I think I watch too much TV…

That is the absolute truth. I’ve watched more TV in the last 6 months than I have in the last 10 years. I hate it. But I can’t stop.

Never thought I would be one of those people…but I am. I fall asleep to shows on the internet with the laptop in the bed. I eat dinner to the latest ridiculously predictable crime drama. I wind down the day and check my e-mail, myspace and facebook along with all the ordinary office workers and their annoying narcissistic boss. I wrap up the night, let the dogs out for the last time, turn the lights out and set my alarm to the closing comments of who’s getting booted from Bromance and Rock of Love.

During my workday my life is divided into 8 hour segments, sometimes if I’m lucky it’s divided into “before lunch” and “after lunch”. When I get home my life gets divided up into half hour segments, dinner cooked and bathroom breaks during commercials.

When I get the urge I walk our neighborhood at night, no TV, no internet, just headlights, bikes, stars and the dull blue glow of the TV coming from an endless sidewalk of living room windows. Surely is cliche to discuss the dumbing down of the human race with an endless onslaught of entertainment but when I’m part of it and I know it it’s a little different. I can walk past the windows and catch glimpses of rolling credits, the well-sprayed hair of the 11 O’clock news reporter, sports highlights and cheesy comedians waiting for the end of the laugh track to deliver the next line. Is this really what we’ve become? Of course it is. I spend the majority of my workday staring at a screen, I come home and stare at a screen while I have another in my peripheral. I finally have a real thought, an emotion that I feel like sharing and I’m typing it into a screen. I feel like we’re living the dream of some fucked-up prophetic Orwellian future.

Most times, when we have people over to visit, we prepare a nice rubber cone full of frozen peanut butter for our dogs so they’ll chill out and not bother people. They keep to themselves and don’t jump on people or compete for the attention of strangers. We laugh at the fact that we pulled one over on them and they don’t even realized we tricked them into their quiet little world where we can do whatever we want and they don’t care because they’re occupied. I’m pretty sure that’s how I’m living my life. The TV is my frozen peanut butter. Whether I’m actively engaged or hearing it in the background, I have no motivation to concentrate on anything original that may be going on in my brain. It’s simply white noise inhibiting me from completing any brain functions that would be beneficial to my survival in this world. When I walk the neighborhoods, past the houses of my fellow Americans, my cohorts in the human race, I don’t hear friendly conversation, plans to sail the seas or to make our world a better place. I don’t hear revolution taking place in our living rooms, I hear the sheer silence of ignorant, clueless complacency.

People work hard, all day long. People use their muscles, their brains and everything they’ve got to make it through the day. I understand the desire to come home from a whole day of physical work or a fried brain and want to think about absolutely nothing. TV is great for that, it helps us relax our brains. But it seems that’s all we do. We don’t go out on work nights. If we need to go anywhere on a work day we try our hardest to do it on the way home from work so we don’t have to go back out after we get home. Restaurants and bars are practically void of the working class on a weekday. Some of the lucky ones get to go bowling on Wednesdays with the guys or happy hour on Thursday. No matter what time we may get off work, for some reason, when we do, our day is almost over. I don’t really have some crazy revelation about that I was just thinking..what the fuck?!

Sixty to 80 years ago during the beginning of radio and TV families gathered around to hear nightly tales of intrigue, mystery and fantasy. We were looking to escape our mundane lives for awhile, we’d have dinner together at the table, have a cocktail, let the kids do some homework then spend maybe an half-hour a night crowded around to hear the latest adventures of the all American super spy, then we’d go back to reading or whatever it is we may have been doing. Now, we run home switch on the TV and revel in reality. To take complacency to the Nth degree we actually look forward to going home and spending the night watching lives of people on TV that are just like our own! We find the greatest humor in our own trivialities. We watch other people’s tales of hope and loss and regret and feel better about identifying with them. Smell-o-vision will most likely never be a reality but what we do have is feel-o-vision. We’ve outsourced our emotions, joy, fear, love and all of our life experiences to what we watch on TV.

