While all of my friends dressed themselves up to celebrate Halloween this past Saturday, I drove to Lawrence to see …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead at the Granada.  I got the ticket a while back without even thinking that it would be the night to go out for Halloween.  It seems like everyone I knew got a ticket to the Terror at the Train Station at Union Station.  I was fine with it, though, because I’d been wanting to see these guys for quite some time. 

I tried to show up in time to miss the opening act, The Blood Brothers, because I’m not a fan of their music at all.  I ended up getting there to see the final 30 minutes of their set, and I have to say it was one of the weirdest concert experiences I’ve witnessed.  For starters, the music was absolutely horrible.  Awful, awful, awful.  I seriously think the two singers might have some rare case of mental retardation, Tourettes, and under-developed vocal chords all rolled into one.  The odd thing, though, was that they played with an insane amount of energy and the crowd went nuts. 

The Trail of Dead mixed up their set list quite a bit, drawing from all of their albums.  I can’t say I’m that huge of a fan of their latest (and not-yet-released) album, So Divided, but they only played a song or two off of it.  They played the first track from it and messed up a few times.  The singer told everything they were still kind of learning it and were going to stick with ones they knew.  As expected, songs from Source Tags & Codes were awesome being that it’s their best album, in my opinion.  Unlike most critics, I happened to be a big fan of their last album, Worlds Apart, and the songs they played on there were the best ones live.  They just sounded monstrous. 

The band has been infamous for playing their hearts out and breaking their instruments in the process.  Last Saturday was no exception.  These guys really went all out when they played.  It was pretty impressive.  As I left the show with my ears ringing and my body exhausted from such a hard-hitting show, I talked to my friends that went to Union Station for the party.  They were ticked off that they paid $35 for free drinks and food only to find that everything ran out by 10:30.  I think it’s safe to say I made the right choice.

I took a little time yesterday evening to check out most of the many blogs listed on Tony’s Kansas City.  It’s been a while since I’ve actually tried to view other sites from the area so I figure TKC would be a good place to start.  The list has grown considerably over the past couple of years so, while it was great to see so many people join the blogosphere, I hadn’t bothered to look at them.

Much to my disappointment, about half the links are for blogs that haven’t updated in at least the past few months.  Some blogs hadn’t updated for over a year, and a few links didn’t even work.  A handful of my friends tried doing the blogging thing a while back but gave up because they couldn’t find the motivation to write on a regular basis.  It’s clear that that’s what happened with the ones from KC. 

The good news, though, is that I did happen to stumble across a few sites that I think are worthy of visiting fairly regularly.  I normally don’t read up on people I don’t know.  It just feels kind of creepy to be able to read about the goings on in their life.  If I don’t know them then it’s got to have something that piques my interest.  I found myself looking for humor and wit a lot while looking at all the local functioning sites.  I realize this might sound rude, but I really can’t stand reading certain blogs where you can clearly tell the author is trying to impress people.  There are a lot of them out there that read like the author is aiming to get an A on a term paper or something.  If it’s your personal blog you should just let it go and stop being so self-conscious.  Anyway, this post really doesn’t have much of a point (it’s a weekend so my mind is clearly on autopilot).  I just found it interesting to see what else was out there.  I don’t think I was expecting to be either impressed or disappointed, but I think I ended up feeling a mixture of both.

I was in Detroit all week and decided to see band I’ve recently gotten into called the Archie Bronson Outfit.  It’s strange to me that not even my friends who are really into music have heard of them, but I was kind of excited to see what kind of show they would put on.  Not only was the show really good, but the night was pretty interesting, as well.

I called the bar ahead of time to check into getting tickets for the show.  The guy told me that there were no tickets and it would just be an $8 cover to get in.  This alone got me pumped because I knew it’d be a pretty small place.  While driving downtown to the bar, I was talking to my mom who was with my aunt.  My aunt used to live in Detroit and got on the phone to give me warnings about the part of town in which I was driving.  She knew someone who got stabbed there and told me to park as close to the bar as possible.  That, obviously, isn’t a very fun thing to hear.  Luckily, I found a parking spot right in front of the bar.

