i woke up this morning to the sound of a transformer blowing up, somewhere in the neighborhood. all the power in my apartment and all down my block was out. living on the third floor, this presented a bit of a problem, since i live and die by my air conditioner. it's already been acting up, lately, so this scenario was making it just that tiny bit worse. i went down front to see if anyone else was out trying to figure out what the problem was. i ran into our downstairs neighbor. he, like myself, was none too pleased. he said he'd call lg&e (the local electric company, for you non-louisvillians) and that was that. i quickly shuffled my ass back to bed.

i was kicked from sweet sleep again around noon, when the power actually came back on. my beautiful air conditioner roared back to life, resuming it's normal schedule of only passably cooling my room. i couldn't resist the temptation to sleep for another hour or so…

and now i'm back to watching the sopranos. i'm now into season two. i finished the first season in just over two days. i'm hoping to pace myself with this new box set…the third season doesn't come out on dvd for another month or so.

today is the weekly cookout/kickball game. my cousin steve is supposed to join us, this week. he's been saying he will for a couple of weeks now, but i think he might make it, this week. we actually ended up hanging out friday night, which was cool. he came over and we drank a lot on the back deck, making an evening of it. we got tired of sitting around and opted to head down to the well and cahoots. it was a great evening for a walk, so i was a lot of fun. we ended up spending most of the night talking about movies.

i didn't do much of note, yesterday, except for hanging out with matt and paul. we had lunch at popeye's, eschewing our normal kfc. i was skeptical, but ended up walking away impressed. and full.

time to watch another episode of sopranos before kickball…

so, i got home from work on friday, a bit unbalanced by the days events. paul and his new gal head out for dinner. brax and his … uh… amanda (status varies with barometric pressure, i think) also head out for dinner. despite the fact that i'm actually hungry for once on a friday evening, i decide that it's a good time to go upstairs, grab a copy of the book of poems i wrote for the ex on Valentines day many many moons ago, and sit down and relive days gone by. (this should give some indication of my state of mind) this is around 7:30-ish.

a few hours later, i'm waking up in the chair, completely dazed, drained of all energy, wanting only a cigarette & more sleep. and… that's exactly what i get.

i plop down ("throw myself upon" would be more accurate) on my bed, and proceed to sleep for the next 12 or so hours.

of course, i woke up around midnight, then again around 4:30am, but since i couldn't think of any reason to actually get up, i just went back to sleep.

9:30am i proceeded to Bobby E's (Bob Evans for those who aren't living in my skull) for some solitary breakfast and a review of my novel "in progress." (that last part is in quotes because i'm sure it's debatable that the small number of words added to my novel over the past two years could be called–even remotely–progress)

next, home, laundry, Star Trek:TNG DVD box set (disc 5–4 episodes), lunch/dinner with paul & j. brian "Jersey Boy" hall, email/quicken, more TNG DVD (disc 6–4 more episodes), and then now, this sentence, this word, this .

(i think someone's used that before, i'm not as clever as you think i'm not.)

anyway, oh, and there was some smoking of cigarettes and playing of galaga interspersed in the preceeding list as well. sprinkle liberally.

so now, i came up here to the computer for some purpose. oh yes! entering the rent-to-own information on the digital recorder and figuring out exactly how much i've (we've–the band) left to pay. and then maybe, if i can find the motivation, figuring out an easy way to get all those "recipe of the day" emails out of emails and into a file that can be easily imported into a recipe database program.

but upon arriving up here, at my computer, i glanced at my desktop (as i am wont to do when i'm trying to click on things to start programs) i noticed an image there that i'd forgotten. and that image prompted me to write this post. aren't you lucky.

i can't recall if i mentioned the minor quest i went on when attempting to create the LP show flyer i did, but nevertheless–i went on a minor quest. i was looking for book jacket scans from old 30's & 40's pulp detective/horror novels. in that search i found this little gem. all you heshers should enjoy this.

i think i may have to use that face for our next flyer.

