Solid Gold & Other Random Thoughts...

So I went to see Solid Gold at First Ave on Friday night. Well first while I was waiting for the rest of my party, I grabbed a beer at Seven Sushi next door. Oh how I love swanky over-priced bars. I took a seat at the bar between the foreigners who don't understand tipping practices (that's racist) and the ragtag group of hot women and sexually confused men (metrosexual? just a silly code word for a closeted wanna be). All of them drinking cosmos that they think should be a deeper color or red despite the fact that it is a martini and should be filled with liquor. I'm sure they payed like $12 for it, why they wouldn't want all that liquor for whats the price of a 750ml of vodka in most liquor stores, I don't know. I fact why even go to Seven Sushi in the first place? I have enjoyed their happy hour, sure, but if I realized that it was going to cost me $6.50 for a Heineken I probably would have just brown bagged a forty and hung out with some bums outside the Timberwolves game until my peps got downtown (there were more homeless people outside the game then there were fans inside the Target Center). I guess most of the women inside Seven were pretty hot, what men won't pay to be near them I guess.

Oh well, Seven aside, Solid Gold show was awesome. If you haven't heard of them, check out their album Bodies of Water. The show was sold out, though you couldn't tell until the second band came out, The Hood Internet. Pretty good DJing group, though it ran probably twenty minutes too long. Some highlights of their set included playing Modest Mouse's Float on vocals over Kanye's Paranoid beat and Tag Team's Whoop There it is over LCD Soundsystem's Someone Great. Great stuff indeed. I definatly give them props for their wide range of tastes, including songs from Ratatat, Michael Jackson, Talking Heads (fa fa fa fa fa), and even Cyndi Lauper. Can't wait to see Brother Ali next week.

Just finishing up Season one of Mad Men. Great show. The only think I hate more then Donald Draper is Pete. Glad to see Cooper tell Pete off about trying to blackmail Draper though. The penultimate episode Nixon vs. Kennedy was probably the best of the season. With the great blackmail storyline, Draper's morally conflicted past, the election night debauchery at the office and the nerdy married guy who looks like Seth Rogan actually getting some action. Funny, smart, smooth and tense. Great show. Too bad Peggy is getting fat as she starts getting more Copy work to do. She probably is carrying Pete's asshole baby.

Not sure way, but Frank Sinatra has been my white noise sleepy time music this past week. Nothing like hearing that a lady is a tramp or him tell you that he like making love to random women he simply glances at (Strangers in the Night). Though I don't know if it gets better than Fly me to the Moon or My Way. So soothing. I think I may just take a nap right now. Be nice an rested for the Vikings as they trounce the Lions (now only the second worst team in the league!). With their one win, the Lions should be singing the It Was a Very Good Year.

The first day of the rest of my life...

So Monday was the first day I have warn glasses in about eighteen years. It is also been roughly ten years sense I had contact lenses to correct my vision. I've warn them for about a grand total of two days and the only think I am sure of is that my eyes sucked quite a bit.

Actually to be more specific it is my right eye that isn't keeping up its end of things. It's like the having anti-lock brakes. You know that its important to have, but until it is actually needed, you don't really notice if it isn't there. Well I got to the point where it needed to get some help or it may stop working forever. Guess there was some black ice on the road.

Now I tell people my right eye is lazy, which it is, but they assume that means that it drifts and wonders. Not so, its just you're uncle that is really fun but never amounts to much. My left eye is the brother that supports the whole family, but unfortunately, is at risk for getting burnt out. So here I am, sitting inside the ghetto Lake Street Pearl Vision, pupils dilated, looking at unisex glasses, trying to find something not too hip, not too dorky. I kid you not there at one point was only two white people in there, one working, one trying to buy new contacts sans prescription. After a heated fight between them, it ended with the male customer storming out, yelling at the woman working behind the counter, telling her to shove the contacts up her ass.

