Out With The Old...And A Half Assed Review Of The Hobbit!

Last night's post was less than inspired...in fact, it was 100% shite.  I can't let 2012 go out like that, so I'm going to end this year with a final post to free my head of clutter...

Before we start with the random unpacking of my mental attic, let's start with a few tangible items I could stand to do with less of:

Water bottles - We have a metric crap ton of water bottles floating around the cupboards of the house.  It seems every time the girls have a soccer or gymnastics camp they receive water bottles.  We also receive water bottles as gifts from time to time...but I also do dumb things like register to receive email updates from various car manufacturers, and my reward for doing so (aside from the emails that flood my inbox) is usually a water bottle.  I'm completely over water bottles and it is time to cull the ones we have.  If interested, let me know...I have a lovely blue Mazda water bottle looking for a home.

Paperwork - I've bitched and moaned about piles of paper at our house...the kids bring home papers, The Better Half has yet to discover paperless statements so every month we are inundated with envelopes containing bank info she never looks over.  We have a filing cabinet in the garage filled with decades of paperwork.  It has to go.  'Important' papers can be saved, archived, etc...but I'd say 90% of what is being saved is outdated and useless at this point. 

Tupperware - A majority of our Tupperware no longer matches, a fact that makes me want to fall down upon my knees and claw at my face in frustration.  At one point, all of our Tupperware (or Rubbermade) containers matched and it was glorious...but some of the lids have gone missing, or we have lids with no containers...or we have containers that I don't remember buying...or we have containers that have just disappeared into thin air.  A Tupperware reckoning is upon us, the misfits must go and a new homogenous regime must move in. 

Tools - I'll admit that I am no handyman.  In fact, I'm downright dangerously incompetent when it comes to most home repairs.  Still, I have a lot of tools, most of which I'll never use.  A majority of the work around the house I've been successful at saw me using nothing more than the occasional screwdriver, vice grips, channel locks, and various types of tape.  Everything else I own is extraneous and rarely, if ever, comes into play...and when it does the results are disastrous at worst, pure amateur hour at best.  Looks like I'll be putting some tools out for the Spring garage sale...and a bunch of Russians will come by and offer no more than $1.00 on everything from Dremel tools to circular saws.

Alright, enough of that...

For 8 1/2 years my family and the fridge have coexisted peacefully.  Oh, there has been the sporadic frozen water dispenser line, but nothing serious.  That has changed in recent days, now the fridge has engaged in outright hostile behavior.  For one reason or another, the temperature inside the fridge swings wildly....once dropping from the recommended 37 degrees to 26 degrees over night.  This caused an 3/4 full bottle of sparking raspberry cider to freeze and explode, showering the fridge with a sticky slush that coated everything...plus, there was glass everywhere.  All of our produce froze as well as the milk.  The freezer has also been acting sporadically, but not to the extremes the fridge side has displayed.

It's a GE Arctic fridge, and less than in-depth online research tells me that the motherboard has gone off the rails.  An inquiry to GE has been submitted to get a quote on the repair, but I don't think it's going to be cheap.  While it may not be as expensive as a new fridge, The Better Half wants to explore the option of buying a new unit as she never really liked the one we have.  She wants to look at ding and dent stores for new models that are counter profile depth and don't flash freeze the produce in fits of fridge rage. 

This would be the second GE appliance to declare war on us, although I was able to wage a fitful peace with the oven using nothing by Hello Kitty post-it notes to keep its motherboard from shorting.  Any recommendations on a fridge would be appreciated, this would be nice, but the MSRP is a wee bit out of our budget.

I took in a viewing of The Hobbit just before Christmas, and aye caramba it is a bloated telling of a story that should not take three films to tell...even two films would be pushing it.  Peter Jackson's decision to turn a 300 page book into 3 films running close to 9 hours is baffling.  This will be the first film trilogy in history that will take longer to watch than to read the book it is based upon. 

The issues with The Hobbit can all be laid at the feet of Jackson.  His reverence for the source material and, well, love of the sound cash registers make, kneecaps this effort.  Jackson is attempting to lay the framework for the Fellowship Of The Ring trilogy, which is pure folly.  George Lucas had a whack at this with his ill-fated and poorly conceived Star Wars prequel trilogy.  The big difference is that Lucas literally had no effing idea how to wedge his 'Vader Redemption' narrative of the prequels into the Original Trilogy, giving the solid impression that he made it all up as he went along.  Jackson has the opposite issue, he wishes to cram every bit of exposition and detail into his Hobbit prequel trilogy, even if the film suffers for it.

Peter Jackson's decision to pad the telling of The Hobbit with events that Tolkien glossed over in the book is absurd.  Certain scenes drag out so long that it feels they were filmed in real time, and the big set pieces reminded me of One Eyed Willie's lair in The Goonies crossbred with Donkey Kong Country and the Temple Of Doom mine car scene. 

The film really only crackles to life during the scene with Bilbo and Gollum, as Gollum is the only character with personality outside of an overarching motive that drives the rest of the characters. 

I just finished a rereading of The Hobbit, and to be honest, I'm kind of dreading the next two film installments.  My fear is that Jackson is going to over tell even more of the story, especially the time the dwarfs are incarcerated by the wood elves....

So That Was Christmas

All of the interior lights are down inside somewhat stately Taylor Manor.  The Dept 56 (and various knockoff) village has been disassembled and placed carefully back within protective styrofoam and cardboard boxes.  The tree is still standing, but stripped of lights and adornments.  It comes down New Year's Day, along with all of the exterior lighting.

In year's past I have always dreaded the way the house looks after all of the festive Christmas decorations are down, but not this year.  I'm not entirely sure why.  Perhaps it was due to the pall cast on the entire holiday when a madman made headlines in Newtown, CT.  I'll be honest, that tragedy took the wind out of my holiday sails and threw me (and The Better Half) for a loop.  Christmas just wasn't Christmas this year...

However, I still enjoyed spending time with my family, having neighbors over for Christmas Eve dinner (even though I was a bit of a wreck the next morning), and watching my kids open presents.  Maddy is clinging to her belief in Santa and we did everything we could to keep that fire burning in her...to the point where she'll be receiving a thank you letter from him sometime this week as she laid out quite the spread for Saint Nick.  Jossy and Katelyn are still true believers, but I'll be shocked if either of them is still believing in Santa at age 9.  We'll see, I'll play it up even when they stop believing, if only for myself. 

So, now there is New Year's to look forward to...and a couple of weeks after that my birthday.  Not that my birthday is a national holiday (yet!), but it is kind of important...at least to me.  Unlike year's past, I don't really plan on making any resolutions because I really, really suck at sticking to them.  In fact, I'm really bad at goals altogether.  I despise making plans or lists to the point that I feel I subconsciously derail them out of spite.  Therefore, no resolutions or goals this year...but themes.  That's right, I'm moving forward with an overarching theme for this next year.  That theme will be 'less is more'. 

Last year I set some very aggressive writing goals for myself and choked harder than Tony Romo in a big game.  Not one goal I set was met with anything remotely within the same zip code as success.  In fact, I regressed as a writer, my vocabulary dwindling to the point I made Hemingway seem verbose.  A 100 word vocab may work for a two year old (or Hemingway), but let's be honest, I've been downright boring lately.  Rather than set out to write the great American novel this year, I just want to be create something each day that I feel good about...be it a blog post, tweet, or something on Facebook (although quitting FB might be in the cards as well, it angers up the blood and muddies the water).  We'll see if this sparks something...

Luckily, I've already adopted the 'less is more' when it comes to working out and diet.  I lost a good deal of weight before our Disney trip over the summer, but it all came back with a vengeance in a hurry.  Over the last 8 weeks or so I stopped with the crazy dieting and over the top workouts, scaling both of them back.  Being closer to 50 than 30 has forced me to listen to my body more, especially my joints.  Having to accept certain limitations due to arthritic knees wasn't easy, but had to be done.  Since doing so I've actually been able to exercise more effectively, I've dropped a few more pounds and about an inch from the waist...even better, I'm off my blood pressure medication. 

The Stuff Reduction goal of the past several years has been nothing short of a tragedy as well.  I seem to sabotage myself quite a bit on that one.  However, we all become slaves to our stuff...car payments, mortgages, cable bills, phones...it all has become too much and taking a step back and downsizing is a theme as well...

I hope you all had a great Christmas, share anything you would like in the comments about changes you hope to make in the new year....

What's The Answer?

The news of the school shooting today became more horrific as the day went on.  I'm not going to rehash it here.  I cannot imagine what the parents of the victims are experiencing, but I hope that they grieve and heal the best that they can.

What happened in Connecticut was nothing short of evil, it was planned out and executed with chilling efficiency.  After every one of these maddening and senseless acts, perpetrated by cowards that usually kill themselves rather than face the consequences of their actions, a raging debate about gun control ensues...and both sides of that argument need to take a step back and ask themselves some questions that I doubt they have answers to.

For those of you that advocate for the right of private citizens to own firearms, where do you draw the line?  Does the Constitution guarantee the right for citizens to own fully automatic or semi-automatic weapons?  Should we arm every teacher in America or post armed guards within every school?  Is an armed society truly a 'polite' society?  Give me one good reason as to why purchasing a handgun is easier than say, buying a leather couch from a big box furniture store...and by that I mean I've had to wait up to 8 weeks in the past to receive a couch I've purchased, but I can go to Walmart or Big 5 right now and walk out with a shotgun or wait a few days for my background check to clear before receiving a pistol.  Does the Constitution grant me the right to own a bazooka, or RPGs?  Do you honestly believe that if more citizens were packing a Glock or six-shooter that mass murders like the one that took place today would be less common?   

For those of you that would like to see firearms removed from the hands of private citizens...how do you propose we do that?  Should the government go door to door and search every home in America and remove these guns?  All can agree that the mentally ill or unstable should not have access to firearms, how do you propose we keep this from happening?  Should the mentally ill be required to register once diagnosed, and does that not open another can of worms?  How difficult should it be to purchase a firearm, impossible?  Should there be a 30 day wait from moment of purchase to ownership...45 days...?  Do you also wish to outlaw hunters from owning rifles, and if so, how do we manage the population of wild game?  What, in your mind, constitutes an 'assault rifle'?  If I strike you with a shoe horn, is that now an assault shoe horn?  Connecticut has some of the toughest gun laws in the United States and politically leans left, but today's shooter walked right through those laws and into a gun-free zoned school...what could the local and state government done differently?  Should schools be on lock down mode at all times now?   

