The J-Blog

RIP Atlanta Thrashers 1999-2011

2011-05-31T10:32:00.005-04:00

I never really had pets in my life other than a fish or two. So it's hard for me to compare losing the Thrashers to losing a pet. But I really am feeling heartbroken today. At noon today, a group of assholes from Winnipeg are announcing that they're buying the Atlanta Thrashers from THE BIGGEST group of ASSHOLES (The Atlanta Spirit Group) and moving my team to Canada. This hurts. It hurts a lot. I moved to Atlanta in 2001 and fell in love with the Thrashers around 2003-ish. I've been to probably 85% of the home games since then. I've seen 0 playoff wins from my team. 0. That's not easy. 53% of the league makes the playoffs every season. 53%!!!! The Thrashers have done it once. The stats major in me tells me there is a 0.03% of that happening only once in 11 years (although i'll admit to being rusty). April 2007 was the loan playoff appearance, against my childhood team, the New York Rangers. The Thrashers lost all 4 games, but those two home playoff games were right up there with the 3 FSU National Championship Games I went to from Jan 1999-Jan 2001 as the best sporting events I've EVER been to. Now my team is being taken away from me. And it's not fair.

In 1996 the Winnipeg Jets left town to move to Phoenix and become the Coyotes. The Coyotes have made the playoffs the last two seasons and have had very good teams. Despite that, the Coyotes have had lower attendance numbers each season than the Thrashers. The Thrashers haven't exactly packed the house, but who wants to go watch a terrible team, year after year? The one season the Thrashers made the playoffs, games were sold out, fan interest was peaking. Since then, it's been downhill, thanks to the worst group of owners imaginable. They've been fighting amongst each other for the last few years in court. As soon as that was settled - Dec 2010, they set out to sell off the Thrashers. And they did so in just 5 months. NHL by-laws state that to relocate a franchise, options to sell the team to local buyers must be fully exhausted. Which is pretty impossible in only 5 months.

The NHL has been so against relocation that when the situation in Phoenix got so bad, the NHL itself took over control of the team when the owners went bankrupt. Here's a crazy thought, why don't you move those fuckers back to Winnipeg! It was their team to begin with! But, no such luck. The NHL Commish Douchebag, Gary Bettman hasn't said a peep about our Atlanta situation, after being so incredibly, oddly dedicated to keeping Phoenix put. He's just standing by letting Atlanta lose our team. It just doesn't make sense why the league wouldn't do anything to try and help us like they helped Phoenix. Atlanta was never given a chance to succeed. As soon as it was announced that the Coyotes were staying put for the 2011-12 season, within days, it was announced that the Thrashers were likely bolting for Canada instead. Now, at noon today, it will be done.

Even with all the losing, i have such great memories of my short life as a Thrashers fan. I've done 2 tv-timeout games - which were blogged here and here. Still haven't used my $50 Hard Rock gift card yet now that I think about it. I've had countless huge beers at the CNN Center, I've played dodgeball on the ice, I got my name on the scoreboard for my 30th birthday, I've had probably a hundred games worth of seats in my company's suite which is right next to the injured players' suite. I sat in both the last row and first row for the 2006 NHL All Star Game. About the only thing I never did was ride the zamboni. The Thrashers were by far, my favorite thing about the city of Atlanta. And they're being taken away from me. It's just not fair.

Now what for me? What did Hartford Whalers fans do when their team moved the Raleigh? Do you still root for them? I still love the players on the team, I can't see myself rooting against THEM. But the prospect of what the team can do when they actually have owners who care is something I'm excited about but won't get to enjoy.

And I've now officially switched from the depression phase to the anger phase after writing this, my first blog in about 14 months. Thanks.

The AJC's Jeff Schultz just posted a column that needs to be read: http://blogs.ajc.com/jeff-schultz-blog/2011/05/31/thrashers-atlanta-were-never-given-a-chance/

ATL Noise: Volume 8, Issue 1

2010-03-10T23:51:00.002-05:00

So it's been 6 months since I've put one of these together, it's time! For those not familiar - this is my own personal researching of local concerts that I may might possibly be could maybe interesting in attending - especially the ones in bold.

Sun 03/14/10 Ben Folds and A Piano @ The Tabernacle

Sun 03/14/10 Craig Ferguson @ Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre

Sun 03/14/10 The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus @ The Masquerade
Sun 03/14/10 Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers @ The Masquerade
Sun 03/14/10 Suckers @ The Masquerade

Sat 03/27/10 Jarrod Gorbel @ Eddie's Attic
Sat 03/27/10 The Honorary Title @ Eddie's Attic

Sun 03/28/10 Chelsea Handler @ Fox Theatre

Fri 04/02/10 Grift @ Red Light Cafe

Wed 04/07/10 Blue October @ Center Stage
Wed 04/07/10 Hurricane Bells @ Center Stage

Thu 04/08/10 Vampire Weekend @ The Tabernacle
Thu 04/08/10 Abe Vigoda @ The Tabernacle

Fri 04/16/10 Dave Attell @ The Punchline

Sat 04/17/10 Dave Attell @ The Punchline

Wed 04/21/10 Nickelback @ Philips Arena
Wed 04/21/10 Breaking Benjamin @ Philips Arena
Wed 04/21/10 Shinedown @ Philips Arena
Wed 04/21/10 Sick Puppies @ Philips Arena
* - Note: I would leave before Nickelback goes on stage

Thu 04/29/10 30 Seconds To Mars @ The Tabernacle
Thu 04/29/10 Mute Math @ The Tabernacle
Thu 04/29/10 Neon Trees @ The Tabernacle

Tue 05/04/10 Bullet For My Valentine @ The Tabernacle
Tue 05/04/10 Airbourne @ The Tabernacle
Tue 05/04/10 Chiodos @ The Tabernacle

Wed 05/05/10 Three Days Grace @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
Wed 05/05/10 Seether @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
Wed 05/05/10 Chevelle @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre

Sun 05/09/10 Saliva @ The Masquerade

Thu 05/13/10 OK Go The Loft At @ Center Stage
Thu 05/13/10 Earl Greyhound The Loft At @ Center Stage
Thu 05/13/10 Robert Francis The Loft At @ Center Stage

Sun 05/16/10 Angels And Airwaves @ The Tabernacle
Sun 05/16/10 Say Anything @ The Tabernacle

Wed 05/26/10 Butch Walker & The Black Widows @ Variety Playhouse

Fri 06/04/10 Reverend Horton Heat @ The Masquerade
Fri 06/04/10 Cracker @ The Masquerade
Fri 06/04/10 The Legendary Shack Shakers @ The Masquerade

Fri 07/09/10 Serj Tankian Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Mon 07/26/10 2010 Vans Warped Tour @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Mon 07/26/10 Reel Big Fish @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Mon 07/26/10 Streetlight Manifesto @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Mon 07/26/10 Sum 41 @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Mon 07/26/10 Pennywise @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Mon 07/26/10 Andrew W.K. @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Mon 07/26/10 and many many more @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood

Tue 07/27/10 Dave Matthews Band @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Tue 07/27/10 Gov't Mule @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood

Sun 08/01/10 "Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival" @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Sun 08/01/10 Atreyu @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Sun 08/01/10 Korn @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Sun 08/01/10 Rob Zombie @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood
Sun 08/01/10 Several Other Scary Sounding Band Names @ %^($'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood

My Second 15 Seconds of Fame

2009-11-20T13:49:00.014-05:00

I know, I know, I've been terrible about this blog, so, sorry to everyone who depends on me to entertain you. IE - mainly folks I'm related to.

My first 15 minutes of fame - http://jznole.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-15-seconds-of-fame.html

Almost two years ago to the day (minus about 4 days) I got picked, with my buddy Matt, to do a contest during a Thrashers game, and we did not do so well, we "Lost All" in the Risk it All game. Fast forward two years (minus about 4 days) and I got a chance to redeem myself! This time, we were sitting in the 200-section, just above the concourse walk-way when I noticed J-Bird snooping around below, I've been to enough games to know he was looking for someone for a contest. He turned around and faced our section and asked a girl in the front row if she wanted to sing karaoke...she said no. Then asked Christine, who was next to me, she said no, and then I think she pointed at me. Then J-Bird turns to me and asks me to do it. Sure! I'll make a fool of myself!!!! So I go down there, he tells me the game. It's a karaoke style where they'll play a song and at some point stop it and I'd have to sing the next verse. Ok, that should be embarrassing enough! Awesome! Then he says, since we're playing the Boston Bruins, we're gonna be doing the Boston song - More Than a Feeling. Sure, I know that song. He starts singing it and it doesn't sound familiar AT ALL. Apparently the only part I knew was the chorus somehow. Awesome! I must've had a pretty serious blank look on my face because he was about to find someone else to do the contest. I said no, I wanna do it, even if I screw up it'll be fun! So, I had the brilliant idea, hey, I can look it up on the jphone! And bam! I've got the lyrics. I kept going over them over and over in my head until I thought I had it down.

As I said in my last blog, J-Bird is a weird dude. While the hockey game was still going on, he was doing play by play in an Austin Powers accent. I told him my name was J, he asked me about 4 times, I'm like dude, you've got the same name, how hard is this?

Finally it came time to actually do the contest. A couple of the Thrashers cheerleaders came by to make me look good. So thanks for that! If only we could do something about those logos on their backs!!! They made me take my jersey off and put on a Hard Rock t-shirt on. I had to fight to keep my hat on, I had a serious Jew-fro going on up there. So here we go, they introduce me to the crowd and go over the way the contest works. They play a few lines from the song and then stop it and I have to sing the next line. As soon as they started going I froze up, completely forgot how the song went, completely forgot the line I needed to sing. It was supposed to be - "I closed my eyes and I slipped away". I really have no idea what words I actually sang but I definitely didn't say slipped away. Not only that, but I kinda screamed it out more than sang. In front of about 12,000 of my closest friends too! Afterwards J-Bird said, hey you kinda went Ozzy on us there, nice! Luckily they said, close enough and said I was a winner. I got a $50 gift card to Hard Rock, and everyone in my row got $25 gift cards. Oh, and I won a free Hard Rock t-shirt.

Here are some pics from different friends from throughout the arena...with more to come

ATL Noise: Volume 7, Issue 3

2009-09-14T22:27:00.002-04:00

It's been a while...as usual, here's just a minor list of upcoming concerts in the ATL, I

Tue 09/22/09 - Cold, Taproot, Killer and the Star, Datarock, Esser - The Masquerade

Sat 09/26/09 - Chevelle, HaleStorm, After Midnight Project - The Tabernacle

Sat 10/03/09 - Snow Patrol, Plain White T's - The Tabernacle (I'd definitely be at this one if it wasn't for it being the same time as the Thrashers home opener!!!! Priorities!!!!!)

Tue 10/06/09 - U2, Muse - Georgia Dome (I'd go just to see Muse and leave)

Wed 10/07/09 - The Airborne Toxic Event, Henry Clay People, Red Cortez - Variety Playhouse

Wed 10/07/09 - Blink-182, All-American Rejects, Fall Out Boy, Asher Roth - #####'s Amphitheatre At Lakewood

Fri 10/09/09 - Kings Of Leon, White Lies - Philips Arena

Sat 10/10/09 - Lisa Lampanelli - Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre (Comedian)

Tue 10/13/09 - Blues Traveler - Center Stage

Sat 10/17/09 - David Cross - The Tabernacle (Comedian)

Tue 10/20/09 - The Bravery - Center Stage

Sat 10/24/09 - Atreyu, Hollywood Undead - The Tabernacle

Tue 10/27/09 - Paramore, Paper Route, The Swellers - The Tabernacle

Sun 11/01/09 - The Used, The Almost, Drive A - The Tabernacle

Tue 11/03/09 - Brand New, Thrice - The Tabernacle

Fri 11/06/09 - Mute Math, As Tall As Lions - The Tabernacle

Thu 11/12/09 - Jimmie's Chicken Shack - Smith's Olde Bar (I swear I've heard of these guys???)

Mon 11/16/09 - AFI - The Tabernacle

Sun 11/22/09 - All-American Rejects, Taking Back Sunday, Anberlin - The Tabernacle

Sun 11/29/09 - Miley Cyrus - Philips Arena (It's a Felony!!!!!)

Fri 12/18/09 - Dashboard Confessional, New Found Glory, Meg & Dia, Never Shout Never - The Tabernacle

Brookhaven Parking SUCKS!!!!!

2009-07-27T18:50:00.000-04:00

So I took a few days to cool down a bit, but am still pissed about the situation. And I'm not even gonna mention my flat tire from Wednesday!!!!

The Brookhaven area I'm talking about is home to 3 bar/restaurant places - Pub 71, The Hudson Grille and Mellow Mushroom (which is the official kickball bar).

These three places all have pretty large capacities, any ONE of them would probably come close to filling up the parking lot. It's gotten to the point where I refuse to even try to park in there after kickball, not only is there hardly any available parking, but the lanes to drive through are small and people drive like a bunch of ruhTARDS.

So far the last few weeks, I've been parking about a block away at a shopping center where NOTHING is open at night. There's anywhere from 20-30 cars doing the same, otherwise this HUGE parking lot is a ghost town. Well, this past Thursday, every single car got booted. Two people from my kickball team who left before I did texted me to tell me about their cars, and of course I'm thinking it probably was just them in a random act of booting. Nope. Everyone. But it gets worse.

The guy who came out to remove everyone's boot was a complete a-hole. By the time I got to my car there were 2 other groups of people waiting for the guy to show up. One of the groups had 2 fairly large black guys, who said amongst themselves while laughing but we were all pissed off, "man I'm gunna fuck this guy up" (or something like that). To which, the boot a-hole said, with a straight face, "I believe I've just been threatened, last night a group of about 6 guys threatened me and one of them left with a bullet in his chest." Wow!!!! What a winner, he really needs to brag about some guy getting shot?

So we finally convince him that no one's trying to fight anyone or shoot everyone, we just all wanted to go home. So, everyone's car had these lovely stickers on the window letting us know that we can call this phone number to get our cars released, and it said on there it is a $50 charge. Now, the first guys who he de-booted, their sticker had the $50 crossed out and $75 written in its place. I found that curious but didn't feel the need to question it from my side, because mine just said $50 with nothing crossed out. So he finally gets to me, I give him my credit card and he asks for my signature and I notice he charged me $75. So I fight him on it,

Me: "my sticker clearly says its a $50 charge."

A-Hole: "sorry I forgot to correct it on yours"

Me: "Correct it? This is an official sticker, what gives you the right to change it at all?"

A-Hole: "I ran out of our new stickers"

Me: "Well, I'm not signing this"

A-Hole: "Ok, I'll leave the boot on your car and the tow-truck can be here in a minute"

Me: "Wow, thats some bull shit, is there someone I can call to complain about this? Whats to stop you from charging me whatever the hell you want?"

A-Hole: "The number is on your receipt and Dekalb County has a minimum fee of $75"

Me: "Whatever, I need to get out of here"

Ughhhhh, I was FURIOUS, there was no winning an argument with this guy, and I certainly wasn't gonna let him tow my car for $25, but I'm still pissed about it. I mean, there's NO WHERE to park! So for now all I will do is boycott the area for the foreseeable future.

Dane Cook - ISolated INcident - I hope

2009-06-29T18:41:00.002-04:00

So Dane Cook has a new CD out called "ISolated INcident" (I have no idea why the "S" and "N" are capitalized). He's been on tour for a few months and his last show was Saturday at Philips Arena. I was looking forward to the show, but I really didn't like his new CD. Its 90% over-the-top sexual humor. I really like his older stuff, but definitely not so much the new stuff.

So Saturday comes, I'm functioning on about 4 1/2 hours of sleep and spending 10 minutes (also 10 minutes too many) at some friends house with cats. So now I'm tired and my nose won't stop running. Awesome!

We get to the show, I was excited because we had seats in the front row of the upper level. Not necessarily close, but front row means not worrying about being too short or having to sit behind King Kong. So we head up to our seats and there's a bunch of Philips ushers sitting at a table blocking the concourse. They ask for our tickets and this guy takes them and says, we're gonna give you slightly better seats. They wound up sitting us dead-center of the arena, about 15-20 rows up!!!! Sweet!!!!!

The show starts (about 45 minutes late), two guys open up for him, and were definitely funnier than Dane Cook on this night. Finally, Dane Cook comes out and basically reads his CD to the crowd. Maybe not necessarily in the same order as the CD, but just by listening to the CD one time on the way to Jacksonville for Memorial Day Weekend...I already knew all the punchlines. I actually dozed off a couple of times during the show. I don't know, maybe I'm getting old, but like I said 90% of his material was pretty much graphic sex jokes. His old stuff was never like this, he hardly had any sex jokes, and he was actually funny. I was very disappointed in the show. He could've at least done some older material, ya know, back when he was actually pretty funny????

Why in the world would a comedian come out with a CD BEFORE he goes on tour????? I've definitely learned my lesson!!!!

Dane Cook, I give you two thumbs...down.

Why I'm Dumb (Part 299)

2009-06-11T15:17:00.002-04:00

I haven't had to post a Why I'm Dumb story since January!

As if this was the first time, I got hurt playing kickball....again!!!!!

Wednesday, April 2, 2008 - Who gets hurt playing KICKBALL???? Me!!!!

Monday, May 5, 2008 - Who gets hurt playing KICKBALL???? Me!!!! Again!!!!

(Something that didn't get mentioned in the aftermath of story #2...the cuts on both of the cuts on my knees got infected, shocking, right?)

To get to my latest dumb activity, I must share another kickball story. So last Saturday (week and a half ago) was the big Smyrna kickball tournament. Team BOFBOS was starting to come on strong after losing 4 of our first 5 games we won the next two going into the tournament. (I swear if anyone says that one of those wins was because the other team didn't show up I'll punch you!) D'oh! Anyways, it was a big day.

BOFBOS got off to a huge start with a 6-run inning to take a 6-0 lead over the Shweaty Balls. Things were lookin good for us. Then it all went to shit, everyone (ok, mainly Jake!) started dropping balls left and right, and the next thing we knew we were losing 10-6! Ouch! But we weren't gonna roll over. The comeback was on. It was 10-8, I was on first base with Mark coming up and he kicked the hell out of the ball, I took off, rounded third base when my feet had decided they had enough. Down I went, stumbling just past third base. But I had to get up, the ball was coming and I knew it was gonna be a close play, so I dove. Head first. Into home. I was wearing long socks and knee-pads, what could possibly happen? I was safe! 10-9! And we eventually finished it off and won 11-10 before losing to the douchebag green team by one run for the third time this season, all by one run, this time in extra innings.

But the Why I'm Dumb part was the headfirst slide. Even with KNEE PADS...KNEE PADS!!!! I scraped up my knees. Again. I believe this is my third time.

You can see some pictures here: (notice the KNEEpads)

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=532328112&v=feed&story_fbid=96208141103#/photo.php?pid=35838430&id=23204618

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=532328112&v=feed&story_fbid=96208141103#/photo.php?pid=35838431&id=23204618

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=532328112&v=feed&story_fbid=96208141103#/photo.php?pid=35838432&id=23204618

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=532328112&v=feed&story_fbid=96208141103#/photo.php?pid=35838433&id=23204618

So fast forward a week and a half, I'm definitely doing a better job taking care of my injuries than last time, but I finally went to see a doctor yesterday. Immediately with barely a look, the nurse says, oh yeah, those are infected. Daaaaaaaamn. And that I need a tetnis (tetanus?) shot. Daaaaaaaaaamn. So now I've had to get a shot and am now on 2 antibiotics and an ointment for the next 7-10 days. Awesome!!!! Guess who's buying new knee pads!!!!!!

Kim's probably right, I should probably wear full body armor, with a helmut (yes she spells it that way) every time I play.

First NonAnnual Movie Review - Valkyrie

2009-05-28T15:42:00.002-04:00

So now that pretty much all TV shows are off for the summer, I'm focusing on no longer wasting my Netflix account. I'm pretty sure I've held on to movies for a good 2 months before. Netflix loves me!

So last night I watched the movie, Valkyrie (where Tom Cruise tries to kill Hitler).

I have 2 beef's about this flick...

Now, I'm no history buff, but I'm pretty sure I picked up on one major flaw. Why would all these German soldiers be speaking ENGLISH? Pretty much all the time. Not only that, but some of those guys had various European accents while speaking English, so it was still hard to understand them most of the time, may as well speak German!

Beef #2 is more personal. As a pretty big Hitler and Nazi hater, and, with this being a MOVIE and all, why not, I don't know, give it a happy ending and KILL Hitler????? At the end of the movie (spoiler alert) Tom Cruise gets executed, THE END. After that there are some boring words on the screen, and then oh by the way, "Hitler committed suicide nine months later". Oh, C'mon!!!!! THAT'S what I wanted to see, show me the suicide! Make it gruesome!!! Is that so wrong?

Incredibly Useful Health Tips of the Day

2009-05-19T15:58:00.003-04:00

I've been trying to spread the word on two very important topics for a while now and finally realized that this may be a good place to really get the word out.

First topic...hiccups.

We all get em (I think?) Ok, so I assume we all get em? Maybe there are some people out there without a diaphragm? I don't know. Apparently some dude - Charles Osborne - had the hiccups for 68 years. How do you sleep? Why didn't anyone try and scare him? Or drink a glass of water upside down? Or hold his breath? Why?????

So, here's my trick to ridding yourself of the hiccups. Ready? PEANUT BUTTER. It's never failed. Next time you get the hiccups, go get a spoonful of peanut butter (I've found that creamy works better than crunchy - sorry Lauren, I've stolen a spoonful every once in a while, now you know why!). Although not as much fun as watching a dog eat peanut butter, curing the hiccups may be the 2nd best reason peanut butter was invented.

Now for health tip of the day #2.

Flossing.

That's right, I'm gonna try and talk you into flossing. I was never a flosser, this is how a typical conversation went:

Dentist - "do you floss regularly"
J - "yes...once every 6 months"

For some reason they never find that as funny as I do. But one time I had a dentist determined to talk me into flossing. And it worked. He flossed my teeth, then here's how it went down:

Dentist - "I know how to make you floss"
J - "Really?"
Dentist - "I'm gonna floss your teeth and then I'll show
you"
J - "ok"
Dentist - after flossing..."smell this"
J - "OMG! Gross! That smells like ASS!"
Dentist - "so you're gonna floss now?"
J - "Yes!!!!"

So next time you're brushing your teeth, go floss real quick and give it a sniff. That's a part of what your breath smells like!!!!

I was reminded of this today at lunch, I had corn on the cob. It was all stuck up in my teeth, so I did some quick flossing at lunch just at my desk. A few minutes later, I got a sniff of my flossing finger and there it was. ASS!!!!!

FLOSS!!!!!!!

My Eyeball Update

2009-05-12T15:12:00.001-04:00

For anyone that needs to read the prequel, go here

The cliff notes version - January 2007 I had a week of radiation on my eye to fight off a small tumor in the iris of my right eye. (And as my reward I brought Mitsa into my life, my 57" beauty of a TV)

Anyways, Tuesday I had my regular 6 month check-up, with parents in tow for support, as always. I was kinda nervous because after getting poked in the eye on the Sunday before by my favorite six-month old my eye had been kinda blurry since.

I'll go ahead and give the full play by play of these miserable appointments I have to go through every six months...

We got there at about 9:15. Emory has one of the worst parking garages I've ever tried to park in. The spots are way too small and everyone ignores the "compact cars only" signs. This makes for quite the lengthy drive up to the top level where I almost always wind up parking. I think it took over 15 minutes just to park.

So we get into the office, sign in, and they actually called me back pretty quickly. A good sign, usually they're about 30 minutes to an hour or three behind.

They give me this device to cover my good eye and to read the eye chart on the wall. Wow. I'm blind, I could barely make out the biggest row of letters, usually I can see those just fine, something is definitely wrong. Then the pull out this thing that also covers my bad eye, but it's got tiny little holes to see out of. I could actually see pretty decently. Apparently with that thing, I had 20-25?I think? vision. Until recently, I'd kept my 20-20. Not cool.

The technician then puts numbing drops in my eyes and I lean my head into this contraption so that she can look at my eye and check the pressure. She says everything looks fine, pressure is good, she doesn't even see a scratch from where Riley got me. So, ummmm, why am I going blind? Who knows!

From there, I go back to another waiting room before they take actual PHOTO's of my eye. They got me in there pretty quickly. This is a contraption where I put my head into this thing and the photographer holds my eyelids wide open and takes a picture (complete with a bright flash) of my eye from just about an inch away. Fun! This process is repeated probably about 25 times. The last 5-7 pictures includes the putting some kind of lens on my actual eye, with some weird gooey stuff between my eye and the lens. At least with this thing on its easier to keep my eye open since I CAN'T close it! Not fun at all. Luckily my eye gets to shower in saline when this part is done. They do all this so that my doc can compare each picture from 6 months ago, and 6 months before then and so on - to make sure the radiated tumor is lifeless. It'll likely never go away, but hopefully it's all just dead tissue now.

Head back into the waiting room, next up is an ultrasound. But first, why not just wait here for...I don't know, an HOUR. This is the worst part of these appointments, the waiting. And of course, to us, it looks like the doctors are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. So anyways, I finally go in for the ultrasound. I can't say I'm too familiar with the OTHER kind of ultrasound that most people are probably familiar with. Actually, maybe I am, I had one for my liver once, it was weird. But imagine having one on your eyeball! It's actually not too bad, the pour a bunch of (what I think is) saline in your eye followed by this glass contraption thing. From there, my job should be simple, just stare at the ceiling where they've got this picture of a small dog you're supposed to stare at. The only problem...it wasn't in the right place. Every time I looked at this dog, she told me to look slightly to the right. It's hard to stare at something for a reasonably long period of time without there being anything to actually stare at. Move the dog! Oh well, I survived. The ultrasound somehow completely measures the tumor, not only length and width, but how deep it is. I'll probably never understand how that works, but I guess I'm glad it does.

Finally up next is the meeting with my actual doctor after he takes a look at everything. But first...another hour-long wait in the waiting room. I think it was almost 12:00 before we got called in there. I should mention that I forgot to grab a granola bar for breakfast, so I've had nothing to eat or drink yet. So combining that with the anxiousness of not knowing what the hell was wrong with my eye got to be a little much for me.

