An Odd List to Be On

1. Milwaukee
2. Minneapolis-St. Paul
3. Columbus, Ohio
4. Boston
5. Austin, Texas
6. Chicago
7. Cleveland
8 Pittsburgh
9. Philadelphia
9. Providence, R.I. (tied) 

From looking at that top 10 list, what do you think is being ranked?  Education statistics?  Employment numbers?  Population rises or declines?  Cleanliness stats?  Top drinking cities?

Well, if you guessed the last one, you are correct.  According to Forbes, my current residence is smack dab in the middle of the #2 drinking environment in the United States!  I was quite surprised to see Minneapolis/St. Paul rank so high.  Milwaukee is a no brainer up there at #1... although I had thought maybe Madison would give it a run for its money, but the perrenial party town doesn't even crack the top 35, let alone the top 10.

I never thought of Minneapolis as a drinking centric city, but I guess it must be.  Walking around downtown, uptown, and the inner suburbs, I can start to see that we do actually have quite the night life, full of drinking establishments.  And with Grain Belt Premium being brewed here, how we've even got a little of that brewery atmosphere that Milwaukee has.  Ok, maybe we don't, but at least we have some quality, cheap, pale ale brewed here.

So next time you are out and about getting totally hammered down at Drink or Brother's or The Loon or wherever, remember that you are in the second drunkest town in the US.  And when you remember that, knock down a few more and let's see if we can't manage to dethrone Milwaukee!

It's Not a Submarine

Last Thursday I had returned to Rochester to perform a fantasy football draft with all of my old co-workers from Kingland Systems (all except two which had also left the company in the last few months). While I was there, a wave of heavy storms and tornadoes went through the area, as many of you may have heard about in the news. When I was watching the weather in the area and on the television, it didn't even occur to me to wonder what the weather was like back in the Twin Cities where my place was.

After looking at the picture to the right (there are more pictures and a description at Jared's site which you can get to by clicking on the picture), it seems like it was pretty rainy at home too... torrentially so. Any time there's enough rain to fill up the road to the bottom of a car door, you know that you got a lot of rain.

Thankfully my car wasn't there and didn't get flooded (since I park right behind or in front of Jared's car on the road). Knowing how much rain had gathered up outside, I wondered about our basement since I had noticed a little bit of water damage to the carpet in the basement living room when we moved in, but thankfully there was no water leakage into the basement while I was out.

With Jared's bad luck on getting his car partially flooded, maybe I received some good luck at my football draft. Tell me what you think of my team:

Quarterbacks:

• Tom Brady
  
• Kurt Warner

Running Backs:

• Lamont Jordan
  
• Kevan Barlow
• Kevin Jones
• Deuce Staley

Receivers/Ends:

• Plaxico Burress
  
• TJ Houshmandzadeh
• Desmond Mason
• Lee Evans
• Troy Williamson
• Robert Furguson
• Ashlie Lelie

Kickers:

• Josh Brown
  

Defense:

• Carolina Panthers
  

With Blood Comes Cleansing - Golgotha CD Review

Up until the last year or two, metal and metalcore had a pretty standard set of vocal types. There was the classic hair metal wail (now used prominently by Dragonforce). There was the sing / scream dichotomy (which was brought into the limelight by Atreyu and their clones, but done best by Sevendust). You also had the nu-metal melodic approach (see any band from the early 2000’s). Lastly, there were the growlers (ie: Zao) and the yellers (ie: Machine Head, Pantera). Recently, however, there is a new vocal type that keeps coming up when listening to newer metal bands — the pig squealers. Job for a Cowboy has the most noticeable version of this vocal type, but bands such as Lokyata and With Blood Comes Cleansing showcase it as well.

Obviously vocals don’t make a band, but in the case of With Blood Comes Cleansing it is the most prominent feature of the band. Even being of the squealing variety, there is actually a moderate amount of variation, believe it or not. At times you get the straight on pig squeal. Other times it is an uncomfortable sucking in style of scream where it feels like Michael Sasser is trying to suck air down his wind pipe while he’s screaming the vocals out. Interesting as it may be, it doesn’t feel even close to natural.

Beyond the stylings of the vocal approach, the rest of the band rumbles in riding on a series of breakdowns and thrash inspired progressions. Most of the time the band sticks to chugging riffs punctuated by your usual start/stop, heavy as hell, break your face, hardcore inspired breakdowns. To spice it up, however, Jeremy Sims and Scott Erickson will bring on some shredding that sounds akin to solid Through the Eyes of the Dead or The Black Dahlia Murder rips. It’s a welcome change from the straight ahead death metal tinged metalcore approach found throughout most of this effort, but still doesn't do enough to get the band to move up the metalcore ranks.

The real downfall of this band is actually not that noticeable if you don’t try to decipher what’s being sang or read the CD insert. If you do, be prepared for some of the most in-your-face, preachy, pro-God lyrics to come around since Stryper or DC Talk. Take this passage from “Persecution” for example: “At the presence of God every knee will bow / Every tongue will confess He is Lord”. Or how about this gem from “Fearless Before Opposition” which goes like: “The demons draw nigh / The angels cry / Holy is the lamb / The lamb that was slain / The hour is coming for our king to return”.