When I walked in, I thought I was in the wrong bar.  There were literally only about a dozen people there just sitting around watching the World Series.  The bouncer took my $8, though, and said the band wouldn’t be on until about 11 (I got there around 10:30).   So I just got myself a $2 Pabst and stood by myself to watch the game.  It didn’t take long to notice that the place was weird and pretty shady.  After a short while, a guy dropped his beer, shattering his glass bottle on the ground.  The guy turned to the head person at the bar and goes, ‘Hey, I’m really sorry but I just dropped my beer.”  The bar dude looked at him and replied, “I ain’t pickin’ it up.  There’s a broom around the corner.  Make sure to clean it well and do a good job.”  Yeah, it was that kind of place.

Benjy Ferree was the opener, and he took the stage at approximately 11:30.  The game was in the 8th inning, and everyone seemed more concerned with what was happening on t.v. than on the stage.  I thought it was pretty good, though.  His songs were pretty catchy and he rocked out quite a bit.  He played for about 40 minutes before leaving to allow time for the Archie Bronson Outfit to perform.

Once they started playing, I knew I was in for a treat.  The lead singer has a pretty bad voice which normally would be annoying.  The band rocked it, though, and the crowd loved it.  I don’t know what it is about their sound, but it’s just so driving yet melodic at the same time.  After listening to their music on CD, I was surprised it was a three piece band.  Although their set was pretty short (only about 35 minutes), it was pretty darn good (and REALLY loud).  Everyone was coming up to them after they finished to tell them how amazing they sounded.  Of course, there were only about 20 people in the room so “everyone” really isn’t all that many people, but it was obvious that I wasn’t the only one impressed with them. 

I don’t know what reminded me of it today, but I had a brief flashback of a specific time when I got grounded as a child.  Getting grounded really wasn’t all that rare of an occasion for me.  Had I been born a decade later I’m convinced I would have been one of those kids who would have been put on Ritalin so that I’d behave in school.  I was always the ornery kid who somehow always found his way in timeout. 

Anyway, we had a babysitter who would watch after my sister and I whenever my mom would go out with friends or have dates.  I got along pretty well with this babysitter, and we’d always end up doing dorky things.  One of those things happened to be making prank phone calls.  It first started with looking up names in the phone book.  We soon discarded the book and just started dialing random numbers.  This worked great until we stumbled across a gay porn hotline.  We kept calling it back because we thought it was so funny. 

Flash forward a couple of weeks while I’m sitting in my 3rd grade class.  There was this guy in there named David who was one of those guys that was too nice to everyone and kind of annoyed people.  He also wore sweatpants every day and I swear he must not have worn underwear because his little pecker would always show through his pants.  Well, one day David asked if I wanted to play after school.  I’d never hung out with this guy before and already had my group of friends I liked to hang out with. Instead of saying no, I told him to call me and give him the number to the gay porn hotline.  I thought it was hilarious. He apparently didn’t.

The next day, my mom came into my room and told me that David’s mom and called her.  The kid went and cried to his mom that I gave him a fake phone number.  I was embarrassed that my mom knew but was pretty darn mad that David didn’t know how to take a joke.  According to David’s mom, David tried to call me and instead got a voice recording of a male bodybuilder talking about how he always had one muscle that was always pumped up and hard.  I didn’t even know what that meant at the time.  I knew it meant something gay, though, and thought it was hilarious.  Needless to say, I got grounded for a few days.  I remember sitting in my room listening to all my friends play homerun derby outside my window.  It was like torture — all because some kid I didn’t care for couldn’t take a joke.