I finally get called in, where a doctor I'd never seen before takes a look. She does her thing, sticking the magnifying contraption in my face and looks into my eye and then says, ok, everything looks good, your doctor will be in shortly. Great!

So after a little more waiting, finally my doctor comes in, it's probably about 1:00 by now, we'd been there for about FOUR HOURS. He does his thing, looks at my eye, and also says everything looks good. WTF? So I finally ask him...if everything looks fine why is my eye blurry? He says, well, lets dilate the eye and I'll take a look then. Great! Another 30-40 minutes for my eye to dilate! Yay! Finally after waiting out the next 30-40 minutes in there, he comes back, takes a look..."you've got a cataract".

Great, so now I've got something that usually only 80 year olds deal with. Awesome! But they warned me about it. Cataracts have several causes, obviously old age, but in my case...the week of radiation is what did it. The bad part is, he told me I have to wait til the cataract "ripens" before they typically take care of it. So, basically, what that means to me, is that my vision is gonna have to get worse before they'll do the surgery. The surgery itself is actually the most common surgery in the US. It's outpatient (what isn't these days?) and I'll just have to take it easy for a few days (obviously I will have to eventually plan this surgery during the kickball offseason!). After some research it seems like "waiting" isn't always necessary, so I'm hopefully I can get this overwith sooner, rather than later. Supposedly not only would things get blurrier for my right eye, but it could get sensitive to light. Which would make driving at night a problem. Right now its just slightly blurry, so it's not too bad, just annoying. Let's hope I can get this taken of before all that fun starts!

I go see another one of my doctors on June 1, this is the guy who probably will actually do the surgery. I'll be dragging my roommate (sorry Lauren!) with me to take notes. So, until then...wish me luck!!!!

Team Canada: WFC Update

2009-04-29T00:37:00.000-04:00

After an 0-8 campaign to finish the 2008 kickball year, the revamped Team Canada - we're no longer Mounties, we're Flip Cuppers - is off to an amazing 4-1 start to the season.

Tonight's game by the numbers:
Team Canada - World Flip Cupper runs: 4
Non-functional CD Players: 1 (On songs NOT to have sex to night! Not cool!)
Songs able to be played in the first inning before it crapped out: 2
Runs allowed by Team Canada: 0!
Actual rounds of Flip Cup played this season: 0!
Terrible calls by the umpire: it would take too long to count.
Missing teeth by the umpire: see above.
Trying to come up with more of these so that I can say "priceless": Priceless!

Quote of the year - after the game, someone on the other team said, "There's a reason they're 4-1". :)

The one bad call I'm complaining about was on a pop up to the 2nd baseman, there were 2 outs, I was on first. He was just inside the base line, I was running towards second. He was well enough in front of me that I just went straight towards 2nd. At the last second he backs up right into my path and barely bumps me and drops the ball. I get called out for interference! WTF? Am I wrong? I can understand that if he's in my path I should go around him, but he's the one backed into my path at the last second! How am I supposed to account for that?

ATL Noise: Volume 7, Issue 2

2009-04-24T17:32:00.001-04:00

There's really only one concert that I feel the need to announce. And they haven't even announced a venue.

Saturday August 1, 2009 - GREEN DAY - Atlanta, GA - TBA (Their new album, 21st Century Breakdown comes out May 15!)

Ok, fine...here's some more that I would might possibly consider attending.

Wed 05/06/09 - Death Cab For Cutie - Fox Theatre

Tue 05/05/09 - Shinedown, Halestorm - The Tabernacle (I wonder if I can still make it there after kickball??? It'd be close, but I really wanna see Shinedown!)

Tue 05/05/09 - Candlebox - Variety Playhouse

Fri 05/08/09 - Frank Caliendo, Bill Engvall - Fox Theatre

Sat 05/09/09 - Stephen Lynch - The Tabernacle (already got my tickets!)

Sun 05/10/09 - Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction - Aaron's (formerly Lakewood) Amphitheatre (ughhh, I can't believe we're gonna have to call it that!!!)

Sun 05/17/09 - Coldplay, Howling Bells, Pete Yorn - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Wed 05/20/09 - Gavin Rossdale - Center Stage

Sun 05/24/09 - Toad The Wet Sprocket - Variety Playhouse

Thu 05/28/09 - Old Men On The Corner Who Need to Go Away - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Tue 06/02/09 - Les Claypool, Matisyahu, Dub Trio - The Tabernacle

Fri 06/05/09 - No Doubt, Paramore, The Sounds - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Fri 06/12/09 - The Fray, Jack's Mannequin, Richard Swift - Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Sat 06/13/09 - TV On The Radio, Grizzly Bear - The Tabernacle

Sun 06/14/09 - Better Than Ezra - Variety Playhouse

Wed 06/17/09 - Taking Back Sunday, Anberlin, Envy On The Coast - The Masquerade

Tue 06/23/09 - Eddie Vedder, Liam Finn - Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre

Fri 06/26/09 - Bill Maher - Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre

Thu 07/30/09 - Snoop Dogg, Stephen Marley, Slightly Stoopid - Masquerade Music Park

Sat 08/01/09 - Green Day - TBA

Sat 08/15/09 - Def Leppard, Cheap Trick, Poison - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Sat 08/29/09 - Appetite For Destruction - Trib. To Guns N' Roses - Peachtree Tavern

Sat 08/29/09 - "Crue Fest", Mötley Crüe, Godsmack, Theory Of A Deadman, Drowning Pool, Charm City Devils - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Tue 10/06/09 - U2, Muse - Georgia Dome (Too bad I can't go in, see Muse and then sell the ticket!)

My First 5k

2009-04-19T20:08:00.004-04:00

Around New Years I decided it would be a good goal to run a 5k. What better one to run in the one sponsored by Sweetwater??? So, the Sweetwater 420 Fest 5k was my goal. I guess when you're running a race like this, it's important to take it easy the night before and have a good night sleep. Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Friday night was my friend, Erica's 30th surprise birthday party. I played my part by offering her non-existent free Braves tickets for Friday night. Shockingly she turned me down. Good thing, because the Braves were playing in Pittsburgh, but I knew I'd get away with it. That made things fun for me! The party was fun, I managed to survive a Rochelle & Stevens' house party with only 1 beer! Who knew! So I did take it easy in that respect. But, not so much in the good night sleep part. I was there until about 2am. Oops! Oh well, for me, 6 hours is probably considered a good night sleep anyways!

So then Saturday I officially ran my first 5k...and I survived. Although, I should use the term "ran" loosely. I ran some. Walked, well, a lot. No one will be accusing me of being in great shape anytime soon, but I finished in 46:18. There were TONS of running uphill. Lauren called it, and I quote, "the hardest 5k ever, pretty much all uphill." So if Lauren says it, I' believe it. I knew better than to try and run the uphill portions. So I walked those and tried to run the flat stuff. And I did, for the most part.

The race started at 11am, which was nice, because these things have a habit of starting way too early in the morning. But there were soo many people, parking was ridiculous. I got to the area at about 10:30 and didn't actually park until about 10:55. Then I had to walk a friggin MILE just to get to the starting line. Seriously! There's no need for a mile-long warm up! Not cool. I met up with Tara, who was running the race with a stroller, pushing Riley the whole time. I had no idea that Tara was gonna run the whole thing like that! Jeez!!!! I kept up with her the first couple of minutes, she was literally weaving in and out of runner traffic with a stroller. It was fun to watch, but I needed a walking break. I mixed it up with running and walking. I can't seem to find a map of the race online anywhere, but when the race finally got to the intersection of Moreland/Freedom Parkway, there were a couple of girls out there cheering everyone on. "Good job! Only 1 more mile! Good job!" (rinse, repeat). So I looked at my watch, and was like, wow! I can finish this thing in about 30 minutes! This isn't so bad at all! After another 15 minutes or so, I got skeptical. Another guy was cheering people on (I assume someone's paying these people or at least giving them free beer) and he said "Good job! Only six-tenth's of a mile to go!" I was PISSED! I know I didn't take 15 minutes to run 0.40 miles. Oh well, just gotta keep on going. I did. We got to where North Ave hits Candler Park (right where I parked) and I knew we were so close. One more block and I would probably be able to see the finish line!!! I can still do this in under 40 minutes. So I kept going when I noticed something strange. A right turn!!!! Nooooooooooooooooo!!!!! Those teasing bastards had us heading right for the finish line, and then BAM. Not so fast my friend! Less motivated, and more frustrated, I pretty much walked the rest of the way. According to my watch, I finished in 46:18.

Here's me just before the finish line fake-running for the camera. My goal was to beat that dude with the stroller. Mission accomplished!

Crossing the finish line!!!! (Why do the 2 clocks have different times? ) For the record, remember, I started late!

Collecting the ever important free beer ticket!

From left to right (not including babies or Jill) Lauren's dad, Holly, Seth, me, Sarah, Jason, Tara, Lauren, another Jason, Josh.

Babies: Sage, Riley, Violet.

Lucky for you thats not quite the end of the story! After all of this, and after my one beer, I had to head home to get ready for kickball. Surprisingly enough, i had plenty of energy for it. My legs were tired but the rest of me was ready to go. So I made it to kickball, where my team, "Boobs on First, Balls on Second" pulled out an 11-8 victory in our last at bat and can finally say we won a game. Even after all that I felt good. We all went to Atkins Park for our post-game tradition, and I finally got some food in me, along with a beer. For those keeping score, that's 2 beers on the day (yes, it's important). After eating, another kickball tradition follows...flip-cup! Here's where the day goes downhill. In a hurry! After about 5-6 rounds (you drink basically a shot - an ounce or two - of beer each round) I felt my stomach saying I'm full. I really felt like I just needed to let out a good burp. I probably should've stopped playing until the burp came, but I didn't want to let my flip-cup team down! So...one more round. Ughhhh. After that, I went and sat down, I couldn't take it anymore. I needed to burp. When finally, I did. Only, I did a little more than burp. Luckily I was able to grab a plastic cup real quick and there went lunch. Somehow I pulled it off without anyone noticing (I think?). From there, it was off to the bathroom for "burp" #2. I finally had enough. Luckily home is about a mile away. I got to my couch, laid down for about an hour and felt better. Took a shower. Went back to the couch and pretty much stayed there til Sunday night. All in all (other than a sunburn) it was a good day.

5k + kickball + X + flipcup = -X

where X = lunch!

Catching Up With...Myself

2009-04-14T23:33:00.000-04:00

Today we finally had the chance to sit down with JZ himself and see what he's been up to.

The J-Blog: So...haven't heard from you in a while, what have you been up to?

JZ: Well, I've been working on my new album, "The Blueprint³" which should be coming out sometime in September.

TJB: Album? Wait...I think we've got the wrong guy. You're Jay-Z. No one cares about you around here.

Jay-Z: Peace.

TJB: J!!!! What's up???

J: That guy is always trying to steal my identity.

TJB: What have you been up to? Haven't heard from you in a while, your blog has been pretty empty.

J: I know, I know...I've got no excuse.

TJB: I hear you've been doing a bit of traveling so far this year?

J: Yeah, I guess I have. I started out 2009 by going to Jacksonville for a few days for a wedding, went on a ski trip to Winter Park, CO in February, a surprise trip to DC for my sisters 30th in March and a trip to New Jersey this past weekend.

TJB: And you didn't feel like blogging about any of that?

J: Back off!

TJB: Alright! Fine, douchebag!

J: You're a douchebag.

TJB: We know. So any accomplishments so far in 2009?

J: Well, obviously what might be my biggest accomplishment so far in my life is last Tuesday in kickball I hit (kicked?) 2 home runs in consecutive at bats.

TJB: Wow! Has that ever been done before?

J: I doubt it.

TJB: Tell us about it.

J: Well, actually the first one was somewhat unexpected. I had an 0-3 count (you get 4 strikes in kickball) and I knew I had to keep the next one in fair territory. So far this season I was 5-5 by keeping the ball on the ground, but I noticed the right and right center fielders were disrespecting me by playing pretty shallow. So I kicked it over their heads and ran my ass off before my traditional belly flop as I crossed home plate! I was DONE! I'm not built to run like that...or at all.

TJB: Traditional?

J: Fuck you!

TJB: So tell me about the 2nd home run.

J: It was pretty similar, the outfielders were pretty shallow. We had a pretty comfortable lead, so I just gave it all I had. I kinda thought this one was gonna be caught but once I got to first and it wound up past the outfielders I just thought, oh shit, not again! But I took off and did another traditional belly flop.

TJB: Is it safe to assume those were your first two career homers?

J: Fuck off.

TJB: Traditional...LOL. So, seriously, a couple of fly balls in kickball has been your biggest accomplishment so far?

J: Well, it's not official yet, but I run in my first ever 5k on Saturday!

TJB: Run? really?

J: Ok, so I'll probably be walking half of it, but its a start.

TJB: What made you decide to do this? Your a lazy fat ass!

J: I know, but, I decided it may be time to work on that. In January at work there was a 12 week weight loss competition, and I decided to give it a shot with running this 5k as a goal, after all it's the Sweetwater 420 Fest 5k!"

TJB: Have you been training for that?

J: Well, I've ran an almost 5k on my own twice.

TJB: Twice? I guess you didn't win this challenge.

J: Ha! No. I did finish 5th though.

TJB: So only 5 people signed up?

J: Fuck You.

TJB: Chill out, that was too easy, I had to.

J: Yeah I know.

TJB: So you finished 5th, I guess running twice wasn't your big secret?

J: Yeah I can't claim that I guess. To be honest, I've been eating a little better and I bought a Wii Fit is what did it for me.

TJB: Seriously, you're gonna claim a video game helped you lose weight?

J: No shit man. There's stuff you can do on there that will make you sweat. Specifically the rhythm boxing.

TJB: So how was skiing?

J: It was pretty exhausting. The altitude really got the best of me. I spent most of my time with Ryan and Nikki at a bar by the ski slopes.

TJB: Nikki?

J: She was our server every time! She was awesome!

TJB: Do anything else while you were out there?

J: I did get to cross the Pepsi Center off my list of stadiums I've been to. Me, Matt and Ryan went to a Montreal Canadiens vs. Colorado Avalanche game.

TJB: What did you think?

J: I've gotta say...I wasn't impressed. Philips Arena is soooo much better. Besides the hockey (the Thrashers wound up finishing with a better record than the Avs), the environment, the PA announcer, the entertainment during stoppages was all...boring. The folks at Philips put on a much better show. I had no idea, but I've been spoiled by going to Thrashers games!

TJB: I'm bored, what else?

J: After that trip was a surprise visit to DC for my sisters' 30th birthday.

TJB: So you actually made it up there without her knowing?

J: I did. She was suspicious that my parents were gonna be there, they showed up Friday night, I flew up Saturday morning while she was on an all day wine tasting tour. When she got home, I hid downstairs, then my dad called her to come down and I snuck out and back in upstairs. Then I just hung out on her couch until she came back up. Got her!

TJB: Not bad.

J: Yeah, she's off to a pretty good start in her 30's. A couple weeks later she managed to win my March Madness Pool. Out of 95 entries, she was the first to turn one in and nailed it. I actually had to give her $600!!!!! I held out as long as I could but I needed her help to finish up my taxes :)

TJB: Aren't you an accountant? You can't do your own taxes?

J: I'll leave. I'll leave right now.

TJB: You won't. So what else? How's passover treatin ya?

J: Passover isn't my favorite holiday, but good things definitely come of it. For the most part it turns into a big family reunion every year. And the bigger tradition is going to White Castle. I flew in before Passover began and met up with my Uncle David and Cousin Josh at Newark and we made our way to the family beach(less) house in Manahawkin, NJ. We picked out a White Castle and headed right for it. I don't know what it is, but those things are so much better than Krystals burgers. Between the 3 of us, we easily finished 20 burgers. We knew that some others we would be meeting would want some, so we got back on the road with a plan to stop at another one as we got closer. And we did. Another order of 20, unfortunately we overestimated this time and most went to waste, but it made the car ride smell good!!!! We even made another trip back after passover started, but because I can't have bread, I made due without. Without the bread that is. Wrapped the burgers with a few fries in the middle. Delish!!!!!

TJB: I think there's something seriously wrong with you

J: yeah, yeah, I think its because there's not a White Castle anywhere near Atlanta, just makes em taste better. So other than White Castle trips, I got to spend a lot of time with the family which is always fun. There's always drama, but I'll save that for when TMZ comes callin me. Amongst other things, I've become a dominant Wii Bowler now. Thanks Scott!

TJB: So we're just about caught up, right? Any other highlights so far?

J: Well, I actually read a book.

TJB: No. Seriously. I mean something YOU did.

J: Seriously.

TJB: There's no need to make shit up, we both know no one's reading this.

J: It's true. Not exactly my proudest accomplishment, but I read Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands. She's a comedian, and a jew. Turns out she was quite the whore. But she was really funny in telling about her adventures. So I read the book over my 2 plane rides in the past week. And now I'm planning on getting my hands on her other book, Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (which was actually #1 on the NY Times best seller list for a while). So I'll give it a shot. No promises. I'm not gonna become an avid reader. My TV's too big and beautiful for that :)

TJB: Reading a book is definitely an accomplishment for you.

J: Considering I'm still on the July 2008 Maxim...hell yeah!

TJB: Alright I don't like where this is going, we need to rap it up. Any important last words?

J: I have not and never have liked fish sticks (or Kanye West)

Facebook - Old Testament Style

2009-04-01T15:19:00.003-04:00

I know it's been way too long since I blogged about anything. I don't really have a good excuse. But I had to share this link I've been laughing about since I first saw it yesterday. My cousin Rob stumbled across it, so he gets full credit for finding this gem.

http://9a4440c5.fb.joyent.us/haggadah/ultraModern2.php

Enjoy!!!! (It's much funnier if you're a facebook user)

Oh No Canada!

2009-03-09T14:42:00.003-04:00

It is a well known fact that I'm a fan of Canada. I like to convince people that I'm from there...it's fun. I like hockey, that's enough to convince em. But my favorite part of Canada is their National Anthem. It's really a GREAT song. And there's no place better to witness it than a hockey game. Just...not necessarily in Atlanta. Whenever a Canadian team comes to Atlanta, they play O' Canada. I really don't understand why they don't play it every game. I'm not sure what the league percentages are, but 42% of the players on the Thrashers (9 of 21) are from Canada. (For fun - 5 are from the US, 2 each from Sweden, Finland, Russia and one 6'7" dude from Czech). Actually, I just found a study from the 2005-6 season, 53.6% are Canadian, 18.5% from the US. So to me, they should play the US & Canadian anthems every game. And mix in the Finland, Sweden, Russian, Czech anthems on a rotating basis.

None of that was the reason for this blog though. Yesterday, I was at the Calgary Flames-Atlanta Thrashers game. Got to my seat just before the anthems started. First up...the Canadian Anthem. I took my hat off (ok, so I wasn't actually wearing a hat) and started singing. Not sure who the girl was who was out there singing but it was bad. Actually her singing was pretty good...one slight problem...she DIDN'T KNOW THE WORDS!!!!! Several times she managed to keep up with the song while looking at a piece of paper with the words. But one time she paused for probably about 10 seconds. I am NOT ok with that. It's almost as bad as Thrasher fans yelling "KNIGHT" during the US anthem (only because Atlanta used to have a MINOR LEAGUE team called the Knights. USED TO!). In Canada, it's so much easier. The anthem singer can just sing the first verse and then hold the mic up and the crowd sings it. It really is pretty awesome to listen to! I just don't understand why someone would accept the honor of singing the two anthems if you don't even know the WORDS!!!!!

Why I'm Dumb (Part 298)

2009-01-19T21:03:00.003-05:00

So I bought my condo right about a year and a half ago. In the living room of said condo, I have a fireplace. If you've been here, you didn't notice because, knowing that I would never use it, I've got a couch right in front of it. When I'm home, I spend most of my time in the living room, hanging out with Mitsa. On the other hand, Lauren spends most of her time in her bedroom. She's always complaining about it being hot in here, I'm always cold. It never occurred to me that there was a reason for this.

Fast forward a year and a half...hmmm, it seems that cold air is coming from the fireplace!!!! So I stick my head up in there, and wouldn't you know it. The flue was wiiiiiiiide open. Brilliant!

Worst. 80's Night. Ever.

2009-01-19T17:09:00.003-05:00

I went with some friends to the Dixie Tavern (which I lovingly call the Dicksee tavern due to the unfortunate guy:girl ratio) Saturday night for 80's night. Who doesn't love 80's night, right?????

Well.....this was BIZARRE. From the time we got there until they closed the place down, I heard 5 (FIVE!!!!) 80's songs. The band looked like a bunch of guys from Def Leppard, except with all their extremities still attached. The music they played was baffling to me. When I got there they played a couple of Pink Floyd songs, which, although before my time, I'm pretty sure that's not from the 80's. But things got really confusing when they started playing songs by Kid Rock, Jet, Buckcherry and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Next Saturday night is 70's night. I guess that's when the 80's music gets played?

My Sister's Encounter with Obama

2009-01-10T23:32:00.003-05:00

This is kinda cool, somebody actually posted a youtube video of Barack Obama coming to Ben's Chili Bowl in D.C. and my sister and brother-in-law just happened to be there. In the video, Kim (in the white coat) shakes his hand about 15 seconds in. Brian got to him just before...and then (off camera) recommended the half smoke (a chili dog)

F&*K the SEC!

2009-01-09T11:04:00.004-05:00

I am sooooooo sick of the SEC. Last night's National Title game was lost because Oklahoma - the highest scoring team in the nation - couldn't score a single point on two separate possessions inside the 10 yard line in the first half. But I'm not here to talk about the game. I'm not even gonna talk about the Tebowner disease that has now spread to Fox's (AWFUL) announcers.

I'm here to bitch about SEC fans. I'm sick of you. I'm not even talking about Florida fans, who are far and away the most obnoxious of them all. Even though 95% of Florida fans have never even stepped foot on campus. I'm talking mainly about Georgia fans...rooting for the 'Turds last night. WTF? Don't you hate Florida as much as us FSU fans? Guess not! I now have ZERO respect for the UGA-UF rivalry. I would NEVER...ever NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER root for Miami to win anything. EVER. It's called a rivalry. That's how it works. Do you think Duke fans were mad when UNC lost in the final four last year? No!!!!!! So why do ALLLLL SEC fans sink as low as to rooting for the 'Turds to win it all? I'll never understand it. I know an Ohio State fan would never root for Michigan to win anything. So what is it with SEC fans? Do you really think your team will be better because of it? Knock it off!

ATL Noise: Volume 7, Issue 1 (Concerts!)

2009-01-06T22:42:00.003-05:00

Haven't done this in a while, and I happened to notice that Reel Big Fish is gonna be here in less than 2 weeks so I wonder what else I don't know!

So, here's the semiannual listing of concerts coming to the ATL that I might possibly could maybe want to go see. If you see bold, it means a much higher probability of me being there...

Sat 01/10/09 - The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, The Becoming, Tickle Me Pink @ The Masquerade

Wed 01/14/09 - Sevendust @ Center Stage

Sat 01/17/09 - Reel Big Fish, The Sleeping, Emarosa, Funeral For A Friend, One Pin Short, Streetlight Manifesto @ The Masquerade

Mon 01/19/09 - Scott Weiland @ Center Stage

Fri 01/30/09 - The Killers, M83 @ Atlanta Civic Center

Mon 03/02/09 - Ludo, Sing It Loud, The Morning Light, This Providence @ The Masquerade

Wed 03/11/09 - Less Than Jake, The Expendables, The Gay Blades, VersaEmerge, Ace Enders, Craig Owens of Chiodos @ The Masquerade

Why I'm Dumb (Part 297)

2009-01-04T22:24:00.004-05:00

This one I had to put as its own blog entry.

Last week, I finally found and bought a Wii. I've been out of town, so I really hadn't had a chance to mess with it until tonight. So, I finally put a disc in and am excited about playing. "Unable to read disc" WTF???? I check the manual, do the suggestions, and it still doesn't work. I go to their website...nothing helps. I finally have to call them. Here's how that went down:

Me: Hi, I'm getting a disc read error, my first time I'm trying to play a game
Nintendo Girl: Is your console horizontal or vertical?
Me: Horizontal
NG: Is the power button on the right or the left?
Me: Right
NG: Sir, your console is...
Me: Noooooooooooooooo Waaaaayyyyyyyy
NG: ...upside down
Me: You have GOT to be kidding me.
NG: You're not the first and you won't be the last, I promise. You're the second one today actually.

Well, at least she made me feel a little better!

Pizza Bowl without Pizza

2009-01-01T18:35:00.002-05:00

This was too funny not to put on here...first, some background info...On Monday, the Papjohns.com Bowl was played at Legion Field in Birmingham, AL...

The Birmingham News reports:

It wouldn't be the Papajohns.com Bowl without a pizza problem. Because Legion Field has only one oven to cook pizzas, some fans waited 45 minutes for their slices before and after halftime.
Both Papa John's stands in one end zone temporarily ran out of pizza before halftime. Sodas also were sold out at one stand, where some fans lined up with three minutes left in the second quarter and finally got their slices seven minutes into the third quarter.

A Papa John's official estimated the company probably lost $2,000 by being unable to make halftime sales.

Seriously? People waited THAT long for a piece of pizza?

I stole this quote from fanblogs.com, this is the funny part

Honestly... if you're going to be the Papa Johns Bowl, you need to have pizza. It's a pretty basic concept, right? That's like going to the Humanitarian Bowl and not having humans.

A Jewish Christmas

2008-12-26T16:35:00.003-05:00

I'm pretty sure it's written in the Torah, that every year, on December 25th, all jew's are to venture to ~~Jerusalem~~ a Chinese Restaurant (and a movie theatre). So as a good little jew, I did just that. To make things even more jewy, I took my jew-friend Shari, to see jew-actor Adam Sandler's new movie - Bedtime Stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, it's a Disney Movie. It was actually pretty good.

