WARNING:
the following blog is likely to be long-winded, gushy, and in general, not very interesting.  There will be VERY LITTLE substance to it.  If this does not appeal to you, don't read it.  If you want to live vicariously through me ... I'm the least interesting person you could pick to do so, but go nuts.

So, this Friday, as I wrote about many posts ago, was Hoodwink.  The Hoodwink Festival is kind of an off-shoot of this 2-day concert called The Bamboozle; easily 100 bands sharing 4 or 5 stages in East Rutherford (Giant's Stadium) New Jersey, rockin' out and giving the kids a good time.  I was unable to go to the actual Bamboozle, because I would only be in NY for this one weekend and wanted to see many people  (plus, kind of expensive), but I decided to go with a friend to the Friday night event.  This is because when I saw it advertised in January, it said 'Badfish covering Sublime', and they're the most famous Sublime cover band out there.  The other selling point was 'New Found Glory covering Green Day'.  Um... can you scream amazing?  Green Day have been my favorite band since I was going into 4th grade, the summer of 1994.  I do not like this 'Know Your Enemy' song because it reminds me too much of American Idiot, which was too much of a departure from 'Green Day' for my liking, but I still cannot remove Green Day from the position of 'favorite band'.  I've seen them in concert thrice, and have cried thrice when they've left the stage because I didn't want the show to end (judge all you want).  New Found Glory in the last year/year and a half have moved VERY HIGH up on my 'music I like to listen to' list, so them covering my trio after the botch attempt to see them perform in September....yeah buddy, it was ON.

Friday morning when I awoke to leave for NY (oh sick days), I went online, and discovered it was NOT just those 2 illustrious bands playing at the show.  Here's a sample of some of what was promised to me via the internet:

• State Farm Stage:

• Push Play covering Muse
• Set Your Goals covering Dave Grohl
• Bayside covering NOFX
• Sum 41 covering Metallica
• Badfish featuring Todd Forman covering Sublime

• MLB Authentic Collection Stage:

• NeverShoutNever! covering The Beatles
• We the Kings covering Jimmy Eat World
• Boys Like Girls covering Coldplay
• New Found Glory covering Green Day

• The Break Stage:

• Inward Eye covering The Who
• Mercy Mercedes covering Midtown
• Forever the Sickest Kids covering Avril Lavigne
• The Ataris covering The Misfits
• Anti-Flag covering The Clash

• Passion Brand Clothing Stage:

• Dubious Pastry covering Radiohead
• Cartel covering New Found Glory
• The Cab covering Queen
• Danger Radio covering Britney Spears
• brokeNCYDE performing a "Crunk'd set"

Don't know who some of those bands are, but... pretty darn cool, eh?   So I get to Long Island, where I'm staying that night and where my concert buddy lives, and she goes, 'oh, I'm not able to go.  I don't feel well'.  I felt bad, because I was staying at her house and she's one of my best friends on the planet, but... this was 90% of why I came down.  So I decided I was going to go to the show, calling everyone I knew to see if they wanted/could be my date.  No dice.  Believe it or not, not many people were free to come out to a show in New Jersey at 5pm on a Friday afternoon THE Friday afternoon I was calling.  Hmm.  But I've gone to shows alone before, I figured I could do it again.

I get to Port Authority to take a bus, the same bus I've taken to many a show.  Except, I don't know where I used to get the tickets from.  On the escalator, I hear these 2 girls talking about 'missing the first set', and we start talking and they agree to be nice and let me chill with them until we get to the bus. HA HA HA, that bus doesn't run from Port Authority anymore; it now leaves from Penn Station (aka, where the Long Island Rail Road had dropped me off half an hour prior).  So we scoot back down there and meet up with one of the girls' friends, and eventually, get ourselves to NJ.  Show started at 5, and we got there just before 7 (in time for Jimmy Eat World's cover).