So I finally settle on a nice brown pair of glasses, but of course there are a million different kinds of lenses. Plastic, polycarbonate, reflective, sun coated, self tinting, fiber-optic, polyorchid, the works, pumpernickle, honey glazed, etc. Since I was eight when I last wore glasses, and I'm pretty sure I went with a style akin to Estelle Getty, I just started yessing and no-ing things based on my own b.s. cheap styles.

When I get my glasses, the woman asks me how they feel. I say fine. This is based on my 2nd grade knowledge of what eye wear should feel like. 12 hours late of pushing my glasses up my nose every ten minutes like Professor Frink ("The colors children", "Glaven!"), I had realized they in fact didn't fit well at all. Plus all my glasses wearing friends are (justifiably) starting to make fun of me for my new look.

Aesthetically, I'm satisfied. But otherwise, I don't know. Apparently my eye can't even be fully corrected, which sucks. I have an astigmatism, which I have heard of but have yet to look up on wikipedia. Half of the reason for these glasses is to protect my golden boy left eye. Which makes me wonder if I should get some rec-specs for when I play sports(you better rec-spect me).

So I have a new challenge of keeping my a.d.d. hands from pulling my glasses on and off every five minutes and also keeping my glasses from sliding down my nose every two minutes. Its a tough battle. I do look way more respectable and scholarly (according to Chaus anyway). If I'm spotted with a pocket protector though, someone please slap me. My balance of nerdy, athletic, emotional, and stoic is what makes me positively Libra. If my scales get thrown, then I'm just a stupid Pisces. With those silly fish apposed to each other. Like one one salmon is confused about which is upstream. A real Libra would take too much time to figure out which direction is which is go the wrong direction. In fact I've been thinking about this way too much. Guess I'm still a Libra after all. One whose vision is now closer to balance.

Friday Night Double Feature

It doesn't get much better then watching Gus Van Sant's biopic Milk and following it up with Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

This is what is wrong with movies today. Paul Blart is a formulaic, mostly humorless, slapstick, pile of shit. Milk is a smartly made, dramatic, humorous, subtle, and even headed look at gay rights and a key figure at the head of it, Harvey Milk.

There was more humor in on scene near the middle Milk then in all of Mall Cop. The scene involved Milk (played by Sean Penn) and fellow San Fransisco Board Supervisor Dan White (played by Josh Brolin). White approaches Milk after Harvey's 48 birthday party quite drunk and harassing him. Not only did the scene balance humor, tension, and the two parties different sides, it does so effortlessly and realistically. The whole movie felt like this to me and deserves every accolade it has received.

To get back to my original point Mall Cop made over 180 Million Dollars. Milk made 54 Million. Mindless fart jokes 1, smartly written , acted, and directed movie with a great civil rights message 0.

Catch 22: The Farve Fiasco

Sigh. anyone else would have done. Yet I'm not sure anyone else would have be able to do the job that he is currently doing. Let's start from the beginning.

17 years with the Packers, 7 division titles, 3 time MVP, 2 Super Bowls appearances, winning one of them. There is no doubt that he is a remarkable player and I have the utmost respect for him. But he accomplished all of this against my Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings- Packers rivalry is easily one of the greatest rivalries ever. Red Sox- Yankees, Ali- Fraser, Lakers- Celtics, Hamilton- Burr(short lived), Martin Luther- Roman Catholic Church. All huge throw downs. And being able to be a part of the Viks- Pack rivalry my whole life has been the cause of much anguish and jubilation. So at the root of that hatred of everything green and yellow comes a distaste for those who represent those colors. Mike Holmgren, Bubba Franks, KGB, the late Reggie White, Sterling Sharpe, Shannon Sharpe (through osmosis), Antonino Freemon, and chiefly Brett Farve.

Now that he is the Captain of my Vikings, I find myself torn. I like Tavaris Jackson. I think he has shown lots of potential when Brad Childress and Offensive Coordinator Darrell Bevell call plays within his strengths. But would he have helped the team to a 7-1 (should be 8-0, if it weren't for lucky ass Pittsburgh) record. Probably not. 5-3, maybe even 6-2, with the weapons we have (Rice, Peterson, Harvin, Shiancoe) and a still stellar defense. But 7-1, and arguably a top 5 team in the league right now. No. This is where the biggest conflict comes from.

