Best Sports Weekend. Ever.

It's kind of a low point for Bay Area sports right now (for the last several years, actually), but last weekend had to be the most perfect football weekend I could ever ask for:

• Cal beat Miami in the Emerald Bowl, 24-17.
  
• The 49ers beat the Washington Redskins, 27-24
• The Raiders crushed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 31-24. Tampa is out of the playoffs! This makes up for Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003. Almost.
• Dallas gets crushed by the Eagles, 44-6. Tony Romo also gets defeated by soap, and collapses in the shower after the game.
• New England wins their final game in Buffalo, 13-0, but the Patriots still don't make the playoffs. Ha ha! Suck it, Belichick!
• The Broncos choke and get spanked by the Chargers, 21-52... and Jay Cutler is still a punk!
• In a shocking move, Mike Shanahan gets fired as the Broncos coach after 14 years.
  

We're hoping for a Manning vs. Manning Super Bowl, but who knows?

Go Bears!

Favorite Music of 2008

The year's almost over, so let's make a list!

In no particular order, here are my favorite albums and EP's from 2008:

Bloc Party - Intimacy: Sounds a lot like the previous two albums from this group, and that's a good thing.


Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight: Great folksy-indie rock from a Scottish band with the least intimidating name ever.


Girl Talk - Feed The Animals: An album full of mash-ups of raps over melodies from other songs. It's kind of fun to hear someone rapping over a tune you recognize, but before you know it, the song has moved on to something else.


The Kills - Midnight Boom: I love this record; it totally rocks. More cool than the White Stripes.


Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed - This group is like a more whimsical Arcade Fire.


Sharleen Spiteri - Melody - I love the Scottish group Texas, and I love this solo album by the lead singer. The most pop thing I have on my list.


She Wants Revenge - Save Your Soul: I enjoy a good male falsetto, but I also love music with deep, monotone vocals.


Tonight - Modern Romance: Kind of new wave-ish, kind of spacey. I listened to this EP continously when I first downloaded it.



Most of this music can be found for cheap at eMusic, which is where I find most of my new music nowadays. Give it a try if you get tired of listening to Fall Out Boy or Nickelback.

Better Him Than Me

My parents taught me never to laugh at someone else's misfortune. Sorry Mom and Dad, but whenever I need a pick-me-up during the day, this picture never, ever fails to amuse me:


Great. Now some bird is probably going to poop on me. Better keep some wet wipes and an extra shirt nearby.

Sleepy Friday

For many years, we've gone out and braved the Black Friday crowds, the day commonly known as the start of the holiday shopping season. We've traditionally got up super early, endured freezing cold weather and waited in long lines for stores to open. We executed shopping plans like a well-oiled machine. This year, however, I wasn't into it.

How can that be? Was I not feeling well? (No) Was I tired from a long work week? (No way, man) Am I getting old? (No... well, maybe)

I think I reached a point in my life where my personal comfort is more important than getting a good deal. I love a sale as much as the next guy, but if pushing, shoving, and the risk of bodily injury is involved, then forget about it.

Anyway, we ended pretty much buying everything we wanted online for the same prices that were available in the stores. All from the comfort of our own home. Thank God for the internet. On future Black Fridays, we may venture out again, but really... what looks better:

This?

Or this?

Kids Have It So Easy

One of my favorite pastimes nowadays is to muse over how good the kids have it today, compared to what my generation had to go through when we were young. Computers? Radio Shack TRS-80! Energy drinks? Moutain Dew! Cell phones? Payphones!

In junior high we had to read George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, as I imagine almost every student has read at one point or another. Back in my day, we were each assigned a used, beat-up copy of these books with covers just like this:


Dig that crazy 1984 font! Groovy! Actually, the Animal Farm cover is pretty cool, now that I think about it. I just didn't know it back then. I don't know who designed this cover, but its actually very well done.

Incidentally, here are a couple of other covers of different editions of 1984:

Why didn't schools give out these versions of 1984? I'm sure we would have all paid attention more closely. Oh-la-la!

The reason for my old age jealously is that Penguin is coming out with new editions for both of these books with all new covers by Shepard Fairey:


I'm sure some school is going to get brand-spanking-new copies of these Penguin editions for their students. I'm also sure that those students are going to deface the covers by writing awful things about the other kids they don't like. Little punks.

