Totally weirded out

I’m a couple weeks late, but reading Kat’s music blog has provided me with some unbelievable creepiness. You have to listen to the linked song.

“why did you kill me mommy, when god made me special for you?”

Disturbing. Seriously. Now back to my regularly scheduled Dead Milkmen listening party. “ooohhhh ooohhhh ooohhhh takin’ retards to the zoo!”


The awesome and the lame-o

The past couple weeks have completely flown by. It’s a combination of things though: the vast amounts of alcohol that I’ve been ingesting, the fact that we’re coming up on a release at work (why is it that weeks fly by when you have a deadline coming up?), and really looking forward to going out to San Jose for the 4th of July to visit Kat. I’ve thought of a lot of stuff to write about, but since I’ve been a little short on time, I haven’t really gotten around to writing any of it out. By now I’m sure I’ve forgotten a good amount of it, but I’ll see what I can remember.

The Awesome

  • www.5ives.com: Random lists of five things. My current favorites: Five things I’d like to see engraved on little rubber bracelets, Five things it’s probably better not to do when you’re kind of drunk
  • I’m leaving for San Jose in 4 days!
  • My high school reunion. I’t's coming up the weekend after the 4th. So I get to hang out with my OK friends, see my parents, and make fun of a lot of people that I don’t like. I don’t suspect that it will be as funny as going to the local Mustang bar when I visit OK, but it should still be funny.
  • Brian’s birthday party. Friday night was a superfun time. The name of the party was “Comedy, Karoke, and Cocktails” or something like that and it was seriously more fun than I would have expected it to be. I took a stab at doing some comedy, which basically involved me telling the same long-winded stories I usually do, only with an attempt at flowing between each. It went over alright. Comedy has secretly been of great interest too me, but I’ve always felt too shy to really do anything with it (until I have a couple drinks in me, then I’ll babble on all night). The kareoke was also really fun. A lot more people participated than I expected. It’s a lot easier when you know everyone there. I mean, who cares if you sing some song terribly in front of the same people that have seen you shitfaced a thousand times before.
  • Spooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnn (not this Spoon – the real one). I debated whether to put the Spoon show in the awesome or lame-o category. I’m really growing to dislike outdoor shows at Stubbs. When you’re toward the back it’s as if you’re not even at the show. Spoon played a good set. Their music is great, but after Brian’s birthday party on Friday night, I was struggling a bit to make it through the whole show. My legs were killing me, it was 2000 degrees. It was painful. After the show was over, we made the obligatory stop at Mugshots though, and that always makes everything better. That gave me the energy to drink through the rest of the night.
  • My now former roommate Christmas just bought a house. This is another dual list item, since while it’s awesome, it means that I’m now roommate-less. Though I’m sure he’s going to appreciate not benig woken up at 3am on Saturday nights by noisy people.
  • Being the first one to my 8am Sunday soccer game. Staying up all night has it’s benefits. I played a great game too. And we even won!
  • $50 max buyin NL hold’em. Two double up hands worth mentioning.
    1. First hand, blind in with 10-7o. Flop comes 6-8-9 rainbow. Early position bets the pot, I call. Turn is a Q, early position goes checks and calls my pot bet (bringing the pot to around $10). River is a 4. Early position puts me all-in (4x the pot). I think about it for a while, decide that he probably doesn’t have J-10 and call. His hand? K-2o. Sometimes I love poker.
    2. In the SB, I get pocket aces. five callers, the button raises to $1. I raise to $3. Three people call around to the button. Button goes all-in for $16. I call, everyone else folds. My AA holds up over his KK. Now while this sucks for the KK guy, it was really good for me. One of the $3 callers had pocket threes, which would have hit trips on the flop.

