Band name...

How does "The Exploding Toads" sound? Band names are fun. I should just come up with a pseudo band name for every song I've ever written. And get a separate webpage for each. That would be hilarious. Well, I've got a wedding to go to now, so I'll blog at ya later.

Beatallica

If you haven't heard of them yet, here's a link to all the FREE mp3s! - http://www.mp3search.ru/album.html?id=15631 I'm goin to see them tonight. I'll give a show review and also a "tim's new job" review next blog. Oh, and I saw Hitchhikers Guide tonight. Really fun, but don't expect it to be much like the book. They really "movie-ized" it.

Whistle while we...

Off to work today. It's almost like going back to school after summer vacation. I always liked the first day. No real responsibilities. Just meeting everyone and gettin used to the place again. And since I'm used to pressing snooze in the morning for about a half hour, I set my alarm accordingly. But the first couple days I'll be ready to get up right away, so right now I have about a half hour to kill. I really miss school. I went down to State Street a couple times last week to see if EarWax had the newest Teen Idols album, which they don't. Seeing all those students walking around to their classes was a real sensory overload for me. I miss the times I'd see at least five people I knew walking past on their way to some other class. I miss the times when on any given day I could get together with some friends and it didn't have to be a special occasion. Well, hopefully I'll meet some musicians to play with at Captel. It's the kinda place where a LOT of musicians work. Kinda like Kinko's was, I guess. Only this place has a few hundred employees, and each Crapko's had about 15. Speaking of music, I've decided I'm gonna try to have two bands, so that means I'm gonna have to find twice the musicians. Wish me luck with that! I already have about ten songs to play in the "good" band. And only about four for the "evil" band. We still don't have a name for the band yet (Chris the guitarist and I). Hopefully something will stick once we get a drummer and bassist. I have a lot of good band names, and I already picked one for the "good" band. But the "evil" band is gonna have a lot more minor key, faster, more serious songs. The stuff we have so far is almost No Use For A Name-ish. There will still be some poppier fast punk songs, but they may seem out of place with the other stuff. I don't care. I'm not out to impress with this band. Just wanna try something different. With the other one, I'm gonna do almost all of the songwriting, so there will be a lot more "Tim" in the songs. Which of course means more Ramones, and maybe a dash of Elvis. And monkeys, Dan C., LOTS of songs about monkeys...

Music

Doin' some more punk website surfing and came across Parry Gripp's solo project. He's the singer from Nerfherder, one of my all-time favorite bands. Okay, I love heart-felt rock anthems and clever lyrics about life and love and powerful vocals that make your skin tingle and your fist pump in the air and music that is respectable and worthy of our money. But I also like this.. http://www.coolcds.com/artists/parrygripp/
hahaha... holy shit. That is the best, most horrible thing I've heard in a while. I'm gonna buy it.

My shallow self...

Alright, I had all these deep philisophical things I was gonna blog about, but then I totally forgot what they were. Maybe they'll come back to me. So, I'll just take this moment to tell you all that Me First and The Gimme-Gimmes are fuckin awesome. I'm listening to their latest album "Ruin Jonny's Barmitzvah". They do punk covers of Auld Lang Sine, Strawberry Fields Forever, and Heart of Glass. Heck yeah! Also in punk news, three members of The Teen Idols, minus the guitarist who left, are starting a new band. I still have to get the Teen Idols' latest album. It's more of the same, but I still like it. Pogo-punk is one of my favorite genres. I think.

Improv Everywhere

Okay, I know I just wrote about it saying you should check out the website, but I just read some of the missions and now I must say you HAVE to read about them! It's fuckin hilarious! I especially like the one where they have Anton Chekov do a reading at, and meet-and-greet outside, a Barnes And Noble. See, he died in 1904. All the "agents" that do the pranks tell what they saw or heard as far as crowd reactions. I bet you would see stunts like these in Madison. It's a weird enough town. Not as strange as New York, I guess. I think my favorite "mission" is the Mobius one. Go to the website! NOW!

A few things.

