(10th anniversary of heaven's gate)

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Ahhh…the year-end wrap-up. Where to start? To be honest, most of the shit that happened to me I didn't post about. Why have I been maintaining radio silence? Who knows?

I finally joined the rest of the web-using world and started utilizing digg. I even dugg a post I posted here. Oh…I'm such a whore.

Today I'm bemoaning the fact that we're not a more regularly updated, noticed "blog." I mean…they could have sent us a couple of these, for fucksake.

I've spent an inordinate amount of time listening to Neil Young, lately. Mostly Crazy Horse material. It's speaking to the parts of the brain Brooksie and I have started activating for the new band. Speaking of the new band, it's tentatively titled "Birth Machine." We expect to rattle the foundation of a local venue this spring.

I guess the biggest news of the season is that i had to have Clyde put to sleep (the Thursday before Christmas; it made the holiday even more fun). Some of you long-time readers (if there's any left) will remember Clyde as my beloved cat of the past decade. She had a tumor on her chest that spread to her lungs. Toward the end she was having trouble breathing and would only eat fresh turkey and "catmilk" (speaking of which, I have two things of that stuff left, if anyone needs/wants it), which made us think it was all just some elaborate scam on her part. Regardless, we couldn't take it anymore and took her back to the vet. He gave us the dire news and we all endured a bit of pre-holiday heartbreak.
Needless to say, she's incredibly missed.

Clyde - 1996-2006

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So I caught a commercial for pillsbury grands earlier, and they showed them making little pizzas on the biscuits. I took the time to look around the internet for recipes, but none of them sounded like they were exactly what I thought I saw.

So I was forced to go to Kroger and get some supplies and see if I could make my own version. Here's what I came up with:

Old Man Hall's Pizza Grands

1 can Pillsbury Grands biscuits (Flaky, any flavor,)
1 jar Kroger Pizza Zip (I went with Traditional)
1 bag pizza cheese
x amount, whatever other toppings you want

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Split the individual biscuits in half (thinner, flakier crust) and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet (I'd like to try making these on one of those pizza stones) about an inch apart. Then spread one spoonful of sauce on top of each one (I went all the way to the edge). Cheese 'em up to your liking, add any other toppings, then bake for 12-14 minutes. You definitely want to check them after about 10-12 minutes, because the bottoms can burn fast, if you're not careful.

Needless to say, these motherfuckers are delicious. I may want to opt for the half-size package of biscuits, next time. Something tells me I'm never gonna eat 16 of these little bastards, delicious as they are.

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while i sit here at work, waiting on a simple answer to a possibly not-so-simple questions from someone higher up the ladder, i figure i'll write up a post for ol' bipolar.

this weekend was chock full of shows. too many shows, as fate would have it. i saw shellac and uzeda friday night. the sound was glorious, the venue was unbearably hot. it all ended up being worth it, though. shellac really kicked out the jams. i noticed that it doesn't really matter what albini does on the guitar, as the rhythm section just locks in and keeps burning along. i think i'd kill for a bass player of bob weston's caliber.
friday night ended up with all kinds of drunken chicanery that i can't be bothered to try and remember clearly.

saturday was another hot one in st. john's for shipping news and wolverine brass. for some reason, that night the sound was fucking terrible. you take the good with the bad, i guess. after that show, i headed over to za's to see arch and buffalo bill. buffalo bill covered motley crue's "wild side." i was most pleased. after that…more drunkeness.

sunday my allergies put the hurt on me. probably the multiple days of drowning myself in second hand smoke. who knows? either way, i ended up having to skip the young widows show. i took some allergy medicine and actually passed out during the car chase scene in ronin. i really didn't know that was humanly possible.

but sunday night, i got my sea legs back under me and was able to hit up the crack of doom reunion show, which was a total blast. i think it even caused more permanent hearing damage to my right ear. always a sign of a great show.

well…i got that simple answer i was waiting on.

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wow. what a weekend. probably the most solidly fun couple of days I've had in a while. friday night i ended up at a party in some friends' practice space. lots of booze, lots of other stuff. lots of fun with lots of friends. i was up until about 4am.

and then i was back awake at 9am to go shooting at the knob creek gun range. before saturday, i hadn't shot a gun for a good 10-15 years. i guess it just doesn't come up in daily life in the city. well…at least not the parts of the city i've lived in. despite my long lapse, i think i did decently well. i hit within the circle 11 out of 18 shots (one of them on the right side got ripped off when we removed the target from the box it was taped and stapled to) I fired 20 rounds, but I wasted two shots blowing up a dr. pepper bottle that was on top of my target. here's a gratuitous shot of me glockin' it up.
after that, we went to ernesto's for some mexican and a couple pitchers of dos equis. i ended up getting home a little buzzed and alot tired, so i took a nap.

i woke up from my nap at around 8:30. from there it was out the door to pick up some equipment and then head out to the dead child show. i will go ahead and say that this show had the best line-up of bands that this city has seen in years. pusher, lords, blade of the ripper, dead child…wall-to-wall metal mayhem. i recorded the whole thing. expect the sets to start showing up on transmission3000 soon. after the show, i ended up staying up until 6:30am, generally getting up to no good.

fittingly, i didn't do jack shit, yesterday.

today…back to work. i have to take my car back into the fucking shop when i get off work, as the door handle stopped working about 4 hours after i picked the car up, last thursday. i think i got about 5 opens out of it before it died again. splendid.

