Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday. I hope everyone has safe travels wherever they go be it to out-of-town family or down the street to the store.

*Darrin holds up a mightily spiked egg nog*
Cheers! Don't Drink and Drive!

Shop-o-rama

My family did the family shopping spree yesterday. 9am to 3pm. Wore me out. But I got pretty much all of my Christmas shopping done in one big swoop. It's a tiring but happy feeling. Wasn't like the old times where we would literally shop from 8am til 8pm. Thank goodness my family sees internet shopping as a good thing. Plus, you usually save a few bucks along the way. $19.99 for Carrie Underwood's newest CD at fye? I think not. Wal-Mart of Amazon.com will have that cheaper thank you very much.

I still have all of Norah's toys to put together. Currently, I have a scoot-car thing, a shopping cart and an entire kitchen to put together. As far as I know, that's all I have, but I'm fairly certain that after Christmas with the grandparents, there will be a few more things to put together. I don't mind it really, it's just getting started and tearing myself way from whatever selfish, all time engrossing thing I have going on at the moment.

I'm over the 8800 song mark on ye olde Music Counter. I think by Christmas I might actually break the 10k mark. Wow. That's alot of music.

Over on Twin Galaxies (my current selfish, obsessive thing of the moment), I hold 18 World Records (as recognized by Twin Galaxies and the Guinness Book of Worlds Records). Most of them really aren't that great. It's easy to set a world record for a game from 1982 that no one cares about. My one achievement that I am proud of in that mix is my 26k score on Sky Diver. That one actually is a pretty decent score. The others? Feh. Give someone a day and a half to beat them. What I'm actually have more fun with now over in TG-land is running a weekly MAME challenge where I pick a game that doesn't have any scores yet or only has one lone score and challenge the other players on the forum to set a new high on the game. So far (aka the first three weeks) the turnout has been mild but still quite fun. I'm sure the holidays are quite busy for everyone, so overall, I'm quite happy with the turnout.

A quick shout out to some friends:
Hang in there Tom and Amy! You're doing just fine!!! :-)

What in the hell?

I purposely did not watch the football games last night. I knew that Oklahoma had a chance at beating Mizzou. But what I did not expect to see what I saw when I visited ESPN.com. On the main page, it only mentioned that Pitt had beaten West Virginia (I had overlooked the scoreboard at the top of the page because of the glaring Pitt headline). I was stumped.

When I briefly saw the games as Maryann was channel surfing, I saw that Pit was trailing WV 3 - 7 in the 3rd. I said, 'Wow, Pitt is actually hanging in there' and I thought they had a chance. Then Maryann changed to the other game and I saw Oklahoma score a TD. What the??? I immediately told her to turn off the TV since I didn't want to jinx either of the upsets that just might occur. I figured Oklahoma had a chance, but didn't give Pitt much of a thought. No one did.

So I finish reading the Pitt article when I glaced over to the right and saw the Top 25 scores... and saw that Oklahoma beat Mizzou.

I'm still in shock, almost literally.

This has been one f*ed up season of college football.

Wow.

R.I.P. Evel Knievel

Evel Knievel, a great man who jumped over just about anything on a motorcycle, died on Friday, November 30th 2007.

I had two of those crank up motorcyles of Evel's. One was his signature white Harley Davidson and the other a dirt bike (which I am fairly certain Evel never used, though, his son Robbie did). Those things were awesome.

poo

I feel like poo. No fun.

Thanksgiving weekend went well. Food was good. Yummy.

The music counter has been updated. I finally got through the psychedelic compilations MP3 DVD plus another CD full o m0torhead and s1ayer, so it's just up by about 1400 songs and 70 hours. Whee!

Basement peeps came to the house... again. They are using what they call their 'Super Epoxy' to try to stop the efflorescence from pushing out the sealant. I tried Dry Lock and that worked for about 6 months. The expensive epoxy sealant that they put on lasted a mere 2 months. Hopefully, this new super stuff, which they put on one day and then come out and re-epoxy a few days later after it has fully dried, will do the trick. I really really really don't want this to go on forever. It's a big pain in my arse.

Robot Guitar

This thing just baffles me for many, many reasons.

I introduce to you (if you hadn't heard about it already)... the Gibson Robot Guitar.

http://www.gibson.com/robotguitar/robotguitarvideovoting.aspx?playvideo=training

A little slack, please.

Buckeyes go into yesterday's game seated at No. 1.
- They lose to Illinois

I need to rake leaves to the lawn can get winterized. Meteorologists say there will be light precipitation Sunday evening.
- It rains and sleets by 8:30am Sunday morning

I need to lower the mattress on the crib which requires my hex wrenches.
- I can't find my hex wrenches

My wife's computer needed an anti-virus update late last night
- Now the computer restarts when trying to perform a virus scan or spyware scan.

Oh oh... and last but definitely not least, my sister came over yesteday. She hadn't see the basement since we had it sealed and what not.
- She looks at the wall and says 'Is it supposed to be bubbling up like that?'. In other words, the few grand I spent on sealing the basement didn't do jack and the minerals are pushing their way past the 2 layers of 'epoxy' (or whatever they put on, should have been Elmer's Glue for all I know) and a layer of primer. All within two months of having it seals. *sigh*


C'mon! Work with me here!

Ooooooooooooooooooops

Seems that my little Excel spreadsheet had some summary issues and was not summing up about 20 rows which included an MP3 DVD with over 1100 songs on it. So instead of reaching for the the 4000 mark, I'm now reaching for the 7000 song mark. Wow.

The calc for the total time has been correct though. So I'm still reaching for the 500 hour mark there. :-p But that'll probably be broken tomorrow when I finish up the last 3 or 4 hours of the 'Electronica Shmlectronica' compilation I got from Toddeus.

And for those who care, with the current stats of 6889 songs and 490h 10m time, this works out to and average of a little over 4 minutes 15 seconds for each song.

The end.

Misc Etc

Just miscellaneous stuff.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I've updated The Music Counter. Just about to eclipse the 4000 song mark. Whee!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I'm still #1. Actually, I'm #1 about 4 times over at Twin Galaxies. I have to admit that in one case I am the ONLY score they have for a specific game. There are so many games for MAME (something like 4000+ games) that it's difficult for them to get scores for every single one of them since many people are just trying to get that perfect Pac-Man score or get to the kill screen in Donkey Kong. I figure I'll start raising a little hell on the forums and getting people to step up to the plate and log some better scores than my paltry entries.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Me lady was in Cinci on Friday and Saturday. This let me play some more video games and also let me do some cleaning up around the house. I had fun, however, my wife did not because she was dealing with a toddler who refused to sleep (cause she was a little bit sick) and weird family memebers. Sorry babe. I did try to give her a little bit of time off on Sunday but I'm sure it was too little too late. Sorry again babe.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Hung out a little with Sir Ian. We watched some DVDs and went to Asian Star Buffet where the Hot & Spicy chicken was good. I ate too much and burped profusely for the next 10 hours. The kicker story at the buffet was this bizzaro woman who was hunched over the pork fried rice (which I wanted) and was using the BIG spoon to try to, I dunno, work around the PORK in the PORK FRIED RICE, and was taking her sweet time. So I went around to the other side and reluctantly got the overcooked and dry white rice. AS I was on the other side, I could see the very very small about of fried rice she did get, there were still like 3 pieces of pork in there. Freakin' twit. *sigh*

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I need to rake the leaves before it rains and they glue themselves to the grass and kill what remaining green grass I have in the back.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Umm... I really need to get to work now. Later!

Happy Halloween!

This year's pumpkins. Happy Halloween!!!

R.I.P. Mr. Goulet. :(

In case you hadn't heard, Robert Goulet died Tuesday morning. Bummer. He was da man.

I'm #1

So, Todd and I went to see "King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters" about a month or so ago. Much of the movie centered around him tyring to get his Donkey Kong score validated by the official video game scoring group, namely, Twin Galaxies.

As we were leaving the theater, someone had mentioned that Billy Mitchell had broken then record again. Out of curiosity, I looked up Twin Galaxies' web site to see if they had an online score board. Which they do and, yes, Billy Mitchell reclaimed the top spot from Steve Wiebe by putting in a score of 1,050,200.

While I was perusing the score, something caught my eye. They allow scores for M.A.M.E. If you don't know what it is, do your homework. Now granted, scores recorded against M.A.M.E don't count towards those records set against actual arcade games, but still, for games that are mostly long long gone and are hardly seen in the wild anymore, it's kinda nice that you can use MAME to set a score.

And so, I threw my hat into the ring. I mostly like playing the really really early titles. Lots of stuff from the first two years of video games, stuff from 1979 and 1980. One of my favorite games is Depthcharge. It's a fairly simple game where you heave explosive barrels at submarines below you. Now, the MAME score for this is really high. I thought I was pretty darn good at the game, until I went to Twin Galaxies. Right now, I'm sitting at #12 with a score of 3780. I've only pulled that score off once. My high up until a few weeks ago was in the 3500 range. I can consistently get into the 3000s, which I thought was pretty good. However, the top score at the moment is 4800. I have no idea how that guy pulled it off 'cause there is alot of delay for the barrels to get to the bottom. I'm starting to guess that despite the fact that I have spent many many hours, I have not noticed that there is a pattern somewhere.

"But Darrin", you say, "I thought you said you were #1". Yes, that is what I said. I am. Just not for this game. That game would be Datsun 280Zzzap!. And my score, at the moment, is 4.10. So, according to the official video game score keeping body, I have the world record score for playing Datsun 280Zzzap! using MAME.