Full-disclosure:  I'm an NRA member as The Better Half's father purchased me a lifetime membership a few years back.  With that said, I never would have purchased myself a membership as I find NRA leadership and some of their positions on firearms idiotic at times.  However, I find the views of the anti-gun lobby just as inane and idiotic.  Neither side has cornered the market on common sense.

I asked the questions above because I feel they need to be answered honestly by both sides of the argument. While we are at it I feel we need to drag the medical and mental health providers to the carpet as well.  What did the Columbine shooters, the Norway killer, and the Aurora theater psychopath all have in common besides access to firearms?  All three were at one time or another on psychotropic medications to treat various mental disorders.  That's another discussion altogether, but one we need to have as a nation.  We are quick to ask for meds for everything from anxiety to depression to hyperactivity for kids, yet never wonder what happens when these kids grow up and become adults...and stop taking their meds.  What side-effects do these medications unleash on those taking them?

This is a nation of 300 million plus human beings, meaning today may have just have been an unthinkable six-sigma event.  Societies that have outlawed and banned the ownership of firearms by private citizens still deal with deranged individuals that find ways to inflict harm and pain.  Since 2010 there have been numerous attacks by knife wielding lunatics in and around schools in China, 27 people have died and over 80 injured...and that's not counting the attack yesterday at a kindergarten. Evil finds a way, terrible things happen, and as the population increases and people live longer certain individuals are out there that shouldn't be.  Unfortunately, we don't know who those people are until something incredibly sad, tragic, and senseless occurs.

I hope our prayers bring comfort to those grieving tonight, but we also owe those same families some sensible solutions to the questions that arise after these kinds of tragedies.        

Top 5 Non-Christmas Songs That Remind Me Of Christmas

A couple of years ago I posted my Top 5 Christmas Songs, with number one being 'The Little Drummer Boy'.  You can read that borderline emotionally manipulative post here if you so desire.  This year's Top 5 Christmas Song list is a little different, mainly because none of the songs are actually Christmas songs...but they remind me of Christmas seasons from my past...

1.  (Just Like) Starting Over - John Lennon:  This one is kind of a no-brainer.  John Lennon was murdered Dec 8, 1980, not too long after this song was released as the 'comeback' single off his first new album in five years.  This song was ubiquitous that holiday season as the world mourned the loss of a rock & roll icon.  Christmas 1980 was the first Christmas we spent in Washington, having moved to Bremerton from El Paso, TX via Jacksonville, FL via Montclair, CA.  I was attending my 10th different school in 5 years and became a very angst ridden and introspective 10 year old.  Being the new kid all the time takes a toll, but that's a different post for a different day.  Anyhoo, that Christmas was when I really began seriously listening to music.  FM radio was inundated with Lennon tributes, Solid Gold took as somber a tone as a show featuring Solid Gold Dancers in gold lame leotards could pull off when '(Just Like)Starting Over' was played during their weekly countdown, and I dug into my dad's awesome reel-to-reel collection of Beatles, Stones, Moody Blues, Hendrix, and Zeppelin albums...I never did understand his affinity for Jethro Tull, however.  This song, though, always reminds me of that Christmas as my mom and dad did their best to help us adjust to a new house/school, I saw snow in our yard for the first time ever, and we would all huddle around the fireplace listening to music as a family.

2.  Major Tom - Peter Schilling:  I still love this song, it's so antiseptic and cold and clinical...it's 80's music boiled down to its synthesized essence.  Oh, yeah...but Christmas.    This song was released October, 1983 but really didn't take off on radio until late November and into December.  Whatever station 101.5 and 93.3 were called back then had this song in heavy, heavy rotation.  By December of 1983 we had moved from Bremerton to Port Orchard, WA and I was attending Marcus Whitman Junior High, my 13th school in 8 years (my bouncing around schools and school districts came to an end in 1983 year, South Kitsap HS was the 14th school I attended by the time I hit 10th grade).  As stated earlier, all of that moving kind of effed with me and I managed to become even more introverted and had no personality whatsoever.  I wasn't so much shy as I was completely unsure of myself and how I fit in.  Money for the family was also a little tight that Christmas so I spent lots of nights worrying about stuff a soon to be 13 year old shouldn't be worrying about.  I listened to the radio in my room a lot, and this song would come on at least twice before I'd finally get to sleep.  Christmas that year turned out fine, but this tune and that keyboard riff always takes me back to my small room in that small house back in Port Orchard.

3.  We Didn't Start The Fire - Billy Joel:  I actually liked this song when it first came out, buying the cassingle before the full album was released.  However, I grew to despise it because I couldn't get away from this song leading up to Christmas 1989...it was everywhere.  Unfortunately, I was not everywhere.  I was still recovering from major reconstructive knee surgery, holed up in my dorm room at Edwards, AFB California.  My actual surgery was in July of that year, but remember that this was 22 years ago.  I tore my ACL, MCL, and medial meniscus playing basketball in Biloxi, MS that Spring and went a few months before an Air Force orthopedic surgeon was found that could handle my injury.  While the doctor that put my knee back together didn't use a hack saw or give me a shot of bourbon and a stick to bite down as he flayed my leg open, it was close.  My recovery and rehab was slow going and I developed a certain fondness for Vicodin and rum as I didn't have a whole lot to do.  One night I took one too many Vicodin or washed it down with too much Bacardi and got all kinds of itchy and rashy.  Not good times.  As Christmas rolled around I didn't have the money to fly home, but I really didn't want to spend it in the California high desert doing my best Gram Parsons impression.  So, I asked for some time off, hopped in my ridiculous 1988 Subaru Justy (basically a go-cart with a windscreen and roof), and made the drive back home.  On the way out of town I stopped and picked up Billy Joel's 'Storm Front' and listened to it over and over again while hopped up on Vivarin and Mountain Dew and trying like hell to keep my Subaru between the ditches as I drove over the snowy Siskiyou Mountains in Northern California...

4.  Helpless - Sugar:  In December of 1993 I was living in a house with 3 other guys in Wedgwood.  We spent a lot of nights at the Wedgwood Ale House drinking Snow Cap, eating $2.00 baskets of fries, and then going home, blazing up, and listening to music or playing guitar.  Good times.  Husker Du was not a band I was terribly fond of, and although I owned Candy Apple Grey it was more out of a sense of obligation to bone up my indie rock cred, but I loved Sugar.  Bob Mould decided that burying the melody behind a wall of distortion wasn't such a great idea (portions of the Sugar 'Beaster' EP do delve into astounding moments of sonic what the f*ckery from time to time though) and recorded tunes that had actual hooks.  'Helpless' was one of those songs.  When it pops up on my playlist I always fondly remember those crazy Wedgwood house days and nights...

5.  Under Smithsville - For Squirrels:  I doubt too many people remember the band For Squirrels.  I think I may have been one of their bigger fans outside of the Gainesville, FL area.  I used to listen to this song quite a bit during the winter months of 1995.  At the time, I was living just south of Everett.  A huge windstorm ripped through the area in early December and I was without power for a couple of days.  All I had was a Discman and a bunch of batteries I took from work.  One of the albums I listened to at night as I fell asleep was Example, especially the song 'Under Smithsville'.  Looking back, it's not a particularly great song as it tries really hard to sound like Life's Rich Pageant era REM, but there is a real feeling of genuineness to it...the writer definitely had someone in mind when he wrote it.  I had someone in mind as I listened to it.  Now, it just reminds me of shopping for gifts while being surrounded by a throng of people at Alderwood Mall, that windstorm, and dark nights spent listening to a band that would fade into obscurity...

So, there you have it...my Top 5 Non-Christmas Songs That Remind Me Of Christmas.  Someday I will expand on each of these songs as there are definitely more stories to tell...especially around 'Helpless'.  That song indirectly set off a chain of events that saw me enter an emotional maelstrom in October of 1994 and come out an emotional cripple by that Christmas...

Mamba, out!       

Under Pressure

I've been living with high blood pressure for the last four years.  At one point it rang up something absurd like 192/110, which freaked the piss out of my doctor and put a real scare into me...especially when he said that if I didn't make some changes a catastrophic stroke was imminent.  He put me on lisinopril and I almost immediately developed the dreaded lisinopril cough.  While the medication worked great and kept my BP from redlining, I was hacking like Doc Holliday minus the six-shooters and pithy one-liners.  So, he tried a couple of others and we finally settled in on metoprolol which worked just fine.  He also recommended that I stop being so sedentary (actually he said I needed to 'get my ass to the track', my doc is kind of blunt).

I didn't get serious about working out and watching my diet until spring of this year.  That's when I began running at least three times a week, using the goofy eliptical trainer when my knees acted up.  By the end of this summer I was stringing four 10 minute miles together, once even knocking out three miles in 26:45...and I say once because my knees were screaming at me for a few days after that one.  Lately, I've been incorporating some crossfit into my workouts just to kind of mix things up.  The results?  I'm down about 12 lbs from my all time high (which we aren't going to talk about).  But wait, there's more...

In August, I ran out of metoprolol and never went back to get my prescription renewed.  That was kind of a dumb thing to do because you aren't supposed to just quit blood pressure meds cold turkey like it was smack or meth or model airplane glue...your advised to cut back on the dosage to give your body a chance to gradually adapt to not having the medication around to regulate whatever it is supposed to regulate.  This past Friday I finally made the time to go in to get my prescription renewed...and a funny thing happened.  My blood pressure reading, completely off of medication for almost 90 days, came in at 128/80, well within normal range.  To call me pleasantly surprised would be an understatement, especially after my doctor said I had essentially cured my hypertension...

Now, I'm not completely out of the woods yet.  I still have to get my BP checked regularly and I can't go buying salt licks to dip in my coffee, but I'm feeling pretty good about things.  Now I just have to keep up on the working out and avoiding the sodium bomb lunches at Uwajimaya....and losing about another 30 pounds.    

