Last night I joined some buddies from work for a couple of beers at the uptown. Me and my old assistant started gambling on pool. We were both raised with pool table in our homes so we both pretty good and evenly matched. Unfortunately he won the best of three and I now owe him a lunch. We the hung out with a bunch of married women that were playing pool at the table next to ours and watched the Intern or whatever that Donald Trump show is called. It’s terrible. What a waist of air time. These girls were all into it though. Afterwards I went to the January replacement bar and some old drunk guy at the end of the bar but me PBR’s cause I was able to bullshit with him about baseball. I had no idea what I was talking about but he bought it all (my bullshit and the beer). Now I know how you ladies feel.

Tonight I have to decide if I’m gong to go up to Boulder to see Hemophiliac or see Father Jones for the last time. I’m thinking I might go up to the show cause I got to eat lunch with Father Jones today and his moving away is inevitable no matter how many last times I get to see him. Depending on when the show is over I might be able to fly back down to Denver and see him. We’ll see.

Last night I had my own personal Mardi Gras. I came home and fixed a big ol’ batch o’ jambalaya while watching all the hootenanny about gay marriage on the evening news. hoo-ha. I also did the dishes and cleaned up the living room but I won’t really get into that because it wasn’t part of my Mardi Gras celebration. The jambalaya turned out great so I decided there was no better way to top it off than with a few hurricanes from the local haunt.

Well the haunt was dead, and I got bored real quickly. So I stopped by a couple of other bars which I immediately vacated when I found out they were unable to serve me hurricanes due to lack of ingredients. I finally settled on the January replacement bar. Here the bartender mixed a tall glass of coolaid on the rocks with a little rum, stirred it around a little, and set the glass in front of me and said, “Heres your hurricane, I hope it tastes ok.” I drank the supersaturated sugar liquid with nary a complaint and settled into my bar stool. After the “hurricane” was gone I promptly switched to PBRers. The woman next to me got out a laptop computer and we browsed thru the suicidegirls website because they were in town doing a burlesque show. Most of the girls were a little to much for me or Betty Paige wannabes. This comes as no surprise from a guy who thinks tattoos are a little unattractive. She gave me some beads for showing her my tits. Despite my warnings of hairy nipples she asked to see them anyway. I ended up staying at the bar way later than I planned talking to this guy who is writing a screenplay. He has a brilliant idea and expects to have it finished this fall. He was a pretty interesting guy. I unwisely gave the both of them the address to this website. I’ve done that once before. I gave a busboy at a restaurant the website address, I can’t remember why. Oh yeah, it was cause I saw him writing in a journal. I’m sure he instantly threw the little scrap of napkin away. I wish everyone of you could have come with me. I reckon it would have been a good time.

It was decided that I’ll be giving up lent for lent.

So I’ve been working on puting together KHUBS Radio for a little while now and I thought what better time to announce it than on Grey Tuesday.

See, DJ Danger Mouse created a remixed album consisting of Jay-Z’s the Black Album and the Beatles White Album, and called it the Grey Album. Jay-Z’s record label, Roc-A-Fella, released an a capella version of his Black Album specifically to encourage remixes like this one. However, EMI claims copyright control of the Beatles November 25, 1968 released, White Album. As a result, EMI has sent cease and desist letters demanding that stores destroy their copies of the album and websites remove them from their site. I personally feel that if sampled music is recorded in a respectful and artistically positive way, that artists should be able release their works without worry about copyright infringement. DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album does just that. I’m not sure what EMI is afraid of, the Grey Album is a completely new piece of art wonderfully different from what the Beatles created. I can’t imagine the Grey Album could have any effect of on the sales of the incredibly popular (and rightfully so) White Album (except maybe introduce a few hip-hop fans that have somehow escaped the unavoidable genius that is the White Ablum).

The point is we cannot allow these corporations to continue censoring art; we need common-sense reforms to the copyright law that can make sampling legal and practical for artists. So for my part, in participation of GreyTuesday, which is sponscered by Downhill Battle, you can listen to DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album by clicking here or the KHUBS Radio link over there on the right for a pop-up to listen to while your doing other stuff. Enjoy!

Friday I worked a little late into the evening and spent a quiet evening at home. I watched How To Lose a Guy In Ten Days. It was cute, laughable, fodder to wind down my week. I can appreciate an occasional fun chick flick despite how generally contrived and predictable it is.