But the victory is some skewed. You see, there is another contingent of players who log their scores at MARP (MAME Action Replay Page). This is where players can post their best MAME scores. A couple of people have logged scores at 4.64 which pretty much obliterates my record. Why they haven't posted them to Twin Galaxies probably has to do with a whole Jets vs. Sharks West Side Story kinda thing. Basically, there are some members of MARP who think TG sucks, and some members of TG that thinks MARP sucks. I don't know why this is really. They are both groups of players to strive to be the best. Some players happily exist at both places and are just as confused as I am why there is such friction there. I dunno.

But no matter, it is what it is. At the moment, if the Guinness Book of World Records wanted to put out a book about the top MAME car driving scores, I would be No. 1, Numero Uno, Top Cheese at Datsun 280 Zzzap! And that's kinda cool.

I really need to try to improve that score, but some people are just much better at video games and it's just a matter of time before one of the top 10 players at MARP finally get fed up and submit their score to TG and I am dethroned.

But like Billy Mitchell, I always have something up my sleeve. I'll keep you posted.

For now, HERE are my scores at Twin Galaxies.

Excuse me while I Ad Lib this...

So... back in the diz-ay while I was a freshman at OSU, I had a roomee by the name of Todd. He was cool. His computer was cool. It was a DOS machine of course. Probably DOS 5. He even had a sound card. An Ad Lib sound card, one of the first commercially available (and useful) sound cards available. He used to create crazy ass music with the music software that came with it, namely, Visual Composer and Instrument Maker. Visual Composer let you, well, visually compose music with a little graphical keyboard. Instrument Maker let you craft 'instruments' by tweaking FM Synthesis values (at least I think it was FM synthesis). He had albums (or cassettes) of this stuff. Rodomontodd is the title of one I can remember. And I thought the stuff was fantastic since it didn't always conform to what one would normally call music. Sometimes there wasn't a specific melody. Sometimes, it seemingly lacked structure all together. Until you looked at it in Visual Composer. Then it made all the sense in the world. It was like painting music. But Todd spent only a couple of quarters at OSU and then he went away. Taking with him his Ad Lib rigged computer and his cool ass software and music.

Around 1997, after finding another tape of music he had given me, I looked him up again on that new fangled and growing by the day thing called the Internet. We got back together and began making music together. Not in a gay way but in a musician way. Unless you talk to the cashiers at Kroger's, then they might swear by the previous.

Annnnnyyyyywwwaaaaayyyssss, from the minute we got back together, we had talked about getting that Ad Lib software back up and running. Unfortunately, we have difficulty in doing so. Windows had come along and DOS was going by the way side. Neither of us had DOS disks anymore. We tried for years in vain to get it to work. 10 years to be exact. But to no avail.

Then, the other day, a mutual friend to Todd and I posted some old music for a group that consisted of Todd. Of course, it was some of the Ad Lib music stuff. So again, my interest was piqued and I began trying to figure out a way to get this running again. I figured I might try loading up Windows 95 on an old PC I have at home and seeing if maybe I could resurrect the Ad Lib music software. I still had all the binaries with me since I made copies of the disks during the one moment in 1997 when Todd had located them. I believe he's not sure where they are at the moment. No matter. I have the files.

Recently, I also started getting back into old game emulation. Things like emulators for the Atari 2600, Intellivision, the Sega Master System, etc. As I was surfing today, I ran across a sweet little program called DosBox. It's been around for a few years and I even remember telling a friend about it a few months back when he was getting into playing the hundreds of old DOS games he still had lying around. I had totally forgotten about it until I stumbled over it again today.

So this evening, I came home and DL'd DOS Box and found the Ad Lib software on my drive and gave it a run. And wouldn't you know it. It f^@#ing worked!!!

I present to you, the first song written by me (and quite possibly anyone else in the world) on the Ad Lib Visual Composer, which features the scrapings of a custom instrument called 'screech' created in Instrument Maker. The song is called "Yeah Baby!" for 'yeah baby' I got the Ad Lib stuff working!!! Wheeee!!! Enjoy!

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

Here's what it looks like in Visual Composer.

Almost done...

Today, I anticipate, will be the last day in a few weeks when I'll hve to get up early to come into work before 7am. Thank goodness.

=-=-=-=-=-

While gettig ready this morning, I had an idea for some lyrics for the love ballad in V: The Musical.

Some people may call it beastiality
But, me, I call it reality
I love my little lizard... yes, I do

My blood runs hot; Her blood runs cold
But her hand is the one that I want to hold.

(I may have to alter this since I can't remember if the lizard in love was a
man or a woman. I think it was a man, so that means I'll have to alter them slightly.)

=-=-=-=-=-=

Went and picked out another pumpkin last night with the wife and the kiddo after work yesterday. We had little N in shoes. I put her down so she could walk around, but she just stood there like she was glued to the ground. I'd call to her and you'd see her trying to move her legs, but they weren't going anywhere. It was funny. She's not used to shoes yet. Poor thing. I guess we'll just have to put her in shoes more often.

=-=-=-=-=-

As always, The Music Counter has been updated.

Yawn......

Another long week for work. Been getting in no later than 7am. Today I was in at 6:15am. Ugh.

I've updated The Music Counter. Nearly 100 hours longer than the last update. The last MP3 CD I went through was torture. It was only had stuff from two bands on it and the songs repeated quite a bit. It was torture to get through. Glad that one is over.

Had a good birthday. Lsat weekend we went to my sister's new house in Portsmouth, OH. Very nice place. Got some cool stuff for my birthday from everyone. I got a giant wooden Brutus Buckeye from the parents. It's sweet. I'll probably only put it out on game day and then bring it back in cause I don't want it to get swiped. The wife got me Season Two of 'Home Movies' which is sweet cause I've been wanting them for years. She also got me an awesome 6-CD Box Set called Metal: A Headbanger's Companion as well as Fiona Apple's 2004 release "Extraordinary Machine".

On my birthday we went to BD's Mongolian Barbeque for dinner. It was tasty. I had sirloin and crab with a mongolian ginger sauce. A deviation from my norm and I have to say it was a welcome one.

This weekend I'm helping Tom put up a door. This involves a power saw, beer and chili. In that order. Beer before power saw is not a good idea. I like my fingers.

Um.. that's all I got to say. I need to get to work. I've somehow lost an hour (it's 7:15am) already and I have much to do.

Later!

25c per play

Toddeus and I went to the Drexel Gateway down on campus to catch the movie "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters". Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It would have been nice if the projectionist knew what the hell they were doing as it wasn't matted correctly, it was slightly blurry on the edges and instead of being a rectangle shape on the screen, it was more of a trapezoid. Asked the wife about that (who used to manage a theater earlier in life) and she said that it was likely that they using a flat lense with a cinemascope mvoie or vice versa. Don't hold her to those exact words since it's early in the morning and I may have screwed up the words n stuff. Something with lenses.

Anyhoo, despite that, I enjoyed the movie. I think I read an article somewhere where Bill Mitchell was upset 'cause the directors put him in a bad light in the movie by taking things out of context, etc etc etc. While watching the movie I kept this in mind, and yeah, there were parts where they made him appear overly arrogant and evil and snobbish. But, there is one scene in particular where, it seemed everything was in perspective and Billy Boy came up looking like a complete ass. I won't ruin the movie for those who haven't watched, but if you do see the movie, you'll know which one I'm talking about.

Um... it's too early for me really to be writing this, but anyways, I enjoyed the movie and it made em want to go right home and play video games. But it was late and I didn't and come tomorrow, I'm sure I'll still be trying to find a way to sell off my vintage video game consoles for some extra bread. Maybe I'll just use that bread to buy me my own full size arcade cabinet. Though, likely not. I really don't need anything else cluttering up my house taking up space.

tired.

later.

'ello govnah!

just a misc post full of random crap
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M and I put out a bunch of stuff out for bulk. We hadn't even finished putting everything out before someone came by and took the grill. When I got up this morning, someone had taken the speakers (which were pretty much toast speaker wise, the woofers had disintegrated into powder), a big treasure chest thingy and had cut the cords from the two vacuum cleaners (I suppose for the copper in the wires). Thinking back, I should have put the broken mirror and broken glass shower door out there as well. And that weird artists stand which doesn't stand cause it's missing some legs or something. Oh well, I'm sure we'll need a bulk pickup again in the future.
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I finally got a chance to work on the front porch. My initial thoughts were that basically quite a bit of dirt had washed out from under it. After digging down so I could put more dirt under there, I determined that it probably was ALWAYS hollow under there.

The process of buying top soil to put under there gave me quite a workout on Sunday. I went to Lowe's twice that day. On the first trip, I went to the garden center and loaded twelve 40 lb bags onto a cart. I soon realized that this was gonna be a bitch to move, so I found an employee and they said 'just go up front and tell them you want 12 bags of top soil, then you can drive your car through the loading dock'. 'Cool', I said. So I paid for my top soil and drove the car around. They had a woman in the loading dock. She held her own. I helped out and loaded about 6 of the bags. Then I got home and unloaded them from the car. Then later, after I finished digging, I had to move them to where I needed to dump them. Let's count up how many times I moved bags. 12 + 6 + 12 = 30 times x 40 lbs = 1200 lbs. Whew. For the second load, I bought 15 bags. I obv didn't bother trying to load them on a cart as they have top soil in back stock. So I help load about 5 bags there. Then I had to unload them from my car and then I ended up using 9 of those bags. So for the second trip I had 5 + 15 + 9 = 29 x 40 lbs = 1160 lbs + 1200 lbs = 2360 lbs of lifting. I lifted a ton of dirt. Literally.
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Work has been nutty so I've been going into work no later than 7:15am and as early as 6:30. Ugh. This will probably continue for a while since I can't seem to catch up. The test suite I'm working on was originally for 2 people, but then it became just me. After doing some calculations, I informed my boss that I would not finish. So me managed to get me some help from one of the other testers, that'll help out some. Hopefully I can catch up a little bit and _just_ finish before the test cycle is done.
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Tonight Toddeus and I are going to see The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters which should be bad ass. It's about this guy's quest to break the Donkey Kong record and dethrone one of the uber-videogame player's record which has stood since in the 80s sometime. Or something like that. C'mon! It's a game about Donkey Kong. Why not?
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I could write more, but I'm already 15 minutes behind in starting testing today, so... later!

getting closer to the norm

The wife and I are finally getting things put back together downstairs. The family room no longer has shelves upon shelves of stuff and actually has even less since we moved the 'scrapbooking desk' downstairs since the little one liked pulling open the drawers and generally wrecking havoc on its contents.