Lemon Song

Looking at the upcoming weather forecast it is now rather apparent that my purchase of a lemon tree last spring was what the English would call a daft and silly acquisition.  I believe the cold tolerance of said lemon tree is just below freezing, but not for prolonged periods of time...and if I really want the thing to survive the winter I should bring it indoors at night and shine a grow light on it.  Yes, well...that all sounds like one big gigantic pain in the ass...and buying a grow light isn't high on my list of things to do as I don't want to be mistaken for a low rent local version of Heisenberg.  Just sayin'...

Before fall appeared and kicked summer's hard partyin' arse to the curb, The Better Half and I attempted to extend our patio with flagstone.  The flagstone was given to me by my folks.  The dug it up from their walkway and hauled it over...so I have something like 30 pieces of flagstone just waiting for a project as the patio extension was an unmitigated disaster.  The problem was that TBH and I just couldn't come up with a suitable layout of how we wanted the extension to look...and it was a rare occasion as TBH both hated everything we came up with equally.  There were no quarrels or disagreements.  Now, the only thing that did disagree with the flagstone misadventure was my back...and my hamstrings chirped up a bit too.  Lifting and moving 30 pieces of flagstone for the 4 hours we labored on the extension is like doing 4 hours of dead lifts.  So, moving and arranging flagstone is the newest event in my Practical Olympics.  Anyway, after 4 hours I did put down enough flagstone to create a new grilling area...and then had to stack 25 pieces of flagstone around the side of the house.  Good times, great oldies...

That's all I've got for now...going to try to watch 'The Walking Dead' or something as 'Boardwalk Empire' bores me to tears...you know what didn't bore me to tears?  The first episode of the new season of 'American Horror Story - Asylum'.  Watching Adam Levine get his arm torn off was pure joy, the only thing that would have made it better is if some ghoul then beat him to death with it...but hey, we can't always get what we want...   

Today's Thousand Dollar Idea

Inspiration strikes me every now and then and I come up with an idea just wacky and obscure enough that it might appeal to maybe 19 other people on the planet.  No, I'm not talking about my idea to open a chain of MMA themed gay bars because that there is a license to print money...it's gold, baby, pure gold! 

Anyway, my idea today was to go all Rick Rubin, minus the 75 lbs I'd have to pack on, the hobo beard and what I can only imagine is eye watering BO mixed with equal amounts of stanky dried Kokanee on his shants.  No, by going all Rick Rubin I mean finding an artist and having them cover material they would never be associated with...like Johnny Cash completely owning and reworking Soundgarden's 'Rusty Cage'.  That was a career reviving and redefining moment for Cash...

So, here's my Rick Rubinesque idea:  Have Allison Krauss record an album of Missing Persons songs.  It would totally, totally work.  Dale Bozzio's vocals are right in Krauss's wheelhouse...and her backing band, Union Station, are topnotch musicians that would work minor miracles with Missing Persons early 80's new wave/pop arrangements.  Me?  Well, I'd be sitting in the booth and offering up creative gems like, 'Allison, break me off something filthy on that fiddle on 'Walking In LA'...and don't be afraid to get dirty on 'Words' there beardy mandolin dude.'  Genius!

Of course, no one but me, David Wild, and maybe that fat bald guy from Pitchfork (his name escapes me) would buy it...so maybe this is more of a $100 idea...but that's $100 more than I had when I started writing this....    

Great Expectations

There's an old saying that became a painful reality for me over the weekend - Our possessions in time will possess us.  I'm not sure if I have the quote right or just who to credit it to...Ghandi...Confucius...Fonzi...all I know is that I have spent the last two days exorcising stuff.  Actually, it wasn't just any old stuff, it was some of the kids toys.  By toys I mainly mean Playmobil stuff.

I'm about one of the biggest fans of Playmobil toys on the planet.  So are the kids, they love the fairy tale castle, the knights castle, all of the farm sets, and the various houses.  The problem with Playmobil is the insane amount of accessories that accompany each play set.  We're talking tiny knives and forks, pots and pans, slippers, hats, medieval weaponry, and various other items.  I spent at least 5 hours on Saturday night sorting it all into empty salsa containers from Puerto Vallarta (they make crappy mole and enchiladas, but their salsa kicks ass)...swords and spears into one container...clothing into another....food items in yet one more.  By the time I was done I came to the following conclusions:  Their are enough Playmobil canned goods and firearms in this house to film a toy version of 'Doomsday Preppers'...and I think this cleanup and organization of said Playmobil canned goods and firearms, et al, has cured me of my Playmobil enthusiasm.  It was brutal...but you are more than welcome to check their stuff out for yourself.  I recommend starting with something small like the vacation house...then when you have some free time delve into the catalog that comes packaged with the toys...next thing you know you'll be sucked into the Playmobil vortex.  Good times!

Speaking of good times, this was supposed to be the 'weekend of me'.  The Better Half has been out on her annual glamping trip to Lake Mojave, house boating it up with some friends of her's from California.   In the old days, pre-kids, this kind of sudden 'freedom' meant calling up some friends and recreating the infamous John Lennon/Keith Moon/Harry Nilsson 'Lost Weekend' (without the Smothers Brothers heckling).  Now, however, I have these things called 'responsibilities' that kneecap any notions I may have of tom foolery and/or drunken monkey business.  Instead, I coach K-1 girls soccer, sort hundreds of Playmobil pieces, and rearrange the laundry room (crazy town here, I tell ya).  Yep, I've come a long way...no skull crushing hangovers for this guy, just a sore tailbone from sitting on the floor trying to determine if Playmobil laundry detergent is a kitchen item or does it fall into general household good...yep, crazy.

So yeah, The Better Half has been out of town since Wednesday...that means I've had to take care of the girls by myself.  I'm actually pretty good at handling the kids, although Katelyn can be a little demanding.  You know what else is demanding?  Braiding hair.  Maddy sleeps with her hair in a braid to keep it from getting too tangled.  I've never braided hair before in my life and can barely manage to create a decent pony tail.  I watched several YouTube videos on how to braid hair, but when it came to applying what I learned from the videos to Maddy's whip of hair...well, it just didn't work out.  No matter how many times I watched the videos, I just couldn't manipulate Maddy's hair into a proper braid.  In the end, I had to walk her over to a neighbor's house and ask her to braid Maddy's hair...which she happily did so Maddy didn't wake up the next morning with a tangled mess.

Oh, Jossy caught a nasty cold on Wednesday and slept fitfully that night...which meant I slept fitfully that night as I kept having to wake up to help blow her nose and apply Vick's to help with the congestion.  This routine was repeated on Thursday night...and Friday night.  The nanny was a mess with the same cold Friday afternoon and her baby started sniffling as well.  Maddy started feeling ill Saturday and then Katelyn Saturday night.  I've been holding up well, but the lack of sleep has been tough...but not so much so that I couldn't clean and organize the laundry room today.

What else happened...I watched a couple of movies (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close...which was just awful...I couldn't stand the little kid in that movie, he almost made it unwatchable).  I also picked up watching 'Breaking Bad' which is just awesome.  Love that show...great characters...although I wouldn't mind it if the brother in law DEA agent got whacked at one point.

That's about all I've got for now...thanks for checking in and stopping by!    

Put Me In Coach...

I volunteered to coach Jocelyn's 5-6 year old girls soccer team.  The Better Half kind of dared me to do so after the league sent out a blast email looking for some parents to step up and volunteer.  So, I filled out the application, answered some very direct and pointed questions during the background check, and now await my fate.  Since no other parents have applied, I'll probably get the gig. 

In the meantime, I'm doing everything I can to resist the temptation of turning Jossy's team into my personal Cobra Kai like war machine.  However, I've already started thinking of drills to implement come the first practice.  Someone is going to have to instill a sense of hustle and aggressiveness into these kids because they probably aren't learning those traits at home.  Damn you, checked out parents!!!!  Anyway, I think the take away phrase from our first practices will be 'getting after it'...someone has to win those 50/50 balls and if 60% of the time we can win them all the time, well then...I'll take it. 

Oh, and having fun...yeah, the kids are out there to have fun, learn esprit de corp, team work, and sportsmanship...all things we'll talk about after we win.

Can you sweep the leg in soccer?  

Oh No, T.O.

I'm going to make my position on Terrell Owens crystal clear - I can't stand Terrell Owens.  I do not have an ounce of sympathy for him and could not possibly care less about his mental and emotional state.  All of the trials and tribulations he is currently experiencing in his personal, financial, and profession life are all self-created.  He's to blame for everything wrong in his self-absorbed little world. 

The Seahawks signing of Terrell Owens needs to be seen for what it was, and it was nothing more than a page out of T.O.'s own playbook - any attention is good attention.  By signing Terrell Owens the Seahawks sent a clear signal that they are willing to sacrifice the development of younger players and team chemistry  for attention from the media.  ESPN has spent more time talking about the Seahawks this week than they did all of last year...all because they signed a 38 year old attention whore with a history of dropping passes.  It is kind of obvious to me that the Seahawks are more than okay with this.

Terrell Owens is incapable of escaping drama, he creates and thrives on it, and he'll bring plenty of drama to the Seahawks this year.  Even if he is on his best behavior, he's not going to be able to escape his own reputation or outrun the fact that he is in dire financial shape...and that's no joke.  He's going to be asked about missed child support payments, the foreclosed homes, Donovan McNabb, Jeff Garcia, being cut by a minor league team for missing a charity event...all of that is going to be snapping at his heels this season.

However, the biggest elephant in the room will be T.O.'s complete lack of contrition and regret for the way he has burned bridges and thrown teammates under the bus in San Francisco, Philly, and Dallas.  Owens may have been low key in Buffalo and Cincinnati, but the drama still lurked in the background.  His inability to admit his mistakes and be held accountable for them is his biggest weakness (alongside his penchant to grow alligator arms in big games) and that weakness fuels his enormous ego.  Owens truly believes the Seahawks need him more than he needs them and it is this belief that will burn and eat at him like a cancer. While he might not be outwardly demonstrative he will make life difficult for Seattle's young QBs, players that won't have the experience and political capital to keep Owens in check. 

To those of you thinking that the 4.45 Owens reportedly ran a 40 yard dash in is impressive, keep this in mind - aside from Peyton Manning and his bolted on head and Tom Brady, NFL players are fast.  That Owens ran a 4.45 at 38 years old and coming off ACL surgery is impressive, but he has always been a physical specimen, and speed in the NFL can be mitigated with coverage schemes...