I was up (relatively) early on Saturday and headed up into the mountains for a day of skiing. I met up with A.P. and his wife and the two kids. We all ate an early lunch together and then went out to the carpet lift to play with the kids and tech them how to ski. The boy pooped out before he even got his skis on but the girls were gung hoe and couldn’t get enough. It was great getting a four year old and a six year old interested in the sport. Both and A.P. agreed the whole secret to getting the youngsters started is just making sure they stay warm and are having fun. Most of the skills and athlectics come later. At first you just have make sure they want to come back. Afterward me and A.P. went to take some turns on our own. We got about four additional hours skiing the ‘S’ lift at Copper Mountain. Traditionally, one of our favorite areas. It snowed most of the afternoon and this made for some good skiing but it also made traffic a bear. It took me two hours to get up to the mountain in the morning and three hours to get back. It was a long day. When I got back into town I went out and grabbed a couple beers. I ended up staying out later than I expected, drunk dialing Jami for old times sake, and waking up on my couch at six in the morning.

I spent most of Sunday running errands, grocery shopping, watching TV, and reading. I was a pleasant weekend for a change.

I went out and grab a couple beers last night. I started out at the hippy bar, they were having their birthday with very little fanfare. Every once and a while one of the bartenders would scream out “Happy Birthday Sancho’s” but no free drinks or party favors or nothin’. Lousy hippies. I did have a pretty interesting conversation with some dude at the bar that spanned everthing from how cold minisota is to the Gaia theory. Afterwards I went to the old haunt. Here I met a school teacher from Manhattan and I tried to help him develop his idea for a children’s book. It had something to do with a bunch of cartoon kids who were at a summer camp and then get lost in a cave. All the kids would be colored primary and secondary colors and each of the kids would behave the opposite of their colors typical expectation. For instance the red guy would never get mad, the blue guy would always be happy and the yellow guy would be brave. We also talked about making the kids all different shapes too. It was pretty funny. I was hating it this morning though.

Yesterday the IT person here at work deleted the entire list of my personal contacts from my computer. They weren’t on the network so they are irretrievable. Gone for good. Dooced. Six years of collected phone numbers and addresses: distant family, old girlfriends, close friends who have moved away, christmas card crap, long forgotten email addresses, everything. No more. Funny thing is, I’m really not too pissed about it. Something inside me says I should be, but I’m not. I guess I feel like if it was someone I haven’t talked to in years, well then, it’s probably not that important to talk to them again. Or is it? Some of the more essential info, important people, I have in other places. And somehow, for reasons that don’t have a logic behind them, I feel like I’m getting a little bit of a clean slate. Just a little. Maybe it’s just one broad swipe with a big, spongy, eraser on this messy chalkboard of mine. But in some way it actually feels good. To some extent it’s relieving, Somewhere a load has been lifted.

This has been one of my more action packed and fun weekends in a while.

On Saturday I woke real late having not got in bed till 4:00 am that morning and then tossing and turning till 5:00, or at least that was the last time I looked at the clock. At around two I called Jami and then my brother. He and a bunch of friends were going to a concert that night. This was good news as I was fearful of spending St. Valentine’s night by myself. At around 4:00 pm I headed out and bought a couple tickets to the Moe./Galactic show at the Fillmore. I then went over to my brother’s to party it up for a while before the show. There was about ten or so of us, or so, that ended up heading to the show. We only caught about half of moe.’s set, which didn’t bother me cause I’ve seen them a bunch of times already. And actually they really didn’t play anything that surprising or amazing. Galactic was sweet though. They are such a fun funky band and I was boogying down almost the entire night.

I spent the majority of Sunday recovering from the night before. I spent the afternoon laying on the couch, getting pizza and sodas for everyone at my brothers and walking Michelle’s dog around. The evening was spent the same way, minus the sodas, pizza, and dog.

I had Monday off due to president’s day so me and Lama and his girl headed up to Winter Park for another day of skiing. The snow was good but not spectacular. Lamma is a great skier and T did a wonderful job keeping up on her snowboard. She did exceptionally well considering we didn’t ski anything but the bumps all day. This made for a challenging day but was tons of fun. They’re a great couple to hang around with and we all had a blast.