The studio is finally back to its old self. The drums are set up so they can collect more dust on them. I moved a couple of things around but overall, it's still crowded. Ha!

The my parents came up this weekend which allow me and the wife to finally get some alone time in. We went to the Olive Garden and had some tasty food. I do find it almost insulting that they do have lunch portions for a cheaper price, but they don't list it anywhere on the menu they give you when you sit down.

Then, instead of seeing a movie, we pretty much just dorked around. We went to WalMart and got a new vacuum cleaner since the old one downstairs bit the dust after using it for 12 years (and I got that one used in the first place... so it's life span is probably closer to 20) and the one upstairs wasn't cleaning as well as it could have (it's one of the older bagless one) and it wouldn't stand up on its own (the little mechanism that allows it to do so was not happy). Then we dorked around at Odd Lots. And then we headed back.

On Sunday, I gots a bunch of crap done that needed to be done. One thing was putting down a protective strip of wood in front of the sliding door. The new one that we had put in a few years ago was a little less deep than the previous one, so there was a spot where the carpet didn't cover the subfloor which was a great place for pebbles and fur and crud to get into. Of course, when you are a little person, like my toddler, that's the perfect place to put your fingers and pull stuff out. However, that era has thankfully come to an end.

I also put together the new vacuum cleaner and swept the house. It's much quieter than the old bagless and cleans about twice as good and rolls very nicely. After putting the new one together, I took part the old one and gave it a good cleaning and fixed the stand up thing-a-ma-jig. Turns out the only problem was that a screw had come loose, much like its owner.

I also 'fixed' the kitchen table. Once of the legs had a split going, so I screwed in a couple of, um, screws in hopes that it will make the table last a little longer at least until we figure out what they hell were going to do in the future with making the family room into the dining room or something. Words.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something important here. Oh well. If I remember, I'll write it down.

I've updated The Music Counter to have the latest totals.

New stuff, Music stuff

* New Stuff *
Ok... not much really that new.

In blogger land, I switched from templates over to the layout format. I think in the long run it'll make more sense. I did this 'cause I wanted the 'Older Posts' link at the bottom of the page. After fiddling with it for the past 2 or 3 hours, I think I have everything back to normal. The only real difference is that the 'Stupid Things' now encompasses all of the archive. Blogger finally got their heads out of their bums and you can now sort newest to oldest by default so you don't have to hack the page. I lost the 'recent posts' section (which used to be the 'Stupid Things...' section) but that's not that big of a loss since by default the page shows you the posts for the current month which is good enough for me.

In other new news, the basement is almost finished with being sealed and stuff. They missed a few small spots so they need to come back and complete that. I just wish the whole thing was done with, but alas it is not. But hopefully by the end of the week, all will be done and back in place in the basement. Kudos to the wife for helping me get a good hunk of stuff back downstairs. I don't tell her 'thank you' enough, so I'll do so publicly. Again. :-p I really am a b@stard sometimes.

* Music Stuff *
For those of you who were hoping that I had finally written and composed 'V: The Musical', you will be sorely disappointed. Since I failed to mention it in the music ideas post a few weeks ago, V: The Musical is, as you may have guessed, a musical version of the V mini-series. I dubbed the two V mini-series from the library about 3 years ago I think. This stemmed from a conversation me and the wife had late one night while both suffering from a bout of insomnia. It will be very Rodger's and Hammerstein-ish. The only lyrics I have thus far are: "Drats! Rats! That's all we can eat for now. Drats! Rats! So hungry I could eat a cow!" This would take place during the scene where some dude sneaks a peek into the spacecraft to see the Visitors woofing down rats instead of normal human food. Honestly, while I may have dubbed off the movie, I haven't sat down and watched it. The rats scene is the only thing I remember. But I digress.

The actual reason for the Music Stuff section is to announce a new counter on the side bar over here. ------------------------>

Basically since I've gotten hired at my new job, I've been listening to all the music I have on MP3. This is something like 100 discs or so. Way too many. But since I am a completist and have continued to stand by the notion that if I buy a record (or download in this case) that I will listen to it, I decided to listen through all these CDs (and in some cases DVDs). That's alot of music. As you can see, I've listened to 2326 songs which has taken approximately 304 hours 49 minutes 46 seconds. I'm sure that the song count and the time are within 1% if not a little less.

When calculating, I had to go back though all the CDs I had listened to already (which was probably around 30 or 40) and put them into WinAmp to get a total time. It would have been nice if I could have just used Windows to search for *.mp3 (since there are txt, m3u and other misc files on the discs as well), but when you do a search, you can't use the 'Enqueue in WinAmp' r-click function because windows does some sort of short hand. If you select _1_ file from the search results, it enqueques it just fine and dandy. But if you select more than one, WinAmp has no idea what you are talking about. I blame Microsoft for this one. I may have been able to use Windows MediaPlayer, it makes you play the song before trying to figure out how long the song is, whereas on WinAmp, if it's visible on the playlist, it looked up the time and displays the time (as well as calculates the total time for the playlist).

Um... not sure where else to go with this. I've listened to a crap load of music and have a crap load more to listen to.

What To Eat - Part II

In the first of the 'What To Eat' series, the husband was left to his own devices for lunch when his wife and kiddo were away. He chose to eat a Spam burger. And it was tasty.

Now, continuing the series, I give you 'What To Eat - Part II'. This part is my directorial debut. Nothing fancy. So, enjoy!!!

Two Triple Cheese, Side Order Of Fries

A long long long time ago, I used to watch Nickelodeon when I got home from school. One of the shows I used to watch was Turkey TV. Now, over they ears, I've talked to many different people who had Nick as a kid, but people only remember You Can't Do That On Television and Mr. Wizard's World. Not Turkey Television (or Turkey TV for short). Well, here is the intro to that show to prove I'm not nuts.



So how does that tie into my title? Well, on occasion they would show music videos for crazy songs. One of those songs was titled "Two Triple Cheese, Side Order of Fries" by Commander Cody. I attempted to locate this song but because I didn't have the title right, I was unsuccessful... until today.

This is a great song and pretty much anytime I am eating a big honking burger, I hear this song in my head. No lie. So without further ado, the video for 'Two Triple Cheese". I love how low budget and 80's this video is.



On a side note, Commander Cody was most famous for covering the song "Hot Rod Lincoln" in the 1970s, which you might know. It's also a great song as well.
If you care to watch. I'm not embedding this one.


That's all I got.

Musical Ideas I've Had That I May Or May Not Get To

Below is a list of musical ideas that I've thought about doing. Who knows when I'll get to them, but the thought is there. Enjoy (or not)!

Duke Amethyst
I've discussed this idea to people before. That was 4 1/2 years ago when I was in a King Diamond / Mercyful Fate musical phase. The idea was remaking songs from the 1970s in the style of King Diamond. Get it? King Diamond. Duke Amethyst. I had briefly researched which songs might work. Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" was the first one I picked. In fact, it was while singing the song in the car and straining to hit the high note when I thought to myself 'I bet King Diamond could hit that note'. The rest is history. The only other song that I had picked out was "Chevy Van" and that was simply because the guitar tab seemed simple enough for me to play.

I learned some interesting facts surrounding the Duke Amethyst name when looking up the wiki's on Duke and Amethyst.
1) A duke is historically of highest rank below the King. That's very fitting. There is only one King Diamond.
2) The amethyst crystal is typically 6-sided prism ending in 6-sided pyramid. The sixes are very appropriate given the satanic nature of Mercyful Fates music.
3) But most importantly, the reason I picked Duke Amethyst is because it matches my initials (DA).


Gertrude's Lemon Giraffe
Probably on my wife knows about this one. Gertrude's Lemon Giraffe is to be music in the vein of 1960's psychedelic music. The name came to me during the drive home from work one day when I was listening to alot of psychedelic music. The band names were always a bit on the odd side. Strawberry Alarm Clock. Chocolate Watch Band. Et cetera. Some also involved names (like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ala the Beatles psychedelic album). Others involved animals... and I have no examples there. So I figured I'd write a computer app that would mix and match all these types of things... namely names, flavors and animals. While running through what types of things would be generated by this app, Gertrude's Lemon Giraffe popped into my head and that was that.

I figured if I ever get to recording anything, the main focus of the music will be a guitar that is being run through the Drunken Sailor Flanger, which is a flanger guitar pedal that I circuit bent a few years back. Psychedelic bands occationally had weird sounding instruments so that would be my 'signature' sound.


A yet unnamed garage band
I never got to naming this one, but the music sound like a typical 1960's garage band. This one stems from my interest in, duh, garage band music like that found on the Nuggets boxset as well as the Pebbles compilations.

