Thought Sausage

So I obtained this from itunes and was listening to it all day at work. Let me just state that I detested this band for a long time. I suppose some of that was just being jealous those dudes from Des Moines were having way more success than any of us were. However, now that they are like, ridiculously huge, and I haven't set foot on a stage in almost 4 years (really?), I can be much more objective. I REALLY liked Volume 3 and thought that album struck a really good balance between good songwriting and blunt force trauma. It's a pretty constant staple in the ipod I use for running/cycling.

So I heard the song Psychosocial and was convinced enough by it that this album would be in that same direction (I thought Iowa was too much gutteral and not enough song craft, and I don't give a shit about anything before that). I've run through all the songs maybe 3-4 times now and I definitely have my faves. Psychosocial, Gehanna (in all its Alice in Chains throwback glory) and Snuff are excellent. There's some other really good ones too. The dudes who play the 'auxillary percussion' or whatever are a lot more pronounced here which is nice. The riffs are less of the gutteral c sharp nonsense and more thrashy than before. Lots more harmonies too, and the guitar solos are less of that directionless frenetic shit on Vol 3 and more melodic and do what a guitar solo should do. Basically it feels like more of a cross between Stone Sour and Slipknot in that regard (which is a good thing IM oh so HO). It's not as experimental as Vol 3 with the non-heavy shit (although we still have a pretty solid acoustic track), but Corey's vocals definitely stretch. As of right now, I'd call him the MVP of this outing. We have some killer falsetto things that work ridiculously well against the music (and not in that whiney Thom Yorke kinda way). I'm glad they are keeping an emphasis on vocal hooks throughout. That was something Iowa lacked and Vol 3 was hinting at.

I dunno if you should buy this or not. Basically if you like Stone Sour's last one, you'll like this, and if you LOVED Iowa and hated Vol 3, you probably won't like it. But it's here if you're so inclined.

Boy howdy of all the customer support I've had to deal with over the years, American Airlines has to be on the ass end of the bell curve. Let me ask you this; if you are a huge company with lots of employees, why must the ones who can't speak a lick of english be the ones you put on your help desk? Surely there are employees of American who's command of our nation's majority tongue is sufficient to communicate concepts such as credit transfers and refunds.

Check it out. So I cancelled my San Fran trip from last week and was told I'd now have a credit voucher, but American would rape me to the tune of 150 bucks for re-booking. Sucks, but whatever right? So I hop my merry ass onto Expedia (as I was told when I cancel the credits would "show up in my account" - they didn't) to book a flight to Boston in October for my cousin's wedding. Seeing that these credits were in fact, unavailable, I called the support and the automated menu even had a choice for those of us that needed to use a credit voucher. This is where the fun began. Oh dear jesus. This fucker (I can't remember his name, but it rhymed with spaghetti) couldn't even understand numbers. NUMBERS! I had to read my itinerary to him no less than 4 times. Then when we finally made it clear I was calling to use credit, he ran through the whole rigamarole on the 150 bucks over and over because I kept saying "Sure okay, so can you use the remaining part of the voucher for that or do I need to give you a credit card (the flight to Boston is like 300 and the San Fran flight was 4 something or other)." At one point he put me on hold for 7 minutes (I spent the time staring at my computer clock) listening to crackly-ass elevator music (note to people who create hold music -how about something soft? the only necessary function of hold music is to let us know we didn't get cut off). When he came back, he informed me that I in fact, had to do this whole transaction through American as Expedia would not be able to book the flight directly so Spaghetti would have to transfer me.

The American Airlines person was nice. All the way up until I told her I wanted to rebook. She asked me why on earth I'd want to do that since I would be charged 150 bucks (I'm given to assume that staying put in Chicago for the rest of my life seemed like a perfectly viable option to her). As if pissing away the entire cost of the SF flight was somehow advantageous to using whatever credit I could get towards Boston. What the fuck?? Once we got the motives of my flight out of the way, she then informed me that not only would I be charged the 150 bucks, but the remaining difference of the flights would also be lost. So that difference between the 300 bucks (or something like that) for the Boston flight and the 450 or so the SF flight cost...yeah that 150 bucks...that part was going to just go away or something. According to her, I couldn't use that towards a flight in the future. I was also told that it was "not American Airlines policy to apply a credit voucher towards the 150 dollar mandatory re-booking fee". Somehow this equates to good customer service (I know this because the message told me while I was being transferred that American Airlines was going to 'record this call for quality assurance'). I finally just piped up and said "So how is it that you guys are just going to charge me an extra 150 bucks for a flight I didnt' even fly, when I'm perfectly willing to apply it towards another flight at a later date?" (I have the Disney World Marathon in January so I was figuring I'd use it then). I was told "If it's that big of an issue, I can talk to a 'credit voucher specialist' and was transferred to this person who I had to explain the situation to THRICE until I was told that there was no problem whatsoever applying the 150 mandatory re-booking fee on my voucher. Somehow it worked out that with fees/taxes I owed them another 15 dollars for the Boston flight. I literally had to ask "Okay can I just give you a credit card for that?" half a dozen times until she finally said 'yes" (prior to 'yes', she engineered new and different ways to explain to me that the differences between the flights and the mandatory fee came to 15 dollars).

