Goosebumps

I just put together my son's first bike. How cool is that? Thank you Son for allowing me to experience these feelings for the first time.

Those Things You Don't Forget...

Yesterday when I got home there was a package waiting from my Dad and his wife. It was addressed to The Boy and contained 12 animal ornaments that were to be "his very own." We told him that he could hang them anywhere he wanted on the tree. He set out meticulously determining the exact perfect location for each. In the end, he had about half of them clustered within a branch of each other, but no matter. It was lots of fun watching him take charge of the task and really make it his own.

So we're getting ready for him to do down for the night and he runs over to the Christmas tree and proceeds to kiss each and every one of his ornaments goodnight.

Wow.

So You Wanna Be a Rock n'Roll Star...

Bow down before the one you serve....I am a rock god. Alright, so I'm actually a way-too-f'in-old video game geek posing as a rock god. But damn if it don't feel how I pictured it.

I'm talking, of course, about the ultimate Playstation 2 game, Guitar Hero 2. I discovered it yesterday...and by 10pm I was immortal. For those who haven't seen this life-altering experience yet, GH2 makes you a rock star playing lead guitar to some of the classic rock songs of all time. Using a guitar controller instead of the usual handheld, you try to keep up with the stage band by blazing your fingers up and down the fretboard while strumming along at the precise moment the actual note in the song is played. Fun? Fuckin'-A right it is!

I can seriously see this becoming an addition. The rush of receiving a standing ovation after blistering through Van Halen's "You Really Got Me" or Cheap Trick's "Surrender" is a feeling this musically-inept air guitar hero has long dreamed of. It's easy enough at the early stages to raise the adrenaline of even the most novice gamer. At the harder levels, of which I'm nowhere near good enough to complete, it gets downright frantic. But the fun is in the practice. And you won't sleep until the crowd tells you that you can. Trust me on this one. Sleep is for the weak. You'll wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day.

Do yourself a favor...pick this thing up, strap on that cherry Gibson SG gee-tar, and rock, rock, til ya drop. Me? I gotta go... I've got groupies waiting.

Turkey, Trimmings & the Giving of Thanks

Well, we all survived. Correction, the turkey did not. Thanksgiving break has come and gone and ya know what? It was really good. Nana & Papa came in from Cali and I think were stunned by the growth of the boy both physically and mentally. They really bonded with him this trip and it was great to witness. Great is actually a bit of an understatement. Grandparents are such a key component in a child's life and it is terrific to watch the relationship building there.

Thanksgiving dinner went well except for the dry-ass bird I cooked. I know, I know, let it go Scott. If only I could have pulled it out 10 degrees sooner...

Sandy baked her amazing pies. At least I guess her pumpkin pie was amazing becuase as long as there is pecan pie in the house...that's the end of my eatin'.

All in all, a lot of fun. Not the most relaxing but hey, what can you do. Definitely made me feel grateful for what I have and who I have. And that my friends, is what it's all about. Not the Hokey Pokey, as previously belived.

Sunday Matinee - Over The Hedge

Another great Sunday Matinee at the Wayne Manor Cinema...this weekend it was Dreamworks' Over The Hedge, a highly entertaining romp for kids and adults of all ages. Dreamworks is the company that created Shrek, and Over The Hedge was released theatrically this past May and did well at the box office.

The plot centers around a street-savvy racoon named RJ (played by Bruce Willis) who finds himself with a one-week deadline to replace a load of pilfered bear goodies that he swiped. RJ infiltrates a naive group of woodland creatures in an attempt to get them to help steal replacement food from the suburbanites that dwell "over the hedge". I guess that's where they got the name.

Casting is terrific, with Willis, Verne the apprehensive turtle voiced by Garry Shandling, Hammy the hyperactive squirrel played by Steve Carrell (of The Office fame), and Wanda Sykes as Stella, the skunk turned cat temptress. Nick Nolte plays Vincent, the grumpy bear who is none too pleased to be awakened early from winter slumber only to find RJ making off with his cave full o' snacks. Nolte's Vincent is "not nice", according to my son. On reflection, Nolte is the perfect casting for this role. Who better to play the role of a surly bear than this guy...
The animation is very polished, reminiscent of "Shrek-style" graphics (as opposed to "Pixar-style"). The action is non-stop and there are entertaining moments for viewers of all ages. Additional voicing is provided by Avril Lavigne, the always funny Eugene Levy, Thomas Haden Church (the janitor guy from Wings), William Shatner and Allison Janney from The West Wing.