The lame-o

  • Flights to Oklahoma City cost $200 and require a layover in Dallas. It seriously would take me just as much time to fly to OKC as it would to drive there if you include the time it would take me to get to the airport. lame-o.
  • The copy protection on the new Foo Fighters cd. Fuck that noise. Seriously, it’s unebelievable bullshit to have a service installed to my computer that will run every time I put a new cd in my computer. And the copy protection can be “broken” in a thousand simple ways, such as running a non-windows operating system. Ridiculous.
  • The Dan Band is on tour and they’re going to be here on July 7th. The jam session will be awesome.
  • Cake is going to be here on July 10th. There’s a chance that I could go, but I will have driven back from OKC all day long beforehand. I don’t know that I’m going to want to do that, given the Spoon experience this past Saturday. And I should also put into consideration how not-awesome it was when I saw them at SXSW.
  • $50 max buyin NL hold’em. There are definitely things that suck about this game too. I’m still working on getting used to the swings in NL, but it’s currently mentally difficult for me to live with the idea that though I made the right play, I threw away my entire buy-in in a single hand. For instance, making the nut flush on the turn with KQ to a A-3-J-5 board, I end up getting busted when the guy turns up A-5o and hits a 5 on the river. That payoff would have been fantastic, I just have to get used to the idea that I could lose it all, really really fast.
  • Fucking weevils. Those bastards somehow got through the jar of pancake mix I just bought. ABC Pest is coming out next week though. Weevils – your days are numbered. Eat up you bastards.

Ow, my soleus!

Last week, during a failed attempt to play three indoor games in a row, some jackass kicked me in the shin, my leg bent a funny (not funny haha) way and it started hurting immediately. I was completely freaked out because I’ve never had trouble with my knees before. For the rest of the night I couldn’t really straighten out my leg without a large of amount of pain. Wednesday was the same thing, so I called up my kick ass orthopedic surgeon and made an appointment for Friday. By Friday, the pain wasn’t constant, but I still wanted to keep my appointment to get the reassurance that I didn’t tear anything. It turns out I strained my soleus muscle, which I was really unaware existed in the first place. But, I’m fine. No torn ligaments or tendons, no surgery, everything is great.

Strange Days
No, not the terrible movie, but rather, my Friday night. For the first time in forever, there were a lot of options available for evening activities. Thomas invited me to some shows downtown, Brent invited me to dinner, April invited me to a NL home game. What did I do? Nothing that I planned on (sorry April, next time). It all started at work. Some people were out of the office, so there was extra beer at beer-thirty. So I drank it. Then off to C Hunt’s for more beer drinking action, where I was stuck with the decision, drive somewhere far, or hang out up north. I managed to convince everyone that we should go bowling, so plans were in place. Stopped by Zen for some tasty foods and we were off to Highland for some kick ass bowling action and beer served in bowling pin-shaped bottles.

Bowling
I had a really good night at bowling. My games went 171, 173, 210 for a 554 series (my second highest since I started keeping score). This is really good considering how much I drank and the number of people that were bowling on my lane (5 total). There were a couple of interesting points. The 173 game ended with a 4-6-7-10 split for an open in the tenth frame. That one definitely could have been better. One other notable frame was one where I left the 1-2-4-10, which I picked up not by knocking the 1 to the 10, but by knocking the 4 off the back wall and tripping the 10. My new ball is intense. And inferno-like.

Late Night
After bowling when everyone lamed out, Jason and I headed to our neighborhood cocktail bar, the Canary Roost. The place was packed. I mean, crazy packed. Some terrible singers, but the last singer was definitely worthwhile. This guy did the best cover of “Toxicity” by System of a Down. Jason and I parted ways and I was still looking for something to do. Amanda called me up and we headed out to some crazy old guy’s house for some after party action. It was weird. Really weird. I think it really started taking a strange turn when some guy put his dick in a jar of crunchy peanut butter. Yeah, that was definitely when it got weird.

Oddly enough, Saturday night, I ended up hanging out with Thomas at the Canary Roost again. This time it wasn’t so packed, so after a couple drinks, I was determined to find a good song to sing. I believe I found the best kareoke song ever: “Punk Rock Girl” by the Dead Milkmen. Fantastic. It’s great for spotting the coolest people in the bar, because they’ll be singing every lyric along with you.

Oh my liver. I promise I’ll take it easier on you this week. Really.


Winning streaks are awesome…until they end

So I was having unbelievable luck on Full Tilt as I was working of my superawesome 100% matching deposit bonus. Full Tilt hasn’t generally been awesome to me, but the World Series of Poker qualifiers and other tournaments that they have are too enticing for me to pass up. I probably already mentioned this, but in case I haven’t: I really hate the interface for Full Tilt. It’s too cartoonish and the cards and chip counts are too small. The size issues probably have something to do with the fact that my monitor is either on its last leg, or my eyes are getting worse. I’m not sure which it is, but I’m not having trouble reading my laptop screen at work. Either way, I can’t see the cards very well.