Several other teams with even more need at the wide receiver position passed on Owens this off-season, not willing to sacrifice team unity and chemistry for a moody player in the twilight of his career.  Owens might still have a decent season in him (I have him pegged for 64 catches, 625 yards and 4 TDs), but the odds are against him staying healthy.  There are other players out there that could have given the Hawks similar stats, but without the wall to wall coverage that will accompany the T.O. show here in Seattle...and that brings me back to one of my original points - the Seahawks signed Owens to sell tickets, generate interest in the team, and move jerseys.  This wasn't a football decision, it was one driven by the very thing that has derailed Owens everywhere he has played - publicity.  In the end, that is what will undo the Seahawks 2012 season...well, that and their 'dynamic' QB situation and the other headcase on the team, Kellen Winslow, JR...but that's another post for another time.

So, welcome to Seattle, Terrell Owens...be nice to Tavaris when he sends a pass sailing over your head and to Matt Flynn when he checks down...yeah, you might have been wide open, but just be happy you are collecting a check with an NFL logo on it.  Seattle is the only team that wanted you, show some gratitude...

Babes In Toyland

The hammer fell on the girls tonight.  I've been asking them to clean their playroom and bedroom for the past two weeks...and they have been ignoring those requests for the past two weeks.  I asked them again tonight if they would please clean their playroom, and they decided that they had better things to do.  So, I did what any parent would do that had reached the end of their proverbial toy rope - I stripped the playroom of toys.

All of the girls Barbies, Calico Critters, Legos, and Playmobil toys are now in boxes and bins in my office.  While my office now looks like a room from Hoarders: Buried Alive, the girls are pouting and crying because they can't play with the toys they had been stepping over for the last two weeks.

This was a rather shocking display of parental discipline from me as I am usually the one that goes soft on them when it comes to cleaning up...especially the toys.  Being the parent most responsible for purchasing said toys, I have taken it upon myself to clean up after the girls which only enables their non-cleaning behavior.  Sure, I ask them to help me, but Maddy is the only one that does so consistently.  Katelyn will clean when given the choice of cleaning up or sitting on the naughty step (the equivalent of being thrown 'in the hole' at Shawshank).  Jocelyn, on the other hand, always acts as if picking up toys is the most exhausting activity this side of being on a road crew shoveling asphalt...in Iowa...in August...mid-afternoon.  Jossy will lay on the floor and whine that she's tired and needs to rest or go to bed.  She'll pick up a couple of things, but it takes her about an hour.  Meanwhile, Katelyn and Maddy have done most of the work...and Jossy not only avoids heavy lifting, but discipline as the playroom has been tidied up...no thanks to her.

The toys are going to be on a two day lock down, a lock down that started tonight.  They can still do arts and crafts, play outside, etc...but no toys.


I'm also hoping that on Wednesday when we carry the toys back that we can play the 'keep this or donate this' game and cull some toys from that room.  If super nanny has taught me anything it is that beating your kids senseless is frowned upon and giving kids a vested interest in getting rid of stuff teaches them some sort of life lesson...I'm not sure what the lesson is, but I hope it's that when dad asks to pick up all of the half naked Barbies lying around, he means it...because he doesn't like stepping on them and looking at them makes him uncomfortable.     

Taking My Lumpia

Every now and again I'll just decide to try and make a dish I've never made before.  Tonight was one of those nights and the food of choice was lumpia.  While it wasn't the catastrophic disaster that was my attempt at fusion cooking (Mexican Thai Curry Chicken fingers...which doesn't even sound good 'on paper'...this unspeakable horror set the culinary arts back several years), it wasn't smooth sailing either.

I didn't plan on following a recipe because recipes are for people that actually want to be somewhat efficient...work harder, not smarter is my motto.  I had lumpia a few weeks back and it seemed really straight forward...egg roll wrappers, a protein, some vegetables, and some screamin' hot oil to cook it all in.  Yes, well.

My problems began when I went to Uwajimaya at lunch to purchase egg roll wrappers.  You'd think that in a store specializing in Asian foods one wouldn't be able to swing a dead cat without hitting egg roll wrappers (the dead cat is not a reference to, um, Asians eating cats...), yet it took me close to 15 minutes of looking around like a round eye tourist before I finally had to ask someone where the egg roll wrappers were.  The clerk gazed upon me as if I was the most remedial shopper to ever step foot in that store.  Egg roll wrappers were in the frozen food section, aisle 2...so, yeah.

I also bought some authentic Thai jasmine rice as I have grown weary of inauthentic rice posing as Thai jasmine.  We will have none of that nonsense.

Wrappers and rice in hand, I finished out my work day and headed home to make lumpia without a recipe. 

Now, lumpia is really nothing more than an egg roll...hence the egg roll wrappers, although the wrappers I bought specifically said 'lumpia' on the box.  ANYWAY, it is the same basic premise as an egg roll...you fill the wrapper, roll it up, fry it, enjoy! 

I used ground beef, zucchini (from my garden!), water chestnuts, carrots and garlic for my filling.  I seasoned it with a little sea salt, a splash of soy sauce (because the sea salt just wasn't enough sodium for this hypertension sufferer), and some black pepper.  Making the filling was the easy part.  Getting the filling into the wrappers without tearing them was a challenge.  Another obstacle was cultural...being part Mexican I am predisposed to think that any kind of food that requires placing a filling in a flat, round pastry is a burrito.  Years and years of burrito rolling had to be overcome, but my burrito rolling tendencies were extremely difficult to maneuver past...so my first three lumpia were unmitigated disasters.  They looked like chimichangas, but with water chestnuts and zucchini bursting out of them. 

Another problem I ran into was with the cooking oil.  I used peanut oil, but peanut oil I purchased at WalMart, so it didn't really behave like peanut oil.  It smoked too much at too low of a heat, so the lumpia had to sit in the oil longer than it should have.  It took about four lumpia before I decided to go really light on the oil, and that really helped.  Lesson learned - don't buy WalMart brand peanut oil and expect decent results.

Once I had cooked up all the lumpia, it was time to finally eat one...and they weren't bad at all.  I ate the first attempts, you know, the ones that were too oily and were falling apart, leaving the 'good' ones for The Better Half.  The filling turned out really good, although I might add jalapeno to it next time (yeah, I know...I'm dancing awfully close to the fusion line again...but jalapenos have been used in Asian food, and it's not like I said I was going to try to make chicken mole lumpia....mmmmmm, mole) to give them a little kick.  Another benefit is that my lumpia were so oily that I'll be waking up with a youthful glean to my skin tomorrow!  If I were a golden retriever I'd have a nice shiny coat...winner!  I might try baking the lumpia next time...

Now I have to think up a dish to BBQ for our annual block party this Saturday....I'm thinking chorizo infused teriyaki chicken sliders... 

Cable Alternatives

It's that time of year again, folks...that time when I start looking over our finances and bills and start wondering where to trim costs.  Right now, I'm looking right at you Comcast/Xfinity.  Sadly, I can't kill my cable internet connection as work has specific requirements for high speed connections.  Plus, DSL blows and the jokers from CenturyLink hosed my neighbor over so eff them...so I have to keep Comcast cable internet.

What I don't need to keep is Comcast/Xfinity cable TV.  If it were up to me I would whack every premium channel we have and use Netflix to supplement.  Stuff like Roku has appeal, but I wouldn't be able to watch NFL games at home.  DirecTV doesn't play well with cable internet due to some odd wiring at the house...so, I turn to you faithful 9 readers...what does your TV setup consist of?  Do you use Roku or Hulu?  How well does it work?

I plan on calling Comcast today to downgrade our service, like giving up one of the DVRs and cutting the premium channels, especially since Game Of Thrones is on hiatus and I have no idea when Boardwalk Empire is set to resume (oh crapola, season three of Boardwalk Empire starts in September).  Anyhow, I need to scale back because our cable bill is the equivalent of a used car payment ($200 a month...I didn't say an expensive used car, now did I?)    

The Dark Knight Rises...and Falls

Today was my annual trip to the movie theater...although I can't remember for the life of me what I saw at the theater last year...hmmm....anyhoo, today I took in a viewing of 'The Dark Knight Rises'.  I walked out of the theater with an overwhelming feeling of 'meh', which has since given way to full blown disappointment.


Now, I'm going to be honest here...I don't give a rat's flying ass about Batman comics, video games, canon, legends, fan fiction, etc.  What made 'Batman Begins' such a breath of fresh air was the fact that it was a very good movie about a comic book character, not a comic book movie.  Christopher Nolan set the bar even higher with 'The Dark Knight', a movie that had more in common with 'Heat' then it did with any other comic franchise...and Heath Ledger as the Joker was sheer brilliance, in the hands of a lesser actor that role would have torn 'TDK' from the hinges of the story Nolan was trying to tell.  'TDKR', sadly, felt too much like a comic book movie, intermingled with 70's Roger Moore era James Bond, and served up with a heaping helping of Lucas Suck Sauce.

'Hold on,' you are probably asking yourself, 'are you saying this movie was Star Wars Prequel/Moonraker bad?'  No, not at all...what I'm saying is that Christopher Nolan's last Batman installment felt as if there was a better story that he was wanting to tell that, for whatever reason, didn't get told.  The plot holes and shoddy character development/motivations are a lot to overcome.  Part of me thinks that Nolan felt some pressure to please the studio, and if so, it is a crying shame.  If that is the case, Nolan should have made the film he wanted to make and given the studio a gigantic 'eff you' flaming middle finger.  In the current climate of film making an eventual Batman reboot is inevitable, so why not do what you will with the story-arc you created?  The scenes that are obvious in their intent to hand the reigns of the series over to Joseph Gordon-Levitt are handled in such a hamfisted and clumsy manner that they almost feel tacked on.  At one point Batman tells JGL's character, 'wear a mask when you are working alone'.  Okay then, why not just give him the address to the Batcave as well?  Oh, yeah....

There are so many things wrong with 'TDKR' that it's almost impossible for me to start...but I'll give it a shot...