So after damn near two hours I FINALLY have a flight on American Airlines to Boston in October and American Airlines got their 150 bucks to switch my flight (150 bucks?!! really??? Why don't they just go ahead and call it a gas tax or something?). The situation was such a clusterfuck I decided to compose a Haiku in its honor:

AA Can Fuck Off
Shitty Phone Support Bitches
Will fly Delta Now

I only give him this title because I'm pretty sure if I didn't, he'd fly to the US, rip my arms off and bbq them or something. That said...his dance moves are pretty fly.

"YOU WILL DANCE NOW! EVERYBODY IS TECHNO DANCING! YOU WILL DO TECHNO DANCING OR I WILL DO SEX WITH YOUR ASS! BLLARAARRAAAGH!"

(as I imagine he is saying in whatever language he says it in)

Roly's thoughts:

[23:54] Roly: you understand this is Neo in daylight
[23:55] Roly: all it would take right now is for Paddy to stagger across drunk in a nice white shirt

Thanks Travis

Well I decided to go ahead and join just about everybody I train with and nut up and become a member of the Chicago Tri Club. So yeah, I'm like, officially a triathlete now and shit. I'm digging those monthly meetings that involve a happy hour (that's carb loading right).

I'm still a Chicago Blue Dolphin. In fact most members of the tri club are also Dolphins. The Tri Club has the added perks of having mad discounts like everywhere and having a bigger network of training/riders.

So, Jennifer Lopez has decided to do a triathlon. Awwwww that's cute and all. Well kinda, sorta not really. Fuck off.

The best part is that it's not even a full international distance (let alone a 70.3 or Ironman). It's an elongated sprint distance (it's really short in other words). I've never done a sprint (although it probably would be good fun), but if I did, rest assured my prepping wouldn't involve a blog, a photoshoot and an appearance on the Today Show where I bitch because people are more impressed by Michael Phelps. No, I'd probably just slam a couple beers and git 'r done.

Seriously, would somebody get this narcississitic bitch off my RSS reader and into a Taco Bell food assembly line where she belongs?

I just got done reading the (semi) newly released Chris Connelly tell all. It's long-ish title "Concrete: Bulletproof, Invisible + Fried: My Life as a Revolting Cock" is quite apt.

Now, I know I've got some readers here who know exactly why this book is fucking awesome and exactly why I would be interested in it (derr....Gabe, Schmudde, Chuck, Jason, Adam, Jay etc etc etc...). Let me just say this to everyone else (those of you who clearly need to be enlightened in music that doesn't suck)- with the onslaught of tell-all bios from rockstars as of late, people such as myself have been entertained reading about all the excesses of Slash, Nikki Sixx, Eric Clapton and so on. All I have to say is that those guys ain't got shit on Al Jourgensen's court. Through Chris's eyes, he makes all those guys look like fucking chumps. And he does it right in Chicago, making the story that much more personal (my buddy Steve is always telling me about how Delilah's used to be The Crash Palace, where Al 'n co would hang out...now I have the specifics of what went on).

That said, I always knew Chris was a witty fellow (what with the gobs of stream of conscious lyrics). This book however, is so witty and so cleverly written the only thing I can think to compare it to is the Mixerman's Diary. His Scottish sense of humor is dripping off the pages which makes the stories all that much more vivid.

Basically, the book picks up with Chris plugging away in Fini Tribe circa 1985 or so and takes off with a chance meeting with Al in London which results in Chris going to Chicago and becoming a member of Rev Co for the next 7-8 years or so. We also hear about how Pigface got started, the ins and outs of touring on Mind is a Terrible Thing To Taste and the grandeur of Ministry's Psalm 69 tour. Chris paints Al like the raving yet-hard-working lunatic he probably actually was. The story drops off after 94 (Linger Fickin Good and the failed tour) or 95 and has some follow ups as to some of the early millennium Pigface reunions, Damage Manuel and Chris's opinions of what has become of Rev Co now.