Next up was finding the Chinese place. I hadn't yet found a good one by house that I liked, so after some research, and by the request of non-jew, Jeremy, we picked out a buffet. Only one problem...the "China Buffet" we saw on the internet (with the worlds best egg roll's according to the review) no longer existed. In it's place was a Chin-Chin, which I've been to, and didn't really want to go back. Jeremy was actually already there, with a table, but I got him to bail. We drove around for a bit, thought about trying a Thai place, but it was closed...Surprisingly, Hooters was open! We kept driving and found a place called "House of Chan". Perfect! The parking lot even smelled good! There was actually a bit of a line outside to get a table, probably another good sign. Eventually we get seated...no buffet though. The waitress had a shirt that said "Thing" in sparkles. She said that was actually her name. It's kinda tough to understand if a Chinese person is being funny sometimes.

Anyways, we look at the menu, and much laughter ensues. Never have I seen so many typo's on a menu in my life. Sure, I understand it's not their language. But I usually think Chinese people are pretty smart...smart enough to use spell checker at least! See below, see how many typo's you can find. You should be able to click on em to make em larger. My favorite is "fride rice".

With all that said, the food was VERY good. We even had a conversation with the manager about the Chinese Diet. I probably learned more talking to that guy than I knew about food in the last 2 years. But, much like college, I've forgotten pretty much all of it already :) I do remember he said that spicy food prevents colds and eating bamboo prevents colon cancer...I think.

Danielson Checks himself into Hospital

2008-12-10T13:44:00.001-05:00

CBS Announcer Danielson Checks himself into Hospital

ATLANTA, GA — At approximately 11 pm Saturday night, CBS sports announcer Gary Danielson realized it was time to head for the emergency room.

"Every single commercial for a male virility pill, like Viagra or Cialis, says that if your erection lasts for more than four hours, then you should call a doctor," Danielson said. "Well I had the biggest Tebowner of my life yesterday, and it started about 3 pm eastern time and it wasn't gone by 11 pm, and I knew it wasn't even close to being gone, so I came to the ER."

The Tebowner seems to have been a direct result of Tim Tebow's dominant performance in the SEC Championship game against Alabama. As of the publication of this piece, Danielson remained in care with a lot of attention being paid to him, as doctors worked in vain to figure out what they could do to treat the Tebowner.

"It's a really difficult thing to treat," said Dr. Pervez Mushtaf, of the Atlanta Regional Medical Center. "Tebowners start off and they feel so great, you're like, 'Damn, Tim Tebow is awesome, I could feel like this forever, I hope that this feeling never ends,' that sort of thing. But then you find yourself about four hours later and you're like, ' Jesus, I mean, I love Tim Tebow, I really love Tim Tebow, but holy crap, this thing has got to go away.'"

A Tebowner is defined by the American Journal of Medicine as a "severe swelling of the genitalia resulting from long-term visual exposure to the exploits of Tim Tebow on the college football field."

Tebowners occur naturally following viewing of Florida Gators games for many people, with an extremely high prevalence in television announcers and University of Florida graduates.

"I'm not sure why, but we treat a lot of TV announcers who have severe Tebowners," Mushtaf said. "Barely a week goes by where I don't spend part of Sunday chucking cold water on Brent Musburger's hoo-hah, if you know what I mean."

As for Danielson, doctors are keeping their fingers crossed that his Tim Tebow-inspired "condition" will subside.

"We've tried cold water, and we've tried ice cubes, and we've even tried naked pictures of Rosie O'Donnell," Mushtaf said. "Nothing has worked so far. But now we've got him in there watching this year's game between the Iowa Hawkeyes and Indiana Hoosiers. That ought to make it go away."

Tebowners are a serious problem in the southeastern part of the country, where Tim Tebow is frequently viewed, and long-lasting Tebowners have been negatively affecting men across Florida for the last two years. It is a much more severe affliction than the fast-spreading Peter Warrdick that plagued Tallahassee briefly in the early part of the 1990s.

Unconquered My Ass!!!!!

2008-11-16T12:32:00.003-05:00

Last night I suffered through yet another FSU loss, not I only did I suffer through the game (where we had to play without FIVE 5!!!!!!!!! wide receivers) but it was about 40 degrees with 20 MPH winds. In row 67, it was pretty miserable. FSU lost 27-17, and it was still much much much much easier to take than the last FSU game I went to at Georgia Tech 2 weeks ago, but I'm not trying to remember that right now.

I have an issue with FSU's new little slogan. 2 years ago, FSU debuted new all black uniforms (I still think they should try black helmets). I actually like em. But what I don't like...and I know this has to do with the actual Seminole Indian Tribe more than the football team, but on the side of the pants is the word, "UNCONQUERED". Well, guess what? If I'm a Boston College fan, I'm having a blast with it. In 2006, the all black uniforms made their debut against, guess who? Boston College. Guess which team was conquered that day? Yep. The Seminoles. Last year, FSU wised up and wore the black uniforms against Duke. Not really fair. So yesterday, back came the black uniforms. And guess who got conquered again.

I understand paying tribute to the Seminole Indian tribe, but how about we let THEM remain unconquered and the FSU football pants can just say, and bare with me on this, it's pretty drastic...NOTHING.

Oh how I miss you Leon Washington!!!! Thanks for beating the Patriots though!

If I'm a Boston College fan, I take this statue, cross out the "UN" and put the scores to the 2006 and 2008 games under it. And bam, you have a t-shirt to sell making fun of us. It's that easy. And sad.

Can someone mention to whoever makes these decisions that FSU is 8-0 all time in the all garnet get-ups?

Guerilla Radio

2008-11-15T12:22:00.003-05:00

Man I am soooooo behind on my blogging! I really wanna get this one in quickly.

Last Friday night, I hung out with Jason in his first fatherhood fun night out. After grabbing some food, we were trying to figure out what to do, so we put our future in our friend, Jeanie. We definitely wanted to go somewhere with live music, preferably a decent cover band. With the power of the internet, we looked up what was going on when the mostest awesomest thing EVER popped up on the screen. A Rage Against the Machine "tribute" band. Just like that we were instantly excited. They played at the upstairs portion of East Andrews.

So we found out about this show pretty randomly about an hour before it was supposed to start, so we rushed off to go over there. They even had some guy open up for him who was really pretty good. He played some recognizable cover songs. Then came "Guerilla Radio" (which is a title of one of RATM's popular songs for those not in the know). And they were AWESOME. Whenever I go with Jason to see a cover band, we always look forward and scream for them to "play some Rage!" The only downfall of the concert was how empty it was in there. I almost felt bad. These guys said this was their first show in Atlanta and the crowd was sparse. Whoever was in charge of spreading the word about this band did an absolutely terrible job. I would've planned my weekend around this concert! But it worked out, with an hour's notice, we went down there and had a BLAST.

Halloween

2008-11-08T14:14:00.005-05:00

I can't say I'm a big fan of Halloween. I think they should reschedule it for a few weeks sooner. It TOTALLY disrupts my birthday! Especially this year when Halloween was Friday and my birthday was Sunday. But I made the best of it.

For whatever reason, Halloween is a pretty big deal at work. There's a costume contest, so I give it a shot each year. The winner gets a DAY OFF! Which, for my place of employment is highly valuable, since they're pretty few and far between it seems. So here's a mini-montage of Halloween the last few years...

2003 - The Nerd

2004 - Charlie Brown (hard to tell in the picture but I just tried to kick the football when Lucy, errr Tim pulled the ball out from under me and I went flying)

2005 - an Atlanta Thrasher (complete with black eye, blood and missing tooth). This was obviously my favorite costume and I was disappointed not to have won anything. I skated (well, roller bladed) around the office all day!

2006 - uhhh, Jason

2007 - Napoleon Dynamite (yes that's a tater tot I took out of my pocket)

2008 - pregnant. (I'd like to point out some water that just made its way to the ground just behind me and some reactions to it. That was awesome)

So after 6 pretty good attempts I finally cracked through. Third place. $25 gift card. I'll take it! (Although I still think the hockey player costume was better)

I can now say that I have a new found respect for pregnant people. Sitting at my desk with that thing in the way was a PAIN! Luckily my pregnancy only last 6 hours or so, well, before re-using the costume Saturday night of course!

Weezer-i-oke

2008-10-29T17:12:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday I went with some friends to go see Angels & Airwaves and Weezer at The Arena At Gwinnett Center. Angels & Airwaves were really good, but they only played about 6 songs or so! When they left the stage I could've sworn lead singer Tom DeLonge said, "we'll be back in a minute to rock the roof off this place". Well, I guess I heard wrong, at that point I was kinda expecting the band to come back out and play some more. No such luck.

They took the stage down and eventually out came Weezer. This was easily a top 5, maybe even top 3 concert I've been to. And I've been to a lot of em! (That's not even updated).

Here's a video of a guitar solo and then me kariokeing (is that a word?) along to the Sweater Song...(sorry for the bouncy camera, I'm no pro)

Here's the set list...

Now this may have been the coolest thing I've EVER witnessed at a concert. A local radio station, I assume 96.7 The Buzz (is 99x still trying the online thing?) held a contest to have a few musicians auditions to take part in a song during the concert. Well, they managed to get about 30-40 people on stage during the songs "Island in the Sun" and "Beverly Hills" (I'm pissed that my camera died, no more videos and I had to jack other peoples' pictures. They had a ton of different instruments on stage including guitars, drums, a bassoon?, cello, trumpet, saxophone, and even a tap dancer, who got the most love from the band - even a hug from Weezer lead singer Rivers Cuomo.

Matching outfits! They all wore white first, then stripped those off into the red track suits in the video above.

Congrats to the Ralls'

2008-10-20T13:52:00.004-04:00

Riley Anne Ralls (formerly known as Eggbert) was born at 11:34pm on Friday October 17th, 2008. I am (un)officially an uncle!!!!

Typically I am not a big fan of kids but I've been friends with Jason (and eventually Tara) for a long time and I'm very excited for them. In fact, I was over at their house Thursday night, trying to setup their wireless modem when Tara said she hoped that she would be in the 5% that actually have their baby on time (Riley was due on Saturday). Maybe five minutes later, she followed that up with ... "my water broke!" I'm half surprised I didn't run out the front door and all the way back to my place to hide, but I didn't. I was legitimately excited for them. Weird!

I went with Tracy, Kim and Michael to visit them at the hospital on Saturday...pictures soon to come...including my kick ass baby gift for Tara mainly, not so much for the baby :)

Jason, the proud new daddy of a conehead :)

Aunt Tracy actually looks like she knows what she's doing. Or at least she looks happy!

As for me, I'm kinda wingin it!

Kim is so good at this she looks bored

And here is my gift to them. Tara actually requested that I brough her beer in the hospital, but this is clearly the next best thing...

And with Tracy's assistance the labels really came out AWESOME!

"Welcome Riley
Love, Uncle J
Bottom's Up"

Thrashers "Unleash" New Third Jerseys

2008-10-08T22:27:00.006-04:00

At tonight's Face-Off event, the Atlanta Thrashers unveiled their third / alternate jerseys. And, uhhhhhh, I don't like them...at all. To me they look like basketball jerseys. In fact, here's a quote from someone on a message board,

"That third jersey's got to be one of the ugliest jerseys in sports. It's a
Hawks jersey with long sleeves!"

That's probably about as accurate as I could come up with. They're gonna wear these things at 14 (of 41) home games this year, starting with the game on November 14th.

Here are some pictures. The numbers on the front of the jerseys are NOT normally supposed to be that big:

They kinda look a little more tolerable from behind...

----------------------------------------------------------

Wow, it gets worse! You know its bad when ESPN is talking about how bad our new third jerseys are!

Let's hear it for the Thrashers, who've set a new standard for bad design with their new alternate uniform. The massive chest number belongs in the NBA, the shoulder logo belongs on a San Diego Chargers jersey, and the socks belong back on the drawing board. Additional photos here, if you dare, and here's a schedule of when this uniform will be worn, so you can make other plans for those dates.

My biggest problem, beside the huge numbers on the front, is that the theme for home games is "Believe in Blueland". Anyone see a problem there???

Praying for Rain...Worked!

2008-10-08T15:34:00.005-04:00

No, this has nothing to do with the drought!

Of course, I'm talking about kickball!!!! I think the thing I was most excited about when I started my own kickball team was the chance to have my team play against my old team. Before the schedules were released, we emailed the league and requested them to schedule our teams against each other. Well, originally the schedule came out and they didn't schedule it. We emailed the league again...and they changed the schedule so that we would play each other.

One catch. They scheduled the game for Wed. Oct 8, 2008. On Yom Kippur. (Probably the most important Jewish holiday of them all). So I knew I wasn't going to be able to play. I was pissed!!! But I knew there was only one thing to do, and I did...I prayed for rain.

Given the fact that it NEVER rains in Atlanta anymore, I wasn't exactly optimistic about this one. But I woke up this morning and noticed something odd was falling from the sky. Turns out it was RAIN!!!!! It's been a while since I've witnessed it! So, apparently God was listening to me...and tonight's games have been postponed!!!!! I'm literally giddy right now. If there's one thing I learned from all of this it's that kickball is probably way too important in my life right now, but I love it!!!!! :)

And while I'm complaining about bad scheduling, I'm also pissed off that the Atlanta Thrashers scheduled the 2008 Face Off Event (a meet & greet with all the players) for tonight! WTF???? I think I've been to that the last two years and it was a really great event! The newest Thrasher, Mathieu Schneider is Jewish, I wonder if he'll be participating?

Fantasy Baseball Bragging

2008-10-03T12:40:00.001-04:00

Warning - dorky post ahead!

For several years now, my favorite fantasy game has been The Sporting News Ultimate games. They're setup like the stock market, where each Major League baseball player is given an IPO price at the beginning of the season, and based on how they do, their price goes up or down as they get bought or sold by those playing the game. So the more money you have, the better players you can afford. Anyways, the season ended this week, and, unlike my Mets, I finished on a high note!

Out of 7,902 entries, I finished 12th! A lot of people (including me) have multiple entries, and each entrant is only allowed 1 prize, so finishing 12th actually meant I actually finished in 5th place! $500!!!!! Woohoooo!!!!!

Why I'm Dumb (Part 296)

2008-10-02T14:16:00.003-04:00

After last night's 12-3 (I think?) kickball loss, we all headed to the bar. I was pretty hungry at this point, but I didn't want just a plain bar burger. So I saw a burger on the menu that was a "Black Bean Burger". In my head, I'm thinking its a burger with black beans and a corn salsa on top. That's different. It never occurred to me, but when the waitress didn't ask me how I wanted my burger cooked...I should've known. It was a meat-less burger!!!!!!! I'm such an IDIOT!!!!!!

Team Canada falls to 0-3

2008-09-26T00:17:00.005-04:00

Team Canada: World Mounties suffered their 3rd straight loss last night to "You Look Like I Need a Drink". Even with the loss, the team has definitely improved since the franchise debut two weeks ago in a 17-0 loss, which was followed up by a 15-3 loss in game 2. Last night was a much closer 8-4 loss. The team is definitely moving in the right direction, just one bad 6-run inning last night cost us a chance to win. We'll get one...soon...I hope!

Pregame stretching (or, me falling down, pretending to stretch if you were actually there)

Shelley, Lauren (who doesn't play because she doesn't kick balls she says) and Jill during pregame ceremonies

The pregame gang signs obviously didn't do the trick

Me, scoring the 2nd run in franchise history...for the record Jill scored right before me.

Jill, shoeing away the cameras after a demoralizing loss. Stevens wiping away the tears, while Connie and Patrick laugh at them

Post-game party...we're all winners!

Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

2008-09-24T12:42:00.006-04:00

This wasn't even actually me, but it directly affects me, so I thought I'd tell a quick story. A friend of mine (I won't use names so that there's no chance of anyone getting in trouble somehow) went down to Philips Arena yesterday to get us tickets to the Thrashers home opener, which is just over 2 weeks away now! While in line, my friend, we'll call her Bob, for fun. Bob noticed a bunch of people around the box office who apparently work for Turner. Security guard types is what Bob called them. Bob strikes up a conversation with one of em, we'll call him "Mohinder" (since I just watched Heroes last night!). Bob asks Mohinder why they're all here in the middle of a day on a Tuesday? Apparently, they work for Turner and they were all given free passes to redeem for 5 Hawks and 5 Thrashers games - 4 seats per game! (Must be nice!). Well, Bob picks up on the fact, that Mohinder may not be a Thrashers fan. Turns out, he is not. Bob also learns that Mohinder enjoys beer, and a trade is born. Bob offers some free passes to a brewery, which, we'll call "Sour Ice". So in exchange for some free beer at the Sour Ice brewery, Mohinder gives Bob his 5 sets of Thrashers passes, and Bob gives Mohinder several free admission passes to Sour Ice Brewery Tours.

It gets better! Bob then goes to the box office to redeem these for tickets. Unfortunately, these passes were not able to be used for opening night, but Bob, smartly, picked several weekend games throughout the season and not only got 4 free tickets to each game. But 4 of the 5 games are tickets for the lower level section! There is a game against the defending champion Detroit Red Wings, and former Thrasher, Marian Hossa, in March that is apparently selling fast, so we will be in the lower portion of the upper level. We'll survive!!!!

This is huge news because our friend "BJ" no longer works at Philips. So tickets are gonna have to be paid for a bit more frequently this season. Good start though!!!!!

Way to go Bob!!!!!!

My Hatred of the Braves Increases

2008-09-18T23:59:00.002-04:00

As a Mets fan living in the ATL, life is rough. I've been to 8 games this year...

April 4: Mets @ Braves, ppd. rain
April 5: Braves 11, Mets 5
April 6: Braves 3, Mets 1
May 20: Braves 6, Mets 1
May 20: Braves 6, Mets 2
May 21: Braves 11, Mets 4
May 22: Braves 4, Mets 2
June 7: Phillies 6, Braves 2 (did I mention I'm beginning to hate the Phillies more than the Braves?)
Sept 18: Phillies 4, Braves 3

The Mets are now a half game behind the Phillies for first place and I know why. It's because the Braves hate me more than I hate them. This year the Phillies are 9-0 in Atlanta. That's right, they've won ALL 9 games. The Mets on the other hand, ALWAYS do terribly in Atlanta, and they haven't won yet in 6 tries. My theory - the Braves do NOT want the Mets to win the division. Enough so, that they intentionally lose all of their games to the Phillies, while they go all out against the Mets.

This weekend, the Mets come to Atlanta. I know I should stay away, you know, to help the team. But I can't. I'm definitely going Friday night, possibly Sunday if I can talk Lauren into it... I'll take Saturday off, gives them a fighting chance to win one game at least!

It was cool though, not only did I get free tix through work, right behind home plate...but it was $1 hot dog night! After spending two whole dollars on dinner, after looking at the ticket, it said that this ticket is good for a "$10 food, beverage and merchandise credit". After kickball last night (recap to come) I didn't feel like drinking, so I wasted my play money on a pretzel and a 85oz coke which was so big it was actually very difficult to carry. The pretzel wasn't very good and I managed to drink about one-twentieth of the drink. Oh well, it was free...sorta!

We sat next to this older guy who has been on a tour of all 30 major league ballparks and Turner Field was the 30th of 30 stadiums for him to visit. Pretty expensive hobby, but I would love to do that someday!

Down Goes Team Canada

2008-09-17T11:50:00.000-04:00

Team Canada: World Mounties made their regular season kickball debut on Wednesday in front of a packed house crowd of, ummm, 5 fans. Before the first game even started, the injury report was significant. Ryan and Devon were both out with leg injuries. I was probable (knee), Cintron was questionable (work). I decided I will go ahead and include myself on the injury report (which, by the way, isn't real) to avoid any Tom Brady-like superstitious injuries.

Our inaugural season got off to a great start with me winning the paper-rock-scissors portion of the competition and earning home field for the game. And it pretty much was all downhill from there. After 3 innings we were down 3-0 when all hell broke loose. With 2 runners on base and two outs in the top of the 4th inning, a slow - and I mean SLOW - ground ball was hit to first where Cintron just had to pick it up and we'd be out of the inning. I didn't even watch, I was jogging off the field as if the inning was over. I look back towards first and somehow the ball got away from him and is rolling into foul territory. We never recovered. 8 runs scored in the 4th inning and all of a sudden we were losing 11-0. Yikes!

Fast forward to the bottom of the 5th. Time was running out, we were down 12-0 when I got my first hit of the year to lead off the inning. Rochelle followed me with another hit, when I got greedy and took off for third. I slid -d'oh - and was called out even though I was never tagged. I was pissed! And, bleeding...again. At least my knee pads came in handy. This time it was my arm (see below). After that excruciating inning was over, the umpire not only admitted that he blew the call, but that our game was over (we only get a one hour time slot). The problem was that it was only 8:24. (Rule #1 - "Each game will be 7 innings or one hour in length, whichever comes first."). Since we started at 7:30, we still had 6 more minutes. I begged and pleaded, telling the ump that since he blew that call, he needs to give us this one more inning...we had to at least try to score ONE run! Well, eventually he gave in and let us play another inning. And 5 runs were scored...but none by us. We lost 17-0.

Chicks dig scars, right?

Team Canada: World Mounties

2008-08-28T17:36:00.007-04:00

The fall 2008 gokickball schedules were announced today and Team Canada: World Mounties (think - Team America: World Police spin off) inaugural kickball season will officially begin on Sept. 10th at 9:30pm against "Where my Pitches at?"

It is unfortunate that the league wasn't able to schedule a regular season game again bitter rivals "Flip cup is our first sport" (although we do plan on filing an appeal!) But we plan on not only taking them down in the preseason game on September 3rd, but also in the playoffs...if they even make it! (EDIT: They adjusted the schedules for us!!!!)

Team Canada: World Mounties Official Regular Season Schedule:

Wed, Sep 10, 2008 7:30 PM @ Where my Pitches At?

Wed, Sep 17, 2008 8:30 PM vs. K-ballers

Wed, Sep 24, 2008 9:30 PM @ You Look I Need A Drink (a team name typo??? I feel "like" there's a word missing)

Wed, Oct 1, 2008 7:30 PM vs. Drunk And Still Kickin'

Wed, Oct 8, 2008 9:30 PM vs. Flip cup is our first sport (HUGEEEEEEE!!!!!)

Wed, Oct 15, 2008 9:30 PM @ Loose Screws

Wed, Oct 22, 2008 8:30 PM vs. Sofa King High Rollers

Team Canada: World Mounties Official Roster:

Charlotte
Connie P.*

David C.

David W.

Devin

Erica

Jason R.

Jennifer*

Jill

Joe

Patrick*

Rebecca

Rochelle

Ryan*

Shelley

Stevens

*-Free agents, randomly assigned to our team...I have high hopes!

That's What She Said!

2008-08-28T00:44:00.002-04:00

Me and Matt seem to have a little competition going, who could use the line "That's What She Said" the most. I'm pretty sure I've got this one in the bag!

It comes from the show "The Office" and the video below has 4 seasons worth of examples. Give it a try...it's fun :)

Fandangles, Take Two

2008-08-26T13:16:00.003-04:00

Just about a month ago, some friends and I went to a restaurant called "Fandangles" - in the Sheraton - for "Downtown Atlanta Restaurant Week" and we had "An Awesomly Horrible Dining Experience". I wrote about it in my blog, still thinking that only my parents and grandmother read this thing. Well, turns out this internet thing is a pretty big deal. Pretty soon after I wrote my little story, I had this email waiting for me:

Good Afternoon Jason,
I just finished reading your blog and can’t tell you how disappointed and embarrassed I am about the awful dining experience that you had while visiting Fandangles earlier this week. I would love to have the opportunity to bring you and your friends back to Fandangles and give you the perfect dining experience that we are known for (complimentary of course). Please let me know if you would like to take me up on the offer and when you would be joining us. You can reach me by email or directly at 404-555-5555 [not really]. I look forward to hearing from you.
Warmest Regards,
Leola (Director of Food & Beverage- Sheraton Atlanta Hotel)

I DEFINITELY wasn't expecting anything like that. As I said, in my mind, only my parents and grandmother ever read this stuff, no matter how high the visitor tally gets. I told her we'd certainly give Fandangles another chance.

Well, about a month later we finally were able to get the group of 8 of us to schedule a night - Tuesday - to come back. Since we had 2 out-of-towners last time, we did feel the need to select two replacements, who wound up being Matt and Rebecca. As soon as we walked into the place, the hostess definitely recognized Erica from last time, which was pretty funny. We were also spotted by Robert, one of the managers who remembered us from last time. He seemed pretty excited to see us as he and really everyone else went out of their way to make sure we were happy...and we were! We were seated in a little open room off to the side were served drinks as we waited on the rest of our group.

Eventually, everyone showed up and we were seated. There were 2 bottles of wine waiting for us by the table and we were then greeted by our server, Fletcher, who also couldn't have been nicer. We were told we would be able to order from the full menu (we did ask, because during restaurant week, it was a limited menu). So that was nice. Although I had planned all along to order the same steak I had last night because it was so good! So we ordered a couple of different appetizers for the table, I'm not a seafood person, so I passed on most of the stuff ordered but I was all for saving room for my steak! I did try something that I think was called a "Taco Tower" which was really good. Finally the main course was served, and I did struggle, but I somehow finished my steak. I think I was the only one to leave without any leftovers, I'd never been so full!!!! And even after the main course, Robert "made" us all order desserts and brought us all an after-dinner drink, which was a 50-year old Grand Marnier. It smelled SO good that none of us really wanted to drink it, but Robert came out a little late and made fun of us for sipping on it. So I went ahead and took a big drink and of course spilled a good bit all over my face. I may have gotten away with no one noticing that though! For dessert we pretty much ordered one of everything and each shared. Everything was soooo good, but I was so full I barely touched the chocolate cake + ice cream I ordered.

So, just like last time, the food was excellent. However, unlike last time, the service was excellent. The only other thing we could've asked for were a couple of hotel beads to sleep off our food coma's :) (kidding)

Me and Matt stuffing our faces, while Rebecca (left) and Alaina (right) acted like civilized human beings...for some reason

Matt, Stevens, Rochelle, Peter, Erica, me, Rebecca...photographer: Alaina.

I don't remember what this was but it was friggin delicious! Everything was!

More pictures to come if Erica ever gets her lazy arse around to sending em!!!!

And here they are!!!! Some sushi appetizer...