There are some awesome things about full tilt though. The little things that make life grand: instant chip counts throughout tournaments. A variety of tournament options, including heads-up tournaments (a new addiction for me). The tournaments are also smaller and impose the antes in later rounds, which work to speed things up a bit. I never thought I would say this, but I like the fact there aren’t 1000 people in every tournament. I’m also back and forth as to whether the players are generally better or worse on Full Tilt. In the cash games, I’ve been getting killed. Seriously killed at all levels. 5/10, 3/6, 2/4 structured as well as at NL. But I’ve done remarkably better in the tournaments than I have in the past. But I’ve seen some really poor play in tournaments. I’ve had a tournament where I doubled up on the first hand when my pocket 8s hit for trips on an 8 high flop, I checked, and the guy behind me went all-in with his pocket queens (over betting the pot by roughly 8x). It may be nothing though, my switch to Full Tilt has coincided with a change in my tournament play, which given the results I’ve had, is apparently working. It’s a nice feeling to make the money in tournaments somewhat regularly though.

I had a crazy streak to start out, where I cashed in I believe the first 6 tournaments I played. Nothing really significant as I continue to get busted early in the money, but it’s still been nice to make it. One tournament qualified me for a WSOP qualifier last Sunday, which (of course) had to be when my luck took a turn for the worse. I ended up busting 10 before the money after making a bad decision with pocket 10s. Ohhhh, pocket 10s. I replayed the moment in my head a thousand times. Chip leader in middle position has everyone at the table covered by probably 5x. Full table, he comes in for double the blind. That should have been my first sign. I mean, when you’re chip lead by a tremendous amount, what do you do when you have a monster hand? Of course, I didn’t think about this at the time. Next to act after the chip lead bumps it up, quadrupling the blind (which is about half his stack). This play is why I think my mind shut down. The re-raiser was pissed off at the chip lead from a previous hand. I (stupidly) shrugged off his raise as tilt-madness. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Everyone folds to me. I have roughly 3x the big blind, so I push all in with my pocket tens thinking I’m some kind of genius. BB folds back to the chip leader, who without hesitating puts the re-raiser all in. In an ignisecond, I wished CTRL+Z worked for poker. Re-raiser thinks for a while, calls all-in. I would let you guess what they flipped over, but I don’t think it would be much of a challenge. I was up against AA (chip leader) and QQ (re-raiser). The community cards didn’t help anyone and I was sent packing.

This week I’ve continued to play a number of tournaments on Full Tilt. While I’m not having the luck I had last week, it’s still going alright. The big difference is I’m not getting the unbelievable luck on the heads-up tournaments like I was last week. Last week I had three heads up tourneys that went three hands (all three against different players). It’s as if they’ve never heard the term “slow play”. And their screens must only have two options on the river “Fold” and “go all-in for 1400 on a 40 pot”. To save space it’s probably just “Fold” and “Attempt ridiculous bluff”.

In other poker news, I’ve offically been ordained as a poker blogger. April over at This is not a poker blog was even kind enough to put me on her list of Austin poker bloggers. Now I’ll just have to learn how to play poker. Look for me to add April and the rest of the poker blogs that I read on a regular occasion to my links soon.


The Cleansing

Last night I ventured out to Stubb’s to see Rainer Maria, which if you’ve been reading my babbling for the past few months you might remember that they put on an awesome set at SXSW. It was also Xuan’s birthday, so a number of the dan house gang were going to the show too. Because Jason and I were both determined to eat dinner, we drove ourselves separate from the rest of the group.

Who Goes to a Show to See the Opening Act?
The crowd was much smaller than I had expected (maybe 300 people?). I had never heard of the headliner before (Copeland) but I assumed they were a pretty big group. The show turned out to be inside at Stubb’s, not outside like the NIN show a couple weeks ago, which was nice because it was hot as ass yesterday. The first opener was some guy I can’t remember. His stuff was alright, but I wasn’t reallly into it last night. Between sets, I bought some Rainer Maria cds and talked to their singer and drummer. They are both really nice people. Unfortunately the first song of the set, the guitarist broke a string. Uggghhh. It was unfortunate because opening band sets are always short anyway. They eventually got a different guitar and everything was cool. The set was once again great, but a little short. Afterward, I talked to the band some more about their future plans (new album and tour in the fall). Hopefully they’ll play a longer set next time.

