Lava Ocean

So I'm falling asleep on the ride home in the car and listening to my new All That Remains discography. You know, standard metal MO -- pretty repetitive song structure w/ heavy everything followed by badass breakdowns and some hot double bass fun and blazing-nonsense twin guitar solo's.

Well I'm listening to what should otherwise be bruising my eardrums with brutality and I'm falling asleep. No big deal, I figure it's like when an alcoholic drinks half a bottle of Jack and gets bored hanging out and drives home. Well as you're falling asleep there's this I'd say 1-2 minute window where anything you listen to gets really god damned big and epic. Any more time than that and you're... fully asleep. And then you're only getting vague, fuzzy half-nightmares about whatever the lead singer is growling on about. In that 2 minute span it's like you're on nature's drugs.

It just so happened I timed this one perfect. I was (nature's) high as shit.

All That Remains - Regret Not
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv2R37gfcxg

So I shuffle my All That Remains playlist and I'm starting to drift off looking out the car window and acoustic guitar picks into my brain and I'm like "All That Remains own acoustic guitars?" I figure it's one of those 2 minute acoustic segue ways between songs. So I'm drifting off, half in some magical land where trees are telling olden tales and my eyes are closed and I'm about to go off and the guitar is closing in around me like the branches of all these trees so big and then-- Metal kicks me in the fucking mouth.

But that's it-- it didn't really wake me all the way. Just brought me to one of those "I hear the alarm clock but I'm refusing to actually 'wake up' and turn it off" deals.

Awesome.
Epic.
Old In Flames-esque.

I don't even know what I was fighting in that half-sleep. But I sure was fighting something. And I was winning. I was flying along at 35 MPH over Morris Rd on some mighty steed vanquishing traffic, and then I was cutting through red lights at 45 MPH, slicing in and around cars at 65, spiraling through vortex of blurry car tail lights and headlights at 100, diving headlong over a cliff, the wind rushing through my face, hurtling into an ocean filled with lava, bracing for impact--
nothing.

And it slides right back into the woods, and I'm walking along real slow and the trees are deep on either side closing in until everything goes black. And somewhere in here I fell back asleep. So I'm not sure how fast my mom was driving home to tell you the truth but I know for a fact there aren't any seas of lava near my house--just some Molten Funk (Lol jkjkj BFFaeae!!.) So yea, somewhere before that.

And yea, I woke up and listened to it 3 more times and it was (luckily) still awesome. And I've listened to it two more times since. Definitely a good one. Definitely fell asleep at the right time.

And when I looked it up on youtube it even had the video synched up with a scene from the movie 300. How can you go wrong with that?

You can't.
Enjoy.



















PS - Check out All That Remains - We Stand for a hot 'regular' one of their songs. And I'm downloading the new Tortoise album right now. Oh boy.

Bleu Cheese Good

It is the gift from the gods.
It is the choice meat of yours truly.
It is mouth-watering deliciousness.
And only two animals have to die for it.



The Buffalo Chicken Cheesesteak.














Chicken--that oh so man-made beast of the rarest and least easily duplicated taste
Buffalo--the right breed of buffalo yields the tastiest spice that one can add to any meal.
Roll-- Amarosso does it right baby.
Cheese--what doesn't this ecoutremont taste like gold on? Well, gold for one. But not many foods.



If you combine them at the right temperature, and add the seasonings at the exact right moment, all while killing the chicken in the right way (under the full moon), and blending them semi-circular in motion you have the end result of lucious, healthy unmistakable man-made joy.

And to boot a few healthy fun facts about Buff Chix Chs:
-fat-free
-cholestoral-free
-low-sodium
-high in vitamins
-enhances hand-eye
-zero calories
-purifies your liver

Boom.

That's what's up. You add just a little bleu cheese (I get mine on the side so those fascists don't drench mine) and you're talking serious awesome. There are such things as mediocre Buffalo Chicken Cheesesteaks but never 'bad' ones.

Live it up America. The land of the free. The land of the brave. The land of the Buffalo Chicken Cheese.

KaPow.

X to the A through the G

How much time do we spend 'working'?

No, not that conversation (about 20 minutes a day) -- the other one. The opposite one. Like 100 hours a week.



Think about it.