I'll say this much, for the insane excesses and not-for-the-faint-of-heart activities that went on, Chris doesn't come off as preachy whatsoever. There's no "look how terrible we were" type things (Chris is a reformed family man nowadays). You feel like he looks back on the era as being a really good time, but that it's in the past.

Going into this, I THOUGHT I would be primarily interested in the Mind tour through Psalm 69 (or however those symbols are pronounced) because he DOES go into some details about how various songs came about, and how So What, Thieves and Jesus Built My Hotrod came along (apparently, Chris slaved away at actual lyrics and melodies for weeks and then Gibby Haynes came in all fucked up and babbled over it on a coke binge at like 6am and there ya go). There were plenty of other great antecdotes about the cast of characters (Al, Paul, Martin, Phildo, Bill, Tucker - the latter of which committed suicide in 1999 and that clearly was a big blow to everyone involved). However, I think my favorite part of the book was the early stuff. Reading about what it was like before Wax Trax had any money, and how everyone was broke and trying to make it. Chris spends a lot of time on this.

Run don't walk yer ass over to Amazon and buy this. Even if you don't know the music or the characters, the vivid images of touring in a semi-successful band in the mid 80's and a huge band in the 90's is utterly hilarious. I especially appreciate the logistics that go into carting the Cocks around the US (need for drugs, strippers and hair gel is punctuated all over the place).

The Burger King in Xenia Ohio

I

Wow, it's been awhile since I said anything on here. Needless to say there has been a whirlwind of activity around these parts, yet not a whole lot to report.

Steelhead is in the bag of course. It went alright. They cancelled the swim and instead had a run a couple miles in its place. That was okay and probably shaved antoher 10 minutes off my time, but didn't help place wise (I usually come out of the water way ahead of the pack, not so much with running). But I had a pretty good bike and an okay run at the end (the 13.1 mile one).

I ended up not getting into the Alcratraz race (!!!) so instead, I'm going to volunteer at Chicago. So if you're running it, there's a good chance I'll be handing you water or yelling at you to slow down in transition (I seriously hate those fuckers).

Last weekend was a bunch of baseball games (well two). Friday night, Google got a skybox down at the Cell and we watched the White Sox beat the Red Sox. I didn't actually watch the game because when I'm in a skybox, my attention is largely devoted to cleaning out the bar as quickly and destructively as possible. Somehow I ended up at Genender's couch and then the next day, was up at Wrigley around noon with Travis to watch the Cards more or less kick the shit out of the Cubs. Good times again there.

Went to some Italian festival which was like a Guido Haircut Event Horizon to the tune of Sinatra. Fun times. The net result of which was I finally got around to getting back to running on Monday night and am slowly accepting the fact that "taking a post-race break" that becomes more than a couple weeks is basically giving up. I still have Big Shoulders around the corner and then this new Tri in Waterloo along with some other rides this year to go. This weekend some Party Patrol people and fellow teamates are riding to some party/bonfire in a south suburb. should be good times.

I have a book review to post very soon as well.

Sorry I haven't posted about the race in detail yet. Tonight turned into a long-overdue sushi fest and then myself and the 'ol Roxbox got it on for a few hours. For those not in the know, Roxbox is the server I re-purposed into a digital audio workstation with enough horsepower to turn your mom into a hit single. It's been awhile since I jammed out on things, but there ya have it. I have no idea what's going to become of any of this, other than I have rough mixes of things to show Ryan Bartekoske if (and when) he shows up for labor day weekend...just to prove I haven't turned into a complete pussy since he and I haven't lived in the same state.

Anyhow, I'm about ready to pass out as I type so the recap will have to wait another night (or two nights...as it turns out I have a ticket to see Dark Knight on the IMAX tomorrow in date-capacity...hoowah!)

Had the Steelhead 70.3 Half Ironman this weekend. It went a lot better than I thought it would. I sort of dogged the run which, in retrospect was entirely unecessary, but fuck it. That distance wasn't near as hard on me as I thought it'd be. I had an awesome cycle despite losing my chain (to be fair, this was by far the fastest chain recovery in the history of my life). There was a clusterfuck of mass proportions after the race that nearly resulted in me being stuck in Benton Harbor Michigan for an unforseeable amount of time that was narrowly avoided. The result of which is that Steelhead organizers will be greatly amending their policies for the years to come about who gets access to gear check. I'll post a full recap of everything tomorrow. For now, I'm getting some sleep (finally).