Who you callin' a Dodo?

I've been getting way into these guys, started listening to them at work, and bought their album Visiter yesterday. It's amazing. So check out the Dodos



Here's their myspace.

To me, they sound like a more easily accessible version of Animal Collective. A little more straight-forward and simpler melodic lines. And I'm not trying to make it sound like a bad thing, I mean that in an awesome way. They have some great lyrics, inventive lines, and just a fun overall sound. I dig them, a lot. Of course, they're not playing anywhere near me, or on any dates I can make in a city where any of my friends live. I guess I'll just have to wait, and listen to their album over and over again, until they come to the greater Kansas City area.

Denver, in pictures and in words. And with facial hair

Well, here's the update I've been promising for weeks now, it seems.

Last weekend, a few of us from work went to Denver. The main reason? Illegal Pete's. A couple of the guys had eaten at this place once, and, since we had a three-day weekend, they thought what the hell, may as well make a weekend of it and head back there. Especially since it was right near the end of the mutton chop competition, we thought it'd be a fun time.

Here we each are, starting off on the about 9-hour drive

me

Jared

Nick

Josh

(Did I mention we all had matching hats, too? Just to complete the ridiculousness of our look) You'll notice I don't have much of a chop going on there. Sadly, I had been "growing" my facial hair for the same amount of time that Josh had. All I had was a creepy-looking mustache, and a few patches of light red hair on my cheeks. Not really visible to the naked eye.

Anyways, the drive out was fun. There was a convoy of 4 cars, made up by what looked like high school students, who were very entertained by the chops. They gave us the thumbs up, took some pictures, and made a sign that read "Nice Chops." All while we were driving. We felt it was a good start to the trip. We stopped for gas near Hays, KS, where we spotted our first (and only) thong appearance of the trip. But it was a memorable one. Not only was the whale tail there, but this girl (who was obviously of good repute), lowered the front of her pants, so the front of the thong was showing. And she did the lowering right in front of us, as we were walking out of the gas station. We were able to make it into the car before we busted out laughing. Our only regret was that we didn't say anything to her. The consensus was that one of us should have just said "nice," and gotten into the car. Oh well.

The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful, just some periods of heavy rain and menacing clouds. It wasn't until we had made it to Illegal Pete's for our burritos that we heard there had been 3 confirmed tornadoes along I-70. The road we had just been on for 9 hours. Jared was taken aback by the news, but it didn't have an impact on my appetite.

2? No, it was 3 tornadoes

Yum

The rest of that first night was spent wandering around, taking stupid pictures. Like these:

These two are twins. My cousin couldn't tell they were even related

Outside of Coors Field, where the Rockies made a furious comeback late in the game, to win in 13 innings. We didn't go, we just stood around outside. The guy who took this picture took off like he was stealing the camera, but stopped after about 10 steps. He feared the mustache.

I think Josh was the most photogenic.

Although Nick was pretty good, too.

Especially when paired in a picture with me, getting fake advice for our imaginary chess game.

The next morning, we tore the shit out of our hotel room. It was the facial hair acting up.

After we put it back together, we wandered around, taking more stupid pictures. I'll save a couple of these for later, as they may be the best pictures ever taken.

We went to the see the Rockies take on the Mets, spending $4 on each ticket, sitting in the "Rock Pile." It was awesome. Sure, we were about 600 feet from homeplate, but we had an awesome view, and surrounded by people our age, having a good time. After a while, since the Mets were up 8-2, we started people watching more than game watching. Nick made a kid cry. The whole section almost made a drunk girl cry. But she had it coming, she was trying to start the wave. Here are some of the views from our seats


And, another friendly mutton that we spotted at the game!This was the first of two other friendlies that we ran into, here's the second:



The rest of Saturday, we took more pictures, went to some bars, I got a little drunk, and talked with a bear.

Sunday, we climbed a mountain. Like a real mountain! Actually, two! We hiked up the Twin Sisters, making it all the way to the peaks, about 4-miles, one way, with around a 2300 foot climb, and some amazing views

The Twin Sisters (borrowed from some other site)

Impressive, no?

Studly

Us at the top, with Long's Peak in the background

That was an awesome hike, I'm glad we did it.

The whole trip was pretty amazing. I met up with a cousin I hadn't seen in years, and our days were busy without rushing around, something quite impressive for our only plan being to eat a burrito, which we accomplished our first night (it was a delicious burrito, by the way).

Now, for my two favorite pics from the trip. First, Josh

and secondly, me, in every else's favorite picture, a picture that basically sums up the whole trip

If you're really interested in seeing more pictures, you can check out my albums here:

Part 1

Part 2

Now in the past week, I've shaved and gotten a haircut, so I'm no longer the kind of gross, creepy looking dude I was in those photos. I'll get a picture or two of my new look up soon. And I'm working on creating a flickr account or something, so I can share photos other than through Facebook. But until then, this will have to do

A video to tide you over

I'll hopefully have some time tomorrow to work on a bitchin' post, but until then, watch this bitchin' video over and over again.