The lines between 1960's psychedelic rock and 1960's garage rock sometimes blur quite a bit and at times I have wondered if Gertrude's Lemon Giraffe should be the same as the garage band. In opinion, GLG is not a very 'garage' sounding name, though, there were bands like Sir Douglas Quintet and The Lollipop Shoppe and the aforementioned Strawberry Alarm Clock and The Chocolate Watchband that were on the Nuggets boxset. Usually garage bands have a 'the' in the title like The Leaves and The Shadows of Knight and The Outsiders and The Sonics.

Musically, I figured I could create a nice trashy sound using my circuit-bent Oxidizer Distortion Pedal. One of the settings on it is a nice buzzy fuzz sound that I think would work perfectly for the garage band sound.

There would also be lots of tambourine. I discovered that many of the bands used a tambourine to accent the down beat. I guess it gave the singer something else to take out his aggressions on besides the typically snarly vocals. I looked around for a while looking for a cheep tambourine. But I quickly found out there was no such thing. At least not in the typical circular tambourine model. Even used ones were 15 bucks and I'm not about to pay that much. So one day I was in the dollar store and saw this cheep-o plastic tambourine (which also came with some horrible maracas). But the jingles were of cheep aluminum and didn't have that nice 'ching' to them. But then I rounded the corner and there were these little sticks with jingles on them. And they had a nice ring to them, so I bought two of them for a dollar each. At the moment, I'm not really sure where in the house they are, but I do have them. So I have a tambourine for the album, just not in the traditional tambourine sense.

Another idea I had was that the album, when recorded, should have a 'live' feel to it. Meaning that in the background there will be lots of screaming of 'fans'. Back in the day, some studio execs created 'live' albums in the studio in order to create the image that the band had a big following and to also mask that the players were, well, not that talented. I figure I can loop some screaming from the Kiss Alive and Kiss Alive II albums (which, quite honestly, with the number of overdubs and redubs were techincally not live either) or grab some bootlegs from archive.org and steal the 'audience' from there. On top of the live feeling, I figured I'd have banter between the musicians. I thought I might even have one of the band members quit halfway through the show only to rejoin a couple songs later. I think the 'quitting' thing might be a bit much, but regular on stage banter might be okay. I guess it will depend on what mood I'm in when I record the 'dialogue'.

Yet unnamed progressive rock / avant garde band
This might possibly be two different bands quite honestly. Part of me wants to get my 'odd time signature' rocks off and part of me wants to utilize all the stupid toys and gizmos that I've circuit bent. Seems like good reason to start a Frank Zappa-ish band. I mean, Frank Zappa had songs that featured people playing bicycles and vacuum cleaners and whatnot.

But part of me wants a 'serious' progressive band on top of that. Not that Frank Zappa is not serious, but what music of his I've been exposed to is definitely not progressive in the way that Yes or King Crimson or early Genesis was, if you get my drift. But, there is only so much time in the world and if I ever get to this project, I just might have to find a 'musical' way to integrate my circuit bend stuff into my 'serious' prog rock band.

This pretty much feeds off of the progressive rock phase I've been on for a while. Lots of Dream Theater and Yes and Rush, in that order. I was reading the latest Modern Drummer magazine which was dedicated to prog rock drummers like Mike Portnoy. Bill Bruford, Neil Peart, Chris Pennie, etc etc etc and that got me thinking about odd time signatures and some experiments I had been meaning try like 5/4 phrases playing over 4/4 phrases or different ways to phrase things in 7/4 time (you can do 2-2-3, 3-2-2, 2-3-2, 3-2-2, 4-3, 3-4, 5-2, 2-5, 6-1, etc etc etc) or coming up with something in 11/8 time. That one kept me up last night. All I could think about was counting 1-2-3-4-5-61-2-3-4-5-61-2-3-4-5-61..., which is basically counting 6/4 except chopping off the second eighth note (1 and 2... and 5 and 6 1 and 2 ... ). I think it would take me a while to learn to 'groove' to that time signature. Course, I thought the same thing about 5/4 and 7/4 and I can do those a little easier now thanks to Dave Brubeck, Dream Theater and a song called 'Shit Chips' by Devilcake ;).

V: The Musical
V: The Musical is, as you may have guessed, a musical version of the V mini-series. I dubbed the two V mini-series from the library about 3 years ago I think. This stemmed from a conversation me and the wife had late one night while both suffering from a bout of insomnia. It will be very Rodger's and Hammerstein-ish. The only lyrics I have thus far are: "Drats! Rats! That's all we can eat for now. Drats! Rats! So hungry I could eat a cow!" This would take place during the scene where some dude sneaks a peek into the spacecraft to see the Visitors woofing down rats instead of normal human food. Honestly, while I may have dubbed off the movie, I haven't sat down and watched it. The rats scene is the only thing I remember.

(update 10-18-07) I had an idea for some lyrics for the love ballad in V: The Musical.
Some people may call it beastiality
But, me, I call it reality
I love my little lizard... yes, I do

My blood runs hot; Her blood runs cold
But her hand is the one that I want to hold.
(I may have to alter this since I can't remember if the lizard in love was a man or a woman. I think it was a man, so that means I'll have to alter them slightly.)

Whut's New

Well, not much really.

The family went to the Inniswood Metro Garden park in Westerville the past weekend and saw the Big Bugs exhibit. That was pretty cool. I'd never been to the Inniswood before and I have to say they keep the grounds up very nicely. This probably has to do with it being a Metro Parks Garden rather than a Park. At first we didn't even think that you could picnic there, however, there is a small area on the other side of the parking lot where there are a couple of picnic tables. We had KFC. It was tasty. I should post some pics, but I don't have them at my disposal at the moment. So I guess you'll just have to go yourself.

I have J&D Basement Systems coming to my house tonight after work. That should be interesting. I'm sure they will tell me all sorts of crap that's wrong with my house, at which point I will curls up into the far corner of the crawl space and cry.

I'm looking at this can of 'Mug Root Beer' and notice a couple of things. Right below the BIG BOLD LETTERS of MUG ROOT BEER, in smaller white font is says 'soda'. I find that funny. As if anyone would actually think that it is beer. The second thing I notice is that at the bottom is says 'NOCAFFINE'. It pretty much looks like that is just one word. Nocaffeine. Maybe that's the sweet n' low version of caffeine or something? The thrid thing I notice is the spelling of caffeine. For a very very long time, i've left out that middle 'e' and wrote it as caffine. Seems logical to me. Oh wait, I'm using the English language which means that everything is as confusing as it possibly can be.

---- cranky old man rant below ----

On a food side note, all of the warnings on food is starting to get on my nerves. There have been allergies to all sorts of shit since the beginning of time. I'm sure in this high-tech 'make them brighter, bigger, grow faster, etc' era we live in it is more wide-spread. I, for instance, used to eat apples all the time. Then about 5 years ago, I ate an apple at work and my throat pretty much swelled shut. I haven't been able to eat raw apples since. Apples sauce is fine. Apple butter is fine. So it probably has everything to do with either what they spray the apples with now or the super shiny wax they put on them.

But that's not really what I wanted to talk about. I'm talking about the warnings. For example, on a can of Diet Pepsi (and just about every other diet soda) you see Phenylketonurics: Contains Phenylalanine. That one almost makes sense to have on their. Almost. If you are a person who suffers from phenylketonuria , then odds are you know that anything that contains aspartame contains that which you are allergic to. I know it's supposed to help these people not have to read all the ingredients to see what they are allergic to. I get that. But when I see a jar of peanut butter which has a warning on it that is "Contains: Peanuts", then I start getting a little bit irked. No f'ing shit Sherlock that peanut butter contains peanuts. If you have a peanut allergy and aren't smart enough to figure out that peanut butter contains peanuts, well then, sucks to be you. Same goes for milk. It should be no surprise that a bar of Hershey's Milk Chocolate contains milk. And it shouldn't be any real surprise that it's manufactured where peanuts are also handled.

Where am I going with this? Sometimes, I think warning are going too far. Yeah, I get it that some people can possibly die from eating peanuts. It sucks to be them cause, damn, p-nut butter and Reese Cups rule only slightly less than bacon. But milk? Give me a break. Most people aren't going to keel over because they have some milk. They might get an upset stomach sure. But hell, they've even proven that people can acclimate themselves to milk. On the other hand, my mother has ciliac. That basically means that she can't process gluten. That would be found in wheat and oats and barley and other woody grains, genius. But I don't think I've seen a loaf of bread with a warning on it claiming "Contains: Wheat" or "Glutenurics: Contains gluten". She can't process gluten, period. There is no ability to acclimate to it. Plus, it causes your body to not absorb much of the nutrients that you do need. She was sick for a very long time. But she doesn't need a freaking warning spelled out to her to tell her what and what not to eat. She reads the ingredients and if she sees 'wheat flour', she puts the shit back on the shelf.

There are people with allergies to just about anything. Some people break out into a rash if they waer clothes with fabric softener on them.

What I'm getting at, is that if list everything that someone might be allergic to, the odds are that we would end up listing the ingredients all over again. So what's the point. Know your illness and know what you can or can't eat.

In hind sight, I can see where maybe the 'is manufactured in the same plant as peanuts'. Maybe. That wouldn't be listed in the ingredients and so I can see how it would be useful to people with severe peanut allergies. I'm not that much of a sour-puss grumpy old man. But if the freakin' product has peanuts listed in the ingredients and you have an allergy to peanuts and you still choose to eat the darn thing, then that's your own fault.

BTW, I'm glad my wife doesn't have a peanut allergy cause then I would have to get a tattoo on my head that says "May contain peanuts". I loves my peanut butter.

