Unified Theory of Flenker, phase the third (in which I realize my dancing problems, and therefore, life)

Weekend before last, I was in Iowa City for the wedding of two friends. I've known them both for a long time, it was a wonderful ceremony, on a beautiful day. Here's a picture of me and the groom from years and years ago

(That's the perfect picture, right? Yeah.)

So it was a good time. And I was looking like the money.

(I'm bringing back hats and suspenders. Trust me)

Anyways, I digress. There was drinking, and there was dancing. Of course there was, it was a wedding. Now, I'm sure many of you who actually know me know that I don't take to dancing very frequently or very well at all. I did this night, because come on, I had to. The usual slow stuff, where you just sort of transfer your weight from one leg to the other. No problem. But it got me thinking (after my head cleared a few days later), anything outside of that, I'm pretty clueless. Then, yesterday, it hit me. I know who to blame. Misters John Linnell and John Flansburgh.

Exhibit A:

In my "formative years," I was kind of dorky. To put it lightly. I flipped out at the episode of Tiny Toons that featured two They Might Be Giants songs. I didn't talk to girls, instead I played Zelda. I went to a total of 0 dances throughout high school and my rather extensive college career. Most of my friends are also inept at the art of talking to females (sorry pals, you know it's true), and few have married, so there were never many opportunities for me to dance. And so, I learned solo. Anyone who has seen me dance can attest, I look like the fellow in black in this video (appearance about 22 seconds in, then again at 1:11 [my birthday is 1/11!!!! coincidence? I'm drunk]).

Now, being a "musician," I have an excellent sense of rhythm (apparently not an excellent sense of how to spell rhythm, THANK YOU SPELL CHECK). This actually does help, to an extent. It's more of the "where" and the "why" for my extremities. I'm sure there's video evidence of this somewhere out there, and if you have any, send it my way, I swear I'll post it here. I have no shame.

So yeah. My early influence in moving my body to the music were these guys

And as much as I loved them (and really love them still), I never stood a chance.

(OK, I think I had bigger plans for this one, I think. It's a good start. But I had a bottle of Seagram's gin that was opened, so I had to finish it before it went bad!)

Also, this is post #400. What a wild trail we've blazed, friends. I'd have a little speech prepared, but feel that it would be a little cheap, since we haven't spent much time together over the last, oh, year or two. But thank you for hanging around, if indeed you are hanging around. Maybe I'll get a little retrospective put together, but just be patient with me. I'm still finding my stride.

HAHAHAHA

Forget you. It's 12:04 am, it's been a rough night, I've had a bottle of wine, this is HILARIOUS

I'm proud of my knock-off Photoshop work. And I'm quite clever, I must admit.

And since I'm a little tipsy, I can forgive myself for doing this "facebook album cover" thing

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

THIS. . . . IS. . . . FLENKER!!!!!

Welcome all, to the beginning of the celebratory week, starting off with my 300th post! It's going to be a lot like the movie 300, but with less half-naked dudes and no weird dancing naked girl, but more grunting, more gravely voices, and more over-the-top dramatics. And who knows, I may kick someone down a well!

What else can you look forward to seeing? Well, my daily music recommendations will be back for a little while, maybe another photo story or two, a couple guest posts, maybe the force behind the Unified Theory of Flenker, and some highlights from the past. Oh, and I've decided I'm going to become a cheese connoisseur, so you have that to look forward to, as well.

Today, besides the wonderful photo above (it's supposed to be a 300, get it? Made with relics from my diet of late, frozen pizzas, beer, and Diet Dr Pepper), I'll start right in on the music recommendations!

This is one group that I've been really excited about lately, I'm not sure if it's because I really like their stuff (I do!) or that I think the girls in the band are really cute, especially the lead singer.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you - minipop!

(there's a couple places where there are some pantheon-level bad acting moments. It's alright with me, they're a band, not an improv troupe)

I first heard them on my XM Radio as I was driving back from Austin, and damn, I liked it a lot. Somewhere on their myspace page, they describe themselves as "dream pop;" I can't think of a better way to describe them, that's exactly how they sound. They have the above song, along with a few others, on their myspace page, which at the moment is serving as their only website. Play them, feel dreamy, sit back, comment, and enjoy the ride that will be Celebration Week!