Rochelle & Stevens (2 future kickball stars for Team Canada: World Mounties)

Erica & Peter...

Me & Rebecca (2 more future kickball hall of famers)
If anyone wants my secret to partial one-eye red-eye reduction, let me know...

ATL Noise: Volume 6, Issue 3

2008-08-25T11:16:00.000-04:00

Some fun shows Labor Day weekend...a bunch of 80's bands on Friday night and a show full of tribute bands on Sunday!

As always, what is listed below are concerts I am possibly interested in attending. So if somethings missing...it's probably because that band sucks :)

Fri 8/29/2008 "The Regeneration Tour" - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 8/29/2008 A Flock Of Seagulls - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 8/29/2008 ABC - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 8/29/2008 Belinda Carlisle - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 8/29/2008 Naked Eyes - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 8/29/2008 The Human League - Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Sun 8/31/2008 "Beer & Whiskey Festival" - Park Tavern
Sun 8/31/2008 Desire - Trib. To U2 - Park Tavern
Sun 8/31/2008 M.E.R.M.E.R. - Trib. To R.E.M. - Park Tavern
Sun 8/31/2008 Talk Journey To Me - Trib. To Poison & Journey - Park Tavern
Sun 8/31/2008 Van Heineken - Trib. To Van Halen - Park Tavern

Thu 9/11/2008 1997 - The Masquerade
Thu 9/11/2008 Finch - The Masquerade (you guys have probably never heard of Finch, but I like em A LOT!)
Thu 9/11/2008 From First To Last - The Masquerade
Thu 9/11/2008 National Product - The Masquerade
Thu 9/11/2008 Scary Kids Scaring Kids - The Masquerade
Thu 9/11/2008 Tickle Me Pink - The Masquerade

Sat 9/20/2008 Jim Gaffigan - Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre (2nd show added...very tempted, but it's over $50)

Wed 9/24/2008 The Mars Volta - The Tabernacle $35

Fri 9/26/2008 3 Doors Down - Lakewood Amphitheatre $25 and up
Fri 9/26/2008 American Bang - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Fri 9/26/2008 Finger Eleven - Lakewood Amphitheatre (Finger Eleven is on my short lists of bands I REALLY wanna see! Yay Canada! Boo Lakewood!)
Fri 9/26/2008 Hinder - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Sat 9/27/2008 O.A.R. - Verizon Wireless Amph. At Encore Park

Wed 10/1/2008 The Kills - The Tabernacle $38.50
Wed 10/1/2008 The Raconteurs - The Tabernacle

Thu 10/2/2008 Lewis Black - Fox Theatre $42.50 and up (anyone????)

Mon 10/20/2008 Alkaline Trio - The Tabernacle $33
Mon 10/20/2008 Rise Against - The Tabernacle
Mon 10/20/2008 The Gaslight Anthem - The Tabernacle
Mon 10/20/2008 Thrice - The Tabernacle

Sat 10/25/2008 Weezer - The Arena At Gwinnett Center My Tickets have already been boughted!!!!!
Sat 10/25/2008 Angels & Airwaves - The Arena At Gwinnett Center

Tue 11/4/2008 Dashboard Confessional - The Arena At Gwinnett Center $29.50 and up
Tue 11/4/2008 Panic At The Disco - The Arena At Gwinnett Center
Tue 11/4/2008 Plain White T's - The Arena At Gwinnett Center
Tue 11/4/2008 The Cab - The Arena At Gwinnett Center

Tue 11/18/2008 Kings Of Leon - The Tabernacle $37.50
Tue 11/18/2008 The Whigs - The Tabernacle
Tue 11/18/2008 We Are Scientists - The Tabernacle

Everything's HOTTER in Texas

2008-08-19T11:34:00.007-04:00

I don't know about everything being bigger, but everything's definitely hotter! (I'm talking actual temperature to be clear). I went and visited my former college roommate and original FSU garnet guy, Kevin in Houston this weekend. The thing I most took from this weekend was that I would never want to live in Houston. Not because I didn't have a good time, but because you can't go outside without feeling absolutely disgusting! Even walking around town after midnight, you just can't get away from it! It's not even temperature hot necessarily, but the humidity! Maybe I've been away from Tallahassee long enough to forget, but I can't imagine humidity worse than Houston this weekend.

Kevin managed to score himself the opportunity to rent out a penthouse in downtown Houston for the summer. It's so big that pretty impossible to keep the place cool during this heat wave (I think there's some kind of record number of consecutive days over 100 degrees or something). Our other friends Bailey & Luis (sorry Luis, but I still call her Bailey) came to Houston also with their 16? month old girl - Julia. Usually I don't like being around kids, but Julia's an exception...but it's obviously because they call her J.

I flew into Houston Friday afternoon and Luis and Bailey got me from the airport and we drove and met Kevin at his fancy pad. The parking garage wasn't so fancy, it was a normal garage, cars are packed in so much that to get into Kevin's assigned spot, we had to back in through the garage about 50 yards or so. Very strange setup. So anyways, we head upstairs and it was true...this place was ridiculously HUGE. Maybe it helped that there wasn't much furniture, just the same old futons I remembered from college! (Which reminded me of a Demitri Martin joke, "There's a store in my neighborhood called "Futon World", love that name..."Futon World". Makes me think of a magical place...that becomes less comfortable over time"). Although since then I think he's gotten a new roommate, complete with furniture, and more importantly...a TV! Kevin currently has NO television. How do people live??? Anyways, I'll get some pictures of his place together below...

So after getting the tour, hunger kicked in and one of the perks of living downtown, we were able to walk a couple of blocks to a Mexican restaurant. I ordered a frozen margarita, but only for scientific experiments of course. By the time the waitress got it to us (which wasn't that long of a wait) it was barely even frozen! It was THAT hot out (I guess I was supposed to mention we sat on the balcony). As we were finishing up dinner, it got a little cloudy and it cooled off a bit. We had to hurry back home because it was about to storm. Which I was pretty excited about. Recently, when I've been around storms...they're big ones! And we had a hell of a view! So, of course the storm (or lack-there-of) passes by without a drop of rain. After all that passed, we went up to the roof of Kevin's place and enjoyed the view. Actually the view was better from the balcony, you could see all kinds of people walking and driving around downtown. I've never seen so many people block intersections and run red lights as I saw there. At some intersections, when the light is red they have these cool blinking red lights right on the streets alerting people to stop. Never seen that before. After a bunch of people watching from up there, Kevin convinced me to go down to where the action is and take a tour of the club scene. We had no plans to actually go in anywhere, but walking around and looking around is just as fun. There were a lot of lines to get into places, with a lot of way too overdressed to have any kind of fun people. Not my thing I guess. If you can't go in with shorts and a t-shirt, I don't want in anyways! Besides, it's midnight, and by the time we did our lap around a few blocks, my back was soaking wet. Gross!!!! How are these people waiting in line all dressed up feeling? Sucks for them!

Saturday we woke up and grabbed some breakfast, then headed out to a nearby park for some kind of outdoor activities (nothing good happens when I go outdoors!). This was no exception of course. Things started out well, we kicked a soccer ball around for a bit, threw a football around, then came trouble. Kevin has these contraptions that are plastic, but I can only describe them as a combo of lacrosse sticks and jai-alai. You have a hard plastic ball and you use these sticks to throw the ball back and forth. I thought sitting this out would keep me safe. But no...while I was just laying around on a blanket...I got hit right in the face with the ball. Thanks Luis!!!!! But the injuries didn't end there. Bailey took a turn and had the ball go off her stick, up in there air, hit a tree (maybe) and right back to her nose. D'oh! Then, to top things off, Luis (I think?) pegged Jenny in the ear before everyone finally gave up on whatever that game was called.

We then went back to Kevin's place to rest up for dinner and our next event, which I was MOST looking forward to. Kevin managed to get awesome tickets for a preseason Denver Broncos-Houston Texans game. We were pretty much RIGHT on the 50-yard line, about 30 rows up. Which are about as good a seat as there were within the stadium. Obviously I'd never been to Reliant Stadium in Houston. I came away VERY impressed. It is right next door to the Astrodome, which I didn't know still existed. And I'm not really sure WHY it still exists! Next to the new Reliant Stadium, the Astrodome looks like a dump! But the very best part of this stadium... the AIR CONDITIONING! It is a retractable roof stadium, and thankfully the roof was CLOSED! It was probably 70 degrees in there. It was awesome! I don't really like or dislike either team, and the fact that it was preseason made it hard to root for anyone or anything, but it was a good game. It came down to a Texans field goal as time expired to win the game 19-16. At least there was no overtime!

After the game we took Houston's train thing, called "METRORail". It is pretty neat. It is a train, I guess...but it's more like a trolley really. It runs in the middle of the street, in it's own lane (although I frequently saw cars "accidentally" drive in their lane) it has to stop for red lights, just like all other vehicles. Hard to explain, but I've always been a fan of trains, so it was cool. It runs along Main Street, right in front of Kevin's place, and there was a stop about 2 blocks away, so that was good. From Kevin's balcony you can frequently see cars (accidentally?) driving in the middle lane, reserved for the METRORail. I wonder how many times they've hit cars? After we got back was another night of hanging out on the balcony...I'm pretty sure I'd do that every night if I lived there, pretty good people-watching spot! I was told that at 2am when all the clubs closed, well, of course I stayed up to see for myself. Nothing too exciting...I was disappointed and from there I had to wake up in a few hours. D'oh!!!!

Sunday morning we woke up early and got breakfast. Bailey, Luis and Julia headed back to Austin afterwards. Kevin was switching from the master bedroom to the other bedroom so that his new roommate could move in as soon as Sunday, so Kevin had a lot of cleaning to do. Which made for perfect nap time for me :) In between about 4 naps throughout the day, I did have to help him move his bed. What kind of vacation is this????

After all the manual labor was done, we were able to go walk over to Minute Maid Park (Home of baseball's Houston Astros). Literally, we walked there...it was like 3 blocks away. Even I'm cool with walking that, although it was about 125 degrees out!!! For whatever reason, they weren't offering tours of the park this weekend, so we did our own tour of the outside of the stadium on Sunday. Outside the stadium were statues of Craig Biggio (future hall of famer, 2nd baseman) (left) and Jeff Bagwell (possible future hall of a famer? first baseman) on a replica baseball diamond, with the statues posed as if they were in the process of turning a double play. So i felt the need to pose as if I was "taking out" Biggio with a good hard slide. It doesn't really help that the statue is about 9 feet tall, but I did my best to break up the double play! We tried some other pictures around the bases but this was the best of the group. We walked all the way around the stadium before realizing it was still 125 degrees and left. Tried to find a place to grab some ice cream on the way back but it wasn't to be. So instead we went back to Kevin's place and I took another nap! I've never taken THIS many naps, I swear! But the heat just wore me OUT!

We took another turn of people-watching from Kevin's balcony when we spotted some people filming a commercial of some sort on the next block. It looked like it was for some haircut place. It was funny watching the reactions of people walking by and driving by as they were filming.

We then went out to China Town for some, uhhhhh, Chinese food! I hadn't had chinese food in a long time, so that definitely hit the spot! There were some very strange "creatures" in their water tanks. Hurray for General Tso and his chicken! (or at least they call it chicken) Then for the first time in my life, went into a Chinese Grocery store. Me and Kevin were the ONLY non-chinese people in there. Definitely an odd feeling. And personally, I thought it smelled REALLY bad in there. No clue why. Then we tried to go to Dairy Queen for some ice cream but for some reason it was closed! Why is it so hard to find ice cream in Houston? Maybe they have trouble keeping it frozen??

That pretty much did it for my weekend in Houston. I flew back to ATL first thing in the morning, had to wake up at 5am to catch my flight! Now for some pictures...and a big thanks to Bailey for making this blog TAKE SO LONG :)

Here's the ridiculously large kitchen...

A view from the outside, couldn't really get the camera to cooperate to make this a good picture

Nice view of downtown!

View from the patio...sporting my new douchebag sunglasses! Glad I got a haircut before being subject to this kinda heat at least, whew!

I was waiting on some more pictures from Bailey but this will have to do...for now!

Olympics

2008-08-18T14:54:00.006-04:00

At first I had a hard time getting into the Olympics, but Michael Phelps probably single-handedly got me interested. I'm sure a couple thousand other people feel the same way. I've mostly watched the swimming stuff, but the reason for this post is a shocking, disturbing argument I'm having with some work people. All my life I've never had any interest in watching gymnastics in the Olympics. To me, as far as I knew, it was very popular amongst women viewers, but not so much amongst the guys. I've been DVRing the Olympics the last few days and happily fast forward through the gymnastics. But last week I guess everyone said how awesome it was and even the guys at work were talking about it. I just don't get it. To me, it's just watching teenage girls jump and dance around.

So...here's what I'm doing. I posted a poll at the top-left of this page. I want ONLY MEN to vote on this. Just give me a simple yes or no...do you watch gymnastics?

BTW, did anyone watch me play volleyball last week? Too bad the equipment manager couldn't spell my name right! But seriously, it was very strange to hear my last name during a sporting event...apparently "Zhekov" and "Zaikov" are pronounced the same.

An Atlanta Kosher BBQ Cook Off???

2008-08-14T09:08:00.004-04:00

I have no idea if this is real, but the picture is too funny not to post. The best part is the sad look on the pigs' face. Which, shouldn't he be happy? Since he's not getting cooked!?!?!? Think Chic-Fil-A people!

I found this - of all places - on a blog about Thrashers prospects! Thanks Holly!!! It's probably legit. And to make it funnier, Congregation Beth Jacob is orthodox, she says.

A Rainout Rant

2008-08-13T10:55:00.005-04:00

Sometimes I just need to vent. Last night I was going to the Cubs-Braves game at Turner Field. Just as we got there they decided to post-pone the game, because it had been drizzling pretty steadily for a few hours. A friend from out of town, we'll call him Jeff, since that may or may not be his name, had been planning on going to this specific game for months now. He's a huge Cubs fan if that matters. He spent over $100 on 4 tickets. Now he's got nothing and the Braves pretty much stole $100 from him. They rescheduled the game for a doubleheader today. Usually when that happens, they schedule a "twi-night doubleheader" where they start a game at 5pm and another one 30 minutes after the end of the first game. In that situation, the team will give you the option to exchange your tickets for any other game the rest of the season. But the greedy a-holes that run the Braves decided to schedule a "day-night doubleheader". Which means today there is a game at 1pm and another game at 7pm tonight. Any tickets from last night can only be used for today's 1pm game. What bullshit!!!! MLB should NOT let this happen on weekdays in my opinion. Do they really expect 40,000 people to call in sick the next day to watch a crappy Braves team? I know in Chicago, the Cubs have day games all the time, but you can plan for that ahead of time! They've GOT to know they're screwing over TONS of baseball fans and it's just not right! I'm sure there's something in tiny print on tickets that make it legal for them to do this, but it's complete horse-shit if you ask me! People paid money to watch a boring baseball game...let em!!!!!

On a less angry subject, yesterday at 5:01pm I got my 5,000th! visitor to this blog. Some dude from Madison, Wisconsin looking at the NHL Network Commercials I posted back in March. (You're damn right I keep track of this stuff, I gotta use my statstics degree for SOMETHING!)Pretty unbelievable to me, when I first started this blog, I figured only my parents and grandmother would read it. The power of the internet!!!! Pretty amazing! Thanks to everyone for stopping by!

I am SOOOOOOOOO Not an Outdoors Person

2008-08-07T23:15:00.001-04:00

I've already used the title "Why I Could Never be a Pierson" and it would apply here too. As a refresher, the Pierson's are a branch of my family, namely a bunch of cousins - Jon, Dan, Rob, Liz who are all VERY outdoors-types. I'll never understand. I pay my hard earned money towards a mortgage each month so that I can sleep in a BED, with a perfectly good ROOF over my head.

I can only remember one other time that I tried camping, it was probably around 1994 or so with my Kenny Rogers Roasters crew, I will now see how many names I remember in case they ever google themselves (say hi!), this will be fun - Nicole Bradley, Dawn Bradley, Amy Swisher, Michele England, Poppy Bilbra-Jacobs...somewhere I've got a picture of all of us (holy crap I found it!!!! Wow, you probably know how it is, when you see a picture of yourself from about 15 years ago? All I can say is wow) Anyways, it was in the middle of nowhere in Southwest Virginia, we rolled in in my yet-to-be-named FSU-Jew-Mobile (my dinky garnet Plymouth Horizon). We got there, setup a tent, took a picture and that's all I remember before it started DOWN POURING. So we threw everything we could in my trunk and everyone came back to my parents house and we used the basement as our campsite...complete with a functioning ROOF! Not to mention air-conditioning. I haven't had any desire to try camping again since.

My friend Rory recently graduated from, well, some kind of advanced schooling to get her PhD, sorry for not knowing all the details, I don't get paid to write this crap! For her graduation party she invited a bunch of people to go camping at Lake Allatoona (which is only about 30 miles from my perfectly good bed). But, as a good friend I agreed to come...for the day. There was an evite and everything where I made my intentions clear that I'm only going for the day and that anyone else who wasn't a camper was welcome to stay at my place. Apparently that decision was overturned and I was going camping overnight. I soon realized I wasn't getting out of this. So I sucked it up and would give it a try. Tracy came into town from Jacksonville, Kim - and her boyfriend Michael and his boat - came in from Birmingham. Tara and Jason were going (but Tara used the 7-month's pregnant excuse to get out of camping...I was jealous). So it would be fun, a lot of my friends were going.

The first mistake I made (besides agreeing to go) was to drive Tracy to the campsite. Something bad ALWAYS happens when we go places together. Off the top of my head, a few incidents - She blew out a tire on I-20 driving back from a weekend in Tuscaloosa; driving back to Jacksonville last summer, a truck spilled oil ALL OVER poor little Vickie. Tracy will happily help me name some more incidents I'm forgetting. As we're driving up to the camp-site, on (the) 75 (why are interstate's only preceded with "the" in California?), we heard a noise at one point. Looked back in my rear-view and didn't notice anything, kept driving, assuming it was nothing. A few miles later we got off the interstate and onto some windy roads when driving got a little tougher. I just figured it was because there was a ton of stuff in the trunk maybe. We pulled into the camp site visitors center to check in, then when pulling out of the spot, guess what!!!!

Of course! A flat tire! Not just a flat tire, the tire was barely even on the rim even. Now, we're on a mountain, I was parked in a spot that was on a bit of a hill, so I had some trouble getting the jack to do it's thing. It slipped off about 3-4 times and about a half hour before I finally gave up. Rory's sisters' boyfriend (did I get that right?) managed to get the car jacked up (sounds funny) and he changed the tire in less than 5 minutes. Not the first time I've been bailed out in a tire-changing situation!!!!

So after installing a poor little donut on Vickie, I let her chew on that for a while and threw all our crap into Jason & Tara's car (nice timing by the way! They showed up just as we were done!) and headed to the camp site. Things calmed down for a bit...settled in, grabbed a beer and setup a chair and just sat there. I guess thats what you do? It was cool though just sitting around...at least it wasn't too hot out, there were plenty of trees and we were right by the lake. So all was going well, I did pass on the opportunity to go on a ride on Michael's boat, especially knowing Tracy was going...something bad was bound to happen :)

The most fun was probably watching Rory's friend (and my soon to be kickball teammate) Joel's dog swimming. (To clarify Joel's dog is not eligible for kickball I believe) That dog probably swam more in the few hours we were there than I may have in the last 10 years. It was also fun watching him and Rory's dog Piper go after a frisbee in the water. Especially when they finally gave up fetching it and we got to watch the frisbee slowly but surely float away. Eventually I did get in the water for a bit, then decided I'd even go on the next boat ride. It soon became evident that someone didn't want me on that boat. Almost immediately...in came the clouds. Dark clouds. Even though the radar was clear (OH! Tracy brought her laptop, you know...like a true camper!) We all know that the weather-peoples are never right, so it became obvious that the sky was about to explode all over us. First came the clouds, then came the wind, the thunder, the lightning, the rain...and just for the hell of it...let's throw in some HAIL for good measure. Luckily we were able to make our way to a bathroom facility in the middle of the campground site. The power was out, so it was pitch black inside the bathroom. I will admit this was a better situation than 2 weekends before when I was stuck on Pensacola Beach in a lightning storm with just an umbrella protecting (or, NOT-protecting) me! But the combination of those two weekends got the best of me...I had enough, I did NOT want to be there anymore. After the storm finally passed, they managed to get a fire going and I got a hot dog out of the deal before I got the hell out of there. If I had stayed, I know I would've been miserable and probably ruined it for other people, so I took one for the team and left with Tara and Jason, who took me back to poor little donut-wearing Vickie and then followed me back, going about 45MPH on "the 75". Ughhhhhhh! So I'm officially 0 for 2 in attempts to camp. Which reminds me of my favorite Bush-ism..."There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." Well, I got fooled twice now...shame on you Rory!!!!!!

Here's all of us...I still don't understand why everyone's so happy? If you look carefully you can see some hail on the bottom left...I think

Did I pick the perfect shirt to wear or WHAT? Goes good with the Twister towel :)

The Next To Last Comic Standing?

2008-08-07T22:19:00.004-04:00

So I just finished watching the season finale of Last Comic Standing. I've never watched the show before this season, but I figured, there's nothing else on this time of year and it's a bunch of people trying to do stand up comedy. Bill Bellamy is an absolutely awful host of the show and for the finale they had 5 finalists which "America Voted" on a week ago. WTF? Why not let the 5 finalists go up against each other to get to 4, then 3, then 2 FINALISTS! Isn't that what the word FINALIST means? The show can definitely be a lot better, ditching Bellamy would be a good start. He laughs at anything, maybe they pay him to. They had their "talent scouts" as Richard Belzer - a non-funny actor from Law & Order - and a guy from the Sopranos I think. Maybe someone can explain to me why NBC couldn't actually get COMEDIANS to judge this thing???

Anyways, when it got down to the final 5 it eventually wound up coming down to Iliza Shlesinger (the only female in the top 5) and a Dane Cook look-a-like-but-funnier in "Marcus". Marcus is actually hilarious. If he had a comedy CD out, I'd buy it. To me he was clearly the winner. But "America" votes. Is that really fair? Maybe I'm being naive here, but don't you think more women than men watch these shows and take the time to call in to vote? Now, Iliza was funny, but not nearly as talented as Marcus...in my opinion. Of course...Iliza won...LAME! Not that the winner of this show (this was season 5 I think) ever goes on to do anything, but I hope to see Marcus doing his thing sometime soon!

I'm pretty sure it was Marcus who had my favorite joke on there, and I know I'll screw it up because it was a couple weeks ago...he was talking about airport security and what you can and cannot bring on a plane with you. He said how it's clear as to why you can't bring a chainsaw, a gun, a knife...you know the obvious weapons on a plane. But a wrench is ok. I don't know about you guys, but...I've played the game "Clue" before...and Col. Mustard would disagree that a wrench is not a weapon!

(I'm sure it was much funnier to hear him do it than for me to type it!!!! But you get the idea)

Kickball - Fall '08

2008-07-31T08:56:00.006-04:00

Signups begin tomorrow for Fall 2008 kickball leagues and I'm planning on creating my own team this time. If you're interesting in playing (Wednesday nights at Brookhaven) drop me an email or leave a comment here...Team Canada: World Mountie needs YOU! (get it?)

My New Favorite Website - thenoonerblog.com

2008-07-29T23:57:00.004-04:00

http://www.thenoonerblog.com/

Yes, there is a blog, but the best part is a video called "The Nooner" which is hosted by Brittany Umar, who is not only easy to look at, but she's pretty funny too. It's just a 2-3 minute video every Monday - Friday that pretty much just makes fun of NY Sports. On the right-hand side of their blog is where the videos are. Check em out!!!

An Awesomly Horrible Dining Experience

2008-07-24T15:00:00.007-04:00

This week is "Downtown Atlanta Restaurant Week". It's a yearly thing (in other cities too) where people can dine at "fancier" restaurants for a flat fee of (this year) $25 per person to try and encourage people to come back after a great experience. For $25 you get an appetizer, a main course and dessert. Looking back, I've now done this four times. Three times were, uhhhh, bad. A couple of years ago, some friends and I went to Ruth's Crap, errrr Chris Steakhouse. Not only did they barely cook my "medium well" steak, but there was more butter than steak I think. Two years ago, we went to a place called Trader Vic's. I can't really remember anything bad to say about that experience. Last year we went to a place called "O’Terrill’s". As soon as we got close to the place I realized that this ain't no fancy place! It's like a dinky sports bar, which I'd been to once after a Thrashers game. I wanna say the "fancy" menu included chicken fingers. Awesome. So much for trying new restaurants!

But this year topped any and all bad experiences. Me and some Sweetwater friends (Erica + 2 friends, Peter, Rochelle, Stevens, Alaina) had reservations at place called Fandangles (which I thought was a website to go to buy movie tickets?). It is in the Sheraton Hotel on Courtland St. Our reservations were at 7:30. Due some really bad weather we got there a little early to try and beat the storms and got into the restaurant about 15 minutes early. We hung out by the bar, Erica thought I asked for a Shirley Temple...and made me drink it. After that, due to manhood issues, I ordered a $7 (ughhh) pint of Guinness. They had a pool table set up in a terrible location by the bar, there was a wall on three sides of the table, without enough room to actually play pool, with a flat screen TV on one of em. As the Guinness commercial guys say...BRILLIANT!

By about 8:30 we finally got seated at a table next to another table who looked completely miserable. Within a few minutes we heard them complaining, ask for the manager who eventually took 50% off their check. I leaned over and asked them if we should even bother staying! We'd been seated for about 20 minutes by then without anyone coming to say hi. We all already knew what we wanted, hell, we found a pen and half the table needed a smoke break, so they circled on the (paper) menu what they wanted.

When we finally did get our waitress to come by, we ordered a couple of drinks with the idea that she could also handle taking our orders too. Uhhhhh, no. She took drink orders for 2 people...and left. We assume to get those drinks, but it took about 15 minutes or so before she came back. Repeat that process about 2 more times. They're lucky we're a laid back, fun loving group!

