Back from New York

So I just took a vacation with my wife to the East Coast. It was pretty sweet. We drove through Pennsylvania and visited a bunch of states, Boston was AWESOME, (saw a Red Sox game, if you're into sports you know how epic that is). But the main attraction on the East Coast is New York City.

I really don't have anything specific to say about New York, but I thought I'd just ramble about it for a bit. It's an interesting place.

So first of all, it is INSANELY crowded, and the traffic is nuts. What we did (which I highly recommend if you ever visit) is got a hotel just outside the city. It was in like Tarrytown or something, just half an hour out of NYC. The hotel had a shuttle to the train station, which we then took into the city. The train is pretty cheap, and kinda fun to ride. MUCH less stressful than driving. Grand Central station is pretty sweet too. It's bigger than a lot of airports.

Anyway we just walked and took taxis, which are also really cheap. We also took one of those little carts pulled by a dude on a bike, which was really fun, but also really expensive. Like REALLY expensive. We also had these tour tickets where we could get on and off these double decker buses whenever we wanted. Getting around NY without a car is NOT an issue.

The tours where cool, I recommend them all. We did a night tour on a bus, pretty amazing to see the city all lit up. We took a boat tour of the harbor and saw the statue of liberty and ground zero. We also went to the top of the Empire State Building (102 stories!). Very cool. Your ears pop from the pressure like on an airplane it's so high up.

I also had a hotdog from a street vendor. It tasted just like every other hot dog I've ever had, but it was the experience of it that was just cool. I also had a horrible poop that night. Coincidence? I think not...

But to wrap things up, Times Square is amazing, especially at night. There's so many lights it's like daytime. There is some mucho awesome stuff. The billboards are HUGE and there's about a million advertisements for movies and tv shows for some reason. So many awesome stores. The M&Ms store is 3 stories tall!

Anyway, I don't know if I'd want to live there, but I think EVERYONE needs to visit New York City before they die.

Oh and my wife and I totally wore matching "I <3 NY" shirts. LOL We're cool.

Michael Jackson Nirvana Mashup

My blogs tend to have absolutely nothing to do with ANYTHING current. And this one continues the tradition.

Rachel Gray came in the other day with a Michael Jackson shirt on and we got to talking about the king of pop. I'm into really weird and obscure music, and it reminded me of an amazing song: "Smells Like Billie Jean" a remix mashup of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit with MJ's Billie Jean. It rocks. Two legends who've passed away in one song. I just wanted to share it with the world.





P.S. I have no idea what that skull train thing is. Just ignore it and enjoy the awesomeness.

The Easter Bunny is REAL!

If you have kids, or maybe you are a kid, you may doubt the existence of the always cool Easter Bunny. I'm not sure why you would be suspicious of his liveliness, I mean you're getting free candy, don't mess with it.

Aaaaanyway, I am here to tell you he is indeed alive and well.

When I was like 6 or 7 one Easter morn, I was just chilling in my room, starting to wake up, and I HEARD THE DOORBELL RING!!! I dive out of bed, and fly downstairs trying to catch the Bunny. I didn't see him. However, there were two overflowing Easter baskets for my brother and me! I grabbed 'em and ran upstairs to wake up my parents.

Now here's why I know the Easter Bunny delivered those baskets: My parents were sleeping. Even if they were faking it, I had run downstairs and back SUPER FAST. And the way that house was set up I would have seen anyone trying to sneak back up to their room. There's no way they could've rung the doorbell and got back up there.

THE EASTER BUNNY IS REAL!

...or some random weirdo dropped off the baskets. I like the first idea more though.

What's up with this Train?

Ok, this is SUPER random and has nothing to do with anything remotely current, but I wanted to talk about it.

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the song "Drops of Jupiter" by Train. Yes I know it's like 10 years old. Awesome song though.

Here it is with the lyrics. Pay attention.







Good song. But I was listening to it the other day and came to a realization: It DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE! And here's why, this verse right here:

Can you imagine no love, pride, DEEP-FRIED CHICKEN,
Your best friend always sticking up for you
Even when I know you're wrong?

Can you imagine no first dance, freeze-dried romance
Five-hour phone conversation
The best SOY LATTE that you ever had, and me?

Right there! He talks about deep fried chicken, and a soy latte. Come on now Train. No one has both of those. If you are eating fried chicken, you don't care about being healthy with soy.

"Oh, I just polished off that bucket of KFC, but real milk will just do me in, gotta go with the soy milk!"

Or if you are such a health nut that you drink soy lattes, there is NO WAY you'd touch anything deep fried. You know how bad for you that stuff is?

Anyway, I just noticed that the other day. I told you this blog was random. It just bothered me. That's bad continuity Train, just poor writing.

Concert Fail

Once again, it's been forever since I've written anything. I'm a noob.