You have to be there from X toY. You got to wake up at W. You have to spend time driving home till Z. You have to go to bed early -- at U-- just so you won't be tired. You totally didn't E-mail that packet your boss specifically asked you to E-mail yesterday and you spend all of R worrying about how fired you are when you go in the next day. And you can't unwind from work until Q. Not to mention dealing with coworkers outside of work (that's J), working overtime (alot of V), and time spent complaining about work outside of work--or T. That's a load of B. S.

It's bullshit.

Meghan has it probably worst of all right now. She goes right from gay-day work to gay-Phillies work and doesn't get back until wayyy late. Props for earning that money babe to support my drinking habits. And I do understand that is a total stress inducer and non-fun-inizer. So I bear with you and accept your 'fists' of fury once in a while. (We need to start working out together, you punch like a girl)

It just ain't my cup of tea. In fact, instead of taking a second job I've decided to cut out my one job. Namely A & E. It's just getting in the way of my life. It's like, c'mon, I need to catch a beer at 9 am on a Tuesday and play video games but I'm...working?

Bullshit.

Or let's try this one on for size -- an all-night binge fest spills over into the next day and we want to drive to Tiajuana and buy hookers and cheap Mexican guns on a Thursday morning (1 pm)? Can't do it guys. I'll be at work.

Gay.

Yo dude, we were walking by Wendy's and a half pound of pot and an all-new never-before-scene season of Planet Earth HD just fell off the back of this truck and we're gonna spend 14 straight hours and journey through it....

Uh-oh, A & Fucking E.

I quit A & E. It's really cramping my social life. I need a life. I need to live. I need to breathe. I can't be shackled up in this nothing but work bullshit. I'm a man. I'm an American. I refuse to waste away. I will fight the powers to be. Slavery has been abolished by my ancestors and by Christ, I'm going to do something about this modern-day slavery.

I'm going to live.

Over - Under

Phillies today and getting my Chutley Jersey.
Conshohocken tonight for Rachel's birthGay (good one me)


The pools are in. The bookies have their numbers.
75 : 1 - I get drunk tonight.

75 : 1 !!!!!!

I'd take it if I were you. Just put down $20 and you could make $1500!!
Do it. Take the bet.

I Am People.

I just checked the 10-day forecast.
2 sunny days.

And in the past week?
we've had maybe 2 sunny days.

So.... roughly 12 out of 14-ish days of rain?

Are you kidding me? This is bullshit. This is communism. This is Richard Nixon lies. This is everything that's wrong with the world. And I think I know what it was.

God reads my blog.

And he read my article on sunshine about a week ago. That he did. Oh God, how clever we are. Oh, you mighty mighty Lord. You even threw some pretty crazy thunderstorm at me today, Big Guy. But it wasn't enough. You big jokester.

You.

You crack me up. And you've got another thing coming.

Fact:
Weather can't stop people.

Fact:
I am people.

People live on. People survive. People can not be stopped. Need more proof? I've documented a few scientific examples of men who 'defied' the elements and lived on in the face of annihilation.






----------------------WATER (Summer, 2120)

Let's say God wants to 'really show me' and he makes it rain for hundreds of years straight and the polar ice caps melt and now the entire globe is covered in water. The world has turned to drastic measures. Dangerous pirates comb the vast empty oceans, wasting away, ever-searching. Oh no, who could possibly survive?




















Kevin Costner.

Maybe you've heard of him. Maybe he sort of survived. Maybe he was even on the search for the mythical island of 'Dryland' and sort of saved humankind. And did he do it while navigating drifters, mutants, and bloodthirsty pirates on jet skis? Yea. Maybe take that fact and wrap your mind around it.

So rain? --I'm not too worried.
Next.








-----------------------------WIND (Fall, 1996)

So a little rain didn't bring mankind to a crumbling end -- what else could God possibly throw at us? Oh no. Here they come: giant swirling whirlwinds of incredible force, powerful enough to lift cows, trucks, and houses and throw them directly into the path of someone driving a red truck. No one, I mean no one could survive the awesome, horrific power of an endless wave of tornadoes. I mean, that just wouldn't make sense.

Knock! Knock!

Oh, it's for you God.
















It's Bill Paxton.


Not only did the man survive a series of documented raging tornadoes in the midwest--but he thrived. He even survived a fucking F5. Maybe you recognize the name, it is after all the finger of God.