This concludes my cranky old man rant for this week. Tune in next week when I complain about the use of the cloverleaf interchange as a means of making entering and exiting the highway 'safer'. :-)

My wife is great!!!

Lately work has been a bit hectic and I've been dazed and confused (for so long, you know it's true). But my wife has been very supportive especially when I've had to work a little later than usual and leaving way early and things just haven't been going right at work. This weekend was the worst. I had been spinning my wheels on a problem that had been plaguing me for all of Thursday and Friday which left me really really behind schedule. In short, something that had worked, stopped working. And to top it off, I still didn't have any solution to the problem. So I came into the weekend feeling like complete crap. But my Mrs tried her best to put me in a good mood.

This included going to the Weekend of Fire in Cincinnati. It was basically a hot sauce festival. We got there and paid our $5 each. And it turned out to be much smaller than I had hoped. Then one of the hot sauce makers I was hoping would be there wasn't. Then I spent way too much on stuff I'm not even sure I wanted. And didn't get a T-shirt that I at least kinda wanted. So now I'm behind schedule, $30 poorer and no t-shirt.

To make matter worse, I tried to go into work on Sunday and of course I couldn't get into the building. Grrrr. But my wife tried her best to cheer me up in any way she could. She's a trooper.

So Sunday night, I decided I would try to have something go right for me. I decided to finally reimage the machine downstairs. I was going to partition the small 20 GB drive so I could have multiple XP images that I could swap in and out using Drive Image (pretty much the precursor to Ghost). So, in order to do this I needed to find my copy of XP Home. Yes, a legitimate copy of XP Home with the holographic CD and little yellow sticker. Well, mostly legitimate copy. ;)

Anyhoo... I thought it was downstairs since I had moved much of my stuff down there. I looked downstairs where I put my plethora of system CDs, but didn't see it there. So I figured it must still be upstairs. I rummaged around and 'ahhhh delight', I found the nice glossy green envelope that said XP Home. I opened it up and... no CD. Now, I knew that they had been separated at some point, but kinda remembered what I did with it. I remembered putting it with a bunch of stuff that needed to go downstairs. So I went back downstairs and riffled around some more. No go. Stuff that I thought was with the XP CD was down there, but no XP CD. So I went to bed Sunday night disappointed.

At some point in the middle of the night, I had an epiphany. At work, I have an MSDN account. I could simply download the XP Home iso and use that. I have a legitimate key, so I just needed the disk.

Monday came along and I got up early and went to work at 7am. I worked with the Devs (which I should have done long ago). It at least pleased me somewhat that the Devs couldn't figure it out either. So they came up with a workaround for the moment. Which was good. However, by the time we figured all that out, the day was done and that put me now 3 days behind schedule.
But I had my ISO, so that was good.

My wonderful wife continued blowing sunshine up my arse trying to make me feel better as well as allowing me to continue my little project. Monday night I burnt the ISO and PRAYED that it would work. Luckily, it did and the rest of the evening I got the partitions set up and XP Home installed and patched. But I looked again and STILL could find that damned original XP disk. On top of that, I realized that another thing that was in that batch of CDs was the CD copy of Drive Image. I have floppies (it takes up two disks), so that part wasn't a big deal for now. But sooner or later those floppies are gonna croak and making the CD, from what I heard, was a big pain in the arse and since I hadn't done the original CD (I had tried and failed), I had no idea how to make another working CD copy. So on top of my original XP disk being missing, now my MULTIPLE copies of a working Disk Image CD were missing as well. *sigh*

So, I got up uber early again on Tuesday and got into work by 7am again. I made some progress so that was good. But the missing CDs were still bugging the crap out of me.

I came home and my wife had dinner ready. She even made me some fried zucchini which is one of my favorite fried things. Mmmm... Baking Miracle n Zucchini. Tasty! Maryann put Norah to bed and I was going to go back downstairs to continue the project, but I wanted to have one more go at finding those disks. I remembered I had taken a bag of music CDs downstairs and hadn't filed them yet. Maybe I had put the disks in there thinking that I would put them where they needed to be when I filed my music CDs. I check downstairs and there was the bag and the music CDs, but no XP or Drive Image disks. *censored* *censored*

I went back upstairs and rummaged around some more. I looked in drawers that hadn't been opened in months, I shuffled and organized all sorts of things on my desk. No disks. So I sat in my chair and harumphed.

My wife comes in and I explain that I just couldn't understand where the hell they went. I knew the disk was very important and that I wouldn't have thrown it out and I remembered seeing it and putting with some stuff to go downstairs but that SOB wasn't down there. She had heard the story at least 10 times over 3 days. But she said, 'Well, lemme help you look'. And I pointed to all the cleanliness and said 'I've checked everywhere in here'. So she poked around in a basket that I hadn't looked in (bad Darrin!) but it wasn't in there. I even double checked after she had checked... but it wasn't in there.

So I took at seat in my office chair. Defeated.

Then my wife hands me this old decrepid waste paper basket that I've had for eons and said 'Is it in here'. The minute I saw the computer cord poking out, I knew it was in there. And it was, as well as the Drive Image disk and several other computer related things.

I said, "Where in the hell was this???" and my wife pointed to the middle of the floor and said "Right here". Once again, my wife had saved me from my perfectionist, I-have-to-be-right-all-the-time, cause-I-can't-possibly-make-a-mistake self.

So I gave my wife a kiss and went back downstairs to finish my project, which I can say is complete. Well for the most part. I still have some stuff I'd like to do with different images, but the main goal was to reimage the box and set it up so I could swap in and out images. Done and done.

My wife as of late has really been very cool and supportive and helpful and has saved me from myself way too many times for me to admit. Well, that is until recent, where I now sing her praises for proving my arrogant arse wrong. :)

Oh... and my wife just called to inform me that I had forgotten my lunch. This was likely 'cause I got up at 6:00am to come into work. She's going to drop off my lunch. Like I said, my wife is great and I love her very very much.

Update-age

Just a quick note to give everyone an update on what's been going on.

Two weekends ago my daughter had her 1st birthday party. Fun was had by all. I thank everyone for showing up. I'll post a picture later on so check back.

This past weekend was fun as well. I finally got the second dehumidifier hooked up downstairs. I had to run a hose through the wall, so it was a fun time.

--- and now the real reason for the update... a good old fashioned family outing story ---

On Saturday, the Mrs, la bambina and I went to the 14th Annual something-or-another Cruse In in Delaware, Ohio. We had a good time walking up and down the strip looking at cars. Here comes the good part of the post.

So we left and being Delaware I wasn't sure where I was, but I pretty much had a good idea of what direction we were going. So as were leaving, we see signs for 23 North, but not 23 South which is what we want. Knowing how we came into town, I tell Maryann, 'Stay on 42. It'll cross 315 or 23 eventually'. So we drove a little while and my wife tells me 'we're going the wrong way.' and I said 'no we're not'. The little one is getting a bit cranky by now.

We drive a little further and the wife says 'we need to turn around cause we're going the wrong way' and I say, 'look, there's the sun,' (note: it was overcast) , 'and that means we're heading south.' *insert grumpy Darrin face* A little further we pass a little town and again the wife says 'we need to turn around 'cause we're going the wrong way' so I say 'let me get the map and I'll look at it'. So we pull off and look at the map. Of course the little town isn't on the map and the signs for 42 don't say north or south. So my wife tells me, 'I'm heading back where we came from'. So I pout and say 'Fine. Do whatever you want 'cause you're not gonna listen to me anyways'.

Sounds like a sitcom situation, no?

So she heads back in the other direction. It is at this point that I realize that the sun, (still cloudy out, btw,) now appears to be coming from the same direction as it was when we were heading in the other direction. *insert Darrin saying expletive of choice*

We make it back in town. In my head we had driven for 20 minutes. In fact, we had probably traveled for 5 minutes. The little one crying in the back seems to bend some kind of time continuum. We head back the way we came into town, and in odd little Delaware, that doesn't mean being able to leave. There were plenty of exits for 23 North, but not for 23 South. You could see 23, but could only enter it by going north. Which is not what we wanted to do.

So Maryann starts heading in the opposite direction to which I ask 'What are you doing?' To any sane man (not saying that I am), going away from the road you are trying to get to does not equal finding an exit to get on to it.

We travel for more than a few blocks. After a while, my wife turns left. By this time, I don't know North or South or East or West and I'm convinced we're going to have to live in Delaware because we won't be able to find our way out.

And at that moment, there is a sign in front of us. 23 South.

We got on the road and all the way home I had to repeatedly tell my wife that she was right. I don't like being wrong, so that is very hard for me to do. But in this case, I admitted that I was wrong in the wrongest of ways.

"Yes, I am an ass," I told my wife.

The running joke of the day was for me to point out direction we were going. If we were heading east, I would say we were heading "due Darrin west".

So, I admit it in public, when I get turned around, I have NO sense of direction unless it is very early morning or late evening and the sun is approximately in the east or west... or is it the other way around... ;)

I've also let my wife know that anytime my testosterone gets out of whack and I start behaving like a moron and saying 'We're going the wrong way!!!' that all she needs to say is:

Remember the Delaware.

You know you're tired when...

You know you're tired when you're dreaming that you are really tired and want to go to sleep.

I had that dream this morning.

And of course, when I no more than laid my head down on the couch in my dream that my alarm went off.

Ugh.

I feel really tired.

Bizzy Bee Part 3

Well, I had yet another busy weekend.

Woke up at 6:30am on Saturday and worked on the yard until 12:30pm. But I can finally say that it is, as far as I can say (save a few very minor things that only I would notice), it all is finally finished. Thank goodness.