If you can get beyond the lyrics and the aping of Job for a Cowboy, this really isn’t all that terrible of a release. What it comes down to, in the end, is how much you really need another metalcore CD in your collection, even if this one is generally better than the majority of the crap from Victory that is no doubt currently cluttering your music racks.

The Days Are Getting Shorter

This morning it was perfect out. Cool, a little breezy, somewhat overcast, the smell of dying summer in the air... it's days like today where I find myself cranking up the sentimental tunes on my MP3 player and walking slowly through downtown with my eyes searching the building tops and the sky for all of the beauty that I so often miss when I am in my usual hustle and bustle to and from work. Cool, fall type days remind me to take everything in around me. I remember to notice that I'm alive and happy and a part of this world, instead of going about from here to there not really acknowledging why I am or letting myself outside of the bubble that is the world directly around me. In the end, there isn't really a way to describe the ethereal feeling that floats around on these perfect days.

Ugghh, I so want to go outside right now. I miss the country side so badly some days, like today, like most fall days. The endless fields stretching on, yearning for the harvest. The trees of the farm blowing in the wind as the leaves slowly and daily change from their robust greens to hushed yellows, Halloween oranges, and dusky browns. Most of all, I miss the silence. In town there is no respite from the sounds of everyday life. There are cars, lawn mowers, neighbors, malls, televisions, houses, buildings, and so much more cluttering up the space around me. There's no true peace to be found outdoors in the city or suburbia. In the country... ahh, there you can find it. Miles can stretch on with nothing happening other than the sun shining down and mother nature blowing you kisses on the wind. The caress of the country. The only people that know it are those that grew up with it.

Fall is going to be here soon. It's a magical season. It's when I feel most alive and, simultaneously, most at peace. I can't imagine living somewhere that doesn't have fall. Minnesota gets cold an ice box in the winter and hot as the deepest depths of hell in the summer, but between those two seasons are two other seasons that are trully phenomenal, and one is right on the horizon.

Hellishly Good Photography Skills

Thanks to Neatorama, I stumbled across one of the most beautiful photography collections that I have seen in quite some time. These Fleeting Moments houses a collection of numerous high contrast, melancholic, beautiful photos like the small thumbnail you see to your right.

After browsing through the photos, I can't help but wish I'd have capitalized on the Photoshop seminars that I have been to. Once I finished the seminars I found myself energized for taking photos and practicing the new techniques I learned, but my interest often waned quite quickly, partially because I'm not as awesome with Photoshop as I wished I was and I don't have the right camera to get great pictures to work with.

Someday, however, I hope that the professional photographer bug rubs off from my mom and I find myself wanting to take the time to create some great prints. Until then, however, I'll just keep admiring all the wonderful photography out there on the glorious internet.

This Should Be Fun

So apparently NWA Flight Attendants are not happy campers and are going to start, as of Friday, performing random walkouts in lead up to a potential strike. You can check out their website here. I have to fly to New York via Northwest next week, which might prove interesting if all of the sudden there are no flight attendants for my flight.

I wonder what I'll have to do if the situation arises where there is a walkout on my flight. I remember that when I was booking my tickets it was pretty damn hard getting a flight period. I can't imagine myself getting onto another flight from a different provider, as I'm sure that any open seats will be fought over by everyone on my flight. Or maybe do I get stuck taking connecting flights to get me there? That would suck. It's a two day trip so spending inordinate amounts of time in the air doesn't make much sense.

Let's just hope that my flight has attendants and I get to New York and back... yeah, getting back will be essential. I don't want to be stuck in the Big Apple with no where to stay. I suppose I could book a hotel somewhere, but talk about inconvenience.

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Side note, is it just me or for the intro to the NWA Flight Attendant website, is that the Terminator II music in the background. If it is, that's pretty bad ass.

Firma - Manifold CD Review

Coffee shops have certain special types of musicians that like to play in that environment's type of intimate, laid back, no-frills atmosphere. More often than not it’s young and barely talented singer/songwriters doing their best Ben Harper or Dave Matthews impression, but on occasion you’ll find a band that so naturally fits the coffee shop venue that you can’t imagine anyone else playing in the background while you sip your latte and socialize with friends. Today's coffee shop band du jour is Firma.

Playing a partially electric, partially acoustic brand of indie rock, the young men in Firma have put together a debut EP that successfully straddles the line between crossing over from being laid back to just plain boring. What does it for this band is the smart and interesting interplay between the two guitarists. Taking center stage over the rest of the band, Mathieu Rodrigue and Stephen Tierney create a dialogue between their guitars, one speaking in light electric tones while the other whispers back with an acoustic voice that fills any empty spaces there may be.

