waiting on a friend

i'm hanging in seattle tonight. i have a cold. yep. i'm out of town with a cold. so instead of hanging out and eating great food, i'm sitting in the hotel room watching baseball and eating potbelly. i picked potbelly because they don't have them in denver. but i found one in seattle. anyway, i love the avclub. as i sit in bed with kleenex in my nose, i'm having a blast because i'm reading an article about great 'bad' albums. i love that concept. albums by great bands that enter into a period of making great 'bad' albums and who better to dissect than the rolling stones. i personally love goats head soup. it's not their best album, it's not their second or third best album. it's not particularly lyrically great or musically great. but it's a great 'bad' record. this guy picks tattoo you as his great 'bad' stones album. i can't really disagree with his analysis. check it out.

frances farmer will have her revenge on seattle

i hope she doesn't while i'm there. i'm headed to seattle today for a week long training exercise. i'm going to try and hit up the space needle and something else. maybe the fish market? bring some fish home in my suitcase? i think that sounds very appealling. i don't know anything about seattle and it helps that i won't have a ton of time to get out anyway.

how about those texans yesterday? mario's out for the season. ad's out for another 2-3 games. the game ended with a schaub int on the winning drive. what has changed? i guess just the year.

demitria is making fried green tomatoes for me this morning before i leave. as noted in previous blog entries, we have a ton of tomatoes to pick before winter comes and most of them won't ripen because it's too cold now. so we're frying them up. well she's frying them up and we're eating them green. they're really good. i've never had them. i think for her birthday in a few years, i'll get her a cow. and then the next year, a chicken. we'll be living off the land in a decade. maybe a windmill too. and solar panels. and a lightsaber.

winter

it's here. it's about 32 degrees outside today. it's time for winter music. that means the following artists will be returning to my stereo:

1. scott walker
2. leonard cohen
3. the rolling stones
4. yo la tengo
5. lou reed

weird how 3 of the 5 are singer/songwriters, not bands.

has anyone watched the new office with andy as the boss? i haven't really liked the first few episodes, but this week's was pretty good. i watched it this morning. i woke up super early today, like around 7:30. now i'm pretty tired. i should take a nap. i don't like taking naps though because i wake up feeling like all exhausted and mushy brained, like i can't think straight.

is it impolite to say you don't want to hold someones baby? i'm not big on holding babies and i'd really rather not in most situations. there are a few where i would, like when ana had a baby. i held her baby. but like people you're not that close to, i would rather not hold their baby. is that rude? can i just not be in the mood to hold babies? is that an affront to the babymaker?

you say tomato, i also say tomato

these are our tomatoes. they are from our garden out back. i posted some photos of our garden about a month or two ago. this is probably the last batch of red tomatoes we'll get. we still have plenty of green tomatoes. the weather is changing and it's getting colder. they don't do great when it's cold. that's why we've had so many grow down here in denver. you talk to people in the mountains and they can't grow tomatoes. we had some strawberries too, but we eat those right out back. we usually jump and down in excitement while we eat them. they're about the size of a dime. tiny, tiny strawberries. they taste awesome though.

we saw 'the ides of march' last night for free. it kind of sucked. i love clooney. this was not his best work. the most entertaining part of the night was the people. there are people there who go every week and line up and stand in line for hours to see free movies. there was a guy who knew like ever fourth group of people. he went to every little group and told each group what an amazing cast this movie had. and then he would name each person in the movie and walk away. and i could hear him each time. he was loud and very excited. and then later, he'd come back and tell each group that he would save them some seats. it was great. i ate so much popcorn though. big time. too much.

death and all of his friends

i don't normally have dreams that i remember. last night was an exception. i don't actually remember the whole dream. i don't really know what it was about in the beginning.

all i know is that i was going to die. i knew it. i felt it. i was scared, but ready. when you die in dreams, you usually wake up. at least i do. so i don't think i've ever really died in a dream or at least i've never gone all the way through the process. last night, i did. i was lying in a bed. and as the time came, my body quickly tightened, not in a way that hurt or was uncomfortable, but it was as if my body made one last gasp. and then it released. and i was dead. my mind didn't stop though. i just left my body. and i think i spent the rest of the dream as a ghost.

but the main point is that i felt my body constrict and stop. i'm not absolved of all my fears of passing. but something about that dream made me comfortable with the process. of course, i could still slam into another car or something like that. i'm sure that won't feel great.

in other news, we went to estes park this past weekend. it was incredible. i love that place.

in other, other news, we had a mouse in the garage. we actually had two mice. one was killed in a trap we set with peanut butter. the other was killed by some poison we left out. the mouse ate so much of the poison, his scat turned green, the color of the poison. we found him in the back of the garage.

in other, other, other news, i took my test this past weekend and i was actual able to look myself in the face after taking it. i have never had that feeling before. i hope it translates into a passing grade.

do you realize pt. 2

it's official. both the braves and red sox are out. the only word is: wow.

do you realize?

do you realize that i could miss two of my preseason baseball predictions on the last game of the season? i had the atlanta braves going to the playoffs, as well as the boston red sox. i correctly nailed milwaukee, philly, ny and texas. i missed on colorado and minnesota big time. but i can't miss on both boston and atlanta too! and on the last game of the season?

i was hoping the astros would do me a personal favor and win tonight and knock out st. louis. yeah, the cardinals scored 5 runs in the 1st! nice way to end the season 'stros.

got to keep the faith that i'll go six for eight. because four for eight doesn't cut it!

does anyone want more youtube videos concerning silver manipulation? because i have them.

the daily mail

talk about a tale of two bands. i saw radiohead on snl. they were gross. then, i just watched them on the colbert report and they were awesome. incredible. whatever four syllable word you can think of. stupendacious.

i just rediscovered my love of peanut butter crackers. i've eaten like ten packs in two days. that's my dinner tonight. maybe i'll eat an egg too.

we're heading to estes park this weekend. no one in denver reads this blog right? well, no one with breaking-in tendencies. i take REG on sat. morning. i've taken it once. i missed passing by five points. i have studied my ass off in these last two-three months. i changed my approach. i accepted that i had to adapt to pass. i feel like i'm there. we'll see. actually the worse part is, i won't see until mid-december. that's a long time to wait. i'm ready. i feel like rocky after he lost to mr. t who's character was actually named clubber lang. he lost to clubber lang and mickey died too so he lost his fighting mojo. but then adrian confronted him and he realized he was afraid. and he and adrian talked and he realized it's okay to be afraid. you have to take that fear and use it as a strength. i was afraid of the test. i'm not afraid anymore.

there's so much you can learn from rocky i-vi. not much for part v, but still.

did anyone see ron paul on the daily show? i love ron paul, but i can't see how the free market is going to keep corporations from polluting and things like that. you need regulators because the market is never truly free. i agree with him on most everything else though. especially his thoughts on monetary policy.

hyman minsky said the market was essentially unstable.

