Corner Of 16th & Grant, Denver

Last night, while walking home from work, I noticed this eerie scene and it reminded me of how close we are actually getting to halloween. The nearly full moon and the belfry of St. Paul Lutheran Church and the dead tree limbs sure created a spooky mood. My new little moon phases thing says that a full moon should be coming any day now. The bells in the belfry can be heard in my apartment. Sometimes their loud ringing is nice and they act as a pleasent type of alarm, other times they can simply be loud and headache inducing. This mostly depends on my mood, demeanor, and how much I drank the night before. I remember one morning when the bells played, to my surprise, Cat Steven’s “Morning Has Broken”. Back in June of this past summer I recorded those bells on my cell phone.

My weekend started off with a Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains, a super band consisting of Les Claypool (Primus), Brain (Praxis), Buckethead (Guns N Roses), and Bernie Worrell (Parliament Funkadelic). The show was great, the played a really long session, had some wonderful solos, a couple of good covers and was basically a full-on freak show. I went with A.P., my bro, Pandy, and a bunch of friends and I think we all had a blast. Opening the show was Gabbylala. She put on a great show playing all kinds of instruments; look for her album in 2005. After the show we all headed out to the lounge for a little nightcapper.

I slept in on Saturday consisted of yard work (raking leaves) and lazing around. I am still on the verge of a cold so I went to sleep early. By the way, that new doublemelt pizza thing from Domino’s is disgusting. Don’t try it. The chicken kickers, however, are wonderful.

On Sunday I ran a bunch of errands and then we had a pumpkin carving party. The weather was perfect to sit in the backyard with all the leaves falling around us, drinking red wine and making jack-o-lanterns. It was tons-o-fun and we have a whole bunch of freshly roasted and liberally salted pumpkin seeds to boot.

Hubs Hiding His Face In Shame After Manbunting, Sheridan Middle School, Denver

Feh. Got our asses kicked in kickball on Wednesday. Afterward a few of us sauntered overto Sobo 151 to watched the redsox/yankees series wrap up. I was too enthralled with the menu to care about who whon the game. Sobo is a Czech themed hockey/soccer bar. To bad the is no real hockey this season (Yet. Come on, keep the dream alive). Anyway, it’s a cool bar if you not hip enough for the Skylark.

I have been on the verge of getting sick all week but have been able to stave it off. This might not be so after tonight. I am, however doing much better than last year.

Last night I took it easy had a large bowl of homemade chili and sat on the couch and watched Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind. It was a pretty good flick when you take it tounge and cheek. For some reason I think the CIA is a metaphore for some person or entity in corporate hollywood but I’m probably reading a lot into that.

Goodbye all my beautiful apple pies a la mode.

I’m looking at using a news aggregator or similar type of service to start reading blogs. Has anyone had any experience using bloglines or kinja or any other type of service? Is there any other services that are better? How do you read your favorite blogs, by simply clicking on the links of your own blog, or do you use a “feed” service?

I can’t remember when or how I stumbled upon Twink. It was through the internet a couple of years ago, but I have no idea who to give credit to so I’m just going to go ahead and give all the credit to the one who most deserves it: Mike Langley. He wasn’t the first. He is definitely not the last. But from what I’ve heard, he is definitely the best: A musician specializing in usuing childrens toy instruments.

Mike and his friends create a weird, whimsical, dreamlike, fantasy-land inhabited by teddy bears, pladough snakes, laughing clowns, decapitated Barbie’s, GI Joes with lit cherry bombs taped to their backs, and the Easter bunny handing out nitrous balloons. Twink’s music jumps from carnival music to new age pennywhistle to plushy rave party to a dark terrifying cartoon theme. Twink’s music spans inconceivable distances in genre which makes for an incredibly interesting listen. Aiding in the incredible diversity in style is the huge variety in childrens instruments used to create Twink’s two albums “Supercute!” and “Twink”. Instruments/toys such as the hurdy gurdy, jaymar brownie, the pling plong, giggle sticks and the see’n’say all get used. And they all get used to great benefit through the imagination, skill, and musical sophistication of Mike Langley. KHUBS Radio is providing you with a stream of the majority of Twinks self-titled debut album and, per usual, a hard to find track by Anaphylaxis that features Twink.

And I know that you’re expecting Kitsch, but trust me, it’s not. Enjoy.