paul may have very well contributed to my inability to function as a normal member of society. last night i was over there hanging out with matt and i ended up borrowing the sopranos season one dvd set. well…18 or so hours later, i'm now on my eighth episode of the crime drama. keep in mind that i watched six straight, last night. six straight hours of mob dysfunction. it's no wonder i'm also in the middle of cooking up a big mess of pasta…

so i have an obsessive personality…big deal. i liked the show a lot back when we used to have hbo.

the job search continues. i've got some solid leads, but i'm killing another hour or so before i go put in more apps. i figure i'll flood the market and see what calls back.

oh yeah…i also made a call to be an extra in a movie, next week. the first step to me conquering hollywood, i'm sure. expect a full update when the shit goes down.

in order to get in at least one more post this week, i'm resorting to some good old-fashioned link throwing.

first of all, there's my co-worker's site: http://www.ae4rv.com
he's been creating flash-based games for a while now, and has several fun ones. his latest venture, and a very addictive game, is StarMonger… essentially a game of Risk in space. It's still a "beta" product, but well worth the visit, if you're into that sort of thing.

I pointed this one out to Nate yesterday, and he was loving it.

In turn, he passed on some links to me, most of which i noticed were from this directory. turns out, whoever this guy is, he's been hoarding humorous bits of internet arcana for quite a while now, and has quite an impressive collection. There's some horrendously funny stuff in there (i haven't gone through it all yet, though i was up for a couple extra hours last night busting a gut when i should have been sleeping) like this little gem. (warning, "this little gem" could be considered very tasteless & offensive)

y'know there's a reason i don't do a lot of linking to esoteric internet hole-in-the-walls. i pretty much figure that if i've heard of it, that it's been on MemePool or something similar like 2 months ago, and has been bouncing around internet mailing lists, message boards, and email forwarding chains for at least that long. in other words, i figure if i've seen it, you probably have too. if there's one thing that I and my fellow blogging compatriots are, it's link whores. so be it.

nevertheless, a post was needed, and a post has been made.

(oh, and i was supposed to post about the Dell Computer guy–from the commercials–getting fined by the Screen Actor's Guild for filming commercials during an actor's strike 2 years ago. unfortunately, the only link i could find to this bit of news was this one, which pretty much just sucks since it's only like 3 sentences. blah. "Dude, you're gettin' a fine." hehe, that's clever. grrrr. )

the other night i had a pretty bizarre dream. the fact that i can remember it pretty clearly all the way up to today is pretty surprising…

in this dream i was in some sort of community home with an ex-girlfriend from a few years ago and a girl i've thought was pretty hot for a couple of years now. anyhowways…we're in this home and the girls are preparing for a trip to ireland or scotland or some business. while we're all sitting around discussing the trip, they both bring up the fact that they are dying to get over there and hook up with a native. their explanation? "those accents are so sexy!" so disheartened because i like both of these girls and am, sadly enough, american, i go to hang out with a good friend that happens to be ewan mcgregor. we hit the bars and we're drinking our asses off and ewan hatches a plan for me to fake a scottish accent and act like i was from scotland all along. he teaches me all the basics of ripping off his speech patterns and sends me on my way. to my surprise, the girls fall for it and all of a sudden i'm mr. cool.

the dream then degenerates into weirdness with us touring some multi-tiered religious garden with ridiculously gory catholic statuary. bloody saints, christ writhing on the cross, etc. luckily, that's right about where i woke up, completely dumbfounded by the whole thing. i wish i could remember what i ate or drank before i went to bed, that night…because i'd never do it again.

elizabeth ended up not wanting to watch north by northwest, last night. we ended up hanging out at the well for a little while and then went back to her place to watch hurlyburly. i've seen it before, but i still enjoyed it the second time around. sean penn is at his best when he's absolutely whacked out.

now i'm back into my continuing quest for employment. wish me luck…

i keep forgetting to mention how awesome the new weezer video is. rock + muppets = a new level of fun. check it out now.

