In the immortal words of Timbaland, it's been a long time, and I shouldn't have left you without a dope beat to step to. It's been an intensely boring combination of school, work, and a whole lot of nothing interesting going on that has kept me from posting. It's always irritated me when you're idly checking in on some form of social media, and twenty idiot friends of yours post something like, "Hrrm. Weather, right guys?". Fuck you, friend. No one cares. You don't even care. I don't care about the dumb meal you ate or your 'fuck the haters' post or the hundreds upon hundreds of half assed memes you found and addressed to ONE person to perpetuate your inane inside jokes. So, I try not to do that here I guess is what I'm saying.
It's been about eight months since I last posted, and some things have actually happened. I have been turning 2014 into my year of better living. In addition to being a vegetarian already, I stopped eating cheese, bread, and anything sweet. I stopped smoking in favor the e-cig vaporizer, the dumbest thing ever. I also started doing a little bit of exercise and such. Most importantly, I cut down on a lot of alcohol, and opt for the blander options as opposed to the stouts IPAs, and ciders I usually enjoy. I am starting to see positive results from these changes...
...AND I FUCKING HATE IT.
Goddamnitall. Acting like an actual human being is HARD. Apparently living everyday like you are Orson Welles in his twilight years for over two decades makes you ill equipped to deal with the sudden change to non-disgusting. I feel like I'm living in a Cathy comic strip. All I need is an ill-fitting pant suit with shoulder pads like a linebacker. I asked a waitress today to hold the meat and cheese from my meal, and she looked at me like I just told her that I have the world's biggest Precious Moments figurine collection. Hopefully hemmoraging toxins from every orifice of my body will eventually pay off in the form of living past my late 30's, but right now I just want to Scrooge McDuck dive into a vault of Cadbury Creme Eggs and mozzarella sticks.
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This change in lifestyle hasn't come without it's missteps however. Perhaps the biggest one was the fact that changing two decades of lifestyle fuckups without any supervision can lead to complications.
Complications like a fucking kidney
stone.
Jesus Christ and the souls in purgatory, you don't know pain until you have had a goddamn kidney stone. Kidney stones are like if that chest exploding xenomorph from 'Alien' had skin made out of Metal Krusty-O's and fought a school of candiru fish for control of your now eviscerated urethra. Hell doesn't begin to describe it. It starts as back pain, then it becomes intolerable back pain, and then eventually you start praying for King Solomon to split your body in twain as A.) The kidney stone riddled section of your body is dead anyway, and B.) Death seems much more preferable to writhing on the ground screaming like a goddamn banshee every 30 seconds.
I had to be escorted to the hospital, where I soon realized that the world didn't revolve around me or my kidney stone, which at this point had taken to annihilating my body so regularly that I thought I was going to pass out or just start grabbing scalpels so I could fish the damn thing out myself like Anton Chigurh shucking buckshot out of his leg. Hospitals really could give a fuck about your bullshit, no matter how much you make a scene (and believe me, I was). They've seen worse. Far worse. A kidney stone is nothing compared to the amputations and gunshots and ass-lodged lightbulbs that walk into their waiting room every day.
People that pop pills on a regular basis will tell you about how great they are. These people apparently haven't used them while their ureters are being tossed into a rusty thresher for 8 hours. Those goddamn things didn't make the pain go away. They just made me tired and want more blankets (By the way Hospitals, I don't know whose Nana you keep getting to crochet blankets for you, but step your blanket game up). But I was to tired to scream anymore, so I guess... mission accomplished?
Eventually, things returned to normal and I slept for about a day. I wouldn't wish this on anyone, so here is my one little piece of advice to take with you: Don't subsist on tea, coffee and drug store tins of cashews unless you want your kidneys to look like the inside of a bottle of amber colored Aftershock. The more you know, yo.