By about 9:30 or so, a different waitress came by to FINALLY take our order. The smokers of the group were on cigarette break #2 by now, so we were able to order for them. Progress!!!!! A few minutes later, our new waitress came back out to inform us that one of the appetizers - "Friend Calamari with Spicy Remoulade Sauce" - was not available, but they had some kind of shrimp something or other to offer in its place, which the waitress said was "awesome" (With her middle-eastern sounding accent, it made it sound even funnier)

It was about 10pm when the waitress came back with some good news! The manager has decided to buy our table a round of drinks (not quite 50% off, but he knew how to keep us happy!). The waitress was talking Erica into trying some type of wine that she kept describing as "awesome". The manager also explained to us the reason for the problems all night is that they had a "random fire inspector" come by to test the sprinklers in the kitchen. And, uhhhh, they failed. He said there was white powder all over the kitchen and that they had to use a kitchen somewhere else. WTF????? I don't think any of us believed a word of that, but, whatever, he was creative with the story.

Finally, around 10:15 they served the appetizers. I ordered "Jack & Coke BBQ’d Babyback Ribs w/ Fried Sweet Onion Petals" (really only because it included the words "Jack & Coke"). But at that point any food was gonna taste great...and they did.

For the main course, you got to choose from 3 dishes, time for some bullets...

Peach & Habanera BBQ’d Salmon over black-eyed peas and mustard greens ragout
Blackened Ribeye Steak over Roasted Garlic Mashed Red Skin Potatoes with grilled asparagus
Porcini Dusted and Grilled Airline Breast with wild mushroom & crawfish grits, sautéed spinach and onions and topped with a sage glace

(WTF is Grilled Airline Breast?) Anyone who knows me already knows I ordered the steak, and was daring enough to substitute the spinach for asparagus. By the time the main course did get to us, by about 10:45, I wasn't even that hungry anymore. The food was actually VERY good, but the fact that we had been there for over 3 hours kinda made that point...moot. (I don't use that word enough).

For dessert, I get to use even more bullets!

Southern Style Bourbon Pecan Pie with Caramel
Carrot Cake (how boring!)
Chocolate Chocolate Cake

I got the Pecan Pie, but told them to put it right in a box. It was Erica's friend Jamie's birthday, and they actually took VERY good care of her. Erica supplied the trick candles and they brought out her dessert with a bunch of candles and sang to her. They also brought her a present - a small brown fancy lookin box with a few wrapped also fancy lookin chocolates inside. The waitress actually asked for the box back, but then said just kidding. So that was funny. They also gave Jamie all three desserts in to-go boxes. Where's mine??????????

Finally at about 11:30 we were ready for the check, we gave one of the guys a few cards and some cash and he proceeded to count it in front of us, which seemed odd. Rochelle made a comment about it, then I asked her...did you just get here??? Are you really surprised by anything at this point?

In the end, we were there for over 4 hours, no one was leaving hungry or angry. We had fun, mostly laughing about the restaurant, but the food was excellent. Can't deny that. I've still got leftovers to look forward to in my fridge!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: On Friday afternoon I got an email from someone offering us an opportunity to give Fandangles another chance, "complimentary of course". I'll be sure to report back how our 2nd try goes!

EDIT #2: http://jznole.blogspot.com/2008/08/fandangles-take-two.html

Pensacola, Day 3

2008-07-23T09:47:00.006-04:00

And now for part 3 of Pensacola weekend, which I'm sure you've all been dying for.

After getting home at about 5am after the Molly Ringwalds show, I don't think any of us were up for any kind of excitement on Monday. Scott took the day off work and eventually the three of us got moving around enough to be in time for a McDonald's breakfast. One problem...for me anyways...There were about 12 breakfast combo's to choose from. Every single one had either bacon, ham or sausage!!!! What the hell! Maybe I'm the only jew to ever come through Pee-cola, but I was pretty upset. Didn't McDonald's used to have some kind of pancake breakfast or something? Not even a plain chicken biscuit combo? Oh well, screw them, I walked next door to Chic-Fil-A and brought that back to McDonald's. I win!

After that we went across the street to Target where Scott completed his only responsibility of the day - buying Toilet Paper. I saw that they had the movie Super Troopers for only $9, so I had to buy it! Then we went next door to Winn-Dixie (apparently they still exist) and bought me and Matt's only responsibility of the day...beer!

We went back to Scott's place and just hung out by his pool all day catching up. Scott taught us to never sign your life away to Direct TV, but I won't get into all that. We also finally found a good use for those noodle things you find around pools. We had some batting practice...

C'mon Piazza, I want the fastball!

Matt-Scott-J (Team photo!)

The original plan was to have Lauren meet back with us and leave town at about 6. Ummmmm, yeah, so 6 rolled around, we're still at the pool. Finally we actually realize this, and told Lauren to get on her way. We decided we'd have one last meal at...where else...WhatABurger. Where some more hell broke loose. Matt tried paying for his meal with his credit card and got it declined. Weird. He asked the girl behind the counter to try it again, maybe it got wet from all the rain. Nope. Eventually he wound up calling the number on the back of the card and wouldn't ya know it. They closed his account! Why? Well, they thought it was odd that he got an oil change in Atlanta on Thursday while, at the same time, bought a couple of hundred dollars worth of gas at several gas stations in South Florida!!!! Someone somehow got a hold of his credit card number, made themselves a card and got some kind of scheme going at some gas stations down there! Apparently this isn't all that uncommon, asking around it's happened to a couple of people we know. Luckily this was his credit card and not a debit card! It would probably be a bit tougher to get your money back if it were a debit card, where a credit card you could just dispute it. Or better yet, when they saw something suspicious, they just closed the account for him. They were so quick about it, he tried logging into his account right afterwards to see all the charges and nothing was there. I'm not even sure how they're gonna charge him for the oil change and all the gas he actually did buy this weekend!

Anyways, after all that drama we hit the road after 10pm...me and Lauren got back to our place at 3:30, at which point I parked, left a voice mail for my boss...and slept til about 10:30 or so.

As many complete disastrous events that occurred this weekend (hit by lightning, credit card theft!) it was still a blast!

Blue Angels, Take Two

2008-07-21T10:34:00.000-04:00

After Mother Nature had better ideas on Saturday for the Blue Angels, they rescheduled for Sunday on what turned out to be a pretty perfect day for it. The beach (and traffic to it!) was MUCH MUCH less crowded.

I am now going to attempt to put up some videos I took with my dinky little digital camera, who knows if this will come out right? I'll pretend like they will! They're only like 10 seconds a piece or so.

This first one is a fly-over with 4 planes with 2 of them upside down. The best part of these videos is the sounds they make

This second video, which I started late and ended too early is where a plane flies VERY close to the water, it makes a ripple affect (not seen here!) But you can hear Scott and Matt pointing it out.

And this last one is of the 6 planes coming towards us from over the water and it kinda looks like fireworks in the distance. I'm actually surprised that I was able to keep a plane in the picture the whole time, I really couldn't see anything because of the sun! And make sure you stay tuned for my brief yet inspiring commentary at the end of this video...

L->R (Ryan, Anne, Haley, Matt, Scott's head, me)

They all missed it!

Somehow I still managed to get sunburnt...must've been the "flaming" chair

Me taking a picture of Matt taking a picture of Fat Albert (the name of the plan)

And a few of Blue Angels pictures:

The Molly Ringwalds and Lauren's Three-Oh!

2008-07-17T16:33:00.003-04:00

So after recovering from our near death beach lightning experience on Saturday, we rested up for the second highlight of this trip. Me, Matt, Scott and Ryan took a trip across state lines into Mobile, Alabama to a place called "Soul Kitchen" to see what I was told was the best 80's cover band ever. And after seeing them I've gotta agree. It wasn't like going to see some cover band at a bar. This was a concert. They played for about 2 and a half hours with an encore. It was also Lauren's 30th birthday on Sunday, so the concert was the beginning of her celebration. We met up with her and a lot of her family - dad, sister, brother, sister in-law, etc...and some other of her friends. As Lauren's brother - Fielder - described em before the concert, they play some songs from the 80's that you probably wouldn't admit to liking (Wham, George Michael come to mind). But every song they played I knew. I'm kinda wondering if 80's music to my generation is what "oldies" music was to my parents. I hope not, because I never liked my parents music, I wonder how 80's music will hold up over time? The band - The Molly Ringwalds - is a group of guys, I think all from England (how the hell do these guys not have a wikipedia page?) dressed up as different characters from the 80's. The drummer was dressed as the Karate Kid, another guy dressed as an 80's chick with big poofy hair(kinda creepy), another guy was dressed as George Michael and another one looked like a friend of mine, Josh Reiter, but I may be the only one who thought that. Oh, and another guy wore a red "flower pot" hat like the guy from the band Devo. He was the only guy we could complain about, as Matt noticed, we're pretty sure he was lip syncing (lip singing?) when he was the lead singer for a couple of songs. Oh, one other complaint...no Def Leppard!!!!! But they did play over two hours of awesome 80's music.

I wasn't expecting that much, and i broke my rule of not wearing flip-flops to concerts. My feet were disgusting by the time this thing was over. On the way back we stopped at a truck-stop gas station place that for whatever reason had $15 legit NFL jerseys. I almost bought Brian a Larry Johnson Chiefs jersey but it was friggin HUGE. Sorry man, gain about 200lbs and I'll be more than happy to go back and get it for ya!!!! We got back to Scott's place at about 4am...just in time to wake up at about 7 for Sunday's rescheduled Air Show! Which I'll save for my next blog...

Me, Matt, Ryan, Scott driving to Mobile for the show

Matt's camera is better than mine...

Why I Could Never be a Pierson

2008-07-15T17:02:00.006-04:00

For those not related to me, the definition of a "Pierson" is essentially an outdoors person. Mixed in the family are 4 of such characters, aka my cousins - Rob, Dan, Jon and Liz. (This the first time I'm noticing all three of em have 3 letter shortened names). All of them are people who could survive anywhere. Hell, Jon just finished a bike trip from Mexico to Canada a few months ago. Me? I have a perfectly good condo, complete with a roof that I enjoy sleeping under.

This past weekend I went down to Pensacola, FL with Matt (and we dropped Lauren off to see her family) to see his cousin, my friend, Scott. The main focus of the trip was to see the Blue Angels perform in an air show at Pensacola Beach on Saturday.

We drove down Friday afternoon, and after a must stop a Whataburger (not quite as important as a stop up north at White Castle), we made it down in time to go to McGuire's Irish Pub & Brewery. It's a pretty well-known place. They've literally got dollar bills hanging from everywhere. As of last year, there is over $700,000 in dollar bills hanging from the walls and ceilings. Supposedly once a year they shut the place down and spend all day counting each and every one of em...for tax purposes I guess. Another tradition is a green drink called an Irish Wake. It's served in a "dirty" mason jar and is strong enough that they'll only serve you one. Another fun part of McGuire's is the trickiness of the bathrooms (see picture). On the Mens room it says, "Don't go in here LADIES this is the Men's Room" (With "LADIES" in a very large font). So of course after drinking an Irish Wake I was pretty easily fooled and walked right in. Some other guy followed me so that made me feel better.

Saturday morning, because of the HUGE crowds they get for the air show, it's important to get an early start, which isn't really my thing. But luckily Central Time bought me an extra hour. We loaded up Scott's car with beach chairs, towels, an umbrella, sunscreen and a cooler with beer and water. It took about 2 hours to make the 12 mile drive, which is better than I remember a couple years ago when we went. Eventually we were able to find a place to park at about 11am and we decided to kill some time by heading over to Subway for some food before we hit the beach. After Subway we walked back to the car (which, it's important to note that walking to the car is in the OPPOSITE direction of the beach). So it probably looked like we were leaving. So, I thought it'd be fun to, as people walked past us, to say "I can't believe the cancelled the air-show" loud enough for whoever walked past us heard. Ok, so it was funny at the time. Little did we realize how powerful karma is! Because after dragging all our crap to the beach (coolers without wheels are a BITCH to carry!) not to much afterwards...Mother Nature unleashed herself on the beach and in fact DID cancel the show!

It was actually one of the most scary experiences of my life, and which is just one example of why I wouldn't survive a day in the life of a Pierson. But, seriously, it was really bad out there. All we could do was huddle around an umbrella and wait out the storm...and wait...and wait...and wait. In the end about 6 inches of rain fell and tons of thunder and lightning pounded the area. At least 4 people were hit by lightning and taken to a hospital. It probably doesn't count but at one point I was holding on to the cloth part of the umbrella, to help make sure it didn't blow away, when I got shocked! I saw a bright blue light right on my thumb. It felt just like getting shocked by an outlet at home, but it put a good scare into me! Ryan and Anne (Scott's wife) also felt a little buzz on their hair at some point. It was just a pretty miserable experience. About 2 hours later or so when they finally announced the show was cancelled and the lightning let up, we packed everything up and started back for the car. Everything was drenched, and it was still raining. The street where we parked had floods halfway to my knees, it was nuts. I can't even imagine all the hurricanes they get down there, this seemed as bad as it could get to me! Finally we made it back to the car, but with the traffic no one was going anywhere. Me, Matt, Scott and Anne just sat in Scott's car for another 2 hours or so, completely drenched. It was pretty miserable. Finally we drove a half mile or so to a beach shop where we all bought new, clean, warm t-shirts. I also lost my sunglasses at some point in the mess, so I got new sunglasses too!

And for fun, here is an MSNBC article about all this that seems like it's written by a 12 year old.

More Pensacola weekend stories to come...

The 4th and Beyond

2008-07-08T09:48:00.008-04:00

Hope everyone had a good 4th weekend.

Friday I actually didn't do anything (well, I was lucky enough to work all day!). But my allergies were bothering me and I'm not so excited about fireworks, so I just spent some quality time on the couch and watched the Mets blow a 2-0 9th inning lead and lost to the Philthies.

Saturday I finished up Season 2 of Weeds. Holy crap what an AWESOME season finale!!! Then headed over to Courtney & Mike's place for a BBQ and festivities. It was fun. They're big into the game cornhole. Which, I thought they made up, but apparently its popular enough to have its own wikipedia page! They make their own boards and equipment, involving the college team colors of choice. For Mike and his friend Adam, they've got Auburn colors, Courtney gets one LSU board. I may need to get me an FSU set...I think my patio is big enough to handle it! So anyways, we setup a Cornhole tournament (complete with dry-eraser-board brackets!). I teamed up with Will, but we lost in round two to Mike and Adam. We definitely got a raw deal in that setup! Courtney and Mike are also the proud new owners of a Wii. And more importantly, the game Rock Band. Which, I'd never experienced before. I've played Guitar Hero before, but Rock Band includes a drum set and a microphone! If I was ever gonna play any instrument, I'd always wanted to be a drummer. Back to the days when I was a kid, going into a music store and grabbing some drum sticks in a side room only to have some a-hole working there yell at me that I was holding the sticks wrong. I ran off crying and it crushed my hopes and dreams forever. I'm pretty sure my parents told him to do that so that they wouldn't have to deal with me playing the drums in their house :) Anyways, we went through a couple of songs, turns out I'm a good singer???? well, it helps when the "singing" is actually a Beastie Boys song! I spent most of the night trying out the drums. And it was A LOT tougher that you'd think. Especially because they incorporate a foot pedal. That makes it tough, and eventually by about 2:30am, after Courtney was long asleep and Mike was passed out on the couch, it was just me and Nooga, we decided we were ready to call it a night.

On Sunday, without really anything to do, I talked Lauren into a double-feature, which we'd been talking about doing for a while now. We both wanted to see The Love Guru, but we couldn't fit it in. We wound up seeing Get Smart (with Steve Carell) first. It was pretty good...but you've really gotta appreciate Steve Carell to really like it. I think he'd be perfect to play a real life Inspector Gadget movie. Next up was Hancock (with Will Smith). I hadn't really heard a whole lot about it, but I definitely wanted to give it a shot. We originally got seats pretty close to the screen, but after staring at the Rock Band screen all night the night before and with it being the 2nd half of a double feature, I asked Lauren if she would be cool with moving towards the back of the theatre. WORST. DECISION. EVER. Turns out we sat right in front of a family with a 2yr old wondering and chatting with himself throughout the aisle behind us. It's bad enough that I already generally don't have a lot of patience for annoying kids, but this was a movie theatre. You just don't let that happen. It's not like this was a kids movie. Without giving much away, Will Smith plays the role of a guy with super powers, but, well, he's kind of an asshole. There's a lot of cursing and drinking in the movie. Not that I claim to know anything about parenting, but this is not something I'd think a 2yr old should be subject to. This kid was sooooooooooooooo annoying, eventually, about halfway through the movie, we moved back down to the bottom closer to the screen again. I was sure to make sure they heard me use the word "obnoxious" as we left our seats, I also made sure to say "fucking" first but not TOO loud. Once we got to our new seats they did take the kid outside, so I feel like I made a positive difference in the lives of everyone in that theatre :) Unfortunately, it was temporary, the kid was back, and even way down at the bottom of the theatre, everyone can still hear this kid. With all that said, Hancock was an AWESOME movie. I absolutely loved it, and whenever it comes on DVD, Mitsa will be providing a movie night viewing party.

Last night was the return of Sports Trivia to a new bar since Frankies is no more. It was at a little hole in the wall kind of place called Charlie Mopps. It's hard to find, I will admit to one U-Turn. I met up with a coworker, Cintron and he needed at least 3 U-Turns I believe. The place was pretty cool, it had tons of beers to choose from. Anyways, for trivia, where half the fun is coming up with funny team names, we went with the recently demoted Braves outfielder, Jeff Francoeur as our target. "Jeff Francoeur, AA [minor league] All Star Game MVP". At first when I got there, our waitress, who was wearing a Sweetwater T-Shirt (a good sign, I was actually wearing mine too) took my order and I ordered a sweetwater and asked if they could turn the Mets game on one of the TV's. Well, they turned it on about 6 TV's! wow!!!! what service :) and the Mets were winning 5-0 before they even got it on! For my 2nd beer I asked the waitress to recommend something to me. She did one better. Actually three better. She brought me 3 samples of beers to try. Hell, after the samples I was kind of thinking I didn't need anymore beer, but since she went through all that I wasn't about to say no thanks, I'm good! So I got a 2nd beer and that was gonna be it. Well, as luck would have it, throughout trivia, they randomly pick team names and award a free pitcher of beer to two teams. Yep, we "won". Cintron isn't really a big drinker and I had to drive, so as sad and tragic as it was, the pitcher pretty much went to waste. I was tempted to offer it to the table next to us, but I'm not so sure they were even 21. There were too many straws in their drinks anyways. Well, me and Cintron wound up finishing in 2nd place and went off with $30 of gift certificates to spend there next time we go back. Which we most definitely will. Hopefully we get the same waitress too!

And in typical Mets fashion, after being ahead 8-0 and 10-1...they had to make things interesting, and wound up winning 10-9. Ughhhhh.

An Interview With a Winner

2008-06-30T22:55:00.005-04:00

For the first time in J-Blog history, we're sitting down for an interview with Lauren Lewis, professional radio contest prize winner.

The J-Blog: (ruffling papers) Hi Ms. Lewis, thanks for stopping by.

Lauren Lewis: It's great to be here.

J: So I heard you got a phone call today, tell me about that.

LL: Q-100 called me this morning and said, Hi Lauren, you have just won one of our online contests." And I said, "oh, what did I win?" and she said, "you just won a treadmill and a peachtree road-race number". I screamed, "oh my gosh! I can't believe this! Are you serious?" And she said, "it's true, it's true you sound so excited! You won a treadmill valued at $3,500!". So i said, "I can't believe this! what number did I get?", she said it was in the 4-group. "I said, "oh great!". And then she said "A treadmill will be delivered in 8 weeks, call us if you haven't received it by then."

J: Speaking of $3,500...you owe me rent money for July.

LL: Oh, whatever, hahahahaha, oh, I do have a check for you though.

J: This isn't the first phone call like this you've gotten, is it?

LL: No, its actually not, I've won so many things! It's unbelievable! However, I've never won money.

J: As I recall, that's not entirely accurate.

LL: It actually is accurate. I've won a trip to Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean with the Backstreet Boys but then they couldn't go, so they offered me a cash option instead. Because it was pointless to go without them!

J: Actually it sounds perfect without them!

LL: Well, to you maybe. Most of the other prizes I've called in to win.

J: Do you have stats to back that up?

LL: Yeah, 3 out of 32.

J: Holy shit, hold on. I don't know if I'm more impressed that you won 32 times or that you really have been keeping track of all of it! Do you have a spreadsheet?

LL: No spreadsheet.

J: Want one?

LL: hahahaha, maybe...you are the Excel King!

J: Maybe later...so list off a couple of your favorites

LL: There's just so many

J: Well, I've got some time, go for it.

LL: Here goes, in no particular order: NSYNC tickets - twice, Britney tickets - twice, Star 94 Halloween Party, Q100 Halloween Party, Q100 Beach Party, Front row Justin/Christina tickets, Justin tickets, Met Maroon 5 backstage, Meet and Greet Backstreet Boys, Trip to Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean with the Backstreet Boys, Backstreet Boys tickets, Meet and Greet again with Backstreet Boys, Music Midtown VIP passes 2005, Destiny Child final tour tickets, Premiere passes to Mission Impossible 3, $75 gift certificate to Murphy's in the Highlands, Janet Jackson DVD, Braves tickets, Trip to Orlando to see spring training of the Braves, Gwen Stefani tickets, Pay my bills - Dentist $150, Kelly Clarkson tickets, LL Cool J tickets, Ipod, American Idol tickets and meet and greet with Ruben and Clay, 99X Lunch at work with free movie passes, Box of CD's, Super bowl party, Treadmill, Peachtree Road race number.

J: Holy shit! There's a lot of lame stuff in there

LL: That's just mean.

J: That's how I roll...you really seem to like that Justin Timberfag fellow

LL: Yeah, just a little bit...

J: So when are we going to see The Love Guru?

LL: Soon.

J: Do you have any tricks or secrets in how to win all this stuff?

LL: Not really, just persistence pays off...as they say.

J: Who says that?

LL: They.

J: So what are you gonna do with the treadmill?

LL: It's so big and bulky I...

J: (interrupts...) That's what she said!

LL: hahahahaha, that's funny...

J: Ok, so seriously, where the hell are you gonna stash a treadmill in here?

LL: Probably my bedroom.

J: What's been your favorite prize that you've won?

LL: I think the front row Justin tickets were pretty awesome, but I think I'm going to enjoy the treadmill. Plus, its the most expensive prize.

J: We have a question from someone in the audience...please stand up sir. What is your name?

Stuart Zaikov: Stuart Zaikov.

J: Oh, hi dad. What's your question?

SZ: $3,500??? wow does it do your walking for you? the one we bought several years ago cost $ 500 or so and had lots of bells and whistles cant imagine what this would have for so much money maybe it also cooks dinner and cleans bathrooms?

LL: Oh, Hi Mr. Zaikov, thanks for your question! I hope it actually burns calories for me!

J: That Super Bowl party was actually something I got to enjoy! We ate all the food before we went to the party!

LL: (giggles) Yeah, that was awesome!

J: Alright, well, we're about out of time. Much thanks to Lauren for being here, apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time.

LL: Sure, no problem it was great being here.

Lina, Where's Your Car? Sweet!

2008-06-30T13:29:00.006-04:00

Friday night I went out with a couple of Matt's coworkers to the new Fado in Buckhood. Actually, we may be to the point where I will call it Buckhead again. I hadn't been down there in quite a while. But they knocked down and completely rebuilt Fado. I didn't go there too often, but it was always packed and really hard to move around at all. Well, the new Fado is friggin HUGE. There are 3 stories now, although the 2nd level is pretty minimal. The first floor is huge, then eventually we went up to the 3rd floor where there is a bar and a patio area on the roof, with a nice view of a bunch of construction. But eventually, it'll turn into a really nice view.

The original plan (I thought) was to go to Fado for a bit, then head back to East Andrews to watch some 80's cover band. With that in mind I parked right by East Andrews (for free! But a half mile from Fado) and thought it'd make sense for later. Well, we wound up staying at Fado all night. One of Matt's coworkers (and one of my new kickball teammates), Lina, parked closer to Fado, but she wasn't in any condition to be driving, so Matt and I were, so we decided to go to her car and drive us over to where me and Matt parked. One problem. Lina forgot where she parked! We started walking around for a bit when I decided lets just make the walk back to our cars and we can drive around and find Lina's car. Since I'm not the type that likes walking around at 2:30am for no reason in particular in an area I know as Buckhood...I was putting my foot down on this one. All Lina kept saying was that she was sure it was towed. Which didn't make sense because she also was sure she parked in a legal spot. So off we went. Me and Matt went and walked back to our cars and told Lina we'd pick them up and try and find her car. It was pretty amazing how many COPS we saw as we were walking. Even state troopers were patrolling the area. I don't know if they were just really on top of things or if this was all part of the "new buckhead" area. Anyways, so we pick her up and start driving around where she thought it may be. And she kept just saying her car was towed.

I decided to drive back right to Fado's front door to try and retrace her steps to get there...and wouldn't you know it...one block away...Lina's car. And wouldn't you know it...a FLAT TIRE!!!!! It wasn't totally flat so we were able to drive it to the closest gas station. We put air in it, then Matt was gonna drive her to her place and I'd follow to pick him up. Well, just as Matt was driving out, I started honking...I could HEAR the air leaking out of the tire! So I got him to stop and we went ahead and put her donut on. It could've been worse, there was a guy at the same gas station on the phone with the cops because some of his "friends" stole his car! He kept saying that he shouldn't have trusted these people! People have "friends" that will take your car???? Oh well, we had our own problems! So eventually Matt got the donut on, but that also looked kinda flat. Back to the air...filled it up and finally got her home. I took Matt back to his car and then finally off to bed. Ironically I saw a police van dealing with their own flat tire on my way home! I finally got home at 4AM. And not the good 4am...

Saturday was spent catching up on my new favorite show "Weeds"... It's on Showtime...and since I get Showtime for free, I may as well. Then Saturday night went to the good ole Dixie Tavern to see a cover band that Lauren promised was good. Asphalt Grunge is their name...and they were pretty good. Not as good as the band we used to see there - Princess something, but every song they played I recognized. A few too much Pearl Jam, but I got over it. They played 2 Rage songs, so I was happy...