today has been officially declared "get a fucking job day." i set out a little later than i planned to, but it looks like i've got a few prospects. i plan to get something at a restaurant at night and maybe a coffeeshop in the morning or something. i also have a possibility lined up for next month which would be a lot more lucrative, i think. but to be honest…anything would be more lucrative than what i have at the moment, which is a big bunch of nothing.

anyone want to hire a down on his luck graphic designer? anyone? bueller?

last night was a low key night of hanging at at cahoots with elizabeth. we ran into raymon and ended up hanging out and chatting for a while. we called it a night pretty early. it's nice to have a completely unexciting night every now and then.

tonight i'll probably meet up with matt for some comics and denny's and then it's movie night with elizabeth. tonight's selection is the hitchcock classic, north by northwest. should be a whiz bang delightful evening of…very little activity. ahhh…sweet nothing.

ok. so i'm a liar. most of you should have me figured out by now though, if i say that i'll post again tomorrow, it almost always means you won't hear from me for a week. i thought that was accepted practice around here… guess i'll have to re-read the employee handbook.

so, anyway, let's step back in time to a week and four days ago. for most of the time leading up to our first show, i wasn't nervous at all. occasionally i'd have a bout, but generally i was butterfly-free. on friday, brax & i were just chilling about the house, me being on vacation and him being off of work, and it pretty much hit us both at the same time. we'd just got done watching some TNG season 3 episodes from my swanky DVD box set, and then all of a sudden about four hours before the show, we're both getting nervous. we made our now-standard jokes about how funny it would be if we all called in to the bar and told them we'd all come down with some stomach bug or something, calling in sick for our first show.

we finally got our shit together and went over to jim's house, grabbed a little beer and whiskey (to calm the nerves) and waited for our of & underage transports to arrive. Paul was first to get there and we hung out for a few minutes before the girls showed up. two of the girls are brax's former co-workers, and they're both incredibly cute, barely underage, and unfortunately attached (not to each other). when they showed up–right on time–they'd also brought along another friend of theirs who also fit all of the above criteria (not sure about the attached part, since i couldn't work up the gumption to broach that particular question). everybody pitched in and loaded our stuff into the back of the truck, then we all left for the bar.

we arrived, met one of the guys from another band, and he pointed out where we needed to bring our stuff in. the sound guy showed up as we were preparing to unload, so we went ahead and started loading onto the stage. amazingly enough, at this point, i wasn't nervous at all. er, well, maybe a little. we got all our shit set up, the waitress brought us some drinks, we did our sound check, played portions of a couple songs, then went out into the "crowd" to talk to all our friends (the only people who were there other than the other bands). we tried to stall for a while, but at about 15 minutes after 10 (when we were supposed to start) we pretty much had to go on or get lynched. all told, i think we had 15 – 20 people there–mostly our friends, as i said–to watch us on our first outing. it was what i would consider a good turnout. amazingly enough, once we started the sound-check, pretty much all the nervousness went away, and we were down to "bidness."

now, we're all too well aware that most of our friends aren't into the kind of music that we play, so it really meant a lot to us for them to come. the support of friends is a powerful and very much appreciated thing.

we took the stage pretty much without saying a word, and started up our first song. of course, Jim was borrowing a bass amp from dave (red taled hawk), and when he played the first note (not having had a dedicated bass amp in any of our practices) it freaked him out to the point where he nearly lost the bassline. he did manage to get hold of himself, and we continued on. i'd have to say we did a pretty damn good job for our first time playing out like that, and considering the "PA system" such as it was, was crap. once we got to the louder parts in our later songs, we pretty much couldn't hear a damn thing from the monitors. i got totally off track in the first song, by a little more than a measure, but we just kept playing like it didn't matter. i think it happened in another song too, and again we just kept going.

one of the things i was the most afraid of was that we'd have a minor problem like that, and we'd just stop in the middle and have to restart the song. thankfully that didn't happen.