Christopher Nolan tries to make us believe that Bruce Wayne hung it up as Batman because he went all emo billionaire recluse after the death of Rachel Dawes in 'TDK'.  Also, something called the Harvey Dent act locked up every criminal on the streets and threw them into a maximum security prison in the middle of downtown Gotham City.  Yep.  On the Rachel Dawes bit I have to call 'bullsh!t' because the Bruce Wayne/Batman from the first two films was obsessed with fighting evil and darkness, letting his own hate and pain consume him...but in this film he's moping around stately Wayne manor like the world's most physically fit Morrissey fan.  Gotham no longer needs Batman, and Bruce Wayne is too busted up about a girlfriend that died 8 years earlier to do anything about it if they did...which really diminishes the motivation Bruce Wayne used to become Batman in the first place.  If anything, the death of Rachel Dawes should have made him even more unstable.  Mopey Bruce Wayne was worse than sad lumberjack Wolverine...

Bane as a villain is introduced as more than just brute force, there's an intelligence to the character that puts some muscle behind the hustle he's trying to put over on Gotham City and Batman.  However, there were times I just wanted to laugh at Bane because of the ridiculous voice used to deliver his lines...he sounded like a demonic Winnie The Pooh mixed with an old timin' carnival barker with a liberal sprinkling of Humongous from 'The Road Warrior'.  By film's end Bane is reduced to nothing more than a love sick pet with awesome deltoids.  I will say that Tom Hardy, when allowed to unleash Bane's physicality, was brutal...but those moments were few and far between as the dust ups with Batman were blocked in annoying close-up tracking shots.  Also, every time Bane did snap a neck or rip off a face, it was done off camera, so the audience is never really given an opportunity to witness what Bane was capable of.

Not being a Batman nerd, I'm not entirely familiar with Bane's back story (fires up iPhone and pulls up Bane's wikipedia page) - Huh.  Apparently, the Bane of 'TDKR' has very little in common with the Bane of the Batman comics.  I'm surprised there hasn't been an uptick in violent and bitter nerd rage over Nolan's treatment of Bane...

How the hell did Bane find the time to fly Bruce Wayne to the prison that looked like the well Leonidas kicked the Persian messengers into in '300'?  You would think the military would be tracking any aircraft or ships that left Gotham, and with this fancy pants stuff called satellite imaging the military would have been able to see the prison hole from goddam Neptune.  Not in this movie - Bane is able to leave Gotham, fly to Whereevertheeffistan (or South Africa/America?  where exactly was this place?), drop Bruce off, set up a sweet 27 inch Trinitron for Bruce to witness the destruction of the city he fought so hard to defend, and then fly back to Gotham. 

Better yet, how the hell did Bruce Wayne get back to Gotham after escaping from the prison well?  He's broke (Bane's stock exchange raid was executed to remove Bruce Wayne from his wealth...Bane must have used Wayne's money to take long positions in Facebook and GM...zing!), he has no ID, his back was recently busted up by Bane, yet he shows up back in Gotham clean shaven and sporting a Burberry jacket looking like he stepped out of the pages of Men's Health. 

Speaking of broken backs, Bruce Wayne is able to heal up thanks to the prison doctor having him hang from some rope for a while and then punching his vertebrae back into place.  Screw stem-cell research, more back punching and rope hanging for spinal injury victims!

Commissioner Gordon has no idea that Bruce Wayne is Batman, although Gordon is the one person that has probably spent the most time with Batman.  Yet, a rookie cop is able to figure out Wayne is Batman from a brief orphanage visit several years back...something about seeing pain on his face.  Okay then. 

Anne Hathaway is definitely the most attractive actress with a face that looks like it was cobbled together from spare doll parts to play Catwoman.  She looked great in costume...but it sometimes felt like she was acting in an entirely different movie.  The playful, campy tone of her character was in contrast to the overall bleak tone of the film.  Perhaps that was what Nolan was going for, making Selina Kyle/Catwoman a light in a very dark world...someone to give Bruce Wayne hope for a life outside of being Batman, etc.  Then why have Bruce get it on with Miranda/Talia? 

The plot, itself, was one big McGuffin Chase.  See, Bane kidnaps and fakes the death of a Russian scientist and then has some rich guy named Daggett hire Selina Kyle to steal Bruce Wayne's fingerprints to pull off the stock exchange plan that puts control of Wayne Enterprises into the hands of some gal named Miranda who turns out to be the daughter of Ra's Al-Ghul so she can have access to the fusion reactor she and Wayne Enterprises developed so she can turn it into a bomb to destroy Gotham thus fulfilling Ra's Al-Ghul's master plan from 'Batman Begins'.  However, Ra's and the League of Shadows want to burn Gotham to the ground because it has become a corrupt and crime-ridden hellhole.  By the time of 'TDKR', Gotham is all but crime free...so why would the League of Shadows want to destroy it?  Exactly - Nolan turns the League Of Shadows into nothing more than a gang of hired thugs employed by Talia Al-Ghul to exact revenge for her father's death.   Everything else in the movie is done to move this revenge plot forward...

Speaking of hired thugs...where do super villains find all the lackeys that do their bidding these days?  Labor Ready?

How did Bane know where the Applied Science division of Wayne Enterprises was when it was off the books?  Not even Miranda/Talia knew where it was, yet Bane builds his super bad guy base directly below it.  

For a city under siege, Gotham was mighty orderly...it even looked like garbage service was running. Thanks to the Waste Management strike in our area, my neighborhood looks more unsightly than Gotham City...and we don't have a crazy buffed out dude wearing a vintage microphone goatee on his face running the town. 

Alfred gave the ending of the movie away and at no time did I ever think Bruce Wayne was dead.  That just wasn't going to happen, which really diminished any tension or urgency from the plot. 

I've gone on quite a bit here and really kind of piled onto this movie.  I didn't hate it, but it was definitely a let down and a very unsatisfying end to a very ambitious project.  Part of me thinks Nolan was tired of the subject matter and took the easy way out, but he also hinted at being limited in scope by the studio.  Perhaps he had a darker ending in mind for Batman, we'll never know. 

If I had to rate this movie on a scale of one to five, I would give it a two.  There's one Talia scene near the end that almost derails the entire film due to some of the worst acting ever put on film...we are talking Sophia Coppola and Padme's death bad...I almost laughed out loud.  That scene alone cost this film half a star in my book...

Girls On Film

Parts 2 and 3 of our California adventure are still in draft form...I'll finish those up as soon as I complete the mind numbing, yet extremely important, task of backing up all of the photos from the hard drive that resides within the very creaky desktop PC...a PC I hope to replace soon with either a Mac, Mac Book, or a couple of iPads...sorry Windows, but you are getting the boot...

Anyhoo, back to clicking and dragging and renaming folders....good times, great oldies...

Disneyland Trip - Part 1 of 3

I originally planned on writing one gigantic blog post detailing the Pescado family vacation to Disneyland.  However, since I barely have the time or creative energy to write a craptacular 500 word post on a daily basis, I decided to trash my overly ambitious plan to get all Tolstoy on your asses...so prepare for a Hemingwayesque recap of our trip, but unlike Hemingway I'm not suicidally drunk (yet) and possess more than a 100 word vocabulary.

I'm going to go on record and state that I adore Disneyland.  Walt's vision of creating a true theme park with story driven rides was created for saps like me. You can keep your Six Flags and their roller coasters designed for the adrenaline junkies, that's not my bag.  Keep that in mind as I run through all of my likes and dislikes about Disneyland.  So yeah, I'm drinkin' the Disney kool-aid and totally buy what they are selling, literally and figuratively.

Disney's California Adventure, on the other hand, has always left me somewhat cold.  That park is disjointed and really doesn't have much holding it together.  Yeah, I get that it's supposed to be a celebration of California, but that never really explained the inclusion of the A Bug's Life themed portion of the park.  A Bug's Life is a great film, but didn't have any characters that kids could really identify with or take to heart.  Therefore, ABL is now Pixar's most underappreciated and least commercial film, their Kid A if you will.   Disney might come to regret creating that portion of the park someday if they don't already...

The other attractions at DCA are fine as stand-alone rides, especially Grizzly River Run and Soarin' Over California.  Oddly enough, those are the two rides that are the most 'California' in nature and speak to the theme of the park.  There's cohesion between the two rides, which adds to the experience.  Disney must have received an earful concerning DCA, because they spared no expense when it came to their latest addition - Cars Land.

Cars Land is awesome.  The attention to detail and creative effort Disney's imagineers put into the recreation of Radiator Springs was not lost on me at all and even gave me a new appreciation for the Cars movies (Cars and Cars 2 are by far my least favorite Pixar films).  Radiator Springs is a living, breathing place now, completely organic...it is that immersive.  What Cars Land also accomplishes is that it ties DCA together even more, giving the park's identity a much needed shot of character...and let's be honest, what sets Disney parks apart from all others is the amount of brand equity Disney/Pixar has vested in all of us.  Take away the iconic characters and their stories and all you have is another not so thrilling amusement park.  And that's exactly what Disney's California Adventure was before the addition of Cars Land.

Now, enough of my yappin'...let's boogie!  What did I like and dislike about our trip to Disneyland.  First up, what I was diggin':

Radiator Springs Racers - As I stated earlier, Disney went balls out when it came to recreating Radiator Springs.  The same can be said for the Radiator Springs Racers ride, a throwback attraction that conjures up the creativity and thoughtful story telling that went into Splash Mountain.  RSR is a lot more than just a low grade thrill ride, it takes you through the Cars franchise and the rider gets reintroduced to characters from the franchise as well as 'live' certain moments.  I won't give you a blow by blow of the ride, just know that it is a damn good one.  Is it worth the 2 + hour wait times?  Uh, no...we'll touch on that later.

Splash Mountain - This has always been my favorite ride, regardless of theme park.  I've always enjoyed the story that gets told, the animatronic characters, and of course, the drop off at the end.  Splash Mountain is just a great ride, old school Disney at it's best.  Sidenote:  I had to trick little Katelyn into going on Splash Mountain.  She was dead set against it and was beginning to really dig in her heels.  So, I had to lie to her and tell her that the screams she was hearing were coming from another ride and that Splash Mountain was nothing more than a gentle boat ride like It's A Small World....conveniently leaving out the part about the 50 foot plunge.  Yes, well.  At the end of the ride Katelyn was seriously pissed at me and whatever amount of credibility I had with her lay in soggy tatters amidst the fiberglass brambles surrounding the splash zone.  If Katelyn ever becomes a stripper (with a heart of gold!) that gets a Lifetime movie made about her, her descent into debauchery will be traced to the time I deceived her concerning the nature of Splash Mountain.  If she can't believe in me, who can she believe in?!?!?
  
