As it's January, and it's also that time of the year where musicians from all over the world get together in Los Angeles for the winter N.A.M.M. (National Association of Music Merchants) show; I figured that I would briefly run down the craziness that I was fortunate enough to experience in 2009 when I went. So this not really going to necessarily flow from thing to thing, it'll just be things I saw and experienced. Some will be short one liners, others a bit lengthier.
Without further a due, here we go!!!
*I went to this sweet ass Yamaha party and proceeded to get food poisoning from some bad queso while getting super drunk off of free beer. They next morning we were was supposed to attend an awards banquet for the company I worked for; it was an award for staying in business for 100 consecutive years. Needless to say, I didn't make it. And this was like the second day of the week and a half long trip.
*At the conference I was cut off by Dave Mustaine, twice. Literally. Like he walked right in front of me and I had to stop in my tracks or I would have run into him.
*From across the room, I saw Steve Vai marching across the hall. I say marching because that is one lanky bastard and he was leaving all of his assistants in the dust by about 20 steps.
*John Dolmayan, the drummer from System of a Down, was wondering around like a lost child.
*One day I was leaving and Tony Levin was walking in, looking like some sort of androgynous gunslinger. Parting the seas of people with his bass. And mustache.
*I went off exploring, which is super fun to do there, and saw Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater playing piano to exactly 3 people.
*While wondering around, I found the booth where Michael Anthony was signing at. I got his autograph by inadvertently cutting in front of about 200 people. Oops.
*Oh yeah, and I found a giant ass rave room. Fucking crazy.
*I found Mike Inez from Alice In Chains who was super cool and super drunk (it was like 11AM); talked to him and he signed some autographs for me. And managed to spell my name wrong, even though we were all wearing name tags.
*During one of the days, I found a booth/table where Alex Skolnick and Alexi Lahio were signing. Everyone seemed to be bypassing Skolnick to meet Lahio who was acting like a tool. I was way way more excited to meet Skolnick for the second time and during the whole conversation I had with him, Lahio looked borderline annoyed I wasn't excited to see him. Douche.
*There are like 3-4 levels at this convention. In the basement they have every shit knock off version of instruments that you could imagine by small companies from even smaller countries. It was on this floor that I saw Brooke White; who was on a season of American Idol. She looked so bummed that some sponsor stuck her in the basement.
*This was also the trip that launched the legendary What's That Smell? series I started to write.
*When I was in a meeting with some folks from Randall, I looked off to the side and saw Tommy Shaw from Styx. Styx hasn't been popular since 1983. Tommy Shaw hasn't been popular since 1991. Yet he had a fleet of people with him doing shit for him. And he is short.
*While I was there, I learned a few things. One is that when the famous/well known musicians are out and about, they like to just check shit out without being bugged. They do this by turning over their badges so you can't see their names. One guy I saw who did this was Cris Caffery, of TSO and Savatage fame. He could tell I knew who he was yet shot me a look with his eyes that said "Hey, don't fucking talk to me." And then he walked away.
Well, there you have it. Some weird/crazy/interesting shit that happened during my time there. As anyone who has been there can tell you, that is just the tip of the iceberg. There are lots of famous, big name musicians who are there, tons of half naked models, weirdos dressed up, and tons of musicians who were popular for like 3 months in the late 80s' and early 90s'. In short, it's a good god damn time. Tons of shows and some booths (Alfred) give away free beer. Party on Wayne.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
What's That Smell: Part Seven: Baby Shit & Aviation Nerds
New Year, new entry in the fabled epic goddamn journey know as "What's That Smell?"
Here we go...
My journey started the day before the actual journey. I had to book a slot on the Super Shuttle for super fucking early the next morning, and also for the first time in my aviation life; checking in to a flight online. I was a bit nervous about checking in online, because I had never done it and the damn website was only giving me a boarding pass for one of my two flights. So far, off to an uncertain start. The Super Shuttle thing went down easy and I also got like %15 off, which amounted to like $3.
However that night things got interesting. I didn't sleep well, partly because I stayed up late and was afraid that I would oversleep and miss my shuttle/flight. Another thing was that I for some reason had an extremely upset stomach. Every two hours I would wake up feeling like I was going to give birth out of my ass. Good times so far. When I actually woke up and took a shower I thought that it would be a better start. However two things happened. 1) The Super Shuttle guy was like 20 minutes late and 2) I felt like I had to take a massive shit but couldn't because I didn't know when this fucking guy would grace me with his presence. So I had to hold that bitch in ALL DAY.
I'm glad that I did check in online since the Super Shuttle guy was late. We got there with less than an hour to go before boarding and the line to get through security was hella long. I boarded the flight, got settled in next to my window seat and busted out a book I had been wanting to read for a while (Predator: Concrete Jungle; awesomeness). I ended up reading over 2/3's of it on the flight, but kept getting distracted because some ass hat was listening to one of the TED Talks from Sir Ken Robinson and laughing hysterically. Side note to this story....TED Talks are overrated, Ken Robinson is not funny, I don't know what Ken Robinson does for a living but he apparently thinks he is a god damn comedian. Seriously, every time I have heard/seen him speak, he seems to consciously script in laughter breaks. What a tool box. ANYWAYS...so this ass hat is laughing his stupid head off and I can hear him over me listening to Tommy by The Who.
