Today was a largely restful day, thankfully. The only thing I did away from home was going with Kelly to a birthday party for our friend M & J’s daughter (who turned 1) at this very kiddie friendly spot called Peanut Butter & Ellie’s. It was, uh, bright, and colorful. However, if I had a wee one it’d probably be a decent little spot I guess. Not sure it mattered to the 1 year old, but there were plenty of others with 3, 4 and 5 year olds who seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. However we got to see some friends and chat for a bit before Kelly and I came home to and watched the last two parts of the three-part SciFi Channel movie Tin Man, a re-imagining of The Wizard of Oz. It wasn’t too bad. I mean, it wasn’t great, but it was entertaining and far superior to the other crap that channel pumps out… just look at their list of ‘original movies’, you’ll get the idea.
Category: Entertainment
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Gaming, and the Company Party
Today Kelly had class all day, and that meant I had the day to myself. I had grand plans to continue organizing my office, but instead spent most of the day playing video games. Played some Call of Duty 2 online for a bit, and then spent some time playing OpenArena, the free Quake 3 Arena game (based on Q3A’s open-sourced engine). It had been a number of years since I’d played Q3A, and had forgotten how even though the graphics are pretty ‘lo-fi’ compared to modern games, it’s still a blast to play (literally, KABOOM). There are several really fun maps to play, and it’s just as fast and furious as Q3A was. Neat!
Tonight Kelly and I went to my company’s holiday party, held at Holocene. It was a good time; open bar, tons of snacky foods, a live band, and an excellent speech from the CEO. Here are a few photos from the party, taken by a coworker). After hanging out until 10pm Kelly and I stopped briefly at Moon & Sixpence on our way home before calling it a night (Kelly has class tomorrow).
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The week so far, and some Radiohead
First, a quick recap of my week so far: WORK.
There, now that that’s out of the way, while reading through Digg tonight I came across a really good article chronicling the career turn-arounds of certain musicians/bands. The first on the list was Radiohead which included a music video for “Just” from their album The Bends. Having never seen it before, I was amazed by it’s brilliance. It’s among the best music videos I’ve ever seen (next to this video by Sigur Ros, and “Hurt” covered by Johnny Cash). The kind that is intelligent, tells a story, and is more like a short film than the kind of garbage that does nothing but glamorize the singer and his gang of “ho’s” and his “bling” (thinking about most rap videos, which is about all you ever see on MTV) or about how sexy and sensual the female singer is.
Below, for your viewing pleasure, is the video for “Just” by Radiohead
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Day at home, night at the Moon
Got up early today. Well, early by my Saturday standards (8:30), and spent most of the day being somewhat productive. I continued cleaning my office, cleaned the kitchen, the garage, the car, etc. You know, super exciting fun stuff. Oh, I also IM’d all day with my loser friend Martin. What a loser! (yes, I expect a response from you, you loser).
Tonight Kelly and I met our friends Ty and Aymie (as well her sister and brother-in-law) at Moon & Sixpence for some dinner and drinks. We were joined later by Miranda & Brian, and even later by my brother Travis. Had a good time hanging out. Had the cottage pie. Still full. Gruhhh.
Oh, today I also created my masterpiece. My friend SD sent me a mix CD (the prize for winning a blog contest: closest guess to the birth date of his son), which arrived in the mail last week (the CD, not his son). Naturally, a home-made mix CD doesn’t have cover art. I like cover art (so does my iPod), so I created one. The CD had only the phrase “Van Man” written on it, a fairly common nickname due to my long Dutch last name. I grabbed an oddball image from his blog and created this: Behold the awesomeness.
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Week(end) roundup
Hello readers (the, um, five of you). Here’s a recap of the week, with an added bonus weird Portland fact at the end (which you must read through all the following junk to discover… because I say so).
Sunday: After spending most of the morning reveling in the rawk greatness I’d seen the previous night, Kelly and I watched Rescue Dawn, which was fantastic.
Monday: I met Snooks after work for a couple pints at Kennedy School, where I got to talk in a limited fashion about Battlestar Galactica: Razor (which Snooks hadn’t yet seen, so I had to skirt around, well, pretty much everything).
Tuesday: I met my friend MB at Rialto (around the corner from my office) for lunch. Had their reuben sandwich. It was no Goose Hollow reuben, but it was good. However, I was left that afternoon feeling generally full and icky. I’m not blaming it on the sandwich, I think I was fighting off a cold. Stayed in and read about 200 pages of the seventh and final Harry Potter book. Was nice to have an evening in while Kelly was out seeing a play.