Aaaaaaanyway, last weekend I went with my wife and our good friend Stephanie to the Three Days Grace/Breaking Benjamin concert at Joe Louis Arena. Breaking Benjamin is my wife's favorite band, so we spent some big money on "gold VIP tickets", which gives you a t-shirt and poster and stupid stuff, but the real reason we paid for this was for early entry. EARLY ENTRY. We get to go in before people with general admission, which is great, because I don't want to have to fight people to get to the front. Expensive, but worth it.

So they email us the tickets and this nice little message that says to be at the box office to check in no later than 4:30. We're there at 4. We show them the email, the box office dude says, "oh ok. just wait". Things are great.

Then it's 4:30 and nothing happens. That's fine. They're running a little late.

Then it's 5 and we're getting worried. Gates open to the public at 6, and there's a HUGE line out there. There's like almost 50 people here in the box office room waiting for the same thing we are.

I ask what the hell is going on. They say they don't have any of the paperwork or wristbands or anything, basically they have no idea how this early entry is going to work.

Then it's 5:30. Everyone is freaking out. The box office people are not helpful AT ALL. We ask what they can do, can they call someone, ANYTHING. They say the bands people haven't dropped anything off, and there's nobody to call. NOBODY. Really?

Well they called a cop because everyone was getting pretty mad. Which I thought was funny, because A: These people paid a ton of money to see this concert, and aren't going to miss it by starting a freaking riot, and B: if there was a riot, one single cop isn't going to do jack.

So finally it's 10 minutes to six, and I say screw it, we're getting out of here. We go up the stairs to the entrance where there's a huge line, and we just go up to the front. Luckily there was a lady there with wristbands for people with floor seats. We show here the email and out tickets, and she says how sorry she is that the box office people suck, give us wristbands and tell us to around to the west entrance.

We run over there and there's also a big line. We just run right in the door. There's some security people there, and they too have no clue what is going on, and that no one told them anything about early entrance. They call over some guy to see if he knows what's up. He doesn't. He calls over another guy. It's like 3 minutes to the gates opening at this point. My wife and I flip out on this poor guy, and they say fine, you can go in first.

We run in all the way up to the barrier in the front, and a crowd of people come in behind us. So we got our early entrance. About 30 seconds before the general public.

Super stressful to say the least.

It ended up being an awesome concert, we got some sweet pictures, and a guitar pick from TDG. My wife paid a security guard $10 for a bottle of water, some chick passed out next to me and I had to lift her over the barrier, a crowd surfer tried to steal my hat, and some guy accidentally touched Stephanie's boob about 100 times.

Good times.

Super Annoying Artsy People

So the other night my wife and I went out to Cheap Charlies after the the Icehawks game. And we sat next to the MOST ANNOYING PEOPLE EVER. It was really entertaining listening to their conversation. (The good gentleman "simply ADORES Tim Burton")

Now I know you have seen these d-bag artsy type people before. They're all over. This particular couple were SC4 theater/ballet students in probably their late 20's. Now there's nothing wrong with being 30 and going to SC4. That's pretty awesome actually, good for you. I went to SC4. It's a great school, but it's freakin COMMUNITY COLLEGE. They accept EVERYONE. These people where acting like it was the most prestigious university in the Ivy League.

Anyway, I won't go into detail about this particular conversation, but I will give some tips on discovering S.A.A.P.s (Super Annoying Artsy People). They are really really fun to listen to and make fun of. Try it, you'll laugh.

1. Clothing. Look for scarves. They love scarves, no matter the weather. Also kind of weird hats. Or pretty much anything from Hott Topic. (although not all Hott Topic apparel clothed people are SAAPs. They could just be emo kids or something. Nowhere near as entertaining.)

2. Hair. Guy SAAPs will usually have facial hair. It's always really neatly trimmed. Whether a goatee, moustache, or full beard, it is disturbing tidy.
The women SAAPs will 9 out of 10 times have short, kind of jaggedly cut hair. You know what I'm talking about. I actually like that style a lot, it just happens to be the haircut of choice for know it alls.

3. Conversation. The only TRUE way to tell a Super Annoying Artsy Person. The big give away: an incredible amount of self importance. They think they are the most intelligent, sophisticated, and knowledgeable people in the world. They are EXTREMELY amused with themselves, and tend to tell stories with an amazing amount of detail and side stories woven in, but in the end have ABSOLUTELY NO POINT. You'll be able to tell right away. They believe themselves to be the authority on pretty much EVERYTHING.

So yeah that's about it. Try and scope some out, and just sit and listen. You'll feel better about yourself.

And if you happen to be a SAAP, no offense, I'm sure you're a great person once we get to know you, but just listening to you, you are not actually awesome, you're a huge loser.

Some profound and thought provoking thoughts about Jon & Kate Plus 8

They both need to shut up and go away.

The End.