And in doing so he even launched Dorothy into orbit and totally made out with Helen Hunt. So I guess that's not too shabby, is it?

And he did it with ease. To Bill, tornadoes are child's play. Next.







----------------------------ICE (Winter 2004)

Oh wait, God has something up his sleeve: what if he rains down hellacious violent superstorms as large as cities that combine tornado-like winds and -150 degree F freezing powers? And thanks to global warming and cooling they descend all over the earth sweeping down from the poles instantly killing millions. Well I guess that's it. Now I'm in trouble, right?

Wrong.











Dennis Quaid thinks differently.


In the Discovery Channel documentary 'The Day after Tomorrow' Quaid shows us that not even supercell storms approaching at rapid speeds to kill Jake Gyllenhaal shouldn't scare us. Apparently you just need a nice warm yellow jacket. He even turns tennis rackets into shoes and walks along the barren wasteland of what used to be Ellis Island in time to pose for a picture next to the almost fully covered in snow Statue of Liberty.

Quaid saw your bet and he raised you, God. All in.
Your move.






--So there you have it. Maybe brush up on your history, God, cause your little 10-day rain forecast isn't so scary anymore. And this is just 3 examples among many, many documented cases. Just 3 regular men who made a difference. Men who were people like you and me.

So bring the pain. Big time. Because you're taking on one of the big boys. I've studied under Kev, Bill, and Den. I know their moves. And I'm more than ready to take this 'weather' on. You know why?

Because I'm people, too.

Sleepless Night

You know that feeling where you wanna go to bed but you just can't sleep?
Of course not, you're a republican.

Well, I've got it. Got it bad. And I can't quite figure it out.

It's almost like I'm supposed to be somewhere else. Like I'm meant to be partying it up with big-time celebs. Rubbing elbows and the likes with artsy people. Being vindictive and getting involved in gang warfare. Pulling a prank on the other kids from the bunk.

I just don't know.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm here at 1 AM cracking open beer #3 tonight when I should be cracking open beer #303. Maybe it's the fact that I'm kinda bored when really I could be running from the cops at full speed, dodging gun-fire and hoping the Russian government isn't in on this. Maybe I'm just wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt when really i would be wearing a tuxedo and laughing obnoxiously at rich people jokes with a bunch of Aristocrats.

Don't. Know.

And it looks like I'll never know. This could have been 'the' night. This could have been my '24'. I always picture my life as a movie (clearly it is) and all the future stuff is unknown and the past is revealed in watery-ripple effect flashbacks throughout, but the right here, right now 'present' is the majority of the movie. Sure we'll skip ahead when it's done but the 'now' is where the action's at. And I'm sitting at home twiddling my thumb.

It's a weird longing. I want something -- I just don't know what it is. And it's not my body that wants something. It's not something like food or water or rest. It's not really physical. It's not even mental really. It isn't my brain's way of saying 'hey, i want to do a crossword puzzle' or 'hey, let's learn at least a few phrases in arabic.' Or if it is it's the worst hint ever.

So I guess it's the heart or the soul. I always imagine it like you have a soul mate -- a perfect mirror of your soul -- but it's not necessarily in a person. And there's not necessarily just one of them.

It's my total bullshit theory. To understand, start from the beginning. It's like when the universe was created it was all one piece. All one unit. And as it exploded outward all these parts broke apart and broke down and mixed together and formed compounds and developed systems and were bound by the laws of physics. Well, our souls, hearts, minds, whatever you want to call them, broke apart, too. They too mixed and changed and transformed and grew. Parts of them could be anywhere. They could be in any form. They could be in any state of matter, any state of time, any state of being.

So I can picture a part of me as a hydrogen cell billions and billions of miles away in a star. I picture me as a C# note in one particular song. I picture me in the dark spots behind the moon. I picture me as a small photon of light. I could be anywhere, anything, or anywhen. And there's not much a chance I'm going to pull all my pieces back together.

Physics --check it out.

Particles don't just disappear or go away. Moments may come and go but they don't 'unexist'. All those pieces are still out there. And they'll still be out there. They change form, they change shape, they change time. They flow.

