had paid (The Association) $105 to shovel the snow for me. Oh wait." You can guess how that was received.

On Sunday, I decided the iPod Touch was no longer doing it for me. I mean, Wi-Fi internet in your pocket is great, but the games of finding a Wi-Fi Hotspot were becoming tiresome. So I decided to take the plunge, buy my way out of my Verizon contract, and get an iPhone.

This was no small undertaking from a financial perspective, because to buy your way out of a Verizon contract you must pay a prorated portion of a $175 fine. In my case, it was $145. Add the $399 iPhone and the $36 activation fee, and its a costly endeavor. Certainly, it was an endeavor that I didn't want to undertake without performing due diligence.

The first thing I did was jump online and check out the AT&T coverage maps. For road trips into Iowa, particularly when I drive home, there would be a 45-minute zone where I would have no coverage. I'm not talking roaming, I'm talking no service at all. What's more, there's huge swaths of Nebraska and Iowa with no service. Not just little pockets -- huge areas, in some cases entire counties, with no service. Worse yet, my neighborhood was classified as having "Moderate" coverage, meaning I would have a good signal on my deck or in my yard, but not inside my house.

That's kind of a problem when your cell phone is your only phone.

Friday night, things were winding down at a local graphic design speaker event when Cliff Glypha walked over to me and said, "I could really stand to go to a bar and drink beer. Lots of beer. Pitchers of beer. We need to do that, and we need to do that quickly. How soon will you be ready to leave?"

Well, I had some things to finish up, and at that moment it appeared that a lot of the group was heading to a bar that is the very antithesis of a place where one drinks quantities of brew: the Nomad. As Continental Frutiger so aptly described it, "The worst about the Nomad is that you have to hang out at the Nomad." Ouch. True, but ouch.

I began working the room, hoping to build a consensus for another bar. It took about 45 minutes, but I was finally able to get a group together to rebel against the Nomad plans and head to the Homy Inn instead. Unfortunately, by that time, Cliff Glypha's night had been planned for him, and those plans did not include the Homy Inn.