FSU advance to College World Series Finals

2008-06-22T21:52:00.008-04:00

Ok, so not MY FSU, but the logo's are pretty similar. Both Fresno State and Florida State made it to the College Baseball World Series in Omaha, but unlike my FSU, Fresno State has made it all the way to the championship series! Unlike in basketball, where all 64 teams are "seeded" from 1-16, where teams seeded 1 are the top 4 teams in the country and teams seeded 16 have never won a game in the tournament. In baseball, the top 8 teams in the country are given a "national seed", Florida State was #5. Fresno State was not seeded. In the baseball tournament, there are basically 16 teams seeded #1, 16 teams #2, 16 teams #3 and 16 teams #4. Fresno State is a #4 seed. Thats equivalent to a #13-16 seed in basketball. In basketball, none of those teams have ever made the Final Four. In baseball, a #4 seed had never made it to Omaha (where the final 8 teams remaining square off each year). Fresno State probably wouldn't have even made the NCAA tournament if they didn't win their conference tournament. Not only did Fresno State make it to the NCAA Tourney, they won their regional, won their super-regional against #3 National Seed at Arizona State which led them to Omaha. They're now 45-30 this season, but 8-3 in the NCAA Tournament, with all those wins against teams ranked in the top 20. They've beaten 3 of the top 8 teams in the country in the last 2 weeks (#2 North Carolina, #3 Arizona State, #6 Rice) Pretty impressive! Now we've got an all Bulldog finals. Go FSU!!!!

2008 College World Series National Championship Schedule:

Game 1 Monday June 23 Fresno State vs. #8 Georgia, 7pm, ESPN2

Game 2 Tuesday June 24 Fresno State vs. #8 Georgia, 7pm, ESPN

*Game 3 Wednesday June 25 Fresno State vs. #8 Georgia, 7pm, ESPN

*If necessary (Best of 3 series)

2008 Thrashers Draft Party

2008-06-21T15:16:00.004-04:00

Last night was the 2008 NHL Draft. I managed to talk Matt, Erica and Peter into going to Philips Arena for the Thrashers Draft Party. I had gone a few years ago with Scott. That year, they opened up the whole arena and let people sit wherever they wanted to watch the draft on the big screen. There were games for kids going on where the ice usually is.

Well, this year was a bit different. The actual arena was not available, apparently some kind of an AARP dress rehearsal was going on inside an they weren't allowing anyone in. So, instead we hung outside the main concourse and watched the draft on a bunch of big screens. And a local sports radio station was broadcasting live. The area was pretty small, but crowded. We got there early enough to get a table, but so many people were standing, I sometimes had a tough time seeing the TV's! I noticed a guy with a camera lurking, so I started doing some acting. Pointing at the draft scout sheet we were handed as we walked in and I acted like I was pointing something out to Erica. Next thing I knew the photographer was asking us for our names! Cool!

The drafted started, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman got booed when he got things underway. Tampa Bay had the first pick, as expected they took Steven Stamkos. Everyone at Philips booed. LA was up next and took defenceman (we had arguments for a while why they spell it with a "c"...no winner in that argument yet) Drew Doughty. Next up were the Thrashers. We all were wanting and hoping for defenceman Zach Bogosian. Gary Bettman came to the podium and announced that there was a trade. I think everyone's in the room went silent. Or just screamed, "noooooooooooooooooo". Well, it turned out the trade had nothing to do with the Thrashers, we all breathed a sigh of relief! Finally, Thrashers GM Don Wadell made his way to podium, everyone at Philips booed. :) But they took Zach Bogosian, and we all yelled, "Bogo! Bogo! Bogo!"

After an incredibly slow first round, a couple of hours later, only a couple of picks later, we headed over to the new Taco Mac for the rest of the first round. It is actually inside Philips Arena. I'm not a fan of Taco Mac, but its cool to have a place like that within the arena now.

All in all, it was a good time, probably the last time to get to enjoy anything Thrasher-related until September, so I did my best.

Help End Breast Cancer

2008-06-19T11:41:00.005-04:00

We interrupt this usually-amusing blog so that you can do some good. I'm a sucker for boobs and my friend Janice is doing something to help save them. Last year, she participated in this 3-day breast cancer walk and managed to get her poor little foot hurt and wound up needing surgery and was on crutches for a while! And she's STILL doing it all over again. What a trooper! Without further uh-do, my friend Janice has the floor (or keyboard I guess)...

Yes, I'm doing it again - I signed up for the 2008 Breast Cancer 3-Day! I had such an incredible experience doing the 3-Day last year that I'm going back for more. I'm so excited about this event, even though this year I really know what I've gotten myself into.

I need your help. I am planning on surpassing the $2,735.00 that you - my friends and family - gave so generously last time around to help fight breast cancer.

This year, instead of walking in Atlanta again, I am walking in San Francisco, September 5-7, 2008!

Just follow the link below to visit my personal fundraising page and make a donation.

If you have any questions or want to hear more about what I'm doing, I love talking about the event. Thanks for all of your support. I'm incredibly lucky to have people like you in my life!

Love,

Janice Ratner

P.S. Don't wait - donate today!

If you haven't already seen them, here is the link to my pictures from last years 3Day! http://picasaweb.google.com/JMR8218/3Day

Click here to visit my personal page.

For more information about the Breast Cancer 3-Day, Susan G. Komen for the Cure or the National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund, visit http://www.the3day.org/ or call 800.996.3DAY.

Why I'm Dumb (Part 295)

2008-06-19T00:22:00.001-04:00

I know I've said this before, but this deserves to count for WAYYYYY more than one.

I think I'm a pretty typical single guy. I don't cook too often, therefore I don't clean too often. Well, 2 weekends ago Laurens' dad and sister (Meredith) were coming for a weekend visit. I decided to give the kitchen a good old cleaning for once. I scrubbed everything down, counter tops, stove, sink...

Well, it took about a week and a half before I was next going to make use of the stove. I turned on the main burner I usually use and noticed something weird. The flame was A LOT higher than normal. I thought better of actually using it, and checked some of the other burners...none of the other three worked. The just made the clicking sound. Seems strange, like all the gas was going to the one burner. Luckily I've got a home warranty on my appliances, so for just $55 a guy will come out and either fix or replace whatever isn't working.

Not that this was an easy process, I called the warranty people Sunday night and they said someone would call me Monday morning. They did, left me a message before I even got to work. I called them back right away, left a message and heard nothing back all day. Called again after work, still nothing. Well, first thing Tuesday morning, just as I was getting out of the shower, they called me. I finally setup an appointment for Wednesday between 4-6pm. Luckily Lauren has a flexible work schedule and is able to be home for stuff like this. Well, she also planned on going out of town, so was hoping for them to show closer to 4pm than to 6pm. Well, the guy didn't show until 6:40 (of course). (sorry, and thanks again Lauren!)

Now for the reason for tonight's blog. The guy walks over to the stove and IMMEDIATELY sees the problem. When I was cleaning the stove, I took the cap-things off of each burner to clean. Well, apparently they're different sizes and I PUT THEM BACK IN THE WRONG SPOTS!!!!! I'm sure deep down inside the guy got a good laugh at my expense and walked out with my not-well-spent-$55 :(

How dumb do I feel????? Although, I could've sworn I tested the burners without those covers on at all and they still didn't work. So I'm not totally sure I understand all this. But...lesson learned. No more cleaning the kitchen!!!!!

Why do I Root for Teams that Most Resemble The Bad News Bears?

2008-06-17T10:00:00.005-04:00

College baseball doesn't get a whole lotta love, but anything FSU related gets my attention. The FSU baseball team made the College World Series for the 20th time in school history. The College World Series is an 8 team double-elimination tournament. In 20 attempts, we've managed 0 (ZERO, ZILCH, NADA, NONE, NO) championships. Even by blind luck you'd think we'd find an acorn at least once, right? Wrong! And this year was no different. But that doesn't mean they don't keep teasing me. On Saturday, with FSU (featuring the nation's best offense, averaging almost 10 runs a game) losing 5-2 in the bottom of the 8th to Stanford, they tie the game at 5 on a huge 3-run HR by 2nd baseman Jason Stidham. Finally, signs of life! So go to the top of the 9th. And I have never in all my life seen the things that happened, happen in a game. With a couple of runners on base, a guy from Stanford hits a hard line drive down the first base line. It goes past first base in fair territory, lands - apparently - right on the line and then hooks foul. Should be a fair ball, but the umpire points convincingly that it was a foul ball. That would've scored a couple of runs. Clearly a blown call, but what can you do? Instead of seizing the opportunity, FSU went the other direction. I'm pretty sure they felt bad for Stanford, so they let them score 11...ELEVEN...ONCE (thats spanish) runs. Included in this fiasco were two terrible errors by the somewhat injured and always terrible defensive shortstop, Tony Delmonico. Dude made 30 errors this season, which was about 60 games. Even I could do better than that! He had more errors than the rest of the team combined (ok, I didn't look that up, but someone told me so it has to be true). They do rank 171 in the NCAA in fielding percentage. 171! How is that even possible for a team ranked #4 in the entire country???

So after losing 16-5 on Saturday, FSU next faced #1 Miami (who also lost because of a bad 9th inning on Saturday) of all teams in an elimination game. FSU and Miami had a bench clearing brawl back in April in Tallahassee. Now remember, this is baseball, so by "brawl" I mean each player from both teams came out of the dugout, stayed plenty far away from each other and had a staring contest. Last night (for me it was last night, the game was at 2pm, but with the miracle that is DVR, the game started at about 6pm) FSU had 14 hits in the first 8 innings and only managed 2 runs. Thats nauseating! (wow I spelled that right!). In the bottom of the 8th, Miami hit a leadoff homer to make the score 7-2. That was about all I could take, I fast-forwarded through the rest of the inning, which somehow went pretty quietly. So now time for the 9th inning. And wouldn't ya know it, FSU's offense finally wakes up, they cut the lead to 7-5, with first and third for the NCAA Player of the Year, FSU Catcher, Buster Posey. He already had 4 hits on the day, he was one HR away from leading the nation in EVERY offensive stat. But no, he walks. Loading the bases with two outs and FSU cleanup hitter Jack Rye coming up. But alas, as is the case with any team I root for, they end their season with a loss as Rye grounded out to 2nd. FSU left an College World Series record 17 - SEVENTEEN! DIEZ Y SIETE (all those years of spanish pay off finally!) runners on base. Unbelievable.

But thats not all. The Mets. My Mets. This season was supposed to be big. They added the best pitcher in the world, Johan Santana, but they just never got it going. So even after a 9-6 win last night over one of the best teams in the American League (the I refuse to call them Los Angeles, Anaheim Angels) the Mets fired their manager (and their pitching coach and their first base coach for good measure) Willie Randolph at about 3am ET.

Ughhhhhh. No more baseball for me for a while!!!!!! (any guesses on how long that actually lasts?)

ATL Noise: Volume 6, Issue 2

2008-06-12T21:35:00.004-04:00

It's been a loooooooong time since I've been to a concert, I'm not actually sure when the last one was. You wait there, I'm gonna go look it up...turns out it was Nov 4 in Chattanooga. I don't think I ever did write about how badly I hated Chattanooga. But I'll let that be for now. Here's a newly updated concert listing for the ATL. Note - this only includes band that I would possibly consider going to see. Crap like New Kids On the Block are not included. And yes, I'm serious I know people who paid almost $80 a ticket to see them. Here's something you should know. They're not kids anymore! And they're certainly not new! Seriously! $80!!!!

Tue 06/17/08 Liam and Me - The Masquerade
Tue 06/17/08 Ludo - The Masquerade (I just recently discovered Ludo via Jimmy Kimmel Live and have been VERY impressed, they're a fun band to listen to!)
Tue 06/17/08 Steel Train - The Masquerade
Tue 06/17/08 The Spill Canvas - The Masquerade

Tue 06/17/08 Rev Theory - The Tabernacle
Tue 06/17/08 Shinedown - The Tabernacle

Fri 06/20/08 Less Than Jake - The Masquerade
Fri 06/20/08 Mustard Plug - The Masquerade
Fri 06/20/08 Suburban Legends - The Masquerade

Sat 06/21/08 Modest Mouse - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sat 06/21/08 R.E.M. - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sat 06/21/08 The National - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Sun 06/22/08 Rancid - The Masquerade
Sun 06/22/08 The Legendary Shack Shakers - The Masquerade

Fri 06/27/08 Bob Saget - The Tabernacle (Really?)

Sat 06/28/08 Edwin McCain Band - Chastain Park Amphitheatre (Thats for Jason)

Wed 07/09/08 Gin Blossoms - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Soul Asylum - Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Wed 07/09/08 "Vans Warped Tour" - Lakewood Amphitheatre (Why does it have to be on a Wednesday????)
Wed 07/09/08 Against Me! - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Anberlin - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Angels And Airwaves - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 As I Lay Dying - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Jack's Mannequin - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Matisyahu - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Reel Big Fish - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Say Anything - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Story Of The Year - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Wed 07/09/08 Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Verizon Wireless Amph. At Encore Park

Fri 07/11/08 Chris Rock - Fox Theatre

Thu 07/17/08 Candlebox - Center Stage (3 hit wonder, but damn those were 3 GREAT songs!)
Thu 07/17/08 The Kings Royal - Center Stage

Sun 07/20/08 All-American Rejects - Mall Of Georgia

Sun 07/20/08 Bryan Adams - Verizon Wireless Amph. At Encore Park
Sun 07/20/08 Foreigner - Verizon Wireless Amph. At Encore Park

Fri 07/25/08 Butch Walker - Center Stage (I will certainly be at either the Friday or Saturday shows...earth to shari! come in!)
Fri 07/25/08 Jesse Malin - Center Stage

Sat 07/26/08 Butch Walker - Center Stage
Sat 07/26/08 Jesse Malin - Center Stage

Sat 07/26/08 311 - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sat 07/26/08 Fiction Plane - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sat 07/26/08 Snoop Dogg - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Sun 08/03/08 Cheap Trick - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Heart - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Journey - Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Sun 08/03/08 "Projekt Revolution" - Lakewood Amphitheatre (This may get classified as a "can't miss" for me)
Sun 08/03/08 10 Years - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Atreyu - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Busta Rhymes - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Chris Cornell - Lakewood Amphitheatre (Nurse Kim!!!!!!!!!)
Sun 08/03/08 Hawthorne Heights - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Linkin Park - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 The Bravery - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Mon 08/04/08 Cheap Trick - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Mon 08/04/08 Heart - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Mon 08/04/08 Journey - Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Tue 08/12/08 "Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival" - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Tue 08/12/08 Black Tide - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Tue 08/12/08 Disturbed - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Tue 08/12/08 Slipknot - Lakewood Amphitheatre

Wed 08/13/08 Nine Inch Nails - The Arena At Gwinnett Center

Sun 08/17/08 Blues Traveler - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Sun 08/17/08 Collective Soul - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Sun 08/17/08 Live - Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Sat 08/23/08 Stone Temple Pilots - Verizon Wireless Amph. At Encore Park

Fri 08/29/08 "The Regeneration Tour" - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 08/29/08 A Flock Of Seagulls - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 08/29/08 ABC - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 08/29/08 Belinda Carlisle - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 08/29/08 Naked Eyes - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 08/29/08 The Human League - Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Sat 09/06/08 Carlos Mencia - Fox Theatre

Sat 09/20/08 Jim Gaffigan - Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre (As much as I really would want to, too much $$$ and a bad weekend! I've got Mets @ Braves to suffer through and Wake Forest @ FSU)

Wed 09/24/08 The Mars Volta - The Tabernacle

Wed 10/01/08 The Kills - The Tabernacle
Wed 10/01/08 The Raconteurs - The Tabernacle

Thu 10/02/08 Lewis Black - Fox Theatre

Still have no clue where or what the Verizon Wireless Amph. At Encore Park is!!!! Let me know if anyone's interested in going to any of these. I'm not saying i'd go to every one of these, but I could be convinced...try me!

Trying to Get Back to Normal

2008-06-05T17:53:00.003-04:00

I promise no more depressing blogs for a while after this one...

Its been a week and a half since Hayden left us and it still doesn't seem real. I think about him everyday and I can still hear his voice in my head. Mostly either yelling at Monty (his dog) or Scott (his little brother) but still, just doesn't seem real. I've been amazed at how many people Hayden touched in his days. Just look at the number of visits I've gotten at this blog over the last couple of weeks:

June 5 … 24
June 4 … 46
June 3 … 43
June 2 … 55
June 1 … 70
May 31 … 58
May 30 … 84
May 29 … 109
May 28 … 155
May 27 … 232
May 26 … 181
May 25 … 11
May 24 … 2
May 23 … 14
May 22 … 8
May 21 … 9
May 20 … 13
May 19 … 9
May 18 … 10

Almost all of those have been through people googling Hayden. Then looking at all the comments here and all of the responses on his facebook page, unbelievable. I don't know if you need to be a member of facebook to read everything, but some of the posts on his "wall" show how great of a kid he was. A couple of girls are planning on getting his initials tattooed!!! We miss you Hayden!

To pile on, my grandmother (Bubbie) lost her brother last night...on her birthday! He had been sick and in the hospital for a while, and is truly in a better place now. It's just unfortunate that she has to go through all of this right now. I love you Bub!

On a completely unrelated note and definitely not depressing news, congrats to my two favorite and most important Kim's in my life! First, my sister Kim, accepted a new job with the Federal Reserve! Finally no more 80 hour work weeks! Then my friend "Nurse" Kim is graduating (and I know I'm saying this wrong) anaesthesia school in October and just accepted a job at a hospital in Huntsville, Alabama which apparently blew her away with their offer. Congrats to Kim's everywhere!

Hayden Lee Rosenstein (1986-2008 RIP)

2008-05-25T23:29:00.011-04:00

I'm not really good at this sort of writing, but the Zaikov family suffered a pretty serious tragedy. My cousin Hayden suddenly passed away this morning at the WAY too young age of 21. Its way too early and I don't know all (any) of the details, but it really doesn't matter, my cousin was taken away from our family and it just doesn't quite seem fair.

UPDATE (5/28): As it turns out, Hayden had not been feeling well for a couple of weeks. Doctors couldn't figure out what the problem was. He was given a green light to go on a trip to Europe for a month. What the doctors did not pick up on was a virus was attacking his heart. And he died from a heart attack...at the age of 21. Even typing that out, it just will never make sense to me or anyone else in this family. We love you Hayden and you will be with us forever.

I encourage everyone to share whatever stories of Hayden you may have here in the comments section.

Swept Away

2008-05-23T10:40:00.005-04:00

I don't really have much to say. Three days, four games, four losses. That SUCKED. I did it though, I wore a paper bag on my head. The Mets were actually winning until the 7th inning or so. So I went bag-less until then. After the Braves went ahead I had the bag on the rest of the game. I won't mention that I wrote something on the back of the bag that wound up being upside down. DAMNIT!!!!!!

Oh well, off to Jacksonville for a long weekend!!!!!! I need it!!!!

Three Up, Three Down

2008-05-22T08:47:00.008-04:00

I have just learned a whole new meaning to that phrase. Have you ever done something that you know is a bad idea but you just can't help yourself? Just keep going back for more? Ok, no, I'm not talking about drugs, although...just kidding. The last 2 days, I've gone to 3 Mets-Braves games, and all 3 have been equally terrible. On Tuesday, I was lucky enough to see the Mets barely show up to lose twice to the Braves. First, was a makeup game from a rainout in April, so I got to sit in the hot sun for a couple of hours - yes mom, I used sunscreen! (although I missed a spot on my neck). Yet the Mets lost, 6-1. Former Met and currently hated human (by me and many Mets fans) Tom Glavine tried to give the Mets a couple of runs in the first inning but they wanted none of it. The Mets were actually winning, 1-0. That didn't last. They didn't even get another hit until the 9th inning! Not a fun time.

In between games we went back to my friend Patrick's car and tailgated to kill some time. Met a couple of college kids parked next to us. We chatted with them for a while, they were trying to get their grill going and had a tough time of it, it was pretty windy in their defense. Eventually they got it going and after sacrificing a couple of hot dogs (picking up hot dogs off a grill with a spatula is harder than you might think!) they shared their food and beer with us! So, not all Braves fans are bad. After hanging out drinking for a couple of hours, I met up with some other friends for the second game - Matt, Divya, Jason, Tara and Eggbert*, . I also met up with Brian, who was in town for business. He was lucky enough to get some pretty good seats in the lower section. Our seats were in the front row of the upper deck, not bad at all! But...then came the rains. Lots of it. What better way to start a second game of a doubleheader than a 98 minute rain delay???? The second game was pretty bad too. I'm not sure if the Mets knew the game had started, they were on the field, but sometimes I wonder if they were even trying. It wasn't until the 8th inning that they showed up I think, already down 4-0, they managed to make it 4-2. Only to give the Braves 2 runs back in the bottom of the 8th to make it 6-2. Which also turned out to be the final score. As if thats not bad enough, on the last play of the game, arguably the Mets MVP of 2008 so far, Ryan Church got hurt:

Damion Easley grounded into a double play to end the nightcap, but New York right fielder Ryan Church and Braves shortstop Yunel Escobar were hurt on the play. Church, who was on first after a single, tried to break up the double play with a slide. Escobar, racing toward first after he fielded the ball, had his knee collide with Church, who was left with a bloody forehead after it scraped off the dirt. Both Church and Escobar had to be helped off the field. Church was diagnosed with a minor concussion and was taken to Piedmont Hospital. Escobar was limping in the locker room after bruising his right knee.

I will say this, I have HATED Chipper Jones for a long time. But when Church was laying at second base motionless, Chipper was the one calling for the Mets medical staff to come out and stayed right by Church until he got up. So, for one day anyway, I didn't hate Chipper as much as I usually do. But that was a pretty shitty ending to a pretty miserable 11 hours at Turner Field.

But thats not all. Wednesday I went back for more punishment. But this time I brought my secret weapon. My friend Jeanie. Whenever she goes with me, the Mets win. It happened twice last year and once the year before I believe. Those are probably the only wins the Mets have in Atlanta the last few years. We got off to a good start, 1-0. Then it got ugly. In the bottom of the 3rd inning, with one out, Mets left fielder Moises Alou walked off the field. One of the strangest things I've seen. He just left. Of course, in the stands, we've got no clue whats going on. Turns out he had cramps. CRAMPS!!!!! Are you f-ing kidding me??? CRAMPS???? Ughhhhhh. It got worse from there, the Braves went up 11-2, and won 11-4.

So it's been a pretty awful couple of days at Turner Field. And for some reason, I'm going back for more tonight. But, this time I very well may wear a paper bag on my head. It's getting embarrassing!

*-Eggbert is the official name of Jason & Tara's unborn child.

Andruw Tubbo Jones

2008-05-12T14:34:00.008-04:00

I think I may have found a new hero. T.J. Simers. A writer for the LA Times. This is the second time (as far as I know) that he's interviewed Andruw Jones, and it's HILARIOUS. In case you don't know, Andruw Jones was a center fielder for the Atlanta Braves for the last 10 years or so. I've always disliked him because he appears to me to be very lazy. That's not me being a hypocrite. I'm lazy. But I'm not getting paid $18million a year to play sports. I'm getting paid a lot closer to minimum wage to count things. The last few years he's plumped up quite a bit. This past offseason he wanted a ton of money and the Braves weren't willing to give it to him, which is smart, because he sucks now! Anyways, without farther uh dew...

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-simers11-2008may11,1,6834038.column

Dodgers didn't get a care package with Andruw Jones
Struggling center fielder dismisses jeers from Dodger Stadium crowd, saying 'you play for the team, you don't play for the fans.'

T.J. Simers

May 11, 2008

Since offering to go on a diet with Andruw Jones and getting nowhere with him, I've lost 14 pounds, so I checked in with the Tubbo on Saturday night to see how he was doing on his own.>

"Have you lost anything?"

"I don't care," he said.

I shook my head in disbelief, and he said, "I don't care what you think."

"Do you care what anyone thinks?"

"I don't care," Jones said.

Saturday night the fans in Dodger Stadium booed Jones' name when the starting lineup was announced. "Don't you care that the fans in Dodger Stadium have turned on you?"

"No," he said. "That's their problem."

I suggested that it's not human for someone not to be bothered by booing fans in their own stadium, and he stuck out his tongue and made some noise.

"How do I write that down?" I said.

All together now: "I don't care," he said.

Without the fans, I said, there's no reason for you to be here in Los Angeles playing baseball and no way you're getting paid $36 million over the next two years.

"I don't care," he said. "You play for the team, you don't play for the fans. The fans never played the game. They don't know.

"Both a Tubbo and clueless, which really isn't a very good combination for the player with the highest annual salary in Dodgers history.

I tried to tell him he was taking the wrong approach with the fans here by saying really dumb things and reporting to work fat.

"Don't you understand why people are upset with you? You sign a big contract and report to spring training out of shape. . . ."

"I disagree with you," Jones said.

So I checked in with Joe Torre, and he said, "I think he could have been in better shape."

I reminded Jones that I had lost 14 pounds and even had eaten a doughnut with the 7-Eleven Kid, and how does it look when the team's center fielder has a bigger belly than the columnist writing about the team?

"Look at your belly hanging out of your shirt," Jones said. "You're probably going to die tomorrow."

"Not before I write this column," I said.

When I told Torre about some of the things Jones had said, he shook his head. "I think he may be saying one thing and feeling another."

Why lie about such things?

"I don't know if it's lying," Torre said. "I know when I have a conversation with him, he says, 'I'm OK, I'm OK,' so in essence, he's lying to me too. Because I know better."

At best, Jones might say "I don't care" because it's a defensive mechanism, but at worst, he lacks common sense, striking out with the fans once again.

As for his play on the field, the Tubbo has one home run, and so far it looks as if he has only warning-track power, which suggests he has lost something.

"If you think that's what I've got, warning-track power, then write it down," Jones said, and it always helps when I have a player's permission to criticize him. "I lost my power, I suck, I should retire."

"I hope you're not waiting for me to disagree with you," I said.