Got cleaned up and went to the 1st b-day for one of the babies and Maryann's mommy group at 3pm. Left there at 5pm.

Got back home, dropped off Maryann and the kid and went over to Todd's for a Records and Cards party at 6pm. Left there around 10:30pm, but still had to divert myself over to Wal-Mart off of 23 to pick up some bottle liners as we were out and Norah was gonna need to eat in the morning. Got home at 11:30pm and crrrraaaasssshhhhhedddd.

Sunday came along, I have no idea what I did in the morning. I believe I may have cleaned the cat litter boxes... or was that Saturday as well? I have no idea. I remember that I looked to see where I could run the hose from the second dehumidifier in the 'studio' in the basement through the wall. I think I have that figured out now, maybe. I'll have to move some desks and bookcases and other things around. But at the time, there was barely enough room to move around, so I couldn't move things into place. Jumped in the car at noon, at lunch on the run, and headed over to my cousin's in Dayton. Visited with them until 6:30pm. Goodbyes and all we managed to get on the road at 7pm. Finally got home at 8:15/30pm, very tired and hungry baby in tow. Dropped off mama and kid and headed over to Culver's to have a second dinner (yes, I was so spaced out that I had forgotten we had an early dinner around 4pm that day). Got back to the house. Got back home, burgers in tow. Ate. Watched Next Food Network star. Norah woke back up around 10pm. Put her back to bed, but then realized that the Salvation Army was stopping by in the morning to pick up some old furniture we no longer needed. So the missus and I moved the chairs and other misc table from the basement to the family room upstairs. Finished that in quick order, watched some more TV (we had taped Gene Simmon's Family Jewels) and caught the end of the Extreme Cake competition and then went to bed around around 11:30pm.

Woke up at my usual 7:15, got ready for work, move all said furniture in family room to driveway and headed to work... which is where I am now... and really don't want to be since I just want to take a nap. Wah.

But, in all it was a good weekend. Tiring, but good.

Nice Weekend

The Mrs. and I headed up to Cinci to celebrate her nephew's birthday. It was nice.

We got up there around 11 am on Saturday. It was a 'pool party', so we all ended up at the pool at the complex where Maryann's parents live. And so I swam. And it was fun. I honestly couldn't remember the last time I had been swimming in a pool. It's been a long time. I'm almost thinking it's been like 10 years or so. We got Norah in the pool and she LOVED it. She was splashing up a storm. While it was warm, we were all intelligent enough to put sunscreen on so no one got sunburn which was nice.

After swimming for an hour and a half, we all headed back to M's parents place. They ordered up some LaRosa's pizza. I thought it was okay. It's handtossed which is good, but the crust was very thick and fluffy. I tend to like the thinner crusts better. If I want fluffy crust, then I'll get a deep dish pizza.

After all the pizza was gone, M. and I dumped off the little one on to her mom so we could go out and have an evening out. A date if you will.

We ended up at Showcase Cinemas to see Ratatouille, which is the new Pixar animated flick. We got there a little bit early, so went to the inhouse bar and grill and had a beer. They were out of Miller Lite :( so we had to have Bud Lite instead. No biggie.

After drinking our beer, we went to the movie. It turns out it was a Digital Projection theater. I have to say this: Holy Shit. It was like watching a DVD on a very very very big screen. The images were crystal clear. No dots or fuzz or scratches flying by during the previews or during the movie. It was very very nice. If you have a chance to see something on a Digital Projection screen, I say 'Do so immediately!'. The movie was Pixar so of course, it was pretty darn good.

The only thing that was disappointing about the whole experience was that during the entire movie, they had a fluorescent light on in the projection booth for who knows what reason. So even during the dark scenes, there was a weird backlight coming from behind you. It bugged me a little, but my wife used to work in a theater, so you can imagine how much it bugged her. She actually left midway through the movie to ask someone to have them turn it off. Of course, that never occurred. After the movie we went to the customer service area to complain, or at the very least, ask why there was this light on. M. talked with the manager and was told 'well, that's the digital projection booth and we have to leave the light on in case anything breaks'. Um... what? If something goes wrong THEN you can turn on the light. Why in the hell would you leave it on ALL THE TIME. Anyhoo, they gave us some free movie passes. We might have given them to her parents for babysitting, though, her mom might have not wanted them or something. So we might have free tickets... or her parents might have them. I'm not sure who got them.

After the movie we went to Graeter's Ice Cream. Since this month is Ice Cream Month, you can get a free mini-scoop with any order. So I went to the counter and asked for a Cherry Cordial sundae with a mini-scoop of Buckeye Blitz on top. In the busyness of the evening, somehow or another that translated into 'Give me a buckeye blitz sundae with a cherry on top'. I didn't complain cause it looked damned tasty... and it was.

An aside: I have always said that I liked Handel's Buckeye ice cream better than Graeter's Buckeye Blitz for two reason. 1) Handel's Buckeye ice cream literally has little buckeyes in it. And I think that is cool as hell. 2) The Greater's Buckeye Blitz has these huge chunks of chocolate in it and that just bugs the shit out of me. If I wanted a damn hershey bar crammed into my ice cream I would ask for it that way. I don't mind little chips or chocolate chips. I'm fine with that. Now, I've told several people this, including my wife, and have in general been told that I am nuts. Until the other night. So I get to the bottom of my Graeter's Buckeye Blitz sundae and tell my wife she can have the 2 chunks of chocolate. I hand her the cup and she says "I don't want a piece of chocolate that big!". They were both about 2" x 1" each. So I told her that this is why I like the Handel's Buckeye ice cream better than the Graeter's ice cream. These are the kinds of chunks that I ALWAYS get when I get Buckeye Blitz. Maryann agreed that that size of chunk was a bit much, but also said that she had never had that problem. *shrug* So there you go.

We got back and Norah was asleep. She of course woke up later in the evening and didn't really ever fully get back to sleep, so neither of us got more than 4 hours of sleep the entire evening. By morning, we were a bit whipped.

But M's mom made a hearty breakfast. I myself had 2 eggs (over easy), 2 fresh blueberry pancakes and 4 sausage patties. It was TASTY!!!

After that we packed up the car and went over to her sister's house to pick up something... I totally forget what that was. Then we went and got lunch at Jocko's chicken and biscuits. I'm a big fan of fried chicken gizzards for god knows what reason. Lee's Famous Recipe has them, but there isn't a Lee's around Columbus, that I know of. The last time I got to eat them was when I was doing some work in St. Louis. But the ones at Jocko's were just as good. Mmmmmmmmm mmmmmmm. Gizzards are good.

We finally got back into Columbus around 5:30pm. We were beat. Norah went to bed around her usual time. We watched the Next Food Network Star program as well as the new Gene Simmon's Family Jewels episode and hit the hay.

All in all, it was a nice weekend, esp the part where I got to spend some alone time with the wife.

I hope your weekend was just as nice.

A few things

WTG Joey Chestnut for bringing back the Mustard Belt to the USA by woofing down 66 Nathan's hot dogs. And I still think that Kobayashi should have been DQ'ed following his 'reversal of fortune'. However, instead, the IFOCE simply made a 'deduction' on the number of dogs that he ate, which in my opinion goes against the rules which they set forth. But, I guess maybe the 'reversal of fortune' rule might be like traveling in the NBA. It's meant to be bent a little (or not enforced at all).

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Issah Washington is a complete moron. All this finger pointing about how he was fired because he was a black man who uttered 'f*ggot' not once, but twice and that this was a ploy be TR Knight who is in a bid to be the most popular Grey's Anatomy star and that it was Patrick What-His-Face who started the whole thing with his spittle attack on you cause he was late or something. Dude, I hate to tell you, but that had nothing to do with color. It probably has more to do with you being a big whiner.

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Brittany Spears is a nut job. I don't really need to quote any sources or examples on this one. Though her latest comment on how that whole incident where she took a few swings at a paparazzi's car with an umbrella had something to do with 'preparing for a role in a movie'. Um... ok. Whatever. Just admit you were whacked out on meth or were having a mental breakdown due to exhaustion or stress.

Bizzy Bee - Part 2

Had another weekend full of yardword fun. On Saturday I managed to weed the majority of the section out back. I also got most of the trees trimmed that I wanted to get trimmed. That only took 7 hours. Blech! Then on Sunday, I got to bundle up all the branches from the tree trimming in the morning. After I quickee birthday party for one of the babies in Maryann's mommy group, I cam back and laid down 36 bags of mulch in a little over an hour. Funny thing, is that I sweated more in that hour than I did the entire previous day. Go figure.

Anyhoo... I'm glad that I got the majority of the yardwork done. There are still a couple of things that I want to do, but if they don't get done then it's no big deal.

Does anyone really care about me doing yardwork? Probably not. :-P

Bye.

Bizzy Bee

I was a busy little bee this past weekend. With Norah's 1st B-day party coming up, the outside really needed to have some work done. I've neglected it for the past couple of years and it needed an overhaul. So, on Friday I called up Ohio Mulch and ordered 60 bags (yeah, sixty) of cypress mulch (the big 3 cu. ft. bags at that). They arrived Saturday morning on 2 pallets. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't. *shrug* So Saturday I spent about 7 hours outside weeding, trimming, edging and mulching the front. There were alot of weeds, let me tell you, but I pulled them all out one by one. The front used 13 bags of mulch.