Wilco - One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)

i can't stop listening to this song. i love the first few lines, "this is how i tell it, oh, but it's long."

speak into the rose

i purchased the new wilco album tonight at twist and shout. i also entered into a drawing to win some swag. i guess it's not swag if you have to enter into a drawing to get it. i also picked up the new girls album, the new aa bondy album and a used copy of the jayhawks sound of lies. good pickup.

must be in a good place now

twist and shout is an awesome record store in denver over on colfax. i've mentioned it a couple times with most people. i really like the place. the other day, they had an in-store concert. the lead singer of the fruit bats and the lead singer of vetiver played a little, intimate show. that's them at twist and shout in the bottom picture. so i met demitria there after work and the show was great. i had seen the fruit bats before at walters on washington in houston and i really like them. vetiver is good too, but i'm not super familiar with their music.

anyway, they had a drawing for the concert that night. both groups were playing at the bluebird. and guess what? we won! we talked to both guys and told them we won and we were going to see them at the bluebird. until the concert, we hung out and had a couple drinks. it was a great night. the show was awesome. we stayed out way too late for week night. but it was worth it. you got to get out and get lucky in life. and i think most of the time the luck just has to do with you getting out. plus it was bruce's birthday so i think there was some good karma in the air.

we'll be heading back to twist and shout on monday night. they're having a wilco listening party for the release of their new album and selling it the night before it comes out. i'm actually listening to it right now on npr.org.

nightswimming

another great REM song. definite highlight from automatic for the people.

it's the end of the world as we know it

REM broke up today. i'm not really saddened by this news. i feel more put in my place, if that makes sense. REM's music was never top notch to me. i liked them for sure. but i didn't love them. but they've been a part of the music scene since i started listening to music. i remember "shiny happy people". i remember the theme song to "get a life" was "stand". i bought "out of time" on cassette and let derek gosney borrow it. i never got it back. so i don't mourn the loss of REM. i will miss them because they've always been there. like when a building gets demolished. you don't really miss it. you just sense things are changing.

radiohead, wilco, the flaming lips. i'll feel it when those bands break up. but best wishes to REM. thanks for the tunes. man on the moon is my favorite REM song. i used to play it on the guitar late at night in huntsville after several rounds of drinks.

heroes and villians

november 1st! the smile sessions will finally be released. i've obsessed over this album for more than a decade. i used to put together my own smile versions when cd burning first appeared. i had all different versions. brian singing this song. mike singing that song. add in a barnyard. take out an instrumental. i can't wait to hear every note. every moment of studio banter. the greatest never released album is finally being released.

standing o

npr is streaming wilco's new album.

i have a complicated relationship with wilco. as anyone who's read this blog more than once knows, i bring them up often. they are my beatles. my stones. my bob dylan. my chevy chase. they are the band i hear when i think back to major moments in my life.

being there- i remember listening to this at bruce's house on the upstairs stereo. to be honest, i bought the album because it was a double album but best buy was selling it for 9.99. it was on the rack they have where they feature new bands. can you believe best buy was once cool enough to be featuring wilco? i didn't love it at first. i let bruce borrow it and he dug the first track on both records. so i gave it another listen. and fell in love. it was a little angry. a little excited. a little stunned. in 1996, that's pretty much what i was in a nutshell. in and out of comedy. in and out of new experiences.

summerteeth- this album was in the post-high school, early college nebulous phase. it was at that point when everything seems possible. that the chains are just starting to be taken off your life and it's about to springboard into some new world order. what's funny is that summerteeth is one of the most depressing albums you've ever heard. read the lyrics. jeff is at his lowest on this album. yet it sounds so beautiful. and it was the soundtrack to this new euphoric period.

yankee hotel foxtrot- sam houston. huntsville. 9/11. all those things come to mind. staying up late at EVN drinking or at my apartment playing cards. released after 9/11 right at the beginning of the most amazing period of american history known as bush part two. there was room to exist in that album. i could hide in it. i heard a voice saying things that didn't make sense from a straightforward perspective. they made sense if you looked away and not directly at it. kind of like peripheral hearing. i still rank that album as one of my favorites of all time.

a ghost is born- i had graduated and moved back to houston. i was working the overnight shift at fox sports. i was somewhat confused about how i ended up at that point after college. working at night. working with strange people. i was living on my own for the first time. no roommate. i was staying up late on my nights off. writing. furiously writing. somehow the world looked different at night. a ghost is born is the sound of someone staying up too late. they should have gone to bed. there are extended frantic solos. there are tracks that are quick and cutting. there are tracks that are marathons, leaning on you as you listen. almost trying to get you uncomfortable.

sky blue sky- back in school. only two albums later i was back in school. i was engaged and living with my fiancee. i was a calmer person. wilco was now a calmer band. jeff had reconfigured the band. the sounds were serene in a way. very forward looking while still looking back, if that makes sense. thinking about where you're ultimately going in life while knowing that what got you there can't be ignored. i remember one sunday i had a paper to write and i stayed in front of the computer almost all day writing listening to sky blue sky streaming on wilco's website. i was upstairs right around the corner from where we hid from the hurricane. there are places to hide from hurricanes.

wilco the album- this is a very confused album. there are all kinds of parts of wilco. nothing seems to fit right. and some of it kind of sucks. by this point i was married and wanting to get out of houston. as fast as i could. i had a job i hated but didn't want to leave because of the economy. there were parts of me pulling at me at all times. wanting this. trying to get there. and it sucked.

the whole love- ah, love. not only love, but the whole love. the reinvention is done. i am in colorado. i am working away. things are going well. the pushing and pulling is finished. but although the immediate reinvention is done, there is still work to be done. eventually you accept who you are while knowing you can still be better. little things like making coffee and getting up early make you happy. listening to 'wait, wait don't tell me' on a saturday morning with the windows open and a cool breeze in your house almost makes you cry because it's so peaceful. it's more than you could have imagined you'd get out of life. the whole love is playing too. i'm making lunch with my wife. soon we'll be in the garden. the whole love is still playing.