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I got enough of a repreve from my increasingly busy schedule to see the band Windhand in concert. Windhand is a doom metal band from Richmond, VA that released their second album (and first for legendary metal label Relapse Records) 'Soma' last year. Now, I listened to the record and thought it was good, if about 20 minutes too long, but it's doom metal and this comes with the territory. It was certainly better than almost any other doom record to come out in 2013. So, I was excited to see the band come to town and do their thing. I didn't know much about the band going into the show, so I was surprised to see that the band was fronted by a woman. This shows how unobservant I am apparently. She's wearing a Cough shirt over a flannel, which makes her the dopest person in the room off the jump. The show starts and like most slow, doom-oriented metal, the live show trumps anything they can put down in the recording studio. You just kind of have to feel the amps rattle your bones to get the full effect. Her vocals are airy, yet foreboding and the riffs are heavy and drawn out, so I'm really digging it.
That is until I realized that this is a doom metal show in a small bar in Ohio, and most run-of-the-mill Ohio burn outs can't go 15 minutes into any sort of heavy rock show without justifying their resin-stained Cradle of Filth t-shirt's existence, so a mosh pit breaks out. Again, this is a fucking DOOM METAL show. There's little to no inertia in doom metal. It's music for heshers that put these records on to fill the void between playing Diablo 3 and packing another bowl, not a bunch of hyper charged jackoffs. It was like if you gave a white trash dude a debit card, and when he went to withdraw cash the ATM only gave him gift certificates to a Rally's: sure, that's not what is supposed to come out, but both paths result in the same outcome: Big Bufords. And for the patrons of that bar, their Big Buford was moshing. Get your act together, Ohio metal dudes.
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It is nigh upon HALL OF FAME WEEKEND in my hometown of Canton. This is when the city gathers together to eat ribs, watched washed-up bands from the 90's play free shows, shoot off fireworks illegally, plow through DUI checkpoints with reckless abandon, and murder each other. Oh, and induct players into the Football Hall of Fame. This year has a pretty great class of inductees, and I'd like to take some time to discuss each member:
Michael Strahan: It's hard to remember when this guy wasn't a jovial pitchman. Or a jovial sitcom star. Or a jovial commentator. But then again, I never got hit by the guy, and I'd imagine that factors into it. People give him shit for his record breaking sack on Brett Favre likely being a fix, but I love the fact that it stripped the record from Marc Gastineau even more. His media credentials likely got him fast tracked into the Hall, but it was only a matter of time for this guy.
Aeneas Williams: I think HOF voters are finally starting to be OK with putting players from the Cardinals in the Hall even though they were essentially about as competitive as the Washington Generals for about a half century. He's like what Joe Haden will become someday.
Walter Jones: Jones was a goddamn monster. In 180 games with Seattle, he only gave up 23 sacks, and again, he lined up against dudes like Strahan on a regular basis. He was only 6'5, which compared to some of the giants of his era (Pace, Ogden, etc.) and today is surprising. He also got called for holding only nine times in his career, which seems like witchcraft to me.
Derrick Brooks: Brooks anchored my favorite defense of all-time. The Bucs from 1998 to about 2003 were awesome. Sapp, Barber, Rice, Lynch... and Shelton Quarles. But Brooks was the lynchpin. He should have at least another Super Bowl ring, but that pious cunt Tony Dungy managed to squander some of the greatest talents of our era. Fuck that guy, Brooks deserved better.
Andre Reed: He told Bon Jovi to fuck off. That's exceptional. Also, The Comeback is fucking insane to watch. That man went batshit. I had a DVD copy of the game for a while (Why? Because my style is SO fresh), and it is stunning to watch a team kick another team in the teeth for an entire half, only for that team to be run out of the goddamn stadium moments later. It's phenomenal. Those Bills teams were incredible.
Claude Humphrey: A Falcons pass rusher before that was really a thing. I don't know much about this guy honestly.
Ray Fucking Guy: The first punter ever elected to the Hall. This is a big deal, and one that's been overdue for a while. Kickers are barely athletes, sure. Most are either roughly 58 years old or former Fútbolers that can't run more than seven steps before getting winded. With the exception of Sea Bass, none of them are over five feet tall (FACT!). Christ, Chris Kluwe was a punter for years and he spent the better part of his life doing raids or whatever in 'World of Warcraft'. But hey, at least one dude should get in, and he might as well be a 70s era Raider because that automatically makes you hard-nosed enough or whatever for a plaque in Canton.