Show = amazing.  These girls are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NICE.  I figured they'd do their own thing at the show after we got in, but they were taking me by the hand and telling me stories and joking around and....aww.  I love concert friends.  They're definitely social places, so getting to be with people is a lot better than being alone at them.  Even if the girls you're with are slightly inhebriated and getting some strange looks.  I had the time of my life.  I saw:
--Jimmy Eat World cover band (good job)
--Queen cover band (eh...not so much; butchering, song-shortening, not Freddie's voice...)
--Avril Lavigne cover band (part of it; the girls I was with really wanted to dance to it.  wasn't awful, was...Avril Lavigne songs.  And they didn't even FINISH with an Avril song, like 'Boyfriend'; they were like "uh....we're gonna play a Sum41 song because Derryk is here and he's her husband" which is kinda a lame cop-out, but it was so fucking fun to rock out to "Fatlip" that I didn't give a damn.
-- Britney Spears cover band (the first 2 songs, mainly because they were near the porta-potties and we were DYING)
-- Metallica cover band (impressively good job.  ROUGH crowd, but also very enjoyable.  Maybe because Metallica is enjoyable?  Even though that was when it was POURING rain out, you couldn't have paid me to go inside)
-- Green Day cover band (see below)
-- Sublime cover band (totally worth the wait of not seeing them before Friday.  They were AMAZING)

When we walked in, I heard wafts of the 'Dave Grohl' cover, as they were playing 'Nevermind', and I was sad I missed the Beatles, the Who, and NFG's covers.  I was also pissed that NOFX, the Clash, and the Misfits were all being covered while I was across the lot at another stage, but overall, GREAT SHOW. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Obviously, though (if you read above the 'bands I saw' listing), the best part of my night was Green Day being covered by New Found Glory.  We started out near the middle-front of the crowd, but then we left.  I had no idea why we were leaving, but we did.  Had to call one of the girls we were with who had been separated.  She wanted to go check out another band.  I did not.  We agreed to try to meet up at the candy tent (did I not previously mention they were handing out free candy all night long!?!?!) after everything was over, and I nodded and DARTED back into the crowd.

My love for New Found Glory grew exponentially on Friday night.  They played GOOD Green Day; REAL Green Day.  I mean, obviously Basket Case and When I Come Around were floating in there (love those 2 songs) and they ended with just Jordan and Chad playing 'Good Riddance' (cliche, but enjoyable).  And they also played 'Long View' and 'Welcome to Paradise', which are good songs, and certainly popular songs (why they were played), but by no means anywhere NEAR 'the best songs Green Day has ever put out'.  Nope.

But then they played things like 'Jaded' and 'Geek Stink Breath'.  I swear to the Lord above, they played 'BRAT'.  Have you ever uttered the phrase, "OMG, I luuuuuuuuuuv Green Day"?  If you don't know the words to 'Brat', you should take those words back.  'Brat'; 'Burnout'....even the semi-popular 'Waiting', 'She', and 'Nice Guys Finish Last'.  Thankfully, 'American Idiot' didn't show up.  At least 3 of the songs were introduced as members of NFG's favorites:
'Armatage Shanks' (Chad)
'2,000 Light Years Away' (Steve)
'J.A.R. (Jason Andrew Relva)' (Ian)

and my love for them ....wow.  They picked such great songs, and then did a stupendous job playing them for the crowd.  I tried to videotape the whole show, but I was singing and dancing and juping much to much for it to be anything but a blur and mumbles, but ... I could EASILY do that every night the rest of my life and not get sick of it.

L.O.V.E.

gotta make a plan
gotta do what's right
can't run around in circles if you wanna build a life
but I don't wanna make a plan for a day far away
while I'm young and while I'm able all I wanna do is ... <3

many moons ago I posted a video to my myspace account, and now I don't have it on my hard drive and myspace is a whore that will only let me link to it. so if you wanna see some good shit - click on that link down there.
sketches from the November Hotel

most of that stuff is older, but i scribble alot so there's more coming someday.


Game 1 of the World Series is up & running. Phils leading 3-1 going into the 5th. Kazmir needs to settle down and stop worrying about baserunners. If he'd just make his pitch, there'd be no baserunners.
Just to drive the point home - Rays in 6.
I'm tired of the political mumbojumbo for now. Obama will win, We're fucked no matter what & I'll be looking for property way down Mexico way. So, I'll give it a rest right now and enjoy some baseball. Baseball fans are smarter than football fans ya know?