On Friday I went over to Uncle Squiggley’s. It was a going away party for the Jones family. They’re moving to Atlanta. Mother Jones leaves today with the baby, Father Jones leaves at the beginning of March. I don’t think they’ll be coming back for anything more than visits. Mother Jones has tons of friends and family in the Atlanta area and Father Jones has a brother and other friends out there. I’ve known father Jones for around 15 years now (give or take a year or two) and he has always been a dear, dear friend to me. The point is I’ll miss him terribly. He was the first person I called when Sabrina dumped my ass. We have been roommates and confidantes. The two of us have shared more funny and tragic moments than either of us would ever be able to recall. He has brought me to the emergency room on more than one occasion. I’ve saved him from hypothermia. Maybe someday a few of these crazy, wonderful, weird memories will make it here. Chances are they won’t. The point is I’ll miss him terribly. A lot of people showed up to Squiggley’s to say goodbye. A handful of us stayed up till the wee hours shooting the shit and sharing stories and memories. It never really got weepy and sentimental, which is surprising considering the hour and amount of alcohol consumed by the others. However, Father Jones will be staying the night sometime in the next couple of weeks so we can have a whole evening to reminisce, we are both prepared for it to be enjoyable and terrible. So I guess the point is: I’ll miss him terribly.

I watched both part one and part two of the X-men movies over the past week. I don’t know. I was never really into comic books and super heroes and crap. These kinds of things never really held my interest too much. I had a couple friends in elementary school that would collect and trade comic books. They would keep hundreds of them wrapped in plastic; stored in a cardboard box on the top shelf of their closet. Occasionally we would finger through them if we were bored with ping-pong, or catching crawdads out in the ditch, but I never read them. My brother had a handful of 3D ones that were pretty fun mostly for there novelty value. But also because all the women drawn in them were exceedingly busty and curvy, and were wearing skintight, metallic, underwear that would supposedly protect them from attack tigers and wizard spells. For some reason I never really bought into the whole “Hall Of Justice” thing. But give me a pillowcase full of Legos and I’ll waste five straight hours building a space base. Anyway, the movies were a pretty entertaining way to waste five hours too(no space base included).

These are pictures from my day of skiing the other week.

Please, somebody tell me they saw the Anna Nicole Smith interview on Larry King Live last night. Oh, my god that was painful. Anna may have lost a lot of weight, but her head is still full of rocks. It got to the point where Larry King was actually answering his own questions cause he was tired of waiting on her extremely slow and muddled responses. At one point she was referring to her pussy as a biscuit. Here is the actual transcript:

SMITH: OK. Well, OK, they had a cake of me there, you know, a naked me, and they had — it was naked and they had the biscuit, you know, the biscuit and the boobs, and I was standing by the cake, and there was this guy there, and he’s like, oh, you want me to show you how to eat biscuit? I was like, sure. Sure. Show me.
KING: We’re approaching halftime at the Super Bowl here, Anna. I think it sounds a little wild.
SMITH: What?
KING: It sounds — that was just a start of the party.
SMITH: That was the start of it. Do you want me to finish telling you about the cake?
KING: No.

Larry King was baffled and had to stop her story. About half way through they brought out her lawyer and King directed most of his questions to him, seeing as how he could actually answer them.

Christmas lights are strung on the moulding. They are plain white and don’t flash. I have a fake plastic tree in the corner. But I have seven or eight real plants in other corners. One of these plants, on the window sill, is dead. But I haven’t gotten rid of it yet. I have a porcelain green monkey holding a turnip. I have a cluttered desk. I have to dust. I have some sort of strange instrument that can’t be played. I don’t think. I have overdue bills my heart can’t pay. I have a corner-shelf filled with colored glass. None of it is usefull. I have a wood and wrought iron coffee table. And matching end stand. Both haven’t been taken from me yet. Though they should be. I have a box full of blankets. And a box full of magazines. Another full of photographs. I have a suitcase record player. A coffe cup stolen from an all night restaurant. I have tropical tempatures on the coldest of days. I have the perfect lamp for a 25 watt bulb. A dripless candle that smells ok. And I could use more light. I have a taken down the drapes. Because I like to look outside. An acoustic guitar on a stand. I’ve got only 2 photographs on the walls. But I don’t want more. This room has a lifetime full of memories. A ratty sofa that nobody really enjoys. Often open windows. Sometime there’s a phone call from far away. “So what did you do today?” There are always shoes on the floor to trip over. Pools of my life gather in nearly every available depression. I have games. But I don’t play them often. Maybe I’ll open a jigsaw. I have a warm embrace. My ceiling has few right angels. And a fan. Which makes it nice to stare at.