I wonder what kind of a person David turned out to be.  I wonder if he still wears sweatpants.  I wonder if he learned to take a joke.  I wonder if he himself actually ended up being gay.  What a great twist of irony that would be.  I hope he is gay.  And I hope he got AIDS.  Totally kidding.

I flew out of Oakland last Friday morning for Chicago for a wedding I was in for Jon, a good friend of mine from college.  My plane landed with just enough time for me to hop in a taxi that I had arranged to pick me up and head to try out my tux with the other members of the wedding party.  The timing worked out almost perfectly, and I was able to hop in a friend’s car to head for the wedding rehearsal.

The rehearsal went well although we only ran through once which had me a little nervous for the following day.  After the rehearsal, we drove over to the hotel where the rehearsal dinner was.  It was good to chat with friends over dinner and drinks during rehearsal.  Afterwards, they each got up to speak before handing out gifts to family and friends.  Jon got pretty choked up when he talked about his family.  It was definitely a side of him I wasn’t used to seeing.  Afterwards, we all hung out and got a picture together.

The wedding the following day went very well.  Jon and Jenny both looked great, and the service was pretty nice.  I screwed up a part when I was walking from the alter to the pew, but hopefully not too many people noticed.  Once the wedding was over, we all got into the limo to go take pictures in a nearby park.  I really liked the style of the photographer because she had us do some unique shots and poses.  This one of Jon might be my favorite, although the bridesmaid in the middle probably should have watched where she put her left hand:

The reception itself was an absolute blast.  There were a lot of really funny moments that took place throughout the night. It’s great to see old friends again and to see that everyone can still have the same kind of fun as always.  The DJ called me to his booth and started playing “Bust a Move” while handing me a cordless microphone.  It was pretty funny.  Of course, I rocked the mic and worked the crowd on the dancefloor.  Sadly, they cut the song short so the whole verse about the wedding was cut out.  Kind of a bummer.  Still pretty funny, though.

Later, Jon’s mom got me out of the dance floor to teach me how to merengue.  This, as anyone who knows me can attest, was quite a site.  I felt completely embarrassed because my whiteboy moves just don’t cut it when you’re trying swivel your hips and dance.  She was really nice about it and seemed to really want to teach me how to dance the merengue.  After I was done, I thanked her for being so nice and walked over to a few friends to sit down.  It was then that I decided that we needed to invent “chair dancing”.  “Chair dancing” is like real dancing except you stay seated for it.  Using this new style, I think it’s safe to say we boogied pretty darn well.

Towards the end of the night, Rommi, Amanda, and I were dancing on the dance floor and I kept grabbing mixed nuts from a bowl sitting on a table near us and eating peanuts.  While I was doing this, I kept changing the words of the songs to be about how good the peanuts were.  Then, “Livin’ on a Prayer” came on and we changed the chorus to “Whoa, we’re halfway out/Whoa, Whoa!/ Peanuts in my mou-outh!”  Our little group belted out the new chorus as I kept grabbing handfuls of nuts.  At the end of the song, Rommi grabbed the whole bowl and dumped them all in my mouth.  My mouth was so full of cashews, almonds, and peanuts that I could barely swallow.  It was a pretty hilarious moment, though.

At the end, the groomsmen all showed off the undershirts we were given to wear under our tuxes.

Before we all left to head back to the hotel, Jon’s parents brought around a cigar box filled with authentic Cuban cigars.  Now, I’ve never smoked a thing in my life, but I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to smoke a Cuban cigar.  Plus, you don’t really inhale any smoke when you do it so I figured it couldn’t hurt anything.  It ended up being pretty fun, and we all sat in a bar in our hotel having a couple drinks and puffing on our Cubans.

Once the bar closed in the hotel, Kurt invited us over to his room to have another drink and hang out.  What once started as an innocent, low-key hangout soon turned to a pretty impressive display of Kurt’s vast knowledge of Disney songs.  The man turned into a human jukebox as he sang different songs without missing a single word.  Everyone was pleasantly surprised, and we all sang along.  Of course, this probably isn’t a wise practice at 3 in the morning when you have neighbors on either side of you.  Soon, the security guards came and had us go back to our rooms.  It was a good way to close out a great weekend.  I’m happy for both Jon and Jenny, and I feel very honored to be a part of their big day.