I’d like to think I’m a one-man union shop. I don’t want other people living for me. I want my own experiences and emotions and successes and failures. I want to drink with friends and sing along drunk to my favorite songs, I want to walk my streets at night and think of how amazing the color midnight blue looks through the mid-January version of 200 year old oak trees. I want to watch college kids make asses of themselves on the first Thursday night out of the semester. I want to go on road trips with my best friend and love of my life and scream along to the music we listened to when we were too shy to tell people we liked each other. I want to write songs with amazing people that know exactly what I want my music to sound like so we can get drunk and play those songs and scream them at the top of our lungs with friends and the unfortunate few who may hopefully in the future become our friends. I want to drive across country and get drunk as shit with old friends because as much as we might think the internet has brought us all closer it will never replace endless hours of interstate travel and the effect a few beers will have on you after those hours in the physical presence of people you grew up with. This exactly what I want to do. If I were to draw up a life plan it wouldn’t include retirement plans and IRAs, it can be summarized in the last 10 lines. Somewhere down the line I’m determined to live the life I want to live. If all goes well and I get a good night’s sleep I’ll start tomorrow, after all, it’s Friday and there ain’t shit on TV.

Oh Snap!

So I was at surfside tonight and who was there? No you would never guess unless you’re a loser that watches reality shows. Daisy (from Rock of Love’s) cheesy boyfriend. Yeah, the doucher in the picture. Not sure why people think its cool to look “evil” or tough. This guy eats all kind of dick.

Possibly the worst job in the world…

Sign-holder person, tied with mall-kiosk employee for the worst jobs in the universe.

Things that are bothering me…

First of all I’d like to say I’ve seen way too many people on campus as of late wearing glasses that tint with the light! What the fuck are you thinking? That being said, I have to say many of these people did also have stringy butt-cut type hair dos and they may possibly still wear Nirvana t-shirts they just recently ordered from the back of some alternative/metal music magazine. But there are also those of you that don’t look like that but still have them, absolutely not acceptable.

Along with those (hopefully no one has the combo) are fucking bluetooth head sets. Seriously?! I’m as weak as the next guy but holding a god damn phone up to your head isn’t that hard. MAYBE if I was driving through downtown Chicago during rush hour, eating buffalo wings, driving a stick shift and playing air drums and I really needed to take the most important call I’ll ever get in my life I might consider using one of these things, but most likely not. Seriously, you don’t look any more important or richer..recognize.

Relate-ability(sic?): All the presidential candidates are competing to prove who is most like me. Who’s the most common, just like the working class. Who knows what its like…who’s been there. I can tell you what, I didn’t finish college till I was 31. I graduated high school with a 2.5 GPA, in the worst school district in the state of Ohio. I drink a lot. I’m generally pretty unmotivated and I eat shit I shouldn’t. I watch too much reality TV, swear like a sailor and can barely speak english let alone any other language. WHY IN THE FUCK WOULD I WANT SOMEONE JUST LIKE ME TO RUN THIS COUNTRY?! I have not the first clue what it takes to be president of the United States.
Do I want some rich person who’s never had to grocery shop in their life? No. But what I do want is someone who’s been around the world. Someone who can appreciate other cultures and has experienced the world. I want someone who finished top of their class at one of the best universities in the world. Am I speaking favorably of Obama? Yes, but he’s as guilty as them all of trying to prove how “average” he is. He may not have been born rich but someone that smart has never been average.

I can say I don’t want someone who thinks dinosaurs are a myth, the Earth is only 5000 years old and homosexuals can be “cured of their disease” with prayer. I don’t want someone that thinks hunting from an airplane or helicopter is fair. Everyone’s going to be called sexist for calling Sara Palin out on her shit. What I think is sexist is picking her because you think it will help you win over women voters. I don’t care what color or gender the candidates are, it doesn’t change the fact that Sara Palin is one of the biggest assholes to ever run for public office. Women didn’t go through all the fighting for the right to vote so today’s women can try to put a woman into office for the sake of putting a woman in office. It makes me sick to think anyone would go to the republicans because Hillary didn’t make it. If that’s the case you are doing a disservice to anyone that’s ever fought for the right to vote.

In new polls being released, it seems white men are in favor of McCain, white women like Palin and African Americans like Obama. Are we all that fucking stupid? This isn’t a football game, we’re not picking who we want to win based on who’s wearing the coolest uniforms. Vote on the issues and what you believe in. If keeping the status quo with white male Washington, seeing the first woman VP in office or the first black president is more important to you than the issues these candidates stand behind then I’m embarrassed to be American and we don’t deserve the freedom we claim we love so much.

You can see the most random shit just walking around your own neighborhood.

It’s been so long since I’ve been able to write anything. I feel my brain isn’t challenged anymore. I can see my typing skills diminishing. I have a hard time carrying a coherent thought in my head for more than a few minutes. It seems I need the perfect “zen” like atmosphere to be able to create anything. I truly regret having a TV and cable. There’s nowhere in my house to escape the dull drone of cable reality shows. I admit I get caught up in it, I feel all the dumber for it.

