I'll go outside tomorrow

I was driving home from jiu-jitsu class around 1:30pm, thinking to myself that it was such a nice day, I had to spend it outside. Maybe walk to Georgetown or something.

After taking a bath and having lunch, I feel asleep for a few hours, woke up, watched Guns N' Roses and Kiss behind the music specials, then messed around on the computer til now (almost 9p.m.).

Hopefully taking a walk to go for dinner still counts as making use of a nice day.

"Much Too Young to Feel This Damn Old"

My wife took me out for my birthday (31) last night, and after dinner we stopped by a local icecream shop. Most of the people who work there look like high school kids. They were playing a mix of '80s music that included Billy Ocean's song about getting out of dreams and into cars when it hit me and I whispered to my wife "THESE PEOPLE WEREN'T BORN WHEN THIS SONG CAME OUT!"

It was weird, I guess the same way people who were 30 or so looked at kids like me who were listening to Led Zep and the Dead back in the 80s/90s. I started having some other related thoughts -- that Guns N' Roses' first album is older than Aerosmith's first disc was when I started listening to GNR; that my first electric guitar that I bought in '91 is old enough that had I bought a similarly old guitar back then I would have considered it vintage.

Oh well, enough of that.

BTW, big ups to boski93 and other White Sox fans who stuck with them all these years despite the lack of success and the fashionable cache of rooting for those "lovable losers" the Cubs. I've only run into two Chicagoans in recent months (and unfortunately work next to one of them) and both immediately sold out their Cubs allegiance for the Sox once the post-season began. Disgusting. One of my collegues who is an accomplished blues guitarist himself told me that Muddy Waters used to watch White Sox games while sitting in his underwear and drinking champagne, so I'm glad for both him and boski.

F*** Friendster

OK, so everyone's all mad at Friendster because you can now view whoever is looking at your profile, and that keeps you from cyber-stalking people at stuff. So I go to check out who is cyber stalking me, and there's nobody. Nobody's viewed my profile in like forever. F*** Friendster. Now I can't even fool myself into thinking I'm popular enough to be cyber stalked.

Cinderella

My wife gave further evidence to why it was a good idea that I married her last weekend when I suggested that she choose the next CD during our road trip to northern New Jersey, and she chose a Monsters of Rock compilation.

There's a lot of good '80s metal on there -- Ratt's "Round and Round," Quiet Riot's "I Wanna Rock," and many more, but the one song that really tripped me up was Cinderella's "Nobody's Fool."

In the interest of full disclosure, I will freely, nay, proudly, admit that I recently bought Cinderella's "Rocked, Wired, and Bluesed," greatest hits disc, so I'm a bit of a fan of their bluesier take on metal, but "Nobody's Fool" just sounds silly.

It's certainly not the first song that I've thought didn't rock as much as it did, say, four months ago when I bought "Rocked, Wired, and Bluesed," not to mention as much as it did back in '89. But I just don't think it's a good idea to proclaim "I'm not your fool!/Nobody's fool!" in a voice roughly as high and quavery as your average eunach.

It brought to mind a vision of a potential video for the song (I haven't seen one if it already exists) where the singer confronts his girlfried who is probably cheating on him/stealing his money/stealing his lipstick, and she's got her posse of denim/spandexed/teased hair/too much make-up '80s mall chicks around her, and he's got the rest of the guys in Cinderella, who are basically just prettier versions of her friends, and she's kind of laughing in his face and calling him a chump. Then he wags a finger in her face, and proclaims "I'M NOT YOUR FOOOOOOOOOL!" and his bandmates lean forward and harmonize with "NOBODY'S FOOOOOOL, NOBODY'S FOOOOOOOOOOOOL!" Then they dance around a bit, and head off to buy some more Aqua Net.

Yankees' Misfortune Soothes My Pain...

I've been reluctant to post for the past week or so, in part out of being busy, but mostly because just about the only thing on my mind has been the Red Sox, and I think I make a lousy sports blogger except maybe when I'm talking about punching geriatric Nat's fans.

Anyway, I feel like the pain I felt from watching the Sox lose on Friday night has been entirely erased by the Yankees' loss to the Angels. As a Sox fan, we don't expect to win it all, and frankly the only real disappointment in the Sox losing to the White Sox was that it ended the celebration of 2004 (not in my heart or mind though). But Yankees fans have an air of entitlement that I'm not sure exists elsewhere in American sports.

Here's a question -- is there a Sox fan who would really want to trade places with a Yanks fan? Most of us who are old enough to remember the joy of watching the Celtics dominate the NBA know it's a different pleasure than the wild adventure and the ultimate result of the 86 year-old quest.

I wanted to leave you with a post I made on an Internet forum about Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu of all things with a Yankees fan that I have met in person. Like many other Yankee stadium miscreants, and far too many other men in the NY area, he's under the impression he's an extra from Goodfellas or the Sopranos.

Someone on that board made a post about wondering if the guy in question was going to commit suicide with the latest Yanks playoff loss, and I responded that it was hard to feel sympathy for a team with their winning history and owner who buys all the best players.

This dude flipped out (and unfortunately the thread appears to have been deleted) and told me that I was repeating a tired line used by people who "don't know shit" about baseball, since the Yanks had been successful with homegrown prospects in the 90s. Ironically, after questioning my intelligence (that I never professed to have -- I'm no boski93) on the matter, he went on to whine about how he owns a ticket agency, and probably lost $30,000 that he expected to make based on the (typical Yanks fan mentality) idea of them going to the series. He then blamed the Yanks recent string of post season misfortune to Steinbrenner bringing in players who don't contribute to the team chemistry.

I cheerfully reminded him that Yanks fans get all excited when Steinbrenner whips out his wallet and signs Contreras, A-Rod, and Randy Johnson, and only whine about chemistry when the latest mercenary doesn't deliver the expected World Series Crown.

So that's all for today....stay tuned for a (hopefully) witty post about the lyrics and singing in Cinderella's "Nobody's Fool" being unlikely to convey the desired effect.

AP: Seattle Wants to Outlaw Lap Dances...

Don't they know that if you outlaw lapdances, only outlaws will have lapdances?