Wednesday: Kelly and I met after at Binks after I left work for a quick beer before going home and watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which was, uh, not great. Not quite as crap as I was expecting, but definitely not my favorite of the three.
Thursday: Kelly and I met at Rose & Thistle for a few pints before coming home and listening to some old cassettes (which came up because over the previous weekend I’d finally gone through all my old tapes and boxed a bunch up to donate somewhere).
Today: After a couple weeks designing the interface for a bunch of new features for SuperSweetCo’s next release of it’s flagship product (culminating with a demo at 4pm) I hung out at a work happy hour where I got to learn some funny shiz about some coworkers, before catching the train homeward. On the way I stopped at Moon & Sixpence for a pint of Old Speckled Hen before catching my bus connection home.
Oh, just in case you’re wondering, I’ve still got Van Halen stuck in my head. I’m still rawking out!
Lastly, I leave you with this odd tidbit I read via a Slashdot post regarding some folks wanting to rename 42nd Ave Douglas Adams Blvd, about the worlds smallest park, here in Portland. Odd.
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Van Halen!
Tonight I went out with my longtime friend Sean to see Van Halen play at the Rose Garden Arena. Yes, you read that right. Van effin’ Halen, with David Lee Roth back as the lead singer! How, you might ask, would I be going to such a show? Well, it’s a good question, and it requires a little bit of storytime… Back in elementary school I was into Van Halen, and introduced my friend Sean to them. Before I’d even reached Junior High, the “Roth Break-up” occurred, and I remember lamenting that I’d never get the chance to see them. I was also never a big fan of their Hagar-era reincarnation (“Van Hagar”). Fast forward 22 years… Sean, bless him, heard of the Halen + Roth reunion tour and immediately thought of me and bought he and I tickets to the show (well, his wife bought the tickets, thanks Mel!). While Van Halen has been off my personal playlist for many years, they occasionally resurface when I get the itch (equal parts nostalgia and the desire to rawk out).
Despite my fears (you know, of them being something of a sad, ghostly version of themselves, aided by walkers and IV’s… and catheters) they were great, and it was a blast. They really did RAWK, and despite their age they both looked and sounded great. Granted, DLR wasn’t able to hit his high screechy vocal accents the same way he did at 54 years old as he could at 26, he was still one hell of a front-man, and the energy onstage between he and Eddie Van Halen was that of two longtime friends having a heck of a good time.
The original lineup was almost complete, the original bassist Michael Anthony (who has sided with that loser, Sammy Hagar) had split with the group, and was replaced with Eddie’s son Wolfgang, who was excellent in his own right and seemed to fit in very well with the band, both in namesake and talent.
The band played nothing but Roth-era Van Halen, and sounded really good. There were, naturally, moments where the songs strayed from their album counterparts, either by mid-song improvisational guitar solos, or vocal changes by Roth, but there wasn’t a song that wasn’t as fun and rockin’ as the originals. Some of the standouts for me were pretty much anything they played from their first album, of which they played a LOT (if not all), which was a pleasant surprise since it’s the one album I actually leave on my iPod and enjoy listening to occasionally. It was also a long show, pretty much non-stop except for a VERY brief break before finishing the show with Jump. They went onstage at around 8:30 and played until 11:15, pretty much non-stop, featuring some amazing solo breaks by both the drummer Alex and Eddie.
Before the show Sean and I went to Rose & Thistle for some beers and some food, and after the show we hit Kennedy School for another beer or two and some fries, both of which served as nice ‘bookends’ to the night. Had a blast, despite how hesitant I was about the evening earlier today.
Oh, and if the pictures from my crappy phone ever make their way to my inbox, I’ll post ’em here, though I doubt they’ll be worth it. The above photo is credited to the official Van Halen website.
Update: Here’s a video from a show a month ago.
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Missing in action, again
Yup, it’s happened again, I’m blogslacking. Here’s a recap of the past couple weeks:
Work, beer, turkey, pie, more work, and more beer.
For a more detailed breakdown, it’s been a little like this: I took some time off around the Thanksgiving holiday and spent a lot of time doing things around the house, like finally getting some shelving assembled in my office, thus making it a bit more organized and manageable. I also finally got my printer and scanner hooked back up. Not sure what I have to print or scan, but whatever, they’re both there and ready to go after 2+ years since the move to the house.