Besides the usual indie rock influences that can be heard within just about any modern indie band’s playing, there are slight hints of other, more diverse, influences touching Firma’s songs. On the opening track, “The Pirate”, there is a distinct nod, intentional or not, to Days of the New and their unique style of play. While on “Nightmares” you hear a stronger, firmer sound with a Circa Survive molded musical attack.

Within the confines of these five songs from the band's self released EP, Firma have put forth a strong offering into the modern indie rock world. There are a few rough edges, such as the sometimes unfocused vocals, but for a debut effort, you couldn’t ask for much more.

A Heartwell Ending - Trust Us We Lie CD Review

There are some days where I would like to take each member of Taking Back Sunday out to a shady corner of North Dakota and shoot them one by one in the head. It would be a Herculean task to count the number of sad, uninspired, rip-off bands they inspired in the wake of the popularity of Tell All Your Friends, as well as the glut of bands still aping that sound. It wouldn’t have been nearly so bad if at least a few of their clones had come out ok, but nearly every one of them came out with the retarded gene influencing every song they wrote. It was like the fifth clone of Michael Keaton from Multiplicity spawned out over and over again.

So without further adieu, I present to you the world’s latest Taking Back Sunday cover band… err, I mean emocore band… wait, maybe mallcore? Or how about we just call it borecore? Or crapcore? Or maybe just unneeded and unwanted? Whatever you want to call it, Trust Us We Lie isn’t much more than a mash up of Taking Back Sunday, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, a vocoder, Fall Out Boy song titles, slightly out of tune singing, and some Emery flourishes for good measure.

If the previous sentence didn’t scream out to you how “scene” these guys want to be than I think you need to wake the hell up, go visit Hot Topic, and catch up on what’s cool with the kiddies today. Sadly, to be cool in today’s Hot Topic and MySpace musical scene a band has to sacrifice all of their integrity, dress up in clothes meant for the the sex lacking a penis, and whore themselves out by making millions of friend requests online. At least that's what A Heartwell Ending did.

Ok, not everything on this disc is utterly terrible. It’s more so boring and run of the mill as opposed to terrible, but in the music industry aren’t those two things almost interchangeable? These guys can, in a pinch, write a chorus that is infectious and not completely eye-rollingly bad, but it is the exception instead of the rule when listening to this effort. Also, the production values are quite good, but then again, what band doesn’t have a nice, glossy CD to put on the shelves today? It’s actually the rarer occurrence to have a CD without pristine production values than the other way around. But anyways.

Where does this leave a band like A Heartwell Ending? Pretty much in nowheresville. Surely this release will get picked up by a decent subset of the scene kids, but beyond that, Trust Us We Lie holds no real redeeming value. It’s another “hot for 5 minutes and then fade into nothingness” releases that we see littering the shelves of Hot Topic and Best Buy. Whatever. It’s your money, not mine, but I can tell you I wouldn’t spend a dime on this.

Busy

Yeah, wouldn't you know it, work is keeping me busy. Not only that, but it seems like all of the sudden I have all kinds of other things to do after work as well, which is not something I am opposed to at all. It's great having stuff to do all the time. No boredom! The only downside, as you may have guessed, is that my little ol' blog tends to get ignored. So until work slows down some, since I usually used quick work breaks to write, you may end up reading the same post over and over for a couple days. I also have a feeling most of my posts are going to be my reviews that get posted over at Decoy, which might be ok for those of you who come here for the music info, but not for those looking for personal blog entries. Anyways, that's that and that's how it's gonna be.

Some Things Are Better Left Unseen

As Jared and I were driving to Blockbuster last night to return Everything is Illuminated (which is a phenomenal film) on our way to a friend's housewarming party, there was something we saw that was so out there that I pulled the first triple take that I think I ever had.

About a half a mile from our house is a bike trail that I often go running on. It's a nice trail and is more interesting to run on than running around our subdivision, but there's still rarely anything of interest to see while I'm out sweating off the calories from the crap I no doubt fed myself throughout the day.

The trail crosses the road that Jared and I were taking to Blockbuster and being that I get annoyed when cars don't yield for me when I'm trying to cross on my runs, I always yield for any runners or bikers so they can get across and not have to break their stride or lose pace. But this time, I saw a type of runner I had never seen.

He was probably about 60, which isn't unusual. I've run many a road race where there are men and women 60 or older. What was interesting was his choice of attire. He was wearing running shorts, but running shorts that were obviously meant for a fifth grade girl. They had the slits on the sides and were only probably about 6 inches long in total length. So as he jogged across the road in front of us, we got quite the glimpse of his tighty whiteys. Heck, she shouldn't have even bothered with the shorts because they weren't covering anything up.

It makes you wonder if he looks at what he wears before he goes out running. I have my pair of short shorts that I like to wear when I'm doing my longer runs because they're light, but they at least are as long as my boxers. And even if they weren't, I'd have boxers on, not a skin tight pair of white nut huggers.

So Mr. Old Runner Dude, I implore you, since you run on the same trail I do, put on some shorts that cover up your goods before you hit the trail next. I don't think I could take seeing what you've already shown me over again.