Then Jones went out, and struck out on three pitches in his first appearance at the plate. I wonder if he cared.

PAMELA ANDERSON was at the Dodgers game and hugging bench coach Bob Schaefer. I'm just here to report the facts and not interpret them. Like everyone else, I'll just have to wait for the video.

THE ANNOUNCEMENT a while ago that a statue of Oscar De La Hoya was going up outside Staples Center before Jerry West or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar didn't make sense until this week when the Anschutz Empire bought a stake in Golden Boy Promotions.

MOST KIDS are probably frightened to check into a hospital, so I took the Boogey Man to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles on Friday to show them some things aren't as scary as they might first seem.

Just as I suspected, Jeff Kent was a big hit with the kids. He got the chance to visit the bone marrow unit, and while the rooms are usually sealed off, 17-year-old Brenda was far enough along in her recovery that Kent could stand in the doorway.

Brenda began fidgeting in her bed, moving her blanket this way and that, her mother finally wanting to know what she was doing.

"I'm getting up to take a picture with Jeff Kent," she said, while working to get herself out of bed. And people think Kent is tough.

Kent had made it clear -- any day, any time -- and he'd visit the hospital to help shoot a video to better explain why Scully & Wooden agreed to donate their time and appear in the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on June 13.

Tickets remain on sale at ticketmaster.com, by the way, and why wouldn't everyone want to catch Scully & Wooden together on Father's Day weekend?

Eleven-year-old Raul, wearing a "leukemia sucks" T-shirt, took a Dodgers cap from Kent and immediately gave it to one of his visiting cousins. Kent offered another, and another, and another and Raul had a lot of cousins.

When they had all been taken care of, he agreed to take one for himself -- in turn giving Kent a personalized framed painting of a penguin. I do believe the Boogey Man was touched.

AMAZING, OR is it, the number of generous folks out there?

Avengers team owner Casey Wasserman donated $10,000 to make sure everyone at Mattel's who wishes to hear Scully & Wooden gets the chance.

The Dodgers, Lakers, Kings and Clippers, among so many others trying to help the kids' cancer cause, have each bought $25,000 tables for a dinner to precede the event.

We checked, of course, and the Tubbo will be out of town with the rest of the Dodgers, so we won't run out of food.

MISSED THE Lakers' weekend in Salt Lake City to go out for dopos with the granddaughter, who was carried off in the middle of the night to Arizona a few months ago by the Grocery Store Bagger and former daughter. Just how bad is it living in Arizona?

Over doughnuts, when I asked the 7-Eleven Kid, she told me, "My favorite place is Home Depot."

Friday Ranting

2008-05-09T11:07:00.004-04:00

Rant 1 - Last year, me and a couple of coworkers would go over to Frankies on Roswell Road to dominate in Sports Trivia many many times. We were supposed to go last Thursday but it just didn't happen. So last night we go for it. But guess what! Frankies is CLOSED! FOREVER!!!!!! I didn't necessarily love that place, but that was one of my first Atlanta sports bar experiences back in the day, and the whole sports trivia thing was fun. Supposedly they're looking for somewhere else for sports trivia. Eventually Frankies will reopen as another Taco Mac. Taco Mac's are becoming like Starbucks around here. They're opening everywhere!!!!

Rant 2 - Got a bad email from the kickball league admin. No more alcohol will be allowed at the fields...here's some of the email:

As the park districts and police departments crack down on alcohol in the parks, they asked to meet with GOkickball management to discuss the topic, further communicate their rules, regulations and city ordinances, and identify the ordinances that GOkickball players have violated. A few examples so that you are aware include over 50 citations for open container and public intoxication, disrespect of park officials and management, and multiple players having been arrested for alcohol and ended up being taken to jail for disorderly conduct.

Going forward we will not allow alcohol to be drank in the parks during GOkickball games, including bottles, cans and cups. We encourage people to visit your league bar after your games to let the fun continue throughout the day and evening. To enforce this rule and be aligned with the City of Atlanta and Dekalb County Parks and Police, the follow steps will be in place and enforced by the GOkickball management, field supervisors and referees:
1- If neither team has alcohol, the games will start as scheduled and have fun.
2- If team's have alcohol, the games will not start until the alcohol is taken off park property or put away in cars. This will subtract time from your game.
3- If a team does not remove the alcohol, the game will be a forfeit to the other team. If both teams do not remove their alcohol, the game will not be played and counted as a tie.
4- And if players do not remove the alcohol and they will not leave, we've been instructed by the police to contact them.
We hope to never run into this situation!

What fun is kickball without being able to drink???? I'm not talking about getting absolutely shit-faced drunk, but just having a couple of beers is what's different than when we were playing kickball in second grade as kids!!! And what the hell were these idiots doing that they got SO drunk that they got themselves arrested????? Well, apparently they ruined it for the rest of us so a big F.U. to all of them.

It'll probably rain for 25 seconds this weekend anyways, meaning kickball will probably get cancelled again, so it probably won't even matter anyways. (End rants)

The Long Awaited Return of the Double Feature

2008-05-08T13:46:00.006-04:00

I view movie theatres the same way I view amusement parks. You pay to get in, then you can ride as many rides as you possibly can until they park closes. Well, with skyrocketing movie prices ($9 for a student ticket!!!! LAME!!!!) something has to be done, so I do my part.

This started back on Labor Day in 1996. My old roommate Tony Rojas (if you're out there somewhere...say hi!!!!) and I went to a Tallahassee movie theatre for an unprecedented attempted triple feature. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But good lord did we pick some TERRIBLE movies to go see. For some reason I even remember all 3 of em. First was "The Crow: City of Angels" (The shitty sequel, not the original), then we saw "The Fan" (Robert DeNiro and Wesley Snipes...who knew they could be THAT bad?), then to finish things off we saw the completely awful "The Island of Dr. Moreau". I had THE WORST headache during the third movie. But we pulled it off.

More recently, 2 years ago, me, Matt and Lauren went for another triple feature. Courtney also joined us for just the first portion of the event. This time we actually saw 2 good movies. Courtney and Lauren made us include a chick flick - The Break-Up. It had Vince Vaughn...but it still sucked. We then saw Mission Impossible III...which was a lot better than I was expecting. And then X-Men III. Also better than I was expecting.

So those are my only two triple-features. My most recent double feature was way back in 2006! Me and Lauren saw "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" which would've been better in 15 minute increments...then "Stranger than Fiction" which has Will Ferrell playing a more serious, yet still funny role. It was actually REALLY good, and I wound up buying the DVD recently.

A later double feature attempt was foiled by Lauren last year when we went to go see "Knocked Up". Unfortunately right when the movie started she was beginning a fight with her then boyfriend, who I named, Re-Todd (but pronounced...well, just say it out loud, you'll get it). So after she was crying through all of Knocked Up...in a bad way...I agreed to bail. I don't even remember what we were gonna see next, it might've been Superbad, don't remember. But I do remember Lauren saying she'd owe me one. I just realized she still hasn't come through, so that's why I'm including this part of the story :)

Anyways, last night the double feature returned. And it was a successful one. First up was "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay". It was actually funnier than I was expecting. An older couple (mid-40's maybe...the guy looked like Richard Simmons) sat down just before the movie started. I said that they'd be gone within a half hour...and they didn't disappoint. They walked out within a half hour! Not exactly a movie for "adults". Luckily I don't fall into that category, so I thought it was funny. After that was "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". This actually wasn't as funny as I was hoping, a little too romantic comedy-ish for me. But it was still funny. A little too much of Jason Segel's crotchal area ("Marshall" from How I Met Your Mother). Now that I think about it, I don't think there were any boobs shown in the movie. Just his junk. I was warned ahead of time so I missed most of it :)

Who gets hurt playing KICKBALL???? Me!!!! Again!!!!

2008-05-05T13:36:00.005-04:00

After 3 rainouts and a game missed because I was out of town, I finally returned from the DL to play some kickball yesterday. And because of all the rainouts, we had a doubleheader yesterday. Luckily our team plays for fun, and isn't too competitive, hell, half the team is from other countries and don't know much about baseball, so we're there for fun, beer and more beer.

So the first game starts, we're ahead 1-0 in the 5th inning or so (we play 7). I get myself my first hit (kick?) of the year. So, I'm on first base. Next batter (kicker?) gets a hit and I took off and scampered to 3rd base. I over-ran the base a little bit, because, no one in there right mind would slide in kickball, right? After I overslid the base, in trying to get back, I did kinda dive back into third base. Only because the pitcher got the ball back and was headed my way. In kickball, if you throw the ball at a base-runner and they're not on the base...they're out. With one exception: you cannot hit them in the head. well...you'll never guess where he hit me! Yep, right smack square in the face. Luckily those kickballs are pretty soft so it didn't do much damage other than getting my glasses dirty. So, no, thats not how I got hurt...although I tried ;)

Very next play, 2 outs, I'm on third. The next batter hits a ground ball and I take off from home, kind of assuming that the play will be at first base. No such luck, they were coming after me. I saw the guy was about to throw the ball my way, so without really thinking, i dove. Head first. In the dirt. Luckily I was safe or I would've been REALLY pissed. But with the big insurance run came came lots of blood and fun scratch marks on my legs and right arm. My teammates loved it though, got high fives from everyone. Of course, no one had any first aid of any kind, so I'm just sitting there, bleeding. Someone did find a couple of napkins, so I got some water and tried to clean myself up a little. I just got to play cheerleader the rest of the game. We were up 3-2 going into the bottom of the 7th and managed to lose 4-3, so that kinda took away from my hero status I think :)

A couple hours later was game 2. Luckily we had a pretty full squad so i didn't have to play in the field, but I got 2 at bats and managed to get RBI singles in both of em, all while limping my way around the bases. But it was fun. I'm sure the 7-8 beers I had helped ease the pain :)

After the game I got a ride to my car, which was parked in front of Erica's house, so I hung out there for a bit...then Erica cleaned me up a little. Hydrogen Peroxide hurts like HELL!!!! Just thinking about it makes me squirm a little. But it was for a good cause I suppose! Then after sobering up, I went home and planted myself on the couch with some ice and watched a 4 overtime thriller between Dallas and San Jose. After the 3rd overtime, around 2am...I was kind of falling asleep, so to enhance my pain, I took a shower. Owwwwwwwwwwowowowowowwww. Finally the game ended around 2:30 (8th longest game in NHL history) and Dallas won. I was rooting for San Jose, but, whatever, I was ready to sleep!

Don't worry, I'm hoping to get some good pictures up pretty soon...waiting for them to get emailed...

Harold and Kumar, urrrr me, Josh and David Go To White Castle

2008-05-05T12:03:00.003-04:00

(Note - no illegal drugs were used in the making of this story...I swear)

First off, please be sure to go see Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (in theatres now!) and be sure to rent Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle!!!

I'm not sure why I don't own that movie yet. Living in Atlanta, the closest White Castle is in Nashville, which is a little too far for me. And who the hell wants to go to Nashville???? Chattanooga was bad enough, if I never go back to Tennessee it'll be too soon anyways. Damn tangents. Now, without further uh doo, onto our story...

Last Friday night I flew up to Newark for the Zaikov's annual Passover festivities. For me, the most exciting thing about going up there is White Castle. Down here we have a similar place called "Krystals" but its NO WHERE NEAR as delicious. Luckily this time we set it up so that I would land just about the same time as my Uncle David and cousin Josh. All big White Castle fans. We met up, rented a car, setup the GPS and were on our way. Punched in White Castle into the thing and off we went. We were officially just a couple of miles from a White Castle! Went through some strange roads, we passed a jail that looked like the White House...except brown. Fanciest looking jail I'd ever seen! We missed a turn, turned onto what seemed to be an empty road. Got to the end and it took us to a parking lot of what looked like a distribution plant. As we were pulling in, I noticed at the top corner of the building. White Castle. Yep. We were guided to a White Castle distribution plant!!!! Unfortunately it was after 10:00 and very closed. No tours, no free samples. Nothing.

Off we went, its New Jersey, there are White Castles everywhere! And wouldn't ya know, just another 2 miles or so was another one. So, back past the jail, take a couple of lefts and go through a neighborhood. White Castle should be popping up any second now! Kept driving...and wouldn't ya know it. We found a White Castle Regional Office! What the hell???? It was at this point that I knew this would be quite the adventure. We decided to just get on the highway and drive for a while and try again later. So we did. And eventually we found the lovely town of Eatontown, NJ. We got off the highway and found a real, live, open White Castle. It was the most wonderful feeling a boy can have...alright, fine, just let me relive my moment! We parked and made our way inside. We ordered Waaaaayyyyyy too many burgers...like....35 or so. In chatting with the lady behind the counter, we told her of our unsuccessful mission so far. We asked her what city this was and her reply...New Jersey. Gotta love it. End conversation. We got our food...then got a call from Alyssa (cousin) and ordered another 10 or so burgers at the request of some jealous family members who already arrived at the beach(less) house we were headed to. So off we went, devouring way too many burgers in the car on our way. White Castle must use crack in their burgers because its just sooooo good and addicting. Krystals doesn't come close to White Castle. Its no contest. And I can't wait to go back already!!!!

(I know its too hard to see in that first picture, but the bird on the sign REALLY looked like a Penguin!)

Vanilla Ice at Cowboys

2008-04-24T10:19:00.003-04:00

hahahahahahahahahahaha. No, seriously. I can't stop laughing! Gotta love this ad I saw, literally on the side of the road yesterday. But it's true. Vanilla Ice will be "performing" (I guess?) at Cowboys tomorrow night (IN KENNESAW). I've been there once, it was a situation where I swore I'd never go again, but, this is too funny. I saw him up at Jillians around 2002 or so with Tracy. The best part was him asking "the ladies" in the crowd to flash him, and the crowd just kinda stood there. HILARIOUS. I may have to suck it up and go tomorrow night.

ATL Noise: Volume 6, Issue 1

2008-04-09T00:45:00.001-04:00

It's been too long! Or maybe just the ATL Music scene has been lacking? This isn't a terrible list. I've bolded what I'm actually likely to pursue...

Thu 04/10/08 OK Go Georgia Institute Of Tech.

Mon 04/14/08 Nonpoint The Masquerade

Tue 04/15/08 Amaru The Masquerade
Tue 04/15/08 The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus The Masquerade

Wed 04/16/08 Bayside The Masquerade
Wed 04/16/08 Four Year Strong The Masquerade
Wed 04/16/08 Steel Train The Masquerade
Wed 04/16/08 The Starting Line The Masquerade

Fri 04/18/08 Feist Masquerade Music Park
Fri 04/18/08 Hayden Masquerade Music Park

Fri 04/18/08 Avril Lavigne Philips Arena (Don't Hate!)

Fri 04/18/08 Armor For Sleep The Masquerade
Fri 04/18/08 Metro Station The Masquerade
Fri 04/18/08 Saves The Day The Masquerade
Fri 04/18/08 Set Your Goals The Masquerade

Sat 04/19/08 "Sweetwater 420 Festival" Candler Park (I'll admit it, I'm just pimpin Sweetwater)
Sat 04/19/08 Last Waltz Ensemble Candler Park
Sat 04/19/08 Outformation Candler Park

Sun 04/20/08 "Sweetwater 420 Festival" Candler Park
Sun 04/20/08 Grace Potter and the Nocturnals Candler Park
Sun 04/20/08 The Jungle Candler Park

Sat 04/26/08 Motion City Soundtrack Masquerade Music Park
Sat 04/26/08 Panic At The Disco Masquerade Music Park
Sat 04/26/08 Phantom Planet Masquerade Music Park
Sat 04/26/08 The Hush Sound Masquerade Music Park

Mon 04/28/08 Andre Ethier The EARL (Only put this here because there's an Andre Ethier who plays for the LA Dodgers, so I'm curious...not exactly a common name I wouldn't think)

Wed 04/30/08 Bon Jovi Philips Arena
Wed 04/30/08 Daughtry Philips Arena

Thu 05/01/08 Bon Jovi Philips Arena
Thu 05/01/08 Daughtry Philips Arena

Fri 05/02/08 Jerry Seinfeld Fox Theatre (yea, like this isn't sold out already?)

Fri 05/02/08 Cracker Variety Playhouse

Mon 05/05/08 Flyleaf The Tabernacle
Mon 05/05/08 Red The Tabernacle
Mon 05/05/08 Seether The Tabernacle

Thu 05/08/08 Liars Lakewood Amphitheatre
Thu 05/08/08 Radiohead Lakewood Amphitheatre

Fri 05/09/08 Skid Row Wild Bill's (Really?)

Sun 05/11/08 Van Halen The Arena At Gwinnett Center

Thu 05/15/08 The Hives Center Stage

Fri 05/16/08 Conditions Masquerade Music Park
Fri 05/16/08 Meese Masquerade Music Park
Fri 05/16/08 Paramore Masquerade Music Park

Tue 05/20/08 Filter The Masquerade (Hey nurse Kim, remember the last time we saw them? I will never forgive you!)

Fri 05/23/08 The Presidents Of The United States Of America The Loft At Center Stage (Really?)

Fri 05/23/08 Be Your Own Pet Variety Playhouse
Fri 05/23/08 She Wants Revenge Variety Playhouse
Fri 05/23/08 Switches Variety Playhouse
Fri 05/23/08 The Virgins Variety Playhouse

Fri 05/30/08 Nada Surf Center Stage

Fri 06/13/08 The Breeders The Loft At Center Stage (What's with all these one hit wonder returns?)

Sat 06/21/08 Modest Mouse Lakewood Amphitheatre (Is it bad that I'd rather see Modest Mouse than REM?)
Sat 06/21/08 R.E.M. Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sat 06/21/08 The National Lakewood Amphitheatre

Sun 06/22/08 Rancid The Masquerade
Sun 06/22/08 The Legendary Shack Shakers The Masquerade

Wed 07/09/08 "Vans Warped Tour" Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Against Me! Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Anberlin Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Angels And Airwaves Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 As I Lay Dying Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Reel Big Fish Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Relient K Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Say Anything Lakewood Amphitheatre
Wed 07/09/08 Story Of The Year Lakewood Amphitheatre

Sun 07/20/08 Bryan Adams Verizon Wireless Amph. At Encore Park (Another Really? And where the hell is this place? Never heard of it)
Sun 07/20/08 Foreigner Verizon Wireless Amph. At Encore Park

Sat 07/26/08 311 Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sat 07/26/08 Snoop Dogg Lakewood Amphitheatre (REALLY? Snoop Dogg with 311?????)

Sun 08/03/08 Cheap Trick Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Heart Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Journey Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Sun 08/03/08 "Projekt Revolution" Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 10 Years Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Atreyu Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Chris Cornell Lakewood Amphitheatre (Kim!!!!! You know you're coming for this!!!!)
Sun 08/03/08 Hawthorne Heights Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 Linkin Park Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sun 08/03/08 The Bravery Lakewood Amphitheatre

Mon 08/04/08 Cheap Trick Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Mon 08/04/08 Heart Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Mon 08/04/08 Journey Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Tue 08/12/08 "Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival" Lakewood Amphitheatre
Tue 08/12/08 Disturbed Lakewood Amphitheatre
Tue 08/12/08 Machine Head Lakewood Amphitheatre
Tue 08/12/08 Slipknot Lakewood Amphitheatre

Wed 08/13/08 Nine Inch Nails The Arena At Gwinnett Center

Fri 08/22/08 G. Love & Special Sauce Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Fri 08/29/08 "The Regeneration Tour" Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 08/29/08 A Flock Of Seagulls Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 08/29/08 ABC Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 08/29/08 Belinda Carlisle Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 08/29/08 Naked Eyes Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Fri 08/29/08 The Human League Chastain Park Amphitheatre

Sat 09/20/08 Jim Gaffigan Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre

Quadruple Header Complete!

2008-04-07T17:55:00.003-04:00

The weekend got off to a crappy start. From about 4:00 on it had been raining. So on my way home from work i call the Braves ticket office to see whats the best way to find out about the status of the first of three Mets - Braves game. I was told to either call back or listen to the pregame radio show. At about 6:30, as we're about to leave, I call again and am told "You crazy, they're gonna play. Starting time is still 7:35." Ok, I guess we have no chance but to buy it. We head down to the stadium and we get about a mile away from parking when they announce that tonight's game has been postponed. As if that's not bad enough, they decided to make it up as part of a day-night doubleheader on TUESDAY May 20th. Which means they're making the game up at 1pm on a TUESDAY. Bastards! Both teams are off on Monday May 19th. I don't get it.

Saturday was the big day though. Baseball would kick off the quadruple-header. Game-time 3:55pm. I met up with my friends Carl & Alycia, and sat with them in the Lexus Level. (Which is code for fancy seats). The only important part is that the seats were covered. Because there was a non-stop drizzle all day. (Drought my ass!!!!) After the 4th inning I went over to my actual seats with Lauren and her friend Stephanie.

I did get to see one of the most controversial moments I've witnessed. The Mets had the bases loaded, 1 out. Jose Reyes hits a line drive to center field. The ball CLEARLY hits the ground and THEN into the glove of Braves center fielder Mark Kotsay. The 3rd base umpire calls it a catch and the Braves get a double play out if it. Mets manager, Willie Randolph comes charging out of the dugout for a rare argument. The Braves trotted off the field, into the dugout during the argument. Randolph convinced the umpires to discuss the play and they ruled it was NOT a catch. They forced the Braves back onto the field to continue the inning. I don't think I've EVER seen that before. It took at least 5 minutes. I really don't understand why the don't use instant replay in baseball. It would be much easier and faster than that. Each team should be allowed 1 or 2 challenges per game and that's it. You can challenge anything other than balls and strikes. That's my proposal.

I have a policy against leaving sporting events early, but I had to make an exception for this one. After all, I was headed to another sporting event! If there was any way what-so-ever I'd be able to see the full game, I'd need a quick one. Ha! The Mets wound up losing 11-5. And in a game with 16 runs and sloppy weather...that's not the recipe for a quick game. And the Mets never beat the Braves, so I wasn't gonna miss anything (turns out I missed a Braves grand slam...yippee). Thanks to Lauren's near play by play text messages, I definitely didn't miss anything.

So, 2nd stage of the quadruple-header: Philips Arena, AKA - Blueland. The last Thrashers home game of the year. My 38th game of the year (out of 41). I got there just in time for the National Anthems, which began at 7pm. Now for the challenging portion of my day. I had to completely ignore the many TV's and scoreboards within Philips Arena. Luckily we (Me, Erica, Peter, J.B. - Matt is busy protesting the Olympics in London) were sitting in a section where half of the stadium's scoreboards were blocked. I managed to only glance and see a score one time...Kansas was winning 9-6. So I felt pretty good about making it through a 2 1/2 hour hockey game without accidentally learning any Final Four scores. The game itself was pretty meaningless. The Thrashers were going to finish with the 3rd worst record in the NHL no matter what. But they'd be better off if they lost. They were playing division rival Tampa Bay, owners of the worst record in the NHL. If Tampa Bay would have won, they would've finished with the 2nd worst record instead of THE worst. Yes...it makes a difference. More on that later. The highlight (lowlight?) of the game was during the 1st intermission. Comcast's "Dating on Demand" was on hand. They played a version of a dating game, where one girl got to ask a question of 3 guys, whom she couldn't see. The questions were bad, the answers were worse. The first guy was asked, if you could be any animal...what would you be? Answer - A polar bear. Wow. He kept talking but we were too busy booing. The next guy was asked...if you could be any alcoholic drink...what would you be. We were practically begging him to say beer (he was quite the large redneck type). No, he came up with...A Bloody Mary. We couldn't boo loud enough. He said (in his redneck twang) that he's hot and spicy. The booing wouldn't end. The third guy was asked, if he could be any entree at a fancy restaurant...what would he be? I don't even know what he said. The booing was too loud. They then had the crowd text in who they thought she should date. The Bloody Mary guy apparently won the fans over. They screwed up the contest so bad that she didn't even have a say in who she would go on a date with. Contestant #2 it is. Worst intermission idea ever. Actually, there was one good twist. He had his choice...the date with the girl...or whatever was behind curtain #1. So, there wasn't really a curtain, but the redneck chose the girl. What did he pass up on? A 36" plasma TV...and a 2yr lease on a Mustang. Now, no one knows for sure if that's legit or not, but serves him right.

Oh, the game, the Thrashers won 4-1. Rookie Bryan Little wound up scoring the first and last goals of the season. Whatever that means. But the most important part of the Thrashers season is tonight. They have a 14% chance to win the NHL Draft Lottery. If they do win, they will be awarded with the first pick in the June NHL Amateur Draft. Which means prized center sensation Steven Stamkos. He's a franchise changer. So, that's tonight at 8pm...I'm sure no one will miss it. Now back to my story...

After the Thrashers game, I hurried home to watch the DVR'd final four. Got home at about 10:30. First up...Memphis vs. UCLA. Memphis was VERY impressive. I think I yelled out "wow" at least 10 times. Memphis won 78-63. Next up, Kansas vs. North Carolina. This was probably built up as one of the most exciting match ups in semifinal history. Roy Williams, was the coach at Kansas for a long time before jumping ship to UNC a few years ago. As Brian described that situation...he's like an ex-girlfriend. Well, Kansas probably had a warrant out for their arrest because they were beating the SHIT out of Roy Williams' Tarheels. It was 40-12 at one point! 40-12!!!!! There's no coming back from that...right? Well, my newly adopted second favorite college team wound up scaring the shit out of me. North Carolina stormed back to make it 54-50 halfway through the second half. But that was as close as they'd come. Kansas held on and pulled away and won 84-66.

Watching basketball without commercials may be the best thing ever. I watched 2 full games, minus commercials, minus halftime in about 2 1/2 hours. It was great. And I pulled off my quadruple header.