i think i'm growing old with wilco. and the relationship is complicated because that's what happens when you get older. there's a lot of baggage. but underneath all that weight, is a respect and admiration that pulls it all back together. so there it is. that's the soundtrack to my life so far. we'll see what other songs are still to come.

for pete's sake

i had this really good blog idea about the nature of colorado and how much i love it and then i started watching little clips of jimmy fallon and forgot all the beautiful things i was going to say. i love jimmy fallon. greatest late-night show going right now. i'm not sure about conan anymore. i saw his show a few times while i was out of town and it was okay.

anyway, the nature here is wonderful. that's all i can come up with now. i have eggs boiling in the kitchen.

that smell

well we've got our first obama administration scandal. the cronyism supposedly on the way out with our current administration, well, it's uh....it's still around.

check out the story here.

or if laughing while crying isn't your bag, go here.

dawned on me

today was a good day. i took a two hour lunch. i went to the bookstore and read some magazines. then i went and got a fish burrito. then i went back to the bookstore and bought "the creature from jekyll island" which is a massive history of the creature and culture of the federal reserve. i can't wait to start reading it. then i finished working and drove home.

did anybody else see that sarah palin was involved with glen rice? that's the most random thing i think i've ever read. glen rice? former heat/rocket guard? strange. that's like an article coming out linking carol burnett with steve bedrosian.

the astros lost their 98th game of the season. worst ever. this is officially the worst astros team of all time. all time! well what a way to join the american league. does anybody remember when the astros were relevant? seems like a long time ago. we have the texans now. remember when they were terrible? oh wait, that was last year. i do remember that.

how did people use to cut their fingernails? did they cut them with scissors? or file them down?

we will rock you

i know peyton manning didn't play. but, how can you not be excited about the texans this year?!?!?! i'm telling you. i already predicted them going 11-5. maybe 10-6. but that will totally be enough to win the division. this is the year. texans baby!!

bushwick blues

tomorrow is the anniversary of 9/11. the ten year anniversary i should say. it doesn't feel that long ago, but when i examine the details, it looks like ages ago.

i had just transferred to sam houston state in huntsville, texas, to get my radio/television degree. the morning started the same as usual. i woke up, turned on the television and flipped it to sportscenter. there was some long story on about golf or soccer or something. i had no interest in it. so i started flipping around and to my amazement i see one of the towers in flames. i wake up kassy, who was my girlfriend/roommate at the time and we watch it. at this point, the reports indicate that it was a plane that accidentally flew into the towers. we couldn't believe it. we finished getting ready and walked to class. by the time we walked to class, which was about a fifteen minute walk, another plane had hit the second the tower. someone has wheeled a television into our class and we all sat and watched. needless to say, the class was canceled. but no one went anywhere. we didn't go home. we didn't know what to do. we just sat and watched, slowly realizing this was something bigger than any of us could have imagined.

finally, around noon, we walked home. i called my mom and my dad. i had to make sure everyone was okay. because that day every horrible thought seemed possible. they were fine. so i watched more at home. finally, i couldn't digest another image. kassy, natalie and i went bowling to escape the madness of the day. we bowled for a few hours, trying to get some sense of happiness or normalcy out of that day. finally we went home and i sat and watched more. i called my dad again. as i talked to him, i watched dan rather sign off. he must have been on the air fourteen hours that day. it was after midnight. i hung up with my dad and sat in the dark for a while. i didn't know anyone who died. i just knew most of them were regular people like me with regular families. they couldn't have predicted that day. how horrible. things were going to change going forward. we had the support of the world. we were going to respond and vanquish those that were against us.

it's ten years later. bin laden is dead. we are still in afghanistan. we are still in iraq (that's another story altogether. i'll let history tell that one). we're in midst of a great recession. we have a completely useless governing body. the people of the united states are unprepared for what's coming. how can you prepare for a jobless, inflationary state when you can't afford education, health care or a house? get ready to add food to that list.

how could that one event have thrown us so far off track? or did it have anything to do with it? we were headed towards a recession when bush took office. the dot.com bubble had burst and the housing bubble had not yet been hatched. deregulation was already in full swing. who knows what alternate state was ahead of us. either way, it didn't happen. we must deal with what we're presented with.

tomorrow, and today since i'm writing this, think back to that day and the people that were lost then and going forward in two wars. think about the decisions we've made since that day. vow to yourself that we won't get fooled again. question those in power. a healthy distrust of government/media is what we need. because i have news for you: every time we blame our problems on the poor, every time we blame our problems on gays, every time we blame our problems on illegal aliens, there is a corporation laying off hundreds of thousands of people and using that money to give to your freely elected representatives and senators to court favor and gain more power to cut health care for you and your family, to cut unemployment payments, to offshore their profits and not pay taxes on them, to use forced and exploited labor in other countries, to disable regulation allowing them to pollute more, merge with other companies and grow in power/influence and finally pass legislation to make it all legal.

the poor cannot influence power. only power can influence power.

WILCO - "Born Alone"

Jeff Tweedy performs the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling"

little pad

i've been threatening to do this for some time. so i finally went out back yesterday with my little camera phone and took some pictures of our garden area. the bottom picture shows the many dead bodies of the yellow jackets that tried to take over our backyard this summer. we had a pretty big problem with those guys. this little contraption worked really well though. the next picture up is of one of our morning glories on the back fence. demitria planted those in between the two flower/vegetable boxes and they took off in the last month. it's really cool because they open up in the morning and then close up during the day when it's hot. but now that it's cool all day, that's right all you folks in texas and elsewhere, it's cool all day here already, they stay open all day. the next shot shows the pretty little tomatoes that will be picked in a few more days once they ripen up a bit more. demitria picked eight the other day. and we still have more coming. the top picture shows the entire area. we have two boxes with tomatoes, herbs, jalapenos, strawberries and wild flowers. the bees love it out there. but they don't mess with us the way the yellow jackets did. so that's our backyard that we put together in our denver house. i think when we get our own place, we're going to have an amazing garden because once i pass this test i can't think of anything better to do on the weekends than garden and read economic books. who would have known those would have become the enjoyable moments in my life? crazy, huh?