 Lack Of Lines - Radiator Springs Racers and Cars Land in general really took a lot of pressure off the queues for other attractions.  Pirates Of The Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Autopia, Nemo's Submarines, It's A Small World, Jungle Cruise, and the sunglasses devouring Big Thunder Mountain Railroad were at times walk on rides or 1/2 hour waits at most.  With strategic use of the Fast Pass system it was possible to bounce from ride to ride with minimal time spent in line.  If you are going to Disneyland anytime soon then I suggest downloading one of the Disneyland queue time apps for your smart phone.  Having that app gave us a good idea as to which rides we would target or hit up while waiting for our Fast Pass time or what have you.

Having daughters - Let's be honest, Disneyland is about Disney princesses.  Being blessed with three girls gives me a new appreciation and fondness for Sleeping Beauty's Castle and Fantasyland.  The look on Jossy and Katelyn's faces when they first laid eyes on that castle is something I'll never forget.  And Jossy saying that her tummy was 'tingly' as we walked towards the gates was a small moment to her, but one I'll cherish.  The ability to tap into a child's wonder and imagination will always be Walt Disney's legacy, and for that I salute him.  I also salute his successors for reviving the princess tradition that allows little girls to dream about far away lands and fairy tales.

With that being said, here's what I didn't like so much about Disneyland...or things that could use improving:

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride - Mr. Toad has to go.  Why Disney has not repurposed the space currently being occupied by Mr. Toad is baffling.  I know 'purists' hate the notion of Mr. Toad being shut down, but purists can be idiots at times.  Hitler was a purist, and look what that got us.  Anyhoo, Disney needs to get their imagineers to work on creating a Beauty And the Beast themed ride, in the same style as the new Ariel's Adventure at DCA.  Where the Toad now squats would be the perfect place for that.  Call it Belle's Beastly Journey or Belle's Be Our Guest Adventure, but make it happen before I'm too old to ride anything but the benches on the carousel next to moms nursing their babies and hip replacement recipients.

Tomorrowland - Tomorrowland is so, so yesterday.  No place at Disneyland is as backwards looking as Tomorrowland.  Disney, here's another idea that I'm giving you...find a way to compensate me later.  If you haven't already started making plans to incorporate Wall-E into Space Mountain, then start firing everyone on your creative staff post haste!  Shut the ride down for 6 months and find a way to turn Space Mountain into Wall-E World.  The infrastructure of the ride can remain in place, but lordy, gut everything else...add holograms of Wall-E, animatronics of Eve...just make it happen!  Turn the entire Space Mountain building into a Buy N' Large, retrofit the roller coaster cars to look like the floaty things people rode around in 'cause they were too atrophied to propel themselves using their legs...if you need me to help you out, just shoot me an email.  And while you are busy with Space Mountain, put Captain EO to rest.  I'm sure their was an uptick in interest after Michael Jackson died, and like good capitalists you made sure to get in on that action by calling it a 'tribute' to MJ...but enough is enough.  Let Cap'n EO and Mr. Toad ride off into the sunset together...I'm sure Bubbles wouldn't mind the company.

Matterhorn - Holy schmoly, the track to the left of the boarding area for the Matterhorn is nothing short of abusive.  The new bobsleds are nice and all, but that means sweet eff all if the ride itself is leaving riders with permanent damage to their spinal cords.  Criminey, my back was wrenched so hard on one turn my feet tingled.  I don't think that's supposed to happen.  The second track is just fine...maybe find a way to make the first track less like something you'd experience in a Hellraiser movie, yes?

Star Tours - Like everything else remotely Star Wars like of late, I was underwhelmed by the new Star Tours.  In fact, I was underwhelmed and motion sick afterwards...the 3D effects and the sweltering heat kind of put me over the edge, so I did not enjoy the Star Tours experience much at all.

Now, for my Disneyland helpful hints!

1.  Pack plenty of water...when you think you've packed enough, pack more.  Remaining hydrated is key to surviving that place if it is remotely hot outside.  Why Disneyland doesn't incorporate the Las Vegas/Phoenix misters to keep patrons cool is borderline criminal, especially at the older rides within Fantasyland that get hammered by the sun.

2.  Use rides like It's A Small World and Pirates Of The Caribbean to take a break and cool off.  Yeah, both rides are kind of on the slow side, but they go for a while and are indoors and air conditioned.  I think we rode IASW and POTC at least three times each, partly because the girls liked them, but also because it gave everyone a chance to get out of the heat.

3.  The snack shop by the Jungle Cruise carries the most healthy snacks at Disneyland.  If you don't want to partake of burgers and fries, then by all means load up on mango and coconut water at this snack shop.  Toon Town has a place that sells a decent cold turkey sandwich and a small fruit stand too, so that's always an option.  California Adventure has a couple of smaller snack shops with fruit and veggies as well, just not inside the joint by Soarin' Over California...Sidenote:  Add this to my list of Disney dislikes....ya'll has got to figure out a way to move people in and out of your restaurants faster.  There is an unacceptable amount of inefficiency at the snack bars, especially the one located in Tomorrowland.  Poach a restaurant efficiency analyst from McDonald's and get those lines moving!

4.  Plan to eat lunch/dinner during off hours.  Better yet, eat when there is a parade...get your food and stake out some real estate on the parade route.  Or, if in Tomorrowland, wait for the Jedi Academy to start a show...there will be lots of people milling around, but not in line for food...that's your chance to get in and get out in a hurry.

5.  Don't try to get a Fast Pass for Radiator Springs Racers if you aren't one of the first in line to enter the park when the rope drops.  Just haul ass to the ride itself, suck it up and wait it out.  If you want to ride again, opt for the single rider option, especially if everyone in you party is over 7...if they aren't, then coach those under 7 to say they are 7 when asked.  Trust me on this one.  Yes, you run the risk of not being in the same car as someone you know, but if you really want to go through again, single rider is your best shot at glory.

6.  Use the Fast Pass system to your advantage and create your ride strategy around your Fast Pass return time.  Let's say you have a Fast Pass time of 11:05 - 12:05 for Splash Mountain.  Use that hour to knock out Pirates of the Caribbean and/or the Haunted Mansion, you'll more than likely will have time for both...return to Splash Mountain, ride it on down, and then head off to grab your next Fast Pass for Indiana Jones or Big Thunder Mountain Rail Road and start the process again.  Paddle the canoes or ride the ferry to what used to be Tom Sawyer's island...there's always something to do, and if you play your Fast Pass cards right you won't waste time and energy running all over the park or standing in line.

7.  Ride the train to get from one side of the park to the other, walking is for chumps, especially as the day wears on and you have a 3 1/2 year old that is getting tuckered out.

8.  They aren't lying about Grizzly River Run's potential to soak you.  We were drenched.  I nearly lost my phone.  That is not a ride to trifle with, especially if you are the unfortunate that sits next to one of the rafts opening.  An enormous amount of water gets into the raft on that ride and you your clothes will get very, very wet.  If you have to take your phone with you, place it in a plastic baggie that can be tightly secured.  I think there are lockers you can rent if you want to bring a change of clothes as well.  Again, they ain't be kiddin' about that being a water ride....

That's all I've got for now, and I'm sure that I am forgetting some obvious tips.  I'll touch on those (if I remember exactly what it is I forgot) in the next two installments...adieu!         

Carry That Weight

I started watching what I eat at the beginning of the month in anticipation of our trip to Disneyland. The goal was to drop at least 15 el-beeze before July 8th. As of about 20 minutes ago, I'm down 18 lbs, which is really good. My end of summer goal was to be 30 lbs lighter heading into fall. I'm on pace for that as well. Why the 'Disney Diet'? Well, at some point during our three day visit to the Magic Kingdom one of the girls is going to collapse into a heap and will need to be carried. Lugging a kid and 15 lbs of garbage weight around my midsection just wasn't going to work. Also, my knees haven't been magically cured, they still give out and ache. I figured if I lost some weight that would be less stress on the knees...lastly, I don't want to look like a fat tub of goo in photos from our trip. Vanity can be a powerful motivator... The downside to losing weight is that most of my clothes no longer really fit me. Today I felt I looked a'ight enough to tuck my shirt in. The problem was that the shirt was roughly the size of an a-frame tent. When I tucked it in there was so much loose fabric that every time I raised my arms it looked like I was wearing a goddam flying squirrel suit...you know, one of these things. Secondly, I had to tighten my belt to the point it was almost painful. I would have been better off rolling like Jethro and tying some twine around my waist to hold my britches up. Aside from the uncomfortable cinching there was the matter of my gig line, which was all effed up. Non-military folks may not know what a gig line is, but I do, and I don't like it being effed. You civilian pukes read this wiki entry about gig lines. ANYWAY, I'm going to need a new belt pretty soon too...which is a nice issue to deal with when you are going a size smaller... Wow...I took something about me losing weight and managed to find a way to bitch about it. Imagine that... Speaking of weight loss, according to my doctor I could probably go a month without food and would still probably weigh close to 200 lbs. That seemed like a crazy statement until he took measurements of my wrists. I'm apparently a direct descendent of Neanderthals, hence the bone density of a Discovery channel biped. I think I'll look up one of those evolutionary charts that shows the progress of man from cave dwelling man ape to where we are today...maybe I'll spot my great-great grandfather in the photos...

King Of The Road!

I'm starting to get excited about our road trip to Southern California. It's been 20 years since the last time I made what used to be a routine drive up and down I-5 for me. Back in my Air Force days I became an expert at driving from Edwards AFB out in the middle of the Mojave to Port Orchard and back again. I would sometimes make that drive on a long weekend, leave from California at 4:30 and drive Def Leppard style on through the night and arrive in PO the next afternoon...yeah, I was a mess from all the Mountain Dew and Vivarin that kept me awake...but I'd take a quick nap and then meet up with my friends. I'd hang with them for a day and a half and then make the long drive back. My fear of flying allowed me to justify the ridiculous amount of driving I did...but it was fun, except for the time I'm pretty sure I was abducted by aliens in Weed, CA and woke up in Medford, OR...it was aliens or driving on pure instinct because I just remember having to pull over because I had no idea what happened during the block of time.