It’s been a fairly nice weekend. I kicked of Friday night with a rum and coke at the Warwick Hotel bar because…. well because it’s fun to drink at hotel bars sometimes.

I spent most of Saturday in sweatpants watching movies, reading and catnapping. A couple of walks around the neighborhood inssured that couch-rigormortis didn’t set in.

Today I went to go return some christmas gifts at the mall. And it may seem late to be returning gifts, but it’s actually pretty early considering some of the gifts were from christmas 2002. Surprisingly, I didn’t have many problems with the returns seeing as how some of them didn’t even have reciepts. It has been nearly a year since I had been to a mall and it kinda wigged me out. It took about twenty minutes before I actuallly started to feel comfortable. It was a bit overwhelming and I thought everyone was looking at me so I didn’t know where to place my eyes. It was real interesting when David Byrne was talking about shooping malls in true stories. How shopping malls have replaced the town square as a meeting place for modern society. Shopping malls are happy, muzac laden, centers of economic certainty. A place where you can bump into a friend while purchasing the latest fashions. And there is always plenty of parking.

I’m over at my moms now, doing laundry, fucking around on the computer and watching the grammys - which is probably the worst produced awards show I’ve even seen. The sound is terrible. Many of the acts were all sonically screwed up. Celen Dions “mike check” episode was hilarious. But over all the sound is just so meesed up it’s hard to enjoy.

I’ve basically been snowed in the for the last few evenings. We only got like three or four inches worth over the last couple of days, not enough to actually snow anyone in, but it was enough to keep me from wanting to go out. I spent some of my recent indoors time staying late at working and doing some design shit. I manage to trudge out to the corner bar for a beer last night.

The night before I watched a really cool flick called True Stories. First off this movie was starred in and directed by David Byrne. And being a huge fan of both his music and his artwork may have effected my opinion of this movie, but I thought it was great. It was “A film about a bunch of people in Virgil Texas” who are observing the states sesquicentennial: the 150th anniversary and “a celebration of special-ness”. David Byrne did a wonderful job with his perfect alliteration, straight face, and odd-ball comments - “This car is not a rental. It’s privately owned”. Yet, he still makes his unabashed annotations on on mass-consumerism, fashion, architecture, corporate America, and marriage without being satirical (for the most part) without being pretentious. The quirky characters were incredibly entertaining. Make no doubt, this movie is a musical, with some of the songs written specifically for the film. My favorite was “Dream Operator” sung during the fashion show. Anyway, great flick, go rent it.

Augusten Burrough’s first memoir, Running With Scissors is a paradox. The novel is filled to the brim with the awfulness and horrors of modern life. Pedophilia, excessive drug use, child abuse, rape, animal cruelty, exploitation, abandonment, sexual deviancy, coprophilia, mental illness, and manipulation all have there place in this novel. But somehow, despite all of this dreadfulness and misery, Augusten’s story is heart wrenchingly hilarious. The entire novel is filled with hope and laughs. Any sort of pity for Augustus is always followed by at least a chuckle. And despite all of the abuse, very little of it is done with intentional cruelty. At no time is this book ever boring, it’s simply (or not so simply) intelligently crafted entertainment. But then again, I’m a rubber-necker at train wrecks.

After his insane mom and deadbeat, alcoholic father get divorced, Augusten is sent to live with his mother’s psychiatrist, Dr. Finch. Living at the Finch’s delapitated home are a host of Dr. Finch’s patients, children, and “wives”, all providing Augusten with varying degrees of hopefulness and despair. By the end of the novel Burroughs discovers that during adolescence, without an adult around to tell you what not to do, freedom is just like being trapped.

Basically, Burroughs has created a wonderfully entertaining novel. I’d recommend this to everyone but my Grandma. Now, if you’ll excuse I’m gonna go perform some bible dips.
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