How Old Am I?
Throughout the show I was throwing back the beers like crazy. I don’t know what was going on with me, but it was as if I was on a mission to get plowed. And I succeeded with horrible results. After the show, we had to make a stop by my favorite downtown bar, Mugshots. The bartenders there are supercool and the jukebox seems to be filled with CDs from my personal collection. I had a couple drinks and a birthday shot with Xuan and that was pretty much the end of good times. We left downtown to go to Anderson Mill Tavern (not my idea) and about halfway through the drive back, I knew things were going to end badly. I can’t imagine how bad I looked, but it must have been painfully obvious to Jason that I wasn’t going to make it. After a quick stop to drop off my stomach contents, I was at home and in bed before midnight. I was soooooooo glad to have driven separately with Jason, not realy a moment that I wanted to share with a large group of people. The morning was the worst though. This has been the worst hangover I’ve had in years. Absolutely horrible. I think I might have gotten alcohol poisoning or something. Seriously, there was a point when I was sitting at my desk thinking I shouldn’t move due to the queasiness. It was a struggle to make it through the workday. I’m glad that’s over.


A weekend of poker tournaments

This weekend, being the first weekend that I have been around in a while, I decided that I should do some laundry, mow the lawn (which took 3 hours), and play some poker. Coming off the fantastic time that I had in San Jose, I decided to continue on my quest to become a better tournament player, which meant playing a bunch of huge tournaments. I’m not sure if I’m getting better, or if I just did well this weekend because all the poker bloggers are in Vegas. Either way, it was quite a boost to my ego, though it didn’t really affect my bankroll at all. I’m still working on getting to a final table, but that will have to continue to be a dream. I don’t really know of a good way to get all the info on the tournament (# of participants, buy-ins, etc) so other than the hand history logs, I just have to remember all the rest of the details. I think these were all $20 buy-in tourneys though. And I’m pretty sure they all started with over 800 players.

NL Hold’em Trny:12813771 Level:12 Blinds (500/1000) – Saturday, June 04, 22:51:52 EDT 2005
Table Multi-Table(355587) Table #6 (Real Money)
** Dealing Flop ** [ 8s, 4s, 3d ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Jd ]
** Dealing River ** [ Ts ]
mikdaroofer shows [ Qc, Qs ] a pair of queens.
gus shows [ Kh, Qh ] high card king.
Player gus finished in 73 place and received $49.68

NL Hold’em Trny:12841030 Level:12 Blinds (500/1000) – Sunday, June 05, 21:13:09 EDT 2005
Table Multi-Table(356723) Table #5 (Real Money)
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jd, Th, Jh ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ As ]
** Dealing River ** [ 2c ]
holmesconst shows [ Ad, 5h ] two pairs, aces and jacks.
gus shows [ 8c, 8h ] two pairs, jacks and eights.
Player gus finished in 71 place and received $57

NL Hold’em Trny:12847406 Level:15 Blinds (1500/3000) – Monday, June 06, 01:42:02 EDT 2005
Table $30,000 Guaranteed(356742) Table #3 (Real Money)
** Dealing Flop ** [ 4c, 7h, Jc ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9s ]
** Dealing River ** [ 2h ]
tifftong shows [ 9d, 7s ] two pairs, nines and sevens.
gus doesn’t show [ Qd, Qh ] a pair of queens.
shiggyshag doesn’t show [ Ks, Jh ] a pair of jacks.
Player gus finished in 43 place and received $114.7

All in all, I was really happy with how I played. I can’t think of a hand where I was behind when I put all my chips in (with the exception of the bust out hand on the first one). For my bust out hands, in each situation, I had less than 2x the big blind so I’m not terribly shocked by the A5o or 97o all-in calls. A good weekend of tournaments at last! And as an added bonus, I’m almost finished clearing the June PP bonus as well!


Memorial Day

I spent Memorial Day weekend in the San Jose area visiting Kat. She set up this super sweet bed and breakfast deal for the weekend in Half Moon Bay (a 1 hr drive from Mountain View) so we spent the majority of the weekend hanging around the beach and generally being lazy. It was unbelievably awesome. A much needed change of pace. We did all the typical stuff youd expect out of a bed and breakfast weekend, walk along the beach, checked out Fitzgerald Marine Preserve, drove through the Purisima Creek Redwoods, ate some tasty foods, and watched the sunset (cause were all romantical and shit, yo). It really was fantastic.