1.) I heard a radio show on NPR called This American Life. They were interviewing a guy from Improv Everywhere, a group of actors and artists in New York who go around to public places putting on "shows" simply because they can. I think it's fuckin hilarious, but you have to read about them on their site to understand what the hell they do. Here's a blurb from This American Life's site about one of Improv Everywhere's missions...
---A group called Improv Everywhere decides that an unknown band, Ghosts of Pasha, playing their first ever tour in New York, ought to think they're a smash hit. So they study the band's music and then crowd the performance, pretending to be hard-core fans. Improv Everywhere just wants to make the band happy – to give them the best day of their lives. But the band doesn't see it that way. Nor does another subject of one of Improv Everywhere's "missions."---

2.) Well, I finally broke down and got a job. I've been searching for something that will pay decently, but since none of those crappy opportunities came through for me, I had to take the crappy opportunity of Captel. Actually, it will be rewarding, not too difficult (once I get the hang of it), and the people there are fun. I've already met a lot of them, since Erika and Dylan both work there. But, the pay is shit. There's still a possibility one of the jobs I've applied for will get back to me, but I couldn't keep holding my breath. I can always leave Captel if that happens. I guess they have a LOT of turnaround. And like I always say, "ONE GOOD BANK HEIST" would really solve all my money problems. But if it comes to that, I'll definitely share the wealth with all of you, my friends.

3.) Today Dylan said "Skatoonzy the Euppet". Search the internet all you want. You will never find the meaning behind this. I'm not sure that there is one. There may have been one... wait.. yes! I remember now. But I can't tell you. I'm going to let this torture you for eternity.

Choose your own adventure!

Tonight I (and the Ensigns) got drunk and watched "Troll." The rest of this blog entry can be filled in by you, the general public!

New Song!

Here's the song I wrote for the ebay winner... The Kinko's Song. I think it turned out pretty well. I told Mike Thompson (the winner and also ex-coworker of mine at Kinko's) he got an $80 song for 8 bucks because I just got really into it. For my next ebay ad, I think I'll put a disclaimer like *your song will not be this cool or this long unless you bid a LOT*.. haha. I REALLY wish I had some better recording equipment. Dan C. gave me a tip on what to get for my computer, but I still would like better mics, and, oh yeah, any knowledge whatsoever on how the hell to record music! I still have no clue how to master, so I fudge my way through the mixing of the tracks manually. It works, I guess, but the trained ear can definitely hear a difference.

Right now the band I'm starting is going very slowly, but we may have a drummer soon. Don't wanna jinx it, though. I need to finish up the songs we've started writing! They're punk as hell.

I might wanna start a side-project, too. Something a lot more poppy. Oldies-punk type stuff. I love that shit. I also wanna do a Ramones tribute someday. That would fuckin rule. Did you know there's a Ramones musical? When it comes to the US, I'm there!

I'm recording vocals on a studio track of a song Luke Bandy did. He was the drummer for Stumblerun. I wasn't a fan of that band, but he's a decent songwriter, so he recorded a few things at Sleepless Nights. Scott Theis (formerly of Saving Face) of Johnny Rocker and The High Rollers did drums! The track is sounding pretty sweet. I'll get a copy soon and put it on the "internet".

Doin' coke

Here's an interesting website I found. Apparently Coca-Cola doubles as battery acid. Think I'll have a can right now!
http://members.tripod.com/~Barefoot_Lass/cola.html

Trivia!!!

