Venezuelian beer in the news

Lovers can become wives with a diet of Regional beer. Click the title.

2005 rocks well

It occurred to me yesterday that it's been a pretty good year for hard rock so far in 2005. I'm giving high marks to Nine Inch Nails's With Teeth, System of a Down's Mezmerize, Alkaline Trio's Crimson, and Judas Priest's Retribution. Check 'em out, check 'em out, check 'em out.

That said, tonight is the big polka show in Hartford, WI - LynnMarie, Kathy Vogt and a few others are squeezing out a show. See you there?

A Birthday, Cows, Tires, Nametags, Mr. Blue, and The Full Monty

Not much going on lately, but plenty of it. So buckle up, pop some corn and settle in.

Went to Lori's Grandma's 80th birthday party last weekend - very nice, great day, saw the whole family. Stopped in Madison for the farmer's market. It was the annual "Cows on the Concourse" day. The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board promotes this as part of Diary Month. They have some pens set up with dairy cows, some adults and some calves. It was good - walk around, see the cows, buy cheese and coffee.

Get new tires on the motorcycle later this morning. Yay!

Went to River Splash, a street festival in Milwaukee. If I was all about just standing around drinking, it would have been perfect. We were in town getting Lori's rings cleaned, dining at Coquette Cafe and checking out the Hot Rod magazine sponsored car show/rally stop at Miller Park. After the jewelers, we drove to the lake and followed it back into downtown. Saw some beautiful houses going that way. All very cool and lots of fun. We had extra time, didn't want to go home yet, so we decided to check out this festival - first timers. The actual highlight of River Splash was speaking to the picture frame vendors (there was a small area with booths with stuff for sale). They had on these cool name tags with programmable, scrolling, electronic messages on them. They also had a cool set-up for processing credit card payments. After we chatted with them for awhile, we made our way to the other side of the festival where the only act on the schedule that marginally appealed to us was going to start their show. They didn't start on time and we got bored and left before they came on. Oh, the band was Light Up, a Styx tribute band.

Ultimately, it wasn't terrible, we just weren't into the festival. I mean, I enjoyed the tunes from the Beatles tribute band. And we talked to the picture frame vendors.

Got a new PC! It's superfast. I don't even remember just how fast, but I think it can do the Kessel run in 11 parsecs. It's just that clever. When we had 1 laptop and 1 desktop, we referred to them as the "laptop" and the "PC" in order to distinguish them quickly in the course of conversations. We've taken to calling the new one "Mr. Blue", mostly because it's blue. It has nothing to do with Eddie Bunker's portrayal of Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs, but we have discussed how the film would have been different if our "Mr. Blue" had actually portrayed Mr. Blue in the movie.

Saw The Full Monty at the new Drury Lane Theater at Water Tower. I've had the Broadway cast recording for a few years now and really like that - The papers all raved about the show - especially the wise-cracking, seen-it-all, piano-playing character. Steals the show, some said. In a word, the experience was 'Ugh'. The performers all performed well, the songs were good, but the book was dreadful and I didn't care for much of the direction. Blah! I thought the wise-cracking, seen-it-all, old timer was the worst part of the show. Theater was nice, though. Go rent the original film, which is great, and give the soundtrack a listen. Stop there.

Of course, because of the show, The Full Monty CD got frequent spins in the player over the last several weeks. And that led to other Broadway shows, especially Avenue Q and Little Shop of Horrors. A couple of new (to me) bands I'm playing a lot of this week are Kaiser Chiefs and Skindred. Kaiser Chiefs's debut rocks - very cool.

Jack Nine, Radio Nothing

Big news in Chicago recently was a radio station format change from oldies to "Jack" radio, where they say they'll play anything. This was done based on the success of "Nine", that sells itself the same way - an open/no playlist. I knew I should know better, but based on the news, I decided to give them each a tryout.

What a great disappointment. As much as they sell on phrases like "we play anything", all I got were radio hits. There's plenty to choose from - What I heard went back to the early '60s and covered rock, pop, and country genres. When I was listening, there was no personality, no DJ, no song announcements.

Now I know the stations are owned and operated by giant corporations and should have expected what I got - music delivered by marketing as opposed to actual people. Like Icehouse and Red Dog are small brewery beers.

I know I'm not they're target demographic and I believe I'm the rarity, but I'd really listen to a station that played anything - Star Spangled Banner, followed by Dr. Dre, Jean-Luc Ponty, something from The King & I, and a XTC b-side. Surprise me! For a station that plays anything, could we at least get through an hour of broadcasting during which 1 track is played that we haven't already heard 50,000 times?

If you want something different, click on the title for a link to Guy Clark's website. Country-ish, singer/songwriter-type of stuff that's probably different than what you heard on the radio today.

Oh, well - Back to the digital jukebox. And more and more of my friends are saying they're satisfied with the satellite radio services, including the variety. I'm betting we'll get that with the next car purchase.

Ollie Tibbles becomes a train

Metra recently named a new train for Ollie Tibbles - A heartwarming story indeed. It got a lot of press recently, so you might have seen it. I think it's worth a read.

Click on the title for the story.

Pete's future vacation plans?

At first I thought Peter would start saving immediately. Even more disturbing to me, I think he may attempt this at home!

Clothes for chickens

'nuff said. Click on the title.

Lori granted a brief Pleasant time

My wife, Lori, works for a band called Brave Combo. Recently, the band played an Art Fair in East Lansing, MI, home to Wally Pleasant. Lori and I have the couple of CDs that Pleasant's released, but haven't seen him live - just never saw him playing anywhere.

While Lori was looking into the Art Fair, another, bonus reason she was interested in this show was because Wally Pleasant has played that Art Fair for 14 years in a row. The opportunity to see Wally Pleasant perform might arrive!

As details were arranged and finalized, however, Lori got the news that Wally wasn't playing the festival this year. Lori laughed it off as she worked with the festival organizers on the Brave Combo gig - it's a shame that when we show up in Wally's home town, he doesn't play a show he's played for 14 years in a row.

Bottom-line, the Art Fair arranged a 2-song set for Wally Pleasant right before Brave Combo's time. The event was even publicized in the local paper's entertainment section - click on the title for a link to the Lansing State Journal. About halfway through the article starts the related material and quotes.

Advances in bumper technology

New to a bowling alley near you - smart bumpers. Apparently when you type in the players' names, you also indicate whether or not each bowler wants bumpers. Bumpers will automatically rise into position when the bowler who wants them is up and lower when the next bowler wants bumper-free bowling fun. We big kids can bowl bumper-free with the bumper set! Click the title for Hawthorn Lanes' website and check out their ad.

Do I need to pray before eating my danish?

I'm probably missing something either in translation, but I'm not so sure. The way the story reads, a Danish Lutheran minister was suspended after he was quoted in an interview stating "there is no heavenly God." He's been reinstated, much to the delight of his flock, according to the item in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times. The link (click on the title) is for a Yahoo story.