I decided to go for a walk tonight. I like to walk around my neighborhood and listen to some Lucero or something similar. I think about all the goings on in my life. I have a backlog of things I’d been meaning to think about but never can due to all the other “noise” going on in life everyday. I was excited to run through all the possible ideas I have but can’t decide in which medium to use them. I’m trying to start a band so I need to write songs. I like to blog, I also like to write, putting down various ideas for short stories and what not. I also have a lot of thoughts on the current election that I need to write down some time. Unfortunately the first part of my walk, Lucero helped me ponder the possible outcomes of VH1’s “G’s to Gents” show.

There are some ugly houses in my neighborhood. People really like crafts hanging from every possible spot on every wall in their houses. They like keeping their houses really bright so you can see in their front windows. I saw a woman running across from where I was walking. She looked to be carrying a very large ring of keys that I could hear over my headphones. She was blond and had a white sweater on. She wasn’t running very steady. As she ran under the street light and on to the curb starting the next block, she tripped and fell. There was a guy running about ¼ a block behind her. She got up and took off across the street running again. He seemed to be chasing her and yelling the words “west, west on oak!!” into a cell phone. About 30 seconds later, they were gone; a car pulls up yells something and screeches off to where they ran. About a block later I see two people on a bright porch talking intently. I pause my music to hear them as I walk past: “don’t put this in your body, you’re body builds up a resistance to the gaba(?)” Then a drunk woman speaks: “you mean I am resistant to the gaba?” I turn my music on and continue past.

A little behind on the photo blog thing

Here are a few pics from my life lately. Just thought I’d share. First up is our first trip to Red Rocks Amphitheater. It’s a little west of Denver. We saw the Cure. Pretty cool place, a bit too big of a place for me to see a band but the views were pretty awesome.

During the day before the show from way up top.

[caption id="attachment_53" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="Crowd shot at night. "][/caption]

The Cure

random stuff: Fort Collins wating for the train..

Waiting for the train

Hiking Vedauwoo (vay-duh-voo) near Laramie in Wyoming:

Vedawoo Wyoming-Hiking

Cannibalization

So we’ve recently heard the cool news that Starbucks is closing 600 stores nationwide. Today we hear the Bennigan’s/Steak and Ale have filed Chapter 7 and are all closing. Besides all the service industry employees that are now out of work I can’t see a downside to any of this. But the question to be asked here is why these places are closing/shrinking? Are the small businesses making a comeback? Are these coffee shops and cookie cutter restaurants starting to cannibalize their own businesses? Either way is fine with me as long as I see these places going away. Of course I’d rather it be that small “mom & pop” shops are making a comeback. Are people finally fed up with the overpriced crap that comes out of these places? I believe starbucks may have gotten too big too fast. Once riding the bus down the 16th street mall in downtown Denver there were starbucks on 6 stops out of the 8-10 that I was on. They bus ride is less than a mile long. We were sitting across from the double doors that open to the sidewalk and businesses on each stop and at least 3 stops in a row the doors opened to that green starbucks sign. I guess the worst part of that is there was people at all of them.

I understand that the baristas at Starbucks are actually fairly well trained so I”m sure they won’t have a problem moving to the Starbucks on the next corner or maybe even a smaller coffee shop. I’m sitting at one of Fort Collins independent coffee shops right now. I have to walk past Starbucks every time to get here and have to shake my head at all the people sitting outside drinking severely overpriced coffee and crapuccinos thinking how cool it is to be part of this great local community. Besides the people that work there, that money doesn’t stay in this economy. While they have tried really hard as of late to portray themselves as a “green” business and use fair-trade coffee they don’t use our local resources, I don’t even think they offer free wireless for fuck-sake! My coffee shop has free wireless, .25 cent refills and an independent bookstore in the back. My coffee shop has always used local resources whenever possible and fair-trade coffee. My coffee shop adamantly supports our local bike community. All of this in my local independent coffee shop is done with lower prices than Starbucks.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the employees of Bennigan’s, at least not the waitstaff. I can say I don’t think I’ve ever eaten at a Bennigan’s or if I have its been quite a few years. I can tell you it’s just like all the other bad cookie-cutter chain restaurants all over this country. Horrible service, the waitstaff doesn’t care at all. If you’ve seen the movie “Waiting” its not far off at all. These places have some of the most un-attentive apathetic servers I have ever seen. Not every place can be fine-dining with well-trained servers that realize your attitude and service directly effect the tips you make. That said, I’m not saying all servers are bad, go to Waffle House any late night and watch the servers bust their ass for 2 dollar tips. The employees of Waffle House are probably some of the hardest working people in the biz -in the kitchen and on the floor. There also a reason you can’t go in to one of these places (Bennigan’s Applebees, Olive Garden…) and ask for no sausage in your pasta or no onions in your salad. Its all pre-made, comes in bags/boxes straight off of a truck. These places don’t have chefs or cooks as much as they have food preparers. They open a bag and heat up the food and put it on a plate. And the people in the kitchen will have an easier time finding a new job than the servers.