Man, this last weekend was a blast. Steven's Point hosts the world's largest trivia game every year, and Sassypants, Cara, Mike "Poo-Poo-Kah" Hansen, and a bunch of their friends formerly of UW Steven's Point, go every year. We got there Thursday night, drank at a bar and hung out, and slept in a cheap motel. Then Friday we got up, walked around campus, registered our team and got free candy bars. We then checked into the GOOD hotel (Comfort Suites), where we got one large suite for 9 or so people (the next night we got an extra room with two beds for the wusses who wanted to "sleep"). The trivia started at 6pm. See, the local college radio station asked a question, played one song, repeated the question, played another song, then gave the answer. You had to call in the answer with your team number before the answer came, obviously. Every hour there were about 8 questions, and at the end of every hour they'd give the point totals for the questions of the previous hour. It all depended on how many people answered. The lowest point value you could get is 5, the highest (like if only ONE team answered!) is 500. So, for questions like "what character could turn on jukeboxes by hitting them" you'd get 5 or 10 points, because everyone and their mother knows it's Fonzi. But most of the questions weren't easy. They were like, "Don Smith asks out Shelly for a date. On their date, they order fish. What does it say on the front of the menu." So... we'd all be at our laptops and desktop computers (there were 7 in the room, I believe, which was okay for 9 or 10 people because usually at least one was sleeping or out) trying to find out what movie has characters "Don Smith" and "Shelly", then searching that for the answer. A lot of the questions could NOT be found online. "What does the yellow sign on Napolean Dynamite's bedroom door say?" The answer is "Pegasus Crossing", but I had to IM a friend who'd JUST seen it to get the answer. Crazy shit, I tell ya. Along with the questions, there were 3 separate music snippet things you had to figure out, too. They'd play 1-2 second clips of 8 songs in a row pretty quickly, and you'd have to figure out what songs they were. It was tough, but not too bad. Not something you could look up online, but you could search for the song to confirm you were right if you had a guess. You had a few hours to do the music ones in between the other questions. Also, there were "trivia stone" searches. They'd give you clues and you'd drive around the city following the clues until you reached a destination, where you'd get a stamp in your trivia book (worth points in the end). Like, start at the pool by the church, turn right at the chicken (which might be like a KFC or something), left at the thing that's between medium and xtra large. (That last one was a real clue, and ended up being a sign at a hotel that said "LARGE pool"). PLUS, there were images in the trivia book that you had to recognize. One was of Scott Bakula in an obscure Quantum Leap photo. The rest were very hard to figure out.

So, Friday we started at 6pm and stayed up the whole night. Erika and I both finally took a "nap" after being awake around 30+ hours. I slept about 3 hours and woke up to do more trivia. I was up again until about 7am sunday. Then I slept until 1pm or so. Then we answered some more questions and left around 4pm. The whole weekend was fun, and hangover-free. We only drank Thursday night, but not too much because we didn't want to be hungover for Friday. I only had two or three beers the rest of the time, because being up for 30 hours makes you feel drunk enough. Caffeine was the drug of choice for most during trivia. Well, that and weed. I can't partake in that quite yet, since I might need to take a drug test for a job soon. Don't wanna take any chances!

It was an awesome weekend, and next year we're gonna get a bunch more people to come with. If it sounds fun, let me know, and we'll start planning now! All you need is about 100 bucks (hotel, registration, food, etc.) and Friday and Monday off! And really, you could just come up friday after work (only 2 hours from Madison) and leave Sunday afternoon. But it was REALLY nice to sleep in today (Monday)! I think Mike H, Dan H, and Dan C would especially like it. Everyone else would like it just about as much, since every one of my friends is a dork. Next year I'm bringing my own computer (with sound editing software for the music questions) and telling everyone I know to stay by their phones so they can be the "phone a friend". Also, we may set up a chatroom, or at least have everyone be available by instant messenger. And we put all the images we had to guess on a website, but didn't forward it to that many people. We'll change that next year. It's gonna be great. Promise.

K62 proposal

I've come up with a new political initiative I call "K62." It would make it legal to shoot any small human child roaming around without their parents. Feral children should be made an unprotected species. In the past 5 years, our state's candy and bubblegum population has dwindled substantially, and something must be done. K62 would allow citizens to shoot these menacing children who contribute also to the overpowering noise polution created by crying, whining, and yells of "yay" and "whee". Although in some regions it is illegal to shoot a gun, in those cases citizens would still be allowed to trap the children and kill them by drowning. The Madison Department of Health says that drowning is the most humane way to kill children. An effective method to use would be to set out a small child-size bear trap and use either a GameBoy Advance or Pokemon card set as bait. Once trapped, the child could then be removed from the metal jaws and their head humanely plunged into a large vat of Kool-Aid. Don't forget to keep them under for at least 5 minutes, or those little fuckers might run away!

