So - everyone's psyched for tomorrow night, right? The big debate? I'm not even American and I'm anticipating this thing...
I figure it's that 'morbid curiosity' thing that makes people slow down at car accidents to try to get a glimpse of the body... We all know that George Bush can barely pronounce his own name, and we just can't wait to see him crash and burn in a heap of dyslexic confusion as the pressure of live television and Kerry's imminant tongue lashing pulverize him in front of the world audience once and for all. Hell, even Texan's are gonna say 'Damn, dat boy's dumb!' after Thursday night ... at least that's my prediction!
Of course, there's no way Bush would have even agreed to a debate, unless he's got some tricks up his sleeve, so thet might be worth watching too. I hope they're better than the old 'Three purple hearts? That don't mean nothin... you're a flipper-flopper!!!' attack. Who knows - maybe under the pressure Dubya will crack, and admit where he went after deserting the armed forces back in 72? That would be da bomb!
So yesterday I saw one of those CNN 'non scientific' polls, where they said 54% of decided voters say they're going to vote Bush, but 79% think Kerry will win the debate. The 20% of registered voters that are undecided say they're waiting for the debate to make up their minds... so if Kerry can remember to smile more, and tell America what HIS plan is for the next four years, this could turn into a landslide. Sure, if he just keeps his mouth shut and lets Bush talk, he'll win the debate (the more Bush talks, the stupider he sounds) but America already knows their president is an idiot, they're just not sure if the other guy is any better .... I'm hoping to see some fur fly tomorrow night!
I'll leave this entry with an article that came out in the Lone Star Iconoclast yesterday - that's Bush's Texas hometown newspaper.
The article is entitled "Kerry Will Restore American Dignity - 2004 Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement"
I highly suggest giving it a quick read. Hell, if even his hometown hates him....... Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha !!!!!!
On Saturday, Vanocuver broke several rainfall records - Saturday was the wettest September 18h ever recorded, infact the ALL-TIME wettest day ever recorded for any time of the year, and we set the record for the most cumululative rainfal in the month of September, ever... and there are still 2 weeks left in the month!
Ah, I know what you're thinking ... a day THAT wet would be a great day for a garage sale and a community BBQ! And that's exactly what we did. Amazingly, we made well over $200, AND the rain actually stopped for an hour during the BBQ, so all in all, the day didn't turn out so bad, considering.
On Friday night, Scarecrow Balcony had played at Pub 240 until the wee hours of the morning, so between getting home at 2:30 and getting up at 7:30, I actually got some decent sleep - but after the garage sale and BBQ, we were in bed by 9:30 on Saturday...
The gig was awesome - lots of friends, lots of new people, the other band was great, and we even walked out with $100 - which was the best paying gig of the four shows we played in the past eight days. Our upcoming Abbotsford gig has been delayed for a couple weeks, so the band will actually get to relax for a bit before hitting the road again.
Tonight Carole and I are going to see the Beastie Boys at Pacific Colliseum - it's an early show - 6pm to 9pm - which is great, because I've had a lot of late nights in the past few weeks. Getting home by ten will be a luxury!
Yeah, so, I know this blog entry is a bit of a ramble, but oh well... they can't all be pulitzer prize winners... to sum it all up, I finally had a weekend where I made more money than I spent, and I finally got rid of a lot of the crap in my basement. Now that the weather's getting so ugly, maybe I'll finally finish off that rec-roo project that has been on hold for three years...
Or maybe Scarecrow Balcony will finally record an album?
"California bans corpsehumping"
"Having sex with corpses is now officially illegal in California after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill barring necrophilia, a spokeswoman says. The new legislation marks the culmination of a two-year drive... The state's first attempt to outlaw necrophilia, in response to a case of a man charged with having sex with the corpse of a 4-year-old girl in Southern California, stalled last year in a legislative committee. Lawmakers revived the bill this year after an unsuccessful prosecution of a man found in a San Francisco funeral home drunk and passed out on top of an elderly woman's corpse."
Read all about it here... if you dare.
Okay, so it made the news - but you have to really search for it - although, you'd think that if someone tried to blow up half the senators in OUR country, it would be ALL OVER the news!