And then, gambling?
Being that we are who we are, there was some casino action involved over the weekend. On the Friday before the weekend, we ventured back to Bay 101 for some poker action. The list was pretty long so I signed up for 2/4, 3/6 and 6/12 (since I had such good luck at it last time). Of course 6/12 came up first, so I prepared for the worst and started playingmy game. There were a lot of maniacs and within a couple hours, I was a bit shortstacked when A2s came at me in the big blind. There was a raise from a maniac that was shorter on chips than me, so I didnt feel guilty calling a preflop raise with 6 callers. The flop came 2-X-X. First person bets, maniac raises, one guy calls, it folds around to me (I call) and the original raiser folds. I was certain that neither of the two guys left in the hand has hit anything yet. Turn comes A and now with 2 pairI bet, maniac raises all in, other player calls, I call. River comes 2 and completes a flush draw. I bet, non-descript guy raises. I only have $11 left, so I re-raise all-in. Non-descript guy calls and flips over pocket aces. Theres a lesson in all of this. Beware the guy who calmly lets you do all the betting. Hell no doubt flip up the hand you werent even looking for. I had to rebuy, there were no two ways about it. Eventually, I won my money back and was actually up $200 for a while, but lost it all on a few straights and flushes that panned out for other players against my top pair, top kicker. I ended the session down $50. Not terrible, but not awesome either.

After the relaxing weekend on the coast, we decided to get some more poker action in on Monday afternoon. Since I have a strong desire to gamble everywhere, we went to Garden City Casino to check out their poker room. Its actually slightly closer than Bay 101 (I think) but on the I-280 side rather than the 101 side which means its more of a pain in the ass to get to from Kats place, even if it is closer.

Garden City
I could go on and on about Garden City. I could tell you about how its more crowded, dingy, and less professional than Bay 101. I could tell you that the dealers let all sorts of ridiculous table talk, players showing cards to other players in the hand, and even accidentally flip up mucked cards at the end of a hand. All of that stuff is interesting and true. My table was full of a bunch of regulars who routinely made deals to check out the rest of hands when heads up against other players they knew. It was silly and boring. I could tell you about how some regulars at my table made stupid obnoxious comments to Kat when she came by my table, but shes already covered that. I could tell you about the weird (seriously) Santa Cruz hippie that sat down next to meand managed to hit quads four times in three hours. Between him and the asshat to my left I found myself wishing there was a stronger cigarette smell to cover up their collective body odor. Instead of all that, Im going to tell you about the most interesting thing that happened while I there: visiting the bathroom.

The first thing I did after getting on the list was go to the bathroom. When I walked into the bathroom, I instantly see a short Asian man at a urinal swaying side to side emphatically as he urinates like a child underlining his name after he first discovered that you could write your name in the snow while pissing. Im not sure that my description does it justice. It was just flat strange. As if it couldnt get any weirder, the next time I went to the bathroom (2+ hrs later) another Asian guy was using the same urinal only this time instead of swaying side to side, hes making a humping motion. Not an exaggerated shaking it off humping motion when he was finished, but humping motion the entire time he was pissing. Either the people in this casino are strange, or there is something really special about that first urinal. And if there is something special about that first urinal, Id rather not know about it.

As far as *actual poker* goes, I played 3-4 hours of 3/6 and ended the evening up $50, evening out my poker for the trip. The most notable thing about the session was the number of quads that were hit. I counted 6 sets of quads all of which were for some huge pots. I hit quads myself (quad 2s) and destroyed a couple guys with AKs (See what happens when you dont raise the flop with AK?!?). The hippie hit quads four times. Twice with pocket pairs. Unbelievable . Wheres the bad beat jackpot when you need it? The most amazing quads came didnt involve anyone Ive mentioned so far. It went a little like this (cutting out all the preflop business). Guy in early position (EP) bets a flop that goes 10-10-4, called by late position (LP). Turn is a blank, EP bets, LP raises, EP calls. River is an A. EP bets, LP raises, EP re-raises (back and forth until EP is out of chips). EP flips up A-A, LP shows 10-10. It almost hurt to watch, but I didnt like either player so I was hoping that somehow theyd both lose. One loser is better than none though, thats what I always say.