The boy was riveted to the screen the whole time. Not a peep except for a couple of screams when the bear was chasing RJ. Who could blame him? Take another look at that Nolte mugshot. Scary.

Since a Sunday Matinee can only be as enjoyable as the boy allows it to be....we've added a new rating scale to our weekly critiques...The Fidget Factor. The Fidget Factor measures, well, the level of fidgetiness (fidgetoscity?) of our two-year old during the viewing. A fidgety boy can make even the best movie grueling.

In sum, Over The Hedge exceeded my expectations and proved to be a very enjoyable 83-minute Sunday diversion. Rated PG for some rude humor and minor cartoon violence.

MTV Here We Come!

You know those moments in life when you realize you're finally starting to "make it"? This is one of 'em. My company Images in Chocolate produced custom chocolate coins a couple of months back for a rapper named Smooth-E. The coins feature his face on one side and his Smooth-E logo on the back. Well, without further ado.

Sunday Matinee - Hoodwinked

Sunday afternoon matinee at the Wayne Manor Cinema has become a new tradition and as such, this is the first of what will be a weekly review. This Sunday's presentation was Hoodwinked, a twist on the classic tale of Little Red Riding Hood.

All the usual suspects are there, Red, Granny, the Wolf, with a couple of surprise characters altering the storyline of the old fairy tale. There are always three sides to any story...in this case, at least that many. The film analyzes what really happened out there on the way to Grandmother's house. It's not what we were led to believe as naive kids.

Character voices are expertly casted with Anne Hathaway in the role of Red, Patrick Warburton (best known as Seinfeld's "Puddy"....yeah, that's right) as the Wolf, and Glenn Close as the more-hip-than-you know Granny.

Appearances are very decieving as the Wolf turns out to be an undercover news journalist and Granny is actually an extreme-sports enthusiast going by the moniker of Triple G. She even sports a GGG tat on the back of her neck. I won't divulge who the real villian turns out to be. It's a shocker.

While the animation is not on par with Pixar's efforts or Dreamwork's animation techniques, the movie's animation style is still fun to watch with its almost video game like appearance. The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack works well, highlighted by various booming explosions that occur in key scenes. Catchy songs highlight the storytelling with a couple, notably the old goat's "Be Prepared" which nearly caused my wife to pee herself.

The true test of these reviews will be our two-year old's reaction. While fidgety throughout, he seemed to appreciate the Strassberg Method character development and the complexity of the principal role scoring. Alright, so he liked the pretty colors and the squirrel.

All in all, a fun time for kids and adults alike. The action, songs and colorful characters are more than enough to hold a two-year old's interest and there are enough innuendos and side jokes to keep a grownup's attention. Those who love the movie Fletch will crack-up at the Wolf's spot-on take on the classic Chevy Chase character.

Highly recommended.

Pete Yorn Concert

Friday night, one of my wife and my favorite singer/songwriters, Pete Yorn, made his long-awaited return to Houston. Some couples have "their song"...we have "our singer"...and he is Pete. Neither one of us had seen him perform before so we were excited when we saw he was stopping in Houston on his Nightcrawler tour.

So us old-timers got all dolled up on Friday night and headed out for a way-past-our-bedtime night of fun. He was playing at a club called Meridian in midtown. Neither of us had been to this club before so we weren't sure what to expect in terms of crowd size. When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised to find the place holds a max of about 1,000 or so tops. The stage was in close proximity to both sides of the bar and the overall size of the place meant you really couldn't be in a bad location, view-wise. Me and the missus clinked plastic cups and downed a Jager shot in honor of our night out as real life grownups.

Mini-Bar from the UK opened the show with decent enough pop-rock to get the crowd lubed up. Nothing really memorable about their set, but nothing offensive either.

A little after ten, Pete hit the stage. He played a good mix from his three albums and added a spectacular cover of The Smiths There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. Everything was great. The place was nice enough, the crowd perfect-sized...hell, we even found barstools to plop our thirty-something asses on. Fine, so mine is forty-something.

We had a blast. We sang along, laughed, bought concert T's...we even made a late-night Mickey D's driveby on the way home. For a night, we were dating again. And a chance to rediscover the girl that you really enjoyed being with...before marriage and parenthood and all that other overly complicated stuff. Thanks Pete...if you're reading this, stop by next time for a burrito!

Proof Women Have the Power

Easy to Remember Terror Alerts

I never trusted that Elmo.

Telemarketer Nightmare

This is the way to handle those oh so annoying telemarketers.

Click to Listen

CD Review: The Hold Steady Boys and Girls in America

With the release of their third album (fuck it, I'm still calling them albums) in three years, most are still not familiar with The Hold Steady. That is indeed a shame. Those that are familiar with them are polarized into those that think they are abysmal and those that think they are the best kept secret in indie music.

Following 2005's mind-blowing Separation Sunday, it was hard to fathom that Craig Finn and his band could top what many considered the best album of last year. In my opinion, Boys and Girls in America succeeds, and should be ranked amongst the best releases of 2006 at year-end.

Finn's talk-sing delivery leans a bit more to the singing side this time around but not to the detriment of his amzing storytelling. Another reviewer remarked that "this is Born to Run 30 years later," and that compliment is not overstated. There are most definitely comparisons to be made to Springsteen's no-hold barred storytelling. Finn's stories just tend to have a few seedier characters in them.

The disc opens with one of the many standout tracks "Stuck Between Stations" with direct references to Kerouac's Sal Paradise from his novel "On The Road." Kerouac's ode to the road seems to weave throughout Boys and Girls with the recurring theme that "boys and girls in America...they have such a sad time together."

"Chips Ahoy!" continues the magic with a tale about a female junkie with a penchant for picking horses. This ain't your daddy's music.

Additional standouts include "Massive Night", "Southtown Girls" and "Chill Out Tent" with the dueling male/female lovestruck in a drugged haze story of two people finding temporary love, where else, but in the chill out tent at a show.

Bottom line, this is not for everyone, but anyone who likes captivating storytelling delivered in a wildly original style needs to give this band a listen. This is the stuff that gives me hope for the future of music. Yup...it's really that good.

Google Buys YouTube...and Everyone Has an Opinion

When Album Covers Attack

This is just too darn cool...

Wait'll Next Year

And so it goes. It's not easy being a Padres fan. Every spring starts with such wide-eyed promise, like the kid on Christmas morning expecting this to be the year he gets the pony. Well, 2006 was not to be the Year of the Pony for Padres fans.

You know what? I thought they had a shot this year. Maybe not to win it all, but maybe, just maybe, to get to the big dance and show a little something. '84 and '98 were not pretty. It's not enough to just "be there" when you look like the Toledo Mudhens doing it.

We've suffered through thirty-eight seasons. OK, so I'm sure there are a few Cubs fans out there telling me to 'shut the fuck up' but it doesn't make it any easier to know that there is another team out there that sucks worse than us. And the Cubs never had uniforms that made them look like a taco.

So we look forward to March, when hope springs eternal once again. And I'll be there. Along with the other dedicated Friars fans that continue to hold out hope that "this will be the year."

Please Kevin Towers...take a look at Albert Pujols and get us one of those. I don't know about you, but I want that fuckin' pony.

Lactose Intolerance

OK, I'll warn ya ahead of time...this is not for the faint of stomach. Funny stuff though. From the first season of Jackass, the episodes that MTV only showed one time and then pulled them. You'll never look at milk the same again. Bottoms up!

It's the End, The End of the Century...

Legendary punk venue CBGBs will close its doors in NY's Bowery district on October 15th. After 33 years showcasing the newest and now uber-legendary punk acts, this famed launching pad for bands like The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith Group and so many more, says goodnight.

The full name is CBGB & OMFUG which stands for "Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers". Gormandizer usually means a ravenous eater of food, but according to CBGB founder Hilly Kristal here it means "a voracious eater of ... music" according to the official CBGB website. Country, Bluegrass, & Blues...not the place you would expect to be considered the birthplace of punk. But indeed it was. The band Television was the first of the punk acts to play there. Sometimes to a deafening crowd of 10 or so. In August of 1974, a sloppy four-piece band argued their way through an amateurish 25-minute set. The band was The Ramones. The music world would never be the same again.

Check out this blistering 1977 Ramones performance at CBGBs.


The final show will include a performance from the godmother of punk Patti Smith and an acoustic set from Debbie Harry & Chris Stein of Blondie. A fitting way to close the book on the greatest punk stage ever presented.

The club is closing thanks to skyrocketing rent costs. In another incarnation, CBGBs will relocate to Las Vegas, and expected to open in 2008.

According to founder Hilly Kristal: "I am taking the bars with me, I am taking the stage—I'm taking the urinal that Joey (Ramone) pissed in with me. I'm going to take a lot of things—anything that makes this place CBGBs."

Sad to say, I never made it to CBGBs. I bet it would have really been something to remember. It is anyway.

"CBGB is a toilet. An impossibly scuzzy little club buried somewhere in the section of the village the cab-drivers don't like to drive through. It looks as if the proprietors kick holes in the walls and piss in the corners before they let the customers in: fo' the atmosphere, you dig."
- Charles Shaar Murray, NME magazine, June 1975

Knee Scope Surgery

I may be the worst blogger ever. Three months between posts. Nice, Scott.

So two weeks post-surgery to have my meniscus tear in my right knee fixed. Things are progressing well. I'm walking, albeit slowly. Physical therapy three times a week is kicking my ass but it's definitely speeding up the recovery time. And who wouldn't want a little faster recovery time, right?

Basically what they did was go in through two holes just below the kneecap. One hole is for the camera, the other for the surgical tools. Kinda cool what they found in there.

The meniscus is the cartilage in the knee that separates the two bones at the joint. Kind of functions as a gasket of sorts. They don't normally do repairs on people my age because it's a very slow healing process and most of the time doesn't work real well. So they pretty much just slice off the damaged part and leave ya with whatever healthy area remains. Here's a pic of my meniscus showing the tear.



See the stuff that looks like stringy crab meat? Crappy meniscus.

Since they were in there anyway...they decided to cruise around and see what they could find. Wouldn't ya know? The source of all my knee pain was a half-smoked doobie that someone left in my knee. Those darn rastas!



So they took that out too. I think I saw a couple of scrub nurses blazing it up....but then again, I was on some pretty serious pain meds.

Here's the knee all cleaned up.


Notice the shaggy stuff is gone. We'll refer to that as the "never gonna run again" stuff. Anybody else think this looks a little too much like something else?

Surprisingly, I've had very little pain. Only used two of the 30 Vicodin they gave me. I gave the rest of them to Terrell Owens. In hindsight, an error in judgment.

The Name Above The Title

Many have asked about the origin of the name of this here blog. Alright, so only my wife did. It's a nod to the 80's band Talk Talk and a line from their semi-hit of the same name. While not my favorite song or even merely memorable, it represents a bygone era for music that seems lost and gone forever. While I consider myself a child of the 70's, the 80's was the more enjoyable musical era of my life. It was a time when music could be simply fun, without public statement (The Cars, Adam & The Ants, Devo) or life-altering (The Clash, Ramones, Dead Kennedys). Most people I feel, listen to music. I've always lived it.

As far back as I can remember, music was a defining element of who I was. I remember lying on my bed on a Saturday morning writing up my own personal Top 20 each week. It was always a treat to find out who would come in at number one that week...even though it was a list no one saw but me. Music defines eras and for me this statement is very true. It was never merely just the song. It was a moment in time noted with an aural bookmark.

Music today is genre-averse. It would be too simplistic to define the music of today by the decade as we did in the 80's. Back then, Duran Duran could sit next to Whitesnake at a diner counter and get along famously. I don't expect the same would be true with today's current crop of artists. Just as there was no 90's genre of music, the 00's are even more decade ambiguous.

But I digress. So there you have it. For all one of you out there, (who am I kidding, no one's reading this garbage), that is the origin of this oh-so-eloquent gibberish. My 2006 version of my teenage Top 20 countdown. Go forth and blog young man. Blog like the wind.

Really, Scott? A Blog?

I know, I know. How trendy it is to have your own blog. How 2006 of me. So why do it? Dunno. I guess it's the frustrated writer in me. You see, back in high school I wanted to be a serious journalist until I found out how much (actually how little) money they made. Money, or lack thereof, can kill a passion like nobody's business. Then I planned on writing The Mediocre American Novel which of course never materialized either. So fast forward to 2006 and every 13-year old kid with a mouth full of braces has his own blog. So here I come world wide web. For better or for worse, Scott's gone cyber with his thoughts. God help us all.

My guess? You'll be back. Like a car crash that you can't look away from, you'll click that bookmark with a sort of feigned interest just to see what happens next. "Does anyone's mind really work that way?" you'll ponder. Yup, it really does. And yes, it's exhausting. So without further ado, welcome to the jungle.