Rigged Letter Sent to Schwarzenegger
Envelopes set to ignite sent to California and New Mexico governors
Va. Intercepts Rigged Letter Bound for Governor
Virginia, West Virginia latest targets of rigged letter
Rigged-letter mailings expand to 20 states
It never ceases to amaze me how Americans are kept in constant fear by their leaders, and yet kept constantly in the dark by the media - this is supposed to protect them while keeping them vigilant? Oh... right... I forgot that Bush needs to be able to say "America is safer now" - gee, I suppose if America knew that bombs were sent to half the Governors in the country they might start to get ideas like "hmmm, that kinda sounds like terrorism..." - and we couldn't have America thinking that! They're supposed to stay artificially scared, but with a false sense of security... I wonder if it would make the news if one of the Governors actually blew up...
How it must feel to be a rockstar sometimes.
Not that a rockstar would have a show at the Fairview Pub at midnight on a Monday night, nor would said 'rockstar' have to be at work at 7AM the next morning... none the less, right now I feel like a lot of rockstars must have felt a lot of the time.
Last night was an AWESOME time. I've got to admit, I didn't think much of headlining a Monday night, let alone at a Blues pub.... but, the Fairview crowd, staff, stage and sound exceeded every expectation. I can't say enough good things about the place... they even paid us!
So why do I feel like a rockstar? Well, I think it's the general 'rundown' feeling that follows on the heels of three energentic shows in six days - or maybe it's just the hangover. Not often, but once in a blue moon someone will buy a round of shooters for the band ... and sometimes, not often, but once in a blue moon, this will set off a chain reaction where half the bar wants to buy the band a drink. Last night was one of those nights. And I can totally see how rockstars become alcoholics and drug adicts... you want to be nice, you want to be cool - if someone just spent $12 buying the band Sambucca shooters, you can't just go "ew, I don't like sambucca - no thank you" (though that's exactly how I felt) - no, you've gotta be the 'rockstar' and slam it. Then the two pitchers of beer came... there are only three people in our band, the bar gave us a free pitcher when we went on stage, and I had already spent $25 on beer while watching the first two bands ... no, I didn't really need another pitcher, but hey... you've gotta be the rockstar, right? (relax ... I wasn't driving - the drummer was - which meant that Wayne and I had to drink his portions too)
So anyway, I think I know how we caused this phenomenon, and I think I know how to prevent it in the future. You see, one of our oldest songs is called "Ashes" and we've always introduced it as "this one's called Ashes" but last night, Wayne added "This one is based losely on the event that we just had an aniversary for on Saturday" ... I thought that was way too vague, so I added "Everyone knows what happened on nine-eleven, right???" - anyway, there were apparently quite a few patriotic Americans in the audience that night, because the song that starts with "Ashes are all I see as I look out my window" and ends with "Your religion is not my problem!" seemed to be greatly apealing to them, as was evidenced by the hoots, hollars, and seemingly endless suply of free booze.
I finally got home at three AM, and the alarm clock went off at 5:55. You know what? I wouldn't change it for the world. But ... did I mention "Ugh..." ???
Hello! It's Sunday night and I've got 40 more minutes until the meat pies come out of the oven, so I figured I'd catch up on the bloggin' - but I suppose I'd better finidh the story of last week before I get in to this week ...
It was, after all, a long weekend - and we had made plenty of plans to fill up the time off. Last Sunday for instance, knowing that I wouldn't be working Monday morning, I invited BobDog over for an Absinthe party. We split a twenty-sixer of Absinthe, of course, imbibing la fie vert the PROPER way - (well, actually - not perfectly proper, but I'll get to that) while watching The Wizard of Oz and Listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon.
What? You've never heard of the Dark Side of Oz aka The Wizard of Floyd ??? Well, for the best explanation, just follow one of the last two links... but here's my 25 cent tour : Pop the video into the player, and after the 20th Centuty Fox lion roars for the third time, start the Dark Side of the Moon CD. The movie syncs up perfectly with every song, every mood, and almost every lyric. Totally amazing. Both Bob and I had head of this phenomenon before, but neither of us had ever tried it - likewise neither of us had ever had an actual evening of 'proper' absinthe consumption.... you know, the wat the old artists and poets and writers used to do it ... slow and easy... which is actually a lot harder to do than it sounds... but I'll like I said, I'll get to that later. As for The Dark Side of Oz, it's an absolute MUST SEE! It will blow anyone away.