one sunday morning

could you kill a honey bee?
driving, sometimes
makes me drowsy
and in between
i believe
there are scenes in trees

funeral flowers keep all winter
how natural, is this place
and this piece of prosthetic
pumpkin puppetry
it's all lost on me

i saw a picture of a paramour
dead in a catalog, scratching
mixed screams of heavy confusion
buried in love and redemption
he was never a real authority

whole love

art of almost

wilco is streaming their new album for 24 hours at wilcoworld.net. i'm listening to the first track right now.

caroline says II

last night, i watched lou reed's berlin documentary. that album has always held a special place with me. it's a perverse, macabre dance of stunningly emotionally torturous prog-rock songs. i first heard it after listening to transformer and loving it. the poppy style, the david bowie production, it was great. then came berlin. much like the talked about dividing line in the aforementioned city, this album divided every part of me. i had trouble listening to it in it's entirety. the song cycle follows a drugged up mother who verbally and psychologically abuses her man and he in turn physically abuses her and leaves her. she then turns to more drugs and men of no virtue. then loses her kids and kills herself. that is the album. and when the last note has played, you feel like it just happened right in front of you. i only bought one more lou reed solo album after that.

"sad songs, sad songs...."

popular

i haven't heard this song in probably 6-7 years. i have no idea why superdrag's "sucked out" got stuck in my head today which for some other reason led me to thinking about this song nada surf's "popular". it was a roundabout of one-hit wonders from the 90's. next week i'll be dissecting the primative radio gods, dishwalla and white town. if anyone can name the songs of those one-hit wonders i will personally put a picture of them on my blog and explain why they are a superstar. no cheating though. superstars don't cheat.

do you know the way to san jose?

because i do. i'm in san jose. i'll be here a week for training. awesome? not really. i'm ready to be home. i've been gone for about six weeks of the past seven weeks. the weather is super nice though. i just ate some lame sushi though. and i don't think my a/c works that great. and i just drank some grapefruit water that nearly made my mouth fold in on itself. so pungent. there was also cucumber water, but i chose poorly. i'm not going back down there. the lobby is a like a club. with grapefruit water.

i think i'm going to bed early. i need to post some pictures of our tomato plants. i hate tomatoes but our plants are awesome. we also have these morning glories on the back fence. they open in the morning and into the day, but then close up for the rest of the day. i'm kind of babbling because i'm tired and i just had an hour long conversation at dinner about work after listening to work training all day.

there is no comedy central on this cable. and no russian television like in kansas city.

i just reread this post. it's really just a long whine.

a grand don't come for free

so my buddy from denver is headed to london today to work and hang for about two, maybe three years. i wish him well. i know he'll do great and love it. me, well i'm happy here in denver. but if the opportunity were to arise for me, i can't say i'd say no to living and working in a foreign country for 2-3 years. maybe longer. we'll see. i really like it here in denver. but to live and work in iceland? awesome. france? awesome. myanmar? not awesome. i think i'd pass on that. although i hear they have amazing roasted tree bark. and the government hands out diapers to anyone who wants them. you can't beat that.

tomorrow i'm going to play in a kickball tournament. i haven't played kickball since 6th grade probably. i feel like i am going to rock it. there is no substantial information to stand behind that assessment. just bravado. and little hot sauce.

i love whistling in pop songs.

gimme shelter

apparently there was an earthquake in colorado yesterday or monday night or something. i didn't feel it. i did however feel love in my heart when i heard air supply on the radio yesterday.

in other news, the astros came to town and got swept by the rockies. i didn't get to go to any games unfortunately. but wandy rodriguez might be getting traded to the rockies. i can have more wandy. isn't that all what we want? i can't help but think of a certain beach boys songs:

"wandy, wandy what went wrong? oh so wrong....
we were together for so long"

i wonder if they were really singing about wandy rodriguez. i bet they were.

in other new, fanta has rushed to the top spot in the cola wars......

rocky mountain high

i'm back. back in denver. that was the longest i've ever been away from home. ever. band camp? that's right, i went to band camp. i actually went to band camp for three summers. that was one week. honeymoon? two weeks. trip to europe? two weeks. this time? i was gone three weeks from home and then home for three days and then gone again for two weeks. so a total of five weeks with three days home. brutal. i have so many clothes to wash and mail to sort through. actually the mail didn't take that long. thankfully i don't have a lot of bills. that's a life of used books and clothes that are at least ten years old.

i am ecstatic to be home. being back in texas made feel back at home, but it felt more like my old home. like a school you used to go to or a church. i actually like to compare it to a first wife. i only have a first wife but i've been around enough divorced people to make the comparison. with your first wife you have kids, buy a house and do major things in your life. for whatever reason, it doesn't work out. you move on. you find wife number 2. by that time in your life, you're older and you kind of know yourself better. you pick someone that's more in tune with who you are. that's what texas is for me. i had major achievements there. life-long friends. great family members. but i found a place that i'm more in tune with. a place that's more like me now.

but, what are some things to document about texas/houston? i'm glad you asked:

1. it's unbelievably hot. i have no idea how anybody lives there when you couple that with the humidity. if it weren't for crops, vitamin d and great surf songs, i would say we should consider retiring the sun. enough.

2. there's way too many people in houston. so many cars. going somewhere. i haven't looked recently but i think the population of houston is exactly eight trillion people

3. the people are nice. they talk to you. and when they talk to you they act like they know you. and they're helpful. that's something i miss.

4. lots of restaurants. i mean a lot. i have no idea how there can be so many restaurants. except i guess when you consider number 2 above. i lost my appetite for most of the week because of number 1 above.