of course, now that we've had our first show, we've all been lazy bastards and haven't called around anywhere to set up another one. gotta work on that.
but this one went well, our friends were there, they enjoyed seeing us doing our thing, and we're anxious to get out again.

my life the unexplainable, neverending party:

last night scott and i took it upon ourselves to scour the kitchen until it was almost shiny new. this took a long time, but those who know what it was like before we claim that we pulled off some sort of minor miracle. after we got done with that, we decided to take the basketball and shoot around at one of the courts nearby, just to get some air. we hung out and made a few shots and missed a hell of a lot more, when we decided to head home and fire up the grill. after some tasty flame grilled gardenburgers, we decided to loaf around the house and be lazy. i mean, shit…we got a lot done, so why not relax?

that's when the phone started ringing. a few people called me and started asking what "everyone" was getting into, that evening. this is really funny, considering how out of the loop i try to stay, sometimes. i informed a couple of friends that scott and i were just relaxing around the house. this ended up turning into an invite for a few friends to come over and drink. so a couple of girls and a couple of guys ended up over at the house, getting drunk and playing strip poker. everyone was a real trooper and sat around completely naked except for one party pooper, but i guess you can't win 'em all.

after that we sat around playing a favorite drinking game of our's: drink while you think. this only lasted until the neighbors decided we were getting too rowdy and started beating on the walls. some people just can't get into a bunch of screaming drunkards at 3:30am, i guess. how lame can you get? so faced with the prospect of having to be quiet (a near impossibility, considering how drunk a couple of us were), we decided to go crash a pool at a nearby apartment complex.

considering that we started off the evening getting naked, i guess it's no stretch of the imagination to figure out what went down once everyone got to the pool. nightswimming, indeed. so we drank more, swam some, and hung out in the hot tub (hey…if you're gonna crash a pool, make sure it's a good one). scott ended up disappearing and i went to go looking for him i was about to swim under the divider that seperates the inside portion of the pool from the outside when i saw the flashlight beams and scott making a mad dash to swim back inside. apparently our party was getting crashed a little early. one of our friends was stuck out there and had to scrunch up against the side of the pool, half submerged, just barely staying out of the line of sight. we all hid out in the hot tub until the flashlights went away and our other friend was able to make his way in and give the all clear. needless to say, we got the hell out of dodge.

it's not summer if you're not out causing a maximum amount of trouble. let the good times roll…

another sunday, another intense game of kickball. i've come to the conclusion that bitching, beer drinking and shit-talk is as much a part of the game as the actual runs scored and dazzling catches made in the outfield. today's game was only the second time that i've been on a losing team, this season. i did end up making some good defensive plays, redeeming myself for a dropped catch by turning it into a double play at second. i was pretty stoked, to say the least. i got on base a couple of times, but never crossed home plate. you win some, you lose some.

we didn't cook out today. i don't really know what the particular reason was, but i think it involved the fact that rob's car wasn't working and jeremy (his roommate) was in the studio, recording his parts for the upcoming second story man record. this left rob with the dilemma of taking only what he could carry on his bike to the park (roughly pronounced "the kickball"). we made due. we hit the field and played until the sun was a distant memory. if we could ever get the damn parks department to turn the lights on after dark at the softball field, we'd be able to keep the season going well into the fall. once again…win some, lose some.

after the game i skipped the usual trek to the dark star (a local bar that caters heavily to the hippie crowd) for the usal $4 pitcher boozefest, and opted to hang out and home and take it easy. scott had pretty much the same idea, passing out on the couch right around midnight.

i forgot to mention that scott's band (telavet) played their last show friday night. it was a damn good show, surrounded by friend of the band and art. it kinda seemed like they ran out of steam towards the last half of the set, cramming in some not-so-frequently-played numbers, but that's definitely forgivable. you should head over to the telavet site and download some of the demos and such. they were damn good, even for one of those dastardly instrumental bands.

two posts in two days…let's see if i can get back on a normal schedule…