Shepard Fairey, by the way, is the same artist who designed the Barack Obama poster that you may have seen once or twice during the presidential campaign:


Go Obama!

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Warfield

After not seeing any concerts for what feels like a couple of years, we went to go see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at The Warfield the other week. I've seen Nick Cave eight or nine times now, and for a guy who's over 51, he can still rock. I would think that all of the Bad Seeds are in their forties or pushing 50, and they can still whoop ass over bands half their age. What an inspiration.

The concert was to promote their latest CD, Dig!! Lazarus, Dig!!! The concert easily made a good album a whole lot better. It's not their best collection of songs, but Nick Cave is really showing no signs of slowing down or mellowing out.

My favorite Bad Seed used to be guitarist Blixa Bargeld, who was part of the band since the beginning. All through his tenure, he split his time between the Bad Seeds and his own band, Einstürzende Neubauten. He sang backup. He played guitar. He had funny haircuts, and he looked kind of weird. He was really cool, but then he left the band in 2003.

Who would become my new favorite Bad Seed? After this concert, it's got to be multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis. First of all, he's got the most excellent beard in the world:

Secondly, he has really come into his own with the band. When he first joined in 1997, he was simply the violin player in an eight-man band. He would always have his back to the audience when he played. In between his violin parts, he would squat down and slowly rock on his heels, always facing away. I don't believe it ever was any kind of stage fright, since he already fronted his own band (The Dirty Three, which plays some of the most excellent instrument-only music ever); this just seemed to be his way to interact with the band and the music.

Now with Blixa's departure, Warren his moved to the front of the stage next to Nick Cave. In addition to the violin, he also plays guitar, keyboards, mandolin, flute, and some other instruments I can't even name. He even gets down on his hands and knees to play screeching electronic noises. All through the concert, he whips himself around the stage like a bearded crazy man. It's hard to describe, but it's really entertaining.

In a nutshell, it was a great concert with some excellent music and a fantastic beard. Thumbs up!

Gas Shoe

I'm not sure what I was thinking of, but as I was refueling my rental car outside of Bradley International Airport, the gas suddenly poured out of the car, onto the ground, and onto my shoe. I never believe that the first "click" of the gas pump means that the tank is truly full, so I always go a couple of clicks beyond the first one. On this day, I went one click too far.

I return my rental car, and catch the bus back to the terminal. All through the bus ride, I keep smelling the odor of gas. I take off my shoe and take a big whiff - yep, that's gas all right.

Now I'm faced with a dilemma: how am I going to get through airport security with a shoe soaked in gasoline? Didn't some terrorist try to blow up a plane by lighting his shoes on fire? (Yes, this guy tried it in 2001)

Before I go through security, I stop by the men's room to try to clean off my shoe. Not surprisingly, cheap airport paper towels get shredded as I scrub them on my shoe. I consider setting my shoe on fire to burn away the gas. Unfortunately, I have no matches.

You know how there seem to be cops everywhere when you know you've done something wrong? It's all true... I've never seen so many police officers patrolling a airport. Who would ever want to do harm to Hartford, Connecticut, the insurance capital of the world??!

I decide to take my chances and go through security. I show my boarding pass and ID, and make it pass the first hurdle. The security area has one of those special detectors that see if you have any explosive materials on your body. Luckily, I am not diverted to that line. By now, I'm starting to break out into a cold sweat. At the other side of the security checkpoint, a cop and a police dog are waiting. I suspect that the dog has been specially trained to sniff out and attack anything that explodes or is remotely flammable.

I get to the conveyor belt, and take off my shoes and belt, and put it into a gray plastic bin. I remove my laptop from my bag, and put it into another bin. I push everything along the conveyor towards the x-ray machine...

A TSA officer comes by and takes my shoes out of my bin. Oh shit!!!

********

It turns out that the TSA person just wanted to put my shoes directly on the conveyor belt. She didn't even flinch at the gas smell that was coming from my shoe. Maybe it wasn't that bad at all. The attack dog didn't even look my way; I think it was someone's family dog that they bring to the airport so the kids can pet it.

Thank goodness for the TSA. I feel so safe.