On Sunday, I had a little bit of time, so I weeded the deck. Sound strange? Well not really. You see, the original owners had a big concrete slab out back, but they decided they needed another 2 ft of space all the way around, so they basically put up some railroad ties and bricks and extended it out. So what happens is that weeds like to grow in the sandy base and between the bricks. So what one has to do is, well, weed the deck. My tool of choice is an old cutting knife that's been in the family at least 30 years (well, it's so dull now it doesn't cut anything). I basically would put the blade between the bricks and extract the ugly weeds. The funny thing is that my body hurt more doing that for and hour and a half than it did from the 7 hours the previous day. Weird.

Then me, the wife and the little one went back home to Anna and celebrated Father's Day and my mom and my sisters birthdays. It was nice to see them.

And that was my weekend. I still have alot of yard work to do. I still need to weed, edge and mulch under one of the trees out back. Then the weeding, edging and mulching of the LARGE section in the back. That is where the majority of the mulch is going. I'm thinking it will take 40 bags, but even now, I'm concerned that I might not have enough, especially if I am trying to put down the correct amount of mulch (ie, 2 to 3 inches deep, like I did out front). And there is a little section with 3 bushes in it that, as you guessed, also needs weeded, edged and mulched. I'd still like to even up thr bricks on the deck. After a few years they tend to dip towards the edges. When I do that, I'll probably also lay down some plastic under this bricks in hopes that it will cut down on the number of weeds that take root. That's the hope at least.

How was your weekend?

Interesting... Update...

So, I decided to look at some of my old blog entries... from like 2002, etc. Ran into a few weird things I had kinda forgotten about. Like I started using Blogger just 10 days after Sept 11th.

I also found a entry on my old LiveJournal which said that 'Afternoon Delight' as done during the movie Anchorman was awesome. I stick with statement. Which lead me to YouTube of course since the original link I had went nowhere anymore. I love the YouTube, but why do people insist on video taping their TV screens. I found 3 versions of this freakin' song in which some knucklehead who had apparntly no knowledge of ripping an mpg from a DVD but could still manage to upload them videotaping (or using their digital camcorder in 2007 terms) said clip. WTF? If you aren't smart enough to rip the sumbitch, then don't fucking bother. Pisses me off that the DECENT version of this showed up on the page FOUR. The other P.O.S.s shows up in the first three pages along with a multitude of other people trying to sing this song (or something). Anyways, I finally found a decent enough copy to share.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1OHAG2S3kBU

And while searching for that, I found a rip of Will Ferrel on SNL doing 'Storytellers: Neil Diamond'. I love this skit for disturbing reasons. Not as much as the 'Blue Oyster Cult... more cowbell... behind the music' skit, but a close second. Unfortunately, both versions that I found were from a SNL special. But anyways... still funny.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=t2C9oMmwl80

So... I did manage to find something on YouTube. Which is where I can, for the moment, actually kill some time.

Interesting...

I've found that I have a set number of websites that I look at on the Internet now. It used to be, not long ago, that if I was on the Internet I ended up just about anywhere. And could surf for hours and hours without really repeating much. So, I'm sitting here at work during a slight lull and I honestly have no idea what to do. I've looked at all the sites I usually look at everyday, I've looked at all the blogs I normally look at and that leaves me where I'm currently at. Well, ok, I did go to MSNBC and kinda peruse the Entertainment and Science / Tech news, which lead me to Space.com... but that was a grand total of 20 minutes... max. So now I sit here, updating my blog and trying to figure out what the hell I used to do not so many years ago that would have me on my computer for hours on end.

Maybe I'll go look at AtariAge.com. Maybe that will direct me somewhere of interest... but I highly doubt it.

Wish me luck.

Nice Father's Day

Well, my first Father's Day was quite nice. Mine started a little early, beginning on Saturday. My wife treated me to some wings and rings at Quaker Steak and Lube. As always, I got the Buckeye BBQ and it was tasty. Then we did a little bit o' Big Lots shopping. On Sunday morning, my wife made me a wonderful breakfast complete with eggs, pancakes, bacon AND sausage. It was deeeeelicious. For lunch we went to Skyline... yummy! Present-wise, Maryann got me the new Dream Theater album (and it rawks!) and Norah got me the latest Neil Peart book (which rawks as well).

So, yeah, I had a great Father's Day weekend. Yay me!

What to do....

The wife leaves the husband at home on a Saturday afternoon. She informs him that she is going to grab lunch on the run so he must fend for himself. The husband starts to panic but then decides to sit down and think about it.


Ah ha! He finds the answer!


SPAM!!! Tabasco Flavored no less!


It comes out of the can. He is amazed that it holds the same shape in the can as it does out of the can. 'Amazing!', he things. But that is a large piece of meat. the wife made a bounty of delicious pancakes this morning and he is surely not THAT hungry.


The answer is: Cut it in half. In his hunger-crazed eyes, his center cut is a bit off.


The husband finds his way to the fridge and pulls out his favorite beer: Shiner Bock. 'Mmmm, beer!', he thinks. With beer, meat and a spatula in hand, he heads outdoors to the mighty grill.


The husband fires up the grill and places the slabs of meat on the grill. The aroma makes his hunger grow. To take his mind off the pains, he walks around to inspect the new gutters that were installed that Friday. 'Boy! They sure do look good! Leaf Gutter rules!', he thinks.


Out front he spies a rabbit feasting on some grass. The eating rabbit reminds him of his food on the grill.


Luckily, the meat is cooking nicely. He flips the slabs o Spam and lets them cook til there are nice char marks on it.


After 15 minutes, he is satisfied and plates the larger piece of Spam (about a 1/2 lbs worth) on a bun. 'Mmmm... time to eat!', he thinks.


Mouthful after mouthful of wonderful Tabasco Spammy goodness enters the husbands mouth. Finally, he is full. He puts away his dishes and goes outdoors to do manly things like mowing the lawn and washing the car.


The End.

Yeah...

I'm a little bit better now. Nothing that a Double BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger from Rally's can't help set straight. Drove far from work to Rally's, then drove even farther south to the park(s) that line Riverside. Parked at a spot overlooking el Scioto River, listened to Kiss' first Alive! album and chowed down. I feel a little bit better now. Sometimes, I just need to spit some blood and fire (like Gene Simmons does on stage) about what's bugging me in order to swing the pendulum the other direction. And it appears to have worked for now.

Peace outside.

Not Happy

I'm having one of those 'not happy' moments. So if I'm mean to you, don't let it bother you 'cause I'm just frustrated about a multitude of things that I probably shouldn't be frustrated about. I'll eventually get over it. But, you have been warned. Today is not the day to test my patience or annoy me or be stupid.

This concludes my broadcast.

Thanks Tom! and other news (or lack thereof)

I know I've thanked him a million times over, but again, a big Thank You to Tom who helped me finish off digging and filling in the leech bed that I had to put in since I'm getting new gutters on the house soon.

Other than that, notta much going on. Work is getting better by the day simply because I'm learning more and more about the product.

I'm eating lemon jello pudding with a fork right now and it's pretty tasty. Thank you Odd.. er Big Lots for pricing it at 79c for 4 little tubby thingys. I also bought some Farley's Fruit Slices candy thee as well. Kinda like the orange slice candy except that is has lots of other flavors. I didn't need them, but I went during lunch, before I ate, which is like the worst thing that you can do. I put back at least 5 other things: Hunt's Speghetti sauce in a 28 oz can, a jar of Mt. Olive 'garlic-free' dill pickles, Zattaran's Brown Rice and Sausage Heat n Eat package, 1 liter of some off brand strawberry soda and some cheepo tortilla chips.

Um... Norah is thiiiiiiiiiis close to crawling at the moment. She can definitely motor around alot faster. I really need to kiddie-proof the concrete thingy in front of the fireplace.

And that's about all I got.

And how are you???

Notta Much other than a favorite chippy snack question

Notta much goin' on folks, but figured I'd drop a quick shout to say "SHIT YEAH!!!" and throw out some random thoughts that haven't warranted their own posts... or something. Words.

The new job is as good as can be excepted in its second week with my boss (and the rest of my colleagues' boss) gone to Vegas. I at least have seen the software that they build. That puts some tangibleness to the documents that I read all last week.

We're getting new gutters put on the house. The old ones are, well, just pissing me off. They are always clogging and I think that there are other things wrong that I don't know about. So, to remedy that, we're using our tax refund and getting Leaf Guard gutters. One piece, seamless stuff with that whole liquid adhesion thing going on so water goes in but twigs and shit, for the most part, stay out. Looks like I am gonna have to put in a new downspout myself though. Seems that it's not a good thing to make a 45 foot long gutter since once can't get the pitch correct for water to do it's thing. I'm hoping I can tie into one of the other downspouts that is about 10 feet away. If not, I guess I'm, as Beatle John (or was it Paul) said "digging a hole" and putting gravel in it.

Some of my favorite chip snacks, in no particular order:
1) Snyder's Of Berlin (not Hanover) Barbecue Potato Chips - I've likes this for a long while now. And the funny thing is, in my opinion, they really aren't that BBQy either. It must be the MSG goodness that makes them so tasty.
2) Munchos - I love these things. And you have to say 'things' cause they aren't really chips (aka sliced from a potato). I can eat a big bag of these in one sitting easy, though I need some significant beverage since they are salty as all hell.
3) TGI Fridays Potato Skins - Cheddar and Bacon flavor. These used to be called Tato Skins until someone got the bright idea of marketing them with TGIFs name. These things are awesome. I had nearly forgotten about them until I saw them in the vending machine here at work. I hope they keep them in stock, though, at 50c an ounce, I just need to find a store that has the big bags of them and then ration them out.
4) Andy Capp's Hot Fries. These things are tasty as well. I still remember having a bag of these when I was about 10 years old. Why do I remember this? Well, mainly cause it was an evening that my parents were out of town and we had a babysitter. My sister and I kept coloring them with red markers and shit and trying to get the babysitter to eat one of them. Of course, she wisely did not. In retrospect, it makes sense. If some kid walked up to you and handed you a single Andy Capp fry and said "Here, eat this" with a devilish grin on their face would you eat it? Me? I probably would, just to freak them out. Course, if it had like hand soap on it, I'd probably freak out and chase them down the street for good measure.
5) Mikesell's Good N Hot potato chips - These are very tasty and very hot. Not as hot as Blair's Death Rain habañero chips, but as far as typical run of the mill chips go, these are pretty hot. And I like them. I've also found that Jay's Hot Stuff chips are a good substitute should the Mikesells not be available. Spiciness is about the same. The main difference is that the Mikesells are thick n wavy while the Jay's are thin and flat. Honestly, I should technically like the Jay's better since I prefer flat over wavy. But, Mikesells was first and therefore wins the official vote.