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man…i fucking hate it when my car is in the shop. i feel so stuck. so…helpless. bumming rides just to do the mundane shit, like picking up dinner. lame. i made plans to go hang out with a friend, last night, then realized i didn't have wheels to get over there. luckily brooksie was home and let me use his.

and the calls from the technicians working on my car, asking me stupid questions they should have already answered for themselves…ugh. just fix the fucking thing, already.

they're laying down some shitty tile at work. the fumes from the glue are insane, so they sent everybody home. i better get paid for that time, though.

i forgot to mention a couple of new shows up at transmission3000: wolverine brass and lords. both rockin', both badass. enjoy.

i'm gonna go sit on the couch and watch last night's daily show…

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So…life's a real bitch, ain't it? Today, when I got off work, I went out to my car and hit the unlock button on the ol' keychain, just like I do every time I get into my car. Mark was riding with me, and he was a little slow opening the door, so he got it right when the car was relocking itself. Well, the alarm started going off. No problem. You just shut the door and hit the disarm/unlock button and the shit goes off, right? No harm, no foul, right?

Nope.

The fucking thing kept blaring. We both get in the car and I'm maniacally hitting the unlock button, trying to get the motherfucker to turn off. No such luck. Finally, it just…stops. Strange. So I go to start the car, and the fucking thing starts going off again. It won't even let me start the car. The ignition is locked the fuck out. Awesome. So I climb out, still pushing that button like a madman, and nothing is happening. So I do what any other sane person in my position would do.

I kicked a dent in the side of my car.

Oddly enough, this had no effect on the blaring car alarm. It would go off for about 30 seconds to a minute, then stop. As soon as you tried to open one of the doors again, it would start right the fuck back up. I walked to a pharmacy down the street and they miraculously had the right battery for the remote. So I bought the battery, replaced it, went back to my car…nothing.

I called St. Matthews Imports and they referred me to Swope. Swope then tells me it's real easy to fix.

"Just insert the key into the ignition and push and hold the security button on your stereo…"

This is when I interrupt him to let him know that I no longer have the factory stereo installed.

"Oh. Well. You'll have to get it here so we can have a technician take a look at it."

Brooksie came and picked me up, thank the fuck christ. We came home, I found my spare remote, made sure to put the new battery in it, then went down to try again. Still nothing. Fuck.

So…the car has gas, a charged battery, nothing wrong with it…and I have to get the motherfucker towed all the way out to Hurstbourne and then pay some dickhead to fix this shit for me.

I swear…I want to find the middle-management asshole that thought up this safety "feature" and smack him upside his damn head.

Irony? The car is officially paid off, as of today.

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ahhh…the best laid plans , and all that. i had intended on posting on monday, once i got back form chicago, but work buried me and burnout reared its ugly head, so here we are at the other end of the week.
my weekend went really well. on friday, we drove up to chicago for the big nerd prom (the chicago comic con 2006). when we got up there (which is skipping the unheard of 7 1/2 hours it actually took us to get there), we stopped in at lollapalooza to see hometown boys my morning jacket rock a few thousand people in the middle of downtown chicago. it was a really nice day for it, too. probably one of the best shows i've seen in a while.

the next two days were all nerd shit. wandering around the aisles of retailers and artists, trying to secure sketches for the ever-growing hellboy sketchbook. an artist i'm a bit of a fan of (dustin nguyen) was there, doing sketches and selling original, published pages for $20. to those that have no clue, that's an insane deal. they usually go for a bare minimum of $75, and on up into the thousands.

saturday night, my travelling companion decided to pass out early in the hotel, so i headed down to the convention hotel's bar, to drink my night away with nerds and comic pros, alike. i ended up meeting some hardcore/punk dudes that had the same general plan (they were from ann arbor). drinks were downed, metal was discussed, jack sparrow was brutally cockblocked (bonus!), hot girls disappeared with the one semi-attractive comic pro, and we ended up out in the parking lot with some older metal dude (who claims he used to smoke crack with al jourgensen), blasting the newest celtic frost. a five man heavy metal parking lot at 4am. not bad.

i haven't really done shit since getting home, really. mostly sitting around, though it feels like i've been really busy. busy doing nothing, i guess.