Trivial pursuit

In Steven's Point this weekend. Playing the world's largest trivia game. The college radio station asks a trivia question, plays two songs, and in that time you have to call in with your team number, and the answer. You get points depending on how many people answer the question. And they are OBSCURE questions. We have 7 laptops connected to the internet in our hotel room. It's pretty cool. We were completely clueless on one of the questions (what was the 11th rule in the tv movie "Love Rules"?), so we answered "not in the butt". Apparently, everyone else guessed that, because we were all wrong. I guess we're sleeping in shifts this weekend, so we can answer questions the whole time. They also give you clues to find things in town and you drive around following the clues until you reach an eventual checkpoint, where someone gives you a stamp or something. It reminds me of the scene from Short Circuit 2 where they try to find Johnny 5 by his musical clues. Remember that? Awesome. You get 10 points.

Weezer

Will this work in the blog-o-sphere?



Let's see..

Apocalypse Later

I had another end-of-the-world dream last night. I seem to have those often. But it's not usually nightmarish. Usually I'm looking for a way to survive and trying to save my friends and family. In this one, I don't remember the details but I do remember a huge tidal wave sweeping across the land. I'd like to think if I was really caught in a horrible storm, like the tsunami recently, I'd survive. I think everyone thinks they would, though. Is that weird?

Today's updates...

1. Another political-type thing.

2. I'm someone who tries to stay somewhat informed of the world around me, but the news is just too fucking depressing most of the time. They say ignorance is bliss, and they're right, in a way. I saw this show recently about a six year old girl who had to have major surgery to straighten her spine, or it would crush her lungs and kill her within a few years. She'd already had many complications with her scoliosis. Who would want this sweet girl to die? That bearded white dude in the sky? What a prick he must be.

3. If you see one movie this year, make it Sci-Fi original, "Mansquito."

4. Going to "trivia weekend" in Steven's Point tomorrow through Sunday with E. Sassypants, Cara, and hopefully Mike (all ex-bordists) along with a few of their other friends, do this every year. I guess a local radio station has 24 hour trivia questions (like one question between every song or two). You call in, say your team name and the answer, and you get points, like trivia in a bar. We're staying in a seedy motel the first night, then a nice one for the rest of the weekend. From what I hear, much drinking and tomfoolery will take place, along with little sleep. I'll tell you all about it!

Todays topics...

1. What ever happened to Burple?

2. Can I be Frank?

3. E and I just finished watching the first and only season of "Wonderfalls." Amber bought the DVD set. It was a show on FOX that only lasted for 4 shows. Thanks to DVD demand, it got released. It was a really good show about a girl who graduated from an ivy league school and ended up being a retail clerk at a Niagra Falls gift shop and living in a trailer park. She was content with mediocrity until small plastic (or stuffed) animals started telling her to do things. She for some reason listened to these animals, and got in weird predicaments that somehow ended up helping other people in the end, even if it caused her suffering in the process. It was very existential. The girl was "fate's bitch" as she put it. It was very well done. Fun, quirky, and one of the few shows on FOX (or tv, for that matter) that had an ounce of intelligence. I highly recommend it! I'm sure FOX would've found a way to ruin it if it would've kept going, like they did to the Simpsons (although that may be just the writers' fault). I really hope Family Guy doesn't start sucking now that they resurrected it.

4. I applied for a job where Erika and Dylan work (Captel). I'm also applying at another employment agency today. They had one or two graphic design positions listed on their website, and a few regular ol' customer service jobs, too. Hopefully I'll get some piece of shit 9-5er soon, 'cause I'm running out of money and I need a car.

5. I heard Sin City is good. I'll have to check it out. I heard there was a small chance Jessica Alba was gonna be nude in it (apparently the comic book character is a stripper and appears nude often). Too bad that didn't happen. Dark Angel was pretty sweet for about a season.

6. I watched the fifth and sixth seasons of Red Dwarf recently. Hilarious stuff! I wonder how the movie is coming along? I need to watch the third season of Sopranos. Has anyone seen Dead Like Me? I guess it's written by the Wonderfalls guy. I really don't watch a lot of tv, I just didn't have much else to blog about.