I’ve been in San Francisco all week for work and, lucky for me, The Decemberists happened to be playing my final night in town.  Before heading to The Warfield last night to watch them perform, I ate dinner at a sports bar to watch game 7 of the NLCS.  The game was tight so I opted to pass on seeing the opening act perform.  The theater was old but beautiful.  I was unable to get a general admission ticket on the floor so I had to sit a ways up on the balcony on the side.  This didn’t obstruct my view at all, however the sound was a little muffled from where I was.  I only noticed this at first, but I soon forgot about it because the show was so entertaining.

Colin Meloy, the lead singer, might be one of the more fun frontmen to watch out there.  He’s all over the place when he plays guitar and is full of witty comments in between songs.  Early in the evening, he talked about how he could hear us all singing but wanted to give us some time to warm up.  He had the person in keyboards hit a note and he lead everyone in singing scales.  This happened for about 5 minutes and was hilarious.  He also grabbed the cell phone of someone in the front row who was taking a picture of him.  He then proceeded to dial up her mom in the middle of the song, held the phone up to the mic, and sang directly into it.  It was pretty great.  During a great song that didn’t make their latest album, Meloy ran around as he sang before ending up laying and rolling around on the floor.  Like I said, it was entertaining.

 The setlist drew heavily on their latest album, The Crane Wife, which is one that I didn’t know if I liked at first.  I listen to it quite often now and enjoy it a lot.  They did a good job drawing from their other albums, as well, and the crowd sang and clapped through the majority of them.  It was amazing to see a crowd so pumped up for a folk rock concert.  The only songs I wish they would have played were “July, July” and “Chimbly Sweep” otherwise I was very satisfied with their song selections.

For their finale, half of the six members left the stage while Meloy and two others played.  Out of nowhere, the band showed up in the crowd during the middle of the song, marching to the song and beating on drums.  The crowd went nuts.  They’re still touring around to a lot of cities yet this fall, and I highly recommend seeing them.

Update: Here are a couple of videos that were posted on YouTube of the show.

“The Legionnaire’s Lament”:

“Culling of the Fold” (the great song that didn’t make the new album):

The last part of them leading us in vocal excercises:

“The Landlord’s Daughter (the Island)”:

“A Cautionary Song” — clip of the closer that has a brief shot of a few of them walking and playing in the crowd (one of the guys fell down so that’s why he reappears:

The Republican party just can’t get a break lately.  Now, the Republican-lead congress has reached the lowest approval rating in 14 years.  How do they respond?  By fear, of course!  Starting this weekend, the Republican party is going to start airing an ad campaign to try to scare all of us into voting for them.  According to the article, “The ad portrays Osama bin Laden and quotes his threats against America dating to February 1998. ‘These are the stakes,’ the ad concludes. ‘Vote November 7.’

Seriously, how many times can these guys do this stuff and get away with it?  It really ticks me off.  I also love how everyone talks about the Foley sex scandle as if that’s what is going to cause the Republicans to lose in November.  I’m sorry, but I could personally care less about it.  Yes, it’s wrong.  He should be punished for it.  But I think people are forgetting that there are many, many other reasons why this Republican-lead congress hasn’t cut it.  People are upset and ready for change.  They aren’t going to vote based on the actions of some guy in Florida who gets his rocks off of having cyber sex with young boys. 