5. people in texas have a sense of humor. i get laughs in texas. i get crickets elsewhere. people in texas like to laugh. they have to. they're slowing burning.

when i landed in denver and i saw those mountains, i felt home. no humidity. it was not scolding hot. my home was there waiting for me. so was my cat. i had to run to the store and buy milk and creamer for my coffee in the morning. i love waking up and having coffee at home. i usually go outside and look at our tomatoes and wild flowers. i also read. i don't have to work tomorrow.

i think i'm finally exactly where i'm supposed to be.

all i need

i'm heading home to texas tomorrow. i won't be passing through or stopping in channelview. there is no reason to anymore. that town is a sad relic. it's infested. diseased. and those that choose not to leave will unfortunately forget why they ever wanted to be there in the first place.

who are you? who, who, who, who

this is an excellent article asking who is exactly is barack obama? i have no idea what he stands for or what he wants from our government.

i have predicted this to my wife and now it's time to make the prediction known. my prediction: if rick perry runs for president, he will win the republican nomination and possibly the white house. that first part is the prediction. the second part is something i'm slowly starting to believe. a prediction in progress if you will. new prediction: in the next two weeks, at some point, i will receive a giant sized novelty check. i look forward to it.

still crazy after all these years

i'm back in KC. i have three more days and then i'm headed to houston/galveston. i'm staying at the marriot this week. man, the gym here is incredible. they have dumbbells up to 75lbs. that is awesome. there is also a nautilus machine, which i've never seen at a hotel or even some gyms. plus the hotel is much closer to my client, which means i'm not soaking wet when i get to work in the morning, which was the case for three weeks.

i also have noticed that since i've left home, i'm not sleeping well. to compensate for that, i've been downing caffeine products, which has been causing headaches when i drink too much caffeine in the afternoon. so today, i decided to only have one cup of coffee. that's it. no sodas or anything of the like. i now have a splitting headache and i can't totally see straight.

there is a russian news channel on this cable set and it's actually good.

this is the most boring post of all time.

off the record

the big night was tonight, my morning jacket in KC at the uptown theater. the bottom shot is the theater before the opening band. the opening band was delta spirit. i'd heard of them from hearya. big, big favorite on hearya. they were good. i would check out their album. my morning jacket was awesome though. started out with the victory dance. moved through some of my favorites from the new album, it still moves, z and evil urges. they were totally upbeat and the place was so hot, everybody was dripping with sweat. i don't know how those guys got through the show without passing out. my ears are still buzzing right now. as you can tell from the pics, i was pretty close over on the right side of the stage. i was able to worm my way after delta spirit. they'll be in denver tomorrow night at red rocks. i have friends going so i'll get a review from there too. i'm going home on friday to denver before i have to come back for week. and then i'm done. between the pizza, my morning jacket, pan-fried chicken and nothing else, kansas city is a pretty bland town. i miss my mountains and afternoon showers. rain, i mean. i don't think it rains here. ever. i hope my hearing comes back.

oh right. this morning. i forgot. so at five in the morning today, i hear an alarm so loud i'm sure the hotel is under attack. i literally sat up in bed with my eyes wide open from a dead sleep. the alarm continued and then a voice came on, "this is not a test. move to the nearest stairway and evacuate the building." i grabbed my wallet and put on a shirt and headed out to find the stairway. i went down six flights of stairs and headed out the back. no one was there. everybody was in the lobby. i headed to the lobby and tried to fall back asleep. i stayed down there for about twenty minutes trying to sleep before they told us it was a false alarm and to go back to our rooms. seeing everyone in their pjs was interesting. one dude did not put on a shirt and one old lady had on a robe. that was all. awkward.

sounds of silence

i'm not sure if i'd rather be outside moving piles of rocks than staring at a computer for ten hours a day thinking as hard as i can. it's freaking exhausting. i'm mentally drained every day. actually it's kind of hot now, moving rocks might be tough. what about driving a taxi?

tomorrow is my morning jacket. totally pumped for that. going home friday finally after three weeks. i'm getting a little lonely here. i was told that there would be others from out of town and people went out quite a bit. that was the opposite of true.

i actually took a taxi from the hotel to work this morning because yesterday i walked, like i do everyday here, and i was soaking wet from sweat. is that how you spell sweat? looks weird.

eat the rich

i finally finished the book with the cover/title shown above. good read. the hubris of wall street and the incredible idiocy of the people running these firms is shown in the story. it's not highlighted enough. the read is more of a story of an unforeseen predicament, with men behind the scenes trying desperately to save a system that had inexplicably turned to a swirling tornado of destruction. that's not really how it happened. and you can try to paint hank paulson a savior as much as you want. but he led goldman sachs before joining the treasury and argued for much of the structure that took down the system. anyway, i would totally recommend it. and i hear there was a movie too. missed it. i was probably watching scrubs or the office for the 3,254 time.

don't stop til you get enough

i finally got to get out in kansas city. other than last friday, my pizza night, and not even really then because i only walked like two blocks from the hotel, i haven't really gotten out in kansas city. my dad had told me about this place that he had eaten at like thirty years ago and i looked it up and it's still there. not only is it still there, it's actually won a lot of awards and is super highly regarded as a great place to get pan-friend chicken. so that's what i got. and it was a lot. mashed potatoes and these amazing cinnamon rolls they give you after you eat. it was awesome. that's the extent of my trip so far. my morning jacket is wednesday. i'll have pictures from that too. see that big piece in the back, i'm going to eat that one tomorrow for lunch. and i have two cinnamon rolls too.

"fool me once, strike one, fool me twice.........strike three." from the office. that was just on tv. great.

hunter pence is a philly. we've traded lidge, oswalt and now pence to the phillies. we were snookered on the lidge deal and the oswalt deal. we'll see how this one pans out. bourn, wandy and lee need to go now. and then we need to bring back tony eusabio. that guy could hit.

be my baby

we're having a potluck thing on monday and the kicker is, as part of a team building experience, we have to give an interesting fact about ourselves that the others didn't know.

i was talking to demitria and i said my interesting fact is that i used to be a baby. i don't think i've ever said anything as funny as that before in my life. i am still laughing about that.

another thing that's funny. tanner and i used to have this routine where we would quote lyrics from mungo jerry's "in the summertime" and how inappropriate some of the lyrics are. "if her daddy's rich, take her out for meal, if her daddy's poor, just do what you feel." and we were like what is that? "do what you feel" because she's poor. that's suggestive.

anyway, it was great fun. so i'm watching jimmy fallon last night, a very underrated late-night talk show, and he was doing the same thing with "splish splash". he's like, "what's going on here? this guy is taking a bath and has no idea there is a party going on?" it was awesome.

dancing on the ceiling

is anybody else getting the feeling that obama really wants to cut entitlement programs and is using this situation as a means to get the cuts while blaming the republicans for it who have always wanted it? i'm not on the side of the republicans, don't misread that. i just wonder who really wants what.

or are we seriously trying to default on purpose under the guise of some sort of back and forth ideological argument that doesn't really exist? i mean, the two parties are the same. both are bankrolled by the same global corporations. is there an advantage to defaulting? i mean, is this a response to all the money printing of QE1 and QE2 that didn't work? defaulting will make interest rates go up by the natural downgrade of our debt courtesy of the rating agencies. is this a means of forcing rates up by blaming the ratings agencies? i don't know. but something seems off here. ignore the rhetoric. ignore the back and forth. people, they're on the same team. what do they have to gain by a default? i guess we'll wait and find out.

