Flashing before my eyes...

While going through a box of mementos I happened upon an envelope full of ticket stubs of some shows I went to years ago. I was flooded with memories of my youth and here are some highlights:

The Replacements and Soul Asylum @ the Entry Oct. 15, 1985. Soul Asylum bass player breaks bass string and the Mats open with "Color Me Impressed."

The Red Hot Chili Peppers @ First Ave Mainroom Oct. 9, 1989 -- Flat out one of the best shows ever. The ticket was a birthday present and my roomies also bought me beers all night. I got seriously altered.

Fishbone and Primus @ First Ave. Mainroom - Nov. 2, 1991
The show came right after the huge Halloween Blizzard of '91. I was so afraid the show would be cancelled because the roads were in horrible shape. But it wasn't. Bass guitar god Les Claypool was dressed in a dark blue hoodie for the whole show and he just rocked it.

Public Enemy and Stetsasonic @ First Ave. Mainroom - Dec. 12, 1988
The stage in the mainroom kept vibrating and making Terminator X's records skip, so Chuck D and Flavor Flav had to tone down the stageshow. But they still killed me. It was my first big hip hop show and I knew every rhyme to every song they did.

Monsters of Rock @ the Metrodome - July 13, 1988
My first time and only chance to see Eddie Van Halen play guitar. It was worth it, even though Sammy Hagar was fronting the band. Metallica blew my head off. Scorpions were boring. Dokken lackluster. But here's the worst part of the show: I was living in a house across the street from the dome and invited some of my old high school buddies to park next to my house during the concert. Unfortunately, my landlord wasn't amused and had all their cars towed. My friends were pissed at me.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jeff Beck @ the Northrop Auditorium - Oct. 25, 1989
My third and last time seeing the great SRV. Beck did a set. Stevie did a set. And then they jammed together. Oh god was that amazing. Weirdest memory from the show was there was some jarhead douchebag sitting behind us and he kept getting pissed everytime one of us stood up. So we sat. And then Stevie did "Voodoo Chile," so we said F-it and stood up. The guy got up came around in front of us and tried to pull one of my buddies down to the floor. He was then ejected from the building.

Other memorable shows - The Suburbs @ the Mainroom in 1984, Violent Femmes in the Mainroom in 1985, Ice-T and Body Count @ the Mainroom Feb. 10, 1992 (the brothers weren't havin' none of the moshpit); House of Pain w/ Rage Against the Machine @ the Mainroom April 5, 1993 (Rage Against the Machine melted my face off and I hooked up with cute chick after the show); Living Colour w/ Bad Brains @ Mainroom April 26, 1993 (dude - Vernon Reid and Dr. No in one show) and Prince at Glam Slam - July 25, 1994 - The Love Experience consisted of Prince, Michael Bland on drums, Sonny T on bass and Tommy Barbarella on keyboards. Prince played guitar all night and tore the shit down.

this is where chicken comes from

Long story short -- last weekend my wife killed a chicken, plucked it, gutted it, butchered it and then cooked it. Boy, it was delicious.

I took lots of photos here.

There's a bit of narrative with the photos that explain why in the hell anyone would do such a thing. But I'll tell you it was done, not out of bloodlust, but out of a sense that one should know where their food comes from. And, that folks should know that if you eat meat, something's gotta die first.

I was inspired by a recent post from whiskeymarie with eight interesting things about her. So what the hay, here it goes:

1. I'm a grown-ass man who thinks puppets are funny. From the Muppets to Sifl and Olly - non-stop hilarity.

2. As a kid I was on the back of 'monster cereal' cereal boxes: Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry and Fruit Brute. It was a promotion selling little dolls of the monster characters. And yes, I did get all four dolls. (fyi - the photo above is not a pic of the box. I have a framed cutout which i keep in a safe place.)

3. I'm a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I dabble in writing, art, music - a halfway decent guitar player - but don't ask me to sit down and play you a song, because all I do is noodle.

4. I don't like cilantro. It tastes like soap.

5. I'm a night person and a morning person. But I'd rather be napping during the afternoon.

6. People think I'm smart because I can remember and recall lots of trivial information.

7. My favorite part(s) of my own body: my hands.

8. My dad is more interesting than me. He's a freelance screen/voice-over actor who's appeared in television commercials and he had a speaking role in a Disney movie which also starred Hulk Hogan and Lonnie Anderson.

An observation about downtown traffic

Recently, while standing at the corner of 7th Street and 2nd Ave. at evening rush hour, I witnessed a frustrating scenario. An ambulance, with its lights flashing and siren blaring, is trying to make its way north on 7th. There is considerable gridlock. And none of the drivers of the cars who are by now seeing the ambulance in their rear-view mirrors, feel the necessity to drive forward to get out of the way.

So the ambulance just sits there, for what must be an eternity while the drivers slowly figure out that in order for the emergency vehicle to get by them, that they'll actually have to make room.

Who knows what type of emergency it's speeding off to: a heart-attack? a stabbing? shooting?

Meanwhile, a woman standing next to me on the corner, voices the same frustration, I'm starting to feel (except her voice sounds much more Minnesotan than mine). "What if that ambulance was trying to save someone they love? Would they get out of the way then? Jeezus!"