Well, that flight lands and I have to run to the exact opposite end of the airport as usual. I find my terminal and chill out for a bit. Then about 20 minutes later we board and boy was I in for a doozy. Now if anyone has read any of the previous installments of What's That Smell?, you will have deduced that I am from Grand Forks; which is where I was headed. Grand Forks is home to the University of North Dakota. Among other things, UND has a world class aviation program and about 2.3 million fucking aviation nerds with it. About 100 of them ended up being on my flight. The whole way, and by the whole way, I mean the whole way; I had to listen to these losers backseat drive and criticize the pilot for the whole god damn flight. And on top of that, (here it comes) the plane had a weird smell (boom!). Why was that? Because a fucking crying baby (who also cried the whole way) was nice enough to take a shit, before take off. By the smell of it, he probably ate another baby's shit.
Well, that's that. Flying home in less than a week. More smelliness to follow!
Here we go...
My journey started the day before the actual journey. I had to book a slot on the Super Shuttle for super fucking early the next morning, and also for the first time in my aviation life; checking in to a flight online. I was a bit nervous about checking in online, because I had never done it and the damn website was only giving me a boarding pass for one of my two flights. So far, off to an uncertain start. The Super Shuttle thing went down easy and I also got like %15 off, which amounted to like $3.
However that night things got interesting. I didn't sleep well, partly because I stayed up late and was afraid that I would oversleep and miss my shuttle/flight. Another thing was that I for some reason had an extremely upset stomach. Every two hours I would wake up feeling like I was going to give birth out of my ass. Good times so far. When I actually woke up and took a shower I thought that it would be a better start. However two things happened. 1) The Super Shuttle guy was like 20 minutes late and 2) I felt like I had to take a massive shit but couldn't because I didn't know when this fucking guy would grace me with his presence. So I had to hold that bitch in ALL DAY.
I'm glad that I did check in online since the Super Shuttle guy was late. We got there with less than an hour to go before boarding and the line to get through security was hella long. I boarded the flight, got settled in next to my window seat and busted out a book I had been wanting to read for a while (Predator: Concrete Jungle; awesomeness). I ended up reading over 2/3's of it on the flight, but kept getting distracted because some ass hat was listening to one of the TED Talks from Sir Ken Robinson and laughing hysterically. Side note to this story....TED Talks are overrated, Ken Robinson is not funny, I don't know what Ken Robinson does for a living but he apparently thinks he is a god damn comedian. Seriously, every time I have heard/seen him speak, he seems to consciously script in laughter breaks. What a tool box. ANYWAYS...so this ass hat is laughing his stupid head off and I can hear him over me listening to Tommy by The Who.
Well, that flight lands and I have to run to the exact opposite end of the airport as usual. I find my terminal and chill out for a bit. Then about 20 minutes later we board and boy was I in for a doozy. Now if anyone has read any of the previous installments of What's That Smell?, you will have deduced that I am from Grand Forks; which is where I was headed. Grand Forks is home to the University of North Dakota. Among other things, UND has a world class aviation program and about 2.3 million fucking aviation nerds with it. About 100 of them ended up being on my flight. The whole way, and by the whole way, I mean the whole way; I had to listen to these losers backseat drive and criticize the pilot for the whole god damn flight. And on top of that, (here it comes) the plane had a weird smell (boom!). Why was that? Because a fucking crying baby (who also cried the whole way) was nice enough to take a shit, before take off. By the smell of it, he probably ate another baby's shit.
Well, that's that. Flying home in less than a week. More smelliness to follow!
Friday, January 4, 2013
It's Not the NFL Hall of Fame Damn It!!!!
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| It says PRO FOOTBALL, not NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE. |
This hall of fame is not called the NFL Hall of Fame, it is called the Pro Football Hall of Fame. If you do some quick research online, you can find out that there have been dozens of professional football leagues, both for men and women, yet only the NFL gets the recognition. I totally get why they don't accept CFL'ers in as much (only two are in: Bud Grant and Warren Moon); BUT when you stop and look at the numbers 6 out of the top 10 all time passing leaders in pro football history played exclusively or a majority of their careers in the CFL, yet only one guy (Warren Moon) is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. What. The. Hell?
Now everyone knows that Eric Dickerson ran for 2,105 yards in 1984, and that my man Adrian Peterson ran for 2,097 this season (2012); but how many people know or recognize that the all time single season rushing record holder is actually Herschel Walker from 1985 with 2,411 yards? Probably not as many as their should be. Or even for that fact that despite only two Pro Bowls in his NFL career, when you combine his total professional yardage, he amassed over 13,000 yards. How does that not merit a bust in Canton?
I guess if you move past just records and all of that, you could just look at dudes who for some reason have not been included because of personal grudges. That in my opinion is extremely lame. Charles Haley might have been a dick, rude, and maybe borderline mean to people; but you know what? That dude has FIVE Super Bowl rings! You know how many other guys have five Super Bowl rings? Zero. Until Brett Favre broke his record, Jim Marshall started the most consecutive games for a non-kicker and that dude has not been inducted. Tim Brown, Cris Carter, Jerry Kramer, Andre Reed, Kevin Greene, etc... The list goes on and on.
I get why they don't let some offensive players in because they feel that some records have been broken so often, BUT some of those guys played at high enough levels for long periods of time. High enough that they still earned All Pro honors and Pro Bowl selections.
So in the long run, is this going to change anything? No. How many people will read this? Five. Six tops. But I still wanted to get that off my chest. It bugs the shit out of me. Just like the MVP award. Seriously, why not just say you're going to give it to only offensive players. I mean, how did Jared Allen not win that award OR the Defensive Player of the Year award????
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