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today just isn't my day, it seems. connor and i just got back from lunch. we said "hey, let's try cafe kilamanjaro, today. that sounds tasty." so we mosey over there and jump in line. i ordered what sounded (and smelled) like a real winner: jerk chicken wings. i mean…seriously. that sounds amazing. well…not so much. first off, the wings were cold. barely room temperature. secondly, the things had no "jerk" flavor, at all. they just tasted like grilled chicken wings that had been sitting out on a plate in the kitchen for a few hours. yeah…the rice was cold, too.

so we get back to work and i decide to get a coke. i wander over to the breakroom, plunk my change into the machine and…out pops a coke. standard procedure, right? well…this is where it deviates: the coke was warm. warmer than warm…moderately hot. what the fuck is up with the temperature gods today? are they punishing for something i did that i shouldn't have? jesus fuck christ…

oh…hey. sorry i've been missing for a while. i have a new office job that involves me sitting around, doing a whole lotta work for a little while, then just staring at the walls for a good chunk of time. so hopefully i'll be more regular, 'round these parts.

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wow. wordpress. i think i remember sending matt a retarded email like "have you seen this shit yet?" so long ago. of course, he had, and he had his own reasons for not wanting to use it, but those reasons have disappeared and here we are.

i've had an incredibly eventful past few days. i spent all of sunday being a production assistant on the shoot for the my morning jacket dvd. that was a lot of fun and i have a ton of photos. i'll actually post a whole diary type thing about that in a few days. i've also spent the past couple of nights hanging out with our friends from japan. they're here for vacation. we've been having a blast, drinking beers and speaking in broken english to each other. i've been snapping photos of the fun and you can find them here.

i'll do a real post soon, i promise.

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my lovely girl and i took off for Paris on May 19th, and had a wonderful trip. we spent just over a week with my sister & her husband, and their insanely cute little self-propelled floor scrubber. the trip itself was awesome, and i'll write more about it in detail later, though not in as much detail as the last time i went, partly because i didn't keep a detailed journal like last time, and partly because, as infrequently as i update, i'm sure you guys don't want to be bored to tears by 8 days worth of interminably long posts. 'cause you know if i wrote 'em, i'd write 'em big.

anyway, the main reason i'll not write more about the trip in this post is because there really was only one event that i want to highlight, and it's possibly the most important event so far in my life (except, perhaps, for my birth). it took a lot of planning, and even some conniving and sneakiness, to pull it off, but i like to think i pulled it off with charm, character, and panache.

on friday, Sara and I headed out on our first full day in paris (we don't count thursday, 'cause we were barely lucid after staying awake for 36+ hours…) to the louvre, which is the only place i had regretted not spending more time at on my last visit. we spent several hours walking around the louvre, until the pictures started really blending into each other, our feet were demanding a break, and our lungs were clamoring for fresh air.

back out in the daylight, we wandered for a bit through the courtyard, then out towards and into the Jardin des Tuileries. some of you might recall the garden as being the location of my favorite view of Paris. when we reached the end of the Jardin, near the huge gate connecting the gardens to the Place de la Concorde, we went into the little bookstore set into the wall, above-which was the spot–my ultimate destination. of course, i'd told sara several times about the spot, and the view of the Parisian skyline that it afforded, with the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Egyptian Obelisk in the large open plaza.

the bookstore was filled with gardening books, and was really just a delaying tactic, though a completely explainable one, considering Sara's mom's gardening/landscaping hobby.

still, there wasn't much of interest, so we left the bookstore and headed up to the spot. hand in hand, we trudged up the incline to the top of the wall. we walked up to the fence and stood there for a minute or two just kind of taking in the scene and hanging onto each other. then i told her i wanted to get some pictures, and i handed her my backpack, so i could dig into it for my camera.

i reached in and rummaged around for a while, long enough for her to get curious as to why it was taking so long. just about the moment, she said "ah… wha…", i set the backpack down to the side, dropped down to one knee, and, with ring in hand, asked "will you be my wife?"

after taking the briefest of moments to recover from shock, she said she would. we hugged, she cried a little, and we just enjoyed the moment for several minutes. i'm certain the french couple sitting on the bench nearby had seen the whole thing, and were either watching us intently, or trying intently not to watch us. we walked over to another bench and sat for a while, talking, and just being close. then we got up and took a few pictures to mark the occasion.

after taking in the view one last time, we headed out of the Garden and onto the streets, walking down to a restaurant in the Marais district that my sister had picked out at my request especially for this evening. we enjoyed the night air, had a great dinner at a classy-yet-cozy little French restaurant, and then made our way back to my sis's place.

i couldn't have asked for a better day, and i couldn't have hoped for all the little plans i'd been working on for the proposal to have gone any better than they did. and i couldn't have hoped for a better girl to have that day with or make those plans for. so, after 20+ years of waiting to find the right person, the countdown has finally begun to end my life as a single man. in June of next year, we're not sure exactly when yet (though, probably on the 11th for all of you who're expecting invitations), we'll get hitched and get started on our long lives of bugging the crap out of each other and laughing about it later. wish us luck.

personally, i can hardly wait.

» France 2004 Gallery

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- 05:21 pm:: im
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