Farve being the leader of our team is like General Lee moving to the North, Magic Johnson throwing alley oops to Kevin McHale, Babe Ruth playing for the Red Sox... wait, skip the last one, you get the point. I can't help but love how efficiently the offense is being run this year. Rice looks amazing under Papa Farve, but I can't shake the looks from Wisconsinites saying that we had to take their quarterback to be successful. Or that this all amounts to some sort of revenge tour from Farve. I even heard someone say it is Farve actually sabotaging the Vikings from the inside like Leonardo DiCaprio in the Departed. Farve should hope that situation doesn't play out, or he, Tavaris, Childress will all be dead, with only Rosenfels left to run the team into the ground.

I'm trying to get used to it. Fourth quarter theatrics don't help. Ultimately the best case scenario involves him just handing the ball off to AP, so I don't have to directly root for him. But as has been seen, he is needed to make this team great, which they have certainly shown flashes of. Sigh. Maybe I would feel better about it if it hadn't been such an ordeal to get him here, between the year with the Jets, where they would have to lose draft picks if he came here, to him being on tv practicing with high schoolers in Mississippi, to his eventual arrival via O.J. Simpson style Bronco cam.

I guess murder scenarios aside, I will continue to swallow my pride and root for the team I've followed since before Farve was a Packer. But Just know Cheeseheads, I not overly happy about it.

Mad Men: So hot.

Everything about this show is amazing. I heard it was good, but didn't want to jump into the middle of the show. I'm now on to the 4th-6th episodes of the first season and I'm totally hooked. Costumes, design, music, acting, humor, drama, Don Draper's (Jon Hamm) dreamy eyes. It's taking me forever to write this since I'm watching it right now. Jon Hamm. What a douche bag, but if he walked through the front door right now... I don't know that I wouldn't sleep with him.

It almost makes me want to start smoking, I feel like even a pregnant woman could get away with a Lucky Strike and a Martini in hand and the Surgeon General would offer her a light.

My only question right now is why exactly Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) would sleep with Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser). Easily the worst person on the show. And January Jones has a sexy superhero name and the body to match. Got to get back to watching.

A Whole New World...

We'll, that's not actually true. When it comes to blogging, I've actually made two previous forays into the nonsense. Nonsense of course being a topographical land mass more than the time waster (that it is). I used to simply Rant about randomness for a few months, get tired of doing it, and then quit. So, if I stay true to self, some time around President's day I'll probably just stop. Just like that. What happened Eric? None of your business. In fact, you're welcome for the entertainment and few minutes of distraction.

So what to write about? I dunno. At this point, I'm really just doing my insomniac thing and after reading some crappy blog i got linked to off of Digg.com, I thought, " I can do that crap again." I used to mostly Rant about stuff on my page on the infamous The 711 website, but if I'm actually going to keep this up, I should probably be less constricting.

What I will tell you is when trying to find the website that was my second blogging foray, I stumbled on a gem of a blog. Simon Says is what google threw at me first. This thing is awesome. Apparently someone throws a blogger awards. But the only people seem to be Asian. Which would seem to make sense given the blogger looks like he host the Malaysian Family Feud and the links on the side read like a Chinese buffet menu made love to a family of backpacker rave DJs. But I digress. There is an award for regional blog, despite that it already seems to be quite regional. I think I'll throw an awards ceremony in Minnesota and give out awards for east of the river and west of the river (but what about Lake Itasca Bloggers?). And the girl who won most influential... a blond Asian. Boo. Certain groups of people don't need to be blond. If I were to make a Venn diagram for this situation, one circle would say white people, the second would say everybody else and in the middle/conjoining circle would be the hair colors black, brown and white or grey(dependent on your Gandolf preference). Now I know that Rhode just said out loud
"That's Racist" and I don't care. Know you're limitations, just ask Melissa Joan Hart. That's why I will never grow out my hair (so stop asking).

Well first one is done. I'm getting tired now, so it seems to have done the trick. Hasta manana.