workin' for the weekend

in case you didn't notice, downtown was very, very busy this weekend. not only did the predators host a draft party for the nhl entry draft, but the kyle petty charity ride made a stop at the country music hall of fame and the nashville brewers festival (or something like that) was right across the street. good times, good times. i wasn't able to get to the beerfest, but was able to snap a few photos of the other two events. enjoy.

tomas vokoun being interviewed by david coleman and howard gentry of sportsradio 560 wnsr. mr. gentry is also our vice mayor. what's that say about the metro government salaries? the vice mayor's got a second job! (he's actually a really, really cool guy).





nashville predators coach barry trotz (hockey name: trotzy) signing some autographs before the start of the draft.







predators play by play guy pete webber interviewing trotzy








petey interviewing nashville assistant coaches peter horacheck and brent peterson.







all of kyle petty's friends motor-sickles. rumor is there are roughly 250 people on this charity ride. for some reason i can't do links on the mac, so i can't put the site in for you. but i would ask that you visit the victory junction gang camp website. good people doing good things.






the king.








richard and kyle petty autographing a victory motorcycle that they'll be auctioning off at the speed and sound event in january.







these are the aforementioned autographs. yes, i was that close.









i guess this guy assumed that, if anyone could help him fix a flat, it'd be the nascar crowd...







i actually was able to get richard's and kyle's autographs. mock me if you wish, but i think it's pretty damn cool that i have the sigs from the most famous family in stock car racing. i think i might actually frame it. it'd look good with my costello hatch print and my boss poster.

surprise!

surprised my dad with a picture of the 'minihawk' for his birthday...thought I should share it.

for lack of something better to say

it's late on friday. my brain is mushy. i can't think of anything deep, wise, clever or smart to say. apparently this guy couldn't either. he stole the idea from these guys, so i'm stealing it from him. feel free to steal it from me if you're in a pinch looking for a late friday post.

Friday's Feast
Appetizer
Name 3 people whom you admire for their intelligence.
bill gates, steve jobs, the guy who invented xm radio (i draw a very THICK line between intelligence and wisdom).

Soup
What's the last food you tried that you really didn't care for.
tempeh. i think i made it incorrectly, but it tasted like wet dirt. no amount of barbeque sauce could save it.

Salad
If you could rename the street that you live on, what would you want it to be called?
You're not really in Antioch, it's just a clever ruse.

Main Course
When was the last time you were genuinely surprised?
when the wife said i could buy a new keyboard. and then when she said she wanted a vespa.

Dessert
Share a household tip.
gonna double up here. first, don't turn on the closet light once the wife's asleep. second, when wearing headphones turn the volume down before hitting play.

have a great weekend. better blogging next week...

noses and faces

i loathe my job today.

i dislike it most days but can tolerate it. today (and the past few days for that matter) i loathe it. we're talking a break-shit-&-run-away level of disdain. all i can think about is music. all i can focus on is music. all i want to do involves music. music and lunch. i want to go to lunch just so i can get out of my three and a half walled hell for an hour or so.

i'm sure that i could quit work to focus on music full time. but then i wouldn't have any money to record songs, buy gear, play out of town shows for little money (or less) or things like that. quitting my job would be a classic example of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. and i like my nose. my face, not so much. so, to quote ulysses everett mcgill, "damn! we're in a tight spot!" a tight spot that i can't seem to wriggle out of no matter how hard i try.

a wise man once wrote, "there must be some way out of here." if anyone happens to stumble across it, please let me know.

drinking problem

i've got plenty of good and exciting things to say about this weekend's trip to atlanta to see the boss and last nite's trip to the theatre to see charlie and the chocolate factory. that would take a lot of time and thought, which is something i don't have. instead, it's picture time. these were emailed to me today under the heading of "why you shouldn't drink with your friends." i prefer to name this exhibit: "things to do to your friends when they get loaded and hit on your woman."




















i would comment about how this will ruin a perfectly good couch, but i'm sure it was a dumpster dive find anyhow. i really wish i had this guy waking up on video. "your girl would look so good in a porno flick" will be a phrase further from his vocabulary than his neck from his head after this prank.



















that's the last time that roger tells trevor that "do the dirty wiggle" with margot if given the opportunity.
























pirate princess pickle bunny here shoulda known better than to call hank's woman a gap-toothed hood rat. shoulda known better...nice tats, sweetheart.

the evening after this picture was taken, grant was overheard asking a drunken sorority girl if she'd ever tried watermelon flavored weenie. on a different note, i'm wondering who lost a bet and had to put the melon on his garbage.