There was still Sunday though, another busy day. Mets @ Braves...again. 1:30. This time I was meeting up with: Lauren, Shea, Shelley, Dave, Davis...and Jill and Josh were in attendance as well, although I never did see them. Well, I did. During one of the in between innings things on the giant scoreboard, there was Josh. I wasn't thinking fast enough or I would've gotten a picture. I was really looking forward to this game because it was the debut of Johan Santana (new Mets pitching STUD) in Atlanta. So, I got a picture of his first pitch: which you can clearly see was a strike... This game went about as well as any Mets-Braves I can remember seeing. I wasn't lying when I said they ALWAYS lose. They were down 1-0 in the bottom of the 8th when Mark Teixeira hit a 2run HR to make it 3-0 Braves. Great. But the Mets gave me a bit of hope in the 9th. They got it to 3-1, had 2 men on base with 2 outs. Then, Mets newcomer Ryan Church (and a member of my fantasy team The League Dumbass) hit a line drive down the first base line...Teixeira made a diving stop and ended the game. Ughhhh. Swept again. I really don't know why I keep putting myself through these games! The Braves fans were extra classy (sarcasm) on Sunday. Check out the sign: (Warning, choking hazard...with a Mets logo)

It took a lot for me not to remind them of who has finished ahead of who the last two seasons (for those of you not keeping score at home, the Mets have finished ahead of the Braves the last 2 years).

If you really look at the buildings in the 3rd picture you can see a TON of windows boarded up from the tornado. It really is unbelievable how much damage it did and only 2 people died.

The Braves game was not the end of my sports-filled weekend, however. There was still kickball. I went from the Braves game over to Piedmont park for the game. Along the way (while stopped at a red light) I had the bright idea to check my email via my phone. And wouldn't ya know it. An email saying kickball was cancelled. That's not my favorite part. Why did they cancel it? "Muddy conditions"!!!! I was in my car, all alone SCREAMING MY ASS OFF. MUDDY CONDITIONS????? Where the F&^*( was that decision LAST WEEK when I could barely walk for the next couple of days because of the damn mud. Bastards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Weekend's Attempt at a QuadrupleHeader!

2008-04-04T15:56:00.003-04:00

Now I'm just making up words. Here's what I've got in store for Saturday:

3:55pm New York Mets @ Atlanta Braves (where I will be booing the HELL out of Tom Glavine)
7:00pm Tampa Bay Lightning @ Atlanta Thrashers (the Thrashers final home game - finally I can have a life again!!!!)

And after the Thrashers game, I will rush home, ignore my cell phone, and watch the Final Four on "tape delay" (can we please find a new term since no one uses tapes anymore?)
6:07pm - Memphis vs. UCLA
8:37pm - UNC vs. Kansas

Then combine that with another Mets-Braves game tonight and Sunday. And my 2nd attempt at kickball on Sunday...

Who gets hurt playing KICKBALL???? Me!!!!

2008-04-02T22:50:00.004-04:00

For the longest time I've been wanting to join a kickball league. Kim has been doing it for years up in DC. The main attraction this time around (as compared to the 2nd grade or so) is beer. And I won't lie...I like beer. But my kickball debut was not such a good one. Our team really had no clue. It was our first game, very understandable...but we lost 11-1. It was cold. Too cold to drink beer. (Seriously). The field was very muddy. And this is how I would meet my demise. Right around the batters box was probably where the worst of the mud was. During my 2nd at bat (do they even call it that in kickball?) I was about to kick the ball when I kind of slipped...then replanted to correct myself. Didn't really hurt at the time, probably because it was so cold. But by the time I got home, and was inside for a while, both of my knees were pretty seriously stiff. Woke up at about 4am in a cold sweat. Chugged a bottle of tylenol (not REALLY) and went back to sleep. Woke up still in pretty bad shape. Went to work, hobbled around all day, took all kinds of fun drugs. But I learned what worked better than any drug I could've tried...ICE!!!! After work, I came home, did the every 20 minutes thing with the ice on the backs of my knees and not too much longer, I was feeling a LOT better.

It's been a couple days now, my knees are still kind of sore, but I've been upgraded from "questionable" to "probable" for this Sunday's kickball game against the Blueballers. We're gonna make em look silly...because they may not realize this, but we play with red balls. Idiots!!!!

For anyone keeping track, I'm 0-2 with a groundout and a fly out so far. But I played a rock solid first base, only had trouble with the first ball that came my way, but it bounced in the mud funny! Definitely not scored an E-3!!!!

NHL Network Commercials

2008-03-26T22:05:00.001-04:00

Two weeks ago I finally gave in and paid a couple extra bucks a month for the NHL Network. It's become obvious to me that I should've done it a WHILE ago. Sportscenter and ESPN pretty much NEVER show anything about hockey. But the best part of the NHL network isn't even the highlights and analysis of the sport. It's their HILARIOUS commercials! Here's some of my favorites:

"Giving 110%"

In case you can't follow here's the dialogue of a hockey head coach talking to his players about (aboot) effort:

Alright, listen up
Today, I wanna talk about giving 110%
Giving 100% means giving everything ya got.
Giving 110% means giving 10% more than is humanly possible.
If we're gonna win as a team, we need 100% of you guys giving 110% 100% of the time.
If only 50% of you guys give 110% and 50% of you guys give 100%
I guarantee you 100% we'd only win 50% of our games

Suppose 75% of 110% gave only 50%
And 50% of the 100% gave 25%
And 75% of 110% were not feeling 100%
...then we'd be in a heap of trouble
That's why we need 100% of you guys giving 110% 100% of the time.
Ok. Let's go out and play some HOCKEY!
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Goals"

The goal in hockey is to score a lot of goals
Soccer, is played on a field, where you score goals
Field Goals are what you score in basketball when you go on a run.
Runs are what you score in baseball, which is played on a field
Field Goals are also scored in football when you can't score a touchdown which is the main goal
So, If you score a lot of goals in hockey you've achieved your goal of scoring a lot goals and THAT'S your main goal.
Ok. Let's hit the showers!
---------------------------------------------------------------
Cliches:

Why'd we lose?
Uh, well I thought we shot the lights out in the first 2 periods.
Uh, in the 3rd period we just couldn't uh
Put the biscuit in the basket
Ya know, uh, we just couldn't put the stuffing in the turkey
Or we couldn't even put the turkey in the oven
Uh, We couldn't put the car in the garage
We couldn't put the train in the station
Uh, we couldn't put the rod in the water
the lightning in a bottle.
Uh, the cat in the hat
I mean that's really why we lost tonight,
We couldn't put the cat in the hat.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The Blue Line:

Ok, listen up
Our blue line is our last line of defence
And our defensemen line up on the blue line
That's where they draw a line in the sand
But you can't draw a line in the sand in hockey
The blue line is drawn on the ice, not in the sand
But if you don't draw a line in the sand
As our last line of defense on the blueline then you'll flatline
And if you flat line on the blue line you'll make headlines
And I ain't lyin.
Ok, lets hit the showers.

---------------------------------------------------------------
The Neutral Zone:

Alright, Bring it in!
Alright, we have to improve our play in the neutral zone.
It's called the neutral zone because it's not the other team's zone
It's not our zone…it's neutral
Like…Switzerland
Switzerland was neutral during world war II
And the Swiss are very fanatical
about their timing…and their precision…and their cheese.
We have to be more like the Swiss
And improve our timing in the neutral zone
And be more precise with our passes
And not have so many holes…
Like Swiss Cheese
The more we play like the Swiss in the neutral zone
The more neutral we will be
And I am very precise about that
OK…Lets go out and play some HOCKEY!
---------------------------------------------------------------
We're Behind You

Alright, listen up
As a goalie, you have to believe
the guys in front of you are behind you
Because if they're not behind you,
Then they're in front of you.
And if they're in front of you
Without being behind you
Then you might as well be alone out here
with nobody in front of you
Now sometimes the guys in front of you
will GO behind you
but if they go behind you without being behind you
then you're in a heap of trouble.
Believe me
Ok. Let's hit the showers!
---------------------------------------------------------------
Puckey

Alright, I know what you're thinking
You're thinking…why isn't our sport called Puckey?
Instead of Hockey
I mean after all...all the other major sports
Are named after the objects that are used in them.
football after the football
baseball after the baseball
tennis after the…tennis
but for some reason our sport is not named after the puck
Logic says it should be called puckey
But its not, its called hockey
There's a reason for that
The reason is…is because
When our native aboriginals who invented this game on a cold frozen pond one day
They…they were playing and and this hawk flew down and grabbed the puck in it's beak
and flew back to its nest and ate it
And they went back to their tee-pee's and
they told their elders what happened
Hawk…eat….Hawk-eat….Hawk-eat
And that became what is now today the modern vernacular of...hockey.
Ok…Lets hit the showers!
---------------------------------------------------------------
Can't find the video for this one, which sucks because this is my favorite...

Alright, today I wanna talk about our defense
the best defense is an offense
the best offense is a defense
the reason why offense is the best defense is because
in hockey the team that scores the most, wins
And if our offense outscores their offense
they'll be defenseless
Their defense might be able to stop our offense
But it can't stop our defense
Because when we're on defense they have to be on offense
and if we have an offensive minded defense
There's no way they can defend us
Now I don't mean to be defensive
But some of you may find this offensive
we're gonna call our defense our offense
and our offense our defense
that way we'll remember to use our
defense as an offense
and our offense as a defense against their offense
And that'll totally confuse them
Ok, lets go out and play some hockey!

A First Class Nap - Weekend in DC

2008-03-24T23:50:00.005-04:00

Pretty busy couple of days. March Madness began on Thursday, which is really the only time you'll catch me watching basketball. Especially with my advancing love of hockey these days, it's taken away from my college basketball viewing (I sure as hell would never watch an NBlAme game!). I run a pretty decently sized bracket pool, usually around 80 participants so that helps drive my interest. Using my nerdy obsessive excel skills I have the power to know exactly where everyone standings after each game. So, with the way technology is these days...may as well bring the laptop to a sports bar! So I did. There was basketball to be watched pretty much from noon to midnight on Thursday and Friday nights. Friday I had the conflict of a Thrashers home game. Not that I was gonna miss it. It was also my buddy Matt's last game of the year. We got to see Alexander Ovechkin's 60th goal of the year, only problem is, he plays for the Washington Craps. The Thrashers blew a 3-1 3rd period lead and lost 5-3. So score one "L" for Operation Believe in Tankland.

After the Thrashers game, me and Matt needed food and wanted to watch basketball. We met up with some fellow Sweetwater friends - Stevens & Rochelle. They picked out a bar to go to a couple miles away, decided we'd take a cab. They had us walking all over downtown Atlanta looking for one. We walked towards the Westin, but noticed the road to our left was blocked off. So we went through the garage of the Westin to the main carport area, thinking there'd be a cab there. Nope. Roads were all closed because of the broken glass everywhere. We kind of snuck out the other side of the hotel. The street was definitely closed. Stevens and Rochelle walked ahead, me and Matt played the role of tourists. See picture - look at all the broken glass all over the place!!!! We turned a corner, trying to head back to an open street and there was a cop car sitting in the middle of the road. Me and Rochelle walked off, but the cop rolled down his window and asked why we were there. (oops). They told the cop that the guys from the Westin told us to go the wrong way. To which the cop replied "those guys are fucking retarded!" (No confirmation of the F-word was given though). Matt then asked the cop for a ride, but he had to stay where he was. Oh well. Next stop - The Ritz. We had a good plan cooked up, if anyone asked, we were in room 302. We did get the concierge to get a cab for us...and I scored a free bottle of water out of the deal! That was the end of the entertainment...I didn't really like the bar we wound up. There was a TV, but no sound and the kitchen was closed by the time we got there. The men's room had an Out of Order sign and I got yelled at for going in the women's room. Whatever. Bitches! Eventually me and Matt needed to get food, so we hopped on Marta, and wound up on the last train back towards his house. Whew! Got back at about 2...went over to Waffle House...back to Matt's couch (my second bed) and asleep by 3. Only to wake up at 5:15 for my 7am flight to DC!!!! D'oh!

I somehow managed to wake up and get myself to the airport in time. Oh, I need a shout out to my friend Jennifer. She's a flight attendant for Delta and hooks me UP!!!! I have to fly on standby, but I get whatever seat is available. If that just happens to be first class...so be it! Well, it had never happened before but it finally happened. Score! I've got me a first class seat! Of course, all I wanted to do was sleep. And that's all I did. I got a bottle of water and a pillow and I was done. Chugged the water, put my head on the pillow against the window and the next thing I know...we landed. I've NEVER been able to sleep that well on planes, but the combo of a first class seat and being on 2 hours of sleep I guess was all I needed! I guess if you're gonna look for a disadvantage of first class, since I was one of the first ones of the plane, I was the first to baggage claim and it felt like I was waiting there FOREVER. Finally my bag (aka - my bed - I was in charge of bringing my air mattress and pillows) showed up and Kim came and got me.

I don't think I ever talked about this on here but after Kim & Brian got married they temporarily moved into Kim's port-a-potty sized condo. They eventually decided to sell it and get a bigger place (Brilliant!) Well, it took them all of 5 days to sell it. So they had to scramble to find a place to live and they did a pretty damn good job! They're new place...which I'm still not sure how to describe - it's 2 stories, but its within a building of about 5 other "units". So it's not a house. Not a townhouse. Maybe a condo. I've never heard of a two story condo though. Whatever it is...it really is nice. And it's HUGE! And it's in DC! I didn't think that was possible. They've got a bedroom upstairs, a bedroom downstairs. A living room upstairs and living room downstairs - to be known as the "man-cave".

Saturday was also Kim's birthday. Later that night there was to be a birthday / basketball / housewarming party. The highlight though was the cake that Brian got for Kim. Yep, that's basically a photo shopped picture of Kim's head on a body sitting on their couch, reading some financial reports while watching her new favorite show - Real Housewives of something or other. Nicely done Brian! After a nice and well needed nap, they put me to work. I helped Brian put together a desk while Kim went out shopping for the party. I managed to keep myself out of harms way but Brian manged to splinter and staple himself. Also at some point we managed to scrape a piece of wood on their wall. Which is when I learned about Oxy-clean (I think that's what its called) Rubbed a little that on the wall and the black line we put on the wall was gone!!! After the desk was done, it was basketball time. It was nice watching Duke lose...as always. But then Kim got home and put me to work again getting ready for the party. The party was good enough for me, all I really wanted to do was watch basketball, so thats what I did. The social types were upstairs, while most of the guys were in the "man-cave" watching the games. One thing I learned is that I'm glad I don't like wine! About 9 bottles of wine found their way into their house as housewarming presents!

After bringing my air mattress with me, turns out I forgot the pump-charger, so the bed wasn't really inflated and I didn't feel like working at it anymore, so I just crashed on the couch and got a good, much needed 10 hours of sleep or so. Woke up just in time for some more basketball! The big activity for Sunday was that Kim was gonna finally teach me how to do my own taxes. I've managed to go all these years and got out of it every year! Between my dad and Kim, I've been pretty lucky with that. But, I guess after going through it, it wasn't that bad. Managed to get that done just in time to go back to the airport to go home. So, it was a quick visit, but it was a good one.

Flying back to Atlanta, again I got to sit in first class! Baby steps but I took a little more advantage of it this time. It was nice sitting there why all the poor little humans walked passed me. I actually felt important or something :) In first class you apparently get free alcohol but I drank enough the last couple of days that I didn't even take advantage of it. I did learn something though. I've always wondered why flight attendants say "we'll be by to collect any cups and glasses". Glasses? Yep. In first class, you get a GLASS! Fancy! I had about 3 bottles of water, but in that fancy glass it seemed like it tasted better than water :)

Why I'm Dumb (Part 294)

2008-03-19T16:52:00.004-04:00

Last week I broke one of my precious Sweetwater glasses (I believe this would've been #39) on my kitchen floor. I had a bunch of stuff in my hands, thought I was putting the glass on the counter...and missed. Oops! I swept up all the pieces of glass. Or so I thought. On Saturday I felt something sharp on my foot...without thinking, I wiped it off on my other foot. Ooops! Glass! Blood! Gross! Ouch! Your foot is never a good place to cut yourself. I'll survive. Scott managed to sleep through the girlish screams.

Last night I stepped on ANOTHER piece of glass. On top of that, I found a piece of glass on my couch! What the hell? So, I finally decided it was time to invest in a mop and some other cleaning supplies. I still had some Target gift cards leftover from my housewarming party (still working on those thank you cards by the way!!!!). I go to Target at lunch, ASS-U-ME-ING that the cards were still in my wallet. I get to the register...$48.53 please. (Why does that always happen to me a Target? They have way too much of my money). I open up my wallet, in search of a gift card...NOTHING. Damnit!

Atlanta, Kansas?

2008-03-16T12:41:00.014-04:00

EDIT: Ok, so I thought I was being funny, but apparently there really is an Atlanta, Kansas. So much for my jokes.

I have no idea how people in Kansas (or wherever tornadoes are relatively frequent) deal with them. Friday seemed like a regular day. It was somewhat rainy during the day, but it stopped before the work day ended. Headed over to sweetwater for after-work beer. Mmmmmm, beer!!! My friend, Scott, was supposed to be flying up from Pensacola later Friday night, but they told him no flights were going into Atlanta. I thought this was weird because at about 6:30 it was pretty much clear and sunny. After sweetwater, we went back to my friend Matt's house, to watch a Thrashers game (on TV - it was a road game). Just after the game, about 9:30, some storms picked up and just standing by a window at Matt's house, we could tell it was getting ugly out. Still, didn't really think it was anything to worry about though. It started hailing and the rain got a lot heavier. A small river formed on part of the street in front of his house. Some of his neighbors had bagged a bunch of leaves, which started floating with the river. ALL of them stopped right at Matt's car! Eventually we turned the TV to a local station to see if there was anything we should know about going on. There sure was.

The SEC men's basketball tournament was going on at the Georgia Dome. Mykal Riley, (if you click that link, ESPN says he's 4 years old) hit a game tying 3-pointer at the end of regulation for Alabama. By doing so, he literally probably saved THOUSANDS of lives. If he missed that shot. thousands of fans would've been leaving the Georgia Dome. That would've been bad because with 2:11 left in overtime, a tornado hit downtown Atlanta (Georgia, not Kansas). It ripped right through the area where the most populated spot in Atlanta probably was at the moment: Georgia Dome, Philips Arena, CNN Center, Omni Hotel, Georgia World Congress Center, Centennial Olympic Park. There was also an Atlanta Hawks game going on, but as you can tell, nobody cares about the Hawks! (Ok, cheap shot, my bad). Last year I was actually at the SEC tournament, a former coworker of mine found out one of his old college friends works for the SEC and gave us VIP passes to the whole tournament! Couldn't pass that up! For this years tournament we tried to get tickets again, but it just didn't happen. And good thing!!!!

The next 2 hours or so we were glued to the TV, watching various local stations' coverage. They all had one thing in common. They're all TERRIBLE at covering stories like this. One station kept showing clips of the georgia dome where someone used a telestrator and drew something looking like a potato. Saw that at least 15 times and still have no clue what they were showing us. The reporters on the scene were annoying. For some reason they felt the need to interview a cab driver who we couldn't understand. In retrospect, I wish we turned on the closed captioning to see if it was just us. I doubt it. Eventually we couldn't take it anymore, we were hungry and decided to go out and get some food. The skies had cleared up, so it was safe to go out. Went out for some uneventful pizza. Didn't see any kind of damage anywhere. Went back to Matt's house afterwards and just watched more crappy news coverage in hopes of seeing some good footage of something. But there was nothing. I decided it probably wasn't a good idea to go anywhere, so I just crashed on Matt's couch. Which is pretty much my 2nd bed anyways.

Scott was supposed to be getting on a 6am flight out of Pensacola, so i was gonna have to wake up early to go pick him up. At about 5:30 I woke up to some LOUD thunder and lightning. I turned the TV on and here we go again. HUGE storms were coming through and there didn't look to be any end in sight. I sent Scott a text, telling him to keep an eye on the ATL weather, and I didn't think he'd be getting here anytime soon. I just told him to let me know if he actually boarded a plane anytime soon. I went back to sleep until I got a call from Scott. The weather had actually cleared up enough to get a flight in. Not only did he get on a flight, but the little bastard wound up getting sat in FIRST CLASS. And he wound up realizing he was sitting next to the aunt of one of his high school friends. Small world. So eventually Scott's flight (after circling Montgomery for a while) got in around 10:30 and we took a little tour of downtown. A lot of roads were closed, but it was still pretty unbelievable what we saw. Sooooo many buildings were missing random windows. Very bizarre. We came back to my neck of the woods, where luckily it seemed as if nothing even happened. More serious storms were supposed to be coming towards Atlanta around 1:30pm. We had some time, so we went and got some food. 1:30 came and went and all seemed well with the sky. Still, we went back to my place to see what was headed our way. One by one, it look almost like someone in Birmingham was spitting these storms out and right at Atlanta! I haven't ruled out a terrorist attack! Storms were coming, one right after the next, luckily they were all heading just north or just south of me. These were seriously powerful storms. We've all seen radars with green, sometimes red colors. I wonder how many times purple and black have shown up?? There were reports of hail over 4" wide. Grapefruit size. The local ABC affiliate had some pretty cool graphics where they showed these storms in 3D. They were also able to use something called a "BTI" (Baron Tornado Index). It's a scale from 0-10 that gauges the likelihood of a tornado. If the number is over 7, its pretty much a guarantee that a tornado has touched down. And the number was over 7 at least 5 times throughout the day. Pretty scary stuff. Luckily, for me, all this stuff managed to avoid my house. Hell, I didn't even get any rain! At one point a siren did go off, which was odd, I didn't even know we had a tornado siren! I guess that's good to know. It was LOUD. And last for a good bit. The dumbasses that me and Scott are, we ran outside to see if we could see anything. Nothing. Still sunny. Very odd. By about 4:45 most of the damage had been done and things were finally clearing up.

Just in time for us to get to the They Might Be Giants concert at the Variety Playhouse. They had a "family/children" show at 3pm. Apparently their stage manager had to tell the lead singer to play some more songs because they couldn't let people leave because of how bad it was outside. The "adult" show was at 6pm. Still early, but apparently the band had a couple thousand mile drive on Sunday. They still played for just over 2 hours. I tried yelling out that there were more tornadoes coming that they needed to play more, but they didn't get that message. Oh well.

I'm adding a bunch of pictures below, of which I took none of them. The 7th building, is from Scott's phone, I believe that is where my roommate works. Haven't gotten confirmation from her on that though. Pretty devastating stuff! (Sorry I have no idea how to keep these pictures somewhat organized, they like to spread out I guess)

Operation Believe in Tankland!

2008-03-12T23:46:00.004-04:00

Well, as you may have realized by now, I've become a big Atlanta Thrashers fan now that I've lived in Atlanta for a few years. But it took some time. I grew up in NYC and was a big Rangers fan. I still remember where I was when the Rangers won the Cup in 1994! (Ok, even if it was just in the extra bedroom of my parents house in Roanoke, VA...I still remember being so excited but everyone was asleep so I had to be quiet!) Soon after, I started FSU in the fall of 1994 and for my birthday, I got my first hockey jersey (aka - "sweater"). It was a dark blue Rangers jersey. Up until about 2003 or so, I would wear it to Thrashers games and even root against em (which I still do the Braves, as a Mets fan...that one will NEVER change). But something happened that year. I realized how much fun the games were. The team was on the "cusp". Later on, maybe 2005, the Thrashers provided an opportunity to trade in any NHL team's jersey for a brand new Thrashers jersey. I traded my 11 year old Rangers jersey for a Thrashers jersey. You've probably seen me in it in many pictures since! And I've been a die-hard Thrashers fan since. Beginning with last season, my company actually started advertising in Philips arena, and as part of a contract they now have a suite in one corner (figures!) of the arena. Not frequently, but I've gotten to sit in the suite several times. Now this year, I've managed to (through Erica) become friends with a guy who actually works on the ice at Philips. He even gets to drive the zamboni occasionally (which apparently is a bottom feeder job that isn't as cool as it sounds). He's gotten me and some friends a bunch of free tickets. So, between him and work, I've gotten to go to A LOT of these games for FREE. With the NHL All Star Game in Atlanta this year, a couple of my friends decided to buy a season ticket package (all Saturday games) in order to have a shot at ($200) All Star Tickets. See, it all evens out. The All Star Game Weekend Festivities were worth it. And to date, I've been to all but 3 home games this season, all for good reason.

Dec 12 vs Boston - doctor's apt & parents in town

Jan 4 vs Carolina - My friend Courtney & Mike's wedding

Jan 6 vs Buffalo - My Super Bowl XLII Champion N.Y. Giants had their first playoff game at the same time as the Thrashers game. Priorities! But I haven't missed a game since.

What I'm trying to say is, I'm a big fan. About a month ago, February 15th, the Thrashers won a 10 round shootout in New Jersey. That win put them a mere 2 games over .500 and into first place in the South(L)east Division. They've one just one game since. The playoffs aren't a realistic goal anymore. Beginning with last season, the Thrashers PR department (or whoever thinks up these things) came up with the slogan "Believe in Blueland". With "Blueland" being Philips Arena. I didn't really like it at first, thought it was kinda lame. But it grew on me. I approve. Now, fast forward to current day. My thoughts are, with the playoffs out of reach, the more games they lose, the better draft pick they'll get. Introducing "Operation Believe in Tankland". Thats right. I hope the team tanks and losing as many games as possible. If they manage to finish with the worst record, they'll have the best shot at the #1 overall draft pick, where a kid named Steven Stamkos would probably help out immediately.

Now, for the bad idea segment. Last night the Thrashers attempted to have a "White-Out" at Blueland. With the idea being, everyone wears a white shirt. As you can see by the picture, there are TONS more empty seats than people in white shirts. Even better, the Thrashers were supposed to wear their white jerseys too. Well, someone forgot to tell the Colorado Avalanche (the Thrashers opponent on White-Out Night) and they just happened to forget their non-white jerseys. Oops. First of all, the whole "white-out" thing has been done. Why not have a "blue-out" aka a "smurf out"? (credit given to Divya for thinking of that one). Instead they had us all wear shirts the same color as the opponent. BRILLIANT! Well, the Thrashers lost 5-2. As if that mattered, hell, they haven't won a home game, in regulation since January 30th!

The highlight for me was this Avalanche jersey. I know its a bad picture, but the back says "Redwings Suck". The Red Wings and Avalanche have one of the best rivalries in hockey. Especially in the late 90, early 0's (did I just name it that?)

So thats about it. Does it make me a bad fan since I'm basically rooting against my favorite team the rest of the season? I don't think so. It's whats best for their future! Right?