This type of stuff just gets me worked up too much.  Thank goodness the baseball playoffs are on to keep my mind blissfully distracted.  I’m not a big fan of any of the teams that are in contention but that doesn’t matter to me.  Some people think it’s funny how I like to go to baseball games in other cities without having a team to root for.  For me, the feel of a baseball game is what’s so great about it.  For anyone who doesn’t understand, please watch this YouTube video.  It’s a clip a fan took from his camera when Magglio Ordonez hit a walkoff homerun to send the Tigers to the World Series.  It perfectly catpures the passion and absolute joy that everyone felt when it happened.

I’m not in Kansas City all that much.  Because of this, I’ve barely paid any attention to the local political races that are going on right now.  I know it’s bad to ignore such things being that I’m a tax-paying resident of KC, but it’s just hard to find time to educate myself about the candidates and the important issues to the city.  That being said, I’d still like to vote but only if I can be somewhat informed.  If anyone can throw some recommendations my way I’d really appreciate it.

I had a really weird thing happen to me a month ago.  Actually, people who believe in astrology wouldn’t find it weird, but I’ve never been one of those people so I found it pretty crazy.  I was on a plane a little over a month ago to Vegas for my friend Jon’s bachelor’s party.  I was pretty tired from a long week of work and all I wanted to do was get on the plane and snooze because I knew I wouldn’t be getting to bed anytime soon once I landed.  Of course, as luck would have it, I got stuck next to two sisters who were too excited about their vacation to stop talking.  At first I was annoyed because, despite normally feeling like a pretty personable guy, I want to be completely left alone on planes.  Things soon changed, though.

“Do you believe in astrology,” the one girl asked.

“Eh…not so much,” I replied.

“Why’s that?”

“I have a hard time believing every single person born in a certain time period shares the same personality traits.”

“Well I bet you a cocktail that I’ll guess your sign in an hour.”

This immediately woke me up.  There’s no way any stranger could figure out my sign in such a short amount of time.  So the three of us ended up chatting and joking around for a while.  We talked about what we do, why we were going to Vegas, family life, etc. Every so often, the girl next to me would turn to her sister and say something like, “He’s definitely not a Virgo,” and continue talking.  Of course, I’d want to know what I did or said that would cross the other signs off the list and they would tell me things like, “Well, you don’t try to dominate conversations so you’re not this sign” or something to that affect.  It was really kind of fascinating.  After about a half hour had passed, they both got their head together and said, “You’re a Cancer!”  My jaw dropped.  They were right, I am a Cancer.  They explained to me their rationale behind their decision.  They said that the main thing about Cancer’s is that they are “genuine” people.  They also said that they care a lot about what people think of them which I found to be odd.  Once I thought about it, though, I guess I can see how that’d fit me.  If I do something to upset a friend or girlfriend I take it very hard and it eats away at me.  Of course, I bought each of them the drink of their choice, and I remained dumbfounded for quite some time.  Of course, the one cocktail ended up turning into about four as the stewardess kept bringing us free mini bottles of what we wanted.  Not only was it a good way to start my trip to Vegas, but it also helped me get that elusive snooze in before my flight landed.

I’ve only met a few people in my life who were big into astrology.  What’s really crazy to me is that all of those people were able to tell what my zodiac sign was after not knowing me very well.  Upon looking up the characteristics of my sign, I found that part of it is totally like me but the other part is definitely not.  For example, one description says, “You are the consummate home-maker. Even men born under this sign express a ‘feminine’ aspect to their character and love the kitchen and other activities that make them feel more secure in their domestic space.”  Ummm yeah.  That’s definitely not me.  I do, however, enjoy grilling.  Maybe that counts.  Aside from that, it seems to describe me pretty well.  Maybe there really is something to this whole astrology thing. 