Before we start debating whether or not this cosmic coincidence was intentional or not, let me say that I'm of the opinion that there's no possible way it could have been done on purpose. When DSotM was written in 1972, there were no VCRs, no DVD players, and infact, no CDs... Floyd could not have done it - which to me, make the whole thing even more amazing! Read through the Dark Side of Oz page to get a glimps of what's going on, but trust me - without seeing it for yourself (it's really easy to find pre-synched versions available on gnutella, mldonkey, limewire, kazaa, etc, just search for 'dark side wizard of oz') you're not even scratching the surface of the experience.... The Great Gig in The Sky is worth it alone... the song starts at the PRECISE moment that the tornado starts, and stops the instant Dorothy gets hit on the head and passes out - as the next song (Money) starts, BAM! She wakes up in colour, in Oz (Remember it was Black and White until Oz) - not only do the songs synch up, but all the action follows the beat and mood of the song - all of the lyrics describe what's happening ... it's an absolute trip! Convinced you yet? Good.
Here's one more thing I'd like to try to convince you of ... DON'T under any circumstances, EVER try to finish an entire bottle of Absinthe between two people!!! We each had about a third of the bottle over the course of maybe five or six hours - sure, that sounds like moderate consumption, that's less than eight ounces each in 6 hours - I can easily drink a case of beer in 6 hours, but that's beer... this was Absinthe. As the How to Drink Absinthe page says in it's closing paragraph, "...for all the languorous physical effects, the mind stays keen. As the clutter of life drops away, the drinker's eyes twinkle as they entertain more lofty concepts, and appreciate beauty without the twisted eyes of the office cynic. We have reached our target. If the intake of absinthe is controlled, the drinker will be up for anything, and won't need sleep until a reasonable hour, with little chance of a hangover...
On the other hand, if he or she starts lashing the absinthe back, chaos may, and probably will, ensue."
I guess 'control' takes a little practice, as chaos most certainly ensued. The most frightening thing about that stuff is that, as the author stated, "the mind stays keen" - you have absolutely NO idea that you're under it's spell until you try to get up... then you say "wow, I feel so clear - why is my body acting so drunk?" But by that time, it's already too late.
Honestly, I want to try the whole experiment again, but this time, the absolute limit is four ounces - that sounnd pretty wimpy if you're talking tequilla or whiskey, but trust me ... after four glasses of that stuff, you ain't in Kansas any more.
Well, it's a week into September now, and it has rained more often than not for the past two weeks or so. The last two weeks of summer aren't looking like they're going to be much better. We've been pretty luck though - summer started a month early this year, and she gave us record breaking sun and heat. It's sad to see her go, but she'll be back... in nine months... ugh.
I was actually pretty lucky Tuesday afternoon - the clouds cleared and the high actually reached 26 (believe it or not!) so I took advantage of it by going for a hike by myself up Noons Creek and through the bush above Westwood Plateau and Eagle Ridge. There have been a lot of bear sitings lately, so I was a little nervous, but the hike was really worth it... 300 metres of elevation gain in 45 minutes made for a good workout, but not a killer workout. Round trip was an hour an a half and about five kilometers. Hopefully it clears up a bit this weekend because I really want to get up there again - I never made it to the viewpoint Tuesday and I wanna get some digital pics of it this year... before the snow comes!
Scarecrow Balcony played the Showroom Cabaret last night with 'The Legion' and 'Lunch Bucket' - it was a really good sounding show. Having 50 people out on a Wednesday night is usually a good thing, but the Showroom still looks pretty empty with 50 people in in ... a lot more full than the Comodore though! 50 people could probably play a good game of hide-and-seek at the Commodore... LOL.
Scarecrow has another show at The Marine Club this Friday (tomorrow) and we're been offered a show at The Fairview this Monday - but that one's still tentative. The Showroom wants us back in November, Mike's Tavern wants us in October, as does Pub 340, City Limits and The Metropolatin, so it finally looks like Scarecrow Balcony got the kickstart it has been needing for the last 6 months. My brief stint with Randomblind (two gigs) has come to an end, so now that I'm dedicated to one band again, things are starting to roll!
Well, more has happened in the last couple weeks, but I gotta run for now - nobody seems to be reading this stuff anymore anyway, so y'all won't mind if I'm lazy, right?