Spent Turkeyday at my folks house, which was very fun and very filling. I ate too much dinner, and then ate too much pie (which is to be expected I suppose). Kelly made a delicious apple pie, that pretty much every member of the family had seconds of. Yum. Me == fat.
The day after Kelly and I met Mr & Mrs Ghost Dog at Mash Tun for some dinner and beers.
After that, the work week broke down like this:
Monday: beers at Moon & Sixpence with Snooks.
Tuesday: home with Kelly watching movies and getting caught up on TV shows, like Heroes.
Wednesday: went to Kells for a couple beers after work… finally ventured downstairs to the ‘cigar’ area (meaning, I could have a smoke down there, pretty neat area, watched a bit of the Liverpool match on the plasma TV down there)… and then met Kelly at Moon after getting off the MAX for a beer before heading home for dinner and more TV watching.
Thursday: met Travis at Moon (yup, back there again).
Friday: Kelly was downtown when I got off work, so I met her at Huber’s, then we went to Kells (she wanted to see the downstairs ‘cigar bar’ that I visited on Wednesday), then we went to Shanghai Tunnel for a bit before taking the MAX homeward… stopping at Moon (yes, again, 4th time this week, urgh!) before going home.
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A sound of transforming roman hero beers
Over the weekend Kelly and I watched several movies, one of which was the horrible adaptation of the brilliant Ray Bradbury short story A Sound of Thunder, which, while having some (and I emphasize some) interesting bits, it was overall a terrible film. Read the original story here (the only one I could find).
Later that night we watched the Transformers movie. Perhaps it’s just that I hold a special place in my heart for cars transforming into robots, but I thought the movie was pretty fun.
We also started watching the HBO series Rome, which was very interesting.
Lastly, we finished watching the first series of Jekyll (starring the brilliant James Nesbitt), and got caught up on Heroes. Jekyll was great, and Heroes is I think a bit slower this year than the last, but still excellent.
Tonight I met up with Snooks at Kennedy School for some dinner, and we later moved on to another local pub, the Concordia Ale House, where I had both the delicious Terminal Gravity Strong Ale, as well as an Oktoberfest Marzen style lager by a brewery who’s name I now forget. Fun times, and was home before 11.
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Best thang evar!
While trying to catch up on my RSS feed reading tonight, I came across something while reading the blog of a local beer lover’s heaven Belmont Station that is, really, the BEST THANG EVAR!
You won’t be disappointed. 🙂
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Missing in action
Damn it’s been a while since I’ve written. There’s no real reason for my absence other than a combination of laziness and a general malaise I’ve been feeling with regard to personal projects. Where to begin…
It seems I’ve not written since my birthday, so I suppose I’ll break it down by day/event as best as my feeble, aging mind can manage.
Saturday, October 27th:
Kelly and I hosted a small gathering at my house to celebrate the my birthday, which was a lot of fun, and involved my friends bringing me copious amounts of beer. My friends know me so well.Sunday, October 28th:
My family and I went for dinner at Wan Q’s, a Chinese restaurant in Beaverton. Had a fun time celebrating both mine and my father’s birthday (we share the same birthday). I remember feeling very full as we left, and dreading going back to work after so many days off. 🙂Tuesday, October 31, 2007:
We had a few little-un’s come by for Halloween, more than the past couple years. Later that night Kelly and I watched Stir Of Echoes, one of those good ‘ghost story’ movies I like quite a bit, along with The Changeling.Thursday, November 1, 2007:
Went to Moon & Sixpence with my brother Travis, and was met later by Miranda. Had a great time hanging out, though remember being out a bit later than I’d intended.Friday, November 2, 2007:
After working form home, Kelly and I met our good friends Rick and Amy at the legendary Goose Hollow Inn for dinner and drinks (mmm… reuben sammich). Yum!Saturday, November 3, 2007:
Went out to Beaverton to hang out with a friend and ex-coworker of Kelly’s and her boyfriend, where I was fed delicious BBQ’d steak & shrimp, and got to play a little Call of Duty 3 (trying hard not to be frustrated that I have no experience with console controllers, and that I still wish that game was released for the PC). Had a really fun time hanging out with both A and S that night.Tuesday, November 6, 2007:
Went to Kennedy School with Snooks for some beers, and conversation ranging from sci-fi TV shows to politics.Tonight:
After work met Kelly at Rose & Thistle for a few beers before heading home.That pretty much catches y’all up. I’m sure I’m missing something, but whatever. Hopefully I don’t let my stress / laziness keep me from posting a bit more frequently.