So all these pieces of us are still out there. We're not even remotely connected to our 'original selves' anymore. But maybe, on let's say a night like tonight--a night where something's bothering me, a night I can't sleep--maybe it's because something happened. Maybe somehow a star I'm connected to billions of light years away just died. Maybe the song that is part of me was just played for the first time. Maybe a part of me in another human being was just born. Or died. It could be anything really.

Maybe that's why we 'like' things or 'don't like' things. Maybe that's why scientists can't explain why some people like peanut butter and why some people hate it (like communists). Maybe we're more connected to the world around us than we think. We're not just 'in' the world around us, we're literally 'in' it.

Like I said, totally bullshit. But I don't know, don't you sometimes feel connected to things or places or people you've never met before -- but it's almost like you've known them... since the beginning of time? Maybe you have. Maybe you have.

So, soul mates-- yea, I believe in them. But not in the standard sense. Maybe that's what it is tonight. And I'm just hoping a piece of me is out there getting laid. Another piece of me was born on planet Glarpknock. Another piece of me is being used to save poor starving kids in North Wales, PA. Whatever it is-- I'm just glad it is I guess.

Even if a star died trillions of miles away -- I hope that part of me died in a glorious supernova. Arcing across space in the beautiful quasar of dazzling color and hurtling burning hot into the cold of the void. Let it never stop shining and twisting and striving like some heavenly ember. May it burn on, long after sound and time can touch it. Just out there drifiting until millions and millions of years have gone by. And then one night it will stop... just one more sleepless night.

Paul Stewart, the Badass

I'd just like to insert an excerpt from the book I'm reading.

The Code by Something Bernstein

It's a book dedicated to the danger, the awesome, and the unwritten rules (or 'code') in fighting in hockey.

For those of you who don't know who Paul Stewart is -- everyone -- he was a badass player from the 70's turned referee. In 1973 he recorded 273 PIM in 46 Games. That's about 6 penalty minutes a game, or roughly one badass player on one team. He played for a bunch of teams including the Quebec Nordiques. He was always doing something controversial. He was being a badass as player or being a badass as a referee.

I even read somewhere in this book that as a referee he accidentally took a punch to the head while breaking up a fight. Well, you don't hit a referee. They usually crumple to the ice and everyone gets bent out of shape. Not Paul. He claims his 'instinct' kicked in he and he just started unloading on this player. He probably would have killed him if the linesmen hadn't pulled him off. So yea, imagine seeing an NHL player getting wrecked by Don Van Gayenhoven -- not gonna happen in this NHL.

Paul was pretty badass.

Then I read these little gem and couldn't find them anywhere online so I'm going to actually type them out. And they are sooo worth it.



















Paul Stewart on 'Shit Talkers'
"Sometimes guys would just talk tough, and as an official, the best way to see what pussies like that were made of was to simply stand back and let them go. There is nothing worse than seeing a guy talk shit and not back it up. Paper tigers, they would run around like assholes, talking smack to other guys, thinking that they could just hide behind the officials. Well, I knew better, so when I saw guys doing that I told my linesmen to go stand out on the blue line and let that guy get his ass kicked to teach him a lesson. That was fun, it really was. The expression on their faces when we wouldn't step in was priceless."

~Paul handing down man lessons.

Paul Stewart on Lightweight 'Pussy Fighters'
"Another time two kids were shadow boxing in an AHL game and I was reffing, so I went over to them and said, 'If you two assholes don't stop wasting my time and start throwing some real punches, I am going to take my whistle off and kick the shit out of both of you."

~Paul doesn't like that weak sauce.

Paul Stewart on Revenge:
"Revenge in hockey can be a bitch. I still owe Bob Schmautz for trying to spear me in the eye in Colorado one night. I had hit him with a beautiful elbow right in the chest, which knocked the wind out of him. I could have taken his chin off, but I didn't. So he came back at me with his stick, and we got into a stick fight. It was ugly. I even went after him years later at a celebrity golf tournament up in Pawtucket with a putter one time.Milt Schmidt had to get between us that afternoon, and it was a good thing he was there or that could have gotten ugly too. I said, "You haven't got a stick now, how tough are you?!" He was a gutless puke. He had no code and no honor. Hey Schmautz--and you can put this in the book, too--anytime, anyplace. I'm ready for you."

~Paul still wants to drop them. 100 years later. What a man.