I went to a walk-in clinic in Chicago a few weeks ago because my right ear had been hurting quite a bit.  I figured the odds were good that I somehow had developed an ear infection which I found odd considering I can’t remember the last time I’d come down with one.  Anyway, the doctor came in, looked into my ears, and told me that 1) I had an ear infection and 2) I had some wax buildup in my ears and she wanted to do something about it.  The sad thing is, I knew what was coming because I’ve had it happen before.  I must produce more wax than the average person.  Gross, I know.  I clean my ears all the time, too.  Anyway, she had my lay on my side while she dripped this fizzing liquid down my ear canal.  I hadn’t had the liquid thing done before, and I must say it is a pretty weird sensation to have liquid bubbling and fizzing loudly inside your ear.  She then took a giant syringe that looked almost like a caulking gun, filled it with water, had me hold a kidney-shaped tray next to my ear, and blasted inside my ear as the remains fell into the tray.  Once again, gross.  The doctor then repeated the process on my other ear.  Even though it sounds disgusting (I apologize to anyone who may read this and have already puked all over their computer monitor), it’s actually a pretty great feeling once all is said and done.  It was like a hi-colonic for your ear.  I’d recommend it to anyone.  My friend Nikki, who also had the treatment done once, helped recreate the experience last weekend.

The other weird thing that happened to me lately was something I am really proud to have gotten checked out.  I have always noticed that I clear my throat pretty often whenever I talk.  I always thought it was a natural thing and never thought much about it.  My step-mom, though, told me that she has always had the same problem and decided to go to an ear, nose, and throat specialist to check it out.  Lo and behold, she was told she had laryngopharyngeal reflux.  After urging me to get checked out for the same symptoms she had, I decided to follow her advice and visit a specialist here in Kansas City a couple of days ago.  The doctor talked with me a little bit and then brought in a television set with a long metal tube connected to it.  He then sprayed the back of my throat to numb it and proceeded to try to shove the metal rod as far down my throat as he good to get a look at my voicebox.  He obviously didn’t know who he was messing with.  This is a guy who has rarely had a successful throat culture done for strep because of my ridiculous gag reflex.  If they were to somehow add “gag refluxing” as an Olympic event, I can safely say (all humility aside, of course) that I would take the gold.  Anyway, after three attempts at getting this rod thing down my throat, he decided he better stop trying out of fear of me projectile vomiting all over him.  He decided to move to Plan B.

Plan B also looked kind of scary.  It was this long, skinny object that was bendable and coated with a sort of firm rubber with a light at the end of it.  The doc could also look at the end of it and see through it.  I could tell this object was going to enter my body through another orifice and immediately thought of Vinnie Barbarino saying, “Up your nose with a rubber hose.”  Only I wasn’t laughing about it.  Instead, I was petrified.  First, he took q-tips soaked with numbing liquid and shoved them into my left nostril.  Notice that I said “into” and not “up” my nostril.  He shoved that sucker so far back there that the q-tip was literally sticking straight out of my nose.  Not fun.  He then stuck this object in my nose, pushing it back where I thought it was going to poke my brain, and then I could feel it moving down my throat.  It was definitely one of the more uncomfortable feelings I’ve ever felt.  As this thing was down my nose and pressing against the back of my throat, he had me say things like “Eeeeee” and “Ahhhh” to see what my vocal chords did.  Then, he had me swallow three times.  Trust me, it’s no fun swallowing with a tube right next to your adam’s apple.  He finally slowly brought the tube back up my throat and out through my nose after what seemed like ages.  As he did so, he told me that I definitely had laryngopharyngeal reflux. 

After being told more about it, I am actually really happy that I found out I had it.  For starters, many people have the same problem I have had and never do anything about it.  I know I wouldn’t have if my step-mom hadn’t looked into it.  The scary part is that, if left untreated, the acid that has been in your throat for so long has actually been known to cause cancer.  I think I’m probably going to be safe, but I’m just happy that the pill I’ll be taking now will allow me to never need to clear my throat anymore like I used to.  From now on, if I notice someone clearing their throat or their voice frequently getting hoarse, I’ll know to point them in the right direction.

So yeah, that’s the update on the weird goings on of my health.  Thankfully, I’m in decent shape and am generally pretty healthy.  I just find some of the new findings to be odd and, yes, kind of gross.