after the widespread concert, todd spent the last remaining hours before his "perma-beard" installation telling biff, his roommate, how badly he wanted to three-hole his little sister. bad idea, todd. but buck up little camper!! at least you'll have some hot dog buns and jet-puffed marshmallows to help cure that wicked hangover.

for future reference

when sorting out the details of a soon to be ending relationship, make sure to find and burn the sex tape. especially if your name is colin farrell.

c'mon, man! use your damn head. it's not like your fred durst or vince lee...i mean, your career's not in the toilet and it's not like it was the last time you were gonna get laid, ya know?

the things some people will go to in the name of dropping some rocks off...

alright, already!

since everyone wants the skinny on last nite, i figure that i oughta deliver lest i get my ass kicked. so here's the shakedown (breakdown, takedown...everybody wants into the crime life):

last nite was great. the 5 spot is a really cool joint with a good vibe and all the right beers. the crowd was slightly larger than normal, and very warm & friendly. some friends that i haven't seen in a while were able to make it out and some people that i didn't know until last nite made it out and spent some time chatting with me so that i can call them friends, too. things, as they tend to do, ran a little bit late, but most everyone stuck with me and even "made" me play an encore.** molly thomas was fantastic, as was katy bowser and shawn byrne's band.

the big story of the nite was that i whipped out a song i haven't played in 20 months (dec 5, 2003). the only reason i know the date is because i played the song at the imagine no handguns john lennon tribute with the long players. (side note: the long players have me 1 degree of seperation or less from the boss, roy orbison, patti griffin, squeeze, al kooper, jason ringenberg, tommy womack, will kimbrow and other fantastic artists that i can't think of). the song? i'm only sleeping, from the beatles' revolver. it's absolutely my favorite beatles' song ever (i think. it's one of the few that i can play and sing well. i've got lots of almost faves including, but not limited to: nowhere man, i'm looking through you, she said she said, & and your bird can sing. i gotta stop there or i'm just gonna hyper link the whole damn catalog.). i think it went pretty well, besides getting the lyrics out of order in the chorus that appears after the bridge. YOU try remembering everything in the right order after 20 months!

the other really cool thing about last nite is that the set was filmed. it turns out that craig havighurst, nashville's best music writer, is making a documentary about nashville's pop rock underworld and has asked if i'd be interested in being one of the artists featured (i said yes...). very damn cool, indeed. i'll let you know more details about this little project as i have them and have permission to discuss them.

thanks to everyone that made it out. sorry that some of you couldn't make it but rest assured i'm not going anywhere, so you'll have your chance to see me again sometime in the relatively near future.

**okay, i don't know that i can really call it an encore. 2 people asked me to play one more song before i even got off stage and i obliged them with a song that i don't play very often.

show update

so i must've been on crack or something, but tomorrow's show at the 5 spot is not free. it's $5. didn't want anyone to get to the door tomorrow, get pissed and bum rush the stage or anything, so i thought i should do an update.

i will still guarantee that the entertainment will be well worth the price of admission. if i can get up enough sack, i might even break out the new keyboard for a song or two. if i get REALLY bold, i might even break out the laptop, ahem, portable, for fun-time with noise loops. that'll be an adventure in sweating on stage if there ever was one.

by the way, if any of you are experts in entourage and can help me figure out why my mailing list keeps self destructing, PLEASE CONTACT ME.

praise Jesus and pass the snakes!!

it's about f'in time, fellas. it's about f'in time.



i can hear it now:

clap, clap, clap clap clap...LET'S GO PREDATORS!!!

(redwings fans across the world shake and tremble.)

how do you spell a-hole?

i spell it r-o-v-e.














i've posed this question in previous entries, but i'll ask it again, in a slightly different format:

what's worse, a president who puts his berries in the wrong crock, or, a president who's right hand man leaks the name of a CIA operative in retaliation for an editorial disputing his boss' claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction?

here's where it gets fun (clap hands. stomp feet. giggle.)...when all of this poop started hitting the fan a couple of years ago, the president made a statement that basically said whomever was responsible for the link would be shit-canned. let's see him get out of this one...

julia miller's in jail for not revealing a source and karl rove's still running the white house after leaking a CIA operative's name. are we in some kind of weird 8th dimension where right and wrong have been flipflopped or what?

