About seven or eight years ago I was at a party when a girl I had a heavy crush on handed me a small coffee table book. After stating that the book somehow reminded her of me, I flipped through it. I really liked it and was flattered that it was me she thought of when she first viewed it.

Ever since then I have been in pursuit of this book.

Unfortunately, I was never able to remember it’s title (or illustrator). It was a children’s picture book with no words. I’ve searched through entire children’s sections of several bookstores looking to both give the book as a gift and to buy for my own. I haven’t had any luck until today, when I found these scanned-in pages while surfing the internet. Does anybody have any clue who the author/illustrator is? Maybe the name of the book? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I copied the pages for you to view below.

UPDATE: Kasey and Giyjun found it! The book is titled Zoom and is Illustrated by Istvan Banyai (if you’re into design/illustration you should check out his website)

Denver makes the nasty list again, and I’m not sure I should be proud or ashamed (mostly ashamed). That is to say - I love that Denver knows how to party, I hate that we can’t do it responsibly.

Men’s Health magazine graded each state on the deadliness of it’s drunkards and Denver ranked first. The listing took into account death rates due to alcoholic liver disease, how many citizens regularly down five or more drinks in a sitting (CDC), drunk-driving arrests (FBI), the percentage of fatal accidents involving intoxicated motorists (U.S. Department of Transportation). and the MADD report card of state efforts to cut down on excessive drinking. This is how the report card shook out:
100 Denver, CO - F
99 Anchorage, AK - F
98 Colorado Springs, CO - F
97 Omaha, NE - F
96 Fargo, ND - F
95 San Antonio, TX - F
94 Austin, TX - F
93 Fresno, CA - F
92 Lubbock, TX - F
91 Milwaukee, WI - F

The Colorado Rockies are entering into the world series for the first time ever tonight. Exciting stuff. I’ll be watching the game and cheering on the Rockies. Will you?

I too am embarrassed and a bit disgusted with how the ticket sales for the Rockies world series home games went (as many of you are). Right now there is no real way to let Rockies management know how disappointed it’s fans are with how the whole thing has been handled. Here is my idea: every Rockies fan boycott next seasons first nationally televised homegame. Simply don’t attend. This will hurt both the rockies managements ego and their pocketbooks. We’ll have to wait for the 2008 schedule to come out before we find out if this game will be opening day or not (if so, plans might need to be changed) but regardless, if enough people do this, it’ll let rockies management know how upset us true rockies fans are. What do you think? Another website to check out is Crashtober if you are interested in trying to do something about it.

In the mean time, go out and root for your favorite team!

Below is a photo I took I took while watching the Rockies win the National League Championship. Also below is a quick video I took of the scene (unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries and I only got about three seconds of video).

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When you simultaneously play the two Nickelback songs “How You Remind Me” and “Someday”, which were released two years apart, you will soon discover that they are 90% the same song.

Nickelback, you lazy, talentless bunch of wankers. What, did you think nobody would notice that you’re recycling your hideous dirge and selling it all over again to your deluded fan base? You bastards, you’re taking advantage of those tone deaf MTV brainwashed twats who are too thick to notice you’re releasing songs that are EXACTLY THE SAME as the ones you recorded earlier.

NPR has a great take on this as well.
Here is a link to an .mp3 of the combined songs by Nickelback.
As an added bonus, this is a link to two Linkin Park songs played over each other.

But all this song similarity stuff is really nothing new. If I have any advice for a budding guitar player, which I don’t, it would be to learn how to play “Louie Louie”. The chord progression known to musicians as I-IV-V (The Eternal Medley) has been used in so many hit songs it should be considered abuse. A popular use of this progression, I-IV-/V-IV-/ad nauseum, is known as the ‘Louie Louie’ and is used in songs such as “Hang On Sloopy”, “Twist and Shout”, “Wild Thing”, and a ton of other songs with very little variation in rhythm.

So I guess, in the end, it’s not all that strange that Nickelback has songs that sound similar. What makes it nerve wracking is that Nickelback has actually plagiarized themselves (if that is even possible). What makes it disgusting, is that Nickelback fans don’t really seem to care and they continue buy this piece of crap music.

My girlfriend hardly ever reads this blog. She knows about it. But I think the stuff I post here has little or no interest to her. I believe she read a lot of the old stuff when we first started dating, but none of it was as juicy as she had hoped it would be. In fact, I don’t think I even have any old girlfriend pictures on here. I mean, that’s what you’re looking for when you sneak through your significant others stuff, isnt it? Anyway, I think she only stops by once a month just to make sure I didn’t post those nakie pictures of us.

When we had the big storm last December she stomped out in the middle of the night, during the heavy snowfall and took pictures of our lawn ornaments - the ladybug, the funky flamingo, and the glowing orb. When she came back inside she handed me the camera and said, “Check it out, it’s for your blog”. I figured since she just came back inside from a blizzard, the pictures weren’t the nudies I was hoping for. They are, however, the first girlfriend contributed entry, so for that you should be thankful, because if she reads this, I’m guessing it’ll probably be the last. Enjoy.

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Free tickets to Cirque Du Soleil.
Getting paid to pour beer at the Great American Beer Fest.
Free tickets to the Avalanche Vs the Red Wings.
Reindeer hotdogs.
Free tickets to the CU Buffaloes Vs Baylor.
Tickets to the Kan’nal show on Friday.
A hot tub night up in Vail.