strawberry fields forever

is there anything better on earth than berries? blueberries. strawberries. blackberries. raspberries. they are awesome!!!!

the day is coming

there is an update to the most memorable moment in KC. it seems as though my morning jacket is playing here in two weeks. and there are still tickets available. interesting.......

it's good to be king

i've had two moments in my life when true genius struck. there's probably been more, but i only remember two. they both involve food. that's probably why i remember them.

one night i was hanging out with pete and tanner and we went to the house of pies. i was really, really hungry that night. when our food came, i ate mine so fast that everybody else still had about 95% of their food left. for some reason, i put my plate on the table behind us. i have no idea why i did this. the waitress, who i noticed did not bring our food, came over to ask us how we were doing. i looked around and made a play. i told her that everybody else had received there food and my order didn't come. she said she was sorry and brought me another sandwich. i ate two sandwiches that night for the price of one. awesome move.

last night was another stroke of genius. as some of you know, i'm in kansas city. i had been out that evening and came back to my room, just laying around the room, watching television some time around 11 or midnight. my next door neighbors were being really loud. i thought about calling downstairs to the lobby or writing them a note telling them to shut the hell up. i thought there had to be a better way to get back at them. i had overheard them ordering a pizza on the phone. i thought, how awesome would it be if i jacked their pizza? that would teach them.

so i waited outside my room, by the elevators ready to intercept their pizza. i was pretty sure they had prepaid for it and all i had to do was pick it up. my wife called and i told her what i was doing. she did not agree with it, but she said i might as well do it right. she told me to go the lobby and meet the guy there. that way he would be glad not to have to come up to the room, we would not be close to the room if for some reason he needed to get in and it provided me with an escape if it backfired and they hadn't prepaid. so i did. i went downstairs and right as i was walking out of the elevator, the guy gets there. i hang up with my wife and approach him. i told him that miguel had called, which was the dude's name next door because i heard him say it, and that i was there to pick it for him. i tipped the guy and he gave me the pizza. i went back to my room and ate half of it laughing the whole time. i didn't hear them order another one, but someone did come to the room late, about forty-five minutes later. might have been another pizza, i'm not sure.

i heard them talking today. they're here for a wedding. so it's probably going to be a louder, later night than last night. if they order another item, i might go for it.

sheer genius. and the pizza was good too. really good. and big. that will probably be my highlight from my time in kansas city.

()

i used to work late nights sometimes in huntsville, texas. i used to work at a video production company called EVN, that stood for educational video network. we'd make horrible, horrible videos about not doing drugs and not using credit cards and making young people feel okay with who they were. but if they watched our videos, they'd probably be less okay with who they were and less okay with whoever, me, made these ridiculous videos. dave made great videos. i actually sought out his videos to watch. he would turn the ridiculous material into something visually stimulating and entertaining. i wonder what dave is doing now. no matter.

so i would work late, as indicated earlier in this post. working late at a young age has a way of detaching you with reality. i'm not sure why. now, it brings in reality. makes it more real. back then, it did the opposite. maybe i couldn't wrap my head around working that late. and i'm only talking about 9 or 10. it would dark of course. sometimes i'd take a break and sit outside in the dark. everybody was gone. most of us had class the next day, me included. but class was easy in huntsville, so i could do what i wanted. so i would. i would sit in my tiny office and blast sigur ros. blast it. i could hear it in every corner of that building. i would watch the videos too.

this was one of those videos. obviously the music grabbed my attention. it's an amazing, beautiful song. totally captivating you at every turn and twist. but the visuals were amazing. i was graduating with a degree in radio/tv so visuals were what i was about. i was also developing a keen photographer eye.

but i wondered. was this the story of the fallen titans? did their hubris finally get the best of them? did they wonder what it would be like to finally tag the other? the music was hopeful, while the visuals told of happiness staunched with patient trepidation. masks. ash. a playground. was this something i would experience? would my children? was fortune transformed to fleeting moments chasing normality?

the song has always leveled me. every time i hear it. i heard this band live. in houston, texas, of all places.

houston, texas. my old grounds.

if you have time, seek out other sigur ros videos. you won't be disappointed. i wish i knew the future. but what would i do with this information? saddled right on my back? were things really easier back then? probably not. it sure felt like it.

here we are, face to face....

we are halfway, HALFWAY, through 2011. hasn't it been something so far? i know right. the previews did not do it justice. things have been good in the music field.

you've got some great albums this year. here are some:

elbow- build a rocket boys
kurt vile- smoke ring for my halo
the strokes- angles
fleet foxes- helplessness blues
bon iver- bon iver
my morning jacket- circuital
radiohead- king of limbs
pains of being pure at heart- belong
wye oak- civilian
tennis- cape dory
cut copy- zonoscope
peter bjorn and john- gimme some
the dodos- no color
black lips- arabia mountain
panda bear- tomboy
the low anthem- smart flesh

two albums i missed somehow:
cults- cults
wu lyf- go tell fire to the mountain

two best albums so far:
destroyer- kaputt
thurston moore- demolished thoughts

that's the year so far. i know we have an album from wilco on the way. i think we might have an album from girls coming. good year. good year.

and how about those new ape movies? looking pretty wild!

ocean breathes salty

alan chang caught this crab in the waters of galveston, texas. the crab is now driving a bus in houston.

wrap your trouble in dreams

i have a cici's pizza shirt hanging in the window of my hilton hotel room. that, my friends, is class.

kansas city

kansas city is hot. and humid. and that was at 7:33 as i was walking to work. i have to walk about four blocks north and then four blocks west. i was soaking wet when i got to work. soaking. yuck.

i haven't done anything right now besides work and try to sleep. i'm having a hard time sleeping in a hotel again. in atlanta, i was miserable. i slept about 3-4 hours a night. i'm not sure why. if i missed my wife? my cat? my bed? or was worried/nervous? i have no idea. maybe just the bed sucked, which it did. last night i fell asleep quick, but woke up at four in the morning for some reason.

they do have a nice menu here. i had these awesome lumpy crabby spring rolls last night. and i'll have them again tonight. that's right. two nights in a row.

i wish i could be done with cpa. it won't let me go. it's my own fault. i've done as little as i can to pass and it shows. i guess that speaks to something to say that i've done so little and come so close. i know people who sequestered themselves for months. literally. and they passed. i didn't do that. now i'm doing that. in KC. i'm sequestered. and i'm going to study. and eat lumpy crabby spring rolls. and i'm going to pass. and be done. it's going to take longer than i thought, but i'm going to finish it.

the beehive state

fooling around the house this morning and this song came on the stereo. wait for the end. harry singing with himself is better than a butter shave.