I'm really really digging the new Weezer. I'm as excited as a little Weezer fanboy.

Nik Freitas (what I'm listening to at work)

I'm going to attempt to do a new little feature, and, hopefully, I'll actually stick this one in the future. I'm going to make posts about what I'm listening to at work, since that's actually when I spend most, if not all, of my time online. So I have XM on, and if I hear a musician or group that intrigues me, I'll check out their myspace page. So far, such bands have included Airborne Toxic Event and Fog, as well as a few others that I'll talk about in the next few days. But for today, here's Nik Freitas!

Here's his website, here's his myspace. I heard the song "Sun Down," and instantly liked it. He's got a Paul Simon/Bob Dylan sound, without being overly obnoxious about it, or sounding too pretentious. It's a good thing. And it's great stuff to listen to at work, relaxing, and not requiring too much attention. That's not to say it's not worth focusing on, because it is. But, it's nice to have on in the background.


Basically I'm saying it's good, I like it, you should listen to his stuff. I'm sure he'd appreciate it. And I'd appreciate if he'd come to Kansas City, instead of playing 2 dates in Omaha. Omaha's a nice city and all, but come on, help me out here Nik!

This post brought to you by the band Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, the planes of Midwest Airlines, and the letters NIN

First off, if you're a fan of Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor has made his latest album available as a free download, just go to this link:

http://theslip.nin.com/

I'm giving it my first listen-through right now, and am liking it a lot. And you can't beat the price.

This past weekend was a quick, but very fun, time spent in Minneapolis. And while my camera sucks, (not to mention I forgot to put in fresh batteries), H and Whiskey snapped off a few. Check out their blogs to see some of the action, and check out H's post at Three Pints for more about Kate Nash.

The Kate Nash show was great, I really enjoyed the opening band, the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players. The family (dad Jason on guitar/keyboard/vocals, mom Tina on the slide projector, and 14-year-old daughter Rachel on drums) basically goes to estate sales, buy old slide photography, and write songs based around them. A lot of bands use a video aspect to their live shows to supplement their sound, (like the Faint, the previously mentioned NIN, Project Jenny, Project Jan, to name a few I've seen in concert), but this is the first instance I'm aware of where the band uses the audio and video in such an intertwined level. To get the full enjoyment out of their performance, here's a couple of their videos

Look at Me (from Conan, with a few slides removed for network TV purposes. I'm not sure if it's better or not. . . )


Don't You Know What I Mean?


Now these videos are a few years old, so Rachel is a few years older now. And Jim still didn't want me to go get her number for him.

These videos don't really do them justice, I was blown away by them, it was awesome. At first I didn't think I'd buy their schtick, but damn if they didn't win me over.

I flew (yes, flew) to Minneapolis, after finding tickets that were cheaper than it would have been for me to drive, and saved me about 13 hours driving (round trip), and a lot of wear and tear on my car. Rudy can't put up with too much more, so I gotta take it easy on him while I can, until I find a new ride. But don't tell him about that.

Anyways, I flew on Midwest Airlines. Holy crap. It was amazing. When I got on the plane for my first flight of the day (Midwest is based out of Milwaukee, so I had a stop there each way), there was classical music playing on the speakers, and (relatively) large leather seats as far as the eye could see. They were incredibly comfortable for plane seats, and even left me with a couple of inches on either side. Plus a middle armrest that was about 5 inches wide. No elbow fights with the neighbor for space! And plenty of legroom.

My favorite part, though, was getting freshly baked cookies. Not just one, but two on each flight! And on my first flight, an older lady was sitting next to me, didn't want her cookies, so she gave them to me! AND everyone got a little bag of pretzels. And drink service. C'est incroyable! I would definitely recommend this airline to anyone if it's available (and comparably priced to other airlines). Lucky for me, KC is one of their hubs. Rock.

So it was an awesome weekend, all around. Played some Wii (Mario Kart is lots and lots of fun) and some XBox 360 (NCAA Football still rules, and the new Grand Theft Auto game is kind of fun), saw a good concert (even if Kate Nash got everyone to say they hated me and I'm pretty sure called me a dickhead), at somewhere near my body weight in pizza (Old World Pizza's buffet is delicious), had some cocktails (most gin and tonics, with a free Jameson and something thrown in for good measure), had a wonderful time meeting and chatting with WhiskeyMarie (however nonsensical and incoherent it may have been), and just really enjoyed myself. If only every weekend could be so fun-filled! Now I'm waiting for visitors to come to KC. There's plenty of room, everyone's welcome! And of course, I can make the airport pick-up, so check out Midwest. It's worth it!