I was aware that CBGB’s was closing soon, but it wasn’t until last sunday when I was surfing the net that I found out that one of my favorite ole punk bands would be one of the last to play at the infamous venue. Bad Brains played there on Monday & Tuesday of this week. And to top it all off MVD Entertainmaent released Bad Brains - Live At CBGB 1982 just three weeks ago. You can watch it it’s entirety below. The first 30 seconds tell you all you need to know, but I suggest you do like I have all morning, and crank this shit up the whole way through!

Not only was the Bad Brains show this week one of the last shows at CBGB but it’ll probably some of the last shows by the full line up. See, it’s a well know fact in the punk rock world that the lead singer, HR, is absolutly off his rocker. Completely mad. This can be witnessed in this video of Monday’s show were he wore a motorcycle helmut for a duration of the concert. You can see they rocked it out on Tuesday though. As you can tell the both the band and the venue are not what it was in 1982. I’m just glad I had a chance to go there during my trip to NYC this summer.

CBGB’s is dead, long live CBGB’s!

I’ve never been afraid to talk about my favoritism toward the “reality” style of television. My interest in them has spanned all genres and styles. So it may come as no surprise that I would actually try out for one. Well, I never thought I would, but it might not surprise you.

Yesterday, G and I went down to the Teatro Hotel to try out for the travel channels new “1000 Places To Visit Before You Die” show. Both G & I are well traveled and have few serious responsibilities, so this looked like a great opportunity for us. You know, quit work and travel the world for four months on somebody elses bill. This was right up our alley.

Now I am well experienced with casting calls - I went through two very arduous tryouts for the Littleton Children’s Theatre at the tender young age of six or seven, where I proved my talent in order to win demanding roles as a goober pea in Brer Rabbit, and a punk-robot-type-thingy in some play I have nearly no recollection of (Thank God). Despite my expansive experience in “the industry” we bombed yesterdays casting call.

I don’t consider myself ugly really, but I didn’t know that the casting call went out to all the modeling agencies in Denver. Yikes. Everyone waiting around in the lobby was so perfect it made me want to puke. These were all actual TV type of people with headshots and “representatives”. But the best part is when we went in for the interview.

“Sit closer, take off your coats, we want to see what you look like” I was just hoping they wouldn’t make me spin around.

They asked us a series of questions that were relatively easy to answer and then they stumped us with this one, “What do you guys have to offer the show? You know, you would be the hosts, why would people want to watch you?”

G and I just turned and stared at each other blankly. Finally I blurted out something about being smart, and quick witted, and able to think on our toes. It was one of my worst displays of “thinking on my toes” ever. I continued to blab for what seemed like forever. It was more like my toes were doing the thinking. After jammering-on for about two minutes too long, G said something that finally shut me up. I can’t remember what she said because I was so dumbfounded I have blacked it out from my memory.

Then they got us with this one, “Where would you guys like to travel?” G said Africa and then started talking about some sort of Angelina Jolie type of stuff about culture and saving the world type of crap. Then I said, “Well my answer would be something of the opposite.” Here, they seemed to light up, thinking there might be some sort of good dynamic or drama that our relationship could add to their show. I quickly deflated their hopes by following up with, “I would like to go to Malaysia or Indonesia cause I just want to lay on the beach the whole time.”

I could just imagine what kind of ratings they would get by broadcasting my skinny, pasty body laying awkwardly in an uncomfortable beach chair occasionally dipping into the ocean to get the sand off my ass. 30 minutes of that. That’s what I told them I wanted.

For the rest of the interview I babbled incessantly while G tried to recover from how horribly everything was going. Not surprisingly, it was a short interview. Expect to see us in the very first episode where they show all of the idiots who tried out but are laughably under-qualified.

I finally made it onto Boing Boing. Well sort of. This is what was published:

UPDATE: Hubs writes, “In the alpine areas here in Colorado we have pink snow too. However, here it is an algae called chlamydomonas nivalis that gives the snow a bright pink hue. It’s called watermelon snow and surprisingly enough it also gives the snow a watermelon flavor that is easily digestible (in resonable quantites).” Link

So I was expecting all these hits. And then for my server to get overwhemled. And then for me to have to shut down this blog. And then I’d become famous for losing my blog to algae, kinda like dooce was made famous because she was the first to get fired for blogging even though she really wasn’t the first. And then I’d be the coolest guy ever, probably.

Instead I got 9 hits from Boing Boing today. Maybe it’s because I don’t know how to spell ‘reasonable’ or ‘quantities’.

If you want to learn more about watermelon snow check this out.

Oh yeah, while I’m thinking of it, I have nothing against dooce or kottke, I mean, I read them when I’m really bored sometimes too, but something tells me they don’t know how to have a good time. So sleeeeeepy!

You heard it here first. A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend told me….
Nick and Jessica Simpson are separated. She was fucking Johnny Knoxville during the entire filming of “Dukes Of Hazard”. Word is that Knoxville is real down on himself about breaking up the marriage. I’m thinking he wasn’t down enough to enjoy it.

Remember, you heard it on Hubsville first. Expect it to hit the tabloids in about three weeks!