What are your favorite chippy-like snacks? I'd like to know. Gimme a comment. Do it now. Otherwise you'll forget and I'll have to cut n paste this thing all over again. Thanks for playing. Come back soon, ya hear? So seriously, did you hear that? Ok, good. Over and out blog lurkers.

The Ultimate Dysfunctional Super Group

First off, if you don't know what I super group is, I feel sorry for you... but anyways, a super group is basically when a bunch of people from different 'big' bands get together and form a new group, which then becomes known as a super group. Some examples are:

Blind Faith - This band consisted of Eric Clapton (Yardbirds, Cream), Ginger Baker (Cream), Steve Winwood (Traffic) and Ric Grech (Family).
Temple of the Dog - This band consisted of members of Soundgarden and Mother Love Bone (whose members would later create Pearl Jam). Most notable song released was "Hunger Strike". Of note, Pearl Jam was formed AFTER Temple of the Dog. Eddie was actually in town to audition for the lead singer position in Pearl Jam when they invited him in to help sing on Hunger Strike.
and
Asia - This progressive rock supergroup consisted of former members of the bands Yes, King Crimson, Emerson Lake and Palmer and The Buggles. Most known for a few charting singles such as "Only Time Will Tell" and "Heat of the Moment"

With the supergroup concept now fully explained with examples, I now present my idea for The Dysfunctional Supergroup! This group will consist of very, how should we say, unique individuals who are known for being moody and / or eccentric. One of the interesting ideas of my concept is that every position will have a backup since it's very well possible that someone might just throw a hissy fit and leave or come down with some medical emergency. Without further ado, I give you:

The Ultimate Dysfunctional Supergroup (aka TUDS)

Lead Singer / Keyboards - Axl Rose
Axl Rose is the lead singer for Guns N' Roses with a very distinctive voice. Axl's temperment and general aloofness is very well documented. G N' R's Chinese Democracy album has been in the works for something like 10 years, has cost some record company 10 million dollars and still has no release date.

Lead Singer (backup) - Sebastian Bach
Sebastian Bach is most known for his stint as the lead singer for Skid Row, but in his defense, I do believe that he had a solo career as well (including his reoccurring role on the sappy sitcom Gilmore Girls). Sebastian also has a unique voice and is a bit moody and I think he would make a great backup. Though, just the fact that he is playing second fiddle might make him just flat out not show up at all as well. He doesn't play keyboards as far as I know but I'm willing to overlook that in light of the existence of a SECOND lead singer (!!!).

Lead Singer / Keyboards / Disco Ball - Dennis DeYoung
Dennis DeYoung is most notable for being one of the lead singers in the band Styx. You know, the Mr. Roboto guy. Dennis ended up leaving Styx because of a disease where lights made him melt or something. He also steered the band in the direction of creating the Kilroy Was Here (Mr. Roboto) concept album which, other than the high selling singer 'Mr. Roboto' didn't do anything and the tour which tried to stage the entire album like an opera bewildered all their fans. But that's beside the fact. He's a fantastic singer. In order to protect him from his light illness, Dennis DeYoung will be performing on stage in a black tent. The tent will also have small mirrors on it and will be on a revolving platform, which will basically simulate a disco ball when the spotlight shines on the tent. How about that! Also note, that with the inclusion of another lead singer / keyboardist, I am putting together the best head-to-head concert since Billy Joel and Elton John toured together. Ohhhhh.... I am a GENIUS!!!

Lead Singer / Keyboards / Disco Ball (backup) - Perry Farrel
Perry Farrel was the lead singer for Jane's Addition and Porno for Pyros. He also the co-creator of the Lollapalooza festival. He is an interesting character to say the least. I'm not sure if he plays keyboards or not, but it doesn't matter because I'm sure he'd figure it out. If he doesn't, he can play bongos for all I care. Also, Perry will not be performing under a tent, but will have a black body suit with mirrors attached to it so he can fulfill his disco ball responsibilities.

Lead Guitar - Vinnie Vincent
Vinnie Vincent is a former of guitarist for Kiss and Vinnie Vincent Invasion. Vinnie was with Kiss when they took off the makeup. No denying that the guy has talent. However, he proved difficult to work with. He sued Kiss when he thought he was due more royalities and lost. Gene was willing to let bygones be bygones and asked Vinnie to help the write material for the Kiss Revenge album. Again, Vinnie got mad and sued Kiss. He has since led a very secluded life. Some have said that he has had a sex-change operation, but I'll believe that when I see it. Actually, I'd rather not see that. Maybe I'll put Vinnie in a tent as well. Or maybe in a giant translucent hamster ball. He'd be rolling around on stage. If Axl got mad at him, he could kick Vinnie (and his ball) into the crowd. Awesome!

Lead Guitar (backup) - David Lindley
I don't know anything about David really. I did a search on 'eccentric guitarist' and his name came up. No lie. He is usually know as a 'Lead Guitarist for Hire' kinda studio musician who has worked for Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart, et al. He is also a multi-instrumentalist playing such odd stringed intruments as oud, cittern, bouzouki, saz, and cümbüş. He also plays other more normal instruments such as lap steel guitar, banjo and violin. I just hope that Vinnie skips out on at least ONE show just so that David can start playing a bad ass cittern solo.

Lead Guitar - Dave Navarro
Dave was in Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers. The RHCP gig came his way, I believe, when John Frusciante went off into heroin never never land for a while (John has since cleaned up). Um... yeah. He was married to Carmen Electra and a couple other people. He just seems to be a bit... odd to me, so he's in the line up as a lead guitarist. BTW, I had to put both Dave and Vinnie as Lead Guitarist 'cause one of them probably would cry if not referred to as 'lead guitarist'.

Lead Guitar (backup) - Eddie Van Halen
Everyone knows Eddie. And if you don't, I feel sorry for you. His antics as of late are reason enough to include him, at the very least, in the backup lead guitarist spot. That whole thing about getting cancer because of his metal pick and not because of the 5 packs a day he smoked alone is enough for me. Maybe it was the picks, who am I to say. If Dave does decide to not to show up for a gig, I think I'm going to put a clause in Eddie's contract that says he has to shave his head. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I can.

Bass Guitar - William "Bootsy" Collins
Bootsy is the man. He's played as part of James Brown's backing band The JB's as well as Funkadelic, Parliament and Boosty's Rubber Band. Hailing from Cincinnati, it's nice to have a fellow Ohioan in the mix. Just the fact that he was booted from James Brown's group for basically tripping on acid while on stage should be enough reason to add Mr. Collins to the fold. Also, his clothing attire is truly a bit on the zany side. The perfect bassist for The Ultimate Dysfunctional Supergroup if you ask me.

Bass Guitar (backup) - Flea
Flea (born Michael Peter Balzary) is the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He just seems like a odd one to me. No doubt that he is talented. He played trumpet in the Los Angeles Junior Philharmonic Orchestra and because a very good jazz trumpet player. Honestly, I picked Flea because I secretly hope that if he does get on stage, that he demands that he gets to play a trumpet solo in the middle of a song, or even better, insists on playing all his bass parts on the trumpet. That would just be cool... to me.

Drums - Tommy Lee
Tommy is most know for his long tenure in Motley Crue. Tommy seems to be a bit... something. I don't know the words for it. Sure of himself? Full of himself? Who knows. He was married to Pamela Anderson. He's had numerous weird drum rigs up on stage. One that spun around and one that hovered over the crowd. Maybe I could put him in a gyroscope, space shuttle training rig. And not for one song, but for the whole gig. His playing would get a bit loopy towards the end of the show.

Drums (backup) - Jizmak Da Gusha
I originally had this spot slated for Lars Ulrich, but in his later years, he's seemed to have mellowed out. So instead, I've given the backup drummer spot Jizmak Da Gusha of GWAR. I need no other reason to include him other than he plays in GWAR. That's reason enough for me.

Sorry that the bios of the players petered out at the end, but this really was more to put together a band based around Axl and Dennis DeYoung. If Frank Zappa or Sun Ra were still around, I would have found positions for them as well. In fact, anyone who has played for Zappa would probably be able to fill in any of the positions.

If you have any other people in mind that might be a better fit in the back (or at the very least, a secondary backup), let me know. I'd love to add to the lineup.

Others I considered for the band: Lars Ulrich - drummer for Metallica, John Frusciante - guitarist for Red Hot Chili Peppers, Carmine Appice - drummer for various bands, Hank Williams Jr. - vocalist for himself, David Coverdale - vocalist for Whitesnake, Chip Z'Nuff - bassist of Enuff Z'nuff (his bass only has two strings!), Van Morrison - vocalist, Eric McFadden - vocalist, guitarist, entertainer.