EVERYBODY IN AMERICA JUST WON A FREE TACO!! no shit. steal a base, steal a taco.
what goes along with a free taco? a free dr. pepper. Guns N' Fuckin' Roses new album is almost-for-sure-this-time coming out on 23 November and when it does everybody gets a free Dr. Pepper. Bitchin!
I've heard the internet leaks and its gonna be a killer album. Maybe not worth waiting 14 years for, but fuckin killer nonetheless.

anyway - rays down by 1 bottom of the 8th and lidge is getting warmed up...
and in the time it took me to write all this shit i figured out how to download my video and i put it on youtube.
so ha! fuck you myspace!
i gotta download so coast to coast AM episodes for my long ass drive tomorrow.
holla back yo!!

Hey all…

 

It’s time to add insult to injury…so to speak.  Monday night I went to a football game that stunk up the Ed (Edward Jones Dome) when “Da Bears” put a hurting on our sorry Rams.  That truly was bad enough, but now I have to add another stinker to the list of poo-poo issues of the week.  The past few days I have noticed something with a particularly foul odor emanating from the old Norge.   Like Sherlock Holmes looking for the bad guy, I have searched high and low in a vain attempt to discover the source of our smell.  I had taken pretty much everything out of the crispers, shelves, nooks and crannies, but no luck.  Ah, but tonight I finally cleared a shelf that looked as if it could not contain anything that would produce our fridge fart, but alas, there it was.  It seems that I ever so slightly had overlooked a Tupperware bowl that contained last week’s leftover black beans from burrito night.   Oooooweeeeee…. Stinky, stinky!!!! 

 

Ah, now that those odorific poo-poo beans are gone, my beautiful icebox can go back to being the keeper of the goodies.  With a little help from the three or four boxes of baking soda in there…it will be as good as new in no time.  Well, perhaps until next week’s taco night.

 

 

NEW YORK (CNN) -- As many as 84 people in seven states have been confirmed as having the strain of E. coli bacteria involved in an outbreak that may be linked to Taco Bell restaurants, officials said Friday.

South Carolina and Utah are the latest states to report outbreaks of the illness. State and federal agencies are still trying to pin down the source, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the vast majority of the reported cases have eaten at Taco Bell restaurants prior to their illness.

Dr. Greg Braden of the CDC told CNN that his agency and state health departments have not seen any other sources of the illness and are zeroing in on Taco Bell and its suppliers of green onions.

"We have some leads to say that it might be green onions, and that's based upon some preliminary testing that's been done in a number of laboratories right now, but the testing has not been confirmed, so we're keeping the options open, and the investigations that we're doing will be covering a wide range of foods, all of them served at Taco Bell specifically," Braden said.

On a voice recording for consumers looking for more information on E. coli, Taco Bell says, "Many of the people who reported becoming ill did not eat at Taco Bell."

Representatives for the company could not be reached Friday to confirm the number of cases that had been directly linked to food served at its restaurants.

On Wednesday, Taco Bell said it had ordered the removal of all green onions from its 5,800 outlets nationwide, after three samples tested by an independent laboratory were found to be positive for E. coli.

Food suppliers in focus

New Jersey health officials have focused attention on a food distribution warehouse in Burlington, and urged all Taco Bell locations that received shipments from there to "discard all current food supplies and clean and sanitize their facilities." Taco Bell would not confirm that the warehouse, operated by McLane Foodservice Inc., was being investigated.

Ready Pac, a food distribution company that supplies Taco Bell's Northeast operations through a processing plant in Florence, New Jersey, says it stopped producing and shipping green onions to the restaurant's franchises on Wednesday following reports of the outbreak.

The company said in a statement that it is working with regulatory agencies and industry experts to determine the source of the bacteria.

Boskovich Farms in Oxnard, California, is a main provider of green onions to Taco Bell, but the company says it has not been contacted by the FDA or any government agencies although it is aware of the E. coli outbreak. The company said in a statement that it is working closely with Taco Bell and Ready Pac to pinpoint the source of the bacteria.

E. coli cases -- first reported November 29 in New Jersey, followed by others in New York and Pennsylvania -- now have appeared in Delaware, Connecticut, South Carolina and Utah, according to the CDC. Interviews with the victims showed that most of the first 58 people who became ill had eaten at Taco Bells.