In all, I’m just glad to see these places slowing down a little. They’re still putting small businesses out of business everyday but its nice to see that these places aren’t totally indestructible. So lets keep this “progress” moving. Lets see these guys eat up their own profits and continue the cannibalization. Stay local. Patron your local restaurants and coffee shops. Keep that money in your local economy.

So we went to Warped Tour…

Yeah, so overall we had a good time cause we met some really cool people and got to hang with our friends. Overall Warped Tour sucks. We’re over 30 and walking around in 90+ degree heat with a bunch of teenagers passing out drunk by 1 in the afternoon is not that cool. So we walked around the actual concert for about an hour before we got to go backstage with our friend James. He had some friends with him that his wife knew that lived in Vail and we met them and hung out with them most of the day. They were really nice and we’re most likely going to hang out again. Some of them used to live in Florida and they listen to good music so we got along. We don’t meet many people in Colorado that listen to good music…especially some cool people that live in the mountains.

So anyway we were at Warped Tour. People over 24 should not go there. We were fortunate enough to be friends with one the bands playing (Against Me!) and got to hang “backstage”. We got to watch our friends band from the stage and drink our own beer and hang in their “tent” area, play foosball and have a good time. I appreciate them for that. They’ve gotten really popular of late and also taken a lot of shit for that but I can say with all honesty that they are still some of the friendliest most appreciative people I’ve met. They were really the only band we saw all day. I wanted to see Pennywise, only cause I never have but we all went to a bar across the street and forgot. We all hung out and had an awesome time without actually seeing any bands (I may also point out that we didn’t pay for any of this) and even got to go to an awesome bar afterwards. The dude from Planes Mistaken for Stars had a huge van and he drove us all to the the 3 kings. We saw some indie rock band from Seattle that I felt bad for cause, people were not against seeing a band, I think we were more just burnt out on seeing live music in general. It was the last show of their tour and it really seemed no one promoted them, no one played with them and worst of all, the road weary and band weary people already there didn’t care to hear another band.

Overall it was an awesome time. We made some good new friends, saw some good old friends and had some good experiences. Andrew even supposedly got me on the guest list for the Dropkick Murphy’s show in Fort Collins, we’ll see if they remember. Anyway here are some really bad pics from the stage of warped tour Denver of Against Me!

Warped Tour Against Me! 2

The Gaslight Anthem best cd EVER!

So I admit I got the new Gaslight through less than honorable means. A few hints about a leaked new album and I just couldn’t help myself, after all they were already one of my favorite bands. I might also point out that I have already ordered a copy of the 7” that’s coming out this month and a blue vinyl full length coming out August 19th.

On to the CD itself. Holy shit, I knew from hearing the first song “59′ sound” on their myspace that this would be amazing. When I first heard that I thought it was amazing but was a bit skeptical of the production and the amount of reverb on everything. As I started to appreciate it I thought “how awesome this would sound on vinyl”. Then they not only put our the vinyl for sale but the first song features some vinyl sounds in the beginning.

I will say this did not have the punch that Sink or Swim had. Maybe not as much angst and his voice doesn’t quite get as aggressive. But these songs really can’t get any more perfect honestly. “in the backseat we’re just trying to find some room for our knees” Brilliant in its simplicity and honesty.

I think over the past 10 years bands have changed the way we look at what kind of music is punk or not punk. Bands like Gaslight, Lucero and Against Me! have taught us that we don’t need loud electric guitars and songs about honesty and emotion is not something to be ashamed of. 10 years ago if you asked me if I would listen to a band like this I might have laughed it off. Now country, Springsteen and Replacements aren’t bad influences and it makes music better than I can ever remember. Those aren’t absent from the new Gaslight and its obvious that these guys have more on their minds than what any scene may think about them. Some blues, folk, soul and still a good dose of punk inspire these guys to write amazing sing-a-long anthems that are perfect for any road trip, BBQ or kegger. I’ve had this CD for about 5 days and listened to it about 18 times so far, its just that fucking good.

The bottom line is this CD makes me want to hang out with all my good fiends drink a lot of beer, sing a long to some awesome music and make some memories for all that is to come. In my book music just doesn’t get any better than that.

Possibly the best picture ever!

Just thought I would share this.