There will be none of that this trip. We'll be stopping just south of Redding for some pool time and to get some sleep so everyone will be in tip top shape for the second half of the trip to SoCal. We'll be staying at the Anaheim Hilton upon arrival and then hitting Disneyland for three days of park hopping and line waiting fun in the sun. Good times, good times....

Randomization...

...Maddy's Cal Ripken Jr. like streak of perfect school attendance came to an end this year. The streak was halted by that crazy virus/rash/heat exposure incident that saw half her face swell up like an agitated puffer fish. She went to school each day she was under the weather, but when it was really bad she asked to see the school nurse. The nurse took her temperature, gave me a ring, and I picked her up before the magic cut off time of 1pm for the entire day to count. Maddy was disappointed that the streak ended, but she's ready to start a new one. Oh, and she made honor roll this year, let's hope that's a streak she wishes to continue. Lordy knows her old man didn't exactly burn up the academic charts back in the day... Anyhoo, I watched a couple of movies over the weekend that did nothing more than illicit strong feelings of 'meh' from me. The first flick was 'The Grey', which was kinda sorta interesting for what amounted to nothing more than 'Jaws' in the woods...although the ending of Jaws would have been way cooler if Chief Brody had taped broken airplane bottles of hooch to his hands and punched the shark to death. Oh well, maybe they'll try that scenario in the inevitable reboot...the one that will make the shark the victim and Brody and crew the real maneaters...because they will be zombies. So, yeah...'The Grey'...aside from some fantastic attack sequences and a harrowing depiction of a plane crash that did nothing to calm my fear of flying, the movie was just okay. Liam Neeson is always a strong presence on screen, and he doesn't disappoint...I've just seen this story told before with sharks/zombies/cave dwelling ghouls, so from that perspective it's old hat...aside from the wolf punching with broken bottle hands... The second movie I sat through was 'Safe House', a movie that was predictable and boring and should end the notion that Ryan Reynolds can co-carry anything but the next Van Wilder installment. Our Disney trip is planned, now we just have to find a place to stay at the 1/2 way point. Now, I've made the trip between SoCal and Washington quite a few times...and most of those times I pulled the trip off non-stop. However, last time I did that drive I was 22. Yes, back in 2006 I did drive non-stop from Auburn, WA to Las Vegas and that decision was regrettable. Jossy was just a few weeks old, Maddy was three, and yet I thought it would be nothing short of awesome to drive to Las Vegas. That trip took 25 hours because we had to stop every couple of hours for potty breaks, diaper changes, and to give me a chance to reload on caffeine. We were also nearly carjacked by Russians at 2am somewhere in Idaho (but that's a story for another day). By the time we got to Vegas I felt like a lizard having an out of body experience. And although part of me thinks I can still handle a 20+ hour drive, I'm not going to risk putting everyone in jeopardy. Besides, The Better Half keeps reminding me of just how tired I was when we hit Salt Lake City on that Vegas trip...I'll have to take her word for it because I don't remember a thing, mainly because I think I was sleep driving and just keeping it between the ditches on instinct alone. Ya know, that whole Vegas road trip requires it's own blog post...

Father's Day Musings

This was my 8th year of being able to celebrate Father's Day as an actual father. It's a cliche to say that time flies by, but it does. We will never be as young as we are today, time keeps slipping into the future, ain't it funny how time slips away...yeah, we've heard 'em all. Anyway, my 8th year as a father and what have I learned? Well, funny you should ask...here are 5 things I've learned in the 8 years I've been a dad: 1. I am powerless against the wants and desires of my kids. I want to make them happy all the time and, much to their detriment and my own, I cave in harder than a mine shaft built by government contractors when they ask for something. Yes, I'm spoiling them and they aren't learning valuable lessons about...stuff you learn about when your parents deny you some candy or a new Barbie every now and then. It's not like I'm always buying them toys and candy or other treats, but if they do get an unexpected gift there is a 99.9% chance I'm the parent that got it for them. What can I say, I like giving them things. 2. Children are literally pieces of you that have broken off, when they hurt that means you hurt. Whenever any of my kids are hurt or sick, all I want to do is make them feel better. When Maddy broke her arm, I was overcome with feelings of helplessness, I couldn't do anything to make her feel better or undo what happened. It's an awful feeling, and my heart goes out to all parents with kids that may have serious illnesses. Those parents are stronger than I could ever be. 3. This is going to fly in the face of the first item I posted, but my kids want my time and attention more than anything else. Yes, they like the gifts, but what they really appreciate is the time I spend with them gardening, or playing, or just hanging out and listening to them tell me about their day. I figure I've got about 3 more years before Maddy is embarrassed to be seen with me out in public, so I want to spend as much time with her before she's ashamed of me...and that's inevitable, all kids turn on their old man at some point...how I handle that rejection will set the stage for our relationship as she grows older. It won't be easy though... 4. There really is middle child syndrome, and I'm trying like hell to break the cycle. With the first born, everything they do is being witnessed by the new parents...their first steps, dance recital...those are all happening for the first time. We used up a lot of videotape with Maddy. We still felt excited when Jossy took her first steps, lost her first tooth and what have you...but those weren't first times for us as parents or me as a dad. Katelyn is the baby, when she starts kindergarten or loses a tooth, human nature means we are going to give those events much more attention and fanfare because she's our last....we'll never celebrate a first day of kindergarten again. I try really hard to make Jossy feel special and make it a point to attend as many functions as possible...but it wasn't until I became a dad that I saw how the middle child can sometimes get the shaft. Oh, the oldest gets hammered as well, we expect a lot more from the 'big sister', but the oldest always knows they are a little extra special...and the youngest is 'the baby'...the middle child is neither, so I'm working harder to make her feel good about herself, she's 'my Jossy', and nothing will ever change that. 5. I'm boring. I love my daughters more than anything. I talk about them every chance I get. Yep, I'm that guy...the one that thinks coworkers want to hear about field day or the songs Jossy's class sang during 'Donuts With Dad'. Long gone are the days of me waxing pathetic about waking up in a Honey Bucket or spinning tales of staying up for two days straight and needing Mecca bloody Mary's to 'get my equilibrium back'. Nothing makes me happier than my kids, even when they are being whiny and needy and throwing a fit in the middle of Southcenter (I'm looking at you Katelyn, you don't know how close you are to staying with grandma and not going to Disneyland this summer!). Like I said, we'll never be as young as we are today, my kids won't be kids forever...I need to soak all of this in so we can all take these memories with us as we grow older. The best times I remember with my dad (or in my case dads) was when they played trucks with me in the sandbox, or played kickball in the backyard...taking me to see Star Wars for the first time. The trips to Disneyland and other destinations were fun, but they wouldn't have meant as much if there wasn't a solid foundation of little things holding everything up. Little things matter, good and bad, and our actions are constantly being deposited and scrutinized in the great Parental Bank that resides within all of our children...they will remember the heartbreak as much as they will all of the good times, maybe more. It's our job to make sure we don't overdraw the unconditional trust and love they have placed with us. They didn't ask to be born (something I'm sure I'll hear from them more than once), so it is our responsibility to guide, love and protect our kids with every fiber of our being. To me, that's what being a father is all about...well, that and bringing home toys every now and then, sometimes we need the gratification that only comes from being appreciated for bearing gifts.

To All You Ex-Wamulians…

…you owe it to yourself to pick up Kirsten Grind's new book that chronicles the rise and fall of Washington Mutual. I've been following Kirsten's writing ever since she first started reporting on WAMU's failure in the Puget Sound Business Journal. She has spent countless hours researching WAMUs rise from small regional bank to the powerhouse it became before it collapsed. From what I have read so far, WAMU was rotting from the inside out leading up to its failure, overrun by corruption and greed in the Home Lending Group. Excerpts I have read so far are both fascinating and infuriating, especially when Grind writes about the gigantic money suck that was Optis, the silliness of the Occasio branches, and Kerry Killinger's transformation from aww-shucks CEO to a private jet flying exec enamored with his own success.

Follow the link below to pick the book up from Amazon.com…

Preppin’ It Up

I have grown somewhat weary of 'Doomsday Preppers'. The scenarios that some of the families were preparing for were somewhat ridiculous. While I can see the value in having about a week's worth of food and a two week supply of water at the ready, anything more than that seems a wee bit over the top. I do admit that the first few episodes had whipped me into a low grade prepping frenzy (I bought a case of baked beans and green beans at Costco…don't call me unprepared!) and I was seriously contemplating buying a generator, but I have since calmed down. Luckily, each passing episode since the series debut featured bat sh*t insane chicken little types prepping for tsunamis and super volcanoes, and that took the wind out of my prepping sails. Otherwise, I was about another full episode away from using cookie sheets as makeshift armor for my car (cookie sheets are bulletproof, yes?) and strapping a shot gun to the hood and going into Road Warrior mode just to get to the train station every morning.

However, the recent outbreak of news stories featuring bath salt fueled lunatics eating faces and self-styled Canadian Hannibal Lector types going on the lam has me rethinking my doomsday preparedness. While I don't believe in zombies or the living dead (or Bigfoot or ghosts or black bumper Mennonites), I do believe we are on the verge of a semi-serious societal breakdown. The markets are on full-blown life support, propped up by central bank intervention…the Eurozone is in worst shape than is being reported, and Germany can't bail everyone out. The inevitable crash is going to be more spectacular than what we witnessed in 2008. This particular administration has spent trillions propping up the banks. When the house of cards comes crumbling down again, the government will find itself out of solutions. Printing more money will not prevent or soften the blow from what's in store. People are going to get desperate and desperate people can sometimes do unthinkable things. Getting a stronger lock for the front door is on the agenda, that's for sure…but reinforcing the walls of the house with cement and cutting murder holes into the frame are not.

So, yeah….I feel I need to prepare to take care of the family should we hit a rough spot down the road. What are 'prepper' essentials? I'm not anticipating the power grid going off line or a major disruption of water service…but life might become sportier, certain items harder to find or obscenely expensive…I'm just not sure what those items would be….