First off, I loved Thisbe Nissen’s first effort, a collection of short stories entitled “Out of the Girls Room And Into The Night“. Go buy it. Now. But I’m disappointed to announce that her debut novel “The Good People Of New York” just didn’t do it for me. It just fell flat. Glossing over he fact that at least two chapters of this novel were taken nearly straight from her collection of short stories, the story just didn’t seem to work. Thisbe Nissen seems to be long on incident and short on plot so I would suggest sticking to her short stories. Thisbe’s writing remained strong and there are moments of true brilliance, and more rarely, heart felt emotion. But the books downsides outweighed the upsides in my opinion. The pacing seemed strange, granted it’s difficult to encapsulate 20 plus years in less than 300 pages, but the speed was jerky; it slowed and accelerated awkwardly.

For a book that is about relationships, in “The Good People Of New York” Nissen did little to develop the relationship between the main characters Roz and her daughter Miranda. And to further muddle things, several characters created brief emotional relationships with each of the main characters but none of these interactions or affairs were built upon with conviction. Individuals simply breezed in and of the novel making impacts whose craters Thisbe neglected to explore.

The novel, however, was enjoyable and worth my time. I didn’t hate it but I surely didn’t love it. There were sections were Thisbe really shined (see below). I’d recommend this book to those interested in reading about mother/daughter relationships but I definitely won’t be reading it again.

It was a relatively uneventful weekend. On Friday after work I went over to my brothers and because Soph was in town. We ordered chinese food and watched the debates. We all got into a pretty good argument about racism again. Afterward I went over to G’s were we sat around and bullshitted till all of her friends left then we drank a couple bottles of wine and danced around her living room till 3 in the morning.

Saturday I headed down to the outlet stores in Castle Rock and purchased the most wonderfully ugly pair of shoes in all of Cole Haahn. We also stopped by the animal shelter and got a consultation to introduce Henry to another cat. Does anyone have any experience introducing a new cat to a cat that lives with you? Was it sucessful? That night I sat around and watched Wet Hot American Summer which was pretty funny in addition to being pretty stupid.

On Sunday I slept in and ran errands most of the day, nothing exciting at all. I fixed a great Morracan ground lamb dinner and then watched Mean Girls which also was pretty funny in addition to being pretty stupid

Sorry guys, it took me a little while to figure out how to get this to work, but this is a continuously (dynamically) updated list of my netflix info. Speacial thanks to Oscar for the plug-in.

Movies I Currently Have Rented:

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Movies I’ve Rented & My Rating Of Them:

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Movies In My Queue:

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Do you have any suggestions?

My Office, Uptown, Denver

This spring I bought a computer. A nice new Dell laptop with all the works. So loaded with the newest gadgets that it barely qualifies as a laptop. It’s more of a portable desktop. But it has one of those WiFi cards in it. Because of this, combined with the fact that I don’t have a landline let alone an internet provider, I’m constantly on the look out for hotspots. After scouring my neighborhood I found one on 17th Avenue, behind Williams Tavern. The link mentions the free brunch but fails to mention the free internet access. Anyway, last night I took a picture of my “office”; it’s that little patch of grass behind the dumpster. It’s from there that I have been replying to your emails, posting new entries, searching for cheap flights, and downloading porn all summer. Stop by sometime if you’re in the neighborhood. Though, now that the weather has cooled off a bit and the crack heads have found that little nook in the brick wall on the right, I haven’t been spending as much time there.

G’s Birthday Cake, Denver

Friday was all about holding babies, drinking wine, and eating greasy hamburgers from the Candlelight.

Saturday was all about cleaning the house (pre party), seeing my old friend Crazy Dr. Pete on a surprise visit from Seattle, G’s 30th birthday party, and whooping it up.

Sunday was all about cleaning the house (post party), a quick trip to the mall, a meal with new friends (cabbage rolls but they had a funny name) and sleeping on the couch.

The last three sentences were all about this past weekend.

Did you know that Frank Black broke up the Pixies via a fax? That’s fucking brilliant. I wish I broke up with my exes via a fax. Why didn’t I think of that. Oh yeah, cause I always the one getting dumped.

The Pixies show last night pretty much kicked ass. Watching a show at Magnus Arena is pretty much like watching a show in a large tin box, thus, it’s like listening to a show in a large tin box. Sound quality left something to be desired. I saw Janes Addiction there before and didn’t notice the sound, but it was Janes addiction, and it was Hallowen, and it was my birthday. I probably didn’t notice anything. Despite being inside a giant altoid container the sound was decent. It was loud. Just like it should be. And they Pixies put on one hell of a rocking show (or rawking is how I think the kids are spelling it these days).

They must have played for about an hour and a half and played 20+ songs. I don’t have a set list but I knew most of the songs they played. Apparently they played everything everybody wanted to hear. But Tony’s Theme. Honestly I wasn’t that familiar with the Pixies before this summer so I feel like I’ve really been invited to sit at the same table as the cool kids now. God I hope I don’t spill my milk.