Bay 101, revisited
On Tuesday, Kat had to work, so I made another stop at Bay 101. My plan was to play for a while and then see about entering the daily tournament at 9:45. I got to the casino around 8:00am (there were probably five tables working at the time). After some confusion and getting bumped on my slot for 6/12, I decided to bite the bullet and play 8/16 because no one was looking like they were going to be getting up any time soon and I didnt want to wait for another table to open up. I had an unbelievable run at 8/16 and in an hour an a half managed to be up $360. Yeah, it was ridiculously awesome. I dont think I could handle the swings though if I happened to hit a bad streak starting out. I mean, at one point I was up almost $500 and $140 vanished without blinking an eye. Happy with my winnings, I decided to play the tournament. $50 buy-in with $20 rebuys.

The tournament is an insane all-in fest for the first three rounds. You start with 500 in chips (1000 with the double rebuy) and people continually went all-in and rebought over and over again. One of the poker roommanagers told me that the last time he played the tournament he spent $280 on buyins. Insane in the membrane. I only spent $90, getting busted twice total. Both times I got busted I had the best starting hand. The first, pocket 7s with 300 in chips left, I pushed in late position to try to take some blinds. Reraises all-in, big blind calls us all. LP shows pocket 2s, big blind shows A-10. 10 spikes on the river. Once rebuys were over I had one hand where I doubled up and got to around 1300. A guy in early position raises to 400. I raise all-in with J-J to isolate and get one other caller. EP shows 10-10, other caller shows 6-6. Flop comes out J-9-2, turn Q, river K. This was the same fucking guy that spiked the 10 to bust me previously. Runner-runner straight. It hurt. I decided Id had enough poker for one day and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in a coffee shop in downtown San Jose catching up on email, talking to my work peoples and typing this.

Overall, it was an amazing weekend. Hopefully it’ll be enough rest to get me through to the Fourth of July, when I think I should look for some Vegas Centennial action. We’ll see how that pans out.


Hey Trent!

So since I was going to San Jose for the long weekend, I had to fly, which meant I spent an entire day in a panic trying to get everything accomplished before I left. (Am I ever going to learn to plan for vacations better? I didn’t think so). It didn’t help that I had spent the previous night out after the Nine Inch Nails show. I left work half an hour later than I wanted to, but still managed to get to the airport in time for the flight. I was absolutely the last person on the plane. As I’m waiting for everyone to find their seats, I notice a guy sitting in the aisle seat typing furiously on a blackberry. Then I notice that he’s not in a business suit, but rather a black t-shirt and jeans. Black dyed hair. I look at the guy across the aisle from him; same thing. Wearing all black, hair dyed black. I look back at the blackberry guy and notice the beefy arms, but he’s still not looking up enough for me to tell if he’s actually who I think he is: I don’t want to embarrass myself, so I use Kramer technique for figuring out who someone is. I call out “Hey Trent!”. He looks up at me blankly.

Me: “You played a great show last night.”
Trent: “Thanks. I’m glad you liked it.” *shakes my hand*.

That’s right. Trent Reznor (and the keyboard player was the other guy) was on my flight. I’m on my way to San Jose, but we stopped in Phoenix, where NIN is playing a couple shows this weekend. Proud of myself for not totally obsessed fan-ing out on him, I take my seat on the plane, resisting the urge to sit within talking distance of him. I mean, the guy’s minding his own business, right? But during the flight, my superfan status takes over and I keep trying to think of reasons why I need to talk to him again at greater length. The majority of the flight we had turbulence though, so the flight attendants weren’t letting people walk around. Finally, the ride was smooth for a while. I decided to go to the bathroom, walk by and see if he was doing anything. He had a Sony PSP and was playing tetris or some game that looked like it. Either way, I didn’t want to interrupt. Once in the lavatory, I remembered that I still have the May issue of Spin in my backpack (the one with Trent Reznor on the cover). I decided that I would just have him autograph it. While I’m in the bathroom though, we hit more turbulence and the safety belt light comes on again. And then the plane starts its decent into Phoenix. Realizing that this is my last chance, I decide to go for it while the flight attendants are cleaning up the back of the plane.