Football is great. Watch more of it, nerds.
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And while I'm doing lists, I am playing through 'Mass Effect' aka The Greatest Game Series Ever Made again. I thought it would be fun to rank the various awesome crewmembers in order of greatness. That list is as follows:
Mordin Solus: Easy choice. Mordin is smart, deadly, charming, conflicted, and intensely funny. His death is the most tear-jerking death in video game history (IMO, of course)
Garrus Vakarian: Shepard's buddy. The dry moral compass of the crew. His sniping ability doesn't hurt either.
Legion: Cold and calculating, yet child-like in his understanding of organics in a way. Legion is simply awesome.
Thane Krios: Spiritual Drell assassin that is deadly even when terminally ill. The dude has a very dark past.
Tali Z'orah: Goes from green space gypsy on pilgrimage to badass tech destroyer in only 3 games.
Jack: Biotic nightmare. She looks like a Suicide Girl and hates pretty much everything. Dope.
Samara: Asari Justicar with a vicious streak. Sort of a yogic den mother that can also rip you to shreds.
Liara T'Soni: Asari scientist that becomes the Shadow Broker. Very proper, even as her world burns.
Grunt: Badass tank bred Krogan. Considered an outsider on his home world, despite being so powerful.
Miranda Lawson: Cerberus operative with extensive genetic mods. Terse, but she has been... umm... rendered nicely.
Javik: Prothean foot soldier. Kind of a dick. Probably because he's the last of his kind.
Jacob Taylor: Cerberus soldier with honorable intentions. He is the paragon of paragons.
EDI: The Normandy's AI that inhabits an android in ME3. She looks like a sex robot.
Katsumi Goto: DLC added smart-alec thief. She's an infiltrator, so I like her.
James Vega: Giant Latino dude. He adds little to the series.
Wrex: I never got to play much with Wrex because of...
Ashley Williams: Idiot Alliance marine that shot Wrex out of nowhere in my ME1 playthroughs. Left her ass to die on Virmire. But I wish I hadn't because that means I saved...
Kaiden Alienko: Fucking Kaiden. I hate this twat. He is like if Ted Moseby was a fucking Alliance soldier.
Mass Effect is dope. Except Kaiden.
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Podcast News! The Andy Daly Podcast Pilot Project is one of the best shows the medium has ever seen. Each show highlights one of Daly's excellent characters along with a cast of odd and often violent co-hosts and guests. There are only eight episodes, so it's easy to tackle and well worth it.
There are a number of finite podcasts that have sprung up over the past year or so. Shows like James Bonding, Go Bayside!, and U Talkin' U2 to Me? are all great listens, and I say this as someone who doesn't care about James Bond, and someone who actively hates 'Saved By the Bell' and U2.
I have also been tearing through the entire 180+ episode run of the show Schlock Treatment as of late. As the show's title would suggest, it's a movie review show about B-Movies and trash cinema. Hosted by The King of Garbage Can Land, Marc McDonald (until recently), Matt Ringler, Kirk Howle and Doug Frye, the four break down a movie a week. Most podcasts like this are completely unlistenable because people who like these films are usually devoid of any charisma, but this show is pretty great. Even with my pointless, but extensive knowledge of trashy movies, this show has clued me into a few that I have to watch now (specifically 'The Vineyard', 'Shakma' and 'The American Astronaut'). Plus they all may hate each other, so that's a plus.
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CLEVELAND SPORTS NEWS! The Browns picked up Manziel, LeBron came back, Josh Gordon got suspended, and the Indians continue to be competent. This is the best Northeast Ohio can hope for at any given time: Good things kept in check by awful things.
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MUSIC! No music updates, as previously alluded to, but if you need a music fix, check out the Deep Rotation podcast. Friend of the blog Brad has a guest on and they discuss a band if the guest's choosing, and he has to listen to all that band's discography (within reason). Great stuff from a great dude.
MUSIC! No music updates, as previously alluded to, but if you need a music fix, check out the Deep Rotation podcast. Friend of the blog Brad has a guest on and they discuss a band if the guest's choosing, and he has to listen to all that band's discography (within reason). Great stuff from a great dude.
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