Wild, Wild West

I caught a majority of the History Channel's excellent 'Hatfields & McCoys' mini series.  By majority I mean that I missed all of part one, so I have no idea what sparked the feud outside of what Wikipedia tells me.  However, I did watch most of part two and all of part three.  Here are some takeaways:

Kevin Costner should stick to doing westerns from now on. His stoic reading aloud of other people's words fits in perfectly with the strong silent types that westerns are contractually obligated to include in their scripts.  Plus, he can grizzle himself up with the best of them.  Costner was perfect as Devil Anse Hatfield.

Bill Paxton can't help but do Bill Paxton things.  He's not a bad actor (he was great on HBO's 'Big Love'), it's just that he's always Bill Paxton...getting lost in a character isn't his strong suit...he's always Bill Paxton.

There really wasn't a 'right' side to the family feud.  Both sides committed atrocities, but in the end I think the Hatfields won in the body count department...if you can call that winning.

Former indie rock darling Juliana Hatfield is a direct descendent of the feudin' and fightin' Hatfield clan.

If I were transported back in time to the wild west days, I think I'd last about a week before getting shot or dying from the general stink of things.  For some reason, while watching the show, I couldn't get over the notion that everyone stunk to high heaven in the olden days.  Everyone wore natural fiber clothing, it was hot, everything was cooked using wood stoves....I mean, I'm pretty certain even the most hygiene conscious back in the day smelled like a bar rag dipped in bong water that was then dried by a smokey fireplace.  Not good.  But the 'Hatfields & McCoys' was a very well done mini series...don't let the stinky looking people fool ya! 

Peas Porridge Hot!

I think I have finally stumbled onto my million dollar idea, the one that is going to allow me to walk away from the daily commute, make me independently wealthy, and turn me into the anti-social recluse I've always dreamed of being...

After all of the Mexican/Korean fusion taco trucks and Ethiopian Cajun Soul Food lunch vans get repo'd and towed away, someone and something is going to have to fill that void.  That's where I come in.  I have seen the future of convenience food, and it is not those dreadful Dipping Dots.  Oh no.  The future is in our collective past, my friends.  I'm talking the original comfort food (and not bourbon, although I have turned to the fiery brown water more than once during times of stress) - porridge.

Yep, I'm planning on opening up a chain of porridge stands across this fine nation of ours with expansion franchises in Canada (although they'll Canadian the porridge up by dousing it in brown gravy and will dip fries into it, but that's their issue, not mine...USA! USA! USA!).  The name of the place will be Three Bears Porridge with the tagline of ...It's Always Juuuuuuust Right.  I figure each location will require about 1,000 square feet to allow for seating and what have you.  The menu will feature breakfast porridge (served all day!), but will also have lunch/dinner options as well...porridge is wicked versatile, ya'll!  It can be served with nothing more than brown sugar or can have various meats and root vegetables cooked right into it as well.  You are limited in options only by your own stunted TV addled imaginations (and ability to pay, that sausage ain't free!).  Each store will have a three bears theme (from the fairy tale, not three big hairy gay dudes), although no one will be required to dress as Goldilocks.  We'll keep it simple.

Here's where you come in. I'm giving each and every one of my 9 faithful readers the chance to get in on the ground floor...no, scratch that...I'm giving each and every one of my 9 faithful readers the chance to get in at crawl space level.  Just send me $1,000 so I can start buying oats and cauldrons and pay for the lease of our flagship store and together we can ride this dream of mine as far as it will take us (queue Starships 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now').  Remember, we are only limited by our own imaginations!!!!

And if the porridge thing doesn't work then we can always open a chain of MMA themed gay bars called the Ground & Pound.  Our signature drink will be the rear naked choke, only two per customer per night!   

Hello Again!

Hey, remember me...the guy that posts to this blog just often enough to let you know I haven't forgotten my Blogger account login?  I thought so...

So, it's been an interesting couple of weeks, if you would define interesting as meaning my weeks have been filled with ordinary and mundane tasks like going to work and digging ditches to complete the French drain.  Oh, and we took a trip to the Great Wolf Lodge.

Unfortunately, I'm in another stretch of poor sleeping and I'm really trying to avoid the Elvis strategy of medicating myself to sleep every night.  That leads to having to find ways to shake off the groggy, fuzzy headed effects of the sleep meds in the morning with different tactics...like caffeine and Peruvian blow.  Just kidding about the blow, if I ever did coke I'd pull a Belushi and that would be that.  But you get the idea...so, I'm not feeling very creative or remotely amusing (which also leads to a downward tick in Facebook posting as well, but hows 'bout that IPO!  Woo hoo!  Welcome to the tech stock meltdown 2.0!!!)  at the moment.  In fact, I'm going to shuffle off to bed and attempt to fall asleep while listening to Sananda Maitreya's, aka Terence Trent D'arby, debut album 'Introducing The Hardline According To...'.  Pray for me as I tend to get frustrated listening to TTD albums...an incredible talent kneecapped by maniacal egotism and self-absorption...argh...still, the way he drags out the syllables in sycamore tree on 'Wishing Well' is just this side of awesome...meaning it isn't awesome...I don't even know what I'm trying to say now...lates! 

Runnin' With The Devil - A Belated Concert Review

To say I was apprehensive about seeing Van Halen live in 2012 would be an understatement.  I went into Saturday night's show at the Tacoma Dome with the lowest of low expectations.  Having seen footage of recent shows on YouTube I was completely prepared for the following:

David Lee Roth would be a rambling buffoon

The entire show would play out like Van Halen: The Vegas Revue

Wolfgang Van Halen would pull a sandwich out of his pocket halfway through the set

Michael Anthony would be missed

Only one of the above four mentioned preconceptions were to be proven true.

It could be said that in the early days of Van Halen the band's image belonged to David Lee Roth.  He was the ultimate hard rock front man performing ridiculous karate kicks while clad head to tow in spandex and various mesh materials.  Eddie Van Halen was the guitar god the lit their musical fuse, but Diamond Dave was the focal point of the band. 

Saturday night's show proved the opposite to be true.  The Van Halen brothers must have had a long sit down with Roth prior to this tour to explain to him that he was to put aside the corny ass carnival barker routine he perfected early in his solo career...the one that turned David Lee Roth from the charismatic front man of America's best hard rock band and into a retarded caricature of himself.  Basically, they instructed him to leave the sideshow horsesh*t antics aside and just get out and push when necessary.

The show wasn't free of Roth Moments...he forgot the words to more than one song, including the opener, 'Unchained', where he just kind of warbled into the mic to the point where I don't even think he was speaking English.  During one of the newer songs he flat out stopped singing and just waited for the chorus.  And of course, there was his dog & pony...or should I say dog & sheep and cattle show.  In retrospect, getting a glimpse into the life of the 'real' David Lee Roth was somewhat interesting, but it was a bit of a momentum killer.  Listening to Roth prattle on about his dogs and why sheep (or was it cattle?) are like cheerleaders was like listening to your drunk uncle tell stories at a family reunion or wedding reception...not unwelcome, buy at no time are you sure where the story is going.

Eddie Van Halen made the show worth seeing.  At 57 years old, Eddie Van Halen's guitar playing is still amazing to behold...his tapping technique may be old hat now, but seeing the master pull notes from his guitar without a noticeable drop off in proficiency from his younger days was more than worth the price of admission.  The pyrotechnics from his younger days are still evident on the newer Van Halen songs, but even then they seem to be a little more tasteful...a less is more approach evident on Van Halen 1.0 standards 'Runnin' With The Devil' and 'Ain't Talkin' Bout Love'.  Eddie's 7 minute plus version of 'Eruption' put all of his considerable talent on display as he shifted from lightning fast picking and tapping to a jazzier/prog rock interlude that threatened to delve into 'An Evening With Roger Waters' territory but stepped back from the ledge before tumbling over.  No other living guitar player has influenced hard rock guitar playing in the manner Edward Van Halen has.  His virtuosity isn't appreciated enough as actual musicianship has been discounted since the early 1990's when being able to actually play was looked down upon...

Van Halen 1.0 created music that was accessible to damn near everyone.  It's nothing more than good ol' ass kicking show us your, uh...well, rock & roll.  You didn't have to over think it to appreciate it, and that's what I always loved about early Van Halen.  Van Halen 2.0 was more polished and commercial, but also much more polarizing as Eddie Van Halen's infatuation with the keyboard became featured more and more.  Van Halen's earlier category can be trite, but goddam, 'Hot For Teacher' is just F-U-N fun...and what the eff is wrong with that?  Music doesn't always to be about making profound statements or what have you, sometimes I just want to see and hear a band that rocks (which is one of the reasons I adored Oasis back in the day).  We got a steady diet of Van Halen's earlier hits, minus 'Jamie's Crying', including 1984's keyboard via sequencer 'I'll Wait', which actually sounded fantastic.  The band's latest single, 'Tattoo', had a vibrancy lacking in the recorded version and was also free of David's soft shoe shuffle that was featured predominately in the video.

For a bunch of cats pushing 60, Van Halen did an admirable job of recreating their greatest hits live.  Whether or not Diamond Dave's antics were suppressed by edict, Father Time, or a new found understanding of his place in the Van Halen world, we'll never know.  However, having him replace the headset mic he was using early on in the tour with a handheld was brilliant...footage of DLR with the headset mic was unfortunate as he looked uncomfortable and fidgety...and no one needs a fidgety Diamond David Lee Roth.

The crowd was something to behold as well...a mix of forty somethings like myself just wanting to have a night out with the fellas, put back a couple beers, and listening to some older favorite songs to a younger generation of fans with their parents.  Also in attendance were plenty of forty somethings dressed like members of a Three Doors Down tribute band, trying to relive glory days long, long gone...and then there were the ladies...some replete in spandex skirts and pants and day glow tank tops to mom jeans and satin tavern jackets to middle class wives along with their husbands while they relived their high school days in their minds.  It was a healthy mix of the normal and the preposterous and the somewhat sad that wandered about wondering where all the good times had gone...I'm glad I went.  Will I go again in a couple of years should they return?  I'm not sure...possibly, but only if Michael Anthony returns to the fold.  He's an integral part of the Van Halen sound.  Wolfie Van Halen wasn't a schlub, and there were some moments where the interplay with his father were genuinely touching, but he can't hit the high notes that were the secret weapon in Van Halen's early hits...