Any suggestions on anything you can give would be great, if you have a band I should check out, a favorite post from the past, a delicious cheese I should check out, let me know! And be sure to check out my friends off to the right there. There are some excellent blogs, something to entertain, or just kill time. And, as always, leave comments. We get warm fuzzy feelings when people do that.

pictures from the east!

Things are going a bit better today. It's snowing, which always improves my mood. At least it was snowing, but now it appears to have stopped. Oh well, it already helped. I'm all showered up, with some clean clothes on, something that also usually is an immediate upgrade. Now if I could just get some good sleep, I may be in business!

Anyways, I thought I'd share a few photos from my recent trip. These are just some taken with my camera, Marin has some more, so when she uploads them, I'll pass them along.

Me and Marin in Times Square

A couple of cool airplanes in the Air and Space Museum

The Capitol Building

The National American Indian Museum (I was feeling artistic here, obviously it worked)

Another shot of the NAIM, this time from entrance, looking up

And, for your viewing pleasure, a mini-themed meal I had when I got back to Iowa

Mini tacos and mini cream puffs, both from Schwann's. The cream puffs are amazing, you don't do any cooking, just let them come to room temperature. mmm mmm

And of course, the perfect thing to top off my mini meal

Have a good weekend everyone!

Soup's on! (the latest Flenker Photo Story)

The weather finally took a trip down the thermometer here in Texas! Instead of approaching the 90's as we had been over the weekend, Monday it barely got into the 60's! Today it was a little warmer, but windy as hell. I would venture to say that if it weren't for the wind, today would have been a perfect day, weather-wise. Although, I must admit, I did love the almost chilly weather we had Monday. It was hilarious to see what people where wearing here. I donned my trusty brown jacket (featured in a few photos here, as well as off to the right, in that little picture up there) and jeans. Other people looked like they were preparing to go on an expedition with Sir Robert Shackleton. ([yay for Antarctic explorer references! Though to be fair, he is my favorite explorer of Antarctica. Way better than Robert Scott.) Any time I can wear my jacket, I'm happy. Some people call it a "track jacket." I call it an attractive jacket. (Damn, I was hoping that'd work better. Maybe if I said it aloud. nope. not any better. Now Big Texas will wonder why I'm talking to myself.)

Since the weather had gotten colder, I thought it would be the perfect time to try out a new recipe, from a brand-new recipe book Marin sent me from New Orleans! And while this wasn't a very Cajun-style recipe, it was damn delicious, and great for a cool day. Since no one could sample it, I figured I'd do the next best thing: take a bunch of pictures of me preparing it, then post them to my blog! So, without further ado, here is the latest photo story, Flenker-touille.

The star of the show, Marty "nobody calls me a" Chicken! (yes, I named the chicken. And I may have made voices for my different ingredients, including a homophobic can of corn named Rodney, and Steven the onion.)

I chop a mean garlic

Steven never stood a chance. (yes, I know the garlic is un-chopped here. An editor has been fired for this continuity error.)

Steven's remains are unceremoniously tossed into the pit

This looks like an artistic shot, but really, I'm just looking for something to add to the soup. And yes, I occasionally wear a hat while I cook.

And a Miller Lite shirt. At least I found the pepper grinder.

Marty is feeling like he's had better days. He doesn't even know the half of it. . .

Oh no! He shouldn't have been snooping around, trying to find out what happened to Steven. And he was only 2 days away from retiring!

The final resting place.

Dished up

That's right

I was pleased with how the soup turned out. As you can tell by the final picture. Not bad for my first effort, and it leaves me with LOTS left over for the rest of the week. Awesome! And in case you missed the other photo stories, you can find the first one here, and the second one here!

One last thing, be sure to check back in the next day or so. It will be the return of a couple of Big Ideas. . .