Quantitative Easing Explained

velvet underground game cont.

i was able to connect the beach boys to the velvet underground. however, it took many steps:

1. follow the same path i made to get to the beatles in a previous blog
2. john lennon played in the beatles with george harrison
3. harry nilsson's 'pussycats' was produced by john lennon
4. van dyke parks collorated with harry nilsson on the 'popeye' soundtrack
5. brian wilson/the beach boys collaborated with van dyke on 'smile'

so that's more like 12/13 steps. but i was able to do it. it was a great moment. i was in atlanta at training and when i did it, i wanted to show everyone in the room. show them my handy work. but i was confident/complete sure that everyone in the room had no idea who the velvet underground are. pretty sure.

inside job

i've seen it twice now. everyone should take some time and watch this documentary. and eat some cheetos while you're doing it. i love cheetos.

my drunk kitchen

as someone who likes to drink, this might be the greatest idea/video i've ever seen.

the vampire squid continues

rolling stone's matt taibbi continues to amaze me with his sharp pen/keyboard. the dude eviscerates andrew ross sorkin's take on goldman's massive short. check it out.

halcyon digest

i bought the halcyon digest album by deerhunter some time ago. i was living in denver, so it wasn't too long ago. i bought it with a couple scott walker albums and maybe a used lou reed record. for a while, i never really listened to it, just off and on. i have finally been listening to it regularly and it is a fantastic record. the lyrics are obscure, but simple and somewhat related to each other it seems. there is melancholy, but the music surrounding it is beautiful. the music is incredible. i highly suggest listening to helicopter, probably my favorite song on the album. this record will stay with you. it's a great late night record, as most of the great ones are. check it out.

btw, happy fourth of july. we planted petunias and bought a new mattress. great day! i also ate cheesesticks from sonic. they don't have them in the immediate city, but we drove out to a different home depot at 34th and quebec and there is one out there. oh yes.

tangled up in blue

what in the world is bob talking about in this song? he changes from first person storytelling to third person halfway through. in the original version, he makes references to living with "them" and watching how things fell through and how he became "withdrawn" because of these personal accounts and this is right after running into what the listener believes is his long lost love.

i always thought this song captured the lost love of two people trying hard to make life work, but work took over their lives/spirits, and they ended up losing love in the process. they go their separate ways. they continue working jobs that require all their spirit/attention again and when the singer leaves his job, he travels down south and runs into his lost love. but then after smoking a pipe with her, the story seems to change and suddenly we're talking about someone else. "i lived with them on montague street." who is "them"? how have the number of people in this song expanded to three or more? the next few lines deal with "he" and "she" and finally "i became withdrawn." what is happening there? who is "he" and who is "she"?

then the next stanza deals with "getting back to her." i thought he was with her! where is he? who's he hanging out with at this critical juncture?

bob, what are you talking about?

the whole love

wilco's new album is called 'the whole love' and it is due to come out on sept. 27. check out the first single in a non-live format.

born alone/dawned on me

wilco's got two new songs filtering through their live shows. check them out here: and here.

scenes from the suburbs- watch it!

go check it out!

6 degrees of the VU

everyone is familiar with the game 'six degrees of kevin bacon'. i have a new game, 'six degrees of the velvet underground'. i have a theory that i can connect every major act through the velvet underground. the rules are as such: you have to have played in a band with someone you wish to connect, produced them or collaborated with them in some way. here is an example. i can connect the beatles to the velvet underground.

1. nico- original member of the VU (she was!)
2. jackson browne- wrote several songs for nico on her debut album
3. don henley- jackson browne wrote songs for the eagles as well
4. stevie nicks- had a duet with don henley
5. tom petty- had a duet with stevie nicks
6. travelling wilbury's- tom petty was in the band with george harrison who was in the beatles

that last step is probably more like two steps. so this game might be called 'seven degrees of the velvet underground' instead. we'll see. i'm trying to connect the beach boys and i'm having a hard time. did lindsey buckingham ever work with dennis or brian wilson? if so, i have them nailed. i wonder if i can connect them through john stamos? he might be the key.

when it's sleepy time down south

i volunteered for habitat for humanity today. i dug out a place for a sidewalk, then cut the frame and then nailed/screwed it into place. i used a circular saw and performed something called a "drop-cut". for those of you who don't know what that is, you pull the guard up on the saw as you drop it down into the wood, turning on the blade as you go. it was a exciting and extremely scary. one drop cut got away from me and the saw took off in a strange circle move, cutting a useless pattern through the wood. we were still able to salvage the piece, which was nice. i also drank more water and gatorade than i have in some time. it was hot today. lots of sun. needless to say, i'm pretty tired.

my mom arrives for her visit tomorrow. i'm pretty excited. we're going to do a lot of tourist stuff, which i tend to like more than most people. we're supposed to have great weather too. it's going to be a blast.

in other news, yesterday was the five year anniversary of the day i proposed to demitria. five years man! in that time, we got married, moved to colorado, i graduated from college again, got three jobs and we have a new cat.