Me: *Tap Trent on the shoulder*. “Hey, I’m sorry to do the stupid fan thing, but would you mind signing my May issue of Spin?”
Trent: “Sure.” *signs the cover*
Me: “I really liked the show last night. The track selection was awesome. Are you guys playing Phoenix tonight?”
Trent: “Naw, we’re playing tomorrow and the next night.”
Flight Attendant: “Please take your seat.”

So before I could work up the nerve to ask for the photo op, the flight attendant shut me down. Too bad. But, I do have my autographed cover of Spin. It brings up an interesting question though. Why did I want it? I have no idea what I’m going to do with this issue of Spin. Do I frame it and put it on the wall? Maybe. I used to be a horrible autograph whore. I used to stay at shows way after the show was over to see if I could meet the band, get them to sign ticket stubs, cds, posters, whatever. Then I woke up one day and thought to myself, why? I still keep ticket stubs because I have some strange idea in my mind that I’ll make some collage of them at some point. But by the time I do that I’ll be a thousand years old and I think I’ll feel somewhat like Uncle Rico every time I look at it. All of this being said, sitting here on the plane, my only thought was “How am I going to get him to autograph this issue of Spin.” The logical “what the hell do I want it for?” question was still there in my mind, but I completely left it unanswered and insisted on getting the autograph, which Trent politely gave me without a scowl. His really quiet demeanor made me feel bad for bothering him. He kind of reminded me of my friend, Kevn (the devil machine). If I didn’t know him, I’d feel bad for bothering him because he always looks like he’s got his own shit going on and doesn’t need to be bothered. Not in a bad way, just like he has better things to do than sign issues of Spin. But fuck it, when am I ever going to meet Trent Reznor again?

Trent Reznor Spin Cover


Head Like a … Learn the Fucking Words You Asshole

Last Wednesday, Nine Inch Nails played at Stubb’s. Multiple people that I know asked me the same question when I told them I was going to the show, “Nine Inch Nails is still around?” Apparently no one remembers “The Fragile” which in my opinion is a high quality album. But never mind that, I was going to see Nine Inch Nails! Things didn’t get off on the right foot; I was late leaving and had to deal with the 6pm I-35 parking lot situation. I was feeling rather impatient though, so I took back roads all the way downtown.

The Show
When I finally got to Stubbs, I saw two big lines. Both appeared to be going into the venue, but one was dramatically shorter than the other. I decided to go for the short line and quickly got into the show. Note to self: always look for the really short line. The other people I was meeting stood in line for an extra 30 minutes for nothing. I secured a great spot 20ft from the stage, dead center.

The Dresden Dolls
They were pretty good. Their drummer can wail like no one’s business. Really good. And they did a cover of War Pigs (the black sabbath song, or as I like to remember it, the Faith No More cover song on Falling to Pieces) which was really interesting. I liked their set, despite the people in the crowd that were flipping them off (as if that accomplishes anything).

Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails came on at 9pm, which although extremely early, was a welcome surprise to me because now I had no room to myself being that close to the stage. Instead, I had the pleasure of rubbing up against 5 people at the same time, none of which were attractive, female, or smelled the least bit desirable. The show was awesome. It was as if Trent Reznor picked my favorite songs from each album specifically for me. The Downward Spiral? Let’s play “Reptile”. Broken? Let’s play “Suck” and “Gave Up”. They even played “Burn” (the non-album track from Natural Born Killers). Rock out. The only frustrating thing is that there was a lot of singing along. Not that singing along is particularly bad, but the guy next to me was a horrible singer. And I’m not talking bad like the rest of humanity, but rather horrible as in “it should be crime for you to speak and thus should not do so in public”. Especially really loudly in my ear. But if that weren’t bad enough, during “Hurt” this guy had to continually sing the wrong lyrics with the wrong timing. I’d give a sample lyric, but it hurts me so bad I can’t bring myself to relive those feelings again. The stage was definitely toned-down from the last time I saw them (on the ’94 downward spiral tour). No big screens with videos playing this time, no smashing of equipment after every song, just some giant LEDs (which looked pretty cool though they were very simple), and five guys bringing teh rock.

In summary:
The show was at Stubb’s BBQ
There were about 2000 people at the show
The jam session was awesome

NINE INCH NAILS
NINE INCH NAILS
NINE INCH NAILS
NINE INCH NAILS

Rock over Austin, rock on Chicago
Winamp: It whips the llama’s ass