As of Thursday, the FDA said at least 35 people have been hospitalized with the same E. coli strain since the outbreak, some in serious condition.

At least one lawsuit relating to the outbreak has been filed against Taco Bell. The lawsuit was filed late Wednesday by the family of an 11-year-old Long Island, New York, boy, Tyler Vormittag. It claims the boy contracted E. coli after eating at a Taco Bell on November 24 in Riverdale, New York.

"When a restaurant serves food, there is the presumption that it is safe for human consumption," said the family's attorney, Andrew Siben. "Taco Bell breached that duty when serving Mr. Vormittag a taco."

The damages being sought will depend on the extent of injury to the fifth-grader, Siben said. The suit was filed in State Supreme Court in Suffolk County.

Calls to Taco Bell to update the status of its investigation and to obtain reaction to the lawsuit have not been returned.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- As many as 84 people in seven states have been confirmed as having the strain of E. coli bacteria involved in an outbreak that may be linked to Taco Bell restaurants, officials said Friday.

South Carolina and Utah are the latest states to report outbreaks of the illness. State and federal agencies are still trying to pin down the source, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the vast majority of the reported cases have eaten at Taco Bell restaurants prior to their illness.

Dr. Greg Braden of the CDC told CNN that his agency and state health departments have not seen any other sources of the illness and are zeroing in on Taco Bell and its suppliers of green onions.

"We have some leads to say that it might be green onions, and that's based upon some preliminary testing that's been done in a number of laboratories right now, but the testing has not been confirmed, so we're keeping the options open, and the investigations that we're doing will be covering a wide range of foods, all of them served at Taco Bell specifically," Braden said.

On a voice recording for consumers looking for more information on E. coli, Taco Bell says, "Many of the people who reported becoming ill did not eat at Taco Bell."

Representatives for the company could not be reached Friday to confirm the number of cases that had been directly linked to food served at its restaurants.

On Wednesday, Taco Bell said it had ordered the removal of all green onions from its 5,800 outlets nationwide, after three samples tested by an independent laboratory were found to be positive for E. coli.

Food suppliers in focus

New Jersey health officials have focused attention on a food distribution warehouse in Burlington, and urged all Taco Bell locations that received shipments from there to "discard all current food supplies and clean and sanitize their facilities." Taco Bell would not confirm that the warehouse, operated by McLane Foodservice Inc., was being investigated.

Ready Pac, a food distribution company that supplies Taco Bell's Northeast operations through a processing plant in Florence, New Jersey, says it stopped producing and shipping green onions to the restaurant's franchises on Wednesday following reports of the outbreak.

The company said in a statement that it is working with regulatory agencies and industry experts to determine the source of the bacteria.

Boskovich Farms in Oxnard, California, is a main provider of green onions to Taco Bell, but the company says it has not been contacted by the FDA or any government agencies although it is aware of the E. coli outbreak. The company said in a statement that it is working closely with Taco Bell and Ready Pac to pinpoint the source of the bacteria.

E. coli cases -- first reported November 29 in New Jersey, followed by others in New York and Pennsylvania -- now have appeared in Delaware, Connecticut, South Carolina and Utah, according to the CDC. Interviews with the victims showed that most of the first 58 people who became ill had eaten at Taco Bells.

As of Thursday, the FDA said at least 35 people have been hospitalized with the same E. coli strain since the outbreak, some in serious condition.

At least one lawsuit relating to the outbreak has been filed against Taco Bell. The lawsuit was filed late Wednesday by the family of an 11-year-old Long Island, New York, boy, Tyler Vormittag. It claims the boy contracted E. coli after eating at a Taco Bell on November 24 in Riverdale, New York.

"When a restaurant serves food, there is the presumption that it is safe for human consumption," said the family's attorney, Andrew Siben. "Taco Bell breached that duty when serving Mr. Vormittag a taco."

The damages being sought will depend on the extent of injury to the fifth-grader, Siben said. The suit was filed in State Supreme Court in Suffolk County.

Calls to Taco Bell to update the status of its investigation and to obtain reaction to the lawsuit have not been returned.