(intermission)

i just got called upstairs to see a blue jay in our herb box. he was not there. i think either my wife is hallucinating or is messing with me. and the blue jay may be in on it.

moving on up

if the astros move to the AL west as part of the new realignment talk, it will be 20 years before they win the division. i'm certain of it. this team cannot survive in the american league. plus, not playing the cubs/cardinals/reds? and instead playing the mariners/angels/athletics? that's terrible. just terrible. i do not like it and i will not stand for it.

moonbeam song

so when i used to work at fox sports on the overnight shift, i couldn't turn my sleeping schedule around, so i often stayed up all night on my days off. and when your days off are tuesdays and wednesdays, you spent a lot of time alone at night. and i remember i used to sit outside on my patio at my apartment at greenway gardens listening to this song on vinyl because i didn't own the cd at four in the morning. it was often nice deep in the night. and i felt like i was the only person awake in the world. i mean there cars moving all around me. but it was dark. and this song made the night move slower. i also love that harry uses the word 'crap' in such a beautiful song. that always made me laugh. i would just sit there. sometimes i'd write. sometimes i'd dance around the apartment. but it was always pleasant.

harry n. or h. nilsson

june 15th was harry nilsson's birthday. besides brian wilson, jeff tweedy and thom yorke, i think harry nilsson has shaped a huge part of my love for music.

so happy belated birthday harry.

pink glove, things are things, right?

i'm not going to joke with you. i could. and it would be easy. i find it easy. that's probably why i'm not successful. because it's easy. joking that is. world finance, not so much. no matter how much i read. futures. swaps. offs. forwards. they are difficult contracts. are they even contracts? i mean, who is dictating these terms of words and constraints? who? are you? i'm not! but if i had a massive amount of assets behind me, could i move the market in my favor? potentially. maybe.

but those things are counter to this album. this is an album of desperate people. people who are young and have no future. people who are fun and opportunist. i love it. people moving together and then bouncing off other people and quickly regrouping to re-position themselves. in front. always in front.

i'll take it home. i'll make it mine. and you'll be improved. and i'll have make-shift wood furniture and a fence. and lines of electric wire. and phone wire. things improving my life. by leaps and bounds. making me invisible. making me isolated.

making me tempered.

whatever. listen to do you remember the first time?

i was once interesting. but time. i mean. come on. time. jeez.

airline to heaven

so last weekend, or the weekend before that actually, we took a little trip, took a little trip, took a little trip hiking. we headed north towards boulder, but turned off west and went hiking in el dorado canyon. this place was awesome. we had to drive through this little town, and i mean little town. the only thing separating the houses was a dirt road with tons of potholes. i had to drive about five miles an hour. you had to pay to get in because it's actually a state park.

the park was awesome. for the first mile or so, it's straight up. you can see in the bottom shot demitria sitting down. we had some water there and i took that shot of her and tried to show how far up we were. even at that point, we had higher to go. we continued up the trail and took a few more shots. there was this giant boulder up there sitting on top of this other giant boulder. so demitria and i climbed up there and took shots of us holding it up.

finally when we were down and came all the way back down the mountain, we sat by the stream and ate some horrible sandwiches we packed. we were pretty exhausted by that point.

the top picture is the night wolf. i've been telling a few people about the night wolf. he's actually a fox and he hangs out in our neighborhood. he mostly sits in one dude's front yard. that's where he's at in the picture. he'll just sit there and hang out. the dude who owns the house said he has no idea why the night wolf hangs out there because he doesn't feed him or anything. but we get a huge kick out of seeing him. we love/fear the night wolf.

holding onto black metal pt. 2

there is a series going on that is tremendously worth reading. it is a five part series. and four parts are out. they take their titles from clint eastwood movies.

for a few dollars more

fistful of dollars

the good, the bad and the ugly

the outlaw josey wales

unforgiven (still to come)

holding onto black metal

we had a great memorial day weekend. i have some pictures to post soon. saturday i took my FAR test and we cleaned and mowed and cleaned and got ready for sunday. we grilled out on sunday and had a few people over. it was fun. too much fun. i had to hang around the house most of monday.

and then a weird thing happened. i couldn't sleep. i slept about three hours monday night and then four hours on tuesday night. i laid in bed tuesday night from 9:30 to one in the morning and i couldn't fall asleep. you ever have sleep deprevation? the world gets real slow. and work takes a long time. i hope i have some serious sleep tonight. i need some rem sleep. i went into the basement and slept last night. i'm going to try that again. it's pretty depressing not to fall asleep when you want to. you feel powerless.

fake empire

the heat beat the bulls last night to set up a rematch against the dallas mavericks. i don't really care about basketball until it gets to the finals. but what's interesting is that since 1984, only a select number of teams have won the nba championship.

1) the lakers (8)
2) the celtics (3)
3) the bulls (6)
4) the pistons (3)
5) the rockets (2)
6) the spurs (4)
7) the heat (1)

that adds up to 27. so in 27 years, we've had seven different champs. that's it. maybe the mavericks will make 8. but if you notice, those teams have come and gone and come back again, well mostly the lakers, pistons and celtics. who knows about the rest. maybe it's time for another 27 years of a different set of eight champs. maybe it's time for the warriors, the hawks, the bucks and the thunder. probably not.

Scenes from the Suburbs - trailer

fore!

yes, that is a huey lewis reference. and if i'm lucky, it won't be the last one. most of my life, i've been pretty good at sports. baseball, football, basketball, tennis. i wasn't great, but i wasn't horrible. i was never the last kid picked. well, if we were playing golf, i would be the last person picked. on earth. and earth is pretty big. with a lot of people that's how terrible i am. i couldn't even hit the ball down the fairway. i hit it left. i hit it right. i hit it on the ground. most of the time, the ball never even went in the air. sad. but i don't really enjoy the game. i don't think i'll be playing again any time soon. apparently, the nine minute video i watched last night did not do the trick. maybe i should have watched the ten minute video.

we don't need no education pt. 2

two weeks ago i was an amateur fourth grade teacher for charity. tomorrow, i will be an amateur golfer for charity. sounds fun? can anyone guess how many times i've played golf in my life? the answer after the break....

well, we're back. the answer is: zero. zero times. i have gone to a driving range once. when i was seventeen. or sixteen. i can't remember because that's how long ago it was. i think the golf outing will be more terrifying than teaching fourth graders for me.

stay tuned for the outcome.

who taught you to live like that?

is the sloan best band that nobody's heard of?

before today

my teaching day at the elementary school was awesome!!! i taught fourth graders about money and resources and gains and losses. i had lunch with them, but we were too rowdy and we couldn't talk for the last five minutes of lunch. i think i was a bad influence on the kids. i really dug it. they called me mr. wright and kept asking me to come back the next day. i had a blast.

i just heard the most amazing interview on npr. the author of a book about area 51 was talking about a source she had that claimed that the aliens that landed in new mexico were not aliens. they were genetically/surgically altered human beings by josef megele who was working with the russians. how crazy is that?!?! check out the full interview here.

the astros were sold this week. i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. i hope that new management brings in smart baseball people who can identify young talent. i think they need to make a play for the young blokes in tampa bay. one of them is from houston.

speaking of baseball, i went to my first rockies game last night. they won 7-4. we had a good time. my company paid for it. that made it even nicer.