30 days

i didn't realize that this show by morgan spurlock, the guy who brought us super size me, was out yet.

the show features some pretty powerful "social experiments" including working and living on minimum wage for, a christian living as a muslim, a mom who binge drinks for a month so her college student daughter can see what it does, so forth and so on. good stuff. everyone oughta watch.

that's all for now. looking forward to seeing everyone monday (at mercy lounge) and thursday (at the 5 spot). don't forget...david mead's playing tonite at mercy lounge. gotta go gotta go gotta go....

screw all that noise

so yesterday i was a little bleary-eyed, to say the least. i'm not much better today, seeing as how it was the aqua-velva man's birthday yesterday. we headed out to the red door (village, not east) for drinks and merry-making (you can read all about it on his blog...). the wife and i rolled in 'round about midnight and got to hit the hay (haaaaaaaaaaay!) about an hour earlier than we had all weekend. i say all that to say this:

i'm in a much better mood today than i was yesterday when i made my doom and gloom woe is me post. i've added a date at the basement (sept 17 w/mack starks), bought a new keyboard ( i heart ebay) and will be getting some new loop-making software this weekend. gonna see if he can separate himself from the other dopes with acoustic guitars, newton is. it's not a totally new idea that i've had, i've just finally sucked it up and decided that it's worth the time and money it'll take me to do it. i appreciate the "hang in there" and "be true to your school" comments from today, though. i should be a downer more often!

ready to go home and i'm typing this on the man's computer. you know what that means...seacrest, out.

the rule of unintended consequences

so i hope that all of my readers (you both know who you are) had a wonderful 4th of july weekend. mine was full of veggie burgers and hot dogs, cold beer, mountain biking and leg slapping (didn't think to bring any off to any of the cookouts...dammit) at two different cookouts.

whilst at barbeque number two i ran into an acquaintance of mine that does their own thing musically and that has sung on a couple of recordings for me. she's super nice and super sweet. however, she really made me feel like shit last nite when we were talking about music. you see, she plays with a band (not in a band, but with a band. there's a big difference) and i generally don't. it's expensive, i don't have a rehearsal space and, due to those other two reasons, i don't generally play and sing as well with a band than sans-a-band. while we were discussing it i told her that it was really expensive (sometimes $300 a show) to put a band together to play. her response was, "if they believe in you and the music, i'm sure they'd do it for nothing." really.

i know she was really just trying to be supportive and nice, but what i heard her say was, "they must not believe in you and your music, since they won't do it for nothing." she didn't say that, but that was the unintended meaning i took from it, selective pessimist that i am. talk about a swift kick to the junk. to top all that off, two of my favorite club booking guys told me (at the same party) that it'd be better to book their respective venues if i had a band. shit. happy frickin' fourth. who wants a sparkler?

you know what i think? i think i can't decide whether to say "screw you guys" and do it the way i've been doing it and find new (slightly less cool) places to play or to find a way to fund (and find) a band to play with, not in. so... if anyone knows any musicians who are 1) good and 2) cheap and 3)who have a rehearsal space, let me know. in the meantime i'll start buying lotto tickets in the hopes of opening up my own club and label (and maybe buying my own fans while i'm at it).

8 men, 3 seconds and 1 voice

i know i'm one of about 2 billion people either attending or watching these concerts today, and probably just one of hundreds of thousands who have added this to their blogs or websites or whatever. all the same...

some interesting (and shocking) statistics that i've learned while on my couch today:
-6000 people die every day in africa due to the aids virus.
-every 3 seconds a child dies as a result of extreme poverty.
-almost half the world's population lives on less than $2 a day.
-12 million african children are orphans because of the aids virus.
-6 million children in developing countries die each year, mostly due to hunger related causes.
-850 million people go to bed hungry - every day.
-by directing an additional one percent of the U.S. budget toward providing the most basic needs – and fighting the corruption that wastes precious resources –– we can help transform the futures and hopes of an entire generation in the poorest countries (hence the name of the organization).
-the basic health and nutrition needs of the world's poorest people could be met for an additional $13 billion a year. animal lovers in the u.s. & europe spend more than that on pet food each year.

please visit the following links. watch the videos, read the information, sign the petitions, make your voice heard and ask the men in charge of the g8 conference to end world poverty and create a level economic playing ground.

one.org
one campaign video
live8.org
make trade fair
net aid
data.org
oxfam
make trade fair
bread for the world
g8

this weekend we (americans anyway) celebrate our independence. next week 8 men have the ability to give independence to billions of people. independence from debt. independence from poverty. please make sure that at this time next year, they have reason to celebrate as well. where you were born shouldn't decide whether you live or die.

yippee

wahoo for me...leaving work early, going to bang some chains and get my party hat on for the weekend (a real party hat. not slang for rubbers or anything). the weekend's activities will hopefully include:

music (been working on new tunes. wahoo!)
baseball
friends
cold beer (hello)
grills
auto racing

it will hopefully exclude:

